The girl who would wear green

Chapter Nine

Soon the girls were back at school and Essie's next year at school was a mixture of good and bad. She still struggled with fractions, would she ever conquer the blessed things? Grade six meant High School soon, and lots of hard work.
The New Year also meant that Essie was resolved to follow through on what her gift allowed her to hear. She felt she was ready and would know what to do.
Her new teacher this year, Mrs Doyle, was a little more interested in Essie and actually let her stand and read some of her stories, which helped make her days so much happier. Mrs Doyle was very strict on spelling though and Essie was still having to correct most of her work.
Hallie and her friends were still in Essie's class and they all still made fun of her every chance they had, doing silly things like following her around and chanting "weird eyes", or saying "ssssssss" as they followed her.
They really were quite tiresome.
Hallie made fun of her family all the time now, but Essie just had to ignore it all, because she knew it was not safe to say a thing. She had to be very careful also about wearing her green colours as Hallie spotted her socks once and immediately told the teacher.
Essie got another lecture about wearing the proper school uniform at all times.
For some time after that, Hallie went on and on about Essie "forgetting" to take her Martian socks off. Hallie was the most annoying person!
Seb also was more of a presence in Essie's life than she wanted. He was quite often around when Hallie and her group started following Essie, and he took to walking with her, and with Amelia, talking about family and school.
It wasn't easy for Essie to give him non answers all the time as Amelia clammed up also when it came to discussing family. Not that Seb let much information out about himself. All Essie knew is that he lived with his grandfather.
Mrs Doyle, like all the other teachers, knew how important Hallie's dad was, and this always seemed to make Hallie bulletproof. Hallie teased some of the other kids too, but seemed to enjoy making fun of Essie the most.
Essie tried very hard to ignore it, because she only seemed to get into trouble if she tried to defend herself.
She did ask Mrs Doyle one day if there was anything she was doing wrong when it came to Hallie. "Why does Hallie have such a problem with me, Mrs Doyle?"
Mrs Doyle told her that she was sure Hallie didn't have a problem with her and she just wanted to be friends. Essie was pretty sure Mrs Doyle didn't have a clue, especially when she told Essie to "put it in the past, and move on."
She was also pretty sure that Mrs Doyle and all the other teachers were just a bit afraid of Hallie's dad and what he would say. Was she the only one who could see what a horrid person Hallie really was?

Essie was pondering on these thoughts, when she should have been doing her maths, when she realised that she was picking up on some noises in the classroom that were more than just the usual noise.
Trent put his hand up again, and asked if he could be excused to go to the toilet. Immediately, once again, the word "Cigarette!" came into Essie's head. She sat up and started to focus on what was happening around her.
Then the words "bored, how much longer, can't wait to get these clothes off" drifted into her head, and her attention turned to Mrs Doyle. Yes it was her, but was Essie really hearing what she thought she heard?
Slowly she looked around the room, realising that the background noise she'd been hearing could actually be coming from the people sitting around her.
Waves of unhappiness suddenly came to her, from Amelia. She turned quickly and looked at her. "What?" whispered Amelia? "You ok?" Essie asked. Amelia just looked at her, shrugged her shoulders and said "yep".
She looked back at Mrs Doyle. A strong feeling of irritation and discontent seemed to be coming right from her.
Essie decided to try an experiment. She looked intently at Mrs Doyle. She concentrated her thoughts on Mrs Doyle finishing the class early, telling them they could go home with no homework today. Over and over, Essie repeated this thought, concentrating on Mrs Doyle.
Then Mrs Doyle dropped her pen and sat up. She looked straight at Essie.
"Essie, you haven't done enough work on your fractions this week, come up to the board and write these sums down and work them out now. In fact I will give you some extra ones for homework tonight I think, you really do need to catch up."
Essie groaned, and feeling wretched she went up to the blackboard to do the dreaded fractions. So much for that idea, she thought as she worked, I imagined the whole thing.
On the way home from School Essie asked Amelia again if she was ok. She still felt surrounded by unhappiness.
Amelia looked at her again, paused for what seemed to be a very long time, and then replied "yes, just leave it will you, what's with all the questions?" Essie gave up for now, as she really could not explain what she was feeling anyway.