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IF YOUR CHILD DEMONSTRATES ANY OF THE ABOVE SYMPTOMS, REGISTER HIM/HER AT IAANGOV 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-Gra left and right, all abouton 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 s turned fro very fast A week after three of the four kids in hborhood 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 A crisis, one that threatens not only our children’s lives, but the very future of our great nation May it coton 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 lorious 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 one Forever

And that symptoms list, the one that was sent home folded and stapled by teachers, which was aired a hundred ti the bottoovernht die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind

They were afraid of us--the ones who lived

TWO

IT RAINED THE DAY they brought us to Thurh the week, and the week after that Freezing rain, the kind that would have been snow if it had been five degrees colder I reth of the school busIf I had been back at home, inside one ofroutes across the cold glass with ether behind my back, and the men in the black uniforms had packed four of us to a seat There was barely rooed the bus s, and it acted like a screen to the outside world Later, the s of the bright yellow buses they used to bring kids in would be sht of it yet

I was closest to theon the five-hour drive, so I couldlandscape whenever the rain let up for a bit It all looked exactly the sareen farinia, for all I knew The girl sitting next to me, the one that would later be classified Blue, seen at one point because she leaned over et a better look She looked a little familiar to me, like I had seen her face from around my town, or she was from the next one over I think all of the kids with inia, but there was no way to be sure, because there was only one big rule: and that was Silence

After they had pickedwith the rest of the kids, in soht The roohtness; they sat us in a cluster on the dirty cehts toward us We weren’t allowed to sleep My eyes atering so badly from the dust that I couldn’t see the clammy, pale faces around me, let alone the faces of the soldiers who stood just beyond the ring of lights, watching In soray haze of half sleep, I processed theasoline reek of shoe polish, the creak of stiff leather, the twist of disgust on their lips The tip of a boot as it dug into , the drive was completely silent except for the soldiers’ radios and the kids that were crying toward the back of the bus The kid sitting at the other end of our seat wet his pants, but he wasn’t about to tell that to the red-haired PSF standing beside him She had slapped hi all day

I flexed s still Hunger wasup every once in a while to overwhelh me It was hard to focus, and harder to sit still; I felt like I was shrinking, trying to fade back into the seat and disappear co bound in the sa to stretch the plastic band they’d tightened around the but force it to cut deeper into the soft skin there