Andi
"Zach."
"Present, madam." Zach said with a flourish.
"Dylan." Ms. Eric dismissed his gesture with an eye roll.
"Here."
"MacKenzie."
"Here."
Bzzzzt. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I quickly silenced it and checked to see who texted me. I speedily tapped the keys to reply.
"Andi."
"Um…" I looked up.
Ms. Eric nodded to show she saw me.
"Jamie."
"Here."
"John."
Silence.
I peered over at John. He was hunched low over in his seat. He was slowly breaking off slivers from a pencil.
"John?" Ms. Eric tried again. She gazed at him from behind her horn-rimmed glasses. Her face clouded over as she looked at him. She finally looked down and checked the attendance sheet.
"Ella," she continued down the list.
More silence.
"Is Ella not here?" Ms. Eric asked. "Does anyone know where she is?" everyone muttered 'no's' halfheartedly. Ms. Eric looked a little concerned as she peered at John again.
His pure blue eyes were dull; his thick lashes almost touching his cheeks below his brunet eyebrows as they knitted together. His usual handsome face was sickly pale. He stared intently down at his pencil.
"John?" Ms. Eric puzzled.
"No." he replied instantly.
I caught up to John as he headed out the door to fourth period.
"Hey," I said, elbowing him lightly. He just stared ahead and kept walking.
"What is it? What's bothering you? Don't tell me it's nothing because I saw your face when Ms. Eric asked where Ella was." I waited, but John just ignored me. "Where is she?" I could tell something was definitely wrong now.
"Don't worry about it," he said, opening his locker.
"Well I'm worrying now! If you just told me—" I was cut off by an unwanted interruption.
"Good news and bad news," Brandon said, swaggering up behind John. WE both had to look up into his statuesque face sitting atop of his Abercrombie-and-Fitch-model-worthy body. If it weren't for his slight case of acne, the kid would probably be gracing magazine covers.
"Which one do you want to hear first?" Brandon asked John, looking down at him with his beautiful blue-green eyes. I sighed as I began to drift off in a daydream.
"Bad." John slammed his locker anxiously.
"Andi's here today," Brandon said sadly. I scowled at him.
"Brandon!" John wasn't in the mood today.
"Ok, ok, good news is, Ella's not dead."
"What? How--?"
"How do I know this? Hmm, exhibit A," Brandon tugged Ella from behind his back. She glowered and moved to run away from his grasp, but he simply wrapped his long arm around her waist and rooted her there.
"Thank God," John leaned against the wall. This caught Ella's attention.
"John, I have something to tell you," she started.
"I love you!" Brandon said in a mock-Ella voice.
"Shut up!" Ella hissed, backhanding Brandon in his stomach. He wheezed a little and glared at her.
"Wait, you were dead?" I asked Ella in confusion.
"Apparently," she said, now trying to force Brandon to let go of her.
"What did you need to tell me?" John persisted.
"Oh, right," she focused on him.
"Hey, what's up?" someone said from behind me. Ella glanced at them and an angelic expression came across her already beautiful face. Her large dark eyes lit up underneath her long black hair. Her full lips broke into a wide smile. I rolled my eyes. Ella only gave that look to one person and one person only. Brandon's hand snapped back to his side and he scowled along with John as Dallyn came and stood next to Ella. He leaned over and she stood on her toes. John and Brandon glowered as they watched the couple kiss.
Dallyn got comfortable and draped his arm protectively around Ella's shoulders. He kept a smirk on his face as he looked around.
"Was it about last night?" John didn't give up.
"Last night?" Dallyn's voice was alarmed and defensive. His smirk disappeared and his grip tightened on Ella. He was suspicious of John.
"I wasn't talking to you," John muttered.
Dallyn tensed up to say something (probably a rude something) but relaxed as Ella whispered something in his ear.
"I'm sorry babe," he said just loud enough for us to hear and touched her lips to his again, this time more tenderly. He gave her a last squeeze and she ruffled his red hair as he left.
She turned back to the three of us with a cloudy look in her black eyes. "Not right now, I've changed my mind." She said then smiled weakly.
The bell rang and startled me. I blinked, then followed the others into Ms. Cluff's classroom. This day was weird as ever. Ella and John had done something last night, and Ella had come back from the dead this morning… what else could there be?
Ms. Cluff stood to take roll, then walked to the overhead to begin the class.
"sine, cosine, and tangent. Now these are… well, trigonometry kind of things," she said with a peppy smile. The class moaned a little at the word 'trigonometry'.
"Oh, hush," she fussed. "It's very simple. You just use a chart in the back of your book, page 826. You can also do these on your calculator, but I'd rather you did it by hand just for a while. It makes the rest easy…" she trailed on and on and on and on…
I was artistically drawing a rather good picture of myself when I stopped. I listened hard.
Nothing.
The rest of the class had noticed something, too, and were looking out the windows and doors in wonderment of the mysterious distraction.
"Ms. Cluff?" someone asked softly. Ella was staring intently at Ms. Cluff as she asked again, "Ms. Cluff?"
Ms. Cluff herself was just staring, as still as rock. The absence of her constant talking had left a void in the classroom; it had been the distraction that no one could find.
She coughed a little, like she was clearing her throat.
A line of red liquid drooled out of her mouth. She reached up to touch it with her hand. She began to hyperventilate, then stopped sucking air in. she could only cough and hack, vomiting blood out in pools. She turned purple and stopped thrashing.
Half the class was screaming their heads off as she hit the ground. The other half were split between people crying with hysteria or in silence.
I ran out in the hallway to call for help, but stopped. Leli was out in the hallway, pale and breathing hard. I panicked. Had she caught the sickness that Ms. Cluff had had?
"Leli! Leli! Are you all right? Can you breathe? Are you hurt?"
"What?" she gave me a puzzled look. "I'm fine. It's Mr. Thomas. He started coughing, and then…"
"Vomiting blood. And suffocating. Then dying."
"Yeah… how did you know? Who told you?"
"Ms. Cluff… had it too."
We sat silently but looked up as other doors began to slam open. Kids began to stagger out of the classrooms with blank or shocked expressions. Friends quickly located each other and formed their clique groups. Everyone pulled out their cell phones and began calling homes or their parents' work.
"No one answered."
"I didn't get an answer, either."
"His secretary didn't answer it! She's always supposed to be there!"
I glanced at Leli and we headed to our group's spot on the second floor greenhouse. Everyone was already there, talking in confusion.
Ella walked over to us. "No one's getting any answers from their parents. It's happened to the other schools, too. People have friends there, and…"
Leli and I popped out our phones and began calling home. Ella waited patiently for us to put down our phones, disappointed.
"I wonder why nobody's answering?" I asked no one in particular.
"They're dead." Ella said in a cold voice.
"Dead? How do you know that for, like, a hundred percent?"
"The disease. Virus. Whatever you want to call it, kills anyone older or younger than a teenager, as far as I know. We're safe till we turn… well, sixteen." She explained.
"Sixteen?" Leli gasped in disbelief. "Most of us are already fifteen!"
"Sooo… how are we gonna live? Food? Water? Just steal?" I began to think deeper about the situation.
"Look," Ella lowered her voice. "What we need to do is take a few people and get away from the majority of the people. If we don't, all they're going to do is fight for leadership."
Leli snorted. "Are you kidding me? I'd rather stay here with everyone else! And Brandon," she looked dreamily in his direction and went over to suck up to him.
I sighed. "Look, Ella, Leli is right. It seems much safer to stay with the larger group of people. You know these guys, they wouldn't fight for power or anything like that." I grinned hopefully. "Come on, just stay with us. It'll work out."
Ella just quietly walked away.
"What?! That's such a stupid idea! You should listen to me!" The rest of my group was having a heated argument.
"Well, no one put you in charge, either!"
"Dude!" Zane cut in. "Think about it. Hmm." He scratched his head. "What could we do when there's no adults around?" he mocked a light going on above his head. "Anything!"
Everyone cheered.
"All right!" he pumped a fist in the air and lead everyone away from the school.
"Aaahh!" Jamie screamed in a high-pitched voice and jumped on my back. I grunted a little in surprise and then pushed her. "This is so cool, huh?" she began as we followed the crowd. "Absolutely no rules!"
I laughed a little and thought about it. I was kinda sad about the whole losing my parents thing, but they weren't much of parents anyway. Always gone for work. Now they weren't here to make me obey their stupid rules.
We were totally and completely… alone.