As Noah watched her mow through the bowl of cheesy pasta, he realized the last thing he had eaten was the sandwich Brian made for their cemetery visit last night. The unusual morning had made him forget all about breakfast, and it was only now that he realized he wasn’t even hungry. Add it to the list of symptoms, he thought.

He gazed at what was left of the mac-and-cheese and wondered if he should force himself to eat something anyways. Just because he didn’t feel hungry didn’t mean his body didn’t need food. If anything, it would be a waste not to make use of the meals someone had prepared for them. It wasn’t every day he got food free of charge.

Before he could make up his mind to go inside and get something to eat, Brian reemerged from the house and trudged over to their table.

“What’d the doctor say?” Leah asked.

“She thanked me for the info, but said that we’ll just have to wait for the test results before we can really start hoping for any updates. I asked when they’ll finish making an antidote and she got really evasive.” Brian slumped into the seat. “I’m stuck like this forever,” he moaned disconsolately.

“Hey, we’ll get to the other side. Things always work out,” Noah said optimistically.

“The only thing I see coming on the other side of this mess is a miserable existence. A life without joy. Without meaning.” He looked on the verge of tears.

Noah shook his head. “Leah with her soup and you with your pasta. You’re both way too attached to random food for your own good.”

Noah heard a dull thump and looked up in concern to see Leah with her forehead against the table.

Sophie stopped eating for a second to glance sideways curiously. “Did she just die?”

Leah pulled herself upright and shot Sophie a dirty look. “No, you jerk, but I might as well have. What will I do without soup? It’s the only thing that keeps me going some days.”

Noah put his head in his hands. I swear, the people I call my friends. This is ridiculous. “You could still eat it if you wanted to.”

“It’s not the same,” Leah said mournfully. She stood up. “I’m going inside. I need time to recover from this.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Sophie said. She turned to May. “And I’m glad I got to see you again before it was too late. I’d say we should catch up sometime, but…”

May shook her head. “Don’t say that. I’m right here, let’s talk.”

“We can go in,” Noah said quickly, nudging Brian. His friend nodded.

“Yeah, I have homework I need to get done.”

Everyone turned to look at him. Leah stopped walking away like the weight of the world lay upon her shoulders and straightened to stare back at her brother. He glanced around uncomfortably. “What?”

Leah shook her head. “We have every excuse to take a break from schoolwork right now. Nobody expects you to be all studious while you’re valiantly fighting for your life against a terrible, unexplained illness.”

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Brian scratched his neck. “I don’t want to fall behind. What else am I going to do here, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a television in the sitting room, go watch a movie or something. Or call our dear parents to tell them that we’ve gotten an illness previously unknown to man…”

That reminded Noah that he should call his own dad before he forgot. He left the siblings to their bickering and headed inside. As he passed through the kitchen he glanced in the direction of the fridge, but he just couldn’t summon the energy to bother eating anything and he ended up going straight upstairs to his room.

He flopped onto his bed and buried his face in the pillow. It had a slightly plastic feel that made him wonder if he might accidentally suffocate himself if he fell asleep, but he allowed himself to relax. I probably don’t even need to breathe by this point anyway. My whole body is shutting down.

After a minute he began to consider how stupid it would be to die from making that kind of assumption, and he grudgingly rolled over.

Might as well get this out of the way, he thought, pulling out his phone. He dialed his dad and tried to think of the best way to phrase his situation as he waited for him to pick up.

“Hey, Noah. What’s up?”

Noah closed his eyes. “Hi dad. There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Oh no. Who is it?”

Noah looked down at his phone. “What?”

His dad laughed. “Nothing. What’s going on?”

“So, I went to the campus health center earlier today.”

There was silence on the phone.

“I talked to a doctor- actually, my friends were there too, we were all feeling a bit off- and the doctor thinks we all have some odd kind of rare illness. She ended up putting us in this nice little housing unit on the edge of campus where we’ll stay until she knows if it’s safe for us to be around people.”

Noah ran his words over in his head and nodded to himself. That didn’t sound too terrible.

His dad didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he asked, “Are you doing okay? Are you in pain?”

“We’re doing great; we’re not in any pain, and they’ve given us everything we need to be comfortable here.”

An exhale came through the phone. “What exactly made you decide to go to the doctor this morning?”

“We, ah, noticed we were breathing out something like dust, which is the main thing that tipped us off. We were also feeling a little numbness.”

“Dust? Numbness? What’s the dust from? Where are you feeling numb?”

“We… aren’t sure,” he lied. “And the numbness is everywhere, I guess. I’ve had no sensory input besides sight and hearing for the past couple hours.”

“Well, don’t go jinxing yourself by phrasing it that way.”

Noah gazed out the balcony window and debated whether to share the rest of the symptoms. They were all a step up in terms of reason for concern and they sounded scarier than they felt. Eventually he decided to just spit it out, if only for the sake of honesty.

“There’s something else. Just… a couple other symptoms.”

His tone must’ve made his dad nervous, because he heard a short inhale. “Yeah?”

“Again, we all feel fine, but our heart rate has dropped a bit. Well, a lot. And apparently there’s not enough oxygen in our blood or something.”

“How low?”

Noah looked down at his wristband. “It’s at 8 right now.”

As he spoke he realized it had decreased just over the past couple minutes, and he felt a spike of worry. Pushing it aside, he added, “And my pulse ox level is 49, if that means anything to you.”

“You need to be at a medical facility. Right now.” The voice on the phone was suddenly stone cold. “Stop talking to me and call your doctor immediately. I’m getting in the car now. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Dad, wait, it’s a ten-hour drive! Honestly, I’m okay, you don’t need to-”

The phone beeped.

Noah put it down with a sigh.