Restless

May tapped her pencil on her desk, brain completely unfocused on the situation at hand. The ticking sound it made as it struck served as a rhythm for her thoughts, like the beat of a lame marching drum. 

"Hmm... May?" asked the teacher. 

May completely missed the words, swimming through her thoughts. She hadn't slept a bit the night prior, her brain occupied then, too, with the extirpations. And now, her eyes were lifeless, staring blankly out the window directly to her side. 

A light drizzle fell from the sky. The dreary weather washed away the hope from her psyche as she stared into the mist. Beneath it, some children played a football game in the wet, splashing across the grass and sending cascades of water from their feet.

"May?" asked the teacher again.

She failed to respond, still lost in thought. Another few moments of silence crawled by as the class waited for her response.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. That visceral sensation dragged her out of the doldrums of her tired mind. Her eyes blinked out the tiredness, turning groggily to the source of the tap. 

Her friend, Bran, sat leaned forward, his hand still outstretched, postured to tap her again. No... pointing. 

She turned in the direction he indicated, rubbing her eye. 

"Nice of you to join us, May," said her teacher, Mr. Matsumoto. 

"What...?" Her face reddened at the sight of her classmates staring at her, snickering a bit. 

Mr. Matsumoto eyed her disparagingly, responding only with a sigh for a moment. "I asked what the speed of light is in a vacuum. Which you'd know if—"

Cutting him off out of indignation, May responded, "Two hundred ninety-nine million, seven hundred ninety-two thousand, four hundred fifty-eight meters per second."

The class and teacher stared in silence for a moment. Mr. Matsumoto grumbled to himself before responding, "Right. But three times ten to the eighth more than suffices for our use."

She couldn't help but think that her mind was better spent applied to more useful things than the recitation of a number. Huffing, she slouched back in her chair and looked out the window again.

———

"May, what the heck is up with you?" Bran asked. "You've been so out of it!" He tossed a rock onto the blacktop of the school's driveway, watching it clatter away before stopping at the opposite curb. 

"Yeah, I don't..." she trailed off. She looked out at the football field, now vacant, deep, muddy puddles restricting the play that could happen on it in spite of the rain having stopped. 

"I mean, seriously! You know how Mr. Matsumoto is! And you still ignored him! And then got it right! I wish I could be like that someday, you know?" He tossed the rock he was holding and then leaned back on his hands, looking up at the sky. "Hey, do you... do you think that doctor was right?"

The way he addressed her shot a twinge of annoyance through her mind. That's my mother, a great scientist, not just some doctor. But she restrained the words. "Probably."

"You really think so? Like, really?" She felt his eyes turn to her, training into the side of her head. "You think the world might end?" But his moment of sincere concern faded as quickly as it'd come. "Y'know, the president, other scientists, and, like, everyone else but her has said since then that she was wrong. And I'm not sure, but... I think she must have been."

His words were significantly more irritating today than any other day. She couldn't put her finger on it, but his ramblings didn't usually affect her so much. But she calmed herself enough to say, "We have to assume she was right."

"I guess. I mean, sure, the... extrications or whatever they're called are a bit scary 'cus we don't know what's causing them, but they're so small. I mean, she's kind of crazy if she thinks those could make the whole world disappear. They haven't even, like, killed anyone yet, you know?"

Her anger flared, brow creasing and nose turning up in exasperation at his ignorance. The brake line incident couldn't possibly be construed as anything but a kill for the extirpations. The whistleblower was a kill—his house and daughter had gone, and then him with them. And May herself had been a target, or so it had seemed. Not killed anyone? she thought, rage set to spill over. But feeling a tap on her arm, she whirled around to face it, instead.

Her anger waned at the smiling face of Alice in front of her. 

"Hi, Sis! It's recess!" She beamed down at May, hands proudly on her hips. "Whatcha doin'?"

Her ire completely gave way to relief and gratitude on seeing them. When nothing else did, her sister's presence always calmed her and brought her back down to Earth. She returned a weak smile. "Hi, Alice." She thought for a second. "I guess just sitting."

"You look tired. You need to sleep more." The words irritated May a bit, but the blow was reduced due to who spoke them. 

Her mind moved to think about the crisis again, chest tightening with worry. "I know, Alice. It's just hard with... Dad."

A shadow flickered across Alice's face for just a moment. But May saw it there. 

And then it was gone.

"He promised me he'd fix it, so..." she muttered, trailing off. 

"I know." But he's scared, May thought. I could help, if I wasn't stuck here... Studying Alice's face, she steeled her resolve. She had to make some headway. For her. If their father had just let her help, then maybe she could be getting somewhere, but... 

She looked around, seeing the brick elementary school peeking out from behind a hill, on which a handful of children played. 

"Hey, why don't you go enjoy your recess? Do you know any of those kids?" She gestured to the hill.

"Well..." She dragged out the last sound. "I see my friend Cade. Maybe I'll go talk to him. You guys are boring, anyway." She looked over at Bran and stuck her tongue out mockingly.

He grinned back at her, beaming, as though he welcomed the insult. 

May breathed a laugh. "Yeah, why don't you do that? Go have some fun." Before the world ends, she thought.

With an emphatic nod, Alice ran off toward the hill in the distance. She waved to them, and then passed over the ridge, out of view. 

And as the light of Alice's presence left her sight, the cloud of dark gloom that had hung over her since the night before retook its place, raining silent despair down onto her. 

———

She didn't know how long she'd sat on that curb. But it was a long time. At some point, Bran had just left. She hadn't truly processed that. She might've missed classes. She didn't know. Her mind raced but crawled, at once bogged down with thoughts but trying to sprint through them. 

And as she'd sat, she couldn't find a way forward. She could look for her mother—that seemed a good bet. But the problem was that she didn't have the best of relationships with her mother. It'd been a couple months since they even talked on the phone. There was no way she could find her with none of her dad's clues to go on. 

But she could start with looking at other research on the extirpations. Someone else in the world must have been interested in them as much as her parents were. She just had to find them.

A memory surfaced of the night before, her sitting at her desk with her laptop open, scrolling through pages upon pages of propagandistic articles on the extirpations. Absolute drivel about her mother's incompetence, some religious angle about divine retribution, spirits, alternate dimensions, time travel... garbage. Nothing of use. Nothing scholarly or rigorous, at least that appeared with a few searches. 

"Hey, Sis!" called a voice from afar. Alice ran down the sidewalk toward her. She sat up. "Check out this—" Her voice cut off as she approached. "Have you just been sitting here this whole time?"

"What? I guess so."

Alice just stared at her for a second.

"I guess I should go back inside—"

"School's done..." 

"Oh." May blinked a couple times and shook her head. "Whatever."

"Well, anyway, check out this neat rock I found on the way over here!" She said, proudly thrusting her hand into the air, her other hand on her hip. With a flourish, she dropped the rock into May's outstretched hand. 

It was smooth, but fairly mundane for the most part. She turned it over in her hand. One part of it caught her eye. 

There was a chip in it. Or maybe a fracture of some kind. Slightly concave. Inside it, it was smooth. Unbelievably smooth. It was as though it hadn't broken, instead having been cut perfectly—

She jumped to her feet. "Alice, where'd you find this?"

Alice's eyebrows shot up as May stood so quickly. She just pointed behind her to the corner of the school. 

She broke into a sprint in the direction Alice pointed. This is... 

Reaching the corner of the building, she turned it, and saw... nothing.

Right where a classroom should have been.