Page 94 of Coldwire
Strange how no one else has discovered this method. I’d have a lot more competition than only Kieren.
I jerk awake in a daze, still caught in the tethers of my dream about studying for a physics test. I’m entirely confused about where I am, why I was thinking about my assignments, why I’m absently reciting a formula.
The floor is moving underneath my feet. Nothing is registering properly, and dimly I conclude I must be having a slight episode. Most times I don’t feel Wakeman Syndrome unless I’m downcountry. But, every few months, it’ll creep upcountry right after I wake up. Virtual sleep will hit my mind at the wrong angle, and it’ll pinch its finger on whatever pipe in my headis funneling conscious thought. Panic starts to swirl. I am not tied to my physical surroundings. I am here, then I am not. I am floating, insentient.
“Lia?”
Some of my awareness returns. Kieren is already awake, standing in the aisle of the bus and playing with something in his hands. The floppy disk. He spins it once, twice, three times. Rayna is still sleeping a few rows down, and Hailey behind her. I am here. I amhere.
Kieren ducks his head, trying to get a better look at me. He puts the disk away into his backpack. “You all right? I shut up the bot—sorry if that woke you.”
“The bot is down?” The bus is still driving. The windows show a burgeoning morning, the mountains in the distance crisp and green. Each gray plume over the horizon comes lighter than the previous.
“No, I shut itup, not down. Told it we weren’t interested in a guide until we departed Threto.” His nose wrinkles. “You look very pale right now.”
“Thank you,” I say in Medan.
Kieren scoffs. “I meant on the verge of death. Do you have food poisoning?”
“Yes,” I say, standing. “Excuse me. I need to go throw up.”
“What?”
It’s not a lie. My stomach heaves. My lungs restrict. I don’t know why this has to happen to me. I don’t know why I can’t just live like a normal person without a brain that’s half-broken, always convinced that my world is going to disintegrate the next time I take a step.
I dive for the bathroom at the back of the bus. I suspect no one has used this in eons, because it’s impeccably clean when I step in. I collapse to the floor, and a lemony scent wafts from the tiles. I gasp in. And in. And in. I am lying in my Pod downcountry. I am not lost somewhere deep within infinite planes of reality. I know where I am.
The door opens.
“Hello?” I find the energy to heave. “Have you ever heard of knocking?”
“No,” Kieren deadpans. He closes the door behind himself. Despite my best effort to splay my arms and stop him from sitting down, he settles on the floor beside me.
“This is absurd,” I manage. “What if I had been having explosive diarrhea?”
“Thankfully you’re just sitting here freaking out, so I think we’re good.”
I glare at him. He raises his eyebrows.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say after a beat. I’m still struggling for breath, so I don’t know who I think I’m fooling.
“Is it Wakeman Syndrome?”
“No,” I snap quickly. The academy can’t know. NileCorp can’t see it on my files. “No, I’m only a little nervous.”
“My mom has it,” Kieren says. “It’s not shameful.”
“Don’t.”
“Okay,” Kieren says softly. “Okay. Sure.”
He doesn’t get up and go. We’ve done this once before. The last time, in the tenth grade, I found myself awake early one morning. It was the dead of winter, which ruled out walking around the grounds. I went to the campus library to avoid freaking out in my room, sat myself at one of the tables with my physical textbooks open. I didn’t intend to study. I only wanted to go somewhere public. Somewhere with life, the candelabras on the windowsills gleaming under the dim lights that the library kept on all night.
Kieren walked in drowsily, wearing sweats and not yet dressed for the day. He looked shocked to find me in the library, not only at that hour, butearlierthan him. I didn’t say hi, didn’t say a word. Still, he beelined right for my table and took the seat opposite me. Some sort of power trip, I’m sure, but I was clearly too out of it to mind. He harrumphed, making a show out of gathering his own physical textbooks and placing them on the table. Though we didn’t talk, his presence changed the mood of the moment. I made an effort to act normal, to hide my disjointedness, and in the pretense it became real. I eased out of the episode.
I tip my head back onto the sink cabinet. Kieren eyes the cuffs of my trousers, and when he tugs one, saying, “Gross. You’ve got mud here,” I know he’s doing his best to distract me.
“Those are brown sequins,” I say. “Homemade.”
