by K. C. Archer
Teddy took the moment to study the objects on his desk. Several large crystals, physics textbooks, psychic pamphlets. But one object stood out to Teddy: a screw encased in glass. It was so menial—so unpsychic but so well preserved—that it seemed out of place.
“Usually, we teach mental defense in the second year. But who knows what else may be possible? Likely the astral telepathy means you can also master astral projection and telekinesis.”
“What, like moving things with my mind? Like Carrie?”
He continued, barely registering Teddy’s questions now. “Dunn would explain it better. Think of it this way: inside every physical body is an astral body with an astral self, the seat of your mind and soul. For most people, including psychics, astral bodies are tied to physical bodies. Today your astral body became untied. It visited your classmates’ conscious and then subconscious minds. If you can learn control, you can learn how to project your astral body—on both planes. How to use it to move matter on the physical plane. How to use it to travel on the astral plane. The possibilities are endless.”
She wasn’t really following what Clint was saying. Did he mean teleportation was a thing? Teddy rubbed her forehead. It was still sore from earlier, and Clint’s explanation wasn’t making it any better. “So what happens next?” she asked. “I just keep working on that astral thing?”
“Definitely not.” He laughed. “Pacing, Teddy. You don’t put a new diver on an Olympic platform and tell him to jump.”
“But—”
“Just because you’ve demonstrated an ability to perform astral telepathy doesn’t mean that you’re ready to use it. Mastering psychic skills take time, practice, and moral responsibility. That’s why Whitfield is a four-year program. We don’t want our recruits rushing headlong into anything without first building a solid foundation.”
Teddy shifted in her seat. She’d just learned that she could fly, psychically speaking, and Clint wanted to ground her.
“Here’s what I’m willing to do,” he said. “Second-year recruits work closely with tutors to develop their specific psychic abilities. I’ll begin your tutorial process now, but only if you agree to do it my way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we start at the bottom and work our way up. Before we do anything, you need to learn mental defense.”
“You mean I need to build my wall.”
“Exactly.” Clint made his way back to his desk. “And then maybe we’ll start with telekinesis. We don’t have any telekinetics at Whitfield at the moment, and the ability is highly sought after in government service. Mental influence as well. It’s a psychic skill that walks a delicate ethical line and should be used only when absolutely necessary. In the wrong hands, it can be deadly.”
Teddy shivered, his words leading her to imagine the worst: What if someone could influence her? Tell to walk off the cliffs overlooking the bay? Or stop breathing? The lighthearted exercises in Seership could be so easily twisted. She had to remember that this wasn’t a game. The ultimate goal wasn’t to beat the Alphas; there was something larger at stake.
“You and I will meet for private tutorials once a week. Until then, work on your mental defense: start building your wall. It can be made of anything, but make it strong, Teddy. Throughout the day, as you’re walking to class, talking to your peers, eating lunch, imagine placing a barrier around your mind. Do it until it becomes second nature. That’s the first way you can stop someone who wants to gain access where you are most vulnerable.” Clint looked directly at Teddy as if reassessing her.
Teddy avoided his gaze, her eyes moving again to the screw on Clint’s desk. “Got any other loose screws?” she said. “Or just this one?”
Clint picked up the screw. Underneath the glass, Teddy could see a date and a symbol engraved in gold. It looked like the number 3, overlapped in a series of concentric circles, underneath the year 1994.
“Special football award or something?”
Clint looked down. “No.” He took a deep breath. “It’s to remind me that when you’re missing one piece, a piece as small as a screw, the machine will fall apart.” He looked back at Teddy. “One gap in your wall, and you’ll fall apart, too. Next week we’ll meet here. Same time.”
Teddy knew she had been dismissed. She got out of the chair, then paused. “Thanks,” she said, stopping herself from adding for believing in me, because it was just too cringeworthily corny.
“It doesn’t matter how much I believe in you,” Clint said. “You have to believe in yourself.”
Okay, that was even more cringeworthy.
“Work on your wall. And get out of here already,” Clint said, returning to his paperwork. “It’s last call at Harris for dinner. And I’ll see you tomorrow for our first Empathy 101 class.” Teddy had almost forgotten that the next day they would begin a new class—Clint’s famous seminar.
* * *
Teddy headed straight to Harris Hall. The dining room was full of the usual laughter and conversation that accompanied meals at Whitfield. But the second she stepped inside, the noise level abruptly dropped. Whispers whipped across the tables. Some students leaned forward to confer with classmates, while others craned their necks to get a better look at her.
Every person in the room was psychic. Why single her out for freak status? She lifted her chin, meeting their curious looks with a ferocious don’t-mess-with-me glare.
As Teddy settled into a seat at the Misfit table, Jillian raised a shot glass brimming with wheatgrass juice. “All hail my roommate, psychic goddess.” The others raised their glasses.
Teddy reddened. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
Jillian lowered her glass. “You should be proud of yourself. I am. For weeks, weeks, I’ve watched you struggle. We all thought you must have pulled strings or something to get in here.”
“The point is,” Dara added, “when opportunity knocks—”
“Jillian’s probably inside doing naked yoga,” Teddy said.
“The point is,” Dara repeated, “when you suddenly become legend at a school full of legendary people, you take advantage of it.” She nodded toward a table full of upperclassmen who were staring at her. “Scare them a little, would you?” Dara asked. Teddy laughed.
“How did you do it?” Jeremy said, setting out a pen and paper from his backpack as if to take notes.
“Turns out I’m an astral telepath,” she said. “Clint’s going to help me control it. Don’t worry, I won’t always be reading your thoughts.”
“Hold on,” Molly said. “You’re studying with Professor Corbett one-on-one?”
“He rarely takes on individual students,” Jeremy added.
Out of the corner of her eye, Teddy looked at Pyro, who had been silent since she sat down; she willed him to help her change the subject. Though he’d been the one to rescue her earlier, now he put his hands up as if to say “Don’t look at me.”
Fine. If that’s how he wants to play it.
Teddy turned back to her dinner tray. She was starving. She’d skipped lunch, but it was more than that—she felt drained.
“Anyway, Teddy’s a star, and we should celebrate,” Jillian said. “I’d like to toast with something shaken, stirred, or on the rocks.” She slid a glass of wheatgrass to the edge of her tray. “Let’s go to the Cantina.”
Dara laughed. “What do you say, Teddy? Are you game?”
She was exhausted, but she needed to take her mind off of walls and astral bodies, Liz Cook’s complaints, and Molly’s secrets. And the only way Teddy knew how to do that was via booze and boys. Teddy tried to catch Pyro’s eye again, but he was focused on his wheatgrass. “I’m in,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT WAS A BREEZY NIGHT. The wind blew off the bay as Teddy and her friends crowded around a table at the Cantina. The stars were bright, the margaritas were cold, her friends were loud. She felt like she could sit in this spot forever.
Since they weren’t supposed to
mention Whitfield when they were off campus, Dara turned their conversations into a drinking game: anyone who let anything slip about their lessons had to take a shot. Even the most oblique reference was off limits, as there were civilians nearby. One man in particular caught Teddy’s attention. He was hanging out by a railing, but he was standing so close and so still that it seemed possible he was listening to their conversation.
“What about you, Teddy?” Dara asked.
“Me?” she said, only vaguely aware that they had been talking about boys. Or maybe not. The margaritas had made the conversations sound fuzzy and distant.
Dara tsked, impatient. “Have a crush on anyone?” she said.
Teddy looked at Pyro, beside her. She placed her hand on Pyro’s lower back, then felt him tense. She promptly removed her hand. They hadn’t exactly spoken about that night, but she assumed Pyro would welcome a friend with occasional benefits. Apparently, she’d misread things.
Teddy took a long sip of her margarita. “I’ll let you know when I do.”
Jillian laughed. “As if it wasn’t the two of you who set off the fire alarm in the dorm our first week.”
Pyro grabbed one of the shots lined up in the middle of the table and pushed it toward Jillian. “That counts.”
“I didn’t say the name of the dorm,” she protested. “We could go to any school.”
He nudged the shot a little closer. “Hey, I don’t make the rules.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“I’ll take one, too,” Teddy said. She downed the shot in a single gulp.
Teddy missed the table when she slammed her shot glass back down. It went tumbling onto the wooden floor, and then off it rolled as if on a mission. She rose, intending to chase it. But the glass came to a stop when it reached the polished dress shoe of the man she’d noticed earlier.
He bent to pick it up and handed it to Teddy. She opened her mouth to say thanks, but when she looked at his face, she stopped cold.
She knew this guy.
Teddy closed her eyes for a second, trying to place him. Athletic. But not in a vain gym-rat way. No, this guy was almost rugged. He wore a blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She glanced down at his hand, wrapped around the neck of a Dos Equis bottle. As she stared at the corded muscles of his arm, it came to her.
“Oh, God,” she said. “It’s you.”
He smiled. “Plain ol’ Nick.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She’d lost all her money to this guy that night back at the Bellagio. She assumed she’d never see him again. Yet here he was on Angel Island. Nothing about it made sense. Her mind swam from the alcohol. Had he been Sergei’s plant at the table months ago? Meant to push her to bet more? Was Sergei tracking her now? She suddenly wished she were sober enough to understand how a coincidence like this could happen.
He held up his bottle. “Having a beer.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I work nearby.”
Now, that was weird. Who worked on Angel Island? “What are you—a park ranger?”
He laughed. “Hardly.”
“You’re very . . . vague.”
“Am I?”
“There you go again.”
“Hey, Teddy!” Dara called.
“So it’s not TeAnne?” he said, his mouth serious but his eyes smiling.
“It’s actually Teddy,” she said, putting a hand on his chest to steady herself. “I’m usually not like this—” She stopped herself mid-thought. “You have a hell of a memory.”
“It’s part of my job,” he said, and she noticed that he didn’t back away, didn’t remove her hand. Not like Pyro. This was promising.
“Which is . . . ?” she prompted, and then stopped herself. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I like the mystery.” She tried to take a step closer but lost her balance. He caught her with one arm, and their faces were so close she thought he was going to kiss her. She closed her eyes.
But then nothing. He removed his arm, set his beer on the railing, and used both hands to straighten her shoulders. “You okay?” he asked.
“Better than okay.”
“I think your friends are waiting for you.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Pyro glaring so hard that it seemed like he might set the whole deck on fire.
You can’t have it both ways, friend without benefits.
“We’re celebrating,” she said, stalling, trying to think of something else to say. She didn’t want Nick to go, not yet.
He grinned, revealing the perfect dimple next to his perfect lips. She was bad. Bad to plan to leave with one guy and then switch to another. But this seemed like fate. And psychics were supposed to believe in those kinds of things. Otherwise why would perfect Nick be at a hole in the wall on a small island off the coast of San Francisco on tonight of all nights?
“What are you celebrating, Teddy?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Or you’d have to kill me?”
“No, I’d have to drink.” Teddy looked down at her hands as if to count. “Like twenty shots as punishment.”
“Teddy,” he said.
“Nick,” she said.
“If you don’t go back to your friends, that guy is going to come over here and try throwing a punch. And I don’t want to have to hurt him.”
Teddy didn’t think of herself as the swooning type, but holy shit. Nick made her knees go weak.
“Besides,” he added, “I have to go.”
Take me with you.
But before she could say another word, he kissed the top of her head and was gone.
Teddy stood there for a few moments, watching him disappear into the night. Did he just dad-kiss her? On top of her head? She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Pyro at her side.
“What the hell was that all about?” he asked.
Good question.
Teddy let out a breath. It was a puzzle she would have to solve later. For now, Pyro was right here, his hand on the inside of her elbow. “Just someone I knew from Vegas,” she said. “You know the saying.”
“We need to talk.” Pyro said. There was something about Whitfield that lent itself to melodrama. They knew each other too well; living, eating, training with the same people every day heightened every interaction.
Great. Another talk. She’d had enough talks today. And talks after tequila were really great.
“You ignored me for weeks,” he said. “And then tonight . . . I’m not just some”—he lowered his voice—“booty call.”
Are Pyro’s feelings hurt?
“I’ve been busy,” she said. “You know, studying.”
“When I saw you collapse today in Seership, I was worried,” he said.
She’d thought Pyro was a player, but this conversation was veering into relationship waters. “I really appreciate what you did for me,” she said. “But I told you, I’m not looking for anything serious.” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, but he turned away.
“Teddy!” Jillian called. “Next round’s on me!”
She couldn’t worry about Pyro’s feelings. She had to look out for herself. She squeezed his hand and then returned to the table.
* * *
That night Teddy again found herself visiting the yellow house. She could hear a woman’s voice singing the familiar lullaby. She walked down the flagstone path and toward the front door. She had never been inside the yellow house; she always woke up before she could enter.
This time she grasped the metal of the handle and pushed.
Teddy found herself inside an entryway with faded wallpaper. With each step, the mahogany floorboards creaked with age. A low table housed everyday debris: photographs, keys, letters. Teddy followed the sound of the woman’s voice through the entryway and into a small white kitchen. The woman hovered over the stove, waiting for a steaming teakettle to sing. As if sensing Teddy’s presence, the woman turned ar
ound, and then—a series of sharp, shrill beeps.
Teddy jerked upright. Her alarm clock read 7:05 a.m. Jillian’s bed was empty, which meant she was probably already in the shower. Teddy heard the muted voices of her classmates in the hallway, followed by the groaning and clanking of ancient pipes as toilets were flushed and faucets turned on. A typical morning at Whitfield.
But she couldn’t shake the dream. It had felt so real. The sounds—the song, the floorboards, the kettle. It was as if Teddy had actually been in the house.
Maybe it was the alcohol from the night before. She remembered the shots. She remembered the awkward conversation with Pyro. She remembered throwing herself at that guy from the casino who had improbably shown up on Angel Island. And she realized something else: he had recognized her immediately, despite the fact that she hadn’t been dressed in a wig and a fat suit.
Jillian returned to the room fresh from her shower, wrapped in a paisley bathrobe. Though they had been exchanging fragments from their dreams (most of Jillian’s featured a menagerie of animals), Teddy had found herself keeping her own secret, instead making up random images to make her roommate laugh (most of them featured Ryan Gosling). Something about the yellow house felt too private to share with her roommate.
“Ryan Gosling getting you down?” Jillian asked.
“I’ve already thought of three comebacks about Gosling and the word down. You make things too easy.” Teddy swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her head was pounding. “Must have been something to do with drinking last night.”
“Funny you said that, Teddy. I had a strange dream last night, too. I was a dog, or I think I was a dog. Maybe a very small coyote. Definitely in the canine family. And I was in the desert. But not because I wanted to be there. There was a big explosion. And, oh.” Jillian shivered. “It was horrible.”