The school then made a mistake. It didn't realize what it was doing at the time. If it had let Jenna be, I wouldn't have noticed, but it felt obliged to quench any small seed of revolution it felt springing up inside it. Jenna had a big imagination, and was a stronger telepath than anyone else in the school. That's what I told myself afterward… I mean, I've always known that, haven't I? I once heard my mother say that people like Jenna told lies not because they wanted to, but because they needed attention, and that it wasn't their fault. I assumed that it wasn't important, and resigned myself to hear more and more about this imagined conspiracy of Jenna's. That was why our next conversation surprised me. I'm totally rambling, I'm so nervous, but please bear with me.
I met Jenna in the cafeteria with Fiona. It was two days later. The first day I hadn't had any classes with Jen, but the second day her, Fiona and I had English together, and she hadn't been there. I walked up behind her.
"Hi Jen."
"Hi, want a drink?"
I sat down next to her. She looked very tired, and her eyes were swirled with green, a sure sign of worry.
"No thanks, so" I asked casually "where you abducted by aliens yesterday, or was it a government plot?" She looked at me sleepily, and asked me what I was talking about.
"You know!" I joked. "You were absent yesterday, so now you know first hand what is happening!"
She informed me very curtly that she had had the flu, and that I shouldn't be so silly, after all, I was a senior student and I shouldn't be putting ideas of conspiracies into the heads of the first years. I walked out of the cafeteria without finishing my lunch. I was hurt that my friend had been so mean about a subject she had been so interested in.
Only then I began to wonder about why my Jenna, who wanted to be a journalist, had dropped her topic, and what the absences actually meant, but all thoughts of impending doom were driven from my head by the thought of my math test next period. I still wasn't too worried, though, which probably saved me.
The next day I missed school. I have memories of being queasy, and deciding to go back to sleep, but I'm not sure if they are actually mine or not. I only know that Jenna must not have told the teachers that she had actually confided her suspicions to anyone, because I woke up the day after with those thoughts intact. I guess I was lucky.