Chapter Twenty
I make Jo swear not to tell anyone what I’ve said, but when we hang up, she’s not crying anymore. I flop back in bed—I’m tired, tired, and so hungry—and read my texts.
Candace’s says, Fuck you, Intense Girl Norah. Damn. I’m not sure she’ll talk to me again. It’s funny how much the thought hurts, a cold ache in my chest, when I have so many more fatal problems to worry about.
The ones from Vik are knives between the ribs: The last time I saw a friend spiraling, I didn’t push and I regretted it. Please tell me what’s really wrong. Then: Can I help?
He heard me go off on Bree, and I’m sure he disapproved: Gratuitous meanness isn’t his style (though it didn’t seem to bother Griffin, which is either flattering or a little disturbing).
But he still wants to help me. Because he feels guilty about the friend he couldn’t help. Because he’s a good person.
Because I’m not a good person, I text back: My room in 30?
***
I shower, pull on sweatpants and an ancient Turkey Trot T-shirt, and eat an emergency protein bar stashed in my dresser.
At thirty minutes on the dot, I hear a quiet knock and open the door.
Vik slides past me, back to the wall, barely inside the room.
When I close the door, he cuts his eyes sideways at the knob—flushing, I think, a bit—and reaches for the light switch. “You mind?”
Oh. Yeah. It’s past sunset, orange light dying to blue dusk. I’ve been too preoccupied to notice that I’m lurking in the shadows like a creep. “Go ahead.”
The light blinks on. I rub my stinging eyes.
My single is bigger than the room I share with Jo at home, but it’s not big.
I back away so Vik doesn’t feel crowded, till my bed bumps my legs.
(Unmade, I remember, face prickling.) Even so, if I stretched out my hand, I could brush his arm with my fingertips.
His arm—or his chest, muscles straining his faded T-shirt as he breathes.
This is the first time we’ve been alone in my room. And despite the exhausted pallor glowing through his brown skin, he looks good. He’s showered since the trial, his black hair curling damply over his forehead. I wish I could run my fingers through it.
I have before.
But when I meet his eyes, they’re—withdrawn. Cautious.
Cautious of me.
Guilt and embarrassment swamp me. I shouldn’t be thinking of him like that, not after how I dumped him, how we tore at each other during the final trial, how he saw me rage at Bree like the unstable jackass I am.
Of course he’s cautious of me. I lash out when I’m hurt. He’s seen that. He’s felt it.
He’s here to right past wrongs for Jake. Not for you, not really. Get it together.
“I’m about to ask a favor,” I say brusquely, “and the ask is big. You’re free to say no.”
“I’m aware.”
I try not to flinch at that. “First, I have to show you…”
My Turkey Trot shirt is oversize, sleeves drooping past my elbows, loose enough that I can push the left sleeve to my shoulder in a second.
Once he sees my bite, there’s no turning back. He’ll know I’m a liar. A criminal. He could cuss me out. Or report me. Or just walk away.
But I need his help. And he deserves the truth.
I hold my breath. My heart bangs against my ribs.
I push up the sleeve.
Vik’s eyes trace the tooth marks circling my bicep: six open wounds, six domed scabs, and one—the circle’s highest point—like an old-time projector’s light stuttering off and on.
Before he came, I promised myself that if he bolted, I wouldn’t block the door and beg him to stay. I would let him make his choice.
He doesn’t bolt. His jaw muscles coil tight. “When?”
“Before the Academy.”
He thinks. “You heard the rumors about Highwall. You came for the Archive.”
“My dad—” Ghostly images rise before me, all the deaths I saw. “A swarm hit us. He has nine bites.”
Vik hasn’t stopped staring at my marked arm. “Norah…”
“There’s a cure in the Archive,” I say. “There has to be. Highwall was bitten during her Nobel speech—you can almost see it on the video—but she lived for decades afterward. No one with an active bite lives for decades.”
Vik looks so hurt, like my wound has torn something red and vulnerable inside him. “If Highwall had found a cure, why would she keep it a secret? Why would the Academy? Hundreds of thousands of people around the world die from beast-bites every year.”
“You wouldn’t keep it a secret? For any reason?”
He shakes his head.
“Even though the Academy could retaliate if you stole the cure and gave it to a journalist or something? Expel you, sue you, bankrupt your family?”
“It’s something that you—that millions of people need.”
“So you’ll find it for me?” I press. “I mean, you’ll look?”
“Of course.” He stares at the tooth marks in my arm like they’re digging into his own flesh.
His hand rises as if to brush his fingers gently over my wound—but he stops, making a fist, like once he touches me, he doesn’t know where it’ll end.
“I was worried you were… I don’t know. Not this.
” He laughs, ironic and broken. “I really wanted to help you.”
“You can,” I tell him.
He nods, shoulders squaring. Determined. It makes me feel strange, like my guts are snakes that have started slithering around.
“Why aren’t you angry?” I ask.
He frowns. “About what?”
I don’t want to spell it out. But I have to. He needs to understand the risks. “My bite. Being—near you. With a bite.”
His frown deepens, puzzled. “The data on increased risk of death for people near the bitten doesn’t prove anything. It’s never been conclusive.”
“Right. Which means it doesn’t prove there’s no risk.
” I’m speaking quietly—I don’t know where Candace and Bree are, and I don’t want them overhearing this conversation—but a hiss enters my voice.
“Besides, nobody cares about data. You saw how everyone treated Candace before they saw her bites were healed.”
Vik’s eyebrows pull together. “Are you angry?”
Kind of. Apparently. I want him to display a smidge of selfishness, of self-preservation.
If he were less generous or less brave, I’d feel less guilty.
Also (and this is more embarrassing), I want him to guess that I broke things off because of the bite, not the trials.
I want him to declare that he doesn’t care about danger, pledge his devotion, sweep me into his arms, etc.
Judging by his perplexed eyebrows, pledging and sweeping haven’t crossed his mind.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, which is both the truth and a complete dodge. “You’d be doing me a huge favor. You know that, right? You know you don’t have to?”
Now he looks angry. “I know what a wound means. If I can help, I do have to. Anybody would.”
I’m not sure anybody would, but I’m also not picking a fight about the average human’s moral fiber after he agreed to save my life. “Thank you,” I say, even though it’s totally inadequate. “Um. Now I think I need to collapse again.”
He bites his lip reluctantly. “The orientation for new Archive assistants is the Monday after break. I won’t get access till then.
We can meet up that evening to talk about what I’ve found, but in the meantime, I’ll start reading Highwall’s scientific publications.
Lucasson’s and Miura’s too. Anything in the public domain.
Maybe that’ll orient me in the Archive—help me find what I need to find. ”
I nod. “I’ll look too. Text you if I notice anything.”
“All right. See you after break.” He looks frustrated, as if this casual goodbye grates on him. “Sleep well. Don’t—don’t dream.”
***
After he leaves, I stare at the bare wall where he was standing, next to the Caravaggio poster I brought from home.
I should feel grateful that he’s helped me find a path forward.
And I am grateful, hopeful. But hope is always also torture.
If hope keeps glimmering in front of me, I have to keep chasing it: struggling, sweating, bleeding, maybe failing again.
And I’ve dragged Vik headfirst into my mess.
I turn off the light, crawl into bed, and pull the sheets over my face. Maybe my ceiling will collapse and kill me, but it’ll collapse whether I stare at it or not.
***
Vik’s parting wish is good luck. I sleep for sixteen hours straight. No nightmares. A warm, dark blank.
The next day, when I shuffle gummy-eyed into the common room, Bree and Candace have already left. Probably for the best. I suspect they won’t talk to me anymore, but I’d rather not stumble into full-on, 360, IMAX proof of that suspicion.
Thanksgiving break passes, slow and surreal.
The November weather is dull gray, air cool and thick, like oatmeal left too long on the counter.
I wake up late every morning and wade through fog to the dining hall, catching the tail end of break’s reduced breakfast hours.
Until lunch, I read ahead in my textbooks and work on college applications.
It feels like playacting, like I’m pretending to be a girl with a future.
But the last time I called Dad, he mustered the energy to scold me for missing most early-decision deadlines.
So I make a list of colleges, reaches and safeties, and I send Mom emails about the FAFSA.
I write supplemental essays about challenges I’ve overcome and try to suppress morbid giggles, thinking about the challenge that might kill me.
Sometimes I fail and laughter escapes me, hollow and echoing, like I’m my own jolly hangman.
After lunch, I wander campus until I find a new place to do research.
On Monday I discover a trapdoor to Lucasson’s roof, a flat expanse bounded by turrets and intricate cresting, lacy iron contorted into fanned peacock tails.
Some adventurous students before me left three camp chairs and a half dozen empty beer cans up here.
I kick the cans aside and nestle down in the middle camp chair.
Pull my laptop from my backpack. Type Victoria Highwall into Google Scholar.
She published 166 peer-reviewed articles before she died. Good thing I read fast.