Dad dropped me off at the front of the school. I only counted four other cars nearby. The school was huge. Three stories high, from what I could tell. Before the Cloud, I figured, this place would have hosted many generations of students living in the area. And nowadays? I eyed the stillness of the school and the parking lot. There could be no measurable student body. Who would attend?
The sight above the front doors read, "Greene County High School." Vaguely, I could make out people's muffled chatter from the inside.
Going up to the dark green front doors, I pushed one open and casually walked in.
The intense white hallway lights hurt my eyes. When I looked down to ease my blurry vision, I raised my eyebrows at the pristine hallways—janitors had been going out of business because people cared little about cleaning public buildings that were barely in use. Maybe if college fell through, I could work here with chemicals and mops. Sounded better than braving the nearly sightless world outside.
The first door I came across, to my right, led into a large hold full of dogs, cats, and native birds in crates and cages stacked up to the ceiling in multiple rows. Now, this wasn't the most vocal bunch of animals I had encountered. My dogs were all talkative, what with two being huskies and one being a smaller yet feistier dachshund. But they made a musky odor fill the room, so I could consider this bunch to be the smelliest.
Practicing med students stood around, looking at charts, and at the crated animals' displayed symptoms, taking notes and chatting among themselves. One snow-white husky began to howl, which made a handful of other dogs join in for a little less than a minute.
My exam wasn't supposed to take place in this room.
It didn't take me long to realize what was going on here. All of these animals were being tested for Selene-Corpus sickness, an illness I was familiar with, having researched it extensively that previous semester for my senior project. I wanted to be a veterinarian ... although, I doubted I would follow through with that career plan, given how much the world had changed in around four years. Priorities, right? Mine had to align with everyone else's, or else I may as well kiss my already pathetic social life goodbye. At this point, the only motivation I had to pursue being a vet was this very phenomenon being studied in front of me.
One of my huskies, Isabel, had recovered from the strange disease that people were also susceptible to. Some symptoms were permanent, but most of the hazardous ones weren't. But an actual cure was yet to arise. Sometimes it naturally went away, like in Isabel's case, but most of the time people and animals were stuck with it, and there would come no mitigation of symptoms.
Supposedly, with humans, the most susceptible to Selene-Corpus were the very young and very old. Basically, those on their way out, and those that were born after the Cloud. Symptoms were epilepsy, delusions, hallucinations, hysteria, vitiligo—this could eventually reflect albinism, which impacts the whole body and not merely the eyes, patches of skin, or hair—and a few other inexplicable traits. That's what intrigued me—how a bizarre array of traits that wouldn't typically have any link to each other make a comorbid display in so many living beings.
Some religious groups considered those with this disease to be touched by the so-called "divine hand."
I didn't believe that. Frankly, I saved little room in my heart for divinity or God.
Maybe it was the divorce or the Cloud, but darkness clouded my interior as much as it fucked with the environment around me: it was too dark inside me to buy into messages like that. With so little to see, I could only rely on what I could hear and feel. At least, I could feel my hand grasp a pencil or my dogs' fur whenever I'd run my hands along their backs.
As a little boy, I had bought into a world of light. But now, I needed the tangible. Not just for my sanity but my survival.
"Are you here for the exam, miss ... mister?" A young woman appeared from the hallway, wearing a red plaid skirt beneath a white lab coat tapped on my shoulder. I looked at her, stepping away from the dog-smelling rehab room. She had on thick black glasses, and her dark brown hair rested in a neat braid behind her head.
I pressed my lips together, first processing the "miss," which she so graciously corrected to "mister," then the fact that she looked like she'd come out of a sexy magazine and not a college classroom ... At least, not from how I pictured college.
"Oh, yeah, that's what I'm here for," I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. "Where's it being held?"
"Down the hallway." She smiled without showing her teeth.
Her sexy appearance aside, I had to wonder if she was like my dad, in need of dental care. If that was the case, that was rather unfortunate. But, while I didn't find peoples' suffering funny, the situational irony of an attractive woman having completely crooked teeth did bring a smile to my face. "What room is it in?" I asked, trying to suppress my cynical sense of humor. "Do you know?"
"Room 166." When she answered this, I caught a glimpse of her teeth ... and they were perfectly normal. Good for her.
"Okay. Thanks."
Shrugging off the fact that she had thought I was a girl, probably because of my long, straight black hair, I shoved my hands into my Khaki pockets and headed down the hall. A line of fifty-some students waited to sign in at a table set up by the testing room. I had made sure to bring my wallet in my front pocket for a photo ID. I also checked myself for my three sharpened #2 pencils.
Oh no.
I could have sworn I'd brought them. I patted every pocket. No pencils.
"I left them in the car ..."
Heart beginning to race, I whispered to myself.
"Don't panic, Kevin …"
"Are you okay?"
Turning to look at the source of that familiar voice, I met Liza's pretty face. Despite how pale she had turned out of the lack of sunshine, a pink glow always brightened her cheeks. She wore her thick blonde hair in a long braid, and she'd painted on violet eye shadow to emphasize the blackish-brown of her irises.
My heart fluttered at the sight of her. For as long as I could remember, she'd had that effect on me. Childhood friendships like ours tended to lead to long-term relationships. Romantic, usually. I think that was where my faith had landed: I hoped to have a relationship with her one day, but she was yet to come to that same conclusion.
"Didn't know you'd show up right after me." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a sharpened pencil, smiling playfully as she handed it to me. I took it with a blush, then said, embarrassed, "Did you hear me talking to myself?"
"We-e-ell, someone dropped this by the front door. I picked it up, in case that someone was you. I'm glad I assumed you'd lose yours."
"This must be the second time I've lost my pencils in front of you." I poked the eraser to my forehead, feeling stupid yet relieved. "I take it your mom dropped you off."
"Yessir, my mom, and the rest of the bunch."
"All your brothers and sisters?"
"Unfortunately. She likes to get them out of the house, but seven AM is early for them. Early for me, too." Covering her mouth with her hand, she let out a big yawn. "I didn't get enough sleep, but I'm not worried about doing poorly. I've got these state exams covered. You're freaking out, aren't you?"
"Not as much as I've freaked out in the past." I chuckled, thinking about all the times she had to comfort me after a near panic attack brought on by exams. "My testing anxiety decreased when I realized test scores don't matter nearly as much as they had before the Cloud."
She contemplated this, then nodded. "That's fair. My pride wishes it wasn't true, but knowing you, I'm glad that's the case."
A semi-insult, for me being a perpetual dumb-ass. Oh well, this was always our way of communicating, back when we still lived within walking distance of each other, and I could easily pop two houses over and see her. But after her mom moved her family across town, followed by the complete loss of sunlight, Dad banned me from walking the new three miles to her house in this darkness.
Four and a half years had passed since I could walk around freely, without a real sense of fear. But the darkness created by the Cloud seemed to drag out the worst of mankind and the most frightful spirits from the shadows ... I wasn't safe walking alone outside, nor was anyone else.
But maybe dad would let me once I moved out? I mean, he wouldn't be able to stop me then ...
Then again, if I ever became desperate enough to escape home, I don't think anyone, or anything, no matter how evil, could stop me.