Sarah wished she was sick. She could still get sick. Stick her fingers down her throat, maybe. But she'd already had breakfast, and the granola would probably hurt coming back up. She'd already said good morning to Mom, so it was too late to have a sore throat and a cough. Fevers were impossible to fake without real planning. And she'd stayed home with cramps last week, so that wasn't really an option. She certainly wasn't going to offer up any symptoms more vague than that, not again.
Today would have been a great day to lay on the floor and watch dust motes in the sun. Maybe watch some game shows with the sound off, curled on the couch under a pile of blankets. Heat up a can of Spaghetti-Os for lunch. If she was really lucky there'd be some movie marathon on. That just sounded divine. It's not like she was behind on any schoolwork anyways. Other than biology, it wasn't like going to class was going to help at all with that.
The fog was bad today, and thick fog always meant she was about to have a worse day than usual. Some days she could get up and everything looked clear, but this morning the white film seemed to coat everything she could see, somehow making the little reflections in the kitchen brighter and making the milk in her cereal seem to glow as she dipped her spoon into it. She could hear music thumping as someone started their car down the street, the energetic beat carrying over the sounds of the engine. The passing beat almost lined up with her own heartbeat echoing in her ears. She carefully cleared her dishes, putting the bowl and spoon gently in the dishwasher before slowly closing the door.
It was definitely bad today, even the water in the faucet was loud. Washing her hands almost felt painful under the spray of water. At least brushing her teeth was a release - she could focus entirely on the sensations of the bristles over her gums, the scritching sounds filling her head, and the taste of mint flooding out the noises outside. But soon enough she had to spit, flinch at the cold water rinsing over her teeth, and finish up. No time to brush her hair, so she just gathered it up into a ponytail, pulling the worst of the frizz tight against her head.
Finishing in the bathroom, she made her way back to her room. Her walls were painted a faded greenish blue, her mother called the color something fancy, and it matched the darker carpet. Sarah wished she could have something different, this carpet always showed her footprints standing out in a pale contrast to the dark olive green. She'd have to vacuum again tonight, or the footprints would keep her up. Her bed was already made, the cotton beige comforter pulled tight and her pillow squared up on top. She turned around to grab a hoodie from her closet. Even in October, the days were plenty hot, but sometimes the hood helped. It stuck on a hanger for a moment, but she just tugged a bit harder until it popped out. She was just pulling it on over her head when her bedroom door crashed open, her mother looming into view.
Sarah couldn't help but scream, just a little. Her mother jumped too, startled by the noise. "Are you ready?" She asked, "I've got to get going, or I'll be late."
"Just packing," said Sarah. Her backpack already had her school stuff in it, but she took a moment to double-check. She pulled a novel from the shelf over her desk, she was pretty close to finishing the one that was already in there, and she couldn't remember if her locker had anything in it. Some earplugs got stuffed into a side pocket - she couldn't usually get away with them in class, but if things were still rough by lunch she'd need them there. Sarah glanced around, but at this point, she was just looking for reasons to stall. No excuse loomed from the bare walls or tidy shelves.
Her backpack was heavy, but it felt good pressing down on her back.
As she trudged out of the house and sat in the car, her mom asked, "Are you ok?"
"I'm fine."
"Your head isn't bothering you? No, um, migraine?"
Her mom wasn't looking at her, so Sarah couldn't just nod, "I'm fine." She could have said yes, but she'd done that before, and that would be worse than just going to school.
The car ride wasn't too bad. Sarah could keep her eyes closed, which always helped. The car was just a Toyota, but it ran smooth and they'd had it long enough that it didn't smell funny or anything. Even better, the city had repaved the highway last summer, so the motion of the car actually felt soothing instead of the normal bouncing and jarring. And while she couldn't call David Sedaris soothing, public radio in the morning was still about as good a soundscape as anyone could hope for.
And then came the moment of truth. The little Camry pulled to the curb outside school, and when the door opened Sarah found herself bathed in shouting, discordant voices. A basketball was being dribbled. Tinny screeches could be heard from at least four sets of earphones. They were kind of early, and the marching band was out behind the school doing something brassy and stompy. Skateboard wheels clattered by over the asphalt. The rope and chains on the flagpole swung in the morning breeze, ringing against the steel flagpole.
Thank god she didn't have to ride the school bus. One of the busses was roaring to a stop around the corner, and she could hear the thump of unbalanced tires completely failing to cover up the echoes of voices inside as it stopped. The hiss of the door opening up released those voices to waft over her.
Sarah stood, frozen. The fog was brighter too, almost like something was shining a light on everything from no particular direction. Finally, a voice pierced through, someone had said her name. Sarah turned back to her mom, smiled, and said, "I love you too. See you later."
With that, she squared up and dove into the school.
Inside was strangely better. She was still assaulted by voices and voices and voices, and now they were accompanied by squeaking shoes that cut through the noise. Lockers slamming shut gave a baseline to the piercing noises. But the light wasn't so bad inside; other than the row of doors at the entrance, there weren't any windows in the hallway to let the morning sun bounce reflections into her eyes. The walls and doors did a decent job filtering out the engine noises from outside, too.
Nonetheless, Sarah felt like it would be best if she got out of the hallways before they got truly crowded. A trio of senior girls she only knew by sight shot past her on their way outside. The girl in front yelled as she ran by, "Hey Sarah."
Sarah gave a little wave, turning around as they ran past, but the three were out the doors before she could hardly begin the motion. No big deal, really. Sarah didn't know any of their names anyways. She reversed her turn, rather than spin in a full circle like a leaf in the wind of the older girls' passing. Sarah's mood lifted for a moment, as she imagined herself spinning like a top as people passed her in the hallways. She wasn't sure what a dervish was - but she'd had a ballerina phase way back before the fog started glowing around everything. She'd missed a year or so after she'd told her parents about what she could see, and never got back to it. But a little part of her still liked the thought of just spinning for the joy of it.
Another kid, Jacob maybe? Josh? A 'J' name, for sure. He came in, walking past her as she stood imagining dancing in the halls. He was wearing a big pair of over-ear headphones with the cord tucked into his shirt, a good enough pair that she couldn't hear the music he was listening to. But she could still hear him mumbling to himself, "How low, before I get in, before I mmmm mmm, before I begin, how low before..."
He brought her attention right back to the hallway, and she shuddered as she got moving. It was Tuesday, so pre-calc was her first period class. That was always a relief. Coach Colway was boring to the point of caricature. He was a golf coach, of all things, but he taught math too. She wasn't really sure if he'd started teaching first and became a coach later, or if he'd been a coach first. But more importantly, his classroom was practically empty. No posters, no doodads waving from the walls; he was strict too, no music, very little talking. He'd just drone a bit, do an example problem or two on the whiteboard, and then pass out worksheets and let them all get to it.
Sarah was the first person in the room. Coach wasn't there, but his room was unlocked and so she let herself in. Sarah grabbed a seat in the middle of the room. her shoulders shook as she took off her backpack. She set it on the desk, then quickly sat down into the seat. She pulled out yesterday's novel and opened it up, focusing as much attention as she could manage on the way the fictional hero helped the British storm a mountainous fort in old India. It was a good book, and she felt outraged on the soldier's behalf at his treatment by the villains of the story, but she still noticed when Coach came in. He was making a sort of slithery noise as he shuffled a stack of printer paper in his hands.
The first bell rang, announcing that there were only 8 minutes to get to class, and Sarah had to fight with herself to not cover her ears. Instead, she just hunched down a bit deeper in her seat.
The trickle of students walking in didn't help her concentration either. More sneaker squeaking, loud conversations continued as pairs came together, friends getting caught up on whatever they'd missed from each other's lives since yesterday. Sarah smiled, trying to look up whenever someone said good morning or hi or whatever. She'd say hello back, wave, whatever seemed appropriate, and then turn back to her book.
The second bell rang, the muscles in Sarah's neck tensed up and her book bent under her grip as she waited out the shrill noise. Her hands relaxed, but her neck stayed rigid as the morning announcements continued. Nothing special, a volleyball match that everyone was supposed to care about. The student council voice on the intercom somehow felt just as shrill as the bell had, but at least most of the conversations had stopped.
Coach Colway was standing up before announcements even finished, writing on the board. More sequences, it looked like. That shouldn't be very difficult, even if he was writing some letter-filled formula up next to the numbers. This was probably the last new thing they'd cover in the week because there was a test scheduled for Friday and Colway usually spent a day or two letting people review. Sarah dutifully put her book away, stuffing it into her bag's front pocket. She rummaged in the main space for a moment, finding the right spiral notebook and dragging it out. The wires had already mushed down, so she had to force it open to a blank page where she could start copying the problems he wrote out.
Coach growled, "Quiet," as a whispered conversation tried to revive in the back, and Sarah finally felt herself start to relax a bit. She didn't even notice the faint mist overlaying everything in the room.
Then the bell rang again, catching her entirely by surprise. Her lead broke as she forced her pencil hard against the paper, dragging a short dark line across the problem she'd been working on. The math hadn't been hard, it was just another way of rewriting equations in different forms, but there was something satisfying about rearranging the numbers like a little puzzle.
She packed up again, folding up the worksheet and closing her notebook around it, then shoving the whole thing back into her bag.
Now the hallways were truly crowded. It simply wasn't possible to move through them without bumping into other kids. Lockers, shoes, talking, it all filled her ears like a physical force. She looked both ways, considering. She could go to the bathroom, and the hallways would empty out in a few minutes, but then she'd probably be late to biology. Bio was already bad enough, she wasn't sure if she wanted to risk drawing Mrs. Bianchi's attention even more. No, she'd just grit her teeth and go. If she was fast enough she could maybe even get a seat by the door, away from the windows.
She set her shoulders and began pushing through. She moved fast enough to earn a few shouts of surprise and irritation when she'd misgauged a space and knock shoulders a bit too hard. Sometimes it'd be some senior or otherwise solid guy and she'd just sort of bounce off them instead. Despite being about to turn eighteen in just eight months, she was still small enough to be routinely mistaken for a freshman. A small freshman who wouldn't even make a jock stumble when she crashed into them. Regardless of the contact, she kept her head down and moved quickly enough to not see anyone's reaction or to even really register who she'd bumped into. It didn't help that the Bio room was about as far as was possible from Algebra without one of them being outside in the portables.
After what felt like a marathon, she reached the door. It was shut, and some cartooney poster featuring a tree with a face blocked off the little window in it. She pulled it open and stumbled in, but was forced to suddenly stop her rush by the bright sunlight that filled the room. Between the half dozen dirty skylights, two walls filled with windows, and banks of grow lights that never turned off, the room was absolutely blinding after the dim hallways.
Sarah was forced to close her eyes, standing in the doorway as she tried to adjust. Even with her eyes closed, she could see the outlines of everything burnt into her eyelids. Fuzzy green filled the windows, where racks of plants grew, filling the room with a cloying and musty aroma. Instead of the little boxy desks with built-in chairs, this room had tall, heavy tables lined with stools. The bright glow in the room was strong enough that she almost didn't notice the music. Some classical something tinkling away, each note interrupting her thoughts.
Mrs. Bianchi was walking along the tables, passing out a piece of paper to the students already in the room. It looked like she'd have to either sit right in front or at one of the tables along the wall. She already knew the wall would be better. It wasn't pleasant, sitting where the floral aromas were strongest, and where the sun shone directly on her, but it wasn't as though anywhere in that room was particularly quiet. Better to endure a lot of discomfort than to be right where Mrs. Bianchi would see her not focusing on the work.
She was sitting down and pulling out another notebook when the bell rang. She was startled enough that she dropped her whole bag, spilling it onto the ground. With a groan, Sarah dropped out of her stool to start gathering the papers and books. The girl sitting next to her got down to help.
"Don't use your locker?" asked the girl.
Sarah didn't say anything, just kept looking down as she shoved more into her bag.
"I never do either," said the other girl, handing over the last few pages.
"Thank you," mumbled Sarah.
"No problem," whispered the girl, because Mrs. Bianchi had started talking. Sarah finally risked a glance up at her neighbor, realizing that this is one of the girls who had half-spun her that morning. She smiled, noticing that the junior was wearing dangly earrings shaped like leaves. That was probably where she'd gotten the mental image from. For just a moment, the girl looked green. Not ill, but like her whole body shifted shades for a moment. Sarah blinked, and everything was back to the misty white that filled the room.
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Sarah jumped again, as half the class shouted "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!"
Mrs. Bianchi laughed along, then continued, "But I suppose we need to talk about why. Mitochondria make a protein called ATP, which in turn is the fuel, the gasoline, for the cell..."
Mrs. Bianchi continued along, but the reflection of a windshield of a passing car made Sarah blink some tears away. And by the time she could struggle back through the screeching violin that bounced around the room, the teacher had gotten far enough along that Sarah was totally lost. She dutifully took what notes she could, writing about stairs and chains and phosphor-something or other. She could have paid more attention, but Sarah was more focused on controlling twitches and grimaces every time the music changed, or a bit of light moved, or someone got too enthusiastic about a bad joke from the teacher.
Disgustingly enough, the only thing that kept Sarah even slightly under control was the posters and diagrams around the room. They were still busy, but she could read the labels on a couple of the closer ones, and she could digest them in between distractions. Sarah figured that memorizing the bones in a skeleton or the stages of the decomposition cycle were biology related, even if she was going to have to sit down with the textbook alone to have any hope of understanding the day's lesson.
After about half an hour, Mrs. Bianchi had them all turn to the worksheet she'd passed out. It was another diagram, filled with blanks, and they were expected to fill it out, demonstrating that they'd learned from the lecture. And then Mrs. Bianchi turned the volume of the music up even louder. Sarah sat, her hands in her lap, and stared at the page. There were no stairs, nor anything that looked like stairs. Lots of circles though, lots of poorly-photocopied circles. And lines, lines where she was supposed to write stuff down.
Sarah jumped yet again, this time because the girl next to her had pushed her, gently, on her shoulder. Sarah focused back at her, looking at the other girl's mouth.
"I said, do you want to do this together?" she asked. "I mean, I took notes, and I think I've got it, but I still remember Tyson complaining about this class. He got a four on the test, but still only got a C in the class."
"What?" asked Sarah. She still wasn't quite tracking, percussive notes filling her ears.
"Sorry, my brother, Tyson," she said. "He's way smart, but never got bad grades. But he complained about AP Bio all the time. I think I've got this, but we should still do it together."
"Oh," said Sarah. She stood up abruptly, dropping down from the stool. "I'm sorry, I've got to, I've got," she said as she darted away.
Sarah went up to Mrs. Bianchi's desk, "Ma'am, can I have a hall pass? I need to go to the bathroom."
Mrs. Bianchi just smiled, and said, "Of course," before handing Sarah a large plush frog. The frog was wearing a t-shirt that said "Hall Pass" in big blue letters.
Sarah left the classroom as fast as she could, but she didn't turn right toward the nearest bathroom. Instead, she turned left, leaving the building, heading towards the football field. On the home team side, there was a dingy brick building under the stadium. Part of it was dominated by a big steel shutter that closed over a counter where Costco soda and candy got sold during games. But off to the side were bathrooms. She ducked into the girls' restroom and found herself in a dingy but surprisingly clean bathroom. This time of year, girls sports were all indoors, so really only the boys practiced out here, and there hadn't been any games for long enough that the place had probably seen more janitors than girls lately.
More importantly, it was dark, empty, and quiet.
She found a stall and sat down, feeling the muscles in her back loosen up. She couldn't stay long, at the very least she'd have to return the frog, but for a few minutes, she had some refuge. After a few minutes in the warm bathroom, Sarah could feel her breath start coming easier as her heartbeat slowed. She felt achy all over, but without the good fuzzy feelings she had after a hard workout. She could hear voices getting louder outside - all male voices. Second period must be almost over, and the guys' PE class was heading back to their locker room so they could change. And to not shower. She needed to get moving too.
Walking slowly now, she went back inside to the bio classroom. The cartoon tree felt like it was sneering at her, his big white eyes shimmering as sunlight bled through. With a deep breath, she opened the door. She didn't pause even as the light briefly dazzled her, just dropped the plush hall pass on the teacher's desk and trudged back to her table, ready to wait a few minutes until the next bell.
Her backpack and notebook were where she'd left them, although she noticed her pencil had been slid into the wire binding of the spiral notebook. Her table was empty now, the senior girl who'd been sitting there was up and chatting with friends across the room.
She pulled her bag up onto the table to get ready to leave, and Sarah noticed that her notebook had been drawn on. There were goofy little anime faces doodled in the corners of the page, a girl with a ridiculously ornate updo and a boy with giant eyes that bulged above his spiky hair. A third face was half finished, with just the outline of a chin and ears framing an empty space. Sarah couldn't take her eyes away, so distracted she missed the end of Mrs. Bianchi's playlist as a tinkling harpsichord petered into silence. She shook her head and picked up her notebook to put it away, and noticed more on the page behind.
Someone, that upperclassman, she guessed, had drawn out the same diagram from the worksheet, with all the labels filled out in ridiculously cutesy handwriting. She'd even dotted the eyes with little loopy spirals and put smiley faces inside of some of the bigger letters. Looking at the page, her hand twitched, tugging on the corner, ready to pull the page out of its wire bindings to crumple and leave.
Sarah didn't need help. She had her textbook, she could have gotten it done on her own. How dare that girl write in someone else's notes? Did she think that Sarah was dumb? That Sarah had some learning disability? Sarah was the smartest kid in that class, it wasn't her fault that Mrs. Bianchi insisted on making the room as painful as possible. Her face felt like a mask, she could hear the girl giggling behind her, oblivious like everyone. Sarah wanted to spin, to throw the book at her. No, she wanted to throw it at Mrs. Bianchi. A shift in light drew her attention to the plants on the wall, and Sarah took a step towards them, reaching out.
She almost picked up one of the pots, but at the last moment, she shifted and satisfied herself by just plucking a single leaf off. She sat back on the stool and slowly tore it into little bits, staining her fingers with a muddy green as she did so. A powerful odor rose up as she did, making her feel like she should retch. She glanced back at the pot she'd almost attacked - it had a tag with big loopy letters that said, "Basil."
Of course, thought Sarah, of course, the bio plants are even worse when you break them.
"Oh, I do love that," a voice behind her boomed. Mrs. Bianchi had walked up without Sarah noticing. "Sometimes when I'm stressed I do the same thing. The herby smells are just wonderful, aren't they?"
Sarah didn't answer, so Mrs. Bianchi continued, "I just wanted to let you know that you don't need to hand in today's worksheet. Keep it to study from, I know a lot of you kids would rather memorize anyways, and frankly, your book doesn't do a great job laying this out. You'll need to know it for the AP test at the end of the year."
"Thank you," said Sarah.
"Oh, and I asked Alexa to copy it out for you. A lot of people mix up where the phosphates go."
Hearing her name, the girl who'd been sitting next to Sarah looked over and waved briefly, before going back to whatever gossip was keeping them so entertained.
At that, the bell rang, making Sarah jump again. This time she couldn't help but cover her ears. The next few periods were easy enough. Third was computer science. The whole room was dark and bare, with just the chairs and computers filling it. Sarah dimmed the screen where she was sitting, and even better she got to put in headphones. She quickly found a white noise generator and turned it on, filtering out what little chatter filled the room. That hour passed quickly.
Fourth period was PE. It was plenty loud, and she absolutely hated Coach Wilkin's whistle, but she was allowed to jog the track instead of participating in whatever inane game was on the schedule today. The exertion and rhythmic feel of her feet hitting the rubberized track wasn't exactly fun, but she could get into a groove of sorts that let all the other stuff slide away.
Despite zoning out, she noticed when Coach Wilkin dismissed them back to the locker room. The shrill whistle helped. Sarah grabbed a shower stall and quickly rinsed the sweat off, holding her hair out of the water with one hand. The spray stung her skin, but after the run, she almost didn't mind the laughing and talking echoing around the tile room. She didn't really pay attention to it, but the locker room had more of the misty fog in it than most rooms like it did. For the most part, she associated the fog with noise, light, movement, and lots of stuff.
The locker room was just tile, with aluminum benches and big lockers. It spent most of its time empty, and people weren't usually all that energetic. The girls mostly were stalling and dragging their feet when they changed into their gym clothes. After an hour being worked by Coach Wilkins (a four-foot, eleven-inch ex-cheerleader who still possessed all the irritating competitive optimism of the stereotype), the girls were mostly too subdued and tired out to be very active when changing back out of those gym clothes.
Shower done, she shucked her shower sandals into the mesh bag with her sweaty t-shirt and shorts, stuffing them into a locker. No PE on Wednesday, so she'd wear them on Thurs and then take the bag home to wash. Sarah momentarily felt irritated that there wasn't a PE class offered last period of the day. But all things considered, it was probably best to let boys have that slot anyways. Too many of them smelled bad enough already, so any boy who waited till the end of the day to get smelly was a good thing.
Although fourth wasn't all bad. It was just lunch next, so she didn't have to rush getting dressed. It wasn't as though she did anything fancy with her hair and makeup anyways. A few brushes to make sure things were straight before pulling the elastic around her ponytail were plenty. And the closest she ever got to makeup was if she grabbed unusually shiny chapstick.
Of course, there was simply no way Sarah would even consider subjecting herself to the cafeteria. The mere thought made her hands shake, just a little. Not even on a good day was that place tolerable. The other people didn't even pretend to keep quiet, and there'd always be a few playing music from tinny little speakers. Plus the smell of chili, or cheap pizza, or whatever crud was on the menu would stick to her hair all day long. No, there was absolutely no reason to go into that big room. Even if she'd forgotten to make a sack lunch, she'd be better off just being a bit hungry.
No, she had something better she could do. Instead of the lunch hall, Sarah made her way to Mr. Clarke's art room. He always left it open during lunch - he said it was so people could work on stuff, but Sarah suspected he'd already lost his keys this year. There was a rumor that a few years back he'd given everyone in all of his classes an A after losing his laptop with all his grades. Whatever the reason, she had her advanced art class right after lunch, so she had every excuse to be there. Even better, Mr. Clarke didn't care about food or drink in the room. It made sense, it was unlikely that spilled soda or dripped bbq sauce or whatever would ever be worse than the damage that paint splatters, lumps of resin, and various adhesives had already done.
The art room was almost as bright as bio, but so far it had always felt more tolerable to Sarah. Maybe it was because she was usually in there during midday, and even though it had just as many big windows the sun wasn't shining directly into the classroom. It might also have been simply that the room was usually quiet. It was tucked on the side of the school, away from both the main road and the gym and football field. Even when it was full of students, it remained fairly quiet as everyone tended to just focus on their projects.
This semester they were supposed to do some sort of sculpture. Sarah got hers down, bringing it to the table she usually worked at. At the moment, she just had ten oblong lumps of clay about the size of her thumb. They were laid out on a board, and she'd spread a plastic bag to keep it from drying completely out.
She eyed them for a moment, considering getting right to work with them, but a growl from her stomach reminded her what time it actually was. Sarah got back into her backpack, rummaging around to where her food had fallen to the bottom. Miraculously, her sandwich only had one corner smooshed, although her apple was pretty thoroughly bruised. That was ok, it just made the apple a bit more juicy, and Mr. Clarke kept plenty of paper towels around. And the sandwich was just peanut butter on wheat bread. It was hard to hurt that.
She pulled out her novel to read as she ate. She was actually able to focus on it and lose herself in the pages. A bloody charge against a fort's wall, the outer fort taken thanks to a breach opened by artillery. The main fort was apparently impregnable until the hero found an undefended corner that could be climbed. More fighting, then the enemy commander was killed shortly after the hero's servant boy was killed.
The hero had just managed to find his real enemy, a particularly vile British sergeant, when the door to Mr. Clarke's room suddenly banged open as a tall redheaded boy burst into the room.
Sarah didn't really like Finn. He was one of those boys who had an adult build at fourteen. Tall, broad, athletic, pretty much the only thing that he ever got teased about was his red hair. And even that was more ironic than mean, what with people chanting "Ginger" at football games whenever he ran the ball. Not that Sarah had ever been to the games, but they'd chant just the same during the couple of pep assemblies she hadn't managed to get out of.
"Sarita Bonita!" he called out as soon as he saw her. He thought that nickname was funny.
Sarah just ignored him, setting her book down and uncovering her project. She was planning on making butterflies, with glazed clay bodies and stained glass wings. The bodies had already been given a rough shape and then left to dry out just enough that she could carve the clay instead of just smooshing it around with her fingers. She turned her back to them, and to Finn, to get some carving tools from the back wall.
When she turned around again, she saw Finn at her table, holding up one of the little bodies in his big hands.
"What are you working on?" he asked her, smiling. "Surely it's not some artsy poop thing?"
"No," she said.
"Well, what then? You're not going to make a Madonna or something to lay them on, are you?" he laughed to himself.
"Put it down, please," asked Sarah.
"I mean, Mr. Clarke's laid back, but I don't think he'd really like something quite so, um, provocateur."
"Give it back, Finn," said Sarah, her voice starting to tighten up.
"No worries, Sarita," he answered. He set the oblong lump of clay back on the board before wiping his hand on the front of his jeans, leaving a smear of reddish clay on his thigh.
Sarah tried to ignore him as he left her table to get his own stuff out. He'd shaped some wire mesh into a pointy oval cylinder and had a pile of paper strips piled up. His creativity apparently stretched far enough to make a paper mache football. He actually came and set down right next to her. Not looking at him, she picked up one of her butterflies and started to carve it out, making the eyes a bit more recognizable, emphasizing the segments in the insect's body.
She was just carving out two long grooves for the wings when Finn spoke up again, "Are you using the book too? For your project?"
Sarah realized that he hadn't been doing anything with his project, he'd just been watching her. He was close enough that Sarah couldn't really pretend to have not heard him. "No," she said.
Finn picked up the book, "Oh, is it any good? Do you think I'd like it?"
"I don't know," she said in a quiet monotone. Sarah had to stop carving, her hands were starting to shiver, just a bit.
"So what's it about?"
"Just put it down."
"I will," he said, thumbing it open and starting to read the first few pages.
Sarah suddenly twitched, breaking the piece of clay she'd been holding. Even though it hadn't been fired, it was still dry enough that it cracked apart like dried mud, the crumbled lumps of clay falling down onto the table. She spun at Finn, not really knowing what she was about to do. Shout at him, or probably just talk really fast at him. She wasn't about to start crying in frustration, no matter what else happened. Maybe she'd reach out and grab her book back, hopefully without bending it too much. Ideally, she could explain that she really didn't want to talk to him, or to anyone. She just wanted to work, she just wanted her stuff back, she wanted her butterfly to not be broken, and she wanted her project to turn out pretty, and suddenly she froze.
The white mist, the fog that had surrounded everything since she was nine, suddenly flashed a bright yellow. Everything shone yellow through the mist. All her life, the fog hadn't ever done anything that she'd ever seen. It didn't even make it harder to see things at a distance, it had never moved, never flowed with the breeze, but now it changed. Sarah forgot about Finn and her book, stunned by the change.
And then she felt the burning, a hot fizzing on her skin. It was worse around her face - her ears, mouth, and eyes were spikes of pain driving toward her brain. She tried to scream, but instead, Finn just saw her eyes roll back before she collapsed on the ground, twitching.