Anthony

I’m not likely to help much of anyone. The science is interesting to me, but I don’t get people as well as I get facts and books. I’m not great at emotionally being there for people, which – weirdly – my brother Anthony is way better at. Our parents baby him for it, but it’s sort of like he babies them right back. He says he can read me too, and would spoil me if I weren’t so spoiled already. So, he’s still capable of being a jerky teenager.

Still, I kind of wish I were more like him, sometimes. Not the laziness or the academic failure, and definitely not the time-wasting zombie-killing hobbies, but the ability to make people smile. I went to go tell Anthony off for playing his stupid game too loudly and told him it was giving Kyle a headache…and somehow, Kyle wound up playing with him in co-op mode and left with the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen on him all week.

I’m considering taking him with me, tomorrow, to talk to Melissa Booker. I honestly hate to do it, but work hasn’t slowed down even remotely – I’m being shafted with ridiculous hours and working at least one shift per day. I say that because sometimes I work until 6 AM and am coming back into work for 4 PM the same day.

It might be awkward – I think Mrs. Booker actually teaches art, at his school – but Anthony’s agreed to it so long as I don’t change my mind. He’s expressed some wild theories about what’s going on, which hasn’t been helped with one of the more recent developments.

The town’s plague has got the attention of the Center for Disease Control – I think. They’ve put into effect what Anthony’s calling an ‘unofficial quarantine’; there’s a curfew for everyone who doesn’t have clearance to be out, and they’ve closed the roads leading out into the city. They haven’t come right out and said so, but they’ve made it pretty clear to the people who’ve tried to take their loved ones to the hospital – they’re expecting the clinic to handle it all, and we aren’t even equipped to find out what ‘it’ is.