Right Uppercut

Chapter 1

Dedicated to closet_anarchist because she helped me with this story so much and she made the cover. Plus, she's amazing. If you haven't read anything written by her, you're really missing out, so go check her out! 

Alright, I'm done. Go read! :)

It’s not that I found school pointless; it’s that I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I wasn’t going to go to college, so as interesting as psychics is, I found myself unable to focus that Wednesday in class. No matter how many demonstrations that teacher performed or the experiments we were graded on, I found myself daydreaming more often than not.

“Daphne!” A voice snapped me back to reality. “Earth to Daphne…”

I turned my attention away from the window, where raindrops raced across the windowpane.

“What?” I asked dumbly as I noticed all eyes of my classmates were staring at me.

Ignoring the snickers of the immature football boneheads in the back, Mrs. Yang smiled and said, “Thanks for joining us. Can you read the last paragraph on page 93, please?”

I read the paragraph quickly, tripping over my words and stuttering from being put on the spot. I wanted to stop reading and make a public service announcement to make it clear that that’s not how I usually read. I am a literate student, but when called on to read aloud, I sound like America’s biggest idiot.

When I was done reading, I let myself zone back out, mentally and physically exhausted. It was a dark, dreary day where I would rather be home, curled under a blanket with a book in hand. I knew I couldn’t even look forward to that after school, though, because I had to go to the shop all afternoon. The money was nice, but a break would be nicer.

The bell rang loudly, announcing the end of the school day. I sighed and pushed myself away from my table and began collecting my books.

“There she is, Daphne solving mysteries with her friends one purple dress at a time,” my best friend, Mitchell sang as he sashayed into the room and slid onto the lab table next to me.

I looked up at him through my eyelashes as I rummaged through my backpack for the pack of gum I knew was in there somewhere. “Dude, how did you get here so fast?”

He leaned back onto the table and I was grateful that Mrs. Yeng had left. She hated when people sat on her tables. Mitchell had gotten several detentions for that reason alone. “You’re just a slowpoke,” he tapped my nose.

“I take it you skipped last period?” I questioned snarkily, offering him a piece of gum, which he took.

Chomping on the minty rubber, he replied, “You say it like I do it all the time.”

Shrugging my backpack straps over my shoulders, I pushed my chair under the table and took a few steps past Mitchell. “Remind me of how many absences you have from English alone?”

He hopped off the table and followed closely behind me out of the empty classroom to the large mass of angsty teens filling the hallways. “Minor details,” he waved his hand in my face.

I snorted and after a quick stop at my locker, I made my way to the front doors. “You don’t need to go to your locker, right?”

He glared at me. “When was the last time I even attempted homework?”

I laughed. “Alright, alright, forget I asked.”

It was such a waste. Mitchell was actually really smart, but his grades didn’t reflect that. Like he said, he never did homework and showed no effort in class work, but he always had intelligent comments to make in class conversations.