I can’t sleep. I feel like sprinting. I imagine a field, wide and open, that I can run barefoot through. Cartwheels and dance moves are also in play. My body wants the movement, but my mind knows I should rest. I need rest. So I count imaginary animals jumping over my head, unicorns and griffins and whatnot, until I’m caught up in making up new imaginary animals.
But none of it works because I keep thinking about Danny. How dense his shrug was when I asked him if he was going to be okay. “Yeah.” He’d forced a smile. “And I’m sorry, Quinn. Really.”
I told him there was no need to apologize.
Still, I don’t sleep well. I wake and try to calm myself, telling myself there’s still time for a good night’s rest, until birds chirp in the still darkness of very early morning.
My phone rings. It’s Danny.
“Hey, Quinn.” He launches right in. He sounds better, chipper even. “I’m sorry about last night. All this was just sort of getting to me, but I feel better now. I really appreciate you listening and forgiving me. Thank you for understanding.”
He might be the sweetest boy in existence. I have this odd desire to invite him over so I can make him an apple pie and ruffle his hair and bop his nose with my finger.
“Of course,” I say. “Of course.”
“Anyway, last night I felt like I had to do...something. I called that virus expert I told you about.” I remember. His biology TA, I think. “Well, he was sort of, I don’t know, weird on the phone. Even though he agreed to meet me today, it got me thinking. I couldn’t sleep, so I spent all night in the library researching. I’m just heading home now.”
I hadn’t told him about meeting up with Rashid ‘cause, well, I collected exactly zero interesting tidbits of information. God, he spent all night hanging out with stacks of books. I should help with this research effort somehow. I stumble out of bed and stub my toe on my night stand. As I grab it and fall back into bed I say, “Great, that’s great and, you know what, I’m up early so I’ll go talk to that environmental professor.”
“Awesome,” he says. My cheeks are tight and I almost start tearing up a little. It’s weird and doesn’t make any sense, but I’m just so happy that the positive yet jittery Danny is back. He scared me last night.
“It’s still worth talking to her, but I don’t think this has an environmental cause,” he continues. “I was looking into this virus expert, and I think there is more there. He said something interesting about white blood cells at a panel a couple of years ago and...” Danny breathes into the phone. “I’m not sure yet, and we only spoke for ten minutes last night, but he was really evasive and...” Danny coughs. “Quinn, I don’t know, I think he might know more about this than he’s letting on.”
“Really? What do you mean exactly?” I say, scrambling. How could someone know what was happening to us and not be the first to grab Peachy by the collar and tell him. “Danny?”
He’s quiet again, then he says, “What are they doing?” It’s so quiet that he must have just meant to say it to himself.
“Who? What is who doing?” I stand up and press my phone harder to my ear. Danny’s breaths spurt into the receiver. There are distant, rapid steps against pavement. “Danny? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, I just need to...” He pauses. No more steps, just breathing.
“Danny?”
“Look, Quinn, I got to go, but let’s meet later. Lunch at the caf maybe? I’ll explain then. And you can tell me what the professor has to say.”
“Sure,” I say. “Sure, Danny.” But I’m talking to myself, because he’s hung up. Still, I can breathe deeply again. My partner in crime is back on the case, full force. We both believe in ourselves again.
I get up, pull on a long skirt, tank top and cardigan, and head to the environmental studies building.
I wander the empty halls. Classes don’t start ’til 8 a.m. But Professor Klip had mentioned during that lecture I went to with Rashid that the early morning is the best time of day to work. I could not disagree more, but, whatever. Sleep is not in my immediate future, and it makes sense to try to catch her before the halls are a whir of students fussing about.
My decidedly artsy shoes click against the cold scientific floors. I haven’t been in the biology department before. I got my science requirements in astronomy. I’d rather gaze at the sky than hunch over a Petri dish. Until now.
I stand in Professor Klip’s doorway. She’s surrounded by stacks of paper and is using this cute little green desk lamp to pore over something, pen in hand.
I cough.
She eyes me suspiciously. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, actually. I mean, maybe.” I gingerly make my way into the room. She doesn’t offer me a seat but, to be fair, both extra seats are covered in papers. “Um, well, as you can see I’m one of the students with purple eyes.”
She nods, her face showing polite disinterest.
“Well, we’re wondering what it is. We don’t know and neither do the doctors or the public health people, or well, anyone. It’s sort of scary not knowing what’s going on.”
She stands and rests her fingers on her desk as she leans forward.
“But, we thought it might be a result of pollution or something? You know, like the fish in the river—” I speed through the rest, getting flustered. I don’t even know the right questions to ask.
She shakes her head and clucks dismissively as she crosses her arms. “That’s unlikely.”
“Why?” I ask.
She sighs. “If there was something wrong with the drinking water, we’d be seeing this in more cases. I concede I know little about the specifics of your condition, but I have overheard that there are clear social links between everyone who has exhibited symptoms. So I would be inclined to believe it’s a contagion.”
You’d think as a scientist she’d be interested in this. But I guess if it’s not in her field she couldn’t care less? I purse my lips and look at the ground. “So, not the environment?”
She shakes her head. “It would require multiple studies, taking months if not years, for me to say that definitively. But if you’re asking me my general thoughts, based on the evidence I do have, well then, let’s just say I’m not rushing to study this. It seems pretty clear it’s a disease that probably spreads through bodily fluids, like mononucleosis does. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I guess,” I say. I don’t move. I bite my thumbnail.
She rubs her eyes and walks around the side of the desk. “I heard something about how the condition might also accelerate the healing process?”
“Yes, ma’am—this arm was broken two days ago.” I hold up my arm and my bracelets slide along the straight bone.
She looks at my arm for almost a full minute.
She turns and looks out the window. “It’s curious,” she says. “A disease that has positive side effects instead of negative ones.” Her eyes snap back up to me. “Almost as though someone might have engineered it.”
“You can make diseases?” My chest tightens.
“Of course,” she says. “Haven’t you heard of bioterrorism?”
“Well yeah, but why give us a good disease?”
“That’s a question for another department,” she says.
I’m about to snottily ask her just what department I should be in, when sirens zoom and pound and get louder and louder until the blue-and-red light flashes in her window. She stands and widens the blinds with two fingers. “That’s interesting.”
I forget decorum and brush past her desk to the window. A crowd of students are a few yards away. They’re huddled around something. Something the cops are moving toward. Something the cops are putting yellow tape around. Something I can’t see.