Project 43

To call them my friends would be a stretch- except that’s how we were raised. As friends. I exaggerate when I say fifteen years, I guess in reality it’s only been like ten because it was before puberty. They probably all assumed I died like some of our peers had.

We were no stranger to death at a young age, and now I wonder if any of them actually were siblings or not since now that I think of it almost all of them had started out with a “sibling” with their parents. But I imagine it was considered healthier having us all together or maybe a controlled environment.

Whatever the case, I remember a lot of my early memories being of coloring. That’s usually when it happened when we were young, or maybe it’s just because that’s also when I had the most nose bleeds when I was young, and I remember it soaking into the paper. By about ten I think was when I was deemed unhealthy enough to have to be separated from my peers. I was old enough to hate it but after so much death I just wanted to live. Maybe they did that on purpose as part of conditioning. Letting us see other children collapse in a pool of their blood, drown on the foam coming from their mouth as their eyes roll back into their head. Limb’s twitching. Screams.

God the screams of a child that young. It was terrifying for me, but once I was away from my friends. Once I didn’t have anyone to talk to or braid hair with. To talk about a favorite show with or study with and compare yourself to...

I was really lonely, so I kept track of every last person that had been alive. Sometimes I also made-up stories in my head convincing myself they were real.

Janice was always first in line. It was because she was Private Allen's daughter, and Allen made her alphabetically first in line. She was the last A that had survived and originally when we were five there were seven kids ahead of her with the letter A including her sister Lilly Allan. Because L was before A. They had been twins. She's seventeen now because she was younger than me, she has a winter birthday coming up. She's always had bad acne once she hit puberty and was short. Five three I remember because the top of her hair just brushed under a poster that had been there for years and I had spent the time to figure out the math last year to entertain myself. I guessed roughly that number. Her brown hair looked like the color of dead sticks, and she liked Pokemon. I knew this when she started wearing pins on her bag and I found it on TV one day. I always liked to imagine her as quiet and mousy, because that's how I remember her after her sister died during a multiplication exercise in class.

After Janice came Nick who had grown a foot over the last year. I noticed the bags under his eyes also seemed to have grown. I assumed he stayed up late and drank a lot of caffeine between the stickers and energy drinks he carried in his bag as well as some new console in his backpack or side sleeve. Me and him where never close- I probably wouldn't even recognize his voice now. I imagined it to be a deep baritone despite being so scrawny.

Marnie and Lilly, the only twins that had survived where behind them. Lilly was a mute and Marnie was deaf yet somehow when we were younger, they communicated just fine with a look. Both of them looked identical up until a year ago. Lilly had cut her hair short but there were also visible marks on her neck that looked like old claw marks. They had plan black back packs, the same standard uniform without alterations. Perfect military dolls.

Stephanie was the one I had liked, she was eccentric. Her hair was a stark white that I think grew in that way. She took sharpies and colored the tips all the time and usually sported a lime green or purple. She had once handed me a tissue when I had a nosebleed.

Lucus, Nate, Julian and Bart looked similar, all of them buff blond and kind of rugged in the wrong places. By that I mean it was almost like they looked malnourished in places or hadn't grown into their manhood. Nate sported a mustache, Bart had short, cropped hair while the other three sported a tiny ponytail. Lucus had green yes, Nate had blue. Julian and Bart sported brown. Everything else from their pale skin and jawline was similar though. They also were military standard.

Amy had no boobs and a giant nose, but I remember calling for a teacher for her. I wonder if she remembered me the way I do her. She was the girl who offered me glue or a pencil whenever I needed it. Did she remember how nice I had been to her when she was bleeding? Foaming at the mouth? It was always hard to tell when someone was conscious or not. Even when I had gone through it, the results where fifty-fifty but when you did pass out you were afraid you wouldn't wake up.

A lot of us didn't wake up.

I can't do this anymore... this is too hard to think about. The last five don't really matter if their dead since they disappeared just like Stephanie. I just wish I knew what was so important to treat humans like lab rats. For me to be a lab rat.

If I'm some sort of cure or I have an immunity... part of me feels responsible to turn myself in I'm not oblivious to that. I could save someone like Nathan if it came to that. Right?

But what if I'm wrong and I just get dissected like a frog? Or put down? Or... something.

I could only imagine what Nathan would think of me if he knew. He'd think I was a freak or something not this normal human. I know I'm a freak. I don't need anyone looking at me like I'm one though when I finally have a person.

I don't mean like a person to interact with, but I mean a person that just looks at you like another person and talks with you. I've been observed so long like a specimen even by my own parents. I'm not obvious to that. I wanted what I saw on T.V.