It is hard to be a psychic; it is hard to know everything. Her Grandma always said that Loretta was blessed, that she was a messenger of God and that’s why the girl knew things nobody else knew; Crazy old bat. Loretta tended to disagree. She was CURSED. Only cursed people talked to corpses and knew when the Alzheimer neighbor next door was going to wander from home. Only cursed people could find Mrs. Pearson’s cat when she was in heat and only cursed people could guess how many jelly beans where in the Mason jar atop old Mr. Richards cash register at the bait store.
Loretta Knew from a young age about her gift, at first she didn’t think anything of it… didn’t all the kids talk to dead people these days? It’s wasn’t until her mother noticed the odd behavior that she really knew she was different. The thing is, you can’t speak to ghosts around your southern Baptist mother, who is also head of the Christmas celebration board for the church and the best singer in the Sunday choir. She’ll be sure to have your head examined. In fact, that is exactly what she did. The day she heard Loretta talking to ghostly friends she scooped her right up and took her down to the town psychologist.
Doctor Stanley Chuck was Beaumont Louisiana’s only shrink, and not a very good one at that. Loretta figured he probably earned his degree online, or in night school or something because she didn’t feel any less crazy after his sessions than she did the rest of the week. And he sure charged an awful lot; a thousand dollars an hour to show Loretta ink blot pictures that all vaguely resembled winged insects. The rest of the time he liked to take notes on his little yellow legal pad about Loretta’s feelings. One time, Loretta sneaked a peek at that yellow pad while the quack wasn’t looking and the only thing the idiot had been doing was doodling for an hour and a half.
After a while, Loretta stopped talking about her dead friends and she stopped talking about the pictures in her head. Instead she made things up to tell Dr. Shmuck so that he could doodle and pretend to diagnose all her brain problems. Eventually, the therapy was deemed unnecessary by her mother, who grew tired of forking out a small fortune every week to help her daughter who had clearly let go of her delusions. Instead, she forced Loretta into more church activities than ever before. This past year Loretta played the role of Mary in the Christmas pageant, she attended Pastor John’s sermons twice on every Sunday; she joined the choir group and was even the chaperone at the Children’s Easter Sunday egg hunt.
After a lot of coaxing and convincing, her mother even let her return to the public school system. Beaumont High School wasn’t the most exciting place in the entire world. It’s was a fairly small building, and incredibly old. In fact, right in front of the main office was a plaque that read “Beaumont High School, one of the first buildings to be founded in the settlement of Beaumont, Louisiana 1753.” The teachers at Beaumont were less than satisfactory. Loretta swore that most of them stuck to the same curriculum from a hundred years ago when the town was founded. Not a lot ever happened in Beaumont, not until the day Loretta returned to school.
She would never admit it, but sometimes Loretta still talked to unseen visitors in her home, and she still had visions of events that were yet to take place. Usually Loretta ignored them so as not to upset her uptight mother, but every once in a while she would use her gift to help others. Just last week she had helped a cousin find her very expensive engagement ring which she had lost swimming in the Beaumont River a week before. And a week before that, Loretta had indirectly helped the Beaumont sheriff’s department catch a kid responsible for writing vulgar graffiti on all the businesses on Main Street. Little things like that sometimes made Loretta feel like Jesus had given her a gift to help others. Then again, not every vision was helpful. Just yesterday she had gotten a random image of bees, and she cursed her brain for being so annoying when she couldn’t stop drawing them all over her binder.
Loretta walked proudly up the steps to Beaumont High School, breathing in the musty scent of the building in anticipation for her first day back to school in three years. She was a sophomore now and well ahead of her class thanks to her grandma’s meticulous teaching habits. She was undeniably confident when she took her seat at the front of class in first period…at least until she heard the group of girl’s giggling in the back. They were whispering so she couldn’t hear much, but she did make out very distinctly the word freak. Loretta flinched as the words registered in her head. Marcy Millar, whom Loretta was not fond of at all began thinking up all sorts of insults to throw her way. None of which would be a surprise because Loretta somehow already knew what they were. Well, that’s what you get for being cursed, you become the town pariah. Besides, Loretta couldn’t exactly argue she WAS a freak.
First period came and went, as did the snickers and giggles of all her classmates, jerks. Third period began as smoothly as the last, the teacher even asked Loretta to solve an equation on the board, which she knew the answer to. She took the chalk from the short round man at the front of the room and idly began writing numbers on the board. She didn’t think much of what she had been doing until she heard the whispers around the room grow louder and more confused. Stepping back, she examined her work. Had she made a mistake in her equation? Absolutely not, the equation was perfect, except for the words scrawled over and over beneath it. Andrew Lawson’s name covered the green chalk board, line after line.
Loretta turned to the class and saw Andrew’s terrified face. Her cheeks grew red and she went to erase the words as the other students cried out childish taunts about her having a crush or being a stalker, and that’s when Andrew fell out of his chair and began writhing on the ground. The teacher looked profoundly stupid standing there with his mouth gaping open, and Loretta had to pause a moment to contemplate that stupidity. Then she rushed forward falling on her knees to Andrew’s side. She wasn’t positive what was wrong until she saw his face going purple, and she noticed the large swollen bump on the side of his neck. That’s when she reached into his bag and grabbed the EpiPen which she injected deep in his thigh.
He struggled to breathe a few more seconds, but then his body relaxed and his chest began to move up and down. Loretta sighed with relief, and ignored the chaos of the room around her as her worthless teacher finally sprang into action. He busied himself over Andrew and ordered the other students to give him some air. Loretta stepped back to gather her things, and tried to hide the wonder in her eyes when she picked up her binder which earlier she had covered in drawings of bees….
