Pulse

you move something in there?”
    Luckily for Faith Daniels, Wade had been crazy enough to pull up songs on his Tablet with his mind instead of his finger. He’d only done it that way for a few seconds, but, yeah, he’d probably sent out the pulse Clara felt.
    “Do you remember when you did it?”
    She sometimes let Wade’s pulse fall away into the background because she felt it so much. The one she’d felt was stronger, like something fresh and wild.
    “Nope, don’t recall. And you should stop being so paranoid. We’re leaving soon—I mean really leaving; know what I mean? Stay focused on the games; it’s important.”
    “Important to whom?” Clara asked. “And what do I need to focus on? I can’t lose.”
    “Yeah, but you could win too big. Remember, we gotta control ourselves. That’s the hard part.”
    Clara nodded. She understood completely. Hanging around with a bunch of untalented normals was sucking her will to live. It was demeaning to constantly lower her standard of ability.
    She kept thinking of how Dylan had coughed and nodded, how he seemed to be paying more attention to Faith Daniels all the time. The thought of Dylan choosing Faith over her was unthinkable. It was beyond sickening.
    It was a lucky thing Wade had been reckless in class. And even luckier that he couldn’t really remember when or exactly how he’d moved something with his mind.
    Faith had Wade to thank for being alive. Because if Clara Quinn had known what Faith could do, Faith would not have lived to see the party Wade was planning to throw.

Chapter 15
Like a Pebble Hitting a Pond
    Hawk waited until the sun was almost down before heading to the abandoned building on the campus to do some recon. He’d been curious for over two weeks about the night Wade and Faith were together, but he’d been putting off any sort of investigation until things cooled off a little bit with Wade. Then he’d heard that the school was about to close for good, and he knew time was running out. If he didn’t get in there soon, he never would. And it was important that he discover everything he could about that night.
    “What were you up to in here, Wade Quinn?” Hawk asked out loud. He’d made quick work of the security system and found himself walking down a darkened corridor with streaks of pale light on either side. Another fifteen minutes and it would be completely dark in the empty wing of the school.
    Hawk wasn’t just smart, he was intuitive. He would have made a fine detective, because he had an objective eye that could log everything he was seeing, parsing it out for hidden meaning. There was less light as he turned the corner and found the hallway where Wade had been riding his go-cart for fun. He examined the cart itself, which had some significant damage. One of the wheels was off, and the welded metal frame was on its side propped up against a wall. The stretchy cord that had been used to launch the cart snaked around the floor like a long-abandoned whip.
    Hawk’s Tablet was equipped with a variety of lighting options, and he chose one that illuminated the space, but not too brightly. The hallway glowed like it were being lit by seven or eight candles all bunched together in his hand.
    Hawk spun one of the remaining attached wheels, which was at eye level because the cart was partly overturned, and started walking. Some of the lockers had violent marks on them; and examining them more closely, he determined that this had not been caused by the cart. There were dents that looked like they’d been made by shoulders and heads. The damage looked more like it had been caused by human bodies crashing into the lockers at high velocity. As he scanned the floor, Hawk found more items: two shotgun shells; metal buckshot pellets scattered around the floor; and, most curiously, dried blood. The blood was just a smear in the dark; and since the lockers were red, it was easy to see how it could be missed in a haphazard cleanup effort.
    “Whatever happened in here, it was some kind of fight,” Hawk said.
    “You better believe it, little man.”
    Hawk whirled around and saw, to his great misery, that Wade Quinn was leaning heavily against a locker at the far end of the hall. His voice echoed menacingly down the long, empty space. Hawk turned and started running back toward the upturned cart, hoping to find an escape route. At the end of the hallway he turned left, and as he did, he thought he felt a soft wind over his head in the