Page 23 of Waysider
Swallowing a sigh, Cal went back to the chair. He leaned his elbows on his knees and waited for his twin to wake up, listening to the distant sounds of dishes clattering and voices drifting up the stairs. Cass slept on, her face puckered in a frown, her eyes lined with exhaustion.
Not yet.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cass’s first class was called Introduction to Clairvoyance.
She knew this not just from the small piece of paper in her hand, but also because it was written on the chalkboard in neat handwriting. It was the first thing Cass saw when she walked through the door.
Sunlight poured into the busy room. Wearing an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt over tight jeans, Cass did a swift scan of every face she passed as she automatically headed toward a table at the back. There were at least twenty people in this class, and the only one she recognized was Tammy, who didn’t look up from whatever she was writing in a notebook. The girl’s expression was just as sullen as the last time Cass had seen it, which was why she didn’t even try to extend a greeting. Cass slid into the chair and mussed her bangs.
Moments later, the professor hurried inside, holding a stack of textbooks in her arms. She was a small-framed woman with black-rimmed glasses and a wide, white smile. She wore a perfectly-tailored pantsuit of green plaid and a white scarf, which stood out starkly against her dark skin.
Once she’d set the stack of books down on the desk, the professor folded her hands and waited for the steady murmur of voices to die down.
“Professor Clemens is on vacation, so I’ll be filling in for him until he’s back. My name is Annabelle Green, and I graduated from Else & Bellows with the class of 1976. House Pennyseeker.” Her smile widened, and Cass caught a glimpse of that pride Headmistress Crane had mentioned.
For the first time, Cass wondered what house she’d be in, if she was here long enough to find out. The thought unsettled her, but Cass wasn’t sure why. Or maybe she did, and she just didn’t want to think about it. Cass quickly reached for the textbook in front of her and cracked it open as Professor Green’s lecture went on.
Cass didn’t recognize most of the terminology, and the pictures were strange. There was one black and white image of what looked like an exorcism, a skeletal woman lying on a thin, lumpy mattress while a circle of grim-faced people stood around her. Another eerie image depicted a solemn-faced girl, her hair in pigtails, while a bright light floated in the air beside her. Cass quickly realized that she’d never seen a textbook like this. At her old school, before she dropped out, her classes had mostly been science and math. The basics. She’d been halfway through her sophomore year when the accident happened.
But even if she had made it all the way to senior year, Cass doubted any of those books would’ve compared to the one in front of her.
“Does anyone know what secondary abilities a voyant can possess?” she heard Professor Green ask from a distance. With effort, Cass lifted her head and refocused.
Tammy’s familiar voice spoke up from the front row. “Telepathy, which is communicating with others psychically. Telekinesis, moving objects with the mind. Precognition, seeing the future. Then there’s transtemporal travel.”
The tip of the chalk was the only sound in the room as Professor Green wrote down the four abilities. Once she was finished, she set the chalk back on the ledge, clapped the white residue off her hands, and rested her fingertips on the desk. “Someone has certainly done the reading. You got every single one, Miss Price. Now, it’s rare for a voyant to possess any one of these abilities, much less more than one, but there are exceptions.”
“Exceptions such as Nathanial Hissing and Sinister Gray,” Tammy put in.
What was it with the names in this place? Cass wondered. Couldn’t there be a famous voyant named Bob Miller?
She turned to make a face at Cal, knowing he’d probably had a similar thought.
But the desk next to her was empty.
“…good, Miss Price,” Professor Green praised. Her brown eyes shifted as she addressed the rest of the class, and Cass looked back with an overly calm expression, silently commanding herself to focus. “It’s publicly known that Nathanial Hissing possessed the gifts of telepathy and telekinesis.”
Don’t think about Cal. Concentrate. Cass waited for the professor to tell them what Sinister Gray could do. Instead, Professor Green wrote on the board again, saying over her slim shoulder, “We call these abilities PSI or EP. Does anyone—anyone besides Miss Price—know what these stand for?”
When no one else answered, the professor’s smile became strained. With a look of resignation in her eyes, she nodded at Tammy, who immediately declared, “PSI stands for ‘psychic phenomena’ and EP is ‘extrasensory perception.’ It’s when an individual learns something that can’t be gained through the senses or deducted from previous experience.”
“That’s correct. Thank you, Miss Price.” The rest of the class continued on in that way. Professor Green would say something in her cheerful, matter-of-fact voice, as if she weren’t completely shaking Cass’s world on its axis, and then she would ask them a question. Tammy’s hand shot in the air, time and time again. Professor Green tried to get answers from other students, but usually, Tammy ended up answering.
Cass went to her next class in a daze. OCCULT SCIENCE I, her schedule read. When she drifted over the threshold, she spotted Finch instantly. The other girl was hard to miss—she was sitting in the front row, alone, waving as if there was any possibility of Cass not seeing her. Cass sat in the chair beside her silently, still numb with shock. She let her heavy, book-laden bag slide to the floor with a graceless thud.
Finch leaned over. She was wearing another sweater today, this one even frumpier than the last. Her thick hair was gathered up in a scrunchie. “How was your first class?” she asked.
At that moment, the professor strode in. He was a bald man with a stained tie and a booming voice. Cass hid her relief and faced forward. This time, Cass didn’t touch her textbook. She just kept her gaze on the professor, even when he directed them to flip to certain pages. Cass struggled to listen as Professor Barbarack began a lecture about astrology. For the rest of the class period, she felt Finch’s concerned, darting glances.
When the midday bell rang across campus, Cass practically shot to her feet. Finch gathered her things more slowly. She held them against her chest and faced Cass. “The dining hall is on the other side of—” she started.
Then the world started shaking. Cass’s heart lurched, and she felt her eyes widen. She snatched the edge of a table and half-squatted, searching wildly around the room to see if everyone else was doing the same.
But the earthquake had already ended.
To Cass’s surprise, Finch didn’t look concerned. Two or three of the other students still wore expressions of alarm, but for the most part, everyone continued on as if nothing had happened. Cass turned back to Finch, her eyebrows raised in a silent question.
