The Fever

12

Friday

It was maybe five, the light looked like five, but without his phone, Eli had no idea.

There was a freedom in it.

It was warmer than in months, as if the temperature had risen during the night, and the bike ride through town felt delirious and wonderful.

His hand kept reaching for his pocket, the phantom buzz.

But nothing.

Maybe he’d never have a phone again.

He was nearly to school before he remembered everything from the night before, all the beer and ruminations and sinking to drunken sleep on the floor of the den, carpet burn on his face.

When he walked in the locker room, everything was unusually quiet. No clattering sticks or ripping tape or the low din of players rousing themselves to life.

But he could hear something, the tinny sound of someone’s computer speakers, a soft voice and panting.

“…my tongue is tingling, like, all the time. If you could see…”

He knew this was going to mean another speech from Coach about how important it was not to degrade women’s bodies because what if they were your mothers, or your sisters.

“…something in my throat. And it’s getting bigger…”

When he reached the last bank of lockers, he saw seven, eight players huddled around Mark Pulaski’s laptop, transfixed. A.J. was grinning and shaking his head. A.J. was always grinning and shaking his head.

“Get a load, Nash. Get a fucking load of this.”

There was a stutter and hiss as the video began again.

It was the latest girl, that Kim girl, glowing from the light of her own computer screen.

Panting noisily, like her tongue was too big for her mouth, she couldn’t seem to quite catch her breath. Her face looked wet, her eyes ringed vampire-brown and her mouth slickly red.

It was dark all around her, but you could see the green fluorescence of some light somewhere, the hospital corridor.

And she was talking straight into the camera, her phone.

Her words soft and slow and dreamlike.

“Hey, everybody, I know you’re all probably worried about me and I wanted to let you know how I’m doing since it happened.”

Breathing, breathing.

“I’m still at the hospital. They won’t let me go.”

Her fingers reached up to that glossy mouth.

“My tongue is tingling, like, all the time, and this side feels like it’s got a lot of pressure and it’s hard to keep my eye open on this side. It feels like this side of my face is slipping from me. I just feel really bad.”

She started clearing her throat, and once she started it was like she couldn’t stop

“But most of all it’s here,” she said, clawing at her neck. “It feels like there’s something in my throat. And it’s getting bigger.”

A scraping sound came from her mouth as she pushed her face closer to the camera, the lens distorting everything, fish-eyeing her.

When she opened her mouth, those teeth, enormous and iron-girded, were blue.

“I’m sure you’re hearing lots of things. About what’s happening. Let me tell you: No one here wants to know the truth. That’s why they won’t let me go.”

Suddenly, as if she had heard something, a muffled sound too fast to recognize, Kim flinched, her eyes jumping to her left, pupils gleaming.

There was a long, long pause, her face palsied. Eli felt something even in his own chest: What did she hear? See?

Then her face turned slowly to the camera again, her throat a death rattle.

“But there’s other girls out there. And they have it. Maybe ones you can’t even tell. Who knows how many of us?”

“I know it by heart,” A.J. said, leaping onto one of the benches. “Brooke and her sister were watching it all night.”

“‘There’s other girlth out there,’” he slurred, his tongue hanging from the corner of his mouth. “‘Who knowth how many of us?’”

Eli looked back at the screen, Kim’s face caught. Beneath, there were 624 likes and dozens of comments: oh, kim, be strong! kim, i’ve been feeling weird too, did u faint when you got the shot? Young lady: this is demonic possession. You can read about it in the New Testament. The solution is to find a True Man of God who can cast the demon out. Receiving Christ can cure you. Blessings to you and your family!

Eli fixed his eyes on the screen. It reminded him, in some obscure way, of those girls at the games, the younger ones who came in groups and banded behind the Plexiglas, bap-bap-bapping with open palms or the bottoms of their fists, their mouths sprung wide, their tongues between their teeth. Me. Me. Me.

“I don’t…” Eli started. “Is she wearing makeup?” He was trying to figure something out.

“Maybe she’ll get her own reality show,” A.J. said. “Kim’s Wrecked World. My Toxic Sweet Sixteen.”

“And she didn’t say anything about the shots,” Eli said, just realizing it. “About the vaccine.”

Mark Pulaski turned around to face Eli.

“You think she’s faking it?” he said, his voice breaking. “Did you see her? My sister got her first shot last week. She woke up from a nap yesterday and couldn’t turn her head. She’s fucking eleven years old.”

Eli looked at him, not knowing what to say.

“Just because your sister’s bouncing around the school while all her friends are fucking dying, man. Your sister…” Mark’s voice trailed off. “Jesus, man.”

Eli watched Mark for a second, and everyone else watched Eli. He felt A.J.’s fist tap his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Eli said. “Sorry, man.”

He turned back to the computer screen, the big arrow over Kim’s face, trembling.

Her backpack on her lap, Deenie talked to him the entire ride to school.

For the first miles, Tom let himself enjoy it. It felt almost like before, maybe a few years ago, when she always seemed to be bursting with giddy, nervous animation. Dad, Dad, wait, listen, Dad, listen. Telling him about a book, a science project.

But all the itchy squirming in her seat now, it was like she was trying to rally herself to get through the day to come. Or else she just needed to keep talking because she was afraid of not talking. He wondered if she felt guilty for the night before, for staying out late with the car.

“Dad,” she said finally, after seven solid minutes about the algebra quiz, the rancid grilled cheese in the cafeteria, the stink of Eli’s gym bag, “what do you think will happen today?”

He looked at the road, the steam from the streets, the crazy late-winter heat wave that had landed, the temperatures rising above fifty-five degrees, and tried to think of something to say.

The school felt anarchic inside, like the time Paul Lozelle let a pair of chickens loose in the cafeteria, a prank that had been musty when Tom was in high school.

Everywhere he looked, there were long bands of girls in their colored minis and tights, ropes of them, like the friendship bracelets that covered their arms, their faces tense and watchful. And the boys, in their own swells of confusion and bravado, stood apart, almost like in middle school, elementary school. Like they were suddenly afraid to get too close. Though maybe that was how they always were and he’d never noticed.

The teachers, in turn, were either spring-loaded, grasping their dry-erase markers like emergency flares, or slouched against doorways, filled with louche contempt.

Walking toward his classroom, its familiar formaldehyde smell, he tried to imagine how any of them were going to make it to three o’clock without spontaneously combusting.

A free first period, he spent a half hour in the dark auditorium, drinking coffee and watching one of the custodians trying to buff away the scratch marks the EMS gurney had left on the stage.

He couldn’t stop himself from walking past Deenie’s ancient civ class. She was in the back, so he had to move very close to the door to see her, but there she was, pen in mouth, brow tightly triangled.

It was when he finally stopped by the teachers’ lounge to check his e-mail that he saw June Fisk and her chubby-cheeked teacher’s aide gaping at the monitor, their mouths open.

On the screen, Kim Court’s blue-lit face.

“It’s not the only one,” June said, rolling a chair toward him. “I’ve heard there’s another one. Maybe more.”

Tom watched it three times, silently.

He thought of Deenie sitting in that classroom and wondered if she’d watched it too, and what she’d thought.

Back to hospital today for more tests, Gabby’s text read.

It felt a little like the days the orchestra went to regionals—no Lise, no Gabby at school. Except now there weren’t even people like Kim, or Jaymie Hurwich, who would always quiz Deenie before a test, her fingers always on her tablet, her flying-flash-cards app, her virtual periodic table.

And Skye was nowhere in sight.

Deenie wondered if she and Gabby were hidden away at Skye’s parentless house, playing music or reading tarot or whatever they did together. All their private conversations.

Maybe it was for the best that Gabby wasn’t there. It felt easier somehow.

Not having a phone at school didn’t matter at all. You couldn’t get reception most places, and you weren’t supposed to use it anyway.

But what Eli liked about it was that when someone asked him, “Why didn’t you text me back? Didn’t you hear about the plan?” he could say, “Sorry, I lost my phone.”

Except for the tickling sense in the back of his brain that there was something to it, that he might be missing something that mattered.

Like he’d felt after his mom left. All those days he’d walk past his parents’ bedroom and still smell her smell, like those shiny orange soap bars she used.

Since then, his clothes had never felt the same, not soft like before, and no one ever slapped the kitchen table when they laughed hard, and all the blue flowers by the side door were gone. They smelled like grape candy.

He wondered if Deenie, who never seemed to miss anything about their mom, ever missed any of those things. After she moved out, two days after Christmas, Deenie piled her gifts into a trash bag and threw it down the basement stairs. For months, they were down there, the bag striped with mold.

The sound of the second bell jarred him and he was surprised to see the halls were empty, except for one freshman girl at the far end, leaning against the blasted brick.

One arm hanging to her side, she was breathing loudly, just like Kim Court in the video.

“Hey,” he called out.

Her head flew up, scraping against the brick.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She didn’t move.

He started walking toward her, but before he’d taken three steps, she scurried away, off into some freshman-girl hiding place.

Sliding on his headphones, he began walking to fourth period.

As he approached the classroom, he saw another girl lurking, but this one didn’t seem sickly or afraid.

It was Skye Osbourne, wearing a long scarf the same color as her mouth, like those dark figs that hung from the tree by the practice rink every fall, the ones that split under your skates.

And this time it felt like she was looking for him.

“Ditch with me,” she said, nodding her head toward the double doors.

He stopped, headphones still on.

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, a slanting smile. “I’m pretty.”

Funnily, Eli wasn’t sure Skye was pretty.

If he saw her without all that hair, which looked like it’d been stripped from a corncob and massed thick, and without all the things she draped over and on top of herself, the scarves and snake rings and coiling bracelets, he wondered if he’d even recognize her at all.

“What’s the point of here,” she added, waving something in her hand, a joint, a white Bic.

What’s the point of here, he thought, looking at that fig mouth of hers.

Pushing through the doors swinging behind her, he stepped outside. The air felt hard, good.

There was a low rumble everywhere, even coming from his own classroom. The thrum of confusion, skidding sneakers, a girl’s lone yelp, a teacher trying to be heard.

He turned the corner and that’s when he saw them.

A long line, like the one to get your school ID photo taken, your yearbook portrait. To get your shots.

Except they were all girls. Ten, twelve, he guessed, more than a twenty wrapped around the hallway in groups and individually. Drooping against lockers, slumped on the floor, their legs flung out, doll-like, one in the middle of the corridor, spinning like a flower child.

Danielle Schultz, her right arm swinging like a baton every third second, synched to her own loud breaths.

Brandi Carruthers, junior-class treasurer and weekend beauty queen, her face streaked with a kind of gray sweat.

Two freshman girls who looked all of eleven grappling each other in that way very young girls do, as if the whole world were conspiring to ravage them.

“Pins and needles, pins and needles,” stallion-legged track star Tricia Lawson was saying, over and over again, rubbing her long limbs.

Even strapping Brooke Campos was there, tan as ever in her buttercup-yellow tank top, but holding her pelvis in a way that made Tom look away.

The line hooked down one hall and then bottlenecked at the administration office.

Inside, Mrs. Harris, a swath of hair matted to her forehead, was hoarsely calling for quiet, the nurse’s office door shut tight.

“He’s not here,” she whispered to Tom, nodding toward Crowder’s office.

“Oh?”

Leaning closer, smelling of Pall Malls and desperation, she added, “He had a seven a.m. meeting at Gem Donuts with the superintendent. He must still be with him.”

The door opened and Tom glimpsed two nurses and a badged woman from the health department, the back of her hand resting on her forehead and something unsettling in her eyes. Like a medic on his first day in-country.

Mrs. Harris tapped Tom’s shoulder, the phone in her hand.

“They want to talk to you,” she said.

“Who?”

“Are you Tom Nash?” the health department woman said, approaching him. “You were next on my list.”

“Your list?”

“We’d like to speak to your daughter.”

Standing in the breezeway, Deenie watched both the videos back to back on Julie Drew’s smeary phone.

First there was Kim, her face sparkly with makeup.

Kim. Kim, a chilly voice inside her said, this is the best thing that ever happened to you, isn’t it?

Kim, all your hard preening and social ambition has finally paid off. Forever craving attention, always the one dying to know the secret you don’t, to have the gossip first, waving it like a peacock fan. And to use that gossip as her golden ticket to the inner circle, or its starry center: Gabby.

Except. Except the Kim on YouTube didn’t quite seem like that Kim.

In spite of the makeup, the dramatic way she’d tilted the camera to hide her braces, there was something that felt very, intensely real about the Kim on the screen.

The fear hovering in her eyes.

And that moment when she looked off camera, as if she’d heard something.

The way her body had been loose and liquid and then, in an instant, turned stiff with fear and warning.

She seemed to be looking intently at something for a moment. Whatever it was, it made her stop everything, her face frozen, her red mouth open, those glistening night eyes of hers.

The video had had 850 views since it had been posted, at two in the morning.

But then there was the second video, Jaymie Hurwich, who hadn’t come to school that day.

Jaymie, Deenie’s number-one study pal, who never, ever missed school, who once came even with strep because of a geometry test. Who came even the day after her sister overdosed on ecstasy at college.

Behind her the baby blue of her bedroom, the zebra lampshade by her bed, Jaymie was talking, and moving.

Blinking hard, so hard it hurt to look at it.

And incessantly stroking her hair. First with her left hand, then her right. Smoothing it over and over, her fingers moving as though playing a harp.

The video header read: DON’T MAKE MY MISTAKE!

“I’m Jaymie. I’m sixteen and I live with my dad and I go to Dryden High and I love school and my friends and playing softball. I pretty much have a great life.”

Blinking rapidly, she let out a long sigh, tugging the fallen strap on her tank top.

“And I’m here to talk about the shots that changed my life forever.”

Deenie took the phone from Julie’s hand, pulling it closer.

“I’ve never done this before,” Jaymie was saying. “But I don’t know how else to deal with what’s happening! Two weeks ago, I had my first shot…”

Her fingers wiggled as if plucking her imaginary harp.

“I was okay for a few days. Then all this started happening,” she said, her hand twitching, like she wanted to stop stroking her hair but her hand wouldn’t let her.

“I kept quiet about it. But now I know I’m not the only one. You probably heard about Lise Daniels.”

Blinking, blinking like an LED. Deenie felt her own eyes twitching.

“So my dad saw what was happening to me. He went and looked it all up and found out about the shots. About what they did to us. He got so scared. I’ve never seen him so scared.”

She looked down, shaking her head, her fingers still wiggling in the air in front of her mouth, then grabbing at her hair, tearing at it.

“The doctor told us it was stress. There’s no way that’s true. There was nothing wrong in my life. I had the best grades in my class. I studied all the time. My dad treated me like a princess. My life was perfect. Until I got the shots.”

Suddenly, her eyes snapped shut, then shuddered open, as if she’d startled herself. Her hand flew to her mouth, sparkle nail polish flashing, her head jerking hard three times, then her eyes rolled back in their sockets.

A beat, then Jamie’s eyes landed on the camera again.

Her eyes wide with alarm.

“There was nothing wrong,” she said, breathless now. “Everything was perfect. There was nothing wrong.”

Shaking her head, looking down.

“I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

When it was over, Julie Drew wanted to watch both videos again. She said she’d heard there were more to watch, “lots more.” And she said this morning Jaymie’s dad had parked himself in front of some congressman’s district office and refused to leave until he got “some satisfaction.”

But I have nothing to do with Jaymie Hurwich, Deenie thought, walking to next period, her head fogged. All I ever did was study sometimes with her. We never shared anything. This one is nothing to me.

For thirty seconds, she felt a swell of relief.

But then both videos began playing again in her head, those slumber-party voices.

My life was perfect, Jaymie had said. Until I got the shots.

Her head so filled with thoughts of the lake, Deenie had barely let her mind rest on the vaccine. Could that be it?

It was the thing they’d shared, all of them.

The same lilac-walled clinic, side by side in the tandem seating, the laminated chair arms locked together.

One by one, going into the little room behind the lilac-painted door.

Slow deep breaths, and don’t watch it go in. That was everyone’s warning.

They’d all talked about it for days, the first time.

After that, no one talked about it much. But now Deenie could remember how it burned and that was all, and how part of her felt a little sad when the burning went away.

How could all this be about those little shots?

It had to be something else. A thing you didn’t know you were waiting for.

Like something inside opening, and then opening something else.

The second bell rang, and she was going to be late.

Turning the corner fast, she nearly ran into the three of them, gloves on, clustered around Lise’s locker, its door swung open.

There was a man holding Lise’s gym uniform, wilted as a lily pad, and her thermos, its lip stained green from her morning health shakes.

The woman next to him, in a blue parka, was carrying a large bag with smaller bags inside.

The third person was Assistant Principal Hawk, his arms folded, missing the usual disdainful curl of the lip, the tan creases in his forehead thicker than Deenie had ever seen them.

“Is this yours?” the man with the bag said, pointing to Deenie’s locker. She could see what looked like the hard corner of Lise’s “purrfect cat” binder cutting into the bag’s bottom.

“Hey, that’s Lise’s private stuff,” she said, unsure where the defiance in her voice came from, the Hawk standing right there.

“That’s her,” Hawk told the others, not looking at Deenie.

She pulled her book bag close to her chest.

“She’s the one,” he added.

They were lying on the bed of Coach Haller’s pickup truck, Skye on her stomach, legs waving in the air, the bottoms of her boot heels slicked with grass.

Eli took a long drag, his first since the summer before, that long family trip to WaterWonders. After the marathon car ride—Gabby and Lise and Deenie, high on sugar and new bathing suits, babbling in the backseat the whole time—his dad took pity on him, giving him thirty dollars and letting him wander alone. He met the guy operating the Tadpole Hole who shared his joint, teased him by saying some girl was watching him. “That one’s in love with you, bro,” he’d said, but the girl turned out just to be Gabby.

That joint had felt weak, easy, but this one was different. Skye said it wasn’t pot but the leaves from a plant used by Cherokees and other tribes. If you smoked it before bed, you would have lucid dreams.

“It clears away darkness,” she said. “And banishes negative energy.”

That sounded okay, and he took a long drag, closing his eyes.

Something passed suddenly, wind rustling above them, and Skye was showing him her bare back, her sweater pulled all the way up so he could see her twisting spine.

“When I was little,” she said, “my uncle called me the Rattler. He said it looked like a rattlesnake.”

Leaning down, Eli gave it a long look, the pale skin, bra Mountain Dew–green, that pearly white canal from her neck to the waist of her skirt. The swooping curve of the spine, an S for Skye.

All right there, for him.

What was he waiting for? Why he didn’t he set his hand there, flat on the center of that sloping spine?

Her skin would probably feel cool, like a smooth stone.

“When I was eleven they gave me the forward-bending test,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him, sharp shoulder blade arching. “Did you never have one of those?”

“No.”

“I guess it’s only for girls.”

Looking at her faint grin, he found himself speculating about figs. Sometimes he’d see one crushed open by the ice rink, its insides filled with dead wasps.

“He’s an artist,” she was saying. “My uncle. He took out his paints and painted up my spine. A diamondback coiling with my coil.”

Coiling with my coil.

He was listening to her in a way, the joint working on him like warm hands. But he was wondering about something. Like what was stopping him from putting his hand on that skin of hers, displayed just for him.

“He told me to never be ashamed,” she said. “That it was beautiful.”

Looking at her, he could almost see the painted serpent squirming on her skin, ready to turn, mouth open.

He started thinking something about her uncle, but the thought drifted away before it could take hold.

“He kept rattlers in the old rabbit hutch. Did you know that baby rattlers have this tiny little button on the tip of their tail? It doesn’t make any sound. It feels like velvet. I’ve touched it.”

She turned on her side but kept the sweater hitched high. He could see the bottom edges of her green bra, half moons. But he didn’t feel what he’d normally feel. It was like looking at a painting.

“They lose it when they shed their first skin,” she said, her fingertips grazing her stomach. “After that, they grow the hard rattle. The one that makes all the noise. It doesn’t sound so much like a rattle. It’s softer than that. More like this.”

She lifted her fingers over those dark lips of hers and made a sound.

To him it sounded like locusts deep in Binnorie Woods.

He didn’t know how long they had been lying there, his head going to places, like that time he fell in practice and his cheek split open and his mom had to pick him up in the middle of the day.

Sitting in his mom’s front seat, his skates on the floor in front of him, feeling the soft tickle of something, a pair of women’s underpants, ice-blue, on the floor of the car.

He would never forget the look on her face. His mom’s face.

Did that really happen? It did. Both of them sat there as if it hadn’t, the entire drive home, the dull thud of the car over the wet streets.

He never told anyone, they never spoke about it, and six months later, two days after Christmas, she’d moved out. Sometimes he could still feel it on his ankles, the sneaking sense that something had gone wrong and it was right there and it was touching you, rustling against you all the time even if you didn’t look.

Then, through the fog of his head, Skye spoke.

“Have you gone to see her?”

“Who?”

“Lise.”

“Lise,” he said, her name sounding funny in his mouth. A picture of her coming to him, that pudgy Lise with her shirt always lifting above her belly.

“I heard she might be talking now. I wondered if she’d talked to you.”

“Me?” he said. “Why would she talk to me?”

“Oh,” she said, and he turned his head to her, her face suddenly so close, and the smell of something rotten from that dark berried mouth. It was like that fig, he thought. With something inside you didn’t expect. “I heard some things. Maybe I was wrong.”

“What did you hear?”

“I don’t know. Something sexy. About you two.”

“What?” He started to prop himself up on his elbows, one of them tugging on her long hair.

She didn’t move, her stomach still bare, her fingers dancing along it. “That you two were doing something. Before school.”

“What do you mean, doing something?”

“By the practice rink, behind the bushes. You and Lise. You were both lying on the grass and you were taking off her tights. They said.”

Those bushes, he knew them, their toothed leaves, thick-veined, and the seed pods laced with thorns. They grew wild and it was a place you could drink beer or do things.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head, shaking the image of Lise, bare-legged, her skirt hitched high, from his thoughts. “Lise, she’s a sister to me.”

“Oh,” she said, fingertips making circles just above the waist of her skirt. Wider and wider circles.

“A sister,” he repeated.

He looked at her. There was something scratching again, in the corner above his eye, like those metal probes at the dentist clawing at your teeth.

“Who told you that?” he asked, his voice lifting to a new place. He didn’t sound like himself. “Who’s ‘they’?”

Skye looked over at him, and in his head he could see the wasps.

“Listen,” he said, grabbing for his bag. “I gotta get to class.”

“Mr. Nash, we’d like to talk to your daughter.”

She said she was Sue Brennan, deputy public-health commissioner.

“About what?”

They were sitting in Principal Crowder’s vacant office.

Her bra strap was sliding down her shoulder and her hair looked dirty. She was wearing latex gloves. Her wrists were red.

“We’re trying to trace as closely as possible Lise Daniels’s movements prior to the attack.”

“But why? You’ve got a public-health crisis here and—”

“We’re looking into whether she may have come into contact with or been exposed to something.”

“You think it might be something toxic?” Tom asked.

“Mr. Nash, we’d really just like to talk to your daughter,” She folded her hands, then seemed to realize she still had the gloves on. Looked at them, not sure what to do.

“So you’re talking to everybody?”

“We know Deenie was one of the last people with Lise before the event.”

Tom looked at her, squinted. “So was a class full of other kids. A school full of people. Are you talking to everyone?”

“There’s many parties involved, and we’re pursuing all avenues.”

“Who’s the ‘we’ here?”

“You have nothing to be concerned about.”

She was giving him a blank face. Like the woman at a car-rental desk, or an airline check-in. Calm down, sir.

“I have nothing to be concerned about?” Tom said. “Pardon me, but have you looked around you? Do you see what’s happening here?”

“Mr. Nash,” she said as she finally stripped the gloves from her hands, ashed with powder and trembling slightly. “We need to find out everything about Lise. About all these girls.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“Why now, why three days later? Why weren’t you talking to Deenie before? Do you have some new information?”

She crimped her file folders in her hand.

“Mr. Nash, I would think it would be important to you. To try to help our investigation. Don’t you want to understand what’s happening to these girls? What if your daughter was next?”

“She won’t be,” he said, his voice suddenly hard.

She looked at him, paused. “No?”

“I know my daughter,” he said, rising. He had no idea what he was talking about. What did it have to do with knowing his daughter? And was his answer, precisely, true?

“Of course you do,” she said, glancing at her flashing phone. “Anyway, it looks like they may have already gotten what they need from her.”

They took her to the music room, empty except for a pair of orchestra stands on the floor. Deenie wondered which girl’s raging spasm had knocked them down, emptying the room, which now smelled of fresh bleach.

“Did something happen to Lise?” she asked. “Something else?”

The woman in the parka shook her head. The man with the bag had left. So had Assistant Principal Hawk.

“We’re trying to get some information about what Lise was doing before she got sick,” the woman said. “Since you’re pals, maybe you can help.”

There were no chairs, so they sat on either end of Mr. Timmins’s coffee-ringed desk.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Deenie said. “She was in class, and she jumped up and then she fell down.”

“Did you see her before class?”

“No.”

“Did you usually see her before class?”

“Not really,” Deenie lied. She didn’t want to explain that she hadn’t gone to Lise’s locker like she usually did. That she hadn’t wanted to talk about what had happened with Sean Lurie. And she’d been worried Lise might see her and just know.

“And did Lise use any drugs that you know about?”

“What? No!”

“It’s okay. No one’s in trouble. Not even the occasional joint?”

“No,” Deenie said, shaking her head.

“Is it possible Lise had been experimenting with someone else?” the woman asked. “Did you have the sense Lise didn’t tell you everything?”

“She told me everything,” Deenie said coolly. “She tells me everything.”

“And that day…had you talked on the phone? Exchanged texts?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything,” Deenie replied, which was sort of a weird response and she wasn’t even sure what she meant by it.

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” the woman said. “And how about Lise and boys?”

Deenie felt her body seize slightly, her shoulders clenching hard, a string pulled in the center of her, tight, and her dad’s voice seemed to rise up from inside her, though it was really from the hallway, loud and meaningful.

“They wouldn’t let me go home,” Brooke Campos whispered to Eli, across the aisle. “The sub nurse is a class-A bitch.”

Eli looked over at her. Beneath the desk, her jeans were unsnapped, her brown pelvis exposed.

“It hurts so bad,” she said, rubbing her stomach. “They said it was stress. Stress seems to mean ‘everything.’”

It might have been the smartest thing Brooke Campos ever said.

“You should go home,” Eli said.

She pressed her fingertips on her pelvic bones, jutting from her low-slung jeans.

“It’s like something’s burning inside me.”

“Miss Campos, Mr. Nash,” called out Mr. Banasiak from under the blue haze of his PowerPoint presentation.

Looking up, they waited for him to say more, but that seemed to be the sum of it.

The lights dimmed and Eli watched Brooke, shifting in her seat.

“Brooke,” he whispered. “Did you ever hear anything about me and Lise?”

“What?” she said, her teeth bright white against her tan skin, teeth sunk into her lips. Like a bronzed beaver, he thought, then shook it off.

“Any stories, about us?

“No,” she said, slowly. Then added, “Well, yeah. I mean, I heard stuff about Lise. But it doesn’t have to do with you.”

“Who does it have to do with?”

“Some guy from another school. A hockey player.”

“Mr. Nash, there’s nothing cloak-and-dagger about this,” Sue Brennan was calling out, still far behind him. “I’ve told you where she—”

Later, Tom wouldn’t even remember walking, or running, he guessed it was, from the catch in his breath, the wet feeling around his shirt collar, the thump in his chest when he finally arrived in the music room.

His hand rattling loudly on the locked doorknob, he could see Deenie inside, eyes large through the door pane.

Some woman in a dark parka hovering over her like a crow.

“Open this goddamned door,” he heard himself say, a voice distinctly his own father’s rather than his own.

The parka woman turned, a flash of recognition on her face, as if she knew him.

She was saying things, telling him to calm down.

Suddenly, all he could think of was Sheila Daniels’s face under the garage-door light, her mouth open, braying.

The door opened, the parka woman saying things to him, and Deenie behind her saying, “It’s okay, Dad. I promise.”

Before they left school, Principal Crowder caught Tom, made some kind of assurances as they stood at Deenie’s locker, Deenie sliding on her jacket.

“You should have been present when they spoke to her, obviously,” he said. “Things are just happening very quickly right now.”

Tom didn’t say anything, grabbing Deenie’s book bag, slamming her locker door.

“And, Tom,” Crowded added, “I know I can count on you at the PTA meeting tonight.”

“PTA meeting?” he asked, stopping himself from tugging up Deenie’s jacket zipper as if she were five.

“Didn’t you get the announcements? There’s an emergency meeting,” Crowder said, eyes darting back and forth between them. “We need you there.”

“I’ll be there,” Tom said. “But why tonight?”

“Didn’t you hear?” Crowder looked at Deenie, hesitating. “Can we speak alone for a second?”

Crowder’s face, up close, sweat-varnished, as they stood in front of his computer in his office, Deenie waiting outside anxiously.

“It’s all over the news,” Crowder said. “It’s on CNN.”

Leaning over, he unpaused the video flickering there.

It was Kim Court again.

“I saw this,” Tom said.

“No. This is a new one.”

On the screen, Kim looked even more haggard now, her face lit green, her mouth open.

“Don’t believe the lies!” she said in that lisping, tongue-rasping voice. “I won’t keep silent anymore. This isn’t about some stupid vaccine. Because guess what, everyone? I never had the shot. I’m allergic and I couldn’t get the shot.

“So listen! Listen!”

Leaning closer.

“Whatever’s happening to us, it’s bigger than any shot.”

Voice scurrying up her throat, eyes rolling back.

“It’s bigger than everything.”

Driving home with Deenie, he took the shortcut through the back roads, skipping the lake.

“It wasn’t anything, sweetie,” he said. “Just another of those videos.”

“Okay,” Deenie said.

“So tonight, I just want you to stay home and stay off the computer. And the TV,” he said. Which was ridiculous, but it must have been a sign of how crazy he was acting that Deenie just nodded. “And no more talking to anybody without me there, okay? Anybody.”

Deenie nodded.

He hadn’t ever wanted to be one of the hysterical parents, the handwringers, the finger-pointers. But wasn’t this different? It felt different in every way.

“And you’re sure all they asked you was if you had seen Lise that morning?”

Deenie nodded, eyes turning to the window.

They drove in silence for a moment.

“But Dad,” Deenie said, abruptly, “who was that woman, anyway? The one in the big parka?”

“What do you mean?”

“She didn’t have the health department thing around her neck. Who was she?”

“She didn’t identify herself?” Tom couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked, had just assumed she was with the health department.

His phone trilled on the gear panel between them. Missed calls: Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.

“I don’t remember,” Deenie said. “There’s so many people at the school now.”

“I’m just glad I found you,” he said.

She looked at him, and he guessed he wanted a smile or something, but she was staring at his phone, her mother’s name flashing.