She knows exactly what she has to do to save herself. And her girls.
“There it is,” Marissa says knowingly, clinking her glass against Chelsea’s. “There’s the smile. Now you’re gettin’ loose.”
Chelsea turns her head to face Marissa, and her lips feel lazy and numb. “Thanks for inviting me. This is the best I’ve felt in years.”
Marissa leans in a little. “Just wait until David sees. He’s going to go crazy.”
“He certainly is,” Chelsea says, settling back into the loving, jiggling, massaging arms of her chair.
Because that’s the plan.
7.
Three more kids have gone crazy at Ella’s school, and the disease finally has a name: the Violence. It doesn’t have any symptoms until it happens—until someone has what they call a storm. Two of the kids who got the Violence broke out with it in the lunchroom just like Thomas Canton, and teachers dove on them, dogpiled them, pulling them and their victims apart before they could do much damage. One freshman girl had a storm and attacked a junior in the girls’ bathroom on F hall, and when she returned to class without the bathroom pass, covered in blood and specks of pink stuff and completely unconcerned, Mx. Alix went to check and found a dead girl on the floor by the sinks, her face full of shards from the mirror her head had been rammed into a few hundred times. That bathroom is closed now.
Much like with the last pandemic, the president is telling everyone that this new plague isn’t a problem, and that if it is a problem, he’ll solve it. He sounds exactly like he did when Covid hit during his last presidency, and Ella’s political science teacher straight-up said that he hopes he gets impeached again. Tons of kids are staying home, their parents writing strongly worded social media posts about the aftermath of Covid and how many kids already live with permanent physical and psychological damage.
But plenty of kids, like Ella, still have to go to school even though it doesn’t feel safe, whether because their parents think it’s not an actual dager or it’s a conspiracy or because they can’t be trusted at home, doing nothing. Ella’s dad said she has to go, so here she is, wearing a mask again, on high alert every time someone brushes past her. There are two more police officers roaming the halls, and all the teachers have had to take classes on deescalating altercations. As if that would help. After what she saw with Thomas and Jordan, Ella knows the problem isn’t making kids scared of being in trouble or making teachers quicker to act.
The problem is that these kids go as blank as sharks and attack.
It would be like zombies, except zombies don’t wake right back up and keep going about their lives despite the blood under their fingernails and the brains spattered on their flowered rompers.
She begged to stay home, but Dad told her she had to keep going to school. It would look bad if his kids stayed home like little pussies, he said. Ella flinched to hear him say that word but didn’t bring it up again. She’s taken precautions, though. She wears her steel-toed Doc Martens from her emo phase in middle school and doesn’t go to the bathroom alone and has rings on all her fingers, big chunky ones with pointy bits she bought on sale at a mall cart. If anyone tries to hurt her, she’s going to hurt them back. Or so she tells herself. She’s never been in a fight before.
Hayden keeps texting her to meet him at their spot out by H hall, but she’s ignoring it. Before, it was kind of annoying, and now it’s risking her life. Being alone with anyone is dangerous, and they’re not the only kids who use that spot to make out where the cameras and teachers can’t see. She feels a little guilty for ghosting him, and with drama club on hold and a return to the no-loitering policies of Covid, she hasn’t been alone with him in days. But on the other hand, maybe he’ll get mad enough to break up with her. If she breaks up with him, she’s a bitch who won’t put out, and everyone will believe whatever Hayden says instead of believing her. But if he breaks up with her, she’s…well, a loser, at the very least, but it won’t be quite as much her fault?
She’s hurrying out to her car after the last bell when she hears footsteps pounding behind her. She spins, hands up, keys clutched between her fingers like Wolverine’s claws, but it’s just Hayden. He looks at her like she’s insane.
“Uh, what the hell are you doing, El?”
Ella resettles her backpack and holds her keys more normally. “Just being careful. Because of all the…stuff going on.”
“Well, you look like a spaz when you hold your keys like that.”
She stares at him for a moment too long, trying to decide if he’s joking.
“Okay. Thanks?”
With a little huff, she turns around and continues walking to her car. Her heart revved up when she heard him running, and it hasn’t gone down. He’s acting weird. And the texts are getting a little out of hand. And angry. In one of them he called her a slut, and then five seconds later he apologized and begged for forgiveness and called her babe.
“Wait up.” He jogs to keep up and walk beside her, his backpack over one shoulder. “You’re gonna give me a ride home, right?”
“I can’t—” she starts.
But he interrupts her. “Because of your little sister. Sure. You always say that. And then you always give in and give me a ride anyway, so let’s just skip the part where I beg and go straight to the part where…”
He reaches for her hand and rubs his thumb across her palm. This, too, is described differently in her books. It doesn’t feel like a gentle caress meant to make her feel loved and comforted or a sensual touch meant to awaken some latent feeling. It feels like he read about both of those moves in a manual and is now attempting to get them both out of the way.
“What’s with all the creepy rings?”
Ella snatches her hand back. “They’re not creepy.”
“You look like you think you’re a witch.”
She’s at her car now and presses the button to unlock it. She puts her backpack in the trunk, her back to Hayden, wishing he would disappear. When she turns to glare at him, he’s grinning like this is all just super fun.
“Hayden, you’re being weird.”
“No, you’re being weird. Stompy boots and witch rings. You didn’t dress like this when we started going out.”
She’s pissed now and can imagine what it would be like to slap him with these rings on, their pointy bits aimed at his freshly shaved cheek.
“And you weren’t such an asshole when we started going out.”
Reaching past her, Hayden slams the trunk down, making her jump. There’s a strange, hungry ferocity about his grin, and a cold trickle crawls down her spine as she realizes that she’s seen her dad look at her mom this way. And, once, at Ella herself.
“I’m leaving now,” she says.