Chapter Ten
Every day until the first trial, Candace, Bree, and I practice channeling after dinner.
I relay to them the techniques Vik has explained in our predawn sessions.
How to clear your mind before you navigate so flickerstate rises around you crisper, realer, more tangible.
How to keep your heart rate low and your breathing rhythmic to steady the channel you’re building.
How not to panic when you feel your power flowing away by concentrating on your trust in the navigator who’s receiving it.
We improve inch by inch. Bree struggles to clear her mind (“I have, what do they call it, monkey brain”).
Candace hates rhythmic breathing (“Very Lamaze. Cringe”).
And every time I channel to them, I either panic and pull back or shove too much power all at once, burning them up (“Sorry, sorry, I—!”).
Still, we do improve. It’s a relief.
Another relief: Candace has started smiling at Bree’s dorky navigation puns.
Once, she even laughs, which makes Bree turn pink and beam.
After that, Bree sits next to Candace on the sofa instead of on the armchair.
They chat about their classes, Bree’s progress with boundary setting, and our class’s slow, slow realization that Candace’s healed wounds won’t kill anyone.
Bree touches Candace’s arm when she wants Candace’s attention, and Candace nudges Bree softly with her elbow to underscore her driest jokes.
They lean together when they talk. They’re friends now.
My team’s doing okay.
Vik and I, not so much. His tutoring may be on point, but our attempts to league? Argh. We detail the future we want painstakingly, narrowing our goals till we converge on a single red-gold gossamer possibility, try to navigate in tandem—
And nothing.
So no, I’m not learning how to league. What I am learning is Vik.
How he looks in the dark, in the red sunrise, in the gold day.
How he grins at my jokes but never cracks a smile at his own, so deadpan I’m not always sure whether the strange things he says are jokes.
How he’s always wearing some distractingly clingy, faded, Vermont-theme T-shirt because he has an extensive collection, gag gifts from his middle school best friend after the Academy accepted him.
“She wanted to remind me I come from the mean streets of VT,” he says.
“Which are...what, dirt roads roamed by poorly trained dogs?”
“Basically.”
“Do you see her in the summer?” I judge this to be a chill and normal way to ask whether the unnamed female friend is the hometown girl Griffin mentioned.
“Not really,” he says.
The evening before the first trial, I text to beg off the next morning practice.
I tell him I need the extra sleep, but the fact is, I need a break from him.
He tutors me, but he’s also competition.
If we both reach the final trial, I’ll have to knock him down or fall myself.
I can’t let myself think about him like—like—this.
***
It takes me a long time to get to sleep that night.
When I do, I dream.
I’m rushing out of Classic English Novels. It’s on the fifth floor of the Language Arts & Social Studies building. My next class is on the first. And I’m so, so late. I barrel down the hallway with its high fan-vaulted ceiling and carom into the stairwell, my backpack banging against my spine.
On the first steep stair, I slip.
I hang in empty air, arms and legs churning.
I land.
Crunch.
Agony explodes in my neck, and—
I wake hyperventilating, pain shooting up my spinal nerves.
When the pain recedes, my breath should slow. But it comes faster as I search for a safe explanation for what just happened and come up empty-handed.
Ordinary dreams don’t hurt. Bite-dreams do.
So. My first bite-dream: breaking my neck on a steep Academy staircase.
Once the bitten start dreaming about their possible deaths, they’re gone within eighteen months. With only one bite, not nine like Dad, I wasn’t supposed to start dreaming for years.
I try to breathe slower. My phone lies on my nightstand. The lock screen reads 1:12 a.m. Go back to sleep, I tell myself, falsely calm. Can’t win the trials if you aren’t getting four hours a night.
I grab my sweaty sheets to tug them around my shoulders—and hesitate, remembering the maxi Band-Aid on my upper arm. I’m fiercely curious about my wound’s progress, but I’m also so terrified of it that I change my Band-Aids with my eyes closed.
Fear can’t control me, not now. I need to be decisive. I need to be brave.
I get out of bed. I turn on the light. I peel up the corner of the Band-Aid, hold my breath, and rip the bandage off.
Thirteen tooth marks tattoo a jagged circle on my left bicep. Ten exist halfway between flickerstate and the real, quivering like an old-time projector has beamed them onto my skin. Two have scabbed—real scabs, dry and shiny as ladybugs.
The last one, at the circle’s lowest point, oozes red.
My bite’s getting worse.
Eighteen months? Fine. I needed to get it done fast for Dad anyway.
I swallow the hysteria vibrating in my throat and whisper to my wound, “Game on.”
***
After a month and a half at the Academy, it’s time to fight for my life.
The Friday of the first trial, it rains. Water gushes from eaves. Silver droplets bead mullioned windows. In the quad, the Great Tree crouches like a guard dog poised to shake soaked fur. I pass the wet day in suspense, dreading and longing for clinic.
And I take the stairs between my classes very, very carefully.
When the hour arrives, I hurry into the nav building. Damp-shouldered students cluster around a whiteboard in the room’s center, where someone has inked an eight-team bracket in pungent black marker. I join the crowd, rising on tiptoe to see.
Team One reads MIRABEL DELGADO, GRIFFIN MINTER, VIKRAM SOUZA. They’re up against Team Two, three boys I don’t know that well. Relief ripples through me.
I hope Vik’s team loses before I have to face him.
I read on to find out who I’ll be facing instead. I locate Team Eight, brEE ALLEN, NORAH SULLIVAN, CANDACE YANG. Our opponents are kids who came to the Academy freshman or sophomore year: ELENA KUZMIN, RAFE WHITNEY, AND CARRIE LEBLANC.
Elena’s one of the best navigators in Clinic A.
I set my jaw. Best or not, Elena’s going down.
Candace pushes into the room, wet oxfords squeaking. She walks over and nods to the whiteboard. “What are we up against?”
“Elena, Rafe, and Carrie.”
Elena hasn’t arrived, but Rafe and Carrie are laying down rain-spattered backpacks on a table nearby. They don’t exactly radiate menace. Rafe is rubbing his fogged-up glasses on his sleeve, and Carrie’s usual orange updo straggles down her neck like a stunned animal.
“Despite the hair,” Candace says as if reading my mind, “Carrie’s pretty good.”
“What about Rafe?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t in my group.”
“Mine neither. So he must have been in Bree’s. Where is she?”
“Haven’t seen her.”
I check my phone. One minute till class starts.
Since Candace and I staged our intervention, Bree has come home by eleven (give or take fifteen minutes) and set her alarm for six.
Last night at dinner, she mentioned, happily, that her homework has gotten easier since she started sleeping more.
And she’s arrived on time to the few classes we share.
But what if she’s late for the trial today?
Door 12 opens. Dr. Langmore steps inside, shaking rain from an umbrella. Dr. Ortega and Mr. Davis follow. Behind them comes a middle-aged man in an argyle sweater.
As usual, Dr. Langmore’s arrival kills student chatter. “Welcome to the first trial,” she says into the hush. “Many of you know Mr. Dennison, who teaches the junior navigation clinics. He’ll help us run today’s trial.”
I check my phone again. Class has started.
Dread burbles in my stomach. What if Bree’s sick?
Would Dr. Langmore let us reschedule? I doubt it.
What if, without telling me or Candace, Bree decided the Academy demanded too much pain for the gain and became the first transfer to drop out?
Would I have to fight through the trials with a two-person transfer team against trios of Academy lifers?
My heart slams against my ribs. My breathing shudders, all out of rhythm.
Dr. Langmore gestures. “Teams One and Two, with me. Teams Three and—”
Bree stumbles through a door to my right. Mud and grass stain her torn jeans, and her left knee oozes blood. She’s blinking down tears.
“What happened?” I whisper when she reaches me.
“I fell,” she whispers back. “My last class is across campus. I ran, but the rain made everything slippery…”
Guilt jabs me. While I imagined catastrophes where Bree ghosted our team, she was injuring herself trying to get here on time.
“We’re with Mr. Davis,” Candace says. “Let’s walk. I can look at your leg over there. I’ve got Band-Aids and Neosporin in my bag.”
I’m not surprised Candace stashes first aid supplies in her designer leather satchel. I bet she carries emergency tampons and a burner phone too.
We head for the room’s south end, where Mr. Davis is waiting for us.
At the nearest table, Candace pulls out a chair for Bree, unbuckles her satchel, and rummages for supplies. “This may sting.”
Mr. Davis begins taking attendance. “Team Eight… Bree Allen?”
“Here,” she says without her usual chirpiness.
He peers at Candace, cleaning Bree’s scrapes with a sanitary wipe. “Does she need the nurse?”
“No,” Candace says.
Elena, Rafe, and Carrie trade glances. I know what they’re thinking: If Mr. Davis sends Bree to the nurse, Team Eight will be down a navigator, fatally disadvantaged in the trial.
“She looks pretty dinged up,” Rafe offers hopefully.
“Bree?” Mr. Davis asks.
Bree blinks down tears and lifts her pointy chin. “I’m fine.”
Mr. Davis frowns. “If you’re sure.”
When he moves on to Team Seven, Candace applies Band-Aids to Bree’s knee, straightens, and gives her a slap on the shoulder. “Good man.”