I hung around front by the big, glass doors and waited for the group. We picked up our roster today and everyone agreed seven-thirty was the time to do it. Not too early, not too late.
Jade showed up first in her new school clothes which made me look at the same crap I had from June. Huh. Mom had dragged me to Zuimez to get new jeans because the old ones (besides having shredded knees) were three inches too short and doin' the crotch grab, a total no.
She wore a cute little mini that barely covered her butt (I liked that but I didn't like the way the other guys were gonna look at her, I'd wanna kick all their asses). Her long, green shirt that was almost the length of the skirt, two pearl buttons at the neck shimmering a little when she moved, and her trademark silver hoops swinging as she walked toward me.
“Hey,” she greeted me softly, and I planted a kiss on her lips, smelling her body spray, so much a part of her, that great vanilla smell.
She put an arm around my waist and we stood there in comfortable silence, just hanging 'til the rest showed.
It wasn't long before John showed up with Alex. Sophie straggled in right after, then the Weller duo made up the last of us.
Bry was a junior this year so there was a stream of kids passing him and he was nodding every other second.
“Well, gotta split. Off to Kent Lake, just dropping off the sib-spawn.” That got a glare from Tiff, but Bry was tough and mock-punched her in the arm. Nice.
Tiff turned, rolling her eyes (Wow, she must stand in front of the mirror to perfect that). I couldn't help noticing she'd pulled out all the stops and bought a new hoodie for this year. The Weller kids took their hoodies damn serious.
Bry walked off and we got back to the business at hand.
“Hey Alex, how goes it?” I asked.
“Good,” he said, nervously hitching up his glasses.
“How come you don't do the laser on your eyes, you could lose those glasses?” Sophie asked logically.
“No chip, no laser,” he replied.
“No kidding?” Jade asked.
He looked at her. “Yeah, my parents are big-time paranoid about all that imbedded chip technology. They think the government is keeping tabs on us with that stuff,” he said, pushing up his glasses again.
John and I looked at each other. Yeah, duh.
I looked at Alex. “What are you anyway?” I always meant to ask but was too busy enjoying the break from all the chaos of last year to be curious enough to remember that Alex had pinged paranormal on our eighth grade Aptitude Test last spring.
“Ah, I'm gonna be unclassified this year.”
Huh, that blows. He's something but nobody knows what?
John clapped him on the shoulder, making him move a half a step. He probably weighed less than Jade. Geez. “It'll be okay. I heard that class is the biggest this year it's ever been.”
“They don't have a handle on dick. Adults think they've got all our paranormal skills mapped and they just flat don't,” Sophie said and Jade nodded.
We'd gone round and round with this last year. There were too many unknowns and the adults were too perfect to admit it. Kids were cropping up with new paranormal abilities and not always on schedule. Even Jonesy's school (at least Bry would be there) was going to do another round of AP Testing in the first two weeks for all incoming freshman. They had to. Or they'd have Paranormals popping up like weeds in the mundane flowerbed, not good.
We were all quiet for a second. “Doesn’t feel the same without Jonesy,” Sophie said.
I had to agree with her there and John nodded. Alex, who didn't really know Jonesy just watched all of us mope about his absence.
“Nah, we don't need him. He got all our collective asses in trouble anyway,” Tiff said, blowing the hugest bubble I had ever seen and snapping it so loudly I felt Jade jump beside me.
“Touchy,” she said, looking at Jade.
“No, I just, I just was startled, is all,” she said, looking down at her feet. Tiff was kinda in-your-face sometimes. Jade, well Jade wasn't. Of course, Jade was a little sensitive. Being an Empath and having an abusive, drunken dad will do that to a person.
We trudged into the school and stood in the line waiting for the roster.
As soon as we were all through, we compared our schedules.
John and I snapped our heads up at the same moment.
The enraged cow, Griswold, was our PE teacher again this year.
Jade and Sophie groaned and Jade said, “Griswold?”
“Yeah?” Tiff smacked. “I don't care, she can get at me.”
“Yeah, she'll do that,” I said with confidence.
“I had her last year and kept her in line,” Tiff said.
“Really?” Jade asked. “She was just...”
“...her,” Sophie finished.
“Yeah, that,” I said.
“Who's Griswold?” Alex asked.
“In the dictionary where it says, 'Fun-sucker'...”
“Ah, I don't think that it's actually in the...” Alex began.
I waved that away dismissively. “Anyway, there's a photo of her. No. Definition. Needed.”
Alex looked at John who said, “True.”
The girls chimed in, “True.”
“I'm not really that skilled in PE,” Alex said.
We all looked at him, kinda pathetic and puny with his slightly uncool clothes and horrible glasses. But, there was something about Alex that was interesting. John dug him, for starters. Plus, he had some cool theories about comic book messages from other Paranormals. We'd explore that later, maybe at the Jonester's house.
“You call Garcia yet?” Tiff asked as we made our way to the lockers.
I looked over at her, an errant kid knocking into my backpack. “Hey man, sorry...” I looked at him. Geez, a thousand kids if there was one.
“No, I've been putting it off. Maybe we can do it together.”
She stared at me, then said slowly, “Yeah, okay. But, I don't wanna get sucked into your undead drama again.”
That didn't make a ton of sense, since she was AFTD too.
Sophie and Jade stopped, looking at her. The swarm of kids milling around us.
“I think you kinda are already,” Sophie said.
“Yeah, you can't really go through all that we did last year without being a part of it, Tiff,” I told her.
Tiff shifted her weight, moving her tennis shoes back and forth over an invisible spot on the recycled quartz flooring. “I guess. I just don't want it to get so crazy like it did. My brother, he got pretty beat up, and you almost got taken...”
We moved against the lockers, too much jostling with the kids. “The Graysheets aren't after me now; we can use what we have to find that scum-bucket that's killing kids.”
She nodded. “No, they're not after you, now.” Her eyes met mine, the green flecks in them bright glitter in the brown. “I'll pulse you later.”
A long breath escaped me that I didn't realize I'd been holding. Good, I didn't want to do it alone. Her words lingered in my head, battering the inside of my skull, they weren't after me now.
Like, at this moment.
I looked at the group and we silently walked away, Jade's hand an abiding comfort in mine.
CHAPTER 4
By far the AFTD class was the most interesting. I'd give it that. They knew I was going to be there. Only the second 5-point AFTD ever in the fifteen years since paranormal markers were discovered.
It was hard to go from being a teenager that never wanted to be noticed for anything exceptional, to being the star pupil. My AFTD teacher actually had AFTD.
I guess the bozos had learned something after the mess with Jeffrey Parker. The other 5-point had accidentally raised a teacher that had A Really Bad Weekend and ended up dead, then came back to school wanting to serve Jeffrey. Righteous.
This teacher seemed pretty cool even though he was older (there were some okay adults but too few to count on it happening with any regularity).
; He perched on a stool that looked super uncomfortable.
“Okay, people.” He searched our faces (there were only ten of us in the whole high school of 1300 kids). “This is our 'get to know you' day, and we may just as well talk about the pink elephant in the room first thing and get it out of the way.”
Great.
Everyone turned and looked at me. So much for blending in, at all.
Dave Smith studied me, finally saying, “As I am sure many of you are aware, Mr. Hart here, shook up the paranormal community late last year with some extraordinary events that led to possible government involvement.” (Ah, no “possible” about it, I thought.) “Mainly, I am very pleased to have a rare, 5-point AFTD in my class. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I'm thrilled to have Caleb in the class. Welcome.”
I thought the applause would start now but no luck. Tiff had a smirk that lit up her whole face and a big bubble popped, the sound echoing in the room.
Smith turned to Tiff, pointing to the separator, which he held out. “Miss Weller, please make your timely deposit.”
Tiff sighed, stomping over to the separator and throwing the gum in, making a wet plop as it landed.
Smith turned back to me. “As I was saying,” his glance briefly landing on Tiff, who had her chin balanced on her fist, her foot swinging a mile a minute, “We welcome Caleb and hope to learn more this year than ever before.”
We all stared blankly at him.
“Right!” he slapped his knee, standing. “Let's go over the five points and then you will receive your syllabus via pulse-pad.” He turned to us, his eyes lighting on the desks as a unit. Seeing that we had our pulse-pads, he turned and began to write down the categories.
He wrote for awhile, finally turning to the class. We looked at the white board and it looked something like:
Impressions/Sensing the Dead: One-point
Hauntings/Ghosts:Two-point
Murder/Traumatic-victim location: Three/four point
Cadaver-Manipulator: Five-point
*Cadaver-control: Five-point
Life-Transference in Theory: Six-point
Smith turned, facing the class while Tiff gave me The Look like, hey unheard-of six point, how ya doin'? I looked back, that was one morsel no one needed to know about just yet. Parker knew and so did the Graysheets.
A skinny girl with braces raised her hand. “Yes, Miss Cline?” Smith pointed to her as she lowered her hand.
“Ah, I was just wondering how many points you were?” she asked nervously.
“That's a great question. The truth is, Caleb has changed the requirements for who can instruct this class. I was the highest numbered AFTD in the country and was recruited for this school when it was made known that Caleb was a five-point. Of course, there is only one other, documented case, at that level. He does not appear to be available for teaching.”
Or anything else, I added cryptically.
“However, teachers who deliver classes where there are students that are five-points or multi-tiered, as is the case with Astral-Projection paranormals (I instantly thought of Sophie), need to have a teacher who is on par, or very near equal in paranormal ability. Gone are the days when a mundane can teach. We simply need a like-paranormal.”
I didn't understand why that wouldn't have been the case from the very beginning. I looked over at Tiff who was absently chewing on her nails waiting for anything of interest to happen (a person could die waiting for that).
We worked through all the prelim crap that you have to go through the first day of school and wrapped the day up in Griswold's PE class. Unbelievable.
Griswold stood at the front of the class and the only good thing was that the whole gang was there, including Alex (who I had a feeling was gonna be part of the group).
“Listen up, people. Some of you may know me from Kent Middle School.” Her eyes bored into each kid who had come from KMS, her eyes rested on ours a trifle long, I thought. “And I expect to have even less disciplinary problems with some of you.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “For those students who are new to my class dynamic,” her horrible voice wheezed out in its grating tone, “this is it: you have two choices in my class, my way or, my way.”
As I saw it, that wasn't exactly a choice. The new kids looked around in confusion but they'd get it eventually.
“We have shared time together. No one and I mean no one, even the President of the United States, interrupts my class.”
She said this every year. I wasn't thinkin' the President was gonna show up, duh.
She droned on about some other useless crap and we got right into the calisthenics. We were still in alphabetical order and guess who I was next to? You got it, Carson Hamilton. Didn't it just suck to have the last name Hart when it got my ass next to his for the next four years? Because that's what it would be. PE being mandatory now throughout high school.
“Doing any corpses lately?” Carson asked like the girl he was.
“Piss off. Thought you called a truce, Hamilton,” I said, thinking about the drive-by and flip-off session at Gramps.
“Nah, I'd have to find someone interesting or more stupid than you. Besides, I've got skills now, you're no match for me. Or that crazy bitch girlfriend of yours.”
“Leave Jade out of it, dickhead.”
Carson smiled. “Make me.”
Griswold was suddenly there. “Well, some things never change. Is there going to be an issue needing my attention here, boys?”
“No, Miss Griswold,” but my voice said, yes.
Her eyes narrowed on my face. “Tell me in a way that I'll believe next time, Mr. Hart.”
She swung that square head with the beady eyes on Carson. “And you...” she had her finger hovering underneath his nose because damn, had he grown over the summer, “I don't care who your relatives are, in this class your butt is mine and I know what you mutter underneath your breath when you think you're so smart. Stay stupid and you'll stay off my radar. Got me?” she asked, placing her hands on her plump hips. Why were PE teachers hogs anyway? Made zero sense.
Carson laughed and leaned into her, their noses almost touching and he said, “Whatever...”
I couldn't believe a teacher talked to him that way and that he talked that way back. She was a tough he-she, I'd give her that. “Take your attitude straight to the office, Hamilton.”
“Fine, whatever...” he said again, making a show of starting a little flame in his hand and blowing her a kiss.
“Go!” she almost yelled, pointing at the door. He went but looked over his shoulder at me, grinning. Wow, what a way to start freshman year. Then he gave me the middle finger salute as soon as she'd turned her back.
I guess there was some comfort in his consistency. If he'd been nice, something would have been up.
Jade looked over at me. I just mouthed, later.
After PE ended and that first day of school was finally over, I could relax. The whole crew was in PE so we just went by our lockers and threw backpacks in and took out pulse-pads. Our parents had a lot of thumbprint signatures to make for all the BS paperwork about rules, discipline and syllabus stuff.
We moped around outside the school, missing Jonesy. Finally, Sophie said, whipping out her pulse, “I'm gonna just pulse him.”
We all had the new pulse phones now. My parents had gotten mine for my birthday last October, but like everything, prices had come down and all the kids had them. They were such an improvement over the old method: texting. Who'd want to enter everything with their fingers? Now we could just depress our thumb on the pulse-pad, and think our conversations and they appeared.
Damn handy.
We huddled around her while she pulsed the J-man.
Hey Soph! -MJ
Hey Jonesy, whatcha doin'? -SM
Well, survived the dumb-ass first day of school and had my man Bry at my back so all's good. What about my boys, what are they doin'? -MJ
“Tell him to meet us at the hide-a-way,” John said.
I held up four fingers.
Soph, are you holding down your thumb, I'm getting big-time feedback -MJ
Sophie lifted her thumb, all her internal dialogue was all mixed up with answering us. Oops.
They’re right here...they wanna meet at the dump.-SM
You goin' with? -MJ
A light blush rose on her cheeks and she shooed us away to finish the pulse without an audience.
Interesting.
“He's comin' by with Bry in the car,” she said.
We pulsed the Parental Authority but for Jade it was her aunt (couldn't live with her dad because he was a total Psycho and her mom was dead). And Alex, well... I think he lived with his grandparents.
Bry rolled up in his car while we were discussing transportation.
Perfect timing.
He and Jonesy got out of his car, the thing steaming like a casserole out of an oven. “Hey dude, looks like your car is imploding,” John remarked.
“Nah, she's still running,” he said, whacking a hand on the hood to emphasize its sturdiness and a hubcap popped off, rolling down the road that led out of the school. We all watched it as it made its way into the main street where cars started swerving to avoid it.
Jonesy looked on with interest. “Do ya need that for it to run?”
“Nope,” Bry said.
“No harm, no foul then!” Jonesy said, unfazed.
Sophie and Jade looked doubtful. “What if that happens to a tire.”
We were all quiet for a second, then Tiff said, “All the restraints work?”
Right. That'd work, I guess.
We all climbed in and made our way to Kent Refuse. We could discuss the day in detail and figure out a new scheme. Well Jonesy could figure out a new scheme.
We drove all the back roads so the cops wouldn't get excited about eight kids. (Even though Tiff said restraints, there just weren't enough so we were flirting with death...) Oh well.
The Death Series, Books 1-3: Death Whispers, Death Speaks and Death Inception (The Death Series, Volume 1) Page 41