“Yeah, not buying it,” Ramona says, resting a hand on her hip and pursing her lips. “What are you going to say? That we’re all going to die?”

“That is a totally reasonable question,” Kendall says. The picture of calm. And then he looks from Ramona to the other girls as I tuck myself farther out of sight. I want so badly to be able to read him, to have some feel for whether he’s telling the truth. But I am too far away and there are too many other people. “All I can do is give you the information we have and hope that we can earn your trust. You all are truly going to be completely fine. The NIH is merely concerned about how you would have contracted this particular strain of highly unusual strep, not the severity of your illness.”

“‘Highly unusual’ how?” Ramona asks.

“Unusual in its high percentage of conversion to PANDAS and in its transmission. It seems the strep you contracted must have been either food or water borne. Strep can be contracted that way, but it is not typical.”

Becca’s face puckers, then she points at Dr. Haddox. “He told me that we probably got it because people are gross and don’t wash their hands.”

“That would certainly be one possibility,” Kendall says.

“And what are the others?” Kelsey asks, shifting forward a bit so that I have to be careful to stay behind her.

“Our working theory is that the strep was introduced at one or perhaps several local food establishments you all frequented—a frozen yogurt shop in Barkwell Shopping Center is one possibility—in an intentional act of bioterrorism. After getting the initial heads-up from some online chatter, it was the credit card receipts from your parents, combined with the fact that you have all been out of school, that led us to you.”

I know the yogurt place, and I have been there. But then, most teenagers in a thirty-mile radius have probably been there—it constantly has a line out the door. And from the way everyone is muttering and looking at one another, we were all on that line at one time or another.

“Terrorism?” Teresa yelps, which is weird after the delay. She even clamps a hand dramatically over her mouth. Excited. I still feel it though. Why do I keep feeling that? It does not make sense.

“Bullshit,” Ramona says skeptically. “If these are ‘symptoms,’ why have I always been this way? Also, why would a terrorist make a weapon that doesn’t actually kill anybody? That would be so stupid.”