Three weeks earlier
The melancholy sound of a violin pierced through the early morning air. Rose opened her eyes slowly, the sound blaring uncomfortably loud in her right ear, and stretched her hand out without looking. Her fingers scrambled across the small table beside the bed, her hand eventually coming in contact with her phone. Barely glancing at the touch screen she shut the alarm off and turned back to flop her head on the pillow. Her ceiling became so much more interesting when there were things she needed to do.
After another three minutes of forcing her eyes to look at the ceiling the alarm went off again, and this time Rose slid out of bed, grabbing her phone to slowly walk across the cold floor and out to the kitchen. The phone was blinking yellow already, Dave must be up early she guessed. She quickly unlocked it and opened Dave's snapchat of his coffee cup while entering the kitchen to grab her own. She picked a mug out of one of the many cabinets and filled it with piping hot coffee, set to start brewing ten minutes ago. There was no way her mom would be getting up anytime soon. Holding the cup with one hand, she quickly snapped a picture of it, sending it to Dave with no caption.
It had become a sort of routine between the two of them after Jade had left. It was a way to reassure each other that they had kept their promise, that they had in fact gotten out of bed and were going to try their best to go through whatever the day had in store. There had been several times where Rose was tempted to quit, to just wallow in the tangled sheets and old stuffed animals in her room for hours, but didn't want to feel the shame of letting down the one person she trusted.
Sipping the black coffee slowly, she headed back to her room to get dressed in some sort of black and purple ensemble. School hadn't even started that long ago and she was already known as the weird kid who sat in the back, wore strange clothes and didn't talk to anyone. That was the way she liked it. Most of the time.
At 7:20 she applied the last coat of dark lipstick, tucking the small tube in her sweatshirt pocket and headed out the door, locking it behind her. Thankfully no one else was outside this morning, the whole neighborhood was coated in a thin layer of mist and general unpleasantness. She hated when the neighbors stared, it wasn't her fault that she lived in the huge, weirdly shaped mansion. Two blocks and five minutes later she sat in the cold seat of the school bus, staring out the window with earbuds eliminating the annoying background chatter.
They arrived at the school after another fifteen minutes, pulling up in front of the large brick building that served as both the middle and high school for the area. Just one more year until she could be in the high school part of the building. Rose exited the bus silently, joining the masses of students milling around the front entrance, laughing and talking with friends. She spotted Dave fairly easily, he stood apart from the crowd looking slightly uncomfortable and leaning against the base of a large flagpole. She walked over and bumped her arm with his, a sort of non-verbal greeting.
Just then the bell rang, causing Rose and Dave to sigh in unison. They turned and began walking towards the open doors, Dave removing his shades to slip them in his pocket. Back in sixth grade he used to argue with teachers when they insisted he take them off, but could never actually give a good reason why he needed to wear them. After a while he just gave up.
Rose had considered bringing up her hypothesis as to why Dave felt the need to wear dark glasses as a way to feel secure, she knew that no one would take her seriously as a middle schooler wearing an impressionable amount of dark makeup.
She continued down the hallway on the way to English, looking up to see that Dave had drifted away without her noticing. He had developed a recent tendency for slipping away when no one was paying attention. Rose often missed when Dave had been always chattering about something, even to the point of extreme annoyance, but was still better than nothing at all.
Rose allowed herself to be carried along with the tide of chattering middleschoolers, their conversations blurring so that individual words could no longer be heard when she realized she was going down the wrong hallway. The very wrong hallway.
It was too late to turn, and trying to fight backwards through the mess of teenagers would be far too much effort, so she continued ahead, trying to fight the nauseating feeling that always seemed to appear inside of her when she glanced at the door to the testing room. It was white and plain, nothing out of the ordinary. It was currently empty, as the next testing date was not for a few weeks, but Rose could still hear the woman's voice.
"All right, this will sting a tiny bit," She had said. Rose rolled her eyes, it was the same dialogue every time she came in. The nurse acted like this was her first blood test. She turned to watch the small sample of red liquid weave its way out of her inner elbow to the syringe. The nurse quickly removed the needle, dabbing at the small prick of blood and applying a band-aid.
"Now wait just one moment dear," She said, turning towards the machine that sat next to Rose on the table. The blood sample was inserted. There were a few small beeps, then a light on the machine flashed green.
"All right, you're free to go. Glad this isn't becoming a trend," She said, the last bit to herself.
"What was that?" Rose asked.
"Oh, well one of the students actually tested positive for contamination. I was afraid that there would be more, but everyone else seems clear."
"Oh."
Rose left the room, walking down the line of kids waiting to be tested on the way to seventh grade math. Someone barreled into Rose, knocking her sideways into a locker.
"Ahh! Sorry!" Jade said, grabbing Rose and pulling her back up. "You just never respond to your name."
"It's too common," Dave was saying from the other side of Jade without glancing up from his phone, "We need to re-name you something cooler."
"Yeah! You need a nickname," Jade said excitedly, "Like a cool alter ego."
"Well why don't you guys work on that," Rose said, smiling, "But I have to go take a math quiz."
"Oh shit yeah. Math quiz," Dave said, glancing up. Rose turned and led the way into the classroom that they had just reached, Jade pausing a moment to squeeze Dave's arm before running down the hallway yelling "Tell me what it's on at lunch!"
They entered the classroom and sat in their usual spots in the back of the room. Everything was normal until they got to lunch and couldn't find John.
"He's probably studying or something, right?" Jade said. "He occasionally acts somewhat studious."
"Yeah, that huge nerd," Dave replied, but Rose didn't say anything. There was a sinking feeling in her stomach that she had tried so hard to repress.
Everything got worse when, after 6th period Rose ran into a worried-looking Jade who nervously said that John hadn't shown up to math class either.
"Maybe he had to go home? His dad might have called in or something," She said quickly. They met Dave at his locket, which was next to Johns, quickly delivering the news. They waited until the entire hallway had cleared, leaving behind only scattered pieces of paper and making halfhearted excuses as to why John wasn't there.
Finally, Dave opened John's locker with the code that John had always tried futilely to keep secret. The door banged open to an empty cavity. Everything had been taken out. Rose's chest was tight, heart beating faster than normal as they raced to the principal's office, sneakers squeaking on the hard floors.
It couldn't have been John, not him, contamination was something that happened to other people, in other schools, in other places, not here and especially not one of her friends.
And then, three months later it happened again. The short period when Jade was still here and John was gone was strange, to say the least. Jade filled the air with empty words that spilled quickly out of her lips but didn't mean a thing, and Rose's mouth felt like it was zipped closed.
There were two tests in between the one that took John and the one that took Jade. Rose no longer took them lightly as just another inconvenience. Her breath quickened when she stepped into the room, arm shaking as they tried to get a clear view of her vein. She couldn't look, not at the needle, not at the blood that once fascinated her, and especially not at the machine that had condemned her friend to what she knew was a short and hellish life.
And when the third time happened, and the light blinked green once again Rose exited into the hallway. She heard whispers that it had happened again, that someone was taken. Her pace had quickened, changing from a fast walk to a sprint, her eyes darting across the sea of unfamiliar faces until she ran headlong into Dave's chest. The collision knocked them both backwards, Rose locked eyes with his strange red ones, which were wide with worry.
"I thought it was you," He said. Rose shook her head, unable to say anything else. The school had learned to not keep what had happened a secret. They announced it over the P.A. system ten minutes later and Rose ran.
The lockers bordering the edge of the hall turned into a blur as she ran, bursting out of one of the side doors of the school to drop to the ground. She fell forward on her knees, face pressed down into her hands. There was a hand on her shoulder, and then arms encircling her and then Rose and Dave sat pressed against the side of the school, smudged in dirt and facing the dumpster for a long while. It wasn't like with John, where they all had tried to avoid showing a visible reaction for the longest time possible. Rose sobbed into Dave's chest, because there was nothing else to do. He said nothing, but held her tighter.
"Oh, excuse me," Someone said, and Rose was snapped back into the present, moving slightly to the right so that someone could pass her by. She reached her class and flopped down in her desk. Reminiscing on painful memories was a particularly shitty way to start the day.
"All right, let's get started," the teacher was saying. Rose tapped the edge of her pencil on the desk, not really paying attention.
"Now before we begin today's lesson there's good news that has actually just been announced a few minutes ago regarding the disease that has been hitting our country as of late." Rose's head snapped up.
"They announced just this morning that an immunization has been developed, tested and is now ready for public use." The entire class gasped. They had been trying to develop a working immunization for the better part of twenty years.
"The school will be responsible for the immunization of all of you, so it's imperative that no one misses school next week. Eighth graders will be immunized on tuesday with the freshman.
"What's going to happen to the rest of them?" Rose found herself asking. The entire class turned around in their seats.
"You know, the ones already in Haven."
The teacher gave her a stern look. Rose's heart was pounding, Haven was a taboo subject nowadays, with nearly everyone knowing the horrific living conditions but no one doing anything about it. The fact that there was hardly any research for a cure to the disease was an indicator that the government, almost like a small child, preferred to shove a problem out of sight rather than deal with it.
"I urge you to take that up with our local representative," The teacher said stiffly. "I believe they are already debating what to do with those left in the cities."
The teacher turned back to the class and started talking about the lesson plans for the day. Rose stared down back at her desk, trying to ignore the whispers that floated in her direction.
"Yeah that's her….her friends were the ones taken…."
"...oh no way! Do you think she's infected too?"
"...she can't talk about it like that…."
The rest of the class passed quickly, and afterwards Rose walked at a brisk pace down the hallway to find Dave standing next to her locker.
"You heard?" She asked.
"Yeah. We should leave. I want to see what's actually going on." Rose nodded and grabbed her backpack out of the locker. The walked swiftly down the hallway, out the double doors and skirted quickly out of view, heading down the street on the way to Dave's apartment just as the bell for second period rang.