Seers (2 page)

Tobias says that without a Preceptor, a Seer will never fully develop his or her talents because it is the Preceptor who acts as a guardian in the place of the Seer’s family, arranges the missions, and helps the Seer to find his or her special skills.

By the age of seven, the strongest Seers have found the scent, followed the path, and found their Preceptor. By the age of seven, the urge, the desire, has become too strong to resist. They cannot help but to make contact. Children as young as three have been known to maneuver their way to their Preceptor. Some by coincidence. Some by choice. Preceptors believe that a Seer’s mere presence in the family can influence parents’ decisions about where they choose to live. Parents move to a new town. The preschool is next to a regional headquarters. Bam. Connection. I’ve been told that some young Seers, the ones with the strongest senses, the most skill, have left a playground, climbed a fence, or jumped from a moving vehicle to get to their Preceptor. These are usually the ones who will one day become Preceptors themselves. Tobias says that connecting with one’s Preceptor is the only way to ensure that a Seer will truly master his or her talents and find the right missions, missions that showcase the Seer’s strengths, missions that make a difference.

And then there’s me. I was seventeen.

I remember how much I learned at my first meeting with Tobias. Tobias is a sound teacher with vast knowledge of the Seers’ organization and the nature of Seers’ abilities. But unfortunately, his knowledge about me is minimal. I showed up at his door almost a year ago. The address of the headquarters must have been lonely floating around in my brain by itself. Because my brain was an empty shell. I have been tested and drilled and tested again. But no one can tell me where my memories are, why they were taken, or what exactly my life consisted of before Tobias.

Tobias told me that Seers rely on sound to travel in. They ride in on a wave, as they say. A sound wave. They concentrate on the vibrations in the being’s voice or the sound it’s making, then close their eyes and ride the wave in through the ear. Imagine a storm cloud, a twister. The Seer’s ear a twister, the being’s ear a twister. Water in between. The being’s sound in the Seer’s ear creates its own storm, and the Seer rides the wave through the water into the next twister, the being’s ear. I picture it gray with white, foamy, angry crests on the tips of the waves. Gray clouds. Rumbling thunder as the sound becomes existence itself. Swirling. Churning. Gliding. Sliding. Like a water slide. Only I hate water slides. I hate angry waves. And I hate ears. They’re ugly.

I go in through the eye.

Schedule in hand, I walk down the E corridor to my first class. E corridor is senior hall. I am technically a senior. By age. By credits. But since I have been to so many high schools, I am a senior with no ties, no tearful good-byes looming in the near future. No favorite teachers, classes. No clique. No friends. All of those things, that feeling of belonging, would be possible if I were here as a normal student. But I’m not. And if all goes well, I will only be a senior here for a few weeks anyway.

My first class is physics. The door is closed. There is something far more invasive about entering a classroom full of strangers when the class has already begun if the door is closed. Somehow the door being open makes me feel as if they were expecting me or expecting anyone, for that matter. They are open to the possibility of it, at least. But a closed door screams, “We are full! Can you not see that we are not presently accepting guests?”

I turn the handle and sidestep in.

“May I help you?” asks the wiry-haired woman in the center of the room. She begins to weave through lab tables toward me. Her eyes, intently fixed on me, are small and glassy but somehow avoid the label
beady
and achieve
keen.
I don’t have to Navigate her to See that her intelligence level is above average. Some people have lace curtains, sheer panels maybe, over their eyes. They give away so much of themselves without trying or even realizing it. Most people’s eyes are shielded as if drapes made from stiff, heavy fabric hang behind them. They effectively keep their secrets to themselves. I’ve encountered only a few people who have room-darkening blinds drawn behind their eyes, and I can’t tell a thing about them. This lady’s eyes hide nothing.

“I’m new. I’m in this class,” I say as I thrust my schedule at her as if I need to prove it.

“Happy to have you.” She glances down and reads, “‘Elise Felton.’ Do you go by Elise?”

“Leesie, actually. Thanks.” Most people don’t ask. I hate having to broach the subject myself. It’s such an easy thing to do, to ask what someone likes to be called. I wonder why it doesn’t occur to more people. I instantly like her.

“I’m Mrs. Marion. We just started a new unit. The first and second laws of thermodynamics. Had you started thermodynamics in your previous school?”

Seriously? The study of the energy transfer between systems? Sounds like any day of my life.

“Yes, I have.”

“Great!” She begins to turn away. I can tell that she needs to get back to the lesson. The class has been busily staring at me, but despite the new attraction, they’re getting chatty and restless. “Grab a textbook from the shelf and a seat in the back.” Then she addresses the class: “Class, this is Leesie Felton. Welcome her on her first day. Don’t leave her stranded in the hallway if she looks lost and help her to the cafeteria! Let’s continue.”

I take notes the remainder of the period. It’s quiet, and I feel safe in my seat. I am not looking forward to the hallway at the bell. I’ll have to pretend to be secure and unassuming. Approachable but not needy. Confident but not overtly alluring. Interesting, not weird.

This is a jeans and T-shirt school. The style of the jeans doesn’t seem to matter. I’m wearing dark jeans, plain, like half the girls. The other half wears a blend of colored, straight leg, ripped. Good. No fashion gurus spotted yet. I chose a gray shirt this morning, wanting to blend in. At least clothes-wise. There isn’t much I can do about the rest of me.

A Preceptor in Tobias’s building says my hair color is like the part of the fire where white flame and orange flame play over the coals. And that pretty much sums it up. I am walking fire with blondish-reddish, wavy hair sailing down my back. I send a chunk of it over my shoulder.

At the bell I take my time getting to the door.

“Hey. Can I help you get to your next class?” A boy is leaning against the doorframe. He’s tall and lanky and looks smart. It’s not the same way Mrs. Marion shows her brain’s secrets with her easy-reader eyes. His is in his stance. It’s in his speech. His stance is relaxed yet ready to pounce, and his words are chopped and crisp, like he’s taking time to say them even though I can tell he must have an endless stream of words and thoughts swimming in his head. He has clear green eyes, and my guess is he considers himself somewhat representative of the student body, political even.

“Sure. Thanks.” I hand him my schedule.

“Calculus. Good. Science and then math. That makes good sense. Mr. Stein. Good. This way.”

He’s funny to watch. Kind of bobble-heady as he agrees with himself. I especially love the way he doesn’t look up to see if I agree as well. I follow him.

“I’m in one of your classes. AP English. We’re studying British romanticism right now. You just missed the Restoration and the eighteenth century, but this is good, too.”

This actually piques my interest. I love British literature. “Okay. I’ll see you then. Thanks for getting me here.”

“My pleasure. I’m Ryan, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Ryan. Leesie.”

“Right. Leesie. Got it. Bye.” He gives a little wave and ducks into his class. It looks like a history class, from the posters.

Calculus goes the way you expect any math class to go. All business. Notes. Problems modeled by the teacher. Practice problems to try on your own. Practice problems review. More for homework. Nobody talks to me, which is fine. I am pleased so far with how easily my new fellow students are allowing me to fly under the radar.

The bell rings, and I see Ryan. Punctual. I’m not surprised. His notebooks are fresh and straight. He has a pen in his hand and a calculator in his pocket. This is a convenient guy to meet on the first day. A great study partner.

“How was calculus?” he asks.

I look at him to assess him before I answer. If he is looking down or away from me or fiddling with his books or checking his phone, he doesn’t care about my answer. He is filling in time with pointless and meaningless conversation. Asking to say he asked. If he is looking at me, well, then I will say more than, “Fine.” We make eye contact. He holds my gaze for a second, but then his eyes dart past me and down to his books and at the teacher coming our way. And then back at me.

Okay. So he cares enough to ask, but I’m not high on his list of priorities. Fine, Ryan. Good thing I’m not here for you.

“It was good, I think. Differentiation. I know a little about it already, so I think I’ll be okay,” I answer casually.

“I can help if you need it. Math is my forte.” He smiles.

“I appreciate that. I may take you up on it. I’m looking forward to English, though. If
I
have a forte, that’d be it.”

“Okay, then. Let me know if you need any help,” Ryan says, this time looking directly at me. He shakes his head to the left, and I watch the wave of sandy brown hair readjust itself across his brow.

“Great, Ryan. Thanks.”

His generosity could be useful. But only if he’s in close contact with the one I’m here for.

As I turn left onto Broad Street, following the signs for 295 North, which will get me out of New Jersey and into Philadelphia, I feel like Clark Kent stripping in the phone booth and emerging as Superman. I travel farther from my new school and from my guise as a regular student, toward Tobias and his office. I shed my regular girl thoughts of jeans and John Keats and ready my brain for the batch of information Tobias has for me today.

Tobias keeps close tabs on me. I live above his office, our area headquarters, in a studio apartment, so his access to me is easy. In addition to his regular checks, we have information sessions, where he tells me about the history of Seers and the organization, as well as mission meetings, where he provides me with insight into my mission subjects. Sometimes he shares what little he knows about my own backstory.

In the light, early-afternoon traffic, I make my way easily to the exit for the Ben Franklin Bridge. My mind wanders to a meeting with Tobias a few weeks ago when he drilled me on what I know about my past and had me recount a memory I retained. I shared the only one that I recall vividly.

My memories are like the silken threads of a cobweb—an old, dusty cobweb that has been reduced to only a few wisps. The strongest, longest of those wisps is the memory of my first Extraction. This was the trip that changed the whole game for me. I knew by then that I could do something that no one else I knew could do. I figured that out on my own, as all Seers do. But that day I knew that Navigating was for a purpose. That I could gain from it. That the being could lose from it. My first victim was Jennifer Dixon.

I had a friend named Sharon. Jennifer was her older sister. Jennifer was a formidable force. She hated our presence. We were little eight-year-olds who brought down the “coolness” that was her house. Sharon’s parents were never home. Billy, the eighteen-year-old brother, was supposed to be in charge, but he couldn’t be bothered. Jennifer, fourteen, did everything she could to remove Sharon and me from the scene so her friends could do what they wanted without the threat of being tattled on—which Sharon and I often did. But you couldn’t blame us; Jennifer deserved everything she got. Everything.

On this day I remember, Jennifer was at her most lethal. She was awaiting the arrival of her popular-crowd cronies, and Sharon and I were doing the most heinous and embarrassing of things: standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter, picking from a bowl of day-old popcorn. Jennifer didn’t waste any time.

“The last thing you need is another calorie, Sharon. Didn’t Mom tell you to cut back?” She sang the last sentence a little, and her words attacked Sharon the way a winter breeze bites your face if your nose is running and your eyes are tearing. Sharon’s hand went immediately to her shirt. She pulled it out and adjusted it, a trick she’d recently begun to do whenever anyone looked at her directly. Sharon was chubby. She was made fun of at school, but I knew she was most uncomfortable at home.