“That’s our ride,” Molly said, pointing to an unmarked tram.
Teddy picked up her belongings. She followed Molly toward the tram, dumped her things on the back, and then stopped. A group of people had gathered in front of a statuesque woman holding a small black dog. She was beautiful, but everything about her was big: hair, boobs, butt, thighs. She was wearing so much fringe that she looked like a giant lampshade, and she was yelling.
“Wilson says that cheap dog food you switched to is giving him gas. He should be eating organic. And throw in a probiotic. You should do that, too.” Her fringe swayed as she pointed to a man—the owner, Teddy guessed. “Also, he wants to go back to the dog park,” the woman went on.
“W-what?” the man said. “No, he can’t. The last time I took him, he got into a fight—”
“—which wasn’t his fault,” the woman said. “He says the other dog was a total asshole.” She put the dog down. The woman had blond wavy hair that reached the small of her back, which she swooped from shoulder to shoulder when she spoke, as if for emphasis. That, with the fringe and the bracelets, made Teddy wonder if she had taken a wrong turn at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. Teddy almost laughed. Could this woman actually talk to dogs?
The dog’s owner didn’t find the woman funny. He tugged the dog in the opposite direction as the dog lurched toward a nearby flock of seabirds.
Frowning, the woman called out, “Wilson, stop projecting! Those birds did nothing to you!” The gulls circled overhead. “You’re welcome,” she said as they flew away.
Then she turned to Teddy and introduced herself as Jillian Blustein.
“Are you like a modern-day Dr. Dolittle?” Teddy said after introducing herself.
“Well, I also have been dabbling in palmistry,” Jillian said as she grabbed Teddy’s hand and turned it over. “You have a strong life line . . . or laugh line. I can never keep those straight.” She gave a good-natured sigh, as if it didn’t really matter. “But yes, I’m an animal medium.”
Teddy laughed this time and then regretted it. “Sorry,” she said. “You must get that a lot.”
Jillian waved it away. “I’m used to it. People have been looking at me funny since I was a kid.” She threw her arms in the air, making the fringe on her jacket wave. “Me. Blending in. You can imagine what a disaster that was?”
“Never worked for me, either,” Teddy said.
“So are you walking or riding?” Jillian asked.
“What?”
“To Whitfield. It’s only a mile or so from here.”
“Sounds like you already know your way around.”
Jillian shrugged. “I arrived a few hours ago. It’s a nice walk. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Teddy called out to Molly to ask if she wanted to join them, but she was already settled in on the tram, so Teddy followed Jillian down a well-worn dirt path that curved south away from the docks.
“What’s your story?” Jillian asked.
My story? Teddy shrugged.
“You know, psychically? How you got here?”
Teddy was so used to keeping her cards close to her vest, so to speak, that her first instinct was to deflect. Instead, she decided to do something she hadn’t done very often, at least with strangers, since that moment when Mrs. Gilbert told her she could just make something up. Teddy told the truth. “I got into a little trouble at the poker tables in Vegas. Clint Corbett sort of bailed me out. He offered me a spot at Whitfield, and I took it.”
She held her breath, waiting for a response. If Jillian was going to judge her as a lowlife, so be it. She’d pick up her chips and move to another table.
But Jillian’s eyes grew big. “Clint Corbett personally recruited you?”
“Is that like a big deal or something?”
“It is a really big deal,” said a voice behind them. “He’s the dean of students.”
Teddy swung around to face the man who had just spoken. His black hair sprouted in messy spikes off his head, as though he’d just tumbled out of bed.
“Do you make a habit of waiting behind trees?” Teddy said.
His head tilted to one side as he studied her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “My name is Jeremy Lee. I’m new at Whitfield.”
“We’re new, too.” Jillian smiled. “I’m an animal medium, by the way. What can you do?”
“I’m a psychometrist,” Jeremy said. “When I touch objects, I get a sort of flash. Sometimes it’s a glimpse of the future, sometimes it’s a glimpse of the past.”
Jillian nodded as if she met psychometrists every day. “One time,” she said, “I went on this road trip through Arizona, and I met this woman who could—”
Teddy tuned out the conversation as their surroundings changed. She had no idea what she was. The whole thing sounded like the beginning of a bad joke: An animal medium and a psychometrist walked into a forest . . .
The path led through a thicket of trees, and when they emerged, Teddy caught her first glimpse of Whitfield. It sat perched atop a cliff overlooking the bay, its impressive redbrick facade towering over the horizon. Whatever was beyond that facade would change Teddy’s life forever. She stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Jillian said, turning and seeing Teddy standing alone. If Molly were here, Teddy thought, she would know what Teddy was feeling; she would understand that Teddy felt excited and terrified and sad and happy and a thousand things
