Free Psych Investigation Episodes: Episode 1 (A Young Adult Scifi / Fantasy) by Kevin Weinberg

truth. Is she with him right
now?”
    “ Yes. She has good intuition. She
told us she had a feeling about that Jack Harris, but I looked at
his profile and it didn’t seem possible. She begged me to let her
investigate the lead on her own. I told her she was wasting her
time but to do what she felt was necessary. She … she’s with him
right now. Alright, we need to calm down. We need to get organized
and—Michael, wait! Where are you going? Hey! We need to stop and
think for a minute!”
    “ Like hell I’m gonna let one of our
own get picked off like some animal. She’s just a kid. Damn you
Paro, damn you to hell! I told you she was too young to join a
team, but you didn’t listen to me. I ain’t gonna let her die like
that family in here.”
    Michael dashed out of the house, running like a
madman, prompting the officers nearby to throw a questioning glance
at Paro.
    “ We need to go after him!” Paro
yelled.

    “ Okay, I’m just gonna right come out
and say it—there’s no way Spider-man would win in a fight against
Wolverine. For one, let’s talk powers. Spider-man has great
reflexes, and yeah, he can dodge quite a few hits, but he can’t
dish out any damage, you see? Wolverine has been hit by buses. At
the very least, if the two ever fought, I’d say it would come to a
stand-still. See, Spider-man could just run away or hide on a
ceiling or something, and Wolverine wouldn’t be able to do anything
about it. That is, of course …”
    Could I have really been wrong about
him?
    Jack had been rambling on about the “X-mans” or
the “Spidermans” or some kind of nonsense since they left the house
fifteen minutes earlier. Mostly, she knew, because he was nervous
being alone in her presence, and needed some way to break the
silence.
    It did make her feel guilty to take advantage
of him and trick him this way. She had even led him on a little,
but she needed to get close. She needed to be sure
.
He
wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, with his sloppy hair and playful
personality, he was kind of cute.
    That he was a Psych was no longer up for
debate. It didn’t matter what Paro said about the odds of there
being a third Psych—well, a fourth, really—in her school. The
empathy he showed when the murders were announced, the sadness she
could feel within him—he couldn’t have done it. Besides, he’d been
home with his mother the entire night, waiting for her to show
up.
    The fire, though, that was him. Whether he did
it on purpose or not was irrelevant. She was in that room. She
wasn’t a Telepath, but she didn’t have to be one to know he was
responsible.
    When it was happening, she had immediately put
up her guard. Never in her life had she been so frightened. But
later, when he’d approached her in the courtyard and started
speaking with her, it seemed to all fall into place. A monstrous
killer wouldn’t set a classroom on fire just because he missed a
homework, but Jack was a simple-minded boy, and intentional or not,
that was the kind of thing she’d expect from him.
    As she walked over the soft grass three blocks
from his home, through a park with a majestic water fountain carved
from stone, she felt the building remorse. She was going to break
his heart. Even if he didn’t commit the murders, he still had to be
tagged and released. He’d committed a crime, and unwittingly or
not, he had to be brought in. She knew it shouldn’t matter to her
what he thought of her, but she couldn’t help but wonder if Jack
would hate her when he learned the truth. More so, she wondered if
he was even capable of hate.
    “ Which is why if they ever made a
sequel to Episode VI, they would obviously have to find all new
actors.”
    Melissa smiled. “You think so, Jack? I actually
haven’t seen those movies.”
    Jack looked as if he’d been punched in the
face. “What! You mean you haven’t seen Star Wars yet? Oh man,
Melissa, you have got to come over and watch them. I’ve got them on
VHS, DVD, and now