Monday, December 22, 2008

Psychic Schoolkids pt7

I woke up to familiar voices, and a familiar argument too.

"That was stupid. He was stupid to do it and you were stupid to let him." Came Lisa's voice.

"I didn't let him. And regardless, Emily is in control of her powers, so nothing is going to burn down any time soon." Chloe defended herself.

"She's in control of her powers for now. What happens if she has a freak out tommorrow, will we go through this again?"

"Umm..I am in the room guys." Emily's voice came from a chair nearby where I was lying.

"Stay out of this." Lisa ordered. "Chloe, you know I only care about you, but you can't keep doing this every time someone new with a power comes along. What happens if the next person does something even weirder? You try to mess with it like this and someone ends up dead. Or worse."

"Not everything comes back to Chris. Besides, if we hadn't stepped in when we did Emily would have gotten worse. Someone would have died."

"She does have a point..." Emily tried to interject again.

"If Dane hadn't messed with her head then it wouldn't have been as bad." Lisa ignored Emily and kept berating Chloe. "His power is probably the most dangerous of the lot of you...you all take it so for granted that he is doing the right think when he pokes in people's heads."

I tried to move from where I was, but I had no energy still, I felt the room flare up a couple of degrees as Emily, who clearly had the energy, stood up.

"Okay listen." She pointed a finger at Lisa's chest. "I don't know what the hell is up with you people, but all you seem to do is argue. I just learned I can do these really cool things, and they are fun, but it seems all you want to do is tell people how dangerous they are and then heal some people when it suits you. Well guess what! I didn't ask for this power, I'm sure Dane and Jacob didn't ask for theirs either." The room heated up a little bit more, and Lisa retreated a little. "Chloe is right though - without them today would have been a lot messier, for myself, for you, and for everyone else. So whatever your history is with these guys...get the hell over it. At least someone is willing to help other people deal with their problems instead of pretending they're too good for it."

Emily nodded to herself in satisfaction, and tried to hide the fact that she had no idea what had come over her. Emily didn't seem like the type to yell at someone, but clearly Lisa was doing a good job of pushing her buttons. Lisa was shocked, and although I couldn't seen the look on her face from where I was on the couch, I could picture it in my head and took a little bit of pleasure from it. I heard her footsteps leave the room without a word.

I took this as my moment to sit up again, with some success. I half-heartedly attempted to clap my hands at Emily's effort in ridding us of Lisa. I think it looked more pitiful than anything else.

"Jacob!" The girls both said, rushing over.

"I'm fine, my head is just a little...sore. Mostly from Lisa's whinging. God that girl can complain."

"What's her problem anyway?" Emily asked Chloe.

"Long story. Definitely one for another day. Possibly tomorrow."

Emily's meekness appeared to have returned just as quickly as it had left, as she left the topic there.

"Did we win though?" I asked as I tried to stand up, before realising the couch was much comfier and didn't spin as much as the floor. "Noone wonders why a trail of fire was following Emily and why I was unconscious?"

"Well umm...yes. Everything got smoothed over." Chloe said.

"Ms Ellis came back while you were out though...we kind of had to tell her you'd fainted." Emily explained.

"Oh great." I put my head in my hands.

"It was the best we could come up with. Plus you were kid of a sissy. Just go inside someone's head for five minutes and then pass out on me? Puh-leeze. I can spend a few hours looking at the future and barely get a headache. And yes, I can see the future." Chloe said that last bit to Emily, who was looking amazed.

"So do all of you guys have powers?" Emily asked.

"Just Jacob, Dane, Lisa and myself. And now you of course. It's hardly that rare a thing anymore really. But yes, you're the first to set things on fire, or really do anything so flashy." Chloe still hadn't been able to shake her habit of answering questions or responding to things before people had asked them. This was especially problematic in a conversation with three people...I kept getting the feeling like Chloe was the only one having the conversation sometimes.

I tried once again to stand, this time managing it, although ending up leaning on Chloe as I did.

"Oh god." She said. "You're far too heavy for this. And I'm sure chivalry means you should fall over rather than lean on a lady."

"You're implying that I'm chivalrous there." I said, shuffling my way wtih Chloe towards the door.

"I'm glad you didn't say the second part of that sentence." Chloe said. "Otherwise you'd have been faling over."

"I know better than to say you're not a lady until at least the third date. It does sound fun in my head though."

Chloe stepped away from me, watching as I stumbled off balance for a bit and then stood on my own.

"Chloe!" Emily said disapprovingly.

"What? I knew he'd be okay."

"Unless you were wrong?" Emily said.

"I'm never wrong." She then turned to me. "Okay, hardly ever wrong. Depends on how far away it was. That was like two seconds away, even you could almost predict that and all you do is a half assed job at reading minds."

"I'm sorry, did I see you saving the day at all today?" I said, as I limped and Chloe and Emily limped out of the office and back into the hallway...


* * * * * * * * * *

Thankfully the rest of the week passed by with very little event. Well, Emily accidentally froze her coke one day, but noone was hurt and I think she was doing it more for an experiment than anything else. What the passing of the week did mean was that I got my date with Chloe.

The main problem with taking a girl who can see the future on a date is that no matter what you try to do, you're not going to suprise her. With this in mind, I didn't even bother trying anything even remotely romantic in the planning stages, and simply met her at a cafe for dinner before we went to the movies.

"So I've been thinking Jacob" Chloe said over dinner.

"Oh you poor thing, you must be in pain." I tried to resist being a smart ass, and failed. The response to this was a kick under the table. Thank god Chloe hadn't dressed up too much for our date and I was kicked only by sneakers.

"No seriously." She said. I put my serious face on, which frustrated her even more but she kept going anyway. "Why is it that out of the whole world, we keep getting kids at our school with like...superpowers? I mean - three of us could have been put down to coincidence...but we're now up to five. And Emily and Dane aren't like us. Their powers just appeared and were random and uncontrollable...I don't know about you but I've never felt like I haven't had control over my power."

"Yeah but can you remember when you first got your powers? I mean, we've had our powers since birth, so they've kinda grown with us, The new guys have just had theirs...appear, and their body's and minds don't know what to do with it."

"True, but are they appearing now? I mean unless they've been bitten by a spider or something it's odd timng."

"I agree. I just hope we've hit out cap of superheroes for now. They seem to be getting worse every time though."

"Well we did good wih Emily. I mean, noone got hurt, except for maybe Mr Harding's pride when Ellis had a go at him outside the science labs."

"Ha!" I almost spat Coke out of my mouth as I remembered the moment. "I love seeing bad things happen to Harding. I mean, if we're asking why questions I've always wondered why he's such an asshole all the time."

"I think he's been at the school too long. I mean, he's been there for like twenty years or something, same as Ms Ellis. Except Ms Ellis got a couple of promotions along the way, Harding has just stayed a math teacher the whole time."

"God imagine doing the same job for twenty years? I'm sick of our school and we haven't even been there a quarter of that." i leaned back in my chair. "Speaking of fleeing school, got any ideas about uni yet?"

"Nothing. I mean, there's not a lot of careers I think I'd be good at. Except maybe economics or something. The stoock market could be fun when you can tell what's going to happen next, and it's technically not illegal either."

"Ahh the joys of a legal system which doesn't recognise psychics."

"Let me guess, you're looking at a Psych degree?"

"Cheater" I smiled, at least Chloe was making the effort to let me say my half of the conversation most of the time.

"You said it yourself, the law doesn't recognise psychics, it's totally allowed. Now, what movie are we going to see..?"

* * * * * * * * * *

It's a little weird being on a date with someone you're friends with, because there's always that kind of...friend vibe...behind the whole thing. It's also the problem with being an empath, because although I knew Chloe was having fun and enjoying herself, I couldn't see a whole lot of romantic feeling behind her actions.

As I sat there, watching the movie with Chloe sitting next to me, I wondered if I'd made a mistake at some point. I mean, I know I can't really suprise Chloe, but maybe even just attempting something a bit romantic might have helped to give the evening a bit more of a date vibe.

Even after we had moved the armrest between the seats up, and Chloe's head sat nestled on my shoulder, I still couldn't stop myself thinking. I think I could have hardly told you what took place in the movie, since I was so transfixed on the girl next to me. It was weird, because normally I didn't care about girls, and dates were an even rarer occurance in my life, but for some reason I wanted that date with Chloe to work, and I was worrying myself sick with the idea that it wasn't working.

The problem with thinking too much, was that I realised at some point I had totally stopped paying attention to Chloe's feelings. She was getting a bit restless, mostly because I think she had noticed me staring off into space with a worried look on my face. I looked down at her to see me looking up at my face.

"Stop worrying." She said, and then leaned up and kissed me.

Wow.

Forget anything I have ever said about how other people feel. When Chloe kissed me, and I kissed back, everything was amplified a million times over. I could feel what Chloe was, effectively doubling the happiness I was feeling, but I could also feel with an irregular level of clarity what everyone else in the cinema was feeling. It was strange, but so very intense.

Whatever I had been thinking about Chloe's feeelings, clearly they were wrong. Which isn't a bad thing. I just had to stop over thinkng the situation and live in the now. Chloe appeared to be, and she was a girl who spent half her time a minute or so ahead of everyone else.

The downside was that I left that movie with absolutey no idea about the plot or characters...

1 comment:

Luke! said...

way to steal my layout!!!