18 Chapter 18

All over the country. Linda’s words tailed after me the rest of the day, echoing through my head, the fear clenching my chest and stomach.

Worry had fluttered wildly inside of me after we’d left the storage room, squeezing my heart to a prune while I walked down the hallway, headed to what used to be a purgatory of study abuse on a regular day. But it hadn’t been one today. Whatever Mr. Truman might’ve said during the class, it’d never reached my ears. My mind could only focus on those words. All over the country. All over the country. Why was I so obsessed with this, with something that might’ve been nothing more than a huge coincidence? A person falling into coma, or a weird type of coma, whatever, wasn’t something unheard of. It was really common in the medical field. Maybe the way these people had fallen was, indeed, weird, but a virus wasn’t a trigger for worry. At least not for me.

I wasn’t one of those people, like Linda, who stressed over everything and meditated to keep their body away from a nervous breakdown. A virus wasn’t worse than a war, poverty, or selfishness. Usually it only took a lab, or several labs, to find a cure and then release it out in the world. I knew it sounded rather easy and simple to do, but it wasn’t. None of that was. But wars and terrorist attacks took a whole lot more to undermine. Their roots were too intertwined into human nature, and more than a physical action, as piercing one’s skin with a vaccine, it was a mental action. A grueling inner labor. A battle with the mind. And not everyone was willing to lunge themselves into that inner battle. And that was a reason for worry—deep worry.

There was no medical solution for that.

Knowing this, I shouldn’t have pondered on those words so much. I shouldn’t have plagued my head with images of people falling unconscious. But I did, and I couldn’t stop that worry from lacing itself with fear. And I couldn’t stop that fear from eating me whole when I spotted those same people reading in the hallways and outside school, their eyes glued on the pages, oblivious to its surroundings.

I didn’t like to read. I couldn’t lose myself in a book like Buffy did, so I didn’t really understand that fascination millions of people had with the written word. The thing that I did understand though, was that look. That enthralled look over gazing at something magical, soul-stirring. The same look I had when looking at a breathtaking Monet painting or a captivating Auguste Rodin’s sculpture.

But the look some of these bookworms had wasn’t the same one. Their eyes were glazed over with something that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, tightening the skin beneath. It was as if they were on a trance, not deep, but edging one that might’ve not been considered healthy. And I couldn’t stop wondering how many of them was I going to see after spring break, because I was almost certain that this odd behavior I’d been noticing for a while now, and that I’d assumed was the result of a contagious bug floating in the air—which might’ve not been that far away from reality—was related to those enigmatic cases in the news.

Somehow, something inside of me had always sensed it, and just like I’d sensed it before, I knew things were going to get worse, and that no lab would come to the rescue this time. That little voice in the back of my head told me this was out of our hands.

I flinched.

“I know. This is getting creepier,” Linda said, as if backing up my reaction. She frowned at the girl sitting in the middle of the staircase, obstructing everyone’s flow like a statue, and threw a look over her shoulder at the Star Wars geek a few steps up, edged on the same spot he’d used yesterday. She turned to look at me. “Creepy as in a Stephen-King-kind of way.”

We circled around the statue-like girl and kept climbing down the stairs, stopping until our feet reached the crammed parking lot. A truck was vibrating behind my black Mini, the driver shouting something about going to Los Cabos at the guy half-opening his car next to me. A group of buzzing people a few slots away was smiling and bragging about their vacations, too, names like Florida and Mexico mixed in the laughter. Friday air was charged with rapture, the soft breeze almost purring in delight. Spring break fever sizzled everywhere. With the sun pouring gold-blinding light on me and the steamy warmth frizzing my hair—like I’d said, the weather here was bipolar—picturing bright beaches and salty zephyrs blowing at my face was inevitable, even if minutes ago my arms had been dotted with goose bumps all over—the chills a ghastly reminder of the daunting events.

My black Bad Samaritan shirt stuck to the thin droplets of sweat on my back, and I couldn’t stop thinking with a pang of annoyance of how from all days, I’d picked this hot one to wear black. But that wasn’t what threw me out of balance in that sun-drenched stance. The contrast between both sights—the jumpy crowd seething around and the becharmed ones curling within themselves—was too hard to digest.

A conflict of emotions surged in me, my body confused over feeling excited or afraid, over feeling hot or cold. The thrill of the vibrant students was contagious, even the cars pulsated eagerly, their roars adding a notch of cheer in the triumphant air. Flowers blossomed to bright colors around. Trees flickered in farewell waves. Yet, that intuitive part of me wrapped my insides with ice, frosting the walls of my stomach and heart to a brittle shape of dread. Something wasn’t right. Something odd was happening, and nobody seemed to notice.

“You’re not listening to me, aren’t you?” Linda’s voice broke into my mind, cracking my foggy thoughts. I turned to look at her and leaned against the Mini’s polished door. “Surfing away?” she added annoyed, crossing her arms over her chest, her thin eyebrows pulled in an arc.

I sighed. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a wicked-cool playground, only that it’s surrounded by a high-voltage electric fence, waiting to scorch us.”

“You’re still worried about those guys.” She motioned her head to the two bookworms on the staircase. I glanced at the one cross-legged on the sidewalk. “Do you really think all of this has to do with the people on the news?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I settled my eyes on another one sitting by a tree. “I still don’t see why, though.”

Linda followed my stare, paused for a moment, and her shoulders sagged. “Even with all this frenzy they don’t stop,” she said bewildered. She looked at the girl with the thick book under the shadow of the imposing oak, and she straightened. “Hey, that’s one of the girls we saw in the hallway reading yesterday.” She brought my attention to a brunette who was opening the door of a small Chevy a few steps away, narrow glasses hanging at the bottom of her thin nose. I remembered her right away. The girl with the purple book. “Since she’s not carrying any books or stopping like an addict to read one…I guess this thing is not as bad as we thought. Maybe we’re seeing stuff that isn’t there.” She turned and looked at me reassuringly.

Linda was right. The girl didn’t look entranced at all. Her eyes were wide open, not glazed over and at half mast. A sparkle of joy lighted them alive. She blended into the vibrant crowd. But, “What about the others? They’re still the same way.”

“We don’t know if the rest is still the same, Dafne. We’ve only spotted a few.”

“Yeah, but…” I hesitated, trying to pull out a good argument, but didn’t find any. I let out a breath. “Yeah, I guess…”

“Besides, we seem to be the only ones worrying over this. I think that what everyone is seeing is just people, well, reading—and there’s nothing wrong with that. The written word is fascinating. Maybe they’re clutching the books a bit too obsessively, but that happens when you love something, right? You hold on tight, whether it’s a book, a movie, a song—or a painting.” She added, looking at me pointedly. “Don’t tell me you don’t get dreamy-eyed with a Bonet.”

“Monet.”

“That one, yeah. I’ve seen how you space out when you look at his paintings in that arty book you have. You almost look as if you want to step into it.”

“Yeah, but…” It’s not the same thing, I continued inwardly. I wanted to tell her that my dreamy-eyed expression had nothing to do with that glazed look, that even if I loved to lose myself into that symphony of soothing colors, it wasn’t an obsession, only a heart-swelling journey. But half of me was already considering Linda’s words. What if I was, indeed, seeing or sensing things that weren’t there? What if these people had just decided to pick up a book and read it? What if I was the one who’d blown things out of proportion this time?