This isn’t meant to be a competition.

Still, I can’t help the hot stab of irritation in my chest—nor the strange chill that follows it, like a winter draft blowing over me, except all the windows are closed...

Oh.

Henry continues talking, completely oblivious to what’s happening. What’s about to happen. “See, the only time Jake leaves his phone in his dorm is when he’s showering. So I was thinking, if I could wait in the halls near his room and pretend to accidentally spill something on him—something you’d have to wash off, like orange juice—you’d have around eight or nine minutes to—”

“That sounds great,” I cut in, suppressing a shiver as I push myself off the bed. My hands feel like ice. No, everything feels wrong, somehow, the walls of the dorm room swelling up around me like an open sore, and my heart speeding up with it. Just because I’ve experienced this shit before doesn’t make it any less terrifying. Any less unnatural. “You think you’d be able to do that in like, ten minutes? I’m heading over.”

“Er...right now?”

The cold has spread all the way down to my toes. I need to move. And quickly.

“Yeah,” I manage.

“Right, well, there’s a slight issue I was about to get to—you know Jake’s roommate, Peter? He’s still in the dorm, and from the sounds of it...” He pauses. A door creaks, and somewhere in the background, I swear I hear beatboxing, of all things. “...he’s currently busy recording a new mixtape. Or perhaps it’s another one of his political rants. If I’m honest, it can be quite hard to tell the difference—”

“What do we do then?” I cut in, urgency leaking into my every word. “I mean—crap, I forgot about the roommate situation—”

“I can probably help with that,” someone says from behind me.

I almost drop my phone.

When I whirl around, Chanel is standing there in her silk pajamas, still a little bleary-eyed from sleep but smiling.

“Chanel, I...” I say, too stunned to form a complete sentence.

“This is for your Beijing Ghost thing, right?” she clarifies. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing just now.”

Henry’s voice cuts through the phone line. “Wait. Chanel?”

“Yes, hi, Henry,” Chanel says into the phone, her grin widening. “How do you feel about us working together again?”

“Since when did you two work together?” I demand, the same time Henry says, a trace of incredulity in his tone, “You told her about Beijing Ghost?”

“Yeah, yeah, Henry and I’ve known each other since we were kids,” Chanel explains quickly, like it’s not really worth mentioning. “SYS collaborated with my father”—for a second, the corners of her lips turn down—“on a few promotional campaigns for his night clubs.”

“Oh.” I shouldn’t be surprised. Sometimes it feels like all the Airington students and their families belong to a single intricate, complex web of power, one I can see but can never enter. Not without getting trapped inside it like some pesky fly.