Chapter 3

On this particular Monday morning April had a significantly difficult time waking up. Her dreams, she remembered, were more vivid than usual, but she couldn’t remember what they were about. And yet she felt a whole new type of exhaustion. “Mom! I don’t think I can go to school today!” she yelled from her bed, startling Dewey at her feet and hoping Mimi would hear down the hall. “Sorry, Panda. You’re going to have to suck it up get moving! Isn’t your history paper due today?”

            “Yes, goddammit.” April muttered to herself as she slowly rose up from the covers that wrapped her into a burrito, dissipating the warmth as she fell into the cold air of the room. Colder than usual. She shivered. “This is ridiculous. I am handicapped for crying out loud! Oh well, I guess I do want to be normal…F**k. I’d better get ready.” April’s pep talk sufficed, because in the next fifteen minutes she had a whoknowswhat tee shirt on (inside out, right side out, who cares?) and joggers that she happened to step on, just glad to have found clothes to begin with. Dewey growled from the bed. Obviously the German Shepard was a little tired as well. “Come on Dewey, if I’m miserable, you’re miserable too.” The full grown mutt jumped off the bed and came beside April to start his services for the day as they trudged towards the stairs. He just hoped today they wouldn’t forget his paycheck. He loved his peanut butter flavored bones.

            “Panda, your shirt’s on backwards, ya goof,” Mimi chuckled at her daughter’s attempt at picking out her outfit on her own (something that had taken years for April to learn to laugh at too) as she flipped one of her delicious banana chocolate chip pancakes over. “Crap, ha, that would have been embarrassing!” April chuckled a little herself, but she was too tired to fully understand what was going on as she twisted her shirt around and grabbed three pancakes off the plate. “Aren’t you going to be late? When is Rooney going to get here?” Mimi asked, as she grabbed herself a plate of pancakes and sat beside her daughter. -Ping! - “Oh! She’s here now, actually!” And within the next few seconds Rooney was walking through the garage door like it was her own home. She grabbed herself a plate of pancakes and took a seat on April’s other side.

            “You’d better eat those fast girls or you’ll be late to school.”

            “We know,” Rooney and April complained at the same time.

            “Alright then, loves. I’m going upstairs to shower. See you later!” And Mimi kissed both the girls’ foreheads, sticky and syrupy remnants clung to their skin making them giggle.

At that moment, Dewey came sprinting down the stairs at the sound of Rooney’s voice. “Hiya, big boy. Hiya, buddy!” Rooney smuggled Dewey into a tight bear hug; April could hear the excitement. Sometimes she wondered if Rooney was only her best friend because of Dewey, but second guessing their four-year friendship was ridiculous.

They met each other in the fourth grade when they were both placed in an after school program for kids who had lost a parent. This was a year after April had lost her father, Warren, to a boating accident. But, for Rooney things had been much different. Rooney had been an orphan since she was seven. She still had Grandma Sue and Papa Murphy, who she currently lived with, but they were hard of hearing, so it was difficult. But on the brightside, she had the freedom to basically do whatever she wanted. That included shaving the bottom half of her head. She had crazy red curls that fell over her shaved undercut full of constellations of shapes and swirls that made her bright green eyes pop and the golden starfires hidden within them shine. She rocked the punky scene look in her combat boots and black finger nails, scaring the s**t out of everyone. These were a few of the reasons April liked her so much. They both hated every person in their class. April and Rooney had a theory: they were born into the generation of idiots and sleezballs. Which, was mostly true. The drama that infested the hallways was so potent, it always left behind the smell of rusted metal (not a pleasant smell to inhale all day). Nonetheless, it was the only air they had, and their noses cursed at them for sniffing out the drama. At least they always had something to talk about.

“So, did you hear about Elaina and Ranya?”

“No. Please fill me in.” April’s lips started to take the form of a smirk, high and knowing.

“They got in a huge fight. It was over Nat and Wesley. Apparently, Elaina had a threesome with Nat and Wes, in Rayna’s bed at her party last Saturday.”

“Seriously? Damn.”

“Rayna’s pissed at Elaina cuz she blames her for leading both of them on while she was dating Nat. It’s literally put a ripple through the scent of drama. Can you smell it?”

“Yeah. Smells like mushy peassss!” They chanted as they high-fived, loud and clear echoing off the cafeteria walls, compelling the eyes of every student in the lunch room. They didn’t care. Most the time the hooligans of the school ignored them. They were in another realm.

“Ha, we’re idiots,” April came back from cloud nine and sat down on her side of the circle table, facing the cafeteria.

“Yeah, but so what.” Rooney, threw a sweet potato fry in her mouth. Yes, Bloom East High did occasionally serve a “fancy” meal.

“So, how’s Grandma Sue and Papa Murphy? April asked as she removed her glasses and set them on the table. She didn’t like to wear them while she ate because they made the black sheet seem more like an empty void than a sheet that could be removed. The black was always a little bit blacker.

“Purrdy gooood… still deaf as they always are. But yestur- woah,” Rooney was interrupted by a miniscule gesture. The smallest of trickles starting at April’s pupil, sending a ripple of black outward dilating her right eye. Rooney couldn’t tell if she was imaging the next few seconds or if they actually happened, but the ripple exfoliated five dark grey slivers that were barely noticeable under April’s clouded eyeball, but there, nonetheless. The slivers formed the shape of triangles interconnected, and as Rooney backed up in either fear or shock or whatever, she saw the whole image. Weather she was imaging it or not, she saw an inverted pentagram in April’s right eye.

April wished she could have seen Rooney’s face right at that moment because the silence was so intense and such a vibrant black, that April knew something was bad. “What is it Rooney? You have to tell me. I want to know” April was begging. “I-I-,” Rooney’s voice quivered, “I don’t want to tell you. Please, don’t make me.” To April’s advantage, Rooney was easily persuaded and one final command got the girl to spill. “Rooney. I. Need. To. Know. Now.”

            Nerves electrified Rooney’s bones, vibrations shivered her body, as she took the deepest breath of her life in preparation to reveal to her best friend that she has a satanic symbol hidden within the light grey clouds (of the previously hazel colored) iris of her right eye.

            “Huh? What are you talking about?

            “Your eye. It’s always been kinda clouded, but it’s even more cloudy now than I’ve ever seen it. And there’s, um, something in there.”

            “Rooney, what the hell is it?” April hadn’t realized she had yelled causing the east wing of the cafeteria to stare at her. “I’m sorry. Just please be straight forward with me.”

            “Fine. April, there is the symbol of Satan in your iris. Literally. The little star fire thingys in the colored part form the shape of an inverted pentagram, which is the symbol of Sa-” Rooney was cut off by the look of April’s face, her jaw clenched, lips starting to tremble in anger. “Don’t you dare f**k with me.”

            “I swear to god, April, I’m not. I wouldn’t joke about something like this…” her voice trailed into silence and April had to calm down to find that she was truly exhausted.

            “I would like to go home now. Please text my mom and tell her I wasn’t feeling well and I need to go back home.”

            “But-”

            “Rooney, please just do it.”

            And so she pulled out her cellphone and scrolled through her contacts to find Mama 2 to send a message. Rooney hated when she fought with April, but it happened quite often considering both of them had such intense personalities. Nonetheless, Rooney put on her best smile and walked with April and Dewey to the nurse’s office.

As soon as the girls walked into the white charade, Helen Fischer was sitting at the front desk, dark freckles surrounded her blue eyes that were distracting to most boys at Bloom East High, but for Rooney it was a different story. Helen lit fires behind Rooney’s eyes after what happened when they were in middle school, which was of course related to Talon Fenway, who stupidly enough tried to date them both at the same time. However, it didn’t change the fact that Helen was a Barbie on the outside, but a mean girl controlled her words. And so Helen sputtered out, “Hello Rooney Taylor and friend. What’re you doing here?” All the sarcasm in her voice shot daggers towards Rooney and April. “That’s none of your concern. Helen. Fischer.” Rooney’s voice couldn’t get much higher and the tension between them filled the room with an impending sense of combustion.

To avoid explosion, April intervened, “Uhhh, I just need to talk to Mr. Phillips.”

“Fine. I’ll let him know. Just sign in here.” Helen handed April the pen and pointed at the sign in sheet all the while serving Rooney the stink eye with a side of pouty lips. Rooney just gave her back a smirk and sat down as Helen walked away to retrieve the nurse.

            “Good afternoon Miss Fleck” Mr. Philips didn’t even have to look down at the sign in sheet to learn her name, and verified how he held up his reputation for being a hardass. “Well, you just gonna sit there all day, Fleck? Or you gonna explain ta me what you’re doing here wasting my time?” April had never met Mr. Phillips before, but she’d heard rumors of his intolerance of high schoolers. He was in the Air Force for 10 years and served as a medic in Desert Storm, which means he was damaged. According to Daryl (his son who attended Bloom East High with April and loved to brag about his badass father), Mr. Philips’s best friend was shot in the leg during combat. The wound became disgustingly infected, and since they were short staffed and low on medical supplies, Mr. Philips had to amputate his best friend’s leg. The operation didn’t go as planned and he watched his friend bleed to death on the table because of his doing. Also, the fact that he was a 250 pound, six-and-a-half-foot man was enough to make anyone piss themselves. April, just continued to stare, speechless, words caught in her throat, unable to give the man the answer he demanded. She jolted from her trance when Rooney whispered, “This guy’s nutso.”

            “Well, Fleck. Answer me! And Taylor I did not give you permission to speak!” Rooney shut her mouth.

            “Y-y-yes, I am here because I’m not feeling w-well.” April’s nerves trickled from her brain to her fingertips causing her hands to shiver from the cold. The icicles running through her veins were sharp and freezing, piercing every nerve ending throughout her body, rendering her motionless.

“No, dip Sherlock. Did you throw up or something?”

“N-n-no, but I f-feel like I might.”

“Too bad, Fleck! You ain’t sick until I see it on the floor! Get back to class soldier!” April was humiliated in front of Helen, who was snickering to herself behind the desk, trying hard to be quiet. April turned around    and felt the quieted Rooney grab her arm and get them the hell out of there.

“Well, that was rough,” Rooney commented as they headed off to English Comp, which luckily, they had together. They both sat next to each other in the back of the room, so usually Rooney and April talked the entire class, but today all April could do was sit their facing forward. Today, she felt something. She felt nervous; But, for what? She didn’t know. But it ate away at her stomach actually making her feel sick. Something was coming. And it was not going to be a good something.

That night April dreamed. She dreamed of the women in grey and the future, her future. Her first of many dreams to come. Even more unsettling than can be imagined.