A/N: Thanks for the reviews. Hope you like this chapter.

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TOM'S POV:

When he heard his mother call up to him from the stairs to tell him to get ready for school, Tom had already been awake quite a while.

He just couldn't gather up the strength to get out of bed.

He was shivering, yet he felt like he was burning. His entire body ached. He knew that could only mean he had a fever.

Crap...I feel sick...But I don't wanna miss school...

Eventually his mother came upstairs expecting her son to be all ready for school, but instead finding him still lying in bed with a fever of one-hundred and two.

"You're staying home, Thomas Collins," his mother announced.

Tom opened his mouth to protest—but then his eyes widened, and he covered his mouth and ran into the bathroom instead.

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MAUREEN'S POV:

"MOMMY! You cannot possibly send me to school in this condition!" Maureen Johnson stormed down the stairs into the kitchen. She only called her mother 'mommy' when she really wanted something. And she really wanted to stay home from school that day.

Mrs. Johnson looked up from her coffee. "My goodness, Maureen, your face is all flushed!" She walked over to touch her daughter's forehead.

"Usually you're over-dramatic about being sick, sweetie, but you've really got a fever this time!" she said.

Maureen sighed dramatically. "I feel icky. Do I have to go to school?"

"Not with a fever!"

"Goody! Now I get to watch TV!" she started to run towards the TV but then paused.

"Whadaya mean, over-dramatic!"

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MARK'S POV:

Mark Cohen had a feeling that he'd caught the flu that had been going around. It was the last week of November and that was usually when everyone started getting sick. He shivered and pulled the covers up around him. He couldn't keep this from his mother...headaches, he could lie about. And he did have headache—along with a cold, a cough, most likely a fever, and a horrible feeling of nausea. He definitely wasn't going to school that day.

He made an attempt to get up out of bed, he put his glasses on. As soon as he did so, he began to feel dizzy and fell right onto the floor.

Nice going, Mark, he thought, You're sick, and now you're gonna get a bump on your head to add to the ailments...Mom's gonna flip out.

Sure enough: "Mark Cohen! What are you doing on the floor! Your face is flushed! What happened? Oh, dear, are you sick? Oh my...You're going to stay home today, young man!"

Mark sighed. Great.

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MIMI'S POV:

"Whoa, where is everyone?" Mimi asked. They were standing outside in the schoolyard. So far, only Roger and Mimi had shown up that morning out of their group of friends.

"Dunno..." Roger muttered. "They all ditched us, I guess."

Mimi laughed. "Yeah, right." She inched a little closer to him. "It's cold, huh?"

"Yeah...yeah, dude, it's really cold."

"Roger, don't call me 'dude'. I'm a girl," Mimi said. Roger looked up at her and shrugged.

"Sorry...it's a habit. And I know you're a girl."

She looked him in the eye. "Then treat me like one." She shivered. "God, I wish I brought my gloves!"

There was a moment of silence. "Here," Roger pulled his mittens out of his pocket. "You can use mine, 'kay?"

Mimi gingerly took the mittens from his hands and put them on. They were a little big, but warm all the same.

"Thanks," she said quietly.

" 'Welcome, Mimi."

She was happy that he used her name instead of 'dude'.

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ROGER'S POV:

Only four out of the seven friends ended up coming to school that day.

"Does anyone else besides me find this really weird? I mean, having only four of us sitting here and all?" Joanne asked, sipping her soda as they sat in the cafeteria.

Angel raised his hand. "I do."

"Dude, can I have one of those crackers?" Roger asked, turning towards Angel. He took one from him before Angel could protest.

"Um...I was gonna say you could have one anyway, Rog," Angel said, shaking his head and popping a cracker into his mouth.

Roger blinked. "Sorry."

There was a long moment of silence.

"If Maureen was here, there'd be a lot more noise than this," Mimi muttered. Angel laughed.

Joanne let out a sigh. "Um, guys, since it's just the four of us...I gotta tell you something," she said.

Mimi leaned across the table. "Is it gossip? Tell!"

Roger rolled his eyes and Angel leaned into the table as well.

"I...have a crush on...someone."

"Who!" Mimi cried.

Joanne took a deep breath. "Tom."

Mimi let out a little squeal and Angel smirked. Roger burst out laughing.

"Don't tell him!" Joanne said quickly.

"We won't," Roger said.

"Promise?"

"Promise," Mimi, Angel, and Roger said in unison.

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ANGEL'S POV:

"Angelo!" A booming voice rang through the ears of Angel Schunard, sending chills down his spine. He was sitting in his room doing his homework. He hated when his father interrupted him while he was studying.

"Yeah, dad?" he called out from his desk.

Thump, thump, thump... He heard his father coming up the stairs. Angel gulped. This couldn't mean anything good. He turned around to see his father standing there in front of him. Mr. Schunard towered over Angel, looking him right in the eye.

"Phone call for you," he said calmly.

Angel blinked. He had expected much more than that. But he was quite relieved. He ran as fast as he could down the stairs and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" he said into the phone.

"Hi," said a stuffy voice on the other line. Then a congested sniff.

Angel thought for a moment, and then recognized who it was. "Tom! Hi! I heard you're sick...there's the flu goin' around."

A sneeze. "Yeah. I called Mark for a question on our homework assignments that my mom picked up for me from the school office...and found out that he's sick too. And so is Maureen. So I wanted to know if you got the page of the book we have to do for the Math assignment. Mrs. Wright didn't give it to me."

"Yeah, I got it, it's page four-hundred and seven," Angel said.

"Thanks," Tom replied. Cough. Sneeze. Cough again.

Angel frowned. "You sound really sick..."

"I am," said Tom, sighing. "Anyway, how are you? Like, is your dad bothering you again at all? I mean, I know the whole thing happened weeks ago but..."

"I'm fine. He's been...nicer to me," Angel replied. He could almost hear his best friend's smile on the other line.

"That's good." Another sneeze. "Crap, my mom's making me get off the phone...before I go, anything exciting happen today that I should know about?"

Besides the fact that Joanne Jefferson revealed that she likes you? "No, not really."

"Okay. Well thanks for the info, I'll see you when I get back to school, which probably won't be for a little while. Bye."

"Bye!" He hung up the phone, only to find out that the phone was ringing again.

"Hello?"

"Angel? It's Maureen. Ugh, in case you didn't know, I was home sick today, and I wanted to know the page number for the math assignment..."

Angel sighed. It was definitely going to be a long night of hearing sneezes and coughing on the phone line.