Psychic Schoolkids - Parts 15 + 16

Yes...I am lazy with updates. Yes...I know it has been two months. Shush. I've been busy and unmotivated and didn't know where I was going with this story. Well actually...I knew exactly where I was going I just hadn't figured out how I was getting there yet. To cut the long story short...Big update! Two whole parts long...and yes I know a "part" is an arbitrary segment designator that has thus far varied from 500 words to 3000 words but I feel this contains enough stuff to think about for 2 parts. Plus it ends on a cliffhanger so if you have to wait 2 more months for another installment you can be on edge. It's like Battlestar Galactica but nowhere near as cool...Oh yeah...update!

“You’re not going to like this.”

Chloe put a notebook down in front of me.

“What this time?” I sighed. There had been too much bad news lately.

“I’ve been dreaming like you said. This time I at least had the foresight to have a pen handy for when I woke up...this is the results.”

I looked down at the page in front of me.

“This is the results from your maths homework. You really need to work on your trig.”

Chloe snatched the book away from me.

“Quiet you. Or we’ll start bringing up history assignments. Cosimo de Medici was a cat? Really?”

Chloe flipped through her book and put it down in front of me. The page was covered in writing, which was pretty shaky and not always the right way up. It was also unique in that it made absolutely no sense at all. There were barely words, let alone sentences.

“I was scribbling.” Chloe explained. “And some of it seemed to come out better when the book was sideways.”

“What’s happening?” Dane slumped onto the seat next to me. “Ooh one of those puzzles.”

“I wrote down my dreams.” Chloe said.

“Sometimes even sideways” I added.

Dane shrugged. “Whatever works.” He peered closer to the page. “I’ve solved it. Hurry up Jacob.”

“Solved it?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s like one of those word find things. Where the letters are all jumbled and the answers are in the mixed up letters.”

“I don’t think that’s what this is...” I started.

“Let me see.” Chloe took the book off me. “Got it!”

“You wrote this! Shouldn’t you know what you were writing?”

“It was a moment of vision, I’m clearly much more of a genius than I know. Now hurry up and solve it.”

The downside to this is that I’m hopeless at puzzles. So rather than sit at the table for twenty minutes with Chloe and Dane giggling I put the book aside. This was quite difficult, since one of my pet hates is people knowing things that I don’t and being able to gloat about them. And of course both Chloe and Dane were radiating gloat. I would have sulked if it wasn’t going to give them even more satisfaction.

“Okay. Moving on to a place where I’m not embarrassed. Dane, did Sarah give you any help?”

“Not really. You know I’m really beginning to doubt whether she actually did any research into the whole Wicca thing before she decided she could cast spells. Apparently what we do is not possible without long hard hours of communing with spirits...and I don’t think she even meant the alcohol kind...in addition to being born on the right day and finding some kind of magical artefact.”

“In other words, a load of crap. From Sarah. What a surprise. Next you’ll tell me that Mr Harding is handing out candy to people and that my ex boyfriend isn’t trying to kill us secretly.” Chloe said snidely.

“Well at least the Neil incident managed to pass by fairly quickly. I mean, the cops were here for what, a day? How do you think Ellis managed that?” I asked Dane.

“I asked her. She said they thought it was likely someone just dumped his body here, so the police weren’t suspecting students or anything. She didn’t mention anything else about the night though, us-wise I mean. Just that her and Harding were in a meeting and heard noises and came to find the body.”

“At least that gets us off the hook. Not that we did anything...if only it got Chris and Nathan on the hook..”

“Like it’s going to be that easy.” Chloe said. “I don’t think the police have any way of convicting people who can slice people open with their minds. Or throw them against lockers. I think right now we’re relying on us to figure out a way to stop them. And by us a mean Emily...cause...the three of us aren’t exactly going to be doing a lot in a fight with them apart from bleeding.”

“Oh shit.” I said, looking at my watch. “I was going to meet Emily about ten mins ago.”

“Jacob, you’re supposed to be my boyfriend, and you’re going to spend your lunch break with another woman? Should I be getting jealous?” Chloe said, not being even remotely jealous, but enjoying the thought of pushing my buttons.

I kissed her on the forehead. “Shut up woman and get back into the kitchen so I have something to eat when I get back.”

Dane just sat back and laughed. With no response to that I headed off to meet Emily in one of the empty classrooms.

***********

Emily had managed to convince one of the science teachers she had work to do during her lunchbreak, which meant that she had free reign of a lab full off all kinds of things that freeze and go boom. Probably not the safest place to be playing with fire in the literal way...but it gave us a good, relatively private venue to test her limits.

“I think I’m taking too long.” Emily said. She had perfected freezing water, but her latest goal was to try and freeze things that weren’t completely moisture. Her latest target was a chair.

“I don’t think freezing plastic chairs is something that can be done quickly.” I said, sitting with a stopwatch in my hand. That had been Emily’s idea.

I watched as a coat of ice slowly began to form around the top of the chair. The legs were already frozen. The stopwatch was up to about three minutes though, which I didn’t need to point out wasn’t going to be useful. I also didn’t have the heart to point out that being able to freeze a chair in any period of time is probably not going to be a priority when we’re being thrown against lockers and having bits of us cut off.

“That took too long.” She said, as she was done. She put her hand back on the chair and the ice melted into a puddle on the ground.

“At least you melted it quickly?” I tried to sound encouraging.

“It’s not hard. Once I stop freezing it, things go back to normal. I just need to give it a push and it goes back a bit faster.”

“How is melting things going anyway?”

“I would show you but I don’t think I’m allowed to break any more chairs.” She pointed to a small stack of chairs at the back of the classroom that looked slightly melted and deformed. “Still can’t set anything on fire though. I really didn’t think fire would be so hard...”

“Well you cool things down and heat them up...you just need to find things that will burst into flame when they get hot enough. Or just...have a spark and transfer the heat over...and whoosh...flames. You can always control the fire without starting it right?”

“Yeah but when I went all out of control...with the burning and the freezing...that was real fire, and that was without any effort at all on my part. Shouldn’t it be easy now?”

I looked at her for a few minutes, thinking things over to myself. “Okay no, there is no way I can say this without sounding clichéd. Power is easy, control is hard. You could probably set everything on fire if you wanted...the only downside is...you would be setting everything on fire...probably even yourself. What you can do right now...that’s you, 100% Emily with no emotional outbursts or people running away screaming.”

“It’s not going to be enough in a fight though...is it?” She asked.

“Not by a longshot.” I said, with a straight face. I scared her far more than I had meant to with that statement.

The lights in the room flickered. Behind Emily I could see..something. It looked like the shadow I had seen the night we had found Neil.

“Jacob? Are you okay.” Emily asked, waving her hand in front of my face.

“Yeah I’m okay...just...flickery lights...and I think there’s someone else in here.”

“Umm..the lights haven’t changed. And it’s just us here.” She said, looking around.

“No, I can feel someone else behind you.” I pushed her aside gently and started walking towards
the shadow.

“Jacob...that’s a wall.”

The shadow looked exactly like that...a shadow cast by the light. The only problem was, there was no person casting it. I stood next to it and looked as hard as I could, but my eyes couldn’t see anything except the shadow that wasn’t there. But my mind could see something else there. A bundle of feelings that should have been a person but wasn’t.

“Woah.” Emily said. “Is that...an extra shadow? Why is there a shadow and no person?”

I reached my hand out. Knowing it was a bad idea but at the same time drawn by a terrible sense of curiosity to find out what was going on. As soon as I hit where the person should have been, emotions started pouring in. And it was different to normal emotions. Normally, I feel things, and they’re just feelings as though I was feeling them, but they were coming from somewhere else. This time they were almost pictures, as though someone was sending me all these emotions just so I could tell what they were feeling without having to feel it myself.
They were confused, and trying to be calm because they knew if they weren’t something would happen.

“Is someone there?” I asked the space. “Are you a person? Did you make yourself invisible or something? We’re not going to hurt you...we can help you.”

“Oh god, invisible people. That’s all we need.” Emily said, slumping into a chair. “Woah, Jacob. We have more company.”

She pointed to another shadow of a person that didn’t exist that was across the room from both of us. She got up and walked towards it. I felt panic from the person in front of me, they were worried by the other person.

“Emily be careful...” I said.

“It’s fine. Invisible people can’t be too bad.”

And in tradition of famous last words, the invisible person became visible. It was a girl, about the same age as the rest of us. She was different though, a little bit more greyed out than is natural in a person. Then I felt the heat.

“Laura...I’m not going to lose!” She said.

“Emily look out!” I cried out, as flames shot from the girl in the direction of Emily.

Luckily, Emily was fast enough. The air around her began to shimmer with cold. The fire that made it to her went around her, but didn’t set anything on fire.

“Okay that could have hurt. Not polite.” Emily said, closing her eyes.

I felt emotions fading, as the invisible person standing next to me simply...vanished. I would have cared more but I was too preoccupied with Emily’s attempt to beat back the flames, which was going much more successfully than I had thought was possible.

“Jacob...I think I might need a hand here. Because trying to freeze things while I’m pissed off at this girl is hard.”

I moved to help but was distracted when the door, which by all rights should have been locked, burst open, and Nathan and Matt walked in.

“Woah.” Was all Matt could manage as he saw the fire coming from the scary little grey girl and the cool air surrounding Emily.

“Guys, this is a bad time to try to kill us. Can you get in line.” I said, trying to distract them from Emily, who really didn’t need to be flung across the room at that point in time.

“Jacob..we’re not here for you.” Nathan said.

“That great. Unfortunately Emily is a bit busy, so you’ll have to..” My speech of making a stand was interrupted as Nathan flung his arm and I was thrown against the nearest wall. Ouch.

“Tobias.” The scary grey girl said as she looked at Nathan. “I should have known you and Laura were my opposition.”

The fire aimed at Emily promptly stopped, and the girl raised a hand. The coolness Emily was focusing on the girl turned into ice, and flung at Nathan’s face. Nathan managed to stop a lot of the tiny icicles aimed at him, but tiny scratches appeared across his cheeks where he failed. The girl made a run for the door, which was still open.

“Don’t let that bitch get away.” Emily shouted.

The girl didn’t get far. As she reached the doorway she slammed into something, almost as though the door was still closed. I felt a sense of satisfaction and looked over to see Matt looking pretty impressed with himself. I guess that answers the question of whether Matt had a power or not.

The girl stood up to turn around, only to run into another wall. For a minute or so she tried to run in different directions, only to find the walls she was running into getting closer together. I felt sick to the stomach as I watched, and felt Matt’s joy as he trapped the girl. Even though she had tried to burn me to a crisp, I didn’t want to wish the squishyness that seemed inevitable to her to happen to anyone.

The squish didn’t happen though, as the walls got to a certain point...the girl simply...vanished. It was just as quickly as she had appeared, and really quite strange.

“Did you get her?” Nathan asked Matt.

“She’s contained again.” Matt said.

“Okay you guys are really going to explain what just happened.”

“Oh shut up.” Nathan said, raising a hand in Emily’s direction.

Before anything could happen though, there was a sizzling noise and he looked at his hand. Even from where I stood I could see the burns appearing.

“No.” Emily said. “I do not appreciate people trying to throw me against things. Or burn me. Or making invisible walls.” She held out her hand in front of her and stepped forward, a sheet of ice slowly began to form in front of her. Good to know invisible barriers still get affected by temperature.

“We were just doing our job.” Matt said. “Like you should have been.”

“Like I should have been?” I asked.

“Not you. You’re not even supposed to be involved in any of this.” Nathan said. “She’s supposed to be stopping them. Until we stop her anyway.”

“What the hell?” Emily asked.

“Oh god. Clearly you missed the rules at the start of the game.” Nathan said. “I would have thought Chloe would have told you by now.”

He and Matt turned to walk away. Emily stepped forward, the ice in front of her shattered.

“Don’t push your luck. Chris isn’t even with us. Go talk to my know-it-all ex.” Nathan said snidely. Dear god I wanted to punch him.

“What exactly do we ask her?” I said.

“Clearly you missed our little friend talking about Laura? She always does....that might be a good place to start” Nathan closed the door behind him.

Emily sat down, exhausted. I sat down at the desk with our books in front of him.

“You were awesome.” I said.

“That was exhausting. Please tell me I’m not going to have to fight like that often?”

“I would love to. But...you burned him without touching him?”

“I was angry. And the air was warm from little Carrie over there. I’m not counting on being able to do it again.”

“Okay, well next time you can get thrown against a wall. At least it’s making me fairly bruise-resistant.”

“Once we’re not exhausted from things trying to kill us, should we go talk to Chloe.”

“Probably.” I said, putting my head onto the table, using the book in front of me as a pillow.

It’s amazing how with word puzzles, when you stop trying you find the answers. I had been looking at Chloe’s writings while I had watched Emily work, hoping to solve the puzzle that Dane and Chloe had figured out so quickly. And I had. In the jumble of letters there was one word, which was even repeated a few times just to hammer in the fact that I fail at word puzzles.

Laura Ellis.