Synectica

Chapter 14

        When Netta woke up the next morning, she sat up slowly, and then felt a shooting pain in her gut. Her hand shot to her stomach and she hunched over in pain. Something was definitely not right. She took a breath and tried to move again. Another stab of shooting pain circulated through her. Her hands shook as she pulled up her top to examine her stomach. There was a large bruise on her upper abdomen that was starting to turn a nasty purple.

        Please don't let it be a broken rib.

        She took a breath and stood up, wincing again at the pain. She put her hand to her abdomen and tried to direct some of the pain into energy and as she did, she felt a little bit of relief. She sent the energy she had gathered into Luke's body down the hall. It had to be sent somewhere; might as well give the jerk a splitting headache.

        Netta quickly fingered her makeup covered jaw when she saw Greg waiting for her at her locker. She did a decent job covering it, but it still hurt. She sucked out a bit of the pain and sent it into the body of a person passing her. The girl immediately began rubbing her temples.

        Sorry.

        Greg handed her a cup of coffee when she got to her locker and smiled pleasantly.

        "Good morning, sunshine!" he said.

        "Morning..." Netta said. The pain still pulsed through her, even though she had tried to relieve it a little. She didn't give that poor girl much of a headache. Two Advil would fix it, no problem. She took the coffee gratefully and began sipping at it. She immediately felt the caffeine take effect and she felt her heart race a little faster.

        "Better?" Greg asked after a minute.

        "Much," she said. He knew her well enough to know that she needed coffee to function.

        "You're such a junky," he said as she downed most of her coffee in a matter of minutes, even though it was a very large cup.

        "Am not!" she said defensively, trying to get every last drop in spite of herself.

        "Mhm," he said skeptically. "You're going to be shaking and acting crazy for the next two hours and then you'll get a massive sugar crash and a caffeine headache. And then I'll have to deal with you," he said laughing.

         Netta rolled her eyes and elbowed him in the arm.

         They walked together to their first period chem class and found seats near the back of the classroom. His small side remarks were probably the only the actually got her through the long period. A small piece of paper hit her in the back of the head and she whipped her head around to see where it came from. Daniel, who was sitting a row behind her, looked down at his notes quickly as his face began to turn a bright shade of pink. Netta threw the piece of paper back at him and he smiled when it bounced off his shaggy brown hair and fell onto his notebook. Isaac Brown and Isaac Viccum, two other geniuses who were sitting with Daniel, snickered, elbowing Daniel and throwing paper at him. It was a miracle that the teacher didn't see them. The two Isaacs couldn't be more different physically, though they were both equally smart and passed chem with ease. In Netta's opinion, they should have been in the honors class with Charlotte.

        Isaac Brown was short and somewhat scrawny with dirty blond hair that was gelled up to a small point in the front. Isaac Viccum was over six feet tall and well built. He too had dirty blond hair, but he never bothered to do anything with it. The three of them never took notes and goofed off during the entire class. Yet they somehow had the highest GPAs in the grade, which never stopped peeving Netta.