The girl who would wear green

Chapter Eleven

Each day Essie developed her gift more as she learned to use it. She found that if she listened carefully when Hallie was around, in the jumble of boring thoughts, she could catch Hallie's intention to say something horrible to her, just before she could actually say it. This worked a treat for Essie now, and she was able to disappear as soon as Hallie thought of her.
This was pretty heady stuff though and she was soon practising this daily.
Essie was quite disappointed to find that she could hear nothing from her father, or her mother. Not a thought at all. When she mentioned this, they told her that some people learned to block access from people with gifts like Essie's.
If they were aware, and had the ability, then they could block Essie's gift and Essie needed to be extra careful each time she encountered someone she could not hear anything from.
Her mother and father did not intend for Essie to have any access to what was going on in their heads thank you!
She discovered next that when Seb was nearby, Essie heard nothing. She became quite careful around Seb after this, although he remained friendly and interested in anything Essie did.
Even when Seb offered to help Essie with her fractions she didn't take him up on the offer. She needed to be careful, she knew.
From then on the world was a bit of a whirl for Essie and she learned quickly what she could and could not do with what she heard, or picked up on.
She did her first real practice on Trent. Every time he put his hand up to say he needed to be excused to go to the toilet, Essie imagined Trent holding a cigarette and vomiting. She was not sure it had worked until the day Trent had to be picked up from school early from the sick bay because he'd suddenly started vomiting violently. Essie heard that Trent had unexplained bouts of vomiting for a couple of weeks before they gradually stopped. She also noticed that he didn't have to go to the toilet anywhere near as often during class.
Essie next became interested in Dee, one of Hallie's friends. Surprisingly, Essie learned that Dee was stealing things from her classmates, and had been for a while. Essie could see, when Dee looked at Stacy's new bright purple automatic pencil sharpener that she was planning to take it.
Essie was surprised because there had been speculation and even accusations about who had been taking things. Everyone had lost something and Hallie had suggested that Essie was to blame, causing some of their classmates to look at her, and even make comments about the possibility. As if Essie didn't have enough to deal with from Hallie!
Essie noticed that Dee waited till everyone was involved in something and then, quick as a flash she had the item she'd coveted in her hand, and then hidden under her clothing. Because she was Hallie's friend, no one thought of looking at Dee. But Essie was watching Dee, the thoughts that came from her had made Essie sit up and take notice.
She started thinking hard about Dee. She thought about bugs crawling, and being itchy, and creepy things crawling everywhere, while keeping focused on Dee.

Then it happened! The whole class was startled to see Dee jump up and start screaming about bugs, waving her arms and slapping and tearing at her clothes, turning around and slapping everywhere, yelling:
"Bugs, ewww bugs, get them off me!!"
They all thought it was pretty funny until Stacy's brand new sharpener fell out on the floor. Dee spent the rest of the class in the headmaster's office and from then on nothing else went missing. Except Dee who was suspended for a week for taking Stacy's sharpener.
The biggest success so far Essie felt was Tara. Tara, who was Hallie's very best friend everyone thought but who, Essie discovered, really didn't like Hallie all that much. Tara had a very ambitious mother who kept pushing her to be friends with Hallie, to be part of her important circle of friends, and Tara did it to keep her mother happy.
The school play was being held again and Hallie, who was always chosen to be the heroine in any play, developed a bad case of laryngitis.
Essie assured her dad she had absolutely nothing to do with this, and she didn't, it was just super good luck.
Tara was asked to step into Hallie's place at short notice, take the lead role and keep it safe for when Hallie was better. Instead everyone discovered that Tara had an amazing voice and she was a born actress.
Essie's only contribution was to think hard about Tara being good at something and sending helping thoughts to Miss Stuart the arts teacher, to agree to Tara's stepping into the lead role.
Only after she'd felt waves of unhappiness coming from Tara when she was with Hallie, and after she had noticed her looking on rather wistfully as the cast for the play was chosen, had Essie done this.
The play was a huge success. Tara was the star of the night, and Hallie had to be content with a smaller role, without any speaking at all. Tara's mother was delighted, telling everyone about her daughter the star of the show, and of course, she always knew how talented Tara was.
Tara didn't spend quite so much time with Hallie after that. Hallie was still trying to work out what happened, because Tara was nice to her, she just avoided any invitation to hang around with her.
It was after this though, that Essie caught Hallie looking at her with a thoughtful expression, and just a small wave of what she thought could be speculation.
Quickly, Essie sent a lot of thought waves Hallie's way, thinking the word "boring" over and over. Hallie finally turned away, saying to Essie as she did "You're so boring!"
Essie decided that perhaps she should be a little more careful in practising, especially if Hallie was watching.