“Oh, it wasn’t you, Tessa.” He wiped his hands on his sweater to dry them, then went to his desk. He picked up my abstract fruit painting and tucked it under his arm. “Come with me,” he said, and sauntered from the room.
I followed him to the cafeteria. He stopped at the back wall and held his arms out wide, facing it, my canvas still in one hand. I had to step out of the way so he wouldn’t hit me with it.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
Was I supposed to see something? If I didn’t have the fog balanced, I’d see dozens of visions, but Mr. Vargas wasn’t asking about visions. He was neutral. “Um, a wall?” I said.
“I know you can do better than that. Try again. What do you see?”
“Um...” Oh! “A giant canvas?”
“Yes!” he said. “Excellent. Now what do you see on this giant canvas?”
I stared up at the wall for a minute. We were in the cafeteria, so that meant food. He couldn’t mean... “My painting? My bowl of fruit?”
“Yes. Your bowl of fruit.” He held my painting in both hands, arms straight out. “I want you to recreate this same piece, on a much larger scale, on this wall.”
“But everyone will see it,” I said.
“Everyone should see it. It’s brilliant.”
He couldn’t be serious. “It’s just fruit.”
With one eye closed, he tilted his head, then tilted the canvas the opposite way. “I’ve been teaching for twenty-seven years, and every year, I present that same bowl of fruit and tell my students to paint it. Do you know what I get? I get paintings of the same bowl of fruit, from every student, every year. Some are truly awful, most are decent, and a few are excellent. Yours is one of the excellent. You took it in a new direction.”
“I thought you were going to fail me for not following instructions,” I said. This was incredible. I had to raise the fog a little to make sure I was hearing him correctly.
“I didn’t give any instructions to follow,” Mr. Vargas said. “You’ve only been here a few weeks, and you’re unpracticed. Undeveloped. However, you have a raw talent, Tessa. You are a very gifted artist.”
Gifted.
Jillian was a gifted dancer. Logan was a gifted musician. All the talent in the family had gone to them, I’d always assumed.
I’d painted before, sure. As a hobby. I was decent. Maybe good. Never excellent. Never gifted. But I was psionic now, when I’d never been psionic before. Maybe my retrocognition wasn’t the only thing the fog had suppressed all those years.
I could envision my painting, super-sized, on the wall. The bright yellow-green pear, stretching from the floor halfway up the wall. The shiny crimson apple. The plump purple blueberry. Greedily, I eyed the white cinder blocks. The strawberry would go right there, in the upper corner. The wall’s bumpy texture would be perfect for the orange.
I was stuck in Lilybrook because of Deirdre’s dream. But when Tristan brought my brother and sister to me, I would bring them to this school and lead them to the cafeteria. Then I would stand them in front of the mural, spread my arms, and announce I painted this. They would be so proud.
Breathless, I appraised the blank white wall, a wall that wouldn’t be blank or white much longer. “When can I start?”
I started on my mural the very next day.
With a pencil in my left hand, I lightly sketched the arc for the meaty part of the pear. To steady myself, I pressed against the wall with my right hand and a few visions appeared through the fog. A girl wearing her hair in two braids with a headband made from daisies. A boy with hair short in the front and long in the back.
I stepped away from the wall and adjusted the fog, bringing it closer until the visions disappeared. It left me a bit dazed, but still aware. The perfect state for painting. I put my pencil to the wall and completed the arc of the pear, then sketched until it was time to go home.
Although Tristan continued to contact psychics and search for matches of Brinda’s drawings, and Aaron worked nonstop on his webcam search, there had been no new leads in their investigations over the next week. So every day after school, I would meet Mr. Vargas in the art room and gather my supplies. He’d help me carry everything down to the cafeteria, bring me a ladder if I was painting up high, then leave me to my work. I’d have to spend a few minutes getting the fog adjusted to just the right level, then I’d dip the brush into the paint, and get started.
The students in the clubs that met in the cafeteria left me alone, but I could feel them watching. On occasion I felt Nathan Gallagher’s eyes on me as well, watching my every move, as if he peeked into the cafeteria to see what I was doing. A few times I’d turn around, but he would disappear before I saw him. Once I felt John Kellan watching me, but that was impossible. I was keeping the fog thick and close to keep the visions away; I must have been lost in memories of the night he had forcibly taken me from Twelve Lakes.
The Nightmare Eyes were always there. They always watched.
When it was time to go home, Mr. Vargas would come to help me clean up, but I would never notice him. He would have to clear his throat or tap me on the shoulder to bring me out of my daze. My muscles would be sore from crouching and bending and reaching and climbing the ladder. My left hand would be stiff from holding the brushes. And though I never remembered crying, my cheeks would always be damp with tears.
One sunny morning a couple weeks later, as I was hanging up my coat in my locker at school, Tristan texted me. Just got an email from another psychic. She had a vision of J & L with an animal that looked like a horse. It had one eye.
I had a drawing of that one-eyed horse in my book bag this very moment. Heart leaping to my throat, I texted back: Brinda drew that!
Yep. Told you my method would work. Now we just have to find that horse.
Finding a one-eyed horse would be difficult, and of course, that vision could be symbolic, like Deirdre’s dream. But this was the first development we’d had since Tennessee. We were getting closer. We’d find Jillian and Logan any day now. I was sure of it.
The second I sat down in chemistry, the intercom buzzed. “Sorry for the interruption,” the secretary said in a bored voice. “Please send Tessa Carson to the office.”
I jumped up, and without even checking with the teacher, bolted from the classroom. This had to be about Jillian and Logan. Finally. Finally! Was it Tristan waiting for me in the office, or Aaron? Tristan had gotten that lead about the one eyed-horse, but it had to be Aaron waiting for me in the office—Tristan would have come straight to the classroom to get me.
In the front office, I skidded to a stop. Aaron wasn’t there, and neither was Tristan. But Cole Gallagher was there, wearing a regulation black jacket from the APR, his tawny eyes dour, his lips in a straight line. “Dennis needs you at the Lab, Tessa.”
“Why? What happened?” I asked. “You look like it’s bad.”
Cole slid a glance to the secretary, who was watching with sharp green eyes, clearly curious about why the new girl would be needed at the top secret science lab down the road. “You know I can’t discuss that here.”
“Did Aaron find my brother and sister?” I asked.
“Tessa. Please.” He took