Now it was Teddy’s turn to shrug. Their interactions since that night at the Cantina had been awkward, to say the least.
“Speaking of,” Jillian said.
Out of the corner of her eye, Teddy could see Pyro making his way over to them. Of course he hadn’t dressed up.
“And who are you supposed to be?” Teddy asked.
“The man who haunts your dreams?”
“Very funny,” Teddy said.
“You want to make tonight a little more interesting?” Pyro asked, nodding to her cup and pulling out a flask.
Teddy thought for a moment. She remembered her promise to Clint. She had to at least try to follow the rules on campus. “I’m good,” she said.
He smiled. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
She saw Clint standing with the instructors by the punch table across the room. Even they had gotten in the swing of things. Professor Dunn had dressed as the Dude from The Big Lebowski, while Clint looked relaxed and comfortable in his college football jersey.
Dara, wearing a fur coat, too much eyeliner, and a pink polo dress, sidled up to Teddy. “You know what I like best about tonight?” she asked, taking a fake drag from her unlit cigarette. She looked just like Margot from The Royal Tenenbaums.
“What?” Teddy took another sip of punch.
“That Boyd’s not here. Imagine her predicament. What if she dressed like a troll and nobody noticed she was in costume?”
The Misfits’ intense dislike of Sergeant Rosemary Boyd had only magnified. Boyd ran her classes with an iron fist and was responsible in large part for the rivalry that ran between the Misfits and the Alphas. It was as if she wanted the competition between them to spiral into something like tribal warfare.
Teddy laughed, catching Clint’s eye. He was watching her. They’d been working consistently on mental defense, but Clint had been able to penetrate her mind each and every time he tried. She imagined a current crackling in her fingers, traveling up her arms. She closed her eyes, marshaling that electricity. Then, as if it were thread, she pictured spinning the bright white light into a web inside her mind, shielding her thoughts. Clint raised his cup to hers and returned to his conversation with Dunn. As if he could hear her silent vow to keep him out of her damn mind.
Ava Lareau bumped Teddy’s arm, almost spilling her drink. Ava was one of those girls who thought lingerie and animal ears made the best Halloween costume. Teddy guessed she was dressed as either a call girl or a cat.
“Anyone seen Brett lately?” Ava asked, her eyes right on Jillian. “He promised to meet me here, but I haven’t seen him yet.”
Teddy just hoped that Jillian wouldn’t take the bait. Everyone knew that Ava was determined to be the best spiritual medium among the first-year recruits, and that she perceived Jillian as a threat. She’d gone on the offensive, doing everything she could to undermine Jillian’s confidence and class rank. And when Ava had discovered that Jillian had a crush on Brett Evans, she’d launched a campaign to openly flirt with him any chance she could. Jillian had retaliated by doubling her efforts to get Brett to notice her instead, occasionally pulling down her dress to reveal another inch of cleavage.
Ava’s eyes narrowed as she turned her attention to Jillian’s costume. “Oh,” Ava drawled. “I just love what you did with that curtain. Very Scarlett O’Hara.”
“I like your costume, too,” Jillian said, smiling. “Clever idea to appear practically naked in front of your professors. Let me know if it works for you.”
Ava flushed. “If you see Brett, tell him I’m looking for him.” With that, she turned and left.
Dara put her hand on Jillian’s shoulder. “He’s over there,” she said, pointing toward a table where a group of upperclassmen—including Brett, dressed as the Long Island Medium—were reading fortunes. “Jeremy and Molly tracked him down earlier. They’re still trying to make that trade for Internet access. Remember? Brett has a key to the lab? The whole black-market thing?”
Jeremy and Molly, dressed in coordinating doctor and nurse costumes, blended easily into the crowd. But Brett stood out. It was hard to miss a six-foot-tall guy in leopard-skin stilettos, a tight leather skirt, a bleached-blond wig—and five o’clock shadow.
Despite the getup, Jillian looked so lovestruck that Teddy decided to accompany her friend across the room to keep her from doing anything stupid. As they drew closer, however, it was clear that Brett wasn’t exactly in character. “I mean, I understand that some people need the rules and restrictions,” he said. “But I don’t. Just the opposite. All these regulations are curtailing my abilities. Makes me feel like I could start a fight with a possum. Why put us through all this training if we can’t use—”
“Hey,” Molly said, cutting off Brett’s rant the moment she noticed Teddy and Jillian nearby.
“Hey,” Jillian said breathily. “You owe me a dance.”
“I do?” Brett said.
Jillian grabbed Brett and led him onto the floor.
Teddy sneaked off to get a refill of nonalcoholic punch. She chatted with Dara and an upperclassman, but no matter how she tried to relax and enjoy herself, there was a distinctly middle-school feeling about the party. Bored, Teddy practiced putting her wall up and down as she watched her peers grind on the dance floor.
That was, until she saw him.
Nick, killer dimples and all, walked into the Whitfield dining hall. Teddy had tried not to think about him much after that night, it had been too cringeworthy—she had made a move on him, and he’d dad-blocked her!—and now he was here and talking to Clint like they were old friends.
She felt like she’d been hit with a ton of bricks, because she realized the truth. They were friends. Or colleagues, at the very least. Nick knew all about Whitfield, all about her—and he had known since the moment she’d first laid eyes on him in the Bellagio. She’d been freaking played.
There’d been a reason she couldn’t read plain ol’ Nick’s hand that
