Survival of the Clueless

Outbreak

1

March 18, 2017,

Marceline sat in a plastic yellow seat, twirling her pencil in math class, boring as ever, learning about fractions and cross multiplying. Her best friend, Victoria sat next to her, in a plastic yellow seat identical to Marceline's. She was chewing on the back of her pencil, staring blankly at the white board. Marceline turned her head to look behind her at Jack, he looked pale and sick, his veins were almost too visible, and his skin had taken on a yellowish hue that was amplified by the dirty yellow of his plastic chair. He looked like he was on the verge of throwing up. The class seats worked like this: there were five rows , each row consisting of five yellow chairs partnered with small dingy looking desks. Three of the desks were empty, all three in the fifth and final column. Marceline sat in the third row, one empty chair next to her and Victoria sitting to her right. The fourth row held Jack's seat, a girl named Anna Goodwin sat to his left and Brian Dirk to his right.

Marceline found her eyes being drawn toward Anna who had started scooting her chair away from Jack, presumably hoping to avoid the throw up that was, by the looks of Jack, not far from happening. Marceline looked back at the whiteboard and sighed, why cant it be Friday, she thought as she rested her elbow on the table and laid her head in her hand. She was drifting into a daydream about flying when she heard a thud come from behind her. She turned to see Jack's head laying face first on his desk. He looked cold and dead, and you could tell he was lifeless just by looking at him, it was petrifying. Mrs. Evans' moved towards the desk where Jack lay motionless. Endless minutes passed with the entire class watching her try to move Jack, and then frantically trying to call the office.

2

It was no secret to Patricia Evans that less than two thirds of her class cared about the days lecture, but that didn't stop her from teaching it. It was her job, a job she once loved but now only kind of hated. She was not ten minutes into giving the students a very thorough explanation of cross multiplication when she heard the thud. It seemed disproportionately loud in the quiet of the classroom where the only sound had been the drone of her own voice. The entire class looked back to see, Jack, a student who had been looking a bit off color that morning, with his head on his desk. Mrs. Evan's looked around the room, the children were suddenly quite interested in what was happening. This was probably the most attention Mrs. Evans' class had paid in the last six months of her lectures. Mrs. Evans would have rolled her eyes thinking about this later, if there had been a later, but right now she needed to see to this student. The panic crept in as she quickly discovered Jack was quite clearly dead. A student, one of HER students was unresponsive. The office was not picking up, the nurse was not answering her line. Mrs. Evans moved swiftly back to her desk, she was nothing if not efficient, and she had there all of the students files with their parents names and emergency contacts. It was not common for a teacher to call the parent of a child unless it was about academics, but this situation was not usual. And really, she was feeling a little out of control. A place for everything and everything in its place! That was her motto. Where were all of her superiors. She had to take matters into her own hands, it was the only option. She could hear the students muttering questions to each other "What do you think happened? Do you think he's sleeping? Maybe dehydrated? Or maybe this is all a hoax!" Their whispers swirled around her head as she pulled Jack's file out of the drawer. She opened the thin folder dragging her finger down the page titled Emergency Contacts. As her finger landed on the number to Jack's mother, she sensed movement. She looked up from the file, her hand reaching for the telephone that sat on her desk, she thought she saw Jack's body move slightly. Her hand hung in the air, hovering above the handset, yes he was moving! Thank you LORD! She aborted her plan to call his mother and moved hastily toward Jack's desk.