“Some people can predict whether it's going to rain or sense when something bad is going to happen. Murphy had a sixth sense about people hitting on her. She could see it from a mile away, the way a spider can see the movements of a fly. As she approached the counter of Ganax Heating, she tried to look as uninterested as possible.
"Is Jodee here?" she asked. She stood at the counter, digging her toes into the linoleum floor. The receptionist was a young guy about her age.
"Hey, Murphy." She suddenly recognized him. He'd been in her high school English class. He'd occasionally tracked her down at her locker and had used complex vocabulary words while he talked to her, trying to impress her.
"I had a huge crush on you. You were really smart."
Murphy sighed. She was incredibly bored. "Precognitive, actually."
He blinked at her for a moment. "Yeah, you were really good in English."
Murphy's usage of SAT-level vocabulary usually halted the moment she got out of class. She had a thing against big words. In her view, they were superfluous. And she hated the word superfluous.
"I don't like being liked for my brain," she said.”