Psychic Schoolkids - Part 17

Previously on Psychic Schoolkids

Jacob is an Empath. He reads people's emotions. He has many psychic friends such as Chloe (his premonitive girlfriend), Dane (his best friend who messes with the walls in people's heads), Emily (a girl he met in detention who freezes/melts things). He also spends lots of quality time with former friends Lisa and Kara (Lisa can heal people)...as well as his brand new frenemies Chris (Kara's ex...he unheals people), Nathan (Chloe's telekinetic ex) and Matt (the wimpy guy who makes forcefields). They also have a principal whose name mysteriously appeared in Chloe's visions, and a Maths teacher who is out to get them. Also...there may be something to do with ghosts.

And now for our next installment...


Sometimes I don’t entirely understand the point of birthdays. Okay, so they are a reason to get all your people together, and get presents, but do we really need to celebrate being a year older? So many people get so very excited about it, but it seems that the older people become the more they don’t seem to give a damn about it anymore.

In fact in the case of Mr Harding, he seemed pretty bloody pissed off about his birthday. We only found out about it by accident, when we overheard Ms Anderson congratulating him on his advancing years, and from then we couldn’t help but giggle every time we saw him. The glares we got in response only served to make me giggle a little bit more when I felt his combination of anger and shame.

However if we were smart little psychics, we would have remembered the double maths that we had at the end of the day. If we’d had the foresight, we’d have baked a cake. Mr Harding however, had the foresight to be extra angry at Dane, Emily and myself as we sat down in the classroom.

“You three! I want you sitting on opposite sides of the room today. That way you might actually get some work done.” He shouted at us, herding us across the room from each other.

Okay, so that’s not too terrible, as much as I would like to talk to my friends, I could live without them.

“Now everyone, I have a present for all of you. Suprise quiz. I hope you’ve all studied...”

Note to self: Do not piss off vindictive maths teacher. I almost wanted to misbehave and get sent to Ms Ellis’ office, but Ellis was either avoiding us or incredibly busy because when Chloe tried that earlier in the day she got to spend 20mins with the school chaplain telling her that God encouraged us to turn the other cheek when people start fights and not punch them in the face. Normally I would agree, but when dealing with Nathan turning the other cheek would only serve to get you thrown across the room again, and punching him in the face would be much more fun.

The quiz was hard too. I think some of the stuff he was testing us on he hadn’t even covered yet. Knowing Harding it was the test that every other class would be doing at the end of the chapter, and he was giving it to us halfway through as a part of his three-quarter-life crisis.

The only upside to such a Maths class was that it was missing Chris and Matt, who normally sat in the chairs next to where I had been placed. I couldn’t help but think that Mr Harding was trying to get me killed, something which had thankfully back fired.

Twenty minutes of class passed. The test I was certain I had not passed. In the end I just started punching random numbers into my calculator and guessing that at least randomly generated numbers would be closer to the answer than empty paper.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Chris saved me.

“Happy Birthday Mr Harding!” He shouted to the entire class as he burst through the door.

Matt trailed behind him, grinning ear to ear and holding a huge cake in his hands, complete with sparklers and candles and even a little wax figure standing on his own in the middle of the cake. I felt a little bit happy that even if I hadn’t decided to bake a cake, my former best friends had performed the vindictive act for me.

Mr Harding was not so impressed. He slammed his fist down on his desk, sending random stationary items to the floor.

“As much as I appreciate the well wishes boys...”

But it was too late, the class, spotting weakness in a teacher and knowing that he couldn’t put the entire class in detention, had begun to sing “happy birthday” at the top of their lungs. It was a sight that with my happiness, combined with that of the entire class, almost made me shed a tear of joy.

“THAT’S ENOUGH” Mr Harding shouted. The singing stopped.

“Chris, Matt, you will be staying back incredibly late tonight for detention.” He said much more calmly. The day was getting better. “Jacob, Emily, Dane, you will be joining them for disrupting the class with your terrible singing.”

...okay so maybe not. I suppose having fun has to have his price.

Of course the three of us didn’t want to stay back that late. Through some miracle we’d all been invited to Kara’s birthday party, which was dinner somewhere fancy and then a movie. Detention would make us late for a fancy dinner, something which Kara would not enjoy. What scared me was the feeling that Mr Harding knew this somehow, and was deriving extreme joy from the thought of it.

Although what scared me equally was the idea of being stuck in a room with Mr Harding, Chris, and Matt for an extended period of time.

The crappy thing about detention after a class you’ve just been in is that there is no escape. You can’t just not show up and hope the teacher forgets. You can’t wait for the teacher to be the traditional ten-fifteen minutes late and have your detention time cut in half...you have to just wait in the classroom and watch everyone else go home.

At least we had cake?

“Okay boys...Emily. I’m going to be marking papers in my office. I want you all sitting at your desks doing work. My office has a lovely window into this room, so if you try to slack off, I will know. If I hear any of you talking, the amount of time you will be here will be increased by fifteen minutes. Don’t try my patience either, I have a lot of papers to mark...”

“Umm sir.” Chris raised his hand. “I miss the start of that last maths lesson, could you tell me what I missed so I can catch up.”

“Chris, open the book, start at Chapter one. We’re on Chapter Nine. Since you haven’t done any work all year so far, you have a lot more catching up to do than that last lesson.”

Dane and I exchanged glances. Did Mr Harding just make a joke? It was a mean joke so it might have just been a dig at Chris, but if it weren’t for the crushing feeling of doom I probably would have laughed at it.

Harding then retreated into his office, leaving the five of us in a mostly empty classroom with our maths books and the expectation of silent work.

“So Jacob.” Chris started talking as soon as he felt the coast was clear. Not wanting to invoke the wrath of Harding I didn’t respond. “It’s okay...his office is pretty sound proof, as long as we don’t yell he won’t hear us.” Now I just wasn’t responding because it was Chris talking. “I hear you and Emily had a bit of a ghost problem in the science lab the other day?”

That got my attention, and Emily’s.

“Yeah that one has been giving us a lot of grief lately. She shows us, tries to set people on fire, and then vanishes. Even when we try to stop her, she keeps coming back. Would have been nice if she’d finished you off for us, it would have been all legit and everything.”

“I could’ve taken her.” Emily said.

“Yeah Nathan showed me the burn you gave him. Pretty nasty. Of course it took about five seconds for me to heal but since you guys have Lisa doing the same for you I think we’re pretty even.”

“And if I freeze you solid can you heal that?” Emily was taking his bait

“And if I cut you arm off does it grow back? Do you really want to play that game with me? The only reason you could even touch me last time is because we didn’t get told what power you had.”

“She hurt Nathan without even touching him though Chris. I’d be careful of her...” Matt said.

From where I was sitting, the room was interesting. Chris was confident. He felt that he was completely in control of everything, and that whatever he wanted to do was going to happen. Emily felt pretty much the same. Which was kinda scary. A few months ago she would have been hiding from her power. Now, she was embracing what she could do and how much people couldn’t touch her. Matt was scared shitless. Which was good, he might be able to put walls up, but he knew there was nothing he could do to Emily.

Dane was just waiting for his moment to speak...which he took.

“Even if you stop her Chris, I’ll pull your mind apart.”

“Oh yes. Dane. That worked so well for everyone last time. You broke our little friendship group into tiny little pieces. And of course you made me a little bit crazy. Even though Lisa did a bang-up job of putting everything in my head together again, there’s still all these little bits missing. Like the bits that tell me to stop when the screaming starts.”

Of course in all the dramatic posturing over who would win in a fight, I couldn’t help but notice that Dane and Emily were missing a few important points.

“Who told you about the ghosts? And that Emily had powers?” I asked.

“Oh wow...it is true. You guys are going solo. Noone to point your smoking guns and tell you what’s going to happen next. That must suck. Although we keep getting told it’s none of your business anyway Jacob so I’m not sure why you’re even asking. At best you should be stopping the ghosts that cross over and let these two wackos get on with the game.”

“This is a game to you?” Emily asked.

“Oh it’s not just a game to me. This is a game to many people. The fact that you don’t even know you’re playing just makes it a bit harder. I mean with no Neil your team is already one man down even. Now if you don’t mind...our backup has arrived.”

We looked behind us to see Nathan standing outside the classroom window.

“At least a detention is easy to fake.” Just got to get the teacher out of the way.

We turned around and saw the blinds on Mr Harding’s office window fall down. Matt had his eyes closed too, which I had a feeling meant even if Harding wanted to leave his office, he wouldn’t be able to.

“God you’re crazy.” I said. “This is the middle of the afternoon. Every teacher is still here.”

“And it won’t matter once Emily and Dane are no longer around. We’ll have won. Everything will be back to normal, the ghosts will go away.”

“Yeah we might have something to say about that.” Emily said, standing up. Dane stood up next to her.

“I don’t think you guys get it. There are three of us with spiffy killy powers. You might be the ice queen...or the burns queen depending on your mood. But you’re still out gunned. And I’m betting that Dane isn’t going to be doing a lot except drive me crazy. Which really...too late!”

He lunged forward, his hand almost touching Emily, who moved away from it. The door swung open with Nathan who charged in. This time I had the presence of mind to move that little bit out of his line of sight and not get thrown against the wall. Dane did as well. Where I failed was that I ended up walking into an invisible wall. I turned to see Matt grinned at me.

Nathan didn’t care about me though, I felt his focus on Emily as he flung her against the wall. However before Chris could get to her helpless figure Dane grabbed Nathan’s hand.

“Let’s dance.” He said, and closed his eyes.

I don’t think I had ever felt more proud of Dane than at that moment. His power was, at best a tool for helping people’s problems, and at worst a way to totally destroy people. Yet somehow...he had turned it into a weapon.

Well..as much as he was going to. Objects begun to fly themselves across the room. The chairs, tables, all started zooming around. Nathan looked at his hand with absolute horror.

“Don’t you just love how we build up all these walls to stop our powers going crazy?” Dane said. “and how wrong things go when those walls go away.”

Of course, Dane was too busy enjoying his moment to notice Chris had trained his sights on him though. Thankfully, Nathan had, which in his current state meant two desks and half a dozen chairs zoomed into Chris. My skin crawled at the crunching noise that they made, but at the same time I had no sympathy for Chris, since he’d just be healing himself...if he could get up.

“Right so I think we’ll be going.” Emily said. Dusting herself off and walking towards the door.

“Umm...” I turned to look at Matt. Emily walked into a wall in front of the doorway. It lasted about three seconds before it became icicles on the ground.

“We have a party to go to don’t we?” Dane said.

I closed the door behind us, leaving Matt to deal with the crush of furniture that was Chris and the object flinging mess that was Nathan. I even poked my head to look through the window to see Harding asleep on his desk (he was breathing...unfortunately).

“So do we need to wear a tie to this thing?” Dane said as we left.

“I’m wearing a dress...so yes, dress up so I don’t feel out of place.” Emily replied.

“Yeah I wear a tie at school, no tie for Kara I think.” I said.

“Well I barely know her. So I’m dressing to impress.” Emily said in her best posh accent.

“I think you’ll need all the impressing clothes you can get” Dane said. “Her first impression of you is you setting a science lab on fire, we’re going to be late, and you’re showing up with me and I’m definitely her least favourite person on account of me brainwashing her boyfriend.”

“Yet she invited you and not him...which shows you’re at least a step up from a homicidal maniac in her books..” I said.

“Do you think she flipped a coin or something to decide who to invite?” Emily said to me.

“Definitely...” I nodded.