Expiration Date

Prologue ; When Things Were Normal

Math was absolutely kicking her ass. She was normally pretty decent at this kind of stuff, with her mum being a teacher and all. She'd known how to count up to 100 by the time she was five, this worksheet was stuff her class had been going over for weeks. So why couldn't she get the right answers?

Elia slammed her clenched fist against the table in anger, her pencil nearly snapping in half with the sheer force of how tight her fingers were wrapped around it. A strange, but presumably frustrated, noise escaped her throat and she nearly tore this stupid paper in half. She would if Miss Monroe wasn't standing three tables away from hers.

She practically slammed her forehead onto the wooden desk, and pulled her arms over her head. Stupid, fucking numbers. Numbers can kiss my ass. If she'd said that out loud, there's no chance she wouldn't have been sent out the class.

During her moping session, she hadn't noticed someone coming up behind her. A gentle hand on her shoulder shook her out of it temporarily. Elia jumped in surprise and snapped her head back, probably giving her whiplash with how quickly she did it. God, she prayed that it wasn't her teacher. But to her fortune, it was just her classmate, a kid called Wren who she shared an English class with. She didn't know much about them, and honestly didn't care to find out. According to her friend, Heidi, they were a bit of a prat and enjoyed being a teachers pet a little too much.

Heidi grumbled a bit and wiped at her face. "You need something, or are you going to let me complain in peace?" She asked them, grumpy and stressed. She just wanted to be annoyed in peace. Wren only smiled shyly. "Yeah, sorry for bothering you, Elia, but Miss Monroe walked off with my pencil when she was marking my work with it, and I was wondering if I could borrow one of yours? I'll give it back at the end, I promise." Elia cocked her eyebrow. I thought Wren was supposed to be an asswipe she thought to herself. But she shrugged. "Sure."

Elia turned back around and dug around her bag. After shoving aside a few notebooks and a stray water bottle, she finally scooped out a blue mechanical pencil from the bottom. She handed it over to the awaiting Wren, who took it thankfully. "Thanks, Elia. You're a life saver." Wren smiled at her gratefully and spun around on their heel, trodding over to the back of the classroom.

Elia huffed and looked back down at the uncompleted paper. She let out a wail of despair and could have sworn she heard Wren laugh.

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The minute the bell had gone off, Elia snatched her bag up and legged it out of there. She prayed that Miss Monroe wouldn't call her back into the classroom. Luckily she didn't hear anything and proceeded. Elia weaved around the bodies of students like a snake and dodged the flailing limbs and bags. A seniors arm grazed the top of her ponytail, but apart from that, she made it out of the crowd just fine. She pushed open the courtyard doors with her shoulder and hopped down the steps, making a beeline for the lunch bench underneath the sycamore tree.

Mars and Heidi were already there. Heidi was talking away as per usual, making violet hand gestures as she nattered on to get the story through to her partner, who was only half listening and chewing away on their sandwich. During her storytelling, Heidi's eyes flickered to Elia and a giant smile formed across her face. She pushed her self up from the bench chair and waved her arm around dramatically, calling out to her friend. "Oh, Eliiiiiiiii." She cooed with a smirk on her face.

Mars tried to swat her hand down, but Heidi only grinned down at them. She wouldn't shut up and to prevent further embarrassment, Elia had to almost tackle her friend down onto the ground when she got close enough. Heidi cackled cheerfully and wrapped her slender arms around her friend, pulling the smaller girl down for a hug.

"Finally!! Took you long enough!" Mars got out their seat to pry Elia away from Heidi and the three quickly reorganised themselves at their bench. Elia sat next to Mars and across from Heidi, who had gone back to their story and her two friends rolled their eyes playfully.

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"BREAKING NEWS! Highly infectious disease has spread over to California. Please stay inside, wash your hands and most importantly, stay safe."

Elia could feel a lump of worry form in her stomach as the restaurants radio blared through from the kitchens. She looked back at Heidi and Mars, who were sat next to her in the booth. The three always came to Livvy's on a Thursday after school, and always sat in the same exact booth and ordered the same exact things. The staff knew their routine off by heart.

Mars had put their phone down onto the table and looked at their hands, thinking about god knows what. Heidi could tell that whatever they were thinking about, wasn't a good thing. So she wrapped her long fingers gently around her partners wrist and brought their hand up to her mouth, gently kissing their knuckles. Mars had always been worried about this virus that had been spreading recently. The minute that they had caught wind of it, back when it started in February, they had been on high alert. Heidi and Elia both assured them that it would be fine, that it wouldn't come to their little town and even if it did, everything would be okay. It did little to sooth their friends nerves.

Heidi made her partner look at her, her soft hand cupping her partners cheek gently. "Please, sweetheart. It's gonna be fine, I'm almost positive that it'll fly past in no time." She ran her finger over Mars' cheek comfortingly, not saying much after that.

Elia nodded in agreement. "Mars, don't worry, dude. I doubt it's anything serious. Look, there's our food coming." All three teens turned around at that and even Mars let a small smile come over their face at the sight of their usual waitress, a woman named Elisia, approaching the table with a tray of food in her arms. She grinned brightly at the sight of the kids. "Nice to see ya'! How was school?" Elisia was an easy person to get along with, she was a chipper woman who was always making sure her customers were doing well.

Heidi took her chocolate milkshake from the tray and drank from the straw for a second, before answering. "Horrible, per usual. I tried faking being sick to get out of doing P.E, but Mr Lang's a bitch and said that if i could stand on my own two legs, that i was perfectly fine. Wait until one of these days, i actually am sick and throw up all over his disgusting track suit." She mumbled the last part and took another sip of her milkshake, but Elisia still heard and let out one of her infamous cackles.

As Elisia slipped Elia's burger towards her, she brought up the one thing they were just trying to forget. "God, i can't believe that virus is finally here. Awful, isn't it? Well, it's expected with our cunt of a president. Don't tell Jeremy i said that.'

The edge of Mars' lips curled up at the last part. Elisia was also very famous for her love of trash-talking, and the president wasn't excluded from that.

"But don't you kids worry, you're still young and even if you do get it, you'll be perfectly fine. I heard it isn't too bad for healthy kids like ya'selves."

God, did Elia wish she was right.