Jessi wasn't as shocked as Kyle when it came to the cruelty of other students. Unlike Jessi, Kyle hadn't quite experienced how harsh the other students could be. One morning, just a week after the school had learned about their secret, a group of boys started mocking Kyle and Jessi as they passed in the hallway.
"Can you imagine how weird and effed up that kid's gonna be?" one of the boys said to the other two. Jessi had been hearing too many snide remarks and was fed up. Without even thinking, she glided toward teh boy, her hand grasped tightly around his throat, and he hovered a few inches from the ground with his back pressed against the wall. Jessi listened to him choke as he struggled to pry her hands off of his neck.
"Jessi, no!" Kyle said, pulling her off of him. The boy fell to the ground and coughed. He tried to play it cool, standing up and recovering quickly. He couldn't be known as the boy who was almost choked to death by a pregnant girl. He laughed with his friends."
"Jesus, I was wrong," he said. "There won't be a kid because she'll kill the poor beast the second it cries." Jessi looked desperately at Kyle, practically begging for his permission to continue strangling the boy. Kyle looked just about as frustrated as Jessi, and as the boys continued to mock and laugh at them, he couldn't help himself. Kyle threw a punch at the boy, feeling a 'pop' under his nose. The force of the punch sent the boy's head forcefully into the wall and he fell to the ground.
"You asshole!" one of the boy's friends shouted as he went for Kyle. Kyle was still stunned by his own actions of punching the first boy, that he didn't even see the punch coming at him. It hit him in the mouth, causing Kyle to bite his own lip. As the boy prepared to strike again, Jessi caught his hand and twisted his arm, poppping his wrist out of his socket. He fell to the ground, caressing his hand and the other fried tried to move in. By now, all of the students in the hall were watching and shouting. Jessi casually tilted the palm of her hand to face the third boy so nobody would notice, and suddenly the boy could no longer move. Kyle looked at Jessi and she smirked. She hadn't done something special in quite some time and it felt good to do it. The boy looked extremely confused.
"HEY!" shouted a teacher, stepping out of his room, followed by a few others. Jessi released her telekinetic hold on the boy and he stumbled forward. The students in the hall moved on, the boy Kyle knocked out was beginning to wake up, the second was crying over his wrist, and the third looked as if he was questioning his own existence; while Kyle was still shocked at his own actions. Jessi, however, was rather proud of herself as adrenaline surged through her blood. She grinned.
"What's going on?" one of the teachers asked.
"He knocked Patrick out and she broke my freaking arm!" the second boy said.
"I'm sorry," said Kyle, wiping the blood off of his lip. When the teachers saw Jessi, it was safe to assume the cause of the scuffle.
"Alright, to the principal's office, now. All of you," the first teacher said.
"Can I go to the nurse?" the boy with the hurt wrist asked.
"Me too, I think my nose is broken," the first boy continued, holding his bleeding nose. Kyle looked guiltily toward them. One teacher redirected the two toward the nurse while the other continued to lead the students to the principal's.
"You were awesome, Kyle," Jessi said, smiling proudly. Her heart was still racing from the adrenaline rush the fight had given her. Kyle's was too, but beginning to slow down.
"That wasn't awesome, Jessi, that was mean," Kyle told her.
"No, those guys were mean, they deserved it," Jessi muttered back. "Did you see their faces?" Her head started to spin and she could hear her heartbeat in her ears. She tried to ignore it.
"Yeah, I saw their faces, that's why I feel so bad," Kyle answered.
"But you were standing up for us," Jessi reassured him. He tried to smile, but Jessi grabbed onto his sleeve and stopped walking. She looked toward the ground as she tried to make the hall stop spinning.
"Are you alright?" Kyle asked. The teacher stopped also.
"What's wrong, Jessi?" she asked. Jessi's vision went black, but she could still hear everything going on around her. She felt Kyle grab onto her and eventually caught her when she lost consciousness.
Jessi woke up just as Kyle set her down onto a cot in the nurse's office. She could hear the one boy whining about his wrist and saw the other with an ice pack against his head and a towel to his nose. The nurse handed Kyle a towel for his lip. Since all of the students had now ended up at the nurse, the principal decided to meet with them there and was on his way.
"It looks like I missed on heck of a fight," the nurse said happily. One of the teachers gave her a look. Kyle smiled. "Look what you boys did," the nurse continued. "You got this poor girl all worked up and made her pass out." Jessi glared at the nurse. She wasn't overly fond of being called a 'poor girl'.
"I'd feel a lot worse if she hadn't almost torn off my entire hand," the second boy said. Jessi tried to suppress a smirk as the nurse wrapped a blood pressure monitor around her arm.
"None of this would have happened if you would have minded your own business," Kyle said. The boys started arguing but were stopped quickly when the principal entered the room.
"Enough!" he said, frustratedly as he entered. Everyone grew quiet and looked at the principal. The nurse took off the blood pressure monitor and jotted down the results on her paper. "What happened?" he looked to the two teachers for assistance.
"When we came into the hallway we saw that Patrick was knocked out and Jeremy punched Kyle, who presumably punched Patrick."
"But when he tried to hit Kyle again, I blocked his punch," Jessi chimed in, not afraid of what the principal was going to say or do.
"She almost ripped my arm off!" said Jeremy, still holding ice to his wrist. Jessi smirked. The third boy sat quietly. He hadn't done anything wrong. Not that he didn't try to, of course. He didn't want to tell anybody how he had been paralyzed briefly.
"Stop being so dramatic!" Jessi told him. Before anything else could be said, the principal held out his hand.
"Kyle, why did you punch Patrick in the first place?" he asked. Kyle looked desperately at the principal.
"Why do you think?" Jessi asked before Kyle could answer. The principal sighed.
"We'll have to review the security camera footage," he began. "But I'll still have to talk with each of you to get everybody's account on the situation." He sounded irritated. "In the meantime, all of your parents are coming to pick you up and take you home." The three boys groaned, Jessi crossed her arms stubbornly, and Kyle put his head down sadly. He hated being in trouble. He'd gotten into trouble quite a few times before, which made the principal think he was a bad kid, but really they were all misunderstandings... and of course the time Jessi leaked an exam. This time however, he had undoubtedly deserved this punishment, and he was not going to argue about it. Jessi didn't care much at all. "I'll talk to you guys first," the principal said before pulling the curtain to cut off the three boys from Kyle and Jessi. By now, the other two teachers had gone back to their classrooms.
"Your blood pressure is a bit high, but nothing alarming," the nurse told Jessi. Jessi shook her head.
After the principal got Kyle and Jessi's side of the story, Nicole arrived to pick the two up. It frustrated her that she couldn't stand up to the principal for Kyle this time. Not when he had actually gotten himself into real trouble.
"What were you thinking?" Nicole asked as they got into the car.
"I wasn't thinking, that's the problem," Kyle admitted solemnly.
"Yeah, well I was thinking about how I wanted to break that kid's jaw," Jessi said, crossing her arms and peering out the window.
"Well you'll both be lucky if they don't suspend you," Nicole told them.
"Let them," Jessi responded. "I'm not going back anyway." Kyle looked quickly at her.
"What?" he asked.
"Jessi, you can't just drop out," Nicole said reasonably.
"Why not?" Jessi asked. "Other people do it all the time, and I'm a whole lot smarter than them."
"Yes, and they end up working at McDonalds with an hourly wage of $7.25," Nicole responded.
"I don't want to go back," Jessi pleaded.
"Maybe we can look into online school so you can at least graduate," Nicole suggested after a few moments of silence. Jessi nodded. She would accept that option if it meant not going back to school.
"Kyle, we need to train with Foss more," Jessi said to Kyle as they stepped inside the house. "You've barely been going to see him, and I know you're avoiding him because you know I'll go with you."
"Because I'm afraid for you... because something will happen like what happened today," Kyle said. Jessi rolled her eyes.
"Maybe that happened because I haven't been practicing like normal," she said. Kyle stared at her. He could argue all day, but he knew Jessi could argue for two. He was frustrated by her stubbornness but loved it at the same time.
The decision was made for Jessi to complete her senior year online. While everyone was away at work and school, Jessi flew through her class work on the computer and went to Foss' warehouse.
"You're looking good," Foss said.
"Thanks," Jessi responded. "What should we work on today?"
"What have you been having difficulties with?" Foss asked.
"I haven't been doing anything lately," she admitted. "And when I try to do things now I feel sick or black out."
"I guess you could say you're a little out of shape," Foss said.
"What?" Jessi asked. "I run every day and I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Mentally, I mean," Foss quickly corrected himself. "Your body has gone under a lot of changes and since you haven't been practicing, it's going to give you some side effects."
"Well I don't like it," Jessi said.
"Of course not," Foss said. "You said on the phone that the last thing you did was stopped a boy from moving at school?" Jessi nodded. "Then let's start with something a bit smaller, perhaps you can make some of these books levitate?"
"That's elementary," Jessi said with a scoff. Foss shrugged.
"Your mind is out of shape," he said again. "You have to start small to reacclimatize your mind to these things."
Jessi sighed. She crossed her arms and focused on the books that were laying on the table in front of her. After just a few quick seconds of concentration, the books lifted from the table and began to float. She looked at Foss expectantly, hoping to move on to something bigger.
"That's good," he said. "You can lift them all up together, but can you keep all of them still while moving just one to the other side of the room?" Jessi smirked at the new challenge. She chose a book to move and it started to move across the air while the other books remained suspended sedentarily.
"This isn't very hard," Jessi said disappointedly. Foss thought for a moment.
"Turn out that single light bulb," he instructed her, pointing at the ceiling that was covered in.
"That's no fun," Jessi said, looking toward the light bulb while still keeping the books floating. Instead of simply turning it off, the bulb burst. She smirked. Of course it was something that usually happened when she lost control of her temper, but it was also fun to make a bit of a mess. Foss looked a bit irritated.
"That was good, I guess," he said. "But that's a little easier than actually manipulating the electricity to make it turn off while not affecting the other lights." Jessi rolled her eyes.
"Fine," she said. Foss was right. Bursting a light bulb was easy, but this was a little more difficult. When she focused on observing the electrical patterns surging through the ceiling. In her attempt to turn out the light, the single book she had moved dropped to the floor.
"Focus Jessi," Foss said. The other books remained in the air. The light above their heads flickered before finally turning off. Jessi smiled proudly.
"Ha!" she said, letting the other books drop. She looked at Foss.
"That was alright," he said. "How do you feel?"
"I feel fine," Jessi responded. "This is easy stuff."
"Good," Foss said. "Now pick up the books with your mind again and bring the other one back to the group while turning the light back on." Jessi grinned, and focused back onto the books. She wondered why she hadn't stopped going to school a long time ago. She imagined how advanced she would be if she had been working with Foss for the past few months instead of being cooped up inside an old dusty school listening to teacher's teach other kids stuff she already knew. This was much better.
