Chapter Text
“She’ll do whatever I want?”
Michael didn’t believe that Jeremy would really do it, but then again, the Jeremy he knew had only surfaced in one or two conversations in the last four months. The Jeremy that knew Michael was there, the Jeremy who thought of him, maybe, as a friend. That was the Jeremy who phoned him, the Jeremy he was supposed to be saving, but he just wasn’t sure, for certain, who Jeremy was right now.
He closed his eyes and hoped. He hoped very loudly, but only in his head. Maybe if he hoped loudly enough, Jeremy would feel empathy super hard and make the right decision. He kind of wished his eyes were open, though, because it would have been nice to see whatever visuals aligned with the outcome in which every person besides himself started screaming at the top of their lungs until fainting. That would have been nice.
And Michael? He was under a lot of stress. Everyone was screaming. They might all be dying? And it was extremely loud. He covered his ears and yelled too.
Eventually, everything went quiet, other than Michael’s own shouting. As he came too, a little, he stopped yelling but continued to hold his ears and close his eyes, trying to hold back tears while focusing on evening shaky and shallow breaths.
Soon enough, Michael opened his eyes. He didn’t know if he should leave or not, since he was not sure to what degree medical attention was required in this situation. Not that he had any to offer. He slowly sat down, looking at Jeremy’s lifeless body slumped over Christine’s. Nearer to himself was the drama teacher and some other students in the play, few of whom Michael recognised. Jake Dillinger was there. So was Brooke Lohst, Jeremy’s old girlfriend. He scooted away slightly, overwhelmed by the fact they had all been grabbing at him moments before.
Michael barely had the nerve to take his hands off his ears, and when he finally did, he put his headphones on and hit shuffle. His brain and all thoughts were an incoherent mess, but he was stable enough to recognise he had to calm down if he was going to be able to help anybody. As the adrenaline and overwhelmed feelings started to fade after a minute or two, he was able to remember how to talk well enough to take on the 911 dispatcher.
Michael continued to sit on the floor with his music playing after the dispatcher hung up. He was pretty sure dispatchers weren’t supposed to hang up. Then, he wondered if the dispatcher maybe thought he was making a prank call. It didn’t sound real—about ten people collapsing at the same time at a school play.
Oh wow, they were at a school play. He couldn’t imagine what the other side of the auditorium was like. Could the audience here the screaming? What the fuck? Why was no one here right now? If they couldn’t here it, what about all the parents in the foyer of the school, now waiting for their kids to tell them how well they did? The kids were dead on the floor of the auditorium.
Not dead, Michael reminded himself. Unconscious. (Although he hadn’t checked. He did not have the nerve to check.) He hoped the ambulance came soon, or someone woke up. He worried that maybe if they did think it was a prank, no one would come, but then he remembered a lesson he had as a kid where the man giving the lecture mentioned that pranking emergency services was bad because they aren’t allowed to not respond, so you’re taking away resources. That meant people had to be coming now, right?
After what had felt like forever while Michael was lost in his thoughts, Christine groaned and squirmed, trying to get out from beneath Jeremy’s weight. His heart skipped a beat, because if she wasn’t dead, the others probably weren’t either. She adjusted Jeremy back to the ground, careful not to hit his head. Michael watched her, politely unhelpful. She looked dazed and nervous at the same time.
“What happened?”
“You fainted. Everyone did ecstasy. It was bad.”
Michael lied. It was a garbage fire of a lie, but it might have made more sense than eating supercomputers. He also didn’t want to be blamed.
“No, it was… No. The little brain computer! Did you—did you have one too?”
“No.”
“Oh. That must sound ridiculous.”
“Yes. Or, no. It’s—that happened. They’re off. Everyone fainted.”
“Hey, are you okay?”
Michael was not sure if he was okay, or if he had the capacity to have a conversation right now. He opted to ignore the question.
“Um. I called 911. Can I leave?”
Christine nodded, probably not entirely on the same page as him, but Michael was desperate to leave, so he took it as the permission he wanted.