Read Farsighted (Farsighted Series) for Free Online Page B

danger.
    “How sweet of you, my little sapling,” Mom coos.
    I sigh, embarrassed even though nobody was around to hear.
    Outside a cool rush of wind chafes my face—it’s barely September, but winter is on the way. A stray leaf blows up and hits me on the chest. I huddle forward to block out the cold air and rush into Miss Teak’s shop.
    “Hello?” I call.
    “Who are you?” an unfamiliar girl’s voice asks.
    “I’m Alex. Who are you?”
    “Shapri,” she says matter-of-factly, with a bit of a twang—I gather she’s not a native Midwesterner. “Hey, aren’t you in fifth period chem?” she asks. “With Dr. Brown?”
    “Uh, yeah. Are you? I don’t remember you being there.”
    “Well, weren’t you around for like a day, and then you got suspended for fighting?”
    A rush of tiny vibrations forces upon my face. That means Shapri’s gotta be looking at me. I wonder what she thinks about the appearance of my blotchy, swollen nose.
    “Yeah, I guess.” I sigh and run my finger across that big, old trunk I rammed my foot against the other day. The layer of dust is gone.
    “So what are you doing in here?” Shapri asks, walking closer to me, her steps muffled by the carpeting. She picks up an object from the trunk, knocking the stand aside. I assume this is the same crystal ball that created the scene earlier this week.
    “I was just bored. My mom owns the florist shop next door.”
    “Oh, Sweet Blossoms, I like that place.” She puts the ball down somewhere else.
    “What are you doing in here?”
    “My mom owns this shop,” she says with a yawn as she stretches her arms over her head and sends bursts of her grassy fragrance my way. She sure does move around a lot, and the coming and going of her voice is making me dizzy.
    “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I feel like a lame goody two shoes for asking.
    “Well, yes. But I’m helping Mom get everything set up here. I took a sick day. Don’t tell anyone at school I’m not really sick.” She sits down on what sounds like a beanbag chair; the contents reorder themselves to accommodate the added weight of her body.
    “I won’t,” I assure her. “So you’re Miss Teak’s daughter. Is Teak your real last name?”
    “Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?” She’s gone from happy-go-lucky to on-edge in a matter of seconds.
    “Well,” I say, choosing my words carefully so as not to add to her bad temper. “It seems too perfect, Miss Teak. Given she’s a mystic and all. Seems made up.”
    “Well, it’s not!” Shapri says with a huff, standing up again.
    Somehow she’s taken offense to my harmless question. “Okay, okay.” Since she’s already upset, I might as well ask the question I most want an answer to. “Are you a psychic, too?”
    “No.” She takes a deep breath. “And Mom isn’t either. It’s just a bunch of made-up crap.”
    “Yeah, I don’t believe in it either,” I say, sinking down into the abandoned beanbag chair—well, not sinking exactly. The motion is more mechanical, like an under-oiled robot. I place my cane on the floor and put my hands behind my head, trying to relax.
    Shapri stares at me for a long time. She doesn’t know I’m able to sense when people do that. This happens all the time, people staring at me. It isn’t fair, since I’m not able to stare back.
    “Where are you from?” I ask, trying to break her gaze.
    It works. She paces toward the other side of the shop and picks something up, then runs her fingers across it— cccccrick goes the deck of cards. “What makes you think I’m not from around here?”
    “Well, you’re new to the school and this is a small town. Plus, you talk with an accent.”
    “I do?” she asks, shuffling the deck absent-mindedly. “I guess I do. I’m from New Orleans.”
    “Where’s that?” I ask, trying to get a rise out of her.
    “Really? You don’t know where New Orleans is?”
    I sigh as if to say “no,” all the while suppressing my urge to