Chapter 2

chapter Two

G RACE S OMERFIELD WAS THE FIRST TO DIE . The first in my fourth grade class, at least. I'm sure that by then, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of kids had already up and gone the same way she had. People were slow to piece it all together-or, at least, they had figured out the right way to keep us in the dark long after kids started dying. When the deaths finally came to light, my elementary school put a strict ban on teachers and staff talking to us about what was then called Everhart's Disease, after Michael Everhart, the first kid known to have died of it. Soon, someone somewhere decided to give it a proper name: Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration-IAAN for short. And then it wasn't just Michael's disease. It was all of ours. All the adults I knew buried the knowledge beneath lying smiles and hugs. I was still stuck in my own world of sunshine, ponies, and my race car collection.

Looking back, I couldn't believe how naive I was, just how many clues I missed. Even big things like when my dad, a cop, started working longer hours and could barely stand to look at me when he finally did come home. My mom started me on a strict vitamin regimen and refused to let me be alone, even for a few minutes. On the other hand, my parents were both only children. I didn't have any dead cousins to send up red flags, and my mom's refusal to let my dad install a "soul-sucking vortex of trash and mindless entertainment"-that thing commonly known as a television-meant that no scary news broadcasts rocked my world. This, combined with the CIA-grade parental controls set up on our Internet access, pretty much ensured I'd be far more concerned with how my stuffed animals were arranged on my bed than the possibility of dying before my tenth birthday.

I was also completely unprepared for what happened on the fifteenth of September. It had rained the night before, so my parents sent me to school wearing red galoshes. In class, we talked about dinosaurs and practiced cursive before Mrs. Port dismissed us for lunch with her usual look of relief. I remember every detail of lunch that day clearly, not because I was sitting across from Grace at the table, but because she was the first, and because it wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't old like Grandpops had been. She didn't have cancer like Mom's friend Sara. No allergies, no cough, no head injury-nothing. When she died, it came completely out of the blue, and none of us understood what it meant until it was too late. Grace was locked in deep debate about whether a fly was trapped inside her Jell-O cup. The red mass shivered as she waved it around, inching out over the edge of the container when she squeezed it a bit too tight. Naturally, everyone wanted to give their opinion on whether it was a fly or a piece of candy Grace had pushed in there. Including me.

"I'm not a liar," Grace said. "I just-" She stopped. The plastic cup slipped from her fingers, hitting the table. Her mouth was open, eyes fixed on something just beyond my head. Grace's brow was furrowed, almost as if she was listening to someone explain something very difficult.

"Grace?" I remember saying. "Are you okay?" Her eyes rolled back, flashing white in the second it took for her eyelids to droop down. Grace let out a small sigh, not even strong enough to blow away the strands of brown hair stuck to her lips. All of us sitting nearby froze, though we must have had the same exact thought: she's fainted. A week or two before, Josh Preston had passed out on the playground because, as Mrs. Port explained, he didn't have enough sugar in his system-something stupid like that.

A noon aide rushed over to the table. She was one of four old ladies with white visors and whistles who rotated lunch and playground duty during the week. I have no idea if she had any medical certifications beyond a vague notion of CPR, but she pulled Grace's sagging body to the ground all the same. She had a rapt audience as she pressed her ear to Grace's hot pink T-shirt, listening for a heartbeat that wasn't there. I don't know what the old lady thought, but she started yelling, and suddenly white visors and curious faces circled in on us. It wasn't until Ben Cho nudged Grace's limp hand with his sneaker that any of us realized she was dead. The other kids started screaming. One girl, Tess, was crying so hard she couldn't breathe. Small feet stampeded toward the cafeteria door.

I just sat, surrounded by abandoned lunches, staring at the cup of Jell-O and letting terror crawl through me until my arms and legs felt like they would be frozen to the table forever. If the school's security officer hadn't come and carried me outside, I don't know how long I would've stayed there. Grace is dead, I was thinking. Grace is dead? Grace is dead. And it got worse. A month later, after the first big waves of deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a five-step list of symptoms to help parents identify whether their kid was at risk for IAAN. By then half my class was dead. My mom hid the list so well that I only found it by accident, when I climbed on top of the kitchen counter to look for the chocolate she kept hidden behind her baking supplies.

HOW TO IDENTIFY IF YOUR CHILD IS AT RISK, the flyer read. I recognized the flaming orange shade of the paper: it was the sheet Mrs. Port had sent home with her few remaining students days before. She had folded it twice and fastened it with three staples to prevent our reading it. TO THE PARENTS OF RUBY ONLY was written on the outside and underlined three times. Three times was serious. My parents would have grounded me for opening it.

Luckily for me, it was already open.

Your child suddenly becomes sullen and withdrawn, and/or loses interest in activities they previously enjoyed.

S/he begins to have abnormal difficulty in concentrating or suddenly becomes hyper-focused on tasks, resulting in s/he losing track of time and/or neglecting him/herself or others.

S/he experiences hallucinations, vomiting, chronic migraines, memory loss, and/or fainting spells.

S/he becomes prone to violent outbursts, unusually reckless behavior, or self-injury (burns, bruising, and cuts that cannot be explained).

S/he develops behaviors or abilities that are inexplicable, dangerous, or cause you or others physical harm.

IF YOUR CHILD DEMONSTRATES ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, REGISTER HIM/HER AT IAAN.GOV AND WAIT TO BE CONTACTED ABOUT THE LOCAL HOSPITAL TO WHICH S/HE SHOULD BE TAKEN.

When I finished reading the flyer, I folded it back up neatly, put it exactly where I found it, and threw up in the sink.

Grams phoned later that week, and in her usual to-the-point-Grams way explained everything to me. Kids were dying left and right, all about my age. But the doctors were working on it, and I wasn't supposed to be afraid, because I was her granddaughter, and I would be fine. I should be good and tell my parents if I felt anything weird, understand?

Things turned from bad to terrifying very fast. A week after three of the four kids in my neighborhood were buried, the president made a formal address to the nation. Mom and Dad watched the live stream on the computer, and I listened from outside the office door.

"My fellow Americans," President Gray began. "Today we face a devastating crisis, one that threatens not only our children's lives, but the very future of our great nation. May it comfort you to know that in our time of need, we in Washington are developing programs, both to support the families affected by this horrid affliction and the children blessed enough to survive it."

I wish I could have seen his face as he spoke, because I think he knew-he must have-that this threat, the crimp in our supposedly glorious future, had nothing to do with the kids who had died. Buried underground or burned into ash, they couldn't do anything but haunt the memories of the people who had loved them. They were gone. Forever.

And that symptoms list, the one that was sent home folded and stapled by teachers, which was aired a hundred times over on the news as the faces of the dead scrolled along the bottom of the screen? The government was never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind.

They were afraid of us-the ones who lived.