I've waited for this day, but not for the same reason that most people have.
I got out of bed and slapped the alarm shut, that played happy pop songs to get me out of my stone shade silk sheets.
My room was huge and open.
The air smelled of something between mint and window cleaner.
Three long marble walls and one glas front, overlooking a simple heath garden. It was surrounded by high bamboo that acted like a fence.
A simple room but the expensive stones in here made it look heavier than it should be.
I dropped the white blanket and tiptoed barefoot to my bathroom.
It also had three walls and a glass front.
On the terrace in front of it, I could still see water glistening in my jacuzzi.
I bent over the long stone sink and let cold water rinse my rough skinned face. In the morning I always felt like a crab, full of crust and sand.
In the full wall mirror before me, I saw tired grey eyes and streaky dark hair. The water disappeared in an invisible slit behind the stone of the basin. I would enter test day squeaky clean.
I stepped into the glass wall that separated the shower area from the rest of the room and stared up into the skylight. A waterfall of scorching hot water fell out from around it. But through the window, I could see the bleak grey morning sky and while I rubbed my whole body in peach blossom scented shampoo, I pressed my eyes shut and waited for the world to stop. But it didn't.
The day was still here. It was a meaningless day and yet it was the most portant day in everybodies life. The first time to get tested. A big red X and in every teens calendar.
Most would take this as an opportunity to brag about how not scared they were. Some will cry and some will try to dodge the test. Others will come out of the unit and throw up. Surely, everyone will throw a party like they had their sweet sixteenth all over again and they will eat ridiculous amounts of fast food and come hung over to school. But it won't really change anything for anyone.
It's just a mandatory thing that we had to go through with in order for the world to function. According to the government.
I sneezed when I came out of the shower. I never managed to not regulate the smart heating system in my rooms to the point that I wasn't either too hot or too cold.
Maybe taking an ice bath in my jacuzzi at mid night hadn't been such a great idea after all but I've had this weird itching ever since the thoughts about the test were no longer something I could push aside.
It's just a stupid precaution, I reminded myself. Calm down.
It's not like anything ever happened. I didn't know why people made such a fuss about it.
I got dressed and walked down the floating stairs to the huge open living area that overlooked more of the Heath garden. My father was already gone, of course. He was a top tier lawyer and I barely even saw his face, except during holidays and that's when he had his practiced and perfectionized let's-win-this-case-smile on, like celebrations between our family where another case to get over with. But my mother sat at the long walnut table, heir whitish blond hair in a loose updo, her white silk morning robe around her shoulders. Her pajama pants had a coffee stain that she didn't mind while sipping out of her cup. My brother Aron was spooning his cereal, tousled dark head hanging over the screen of his phone. Never emerging, like he was on one of his dives during swim practice. Only one that made me smile was my nine year old sister Kenzie, who sat at the table and played with the pink chocolate balls on her pancake.
"Eat don't play" I ruffled her hair and she grinned up at me.
"I'll play, and then I'll eat. It's called work hard, play hard. Daddy says you need to do balancing or life will outweigh you."
"Oh, toothgap. You're really young to think about balance."
"Kenzie, listen to your sister", mom said over her magazine. Kenzie grimaced and I grimaced back at her, pointing her to eat.
"Morning", I said to them all - the rest of them - like I'd just seen them and I walked over to the open kitchen area and scanned the fridge for food. Porridge, fruits, my protein shake and some almond milk. The cereal boxes I shoved aside: I had never been a fan of sugar. I'm fact, just a gram of it made me sick to the stomach. I didn't know why Aron shoveled that stuff like each gram would make him richer.
"Masie dear, could you please pick up the newspaper?", Mom called from behind me.
Just about to pop a bite into my mouth, I put my breakfast back on the counter by one of the barstools and said: "Sure".
The big flat screen TV in the lower lying sitting area flared. The news were on, to be exact, and a news anchor in a dark blue suit earnestly reminded us all, that this was not meant to be fun, but it would be over fast and we were all to take our part of the populations responsibility seriously. ...So the usual.
I put the cap back on the almond milk and stalked through the hallway and the beige colored walls towards our front door. The morning breeze was fresh and clean, as state wide air pollution filters made sure that's how it was, and I walked towards the all surrounding bamboo hedge, that completely engulfed the world beyond and only opened where our main gate was. A path of flat grey stones lead up to it. Behind the fingerprint gate stood our mailbox. But suddenly Mom appeared behind me and pressed her finger to the scanner, causing the gate to hum and slide open.
I looked at her questioningly. "I said I'll fetch it", I said, laughing.
"No you can't", she reminded me. "I forgot. You turned seventeen this month and today is the test. On test day, they deactivate all seventeen year olds fingerscans. You can't open anything until you've tested negative, remember?"
"Right." I'd forgotten too. This was a way too force the kids to actually attend the test and for them to not to try and skip it. Pretty smart of them. Besides, the virus needed three months to turn infectious so they had to check all the seventeen year old in a monthly rhytmn, not yearly like some of the ever complaining people demanded from the politicians.
I was itching to know if it was true. Was I blocked from everything now? How exciting. I pressed my fingertip against the mail box scanner and the display buzzed and red: ERROR 1007. And just like that, I knew it was real. My heart's pace should probably speed up now but I just watched Mom unlock the mail box. When the slot with the mail sprung open and I grabbed a stack of letters and a rolled together newspaper, to hand it to her (honestly my presence here now was kind of useless) I felt eyes stinging into the back of my neck.
I glanced across the street and saw Kain crouching by the hedge of his mother's estate. Kain Longfort was the son of one of the richest cosmetic heiresses on this planet. His mom owned everything from drug stores to skin care boutiques in every major city. You'd think somebody this surrounded by gold and glam would be more... Well, glam.
His shaggy black hair hung into his face and his unfriendly, cutting blue eyes pierced right through me. He was sitting on his black bike, to be exact and the only thing really missing were his idiot level bike friends.
"Oh no", Mom said, when she followed my eyes across the street. She sniffed. "Don't tell me you kids are still fighting. I thought that was sixth grade history."
"He made the whole school hate me, Mom."
"You broke his bike."
"It was an accident. I was eleven. I apologized. Then he picked fights about it." Like the rude little piece of clay he was.
Things... Escalated. But I remembered that it wasn't my fault. Not really. I came down the hill with my own bike and Kain shot out of his own driveway completely without warning, right when I was about to pass it. I raced into his brand new mountain bike and dented it with no return. My own older kid bike had been completely fine, which added to his anger. It wasn't even like he couldn't afford a new one. I refused to offer him money because that meant admitting it was my fault. Of course I would have forgotten all about that little incident if he hadn't started to brawl with me about everything afterwards. One incident turned into hundreds of incidents and before I knew it, I had made the first enemy of my life. I was usually a peaceful person.
My mom just sighed and walked off back towards the house. "Please sort that stuff out sometime. You know, Kirsty Longfort is a really good friend of my sister?"
"Not your friend though."
She gave me a warning stare. "We're neighbors. Get along." And with that, she stalked off on her morning sandals.
I looked back over the street and Kain was still staring.
He lifted the left corner of his mouth, revealing a mocking white grin. Then he ignored me and turned to the shoulder length blond haired girl I hadn't noticed standing behind him. She got onto his bike and they laughed about something. This explained why his douche friends weren't around. Kain put on his matte black helmet and his blue eyes darted back over to me. He winked and I pretended to gag (That was my honest reaction though). But the glare I sent him made him laugh more so I turned back to the mail box while he sled up his bike with a roar and then him and new hair cut Barbie raced up the hill, towards the centre of Jewel town.
I walked back into the living area and my brother rushed past me out of the archway and Into the hallway, grabbing his backpack from the floor, before dashing towards the front door.
"Bye, Aron", I said with emphasis but he plugged his earphones into his ears and slammed the door shut behind him. I never understood why my friends wished for older brothers; That one was naturally hostile.
It didn't help that he and Kain were kickboxing buddies. My brother Aron wasn't fond of the fact that I made enemies with Kain Longfort in sixth grade, while he had worked his way up into their douchy dorky 'cool' clique.
Aron had his own car since he turned sixteen two years ago, but he refused to take me anywhere let alone school where the cool kids might see me with him. I always told him they knew we were siblings but he used to shrug and say it was one thing for them to know it, a whole different thing for them to see us together.
I rolled my eyes and plonked down at the bar by my breakfast. By now, my sister Kenzie had positioned herself across from my plate and looked up at me with huge, light brown Bambi eyes.
"Hey, kiddo", I said.
"Do you think Mom will leave Dad?", she asked in a half whisper.
Shocked, I dropped my spoon. "What? No! Why would you even think that?" I paused. "Who told you that?"
I was starting to get mad at Aron but Kenzie nodded towards Mom at the dining table, a sad pout on her little face. "Mom and the fitness trainer are having S-E-X", she said and I was glad I hadn't taken any spoonful of my porridge yet because I'd surely choked it out.
"That's not true", I said, although everyone in this household knew it was. "Eat your pancakes. Doesn't your friend come in five minutes to pick you up?"
Kenzie nodded. She rolled up her last pancake and stuffed it into her heart shaped mouth and I stared at her. How had she figured it out?
Glancing over to the table, Mom was on the phone with said fitness trainer, twirling a strand of her perfectly straightened platinum blond hair around her finger.
Pigtails dancing, Kenzie left when the doorbell rang. She always stole rides with her best friend Amirah and Amirah's mom. So it was just my mother and me but that pretty much surmountedt to me being alone in our living area, while my mother sweet talked her sports friend.
I ate my breakfast and got up to get my bike out of the garage. I used to ride the bus but that was prior to rumors about me going around through the whole school and causing a lot of evil Snickers and whispers behind my back. I decided not to dwell on the fact that I had to leave home earlier and condition my muscles before school.
The way to school was nice, passing by a few hay fields and then a couple of rowhouses and Jewel towns neat little center. West Jewel School lay - what a surprise - west of the main Street, where the houses got larger and the town even had four skyscrapers. One of these buildings I knew was mostly occupied by the bank and the tallest, slimmest building in it's shiny white shard shape was Kain's mother's cosmetic imperium.
I drove past the scrapers and rolled into the gritting asphalt of West Jewels school campus. The white gates stood widely open and I was careful not to get run over by one of the many cars rolling in. But just then a bike dashed by and nearly ran into me. The driver honked and the girl on his backseat giggled and waved with an empty donut bag. I glared after Kain, but then made myself shake my head. I then made my way to the main staircase by the front door, where my friend Alice Hentdorf waited on the second step from the top. She had a calculus book on her lap and her white earbuds in, her blond locks curling their way into her pale, round face.
Alice used to be one of the most popular girls in scho before she decided that she hated the in clique. So now she wore slightly more punk clothing than her old friends would have allowed and there was a black diond stud in the right wing of her petite little nose.
Her gleaming dark eyes looked up at me and she hid the calculus book in her navy green backpack, stuffing the earbuds away as well. She stood up, grabbing the rail. "Are you ready?", She asked in her bright, cheerful voice, her eyebrows jumping up and down in the expectation of us being tested for a world destroying illness.
"I can't fathom why you're so excited about this.", I said soberly and she flew around my neck, arms squeezing the oxygen out of me. "Come on!", she said, jumping away from me. "Let's have them examine our saliva."
"Gross", I said but she just grabbed my wrist and pulled me along to the neat white, floor to ceiling window lined hallways of West Jewel Highschool.
We passed Kain and his group of... well, groupies by the mint colored lockers and Kain looked up and his blue eyes met mine in passing. Menacingly. I quickly looked down sucking in a sharp breath of air and followed Alice towards the testing unit. "Why is this douche everywhere", I grumbled.
"What", she said. "You mean like the pest?"
We both chuckled at the accuracy and she grabbed my arm.
"Come on now! Test unit!"
"Don't we have to register at the infirmary? Get our times?", I asked. I was actually hoping to procrastinate as long as I could, as I usually did. Since it gave me time to think and... prepare. But my friend was the opposite.
"I already went ahead and did this." Alice shrugged and pulled out to sleek white cards with angled black letters on it.
They read: Alice Hentdorf. 8:17. And Masie Sutton 8:18. PLEASE KEEP DISTANCE AT THE LINE.
Alice hopped up and down in excitement. "We'll be some of the first!", she exclaimed. When she saw my face, she laughed. "Oh come on, don't be such a downer about this. Best to have it behind us quickly, right? Imagine the other students. They'll all sit in school, shaking with what is about to come next. We will get to enjoy the rest of the day, watching them tremble." She then lowered her voice to a whisper. "Imagine watching Kain shake in horror, as everyone walks out of class, one after one. He won't show it but he will worry like everyone else. And we'll be through and we'll watch and laugh."
"Fair enough", I gave in, although I didn't care about Kain Longfort trembling. "But I actually just want to forget the guy exists", I said.
My best friend snorted and pulled me along. "Not possible. But you know what's possible? Getting our access to scanners back before 9."