She turned back to the plaque. The American government had turned on its own citizens. She technically would be working for the government one day; what if she disagreed with their policies? Would she still have to serve, as she had promised Clint?
* * *
Those questions stayed with her as she took her seat and waited for Professor Dunn. And waited. He entered the classroom—his T-shirt today listed the dates of AC/DC’s 1980 Back in Black tour—and launched into his lecture without introduction.
“You may think,” he said, “because you’re here to study seership, that I’m about touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo. But you would be wrong.” His harsh words were at odds with his laid-back appearance. Teddy bit her lip in an effort not to laugh. She kept her eyes on Dunn, refusing to look at Jillian, who would be crestfallen. Jillian loved mumbo-jumbo.
Dunn continued, “We’re going to be approaching the art of parapsychology through science. Because this is a science.” He began to walk through the aisles, looking at each of the recruits. “Without a foundation in the science of psychic ability, there’s no way to expand on the power you already have. And if you don’t expand that power, you will fail your midyear exam in December. And if you fail, you’re out.”
Besides her knack of guessing when people were lying, which seemed to be irrelevant when dealing with psychics, Teddy had only once demonstrated any psychic ability—the day before, with Clint. She looked around the room, trying not to feel like an imposter. She would have to figure it out before that exam.
You’re not dressed in a fat suit and a wig, pretending to be someone else. This is the real you. You belong in this room.
Dunn went on, “Psychics see, smell, touch, feel, taste, sense, know what is unknown. And that is the definition of seership: seeing the unseeable—not with our eyes but with our minds. Only then will we know the unknowable. That practice begins with meditation—”
There was an audible groan from the back of the class. “I thought you said we weren’t doing any hippie-dippie crap?” Zac Rogers yelled out.
“What makes you think that changing your neurochemical makeup is ‘hippie-dippie’? The more focused your brain, the more focused your psychic ability. I have degrees in astrophysics and neurochemistry from Berkeley. I spent a decade in India studying with a swami. I use both Eastern and Western science in this classroom. That’s how we get the full picture on what it means to be psychic.”
“But what about the cool stuff?” Zac said. “You know, like mental attacks?”
“That’s a very specific—and advanced—type of telepathic communication. And there’s no way to master that until you master the basics of telepathy. And you can’t master the basics of telepathy until you master meditation.”
Dara asked what a mental attack was, exactly, and Dunn looked thoughtful. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, but it’s when one mind breaches another mind through uninvited mental connection.”
Teddy thought back to the casino. Was that what Clint had done to Sergei and the guards? They hadn’t seemed like they were under attack. They didn’t resist. They didn’t struggle. They had just done what Clint had wanted them to do.
“Today we’re talking about the brain and its structure.” Dunn walked back to the front of the classroom and pulled down a large-scale diagram of the human brain. “You’re going to become very familiar with this over the next month.”
After class, Teddy wished that the rest of the time had been as exciting as Zac’s interruption. Instead, she had a notebook full of brain facts to memorize and an hour of meditation homework. On top of that, Dunn had instructed the first-years to recount their dreams to their roommates each morning, then record them for future analysis of precognition and premonition.
Teddy looked to an equally befuddled Jillian as they exited Dunn’s classroom. “Not what you expected, either, huh?” she said.
Jillian shook her head.
The two began to walk toward Harris Hall for lunch. A thought had been nagging at Teddy all morning: she hadn’t spoken to her parents. After every bad first day, her parents had been there to talk. Even though there was a no-tech-on-campus rule, she had heard there were phones in the office available for students to use. As they passed the main office in Fort McDowell, Teddy told Jillian to go on ahead.
The woman who sat behind the front desk looked as old as the fort itself. Teddy cleared her throat. “Excuse me?”
“Yes?” the woman said.
“I heard there were phones in the office available to make personal calls?”
“Do you have a phone card?”
Teddy shook her head.
The woman sighed and slid a piece of plastic across to Teddy. “This should have ten minutes left on it. Phones are the second door on your left. Buy a phone card next time you’re in town.”
Teddy opened the door and took a seat at one of the phone booths. Luckily, no one else was in the room. She hadn’t used a pay phone since maybe . . . ever? She punched in the digits on the card and then dialed the familiar numbers of her parents’ home line. It was early in the afternoon, and her mom was sure to be home.
The phone rang once, twice, and then after the third ring, her mom’s voice came on: “Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Oh, Teddy! Is that you? We were so worried. We didn’t know . . . You left a note, but . . . Oh, sweetie.”
“Mom, I’m fine.” There was something about those words that made the events of the last two days feel very, very real. She had followed a stranger across the country to study at a school for psychics—because she was psychic. What was more, she had learned there was a possibility that her birth parents had been psychic, too.
Her mom sounded relieved. “So how is it, this new school?”
“Good.” Teddy wanted to ask about her birth parents, but she’d been through it before—her mother and father didn’t know much. The story
