Teddy capped her coffee and raced down Pier 41 to the dock where the ferry waited. Well, she ran as fast as she could, given that she was dragging her suitcase, carry-on duffel, and purse, along with the steaming mocha, all while dodging tourists. She was the last to board before the crew hauled in the carpeted plank and pulled away from the wharf. She dumped her gear at her feet against the rail. As the boat’s engines hummed, she watched the city skyline recede. She hadn’t been to San Francisco since her disastrous stint at Stanford.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Teddy turned to see a young woman in her early twenties standing beside her. She was small—elfin, almost. In fact, Teddy thought it looked like this girl might have spent more time reading The Lord of the Rings under her bedcovers than walking outside in the sun. Dark circles shadowed her eyes.
“I’ve never seen San Francisco from this vantage point,” Teddy said, looking out over the horizon.
“You’re on your way to Whitfield, too?” the girl asked.
Teddy turned to her, wondering if the girl was psychic.
The girl smiled and tilted her head toward the pile of luggage amassed at Teddy’s feet. “It’s pretty easy to tell who’s planning on staying for months and who’s just day-tripping,” she said, pointing from her own luggage to the other passengers. “I’m Molly Quinn, by the way.”
Teddy glanced around the deck and saw that Molly was right. Most of the people on board were tourists: couples and families equipped with backpacks, bikes, and water bottles, prepared to explore the island for an hour or two. Only a few had the number of bags that identified them as students.
“I’m Teddy.”
Molly wasn’t what Teddy had pictured when she’d imagined the typical Whitfield student. She’d half-expected (all right, dreaded) a group of kids in capes, tarot cards spilling out of their pockets and crystal balls cupped in their hands. But Molly looked normal enough, besides her pallor.
“What made you decide to come to Whitfield?” Teddy asked.
Molly looked away, appearing to study the foam churned up in the ferry’s wake. “I didn’t exactly choose to come. It was this or jail. Turns out I’m considered a threat to national security.”
Teddy laughed, then stopped when she realized it wasn’t meant as a joke. “You? Really?” Teddy thought this woman looked as dangerous as a mouse.
“Well, I sort of hacked in to the CIA’s mainframe.”
Teddy did a double take. Molly Quinn didn’t look like a computer hacker. Surely she was bluffing. Teddy braced herself, expecting that anxious feeling to creep through her body as Molly talked, but it never came. She remembered that Clint had said psychics would be harder to read. And then something strange happened: an image appeared before her eyes, just a flash, like a frame from a movie: Molly huddled in front of a computer. The image was gone as quickly as it had arrived. Had she been in Molly’s head? She wanted back in, to see that image again—was it a memory? Dazed, Teddy tried to rejoin the conversation.
“I wanted to prove myself.” Molly shrugged. Teddy guessed that even mice could chew through the right wires to destroy the system.
Molly looked Teddy up and down. “Let me guess. Psychometrist?”
Teddy didn’t know what a psychometrist was.
Molly continued, “I’m an empath. Do you know what that is?”
Teddy shook her head.
“It’s someone who can tune in to the emotions of others, but on an extremely heightened level. I can feel—literally—everything someone else is feeling: pain, grief, joy, boredom. Like right now I can feel that you’re excited but also frustrated—like you can’t get a handle on all the information you’d like. Don’t worry. Lots of students have close to no psychic knowledge when they first arrive.”
Teddy didn’t like how easily Molly had figured her out. She wasn’t used to talking about her feelings with anyone except her dad, and even then pancakes had to be on the table. So she just smiled and changed the subject. “How does being an empath help you hack in to a computer?”
“It doesn’t, not really. I have a degree in computer science, so I know my way around tech,” Molly said. “Obviously, that helps. But those upper-level coders, the guys who work for the CIA . . .” She paused, shaking her head. “They’re so proud of all their tricky little bits of code, their so-called impenetrable firewalls. It’s ridiculous how cocky they get. It’s like they leave a trail of fingerprints, and I just follow that inside.”
While Molly talked, Teddy tried to recall that image of her. But this time nothing happened. Whatever connection there had been was gone.
Guess there’s a reason psychics go to school.
“So how’d you get caught?” she asked.
“Well, I got cocky, too. I left a note. You know, a ‘Hey, if I got in, who else is reading this?’ kind of a thing. They traced the breach back to my laptop. Then these guys from Whitfield showed up.”
Teddy wondered if she and Molly were more alike than she’d thought. Had all of Whitfield’s students run into trouble before enrolling? She wondered if Whitfield was some sort of academy for wayward psychic millennials. That wasn’t what she’d signed up for.
Molly looked at Teddy, her expression mirroring Teddy’s own. Then Molly shook it off and gave another smile, gentle but strained. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Whitfield’s actually pretty amazing. I wouldn’t have come back if it hadn’t been.”
“Come back?”
“I was here first semester last year, but I took time off to deal with some personal stuff. Luckily, they’re giving me another chance.”
They both leaned against the railing, watching as a small island, covered by scrubby pine and ringed by steep coastal cliffs, rose dramatically from the center of the bay.
“That’s home,” Molly said.
The ferry bumped up against the dock. Passengers milled toward the exit
