Molly gave Teddy a look. Teddy guessed even Molly wasn’t thrilled to be her partner.
Dunn distributed packs of playing cards. Excellent. This she could do. She tore the plastic off the package and shuffled the cards, the weight of the deck beautifully familiar, the cards themselves slick in her hands. She alternated her fancy shuffle with pivot cuts, her hands flying around the deck. That was when Ben Tucker spoke: “Where did you learn to do that?”
When Teddy looked up, she noticed half the class staring at her. She shrugged, self-conscious. These people didn’t need to know about her past. “Some of us didn’t spend our teenage years hanging out at the mall,” she said.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Molly said, as if about to get a cavity filled.
I don’t suck. You suck.
Teddy put the deck on the table. “After you.”
Molly nodded and picked up the cards. “I’ll project.”
“Remember,” Dunn announced from the front of the room, “get on the same channel. Imagine the walkie-talkie in your mind. Sync up your breathing and connect consciousnesses before you begin. Physical contact helps to start.”
Teddy reached out her hand to Molly. “Should we pick a channel for our psychic radio?” Teddy asked.
“Sure,” Molly said, taking Teddy’s hand. “How about three?”
In her head, Teddy closed her eyes, imagining a set of old yellow walkie-talkies that her dad had bought her when they’d gone camping on her ninth birthday. She wondered where the walkie-talkies were now—probably somewhere in the basement. In her mind, she turned the dial to the number 3, trying to sync to Molly’s breathing.
Teddy opened her eyes as Molly slipped a card from the middle of the deck, looked at it, set it facedown, and then stared, wide-eyed, at Teddy. But Teddy didn’t hear anything. Not even static. Ben Tucker, another telepath, was the first to successfully receive a communication. All around, Teddy heard other classmates naming cards, followed by whoops. A familiar feeling of defeat rose within her. The same feeling she’d gotten when she’d lost big at poker, when she’d been fired from another crappy job, when she’d called her parents to tell them she was coming home from Stanford. But Teddy closed her eyes again, determined.
She gave up on the walkie-talkie idea. Instead, she pretended she was at a poker table. That Molly was an opponent across from her. She reached out to Molly’s mind, hoping to see the card. She’d landed on something the first day they’d met; maybe she could again. But instead, when she reached out to Molly’s mind, her mouth went dry and her skin grew hot. She saw a wall of gold . . . or was it sand? Teddy imagined brushing against it, feeling the coarse grains between her fingertips. She imagined the strongest wind scattering the sand, blasting it apart; she saw the wall—a dune, really—crumble before her. Then:
Whoa.
Beyond the wall, emerging from the inky darkness in her mind’s eye, she saw the card.
Four of clubs.
Her palms were sweaty—no, she was sweaty everywhere, hair plastered to her forehead. Something clicked, and that old plugged-in feeling she had chased at the poker table gripped her. It felt like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. She could see every card held by every student in the room.
Ace of diamonds, three of hearts, six of clubs, jack of spades, queen of hearts.
She felt a jolt before the cards faded away, and she was bombarded by new images. She saw Pyro in the cop car, the night his partner was shot, crying. She saw Jeremy Lee on the morning of 9/11, trying to call his mother on the phone. She saw Molly hacking in to the CIA mainframe. These were memories, she realized. There were more of them, ones she couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t place. Ava shoplifting from an expensive department store. Liz taking steroids before a competition. Molly—
Like a computer losing power, her mind’s eye went dark. And then everything else did, too.
* * *
Teddy blinked and looked at the ceiling, confused about how she had ended up on the floor. The last thing she remembered was that she was in class, sitting with Molly . . .
Oh, God.
Teddy sat up quickly only to find Molly also sprawled across the floor. In fact, everyone seemed to be rubbing their foreheads, dazed. And then everyone turned toward her. Before she could think of what to say or do, the room tilted sideways. Her stomach heaved, brilliant white lights exploded before her eyes, and excruciating pain reverberated through her skull.
Oh, God, not now. Please not now.
She knew the symptoms. She was about to have a seizure. She was epileptic, after all.
She stumbled to her feet and lurched toward the door. She barely made it into the hallway, the hum of voices growing louder behind her, when Dunn grabbed her elbow. “Teddy, are you all right?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
She managed a nod. If she could just get to her room, there was a chance she wouldn’t—
“That was an incredible display of astral telepathy,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything like that in years.”
Teddy clutched the wall. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Clint mentioned, but . . .” His words swam together; he was speaking gibberish now. Teddy gave another nod. When she moved her head, the edges of her vision began to blur; the hallway was tunneling before her.
This is really going to hurt.
And then everything went dark again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TEDDY OPENED HER EYES. SHE was lying down, tucked into a bed that wasn’t hers. The room, with its pale blue walls and flimsy white curtains, wasn’t hers, either. A glance out the window revealed the bright afternoon sun. She blinked, confusion giving way to worry. It didn’t matter whose bed she was in. She had to get up. She was late for Seership.
“You’re awake.” Molly stood at the door to the room. “Feeling okay?”
Whenever Teddy had a seizure, there were gaps of unaccounted time. It
