Whitney tried to contain his illness throughout first period, but it wasn't at all easy. He could barely lift his head without a wave of pain flooding through him. He slowly got up when the bell rang and dragged himself down the hall, keeping his head low. He felt like some sort of weird sensory overload was going on in his head and it seemed doing anything except lying down with his face covered in a quiet place was too much. Unfortunately this didn't make the halls quieter or the light dimmer, and he considered calling his mom after all.

Lost in thought, he didn't focus on where he was going and stumbled into Pen, who didn't seem all that affected considering she was a lot stronger than him. He was about to look up to give his usual unfriendly glance he realized who she was and that she looked just as unpleasant as he did. He noticed she carried an extra backpack with her, one that could only belong to David. He figured this illness and his group had something to do with one another, and he sighed.

"This is affecting our group from yesterday, isn't it?" He briefly paused for what appeared to be a moment of thought. "I'll go along with whatever dumb thing you'll plan, I've got nothing better to do." Whitney walked past her to get to his next class. He realized that if this, whatever this is, is going to keep bothering him, he's going to need the trust of those people whither he liked it or not, and if he was going to earn it, he needed to do what he hated most.

Dante stumbled out of the bathroom and fell to his hands and knees. There were a few others staring at him but that didn't matter right now. His head was pounding and everything was super loud. Dante felt like he was going to die and he tried to stand but quickly slumped against the wall. Though his vision was foggy he saw saxon coming out of his class and stumbled towards him as best as he could. Grabbing his bag he looked at saxon and said in a raspy voice "you have to help me get out of here man".

Whatever Ula had was killing her. A splitting headache, and the lights seemed too bright. When first period was over she snuck into the library. Ula went to a corner and curled up. Strangely she heard the librarian talk to someone. She lifted her head, no one was near her. This was weird. Ula had been sick many times before, but it was never never something like this.

Dave, engrossed by looking into his new eyes, was briefly startled by loud voices next to him. He jumped slightly, looking over to his right. Nobody was there, but the voices still happened. I must be going insane, he thought, but soon enough, he identified Whitney's usual voice from the multitude of others he could now hear clearly.
"This is affecting our group from yesterday, isn't it?" he said uneasily. A moment passed. "I'll go along with whatever dumb thing you'll plan, I've got nothing better to do." He heard footsteps walking away, probably towards the owner's next class. Dave recollected his thoughts, now with the information in his head that he and Pen weren't the only ones with this mystery disease. He glanced back up at the mirror. The golden eyes had disappeared, replaced by the normal blue. Splashing his face with water, he spit the globule of blood out of his mouth and tried to breathe normally, exiting the bathroom and making his way over to where Pen was.

"Well, I guess we know now that it's not just us two with this... thing," he remarked. "Now that we've got Whitney, we just have to find the others, I suppose." He noticed the extra backpack on Pen's shoulder and recognized it as his own. He smiled for the first time that day.

"Thanks for getting my backpack, that old codger Stanton probably would have just thrown it away." He grabbed it off her shoulder and slung it around his own.

"I'll go look around for Saxon and the others, see you later" he said, delving into the steady stream of students.

Just before he got to his next period Social Sciences class, he saw an odd commotion up ahead. Nobody seemed to be noticing, but Dave was most definitely curious. When he arrived at the scene, he noticed Dante, looking very pained, stumble over to a hoodie-wearing figure, who, on a closer look, was Saxon. He walked over to the two. They would know something.

"Hey, what's going on?" he asked. "You guys feel terrible today too?"

"This is affecting our group from yesterday, isn't it? I'll go along with whatever dumb thing you'll plan, I've got nothing better to do," Whitney snapped as he walked past and though Pen raised an eyebrow, she held her tongue. No use starting an argument.

Dave appeared again and grabbed his backpack.

"I'll go look around for Saxon and the others, see you later" he said, rushing off. Pen shrugged, not really wanting to go to English. With her headache worsening, she made the logical decision to skip it.

She wandered down the corridors and tried to act casual as she walked out the back door. The area outside was empty and Pen breathed in the fresh air, feeling marginally better. It seemed as though being outside was helping and Pen took this as an excuse to walk out the school gates. She staggered over to one of the benches down the avenue where the school was set and tossed her own bag down on the seat next to herself. Sighing, she leant back and closed her eyes, praying for the dizzy spell to pass.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Silk, but I can't seem to find the problem."

"Are you sure?" Jesse's mother glanced back and forth between him and their private doctor anxiously. She seemed not only upset, but also unsure. Was this some game her son was playing to get out of school? And for what reason? He didn't even have to go this far; whatever Jesse wanted to do, his mother stayed out of it. If he wanted to skip school, not a word would be said about it, at least not until his father returned home and found out. "You can't find a single thing wrong with him?" she asked the older man.

The doctor smiled hopelessly. "Um, Mr. Silk, what were your symptoms again?"

Jesse sighed heavily, frustrated. "I told you, headache, stomachache, nausea, and maybe a fever. I don't know." He glanced at his mother, who seemed really unsure now. "I'm not lying! It was like that other time I was sick. Remember? I felt perfectly fine after." His mother shook her head. Of course not. She couldn't even remember his birthday.

The doctor leaned forward in his swiveling chair, attempting to look serious. "So you feel completely fine now?"

"That's not the point!" Jesse signed again, then stood up, half expecting to feel lightheaded. It was true, he really did feel fine. If there was any connection to his last sickness, he surely got rid of it faster this time around. In the end, he was overreacting just a little bit. Atleast there was still time to go to school. "Look doc, if you can't help me then you're only wasting my time. Mom, call Ron to bring the car around to the entrance."

-

The driver stopped in front of the school, and Jesse got out. It was strange to see how the building looked so quiet and empty from the outside, knowing that the chaotic daily lives of the students were featured inside. The sky was blue, but it looked like a whole different level of blue, one Jesse had never seen before, not in his entire life. The color was so... enhanced. As he stood on the curb and questioned as to whether that doctor had injected him with some sort of drug, Jesse began to hear voices. A ton of them. A mixture of different voices, male and female, rang within his mind, and his hazel eyes shifted around to find where they were coming from. There was no one else out here but him, and the voices sounded farther away.

Perhaps there was a celebration going on behind the school? Some kind of pep rally he was unaware of? He went into that direction. Walking beside the school, the voices didn't fade, nor get any louder, and he wondered if he was going the right way. It didn't really matter. It was nice out today, and there was the thin scent of rain he always enjoyed. He felt alone, but it was an euphoric loneliness.

When he turned the corner to the field behind the school, surprisingly he found that there was no one. In that exact moment, the voices disappeared. Jesse could only stand there and blink as he listened intently to the silence. The distinct voices-- some girl complaining to her friends about her math teacher, some boys arguing about who was the better basketball player, and others--were gone. It was almost as if he'd never heard them at all. "Damn," Jesse swore. "I've got to be tripping on something." The whole morning felt like a dream--no, a nightmare. Something was off about today.

He stood there for a couple of minutes longer, contemplating if something really was wrong with him. It was then that he spotted, within the same scene he had been staring at for so long, blond hair. "Penelope?" He peered hard to see if it was really her, and he wasn't just imagining things. She was seated farther away from the school, on a bench. Without thinking about it, he headed towards her.

"Penelope," he greeted cheerfully when he reached her. It was strange, actually trying to talk to people was becoming less difficult. He invited himself to the seat beside her, and sat down eagerly, analyzing her face. She seemed paler than before. Was she tired? Sick? He felt a bit of concern, but hid it quickly."Skipping class?"

"Penelope?"

She swore she heard someone say her name. Maybe she was hallucinating, meaning that this illness had to be something serious. She checked her symptoms against her memorized disease factfiles - which consisted of two; a cough and chickenpox, something she'd caught back in third grade. Neither, however, seemed to have quite as severe side effects as the ones she was currently experiencing. And you couldn't catch chickenpox twice, so that eliminated that one.

It was then that she noticed the kid from the field trip - Jesse - wondering up to her. To be honest, he didn't look too great either. Without asking, he took the seat besides her and commenced on a conversation in a sinfully cheery tone (nobody could be that happy, whilst she was feeling as bad as she were).

"Penelope - skipping class?"

Pen swallowed back the insult dancing on the tip of the tongue.

"Again, I would ask you to not call me that," she said through a forced smile and gritted teeth, but when she sensed a hint of genuine concern in his voice, she felt the smile fade into a natural one "And I could ask you the same question. I'd thought you would have a limo, or something, to get you to school on time."