“Hey, you got your cast off!” Jessa said to Mr Fletcher as she bumped into him on her way into school. “How does it feel?”
“Feels great!” he said, wiggling his arm proudly. “I can finally reach the itchy spots, which I’m very happy about.”
“That’s good,” she replied.
“Are you okay?” he said. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m all right, but this stuff is driving me crazy. You still haven’t heard back from Rachel about the video?”
“Not yet, she’s still working on the analysis. And we ran searches on the licence plates but found no record. Is anything else bothering you? Anything going on with Cecily?”
“Nope, she’s been minding her own business lately. Other than that, I’m doing fine I guess, just haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Stressed about exams?”
“Maybe. I've been having these nightmares for a while, though. I’ve tried doing some open-mind practice before bed, to relax, you know? But apparently it relaxes me so much that I end up having these weird, vivid dreams that wake me up. Last night I had a horrible nightmare about Annora. It was different to the others, too. It wasn't a regular scary dream, though. It felt really real, but also totally surreal. Actually, it felt similar to the intuitions I had before. When I woke up, it felt more like a memory than a dream.”
“That sounds intense,” he said.
“Yeah. Those kind of dreams haven't all been nightmares, though. I mean, the other night I dreamed that we were in a parapsych history exam, and Maggie finished early but didn’t realise there were two more questions on the back page so she failed.”
"Sounds like a nightmare for Maggie,” he chuckled. "Well, I hope in your dream you had time to revise for the test beforehand, because I am springing a mock exam on your class today."
“Noooooo!” she playfully feigned her horror as the two of them entered the classroom.
“Good morning, everyone!”
“G’morning, Mr Fletcher,” the awaiting class replied.
“I have a nice change of pace for you this morning, as we had a slight schedule reshuffle. Madame Bellerose is away today, so you’ll be staying in here for the first two lessons instead of going to French. And instead of a normal lesson, you will have not one, but two mock exams. French and Parapsych History. How does that sound?”
The room volume increased with whinges and whines.
“It’s okay, this is what we’ve been preparing for,” Maggie said, directing it at Flynn but seemingly more for her own benefit. “You’ve studied for this; you know the material.”
“Mags, chill out, it’s just a mock exam,” Flynn soothed. Maggie responded with a glare.
“Mr Fletcher, I don’t feel very well. May I be excused?” Cecily Graves uttered through her fingers as she held her head in her hands. He went to her and put a hand on her back.
“Yeah, you don’t look very well at all. Want me to call your parents?”
“No,” she shot back quickly. “Can I just go to the nurse’s room?”
“Of course. I’ll send her a message and let her know to expect you.”
Cecily left the room quickly, keeping her head down so her hair could hide her face from the discerning looks of her classmates.
“She looks rough,” said someone at the back of the class.
“I think breaking up with you is taking its toll on her, Eli,” said someone else.
“That’s enough,” Mr Fletcher swiftly ended the teenage banter.
Every member of Jessa’s first-year class watched the second hand of the clock making its way round to the 12. Pens in hand. Maggie breathed heavily in and out through her nose.
“You can begin,” Mr Fletcher said as the second hand met its big hand associate at the 12. A papery woosh washed over the room with the turning over of the first page, followed by the scratching of nibs scrawling answers in French.
Forty minutes seemed to pass in moments, and Jessa didn't even have time to check over her answers before Mr Fletcher was asking them to put down their pens.
A quick break ended much too soon, as students tried to just as quickly switch their thinking mode from French to English in preparation for the next test, and then it was time to write again.
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Jessa hunched over her paper, scribbling and scrabbling the blue ink across the pages, handwriting becoming progressively more illegible with every sentence. She took a moment to stretch and think about her next answer.
Fifteen minutes to go. Maggie was already sitting with her arms crossed.
Mr Fletcher leaned back in his chair, surveying the room of mostly hunkered students, manically getting answers out of their heads and onto the page.
Jessa followed his gaze around the room and felt a strange deja vu. Mr Fletcher stopped his focus on Maggie’s desk, noticing that her papers were all tidily closed and positioned in front of her neatly folded arms. He stood. The deja vu continued.
He took a stroll around the room. “Ten minutes remaining,” he informed them gently, and the writing became louder and quicker. Jessa knew she should return to her own paper but was still watching the teacher with a curious familiarity. As he passed Maggie, he gently touched his hand to her shoulder, and held it there for a second, in a motion unseen to any of the other scrambling students.
Maggie suddenly burst into action, swishing her paper over to look at the back page, where there were two additional questions lurking at the back.
It seemed like only seconds until Mr Fletcher announced the end of testing time and dismissed the class for break.
“Jessa, can I see you for a minute, please?” he asked, and she hung back near his desk as the rest of the class filed out, already chattering about the test and comparing answers.
“Do you realise what just happened?” he asked quietly.
“I’m not sure.”
“Jessa, Maggie missed the last questions. She didn’t look on the back page. That’s the dream you told me about, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
“It means I need to know what you dreamed about Annora.”
She told him everything. Break-time ended but still Mr Fletcher pried Jessa for as much detail as she could remember about her dream, and sent a message to the chemistry teacher to excuse Jessa from her next lesson. He marched her out of the classroom and toward the staircase.
“So what, you think my dreams were real?” Jessa asked in disbelief.
“I think they might be predictions,” he replied quietly, hurrying down the West Wing corridor. He knocked loudly on Dr Mortlock’s office, and she opened the door quickly enough that Jessa wondered if she’d sensed their arrival.
“Hugo. Miss Baxter. Come in.” Her words welcomed them, but her cold eyes didn’t.
“Felicia,” Mr Fletcher began, “are we safe to talk here?” he glanced around the room, though Jessa couldn’t tell what he was looking for.
“Of course,” Dr Mortlock replied with derision.
“We’ve had an interesting development. I’m beginning to suspect that Jessa has some element of future-sight.”
Dr Mortlock stared into Jessa with what could have been curiosity or ridicule.
“She’s apparently been having some alarming dreams, one of which foreshadowed something that happened in my class today. Another one is more concerning, and regards Annora Huff.”
He relayed the details of Jessa’s dream to the headteacher, who simply nodded along with most minuscule of head jerks and occasionally squinted down to Jessa.
“And what do you think, Miss Baxter? What do you make of these dreams?” Dr Mortlock finally said to her.
“Well. Umm,” Jessa cleared the dryness from her throat, “they’ve all been very vivid, and when the thing with Maggie’s test happened today I did feel a weird deja vu thing… umm…” Jessa faltered, unsure whether Dr Mortlock was truly asking for her opinion or if she was being asked to justify herself.
“Felicia, apparently Jessa had done some open-mind practice right before going to bed.”
Dr Mortlock craned her birdlike neck back toward Jessa. “Is this true?”
“Yes,” Jessa replied. “Should I not have done that? Ms Alzamora said it could help us relax.”
“It does for most people,” said Mr Fletcher. “But the few parapsychs with futuresight do find that open-mind practice is what starts bringing out the skill. It often begins revealing itself through dreams.”
“It certainly could be the beginning of a futuresight ability,” Dr Mortlock said, more to Mr Fletcher than to Jessa. The two adults looked at one another for a moment.
"I told you I was having future visions, though, and you didn't believe me, you said it couldn’t possibly be futuresight, remember? When we came to you that night and told you about the strange thing that happened to me when I put on Annora’s scarf.”
The look on Dr Mortlock’s face was one of acute disdain. “Futuresight isn’t relative to objects, Miss Baxter. Whatever you experienced then was certainly not futuresight. And children do not simply have conscious futuresight visions.”
“I’m hardly a child,” Jessa snapped.
“You’re a fourteen-year-old student, Miss Baxter. By all accounts, you are most definitely a child."
“Child or not, Felicia, Jessa is onto something,” said Mr Fletcher. “Now, Jessa, what you described in your first vision about Annora, really doesn’t sound like futuresight. Are you absolutely sure it coincided with the moment you put on Annora’s scarf?”
“Positive. I remember it. Annora had left her scarf at my house, and I put it on. And that’s when I heard these whooshing noises, then I was sort of in the vision. It was like I was Annora. And in the vision, she was wearing the scarf too.”
Mr Fletcher’s face was frozen in concern. "You didn't mention the noises before."
"Oh. I didn't know that part was important. What do the noises mean?"
"Tell me, in the vision, when the noises happened, did it feel like your body was being whizzed from one scene into another?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“All right… You know how in a TV show, what you see on the screen is edited from different cameras and different angles, and from your perspective as the watcher you can see those switches between scenes?”
“Yeah…”
“Was it like that in the vision you had, with the changing of scenes and perspectives?
“Oh. Yes, just like that.”
“And the whooshing sounds accompanied those transitions?”
“Yes.”
He gently wetted his lips with his tongue, then rubbed his chin. Jessa watched the adults again.
They stood in silence but moment to moment their expressions changed slightly as though they were having a conversation. Out of nowhere, Dr Mortlock’s body language changed from stern to worry. She touched her fingertips to her temples and massaged gently.
“Why?” Jessa said, growing frustrated. “What does this all mean?”
“I think what you experienced in that first vision wasn’t a prediction, Jessa,” said Mr Fletcher. “It was object-reading. I didn't think it was possible for someone to object-read without intensive training.”
"Nor I,” Dr Mortlock added. “Though in this case, it appears we have been let down by our own knowledge, Hugo. Or lack thereof."
“In that vision, I saw Annora with Silas Lynch.”
“Yes,” Mr Fletcher continued. “Based on the quality of your apparent futuresight and the accuracy in your description of object-reading, it looks like—”
“Like Annora is the next one to get taken?” Jessa answered.
“No, Miss Baxter,” said Dr Mortlock, “object-reading is contingent on events that have already transpired. It would appear that Silas Lynch has already found Annora Huff.”
“Hugo,” Dr Mortlock continued, “I would find it prudent to call an urgent Agency meeting. I suggest you and Miss Baxter go ahead to the usual meeting place, and I will bring Miss Huff and our other young Agents shortly.