GED Class, 1:15 PM -- the back of the room
In her seat near the door, Maizie only had half her attention on the lesson that was going on at the moment. Her phone was out on her lap, the screen dimmed enough that it wouldn't glow under her desk and give her away, and she was halfway through an opening text to Liv when someone screamed. Like, for real.
“What the hell?” Maizie startled, nearly dropping her phone, and her head whipped up to look around the room. A few rows ahead of her, closer to the board than she ever felt comfortable sitting, one of the guys had attacked his neighbor or something. No, wait -- was that blood? “Oh my god. He's biting her!”
“What?” Noa asked, her eyes up from the notes she’d been writing when she heard Maizie’s declaration. The commotion had increased as the students closest to the duo vacated their chairs, but even with the moving bodies it was hard to miss the scene. “Oh fuck.” She pushed her chair back as she stood up.
“Run for the hall if it gets worse,” she told Maizie and Sasha, looking at both in turn.
Sasha’s attention had been snapped up from the sketch he’d been drawing in the margins of his textbook at the sound of first Maizie’s voice and then Noa’s. He had spaced out on the lesson nearly ten minutes ago, but now all thoughts of the little colony of bees he had been drawing were chased from his mind, replaced with a bone chilling kind of realization.
“Shit,” he exclaimed, gaze darting from Noa and then to Maizie, before traveling towards the front of the room in search of Marina.
Fuck. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not on the day before the anniversary of losing his mom. Sasha felt numb, like if his brain told his limbs to move they may not. Then his dark eyes went wide as Noa stood and told them to run if it got worse.
“Where are you going?” Sasha hated the way his words came out in a mix of a demand tinged with panic. “We need to get Marina and get out of here,” he added, turning his attention towards Maizie as if his friend might back him up on this plan.
Maizie hit send on the last of three jumbled messages to Liv and looked up at Sasha, wide-eyed. What was he talking about? God, it felt like someone had clamped a hand around her heart, squeezing the organ like a vice while it kicked and sputtered and fought for freedom. Fear, maybe? Her eyes darted to the front of the room.
“We can’t leave Marina behind,” she agreed, even though all she wanted to do at that moment was run out of the room without looking back. Some of the students were doing just that, and as Maizie scrambled out of her seat, one of them knocked her back into the desk, stomping on her foot hard enough that her eyes watered. Or maybe that was the fear too, because part of her definitely wanted to burst into tears.
“But how are we gonna get her attention?”
Noa was jostled and elbowed by panicked students making their way to the back of the room as she continued to watch the front. Inwardly she was trying not to be frustrated at the two teenagers that seemed more concerned with Marina and her whereabouts than they did themselves. She’s actually least concerned about her friend. She knows Marina can handle a situation. Sasha and Maizie are the unknowns.
“Now’s not a good time,” she responded evenly, having caught sight of Marina near the teen that had turned. But that’s all she saw before she was thrown back into her desk by a trio of bodies in the aisle. She regained her balance quickly, but knew that she’d have a good bruise to show from it.
“We won’t leave without her.” Noa moved forward another row, ducking around a couple more panicked kids, and closer to the scene. That wasn’t what she wanted to say; she wanted to tell Sasha and Maizie to get clear, For Vic and Savannah’s sake, and maybe for her own. But the pair of them seemed too stubborn to listen.
“But she’s too close to…” Noa trailed off for a fraction of a second, “the student who turned to try and say something now.”