“Now you tell me if anything else happens, okay? Don’t listen to that boy and his idiotic father. We both know they don’t know anything about what they’re talking about.”

“Okay, Dad. I’ll tell you. I just didn’t want to bother you. You already worry about me so much.”

Alice’s dad watched her as she stepped out of the car and adjusted her backpack again. “Alice.”

She turned back to him. “Don’t you worry about that," He continued, "I would want you to tell me this… even if it seems small compared to what you went through. Promise me?”

“Alright dad, I promise.”

“Alright then, see you after cross country practice. Have a good one!”

Alice waved as Dad began to drive away. “Bye.”

She turned around and jumped as she saw Josh standing there near the doors, watching her.

“My god, what a creep.” Alice looked to her left and saw Julia Hanover looking at Josh. Alice didn’t know her that well, but Julia always seemed friendly when they had briefly talked before.

“Ye… Yeah. I don’t know what his deal with me is,” Alice had replied. Julia raised a brow and raised her arm, throwing a middle finger in Josh’s direction while still looking at Alice. Alice glanced back and Josh had looked away and was entering the doorway. Julia put her arm down.

“I think you might have an idea, based on what happened yesterday.”

Alice glanced at Julia sharply, but the girl seemed at ease.

“Look, sorry you got such a rough start here Alice. Not everyone here is that way. I always knew those stupid rumors he spread weren’t true anyway. Josh has been a dick, but his social credit is way down in the toilet after people realized what his issue with you really was. People say he might even not play on the football team anymore since his detention is the same time as his practice.”

Alice shrunk inwards and looked at the girl. Her expression was a little more serious now, “An…And that reason was?”

“You care. About what happened in Harmony, what it means for us. What happened to those people. There are a lot of deniers like Josh, or people that just try to ignore it and go on with life. It’s just too scary to really think about it too much. There are a lot of people like you, they just don’t want to show it to the world.”

Alice blinked at the girl. “Wha… How did you say that so well? That was like an award winning speech or something.”

Julia laughed, and the more serious mood broke. “Hahahaha. I wish. Oh man, I got carried away didn’t I? Sorry if that was too heavy. I’m a theater student so I have to have my little dramatic outbursts at least once a day. Sorry, I’m being weird again aren’t I? That was a really terrible way to ask you if you wanted to eat lunch together today? Maybe?”

Alice looked over, and Julia for the first time seemed a little awkward. “Uhm. Sure. Let’s do it. I’ll see you then Julia. We should probably get to class.”

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“Oh yeah those. Quick, Mr. Williams will kill me if I’m late again.”

With that the two girls ran in the doors and up the stairs to the history classroom. And when they sat at their desks, Alice was smiling. Her first new friend. Her smile dipped for a moment before returning if a little forced. Best to not focus on the past. She was just excited that things were finally turning around.

— — — O — o — O — — —

“Anyways, what’s an ‘Infected’ Alice?”

Alice looked up from her food. Things with Julia Hanover and her other new friends had been going pretty well over the last two weeks. Alice had been introduced to her group of theater friends, and they had commented how they loved her ‘somber aura’ whatever that meant. They were all pretty strange, and Julia really hadn’t been kidding about them being overly dramatic.

One time one of the boys that had sat with Adrianna dropped their plastic fork on the ground and after picking it up and started doing a whole romeo and juliet speech thing, holding the fork up and pretending it was the girl in the play. Julia had tried to explain the in joke, but Alice still didn’t really get it. He was in theater too apparently. Something about them practicing with a mannequin for their lines? It was still strange that he just started doing it with no warning, and that everyone accepted it. But they accepted her too, so it was fine.

“Sorry, what was that Julia?”

“Sorry if it's out of the blue. Well, everyone’s still talking about Josh’s little tirade and your response. You said people were killed by the infected. I’ve never heard the aliens referred to like that. It’s always aliens, I remember they tried Outsiders too for a while but it never caught on.”

Everyone around the table shared Alice in interest and she warred with herself. Should she tell them? Well there was a way without exposing herself. The ADF had drilled her on how to respond to questions about slips like this. “Well, Uhm. Have any of you read any of the first hand accounts from Harmony?”

She looked around and was surprised that most of them were nodding. “You… you all have?”

Julia stared at Alice for a moment, and seemed to notice her discomfort at the topic. She met Alice’s eyes and winked at her and smirked. A second later her expression morphed and Julia looked at her in over exaggerated disbelief for a moment then even more at the others that were shaking their heads. “What? The rest of you didn’t read any? It’s only like the most important event in human history ever!”

Adrianna grumbled. Julia looked at her. “Huh?” The girl spoke up. “We do enough reading practice for our lines and for class! Those accounts are just so depressing. I want to read something happy and uplifting in my free time!”

Julia smirked. “Uplifting huh? This will be fun. Why don’t we tell the group what you’ve been reading recently.”

“Errrr…. That’s not important. No need to…”

“Why, I think it is. You were just dying to tell me all about how amazing twilight was just yesterday. I think you should tell all of us some more about it.”

Immediately half of the table groaned, including Alice, while the others joined the fight to defend the best novel there ever was and how there could be absolutely wrong with it ever and how it was the best piece of literature ever told. The others argued that maybe, just maybe, that there was a mistake somewhere in there. The boy from before just sat there looking confused at the conversation.

Julia just sat back and watched the chaos, smiling as she watched as the two factions fought to convince Adrianna if twilight was a perfect masterpiece or not. Adrianna was looking a little overwhelmed at the unfolding chaos with her somehow in the middle of it all.

Julia glanced at Alice again and threw her a stealthy thumbs up. ‘Sorry about that’ she mouthed before she returned to her observations. Alice blinked. Damn, she was good. She had distracted perfectly from the uncomfortable questions, which were forgotten in the following silly argument. Alice was just happy she hadn’t gotten on the girl’s bad side. She didn’t want to know how scary that would be…