"And if you can't?"
I don't answer. We both know what happens if I can't. We've been reading about it for weeks—the restricted section, the documents, the women who disappeared.The matter has been handled.
Brittany is quiet for a long time. The lamp throws warm light across the room, softening the edges of everything—the textbooks stacked on her desk, the skull-print tissues on the nightstand, the black flashlight with the skull sticker that she bought for our Concordia Hall mission. We never did break in. Maybe we won't need to. Maybe after tomorrow, the answers will come to us whether we want them or not.
"Then let's watch something stupid until we pass out," she says.
She pulls her laptop from under the pillow—battered, covered in stickers, the same one she uses for everything—and opens it between us on the bed. Herbert settles on the keyboard for a moment before she gently relocates him to the pillowcase.
"What are we watching?" I ask.
"Something with terrible effects and worse acting. I need to feel intellectually superior to something tonight." She scrolls through options. "Sharknado. Sharknado 2. Sharknado 3. There are six of these."
"There are not six Sharknados."
"There are six Sharknados, and we're watching the fourth one because it's calledThe 4th Awakensand that's objectively the worst title in cinematic history."
"Sold."
She hits play. The opening credits are terrible. The music is worse. A shark flies through a sandstorm and I think—for no reason at all, for every reason—that I might cry.
I don't cry. I throw popcorn at the screen instead, because Brittany produced a bag of microwave popcorn from a drawer that also contains three flashlights, a Swiss Army knife, and what appears to be a small first aid kit. The popcorn is stale. The movie is an atrocity. Brittany provides running commentary in a voice so dry it could start fires, and I laugh—really laugh, the kind that hurts your stomach and makes your eyes water—for the first time in weeks.
Herbert catches a piece of popcorn in a web he strings between the lamp and the bedpost. We both stare at it.
"He's evolving," Brittany says.
"He's always been this advanced. We just weren't paying attention."
"If that spider starts talking, I'm dropping out."
"You'd never drop out. You love it here."
"I tolerate it here. There's a significant difference." But she's almost smiling—the closest Brittany gets, which is a very slight loosening of the mouth that you'd miss if you weren't looking—and Herbert is eating his popcorn kernel with the methodical satisfaction of a creature who has figured out the food chain, and for two hours we are just roommates. Just two girls watching a terrible movie in a dorm room, throwing food at a screen, laughing at things that aren't funny because the alternative is thinking about tomorrow.
The movie ends. Brittany closes the laptop. The room goes dark except for the sphere glowing faintly in my jacket pocket and the small green light of Brittany's phone charger.
"Everly."
"Yeah."
"Whatever happens tomorrow." Her voice is quiet. Stripped of the sarcasm, the deadpan, the protective armor she wears like a second skin. Just Brittany. Just my roommate. "You're not a bomb. You're not a weapon. You're not a problem to be handled."
My throat tightens. "How do you know?"
"Because I've met bombs. And weapons. And problems." A pause. "You brought me cookies on your first day. You wore a yellow cardigan. You named your pillow Frank."
"I did not name my pillow Frank."
"You talk in your sleep. His name is Frank."
I laugh. It comes out watery. Herbert crawls from the bedpost to my pillow and settles beside my head, a small warm weight, eight legs folded, standing guard.
"Get some sleep," Brittany says. "You're going to need it."
I close my eyes.
The dream comes fast.
