Chapter Eighteen
I tiptoe into my single for Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide. I tiptoe out to the bathroom, flip on the light, and survey the damage. My palms are hamburger meat, garnished with rock chips. Looking at them, I remember how gently Vik held my hands up with his own.
I meet my eyes in the mirror. My lapidary face, unlikable, alone.
Time to get it done.
***
The next day, I put my unavoidable-contact-only plan into action, not leaving my block except to attend class and raid the dining hall at off times like an antisocial dumpster raccoon.
The one person I talk to at any length is Jo, on the phone, safely outside my danger zone.
I tell her everything’s fine. I tell her I’m going to win.
I still spend every evening on nav with Candace and Bree, but the whole time, I’m glancing twitchily at the ceiling, terrified it’ll collapse and crush me, murdering my poor unsuspecting teammates in the bargain.
I’m scatterbrained, nerve-wracked, missing half the things they say to me, failing to execute basic nav.
As soon as practice ends, I flee to my single, turning down Candace and Bree’s offers of Hereditary or gossip, citing my need for sleep.
Speaking of sleep…
After I x-ed early mornings with Vik from my schedule, I hoped I’d get more rest. Nope.
Fear of bite-dreams keeps me tossing for hours every night.
When I do fall asleep, I wake again in absolute blackness, heart slamming against my ribs so loudly I worry Candace and Bree will hear it through our walls.
This happens two, three times a night. By the Thursday before the last trial, I’m praying for six hours of shut-eye.
***
I stare up into a bright light surrounded by brown roots. Classical music plays. Somehow, I know I can’t move.
Near the light, the air wrinkles. From the wrinkles poke legs, mandibles, fur, scales, chitin. Before I can occlude, the swarm bursts into reality. The teeth are coming. The music swells, all violins, and I scream—
***
Knocking wakes me. I jerk upright, sweating, and reach for my phone. The screen lights up. Thursday, November 18, 7:41 p.m.
The memory comes to me: After class, I told Candace and Bree I was going to lie down for a second before our final-trial strategy session.
Guess I lay down for more than a second.
I stumble out of bed. When I open my door, Candace and Bree stand on the other side.
Candace’s arms are crossed tightly, and her neat eyebrows lower over her eyes.
Bree, pressed against Candace’s shoulder, is chewing her thumbnail like she wants to nibble away her nervousness—but so far, it’s not working.
“We need to talk,” Candace says.
“I’m sorry about dinner,” I say. “I must have slept through—”
“Not about that. Come on; let’s sit in the common room.”
She and Bree settle on the sofa, and I collapse into the armchair.
This isn’t an unusual seating arrangement for us, and normally it’s cozy, but now, with the tense atmosphere in the room, it feels like a stress dream, like I’ve walked into a panel interview for an important internship I can’t remember applying for.
Bree tugs her nail from between her teeth and bursts out, “Look, we wanted to ask—are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
Candace sighs. “Norah, please do us the courtesy of remembering we are not idiots.”
My shoulders pull defensively toward my neck. “What?”
“I vacuum-packed seventy-five pounds of clothing into two oversize suitcases to come here, but my whole wardrobe could fit in the bags under your eyes. You say you need to sleep. But you’re clearly not sleeping.
For the past week you’ve turned us down every time we’ve asked you to hang out.
And you’ve started flinching at loud noises.
When Bree asks whether you’re okay, she means, why aren’t you okay? And what can we do to help?”
The question hits me hard. Candace isn’t touchy-feely, and while I consider her and Bree my friends—my only friends, now I’ve lost Vik—a paranoid part of me still worries that to them I’m more like a coworker, a girl they hang out with just because we’re in the same block and on the same trial team.
The care in Candace’s voice makes me want to cry.
I cover my face to hide the tears burning my eyes. “Sorry, it’s…everything.”
“Candace, um, mentioned you and Vik…” Bree says. “Did—did something happen?”
“Oh,” I say from behind my hands. “Yeah. I ended it.”
“Ended it? So you were… But why end it? You like him so much.”
I don’t ask how she knows. Maybe I’m that obvious. “He’s the competition. It was a bad idea.”
“Norah.” She sounds so sad for me. “Not everything’s about the competition. Not everything’s about winning.”
Bitterness floods my mouth. Is that all Bree thinks of me—that I’m fixated on winning, snaring status and prestige, being number one?
“It’s smart to focus on the trials,” Candace says. “But are you just upset about Vik, or is there something else?”
I lower my hands. She’s staring at me with flat disbelief. She knows there’s something else.
My chest twists. I long to tell my friends the truth: My dad’s dying, I’m dying, I’m so scared. Please help me.
Then I remember how Bree shunned Candace, like all our classmates did, until she saw that Candace’s bites were healed. If she knew why I wanted the Archive—if she knew about my unhealed bite—would she try harder in the final trial to save me?
Or run screaming? Or report me?
And Candace… She knows what it’s like to fear death breathing wetly down her neck. Maybe empathy would compel her to fight for me. But maybe, having escaped the doom of possibility wounds once, she’d do anything to stay out of their orbit again. Including ditch me.
I want to trust Candace and Bree. I do.
But I can’t risk it.
“Guys,” I say. “I’m stressed out and exhausted. And tomorrow’s the final trial. Can we just…leave it for now? Rest. Save the heart-to-heart for after Dr. Langmore names us this year’s Archive assistants.”
Bree smiles at my attempted optimism.
But Candace is unmoved. “We navigate better together when we’re honest with each other. I showed you my bites the day I met you. About a week after that, Bree opened up. Now we’re asking you to reciprocate, for your own good, and you’re stonewalling us.”
“I’m not—” You are, though. I try again. “It’s not one thing. It’s Vik, and the competition, and not talking with my mom, and not sleeping…”
“And what else?” Candace asks.
I swallow. “Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s more than enough. But you’re hiding something. You’ve been hiding something since you came to the Academy. You’ve got to know I know that.”
“No,” I protest. “No, I’m not hiding anything.”
Her expression goes cold. “So first you stonewall, and now you lie to our faces.”
“You’re calling me a liar?”
“Guys.” Bree twists in her seat, glancing between Candace and me. “Let’s not get more intense than we need to. Norah, we’re not going to make you share anything you’re not comfortable with. But really, we want to help.”
They want to help. I should give them something.
I open my mouth to tell them about Dad. Just Dad.
Then I remember Anna Mayer.
For years, Anna ended calls with me by saying, “Bye, love you.” But I haven’t seen her since she heard about Dad’s bites. No texts even. She just ghosted. Why should I expect Candace and Bree, who’ve known me a few months, to stand by me when she didn’t?
I can’t trust them, but I want to. Which means I need to end this conversation. The longer it lasts, the more pressure they apply, the more likely it is I’ll tell the truth—and they’ll abandon me when I need them most.
I can’t let that happen.
I lurch up out of the armchair. “Help me by insulting me?” I don’t have to fake the anger tightening my voice. Candace is right that I’m a liar, but still, her words sting. “No, thank you. I heard you guys out, and now I’m done. I need to catch up on sleep. See you at the trial tomorrow.”
I storm theatrically back into my single and slam the door.
Through the thin walls, I hear Bree’s pleading voice and Candace’s terse one. Bree’s probably urging Candace to follow me so we can all make up and hug, and Candace is refusing. So now I’ve fought with my teammates the night before the final trial, and I’m causing them to fight with each other.
Great job, Norah.
***
I lie rigid in my sweaty bed and wonder what will happen to my family if my team loses, if Dad dies, if I die. When my alarm goes off, my eyes are wide open.
I drink four cups of coffee at breakfast. By lunch, my vision is blurring.
All afternoon, the letters in my teachers’ handouts swim like tiny black fish.
With a minute left in my last class before nav, I ask to use the bathroom.
I splash cold water into my bruised-looking eyes and tell myself to get my shit together.
Ten minutes later, as I walk between the lions into the nav building, my phone buzzes. Jo’s calling.
Right. I forgot to call her last night. She must be worried.
But this is the one instant I have no bandwidth for my baby sister.
I turn off my phone and head inside.
The huge room is almost empty. In its center, Griffin stands contemplating a whiteboard, bracket almost complete. As I walk up, he grins. “Ready for the big finale?”
His blond hair ripples sleekly over his forehead. The skin under his eyes is smooth, not creased or shadowed. I envy him so intensely my face aches. “I’m ready to see the Archive.”
“Ooh. Aren’t we confident.”
“You’d rather I apologized for wanting to win?”
“You know I like you how you are,” he says. “But today you’re toast.”
The competitors arrive one by one. Candace, walking stiffly like our fight has beaten her up and she’s afraid to jostle the fractures. Bree with hangdog eyes. Mirabel in sweat-wicking athletic gear. Vik, face utterly blank.