Chapter 1: Katie
“Miss Chase, is something funny?” Mr. Paprika asks while Sue, my best friend, and I laugh continually. “Ladies!”
“Sorry, Mr. Pep,” I say. “It’s just… well… your fly’s down.”
“Miss Chase, that is so inappro—what?” he screeches. He turns away from the class to check. I receive lots of laughs and high-fives. I just shake my head, chuckling. Poor Mr. Paprika didn’t even see that coming.
“Katie, you’re hilarious!” Sue says, slapping her thigh. I grin, taking in all of the credit and missed class time.
“Miss Chase, detention!” Mr. Paprika yells. “You’ll be helping out the Scholastic Decathlon Team during lunch today, cleaning up their mess while they practice for their upcoming decathlon.”
I groan. Just what I need: a lunch with the dorkiest people on Earth.
The bell rings, and I grab the detention slip before bolting out of the room. Sue waves good-bye to me. “Guess I’ll see you in forty minutes,” she says, walking towards the lunchroom. I head down the hall to room 309 and knock.
“Yes?” a voice calls. Mrs. Tyson opens the door. She looks like an over-sized oompa loompa.
I mumble, “For detention, I have to help out the team.”
She smiles kindly. “Of course. Come on in, Katie.” She knows my name not because I’m in her class, but because I always do detention with her.
The team stares at me. Ricky Granger, one of the new kids in school and my new neighbor, waves slightly. If he didn’t wear glasses and green braces, he’d be kind of cute with his blonde hair. I tear my gaze away from his blue eyes.
I pretty much zone out when they begin practicing. The only thing I have to do is clean up their mess of chemicals when they do that. A lot of this stuff is just math.
“Alright! Very good!” Mrs. Tyson says, smiling like an idiot. “You still have ten minutes to eat lunch before your next class. I’ll be in the teacher’s lounge.” Once she leaves, I relax and pull out a turkey sandwich.
Rick sits beside me, opening a brown sack. “Hey, Katie. Detention again?”
“Yup,” I say, popping the ‘p’.
He chuckles. “It doesn’t surprise me… Say, doyouwanttocometothedecathlon?”
I crunch my eyebrows together in confusion. “Huh?”
“Do you… do you want to come to the decathlon tomorrow after school?” Ricky asks, going red. He takes a bite of his sandwich.
Frozen, I have no idea what to say. Ricky is nice, but I just met him. Maybe I should tell him that we’d be better off as friends.
Before I can, I hear the breaking of a test tube. I turn towards the noise and see green liquid oozing off of the lab table and on a girl’s arm. Before anyone could do anything, she screams, “MY ARM! HELP, HELP!”
“I’ll call someone!” Ricky says, dashing towards the phone. I have gone into total shock mode. Could this really be happening?”
“Yes, sir… yes, sir. Okay. Will do,” Ricky says before hanging up the phone. He closes the classroom door.
“What did they say?” a boy asks, trying to calm the girl down.
Ricky looks solemn as he says, “No one in here is allowed to leave this room. We’re under quarantine.”
“What the hell are you smoking?” I say. “Ricky, what the heck? So, she got some chemical on her. Big whoop.”
Ricky runs over to the girl, who had collapsed in the boy’s arms. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s running a fever. Also, she’s gasping and clutching her… hurt arm,” the boy explains, hugging her. They must be together or something.
“You shouldn’t have touched her!” Ricky yells suddenly. “We don’t know if it’s contagious or not!”
The boy glares at him. “I don’t care!”
I back against the wall nearest to the door. “This is… this is just unreal!” I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the gasping girl; her breathing is getting shorter by the second. The boy keeps shaking her, and once he even performs CPR, but nothing is helping. I couldn’t help but think of the future she could have had. Wait, why am I thinking so depressingly? I think to myself. She’s not even dead!
I inch towards the door. “I’m just going… to go outside…”
Ricky’s arms slam against both sides of my head. “You can’t do that, Katie,” he says seriously. “This room is under quarantine. You go out there, you might as well declare the whole school under quarantine.”
“Too freaking bad!” I scream. I twist under his arms, open the door, and run outside. I heard the door slam, but I know what I’m doing. I’m going to get out of this school as fast as I can.
The intercom turns on. “Katie Chase! If anyone sees Katie Chase, bring her to the office immediately…” I smirk. That won’t stop me. I’ll jump out a window or something. There’s nothing in this school that won’t let me escape from this nightmare…
Except maybe the line of CDC agents at the end of the hallway.
