DISCONTINUED

Chapter 22

Luna slouched low in her seat, staring at droplets of water that ran diagonally down the window of the bus. The sky was a flat, depressing grey and the incessant, soaking rain left her constantly chilled. It was a typical "liquid sunshine" day in the Pacific Northwest.

They drove past a single tall scraggly tree on top of a hill shrouded in mist. The creepy tree was full of screaming crows. How could she hear them from inside the bus when she couldn't even seem to hear the voices of the kids around her? Geez, that was an awfully freaking dark image. She shivered and looked away. What did they call a group of crows again? Right, a murder of crows. Perfect.

The weather was certainly the only thing that was typical these days, although you'd never know it by looking around the bus at most of the kids as they sat joking and gossiping with each other just like they had before... before that day everything had changed. Idiots. She glared at the kid who had turned to yell over her to someone at the back.

After the announcement and the initial period of house confinement, unbelievably things had kind of just "carried on". It seemed insane, but that's essentially what happened. Sure, there had been some opposition, fairly significant in both frequency and magnitude at first, but it just resulted in mass executions or "discontinuances" as they'd come to be known, and a bunch of dead bodies really has a way of getting people's attention.

Luna stared back out thewindow. First her Mom, then Mack and now all of this, whatever "this" was. Itwas just too much. Her whole world had turned greyscale, as if she now saw andexperienced everything through the depressing, crushing weight of a greyfilter. She rested her head against the window and closed her eyes.