Summer comes and for the first time in a year, they try to pretend that things are normal. Nothing has changed and there is no way that their lives can be described as remotely normal, but they pretend. Even though Jenna is dead and Stefan is still missing, on the run or kidnapped or following Klaus around like a compelled little puppy; even if Tyler has to be locked in the Lockwood vault when the moon rises high and full in the sky and Caroline is still a vampire. They're pretending that it doesn't matter that Elena spends as much time at the Salvatore Boarding House as she does at her own, and Alaric is drunk on the couch half the time that she is there and won't take a bedroom no matter how often she offers it to him; even if Bonnie did annoy a hundred dead witches to bring her boyfriend back to life and they're never ever really normal.
They fake it.
Halfway through summer, Caroline declares "Road trip!" and Bonnie and Elena embrace the idea because that's what you do when you're seventeen and you've spent a year dealing with homicidal vampires, learning witchcraft, and cowering in fear of an Original vampire. Because they all need to get away from Mystic Falls and it doesn't matter at all where they're going as long as it's 'anywhere but here.'
Caroline decides that they're going to take a college tour because now is the time to start thinking about these things because they're not going to be seniors forever. She spins a tale of Stefan coming home and he and Elena doing the cutesy 'off-to-college' thing together and points out how Bonnie's grades will get whatever she wants and wherever she wants and that Jeremy will follow along like a little puppy. Which makes Elena alternately squirm and smirk, and Bonnie can't really blame her for that because it's still a little weird making out with Elena's little brother, and it's one of those times when they don't eat ice cream and talk about those more intimate details.
Damon scoffs at their plans while Alaric tells them it's a good idea. Tyler hangs around trying to get a tag-along invite and Jeremy comments that he wishes he hadn't taken that job at the Grille. Caroline kiboshes the boys before they even get started, pointing out that it's "ladies only" and promises that they'll all come back safe and sound and that she won't let any college frat boys get their hands on Bonnie. Alaric points out that there won't be many frat boys around in the middle of summer. Damon makes some comment about Bonnie and her mojo, but it's under his breath and halfway to complimentary so only earns a mild glare from Elena and Caroline.
Jeremy doesn't look relieved until Bonnie gives him a hug and they sneak off to his room. Where sneaking means walking right up the stairs hand-in-hand under the watchful eyes of his sister and her best friends with Alaric hovering because he doesn't quite know how to do the guardian thing or even if he should.
Before they leave, Damon lectures Caroline and she gets pissed off that he thinks she can't protect Elena, but then Alaric makes sure the tires are inflated and Tyler makes sure they have triple-A and that their bags are loaded in the trunk, sodas are in a cooler and a bag of potato chips is wedged between the front seats. They're off with laughter and loud music and Bonnie and Elena catch each other looking back in the rear view and laugh their asses off as Caroline peels off the down the road.
Normal, so, so very normal.
Caroline, as it turns out, has plans. She has a future laid out, and she shares it with Bonnie and Elena as Bonnie stretches out in the backseat and Elena barks at her to mind her driving and the road.
"Only one of us is going to live forever!" Elena cries out, cringing with a hand on the dashboard and another on the seat belt. It's a bump along their road of Denial and Caroline's face falls. Bonnie shifts in her seat ready to interject, and Elena bites her lip and looks ready to apologize when Caroline simply shakes it off.
"But we're all going to live like normal girls for the week!" Caroline does slow down, though, at least temporarily. It doesn't stop Elena from nabbing the backseat when they stop at a rest stop and shoving Bonnie up front with Caroline. Doesn't stop Bonnie from sticking her tongue out at Elena in the side mirror or stop Elena from pulling a face in return.
They eat Oreos, wave at a trucker and when they stop at a truck stop for an early dinner, they sit on the hood of the car while Caroline drinks her blood from a pink and yellow flowered thermos. They might have detoured, but Caroline is back laying out her life plan: how she'll get her Bachelor's and her Masters and be that girl that everyone envies because she looks so young.
"A little bit of proper make up magic, and I can get all the way to twenty-two," Caroline announces as she steals one of Elena's onion rings - because no one has to worry about boyfriends to kiss - and dips it in her chocolate milkshake making Bonnie frown.
"Eww," Bonnie says on command because it's what she says every time Caroline does that, and what she's been saying for years.
"You should try it," Caroline enthuses. Another onion ring goes in, Elena's hand belatedly smacking at empty air as she tries to counter vampire reflexes, and then Caroline dangles the grossness in front of Bonnie's face. "Mmmmm ..."
The restroom is busy when they stop in before heading out, and Elena comments that she really hopes it's not food poisoning. It's too late to see the campus when they get there, so they get a room at a motel, order greasy pizza and watch a pay-per-view romantic comedy because there's more than enough drama, mystery and horror in their lives.
Campus is dead when they get there the next day. Even for summer, the place is deserted. In the main office they learn that the campus is all but shut down. The receptionist who looks more than a little peaked and pale tells them that there's some summer bug that's being incredibly vicious. It's leaving few standing in its wake and more than three-quarters of the auxiliary staff is out sick.
They show themselves around but it's not quite the same. The eerie quiet of the campus coffeehouse - one barista and a handful of students lounging around - decides for them that it's time to move onward.
Bonnie's phone chirps a text message as they're climbing in the car, and she looks down, expecting Jeremy. Instead it's Damon.
Come home now. We need your witchiness.
"Jeremy missing you already?" Elena teases.
Bonnie frowns and shakes her head, fingers already sending a message back to Damon. "It's Damon."
Elena's face falls, goes from surprised to jealous to worried in three seconds flat. Because no matter how much she loves Stefan, everyone with a set of eyes can see she has a thing for Damon. Yet, even she knows that Damon and Bonnie aren't the social hanger out types. If Damon is texting Bonnie - and vice versa - it's not a good thing. "What . . . what does he want?"
"Is it Klaus?" Caroline looks anxiously between her friends and her cell phone is already out.
Bonnie's text is returned via the ringing of her telephone. She answers on the first ring, "What's going on, Damon? Is it Klaus?"
"No," the older Salvatore's voice comes through with a touch of annoyance as though wondering why she would ask such a thing. "Don't you think I would have told you if it were Klaus?"
'Not Klaus,' Bonnie mouths to Elena and Caroline and watches her friend's shoulders visibly relax. "Then what is it?"
"Everyone is getting sick."
Bonnie smiles. It's a light smile, a soft one, her mouth twitching and then she laughs. "Everyone is getting sick?"
It takes a moment, but then Caroline rolls her eyes and tosses her hands up in the air. Elena shakes her head and giggles.
"I can hear the laughter, but it's not funny. This is serious. Everyone is getting sick. Everyone in Mystic Falls is getting sick."
There's something in Damon's voice that sobers her. With her vampire hearing, Caroline sobers as well and Elena looks between them.
"What? What did he say?"
Caroline shakes her head. She's already there - at the place Damon had to be going when he texted Bonnie. "No. That's not possible. It can't be a magical sickness, can it?"
They're standing in the middle of a near lifeless college town. Not a car, bicycle or pedestrian has passed them.
Stranger things have happened. They know because they've lived them.
"We're coming home," Bonnie tells Damon, without looking at Carolina or Elena for confirmation. Just like that, their roadtrip and 'normal girls' week is over because this is what their lives have become and it's what they always do.
By the time they reach the town limits of Mystic Falls, Caroline is driving like the devil himself is on their asses, Bonnie isn't arguing and Elena is in no condition to chastise. It hit Elena two hours into the drive on the way home. They stopped by the same rest stop that they did on the way out, only this time it was littered with people sleeping off sickness in their cars, truck drivers stumbling bleary eyed and flushed out of showers to sleep in their cars.
Elena went to splash water on her face and almost tumbled into the sink. She was dizzy and cold, and by the time they got her into the car, all she wanted to do was sleep.
Now with her head resting in Bonnie's lap, she's shivering and sweating and burning hot to the touch. Caroline has the nearly empty road to herself but they still can't get Elena to the Gilbert house quickly enough.
Damon takes one look at the girl, being carried on Caroline's back like she weighs no more than a football - and really, for the vampire she probably doesn't - and blanches. Before Caroline can say a word, Damon has Elena in arms and has whisked her up to her bed. With a quick word to Alaric and Jeremy, Caroline and Bonnie bound back out the door to get Bonnie's grimoire.
It's an effort in futility. The mass illness that's sweeping through Mystic Falls and the region isn't just sweeping through Mystic Falls and the region. It's everywhere, world wide and while every infectious disease expert in the world is trying to figure out where it came from and what caused it, no one is close to any answers.
It's not magical, so Bonnie trades shifts with Caroline, Alaric and Jeremy to take care of Elena who's slid into a semi-coma. The hospitals are full, the sick are being told to stay home and the first reports of death come three days later. With a quiet, grim glance at Alaric and Damon, Bonnie turns off the television before Jeremy wanders back into the room.
Damon tries blood. It doesn't work for Elena, or Sheriff Forbes when she takes ill, or Jeremy when he starts to show symptoms.
Bonnie plays nursemaid and caretaker. She and Alaric trade shifts and Damon visits the empty grocery stores and cooks dinners. Carol Lockwood and Tobias Fell are the first Mystic Falls casualties and the death toll is climbing around the world. Bonnie turns off the television and they play cards instead of watching the news that night.
At the first hint of dizziness, Bonnie hides it. Elena needs her. Jeremy needs her.
"You're sick," Damon confronts her when she tries to sneak a break and rest her head on the counter between spooning out soup that Elena and Jeremy spend more times spitting out and throwing up than actually eating.
"I'm fine," Bonnie argues. Because she has to be. Someone has to be.
"You're useless if you're sick."
"I'm fine," Bonnie stubbornly repeats, but she doesn't know why she's arguing and she's not sure what that shattering sound is or how the soup landed on her feet instead of in the bowl.
Then the lights go out and world collapses in on her.