A flash of something metallic caught Teddy’s eye. Pausing, she peered over the rocky ledge to the sea below. Half-hidden by the jutting cliff was a sleek speedboat bobbing on the incoming tide. Someone stood on the stern, cleaning the motor, an assortment of tools spread at his feet. She took a step closer and realized it was Jeremy. So that was where he stashed his boat. If not for that flash, she would have walked right by and never seen it. She carefully maneuvered down the ledge, settling atop a rock to watch Jeremy work. He was methodical, carefully arranging each tool.
He looked up. “Ah,” he said. “Hello.”
“Nice boat,” she said.
He grimaced. “I know I’m not supposed to have one. Because of the rules about leaving the island. But my family lives in San Francisco, and it’s nice to visit them. Well, not my family. My dad and my stepmom. So maybe you wouldn’t say anything about the boat?”
“What boat?”
He swung around and pointed. “That boat right—” He paused. “Oh.”
Not thirty minutes ago, she was trying to convince Clint she could toe the line. And here she was, already breaking another school rule.
“I can give you a ride back to San Francisco if you want,” Jeremy said.
“What? Why?”
“You look unhappy. I assumed you failed your test.”
“As a matter of fact, I passed.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “You did?”
“You don’t need to look so surprised.”
He shrugged. “Most people celebrate when they pass. You look like you’re ready to check out.”
She imagined speeding off with Jeremy in his boat. Maybe she’d walk from the pier to some little shop and get a job in San Francisco, then find a room in some apartment with a bunch of grungy twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of college.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I want to serve my country.”
He said it so quickly that it took her aback. She wanted to say: “You seem so sure.” Instead she said: “You sound like Boyd.”
Teddy could imagine how Boyd would react to hearing that she had left. So damn smug. That alone was almost enough to make her want to stay.
“I want to put my talents to use,” he said. “And what could be a better than keeping us safe?” He fiddled with the lid of his toolbox. “My mom was in Tower Two. As a psychometrist, I could have seen something. I should have studied the clues.” He said this with the same flat emotion with which he had offered Teddy a ride back to the mainland. With the same emotion she imagined one would say “I like tuna fish sandwiches” or “It’s cold outside today.”
“I don’t believe,” he said, pausing as if considering his words carefully, “that the future is set in stone. I don’t believe that we aren’t supposed to change it. We wouldn’t have these gifts otherwise.”
Teddy thought about that as she rattled the bottle of pills in her pocket. She had talents, too. She didn’t have any idea how they could be put to good use, but the thought of finding out, the possibility of sharing Jeremy’s certainty . . . She realized that Jeremy Lee had inspired her. Him, of all people.
“But like I said,” Jeremy added, “if you want a ride back to the main—”
“No,” she said, swallowing hard. “I want to stay.”
“You mean right here?” he asked, pointing down at the slab of rock she was standing on, overlooking the water.
“No,” she said, laughing. “Here.” She spread her arms toward the campus. Clint had made it clear that if she wanted to succeed at Whitfield, she had to be all in. Teddy reached into her pocket, took out the bottle of pills, and flung it as hard as she could out into the water.
“What was that?” Jeremy asked.
Teddy dusted her hands. “Old habits,” she said, and she didn’t look back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TEDDY AND FIRST DAYS OF school didn’t really, well, mix. Think oil and water, toothpaste and orange juice, Taylor and Katy. On her first day of kindergarten, Teddy punched her teacher in the face. On her first day of high school, she got drunk after fifth period and threw up on the bus ride home. On her first day of Stanford, she placed her first bet before her first class, screwing up everything before a professor could even call her name from the roster. On first days, that feeling of anxiety plagued her. When people tried their best to fit it, they always lied.
On the first official day of classes at the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development, Teddy was determined to break the pattern. She woke up early. She showered. She put on a clean shirt. She ate breakfast (if you could call chia seeds breakfast; really, weren’t they tadpole eggs?). And then she followed the rest of the first-year students to Fort McDowell for her first class, Introduction to Seership.
Ivy had taken over most of the stucco facade, and red bricks lined the roofs. It seemed strange that a subject as unconventional as seership would take place in a building with such a regimented history.
Next to her, Jillian shivered. “This place gives me bad vibes.”
“Ghosts?” Teddy asked.
Jillian nodded. “Something.”
Teddy turned to see writing on a wall plaque outside the entrance. She ran her hand over the embossed metal.
IN RECOGNITION
OF THOSE WHO PASSED THROUGH ANGEL ISLAND AND WERE NOT WELCOMED,
OF THOSE WHO WERE TURNED AWAY,
OF THOSE WHO WERE TREATED UNFAIRLY BECAUSE THEY WERE DIFFERENT,
AND BECAUSE THOSE DIFFERENCES WERE FEARED.
MAY WE REMEMBER THAT IT IS OUR DIFFERENCES THAT MAKE US STRONGER.
ANGEL ISLAND, 1910–1954
From behind her, Dara said, “Angel Island was the Ellis Island of the West. Mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants came through here. During World War Two, it was basically an internment camp. In the fifties, California voted to make it into a park.” She nodded to Jillian. “No wonder it gives Ms. Medium the creeps.” Dara wrinkled her nose. “Though I thought she could only talk to animals?”
Teddy guessed
