Cellular

Lohan I

[Flashback]

"Your father was hurt in the invasion. Um, h-he didn't m-make it."

It takes him a moment to process that.

His dad is dead.

Gone. Forever.

He'll never be able to look up at his father as he reads Lohan stories from the Pupil Observatory. 

He'll never hear his father say "You're the bestest son in the whole world."

"Dad, bestest isn't a word!"

His thoughts are cut off  as Leigh emits a heart wrenching sob.

He feels tears slide down his face.

Leigh gets up from the couch and floats up to their shared bedroom.

Lohan follows her by default. 

That night, he barely gets any sleep as he and Leigh hold each other and cry.

He hears his mother cry too.

[End of Flashback]

"Lohan!"

Leigh jolts him awake.

"Mom said we should come down. There's someone she wants us to meet."

He pretends not to hear the distaste in her tone.

"Is it some sort of present, or-"

"No, you dolt. Come on, get up. Let's go see what she's talking about."

A few days ago, he and Leigh had become the cell equivalent of fourteen. 

So sue him for thinking about presents.

Leigh pushes him off his bed and drags him down to the living room. Their mother is there, with some guy, a white blood cell by the looks of him.  A bitter taste fills his mouth as his mother introduces him as Will. It doesn't take a nerve cell to realize that this is a new boyfriend.

The guy smiles. He looks friendly enough, but Lohan feels overwhelmed by the sudden urge to get away  from him.

He glances at Leigh, and she has a slightly horrified look on her face.

It makes him better about his own feelings.

Their mother smiles nervously, searching their faces.

"So, why don't you guys get acquainted?" she asks, slowly moving away.

"No." Leigh says, looking at Will like he's something particularly nasty. " Lohan, come on. We're going out."

He feels torn. One the one hand, he doesn't want to 'get acquainted' with Will, but on the other hand he wants make his mom happy. 

But he also doesn't want to make Leigh angry.

"Um, okay." 

She grabs his hand and they float out of their house. His mother sighs resignedly and invites Will to have some ice cold glucose in the kitchen.

They don't get that far from the house when Leigh's friend, Leni barrels into them.

"LEIGH! You'll never guess- hey what's wrong? You look like you just had a conversation with an amygdala."

"It's fine. What were you saying?"

Leni looks at her weird before continuing.

"Well,  since there hasn't been an attack in like, ages, Rae is allowing lung cells to like, leave the lungs!"

Rae is the head cell of the heart. She and Nolan, the head nerve cell run the whole body.

Anyway.

The fact that Rae is allowing lung cells to leave must mean that everywhere is safe.

Because lung cells are like the king on a chessboard. So very important, and yet so very weak.

Lohan leaves them to talk and darts up towards the pupil observatory, like he's always wanted to. The Pupil Observatory is where cells can see the outside world. 

He greets the Head of the Optic Nerve Corps before entering. 

He steps over rods and cones and sees light for the first time. In the body, especially the lungs, it's dark, and the only light is from the tiny machine things that the platelets made.

His dad had seen light before. He'd described it as warm and happy, and now  Lohan understood what he'd meant.

He steps further towards it, and then he makes out images.

The human is sitting at a table with her friends. A glow passes above Lohan's head as a squad of endorphins and dopamine hormones rushes towards the brain. Then the human does a weird loud thing with her mouth, and her eyes scrunch up so the light reduces.

Oh, right. He wants to smack himself.

She is laughing.

He watches some more, as her friends do the same thing.

Briefly he wonders what Leigh is doing. Oh well, he thinks. She's probably off somewhere with Leni and the others. He fixes his attention on the scene before him again. Someone says something and a glow passes above his head again.

He sighs happily. He can definitely get used to this.