Long Past Dawn

The door slams closed behind me and I start to think that this weird day might just come to a close.

"Hello? Who's that?" Mom calls and I can hear her footsteps coming towards me, I'm starting to think that I might cry. After all, just hours earlier I thought I might never hear her voice or see her again.

I run over to where my mom has just turned the hall corner and hug her as tight as I can. This day has been too weird, I'm just so scared that something else is going to happen.

"Huh? Dawn? What are you doing home! Shouldn't you be in school?"

I bury my face in her and don't hold back my tears any longer, "Oh my god Dawn! Are you ok? What happened?" Mom says as she checks me over.

"Mom....." I weep into her as she tries to calm me down before taking me into the living room where she sits me down on the couch and goes to get me a glass of water.

"Come on Dawn. Tell me, what happened?"

"I t-thought I was going to die!" I say only to burst into more tears. In between the waterworks I manage to squeeze in the whole story, well not the whole story... more like I was distracted and before I knew it I was in the middle of the crosswalk with a car coming down on me and that the car stopped on time. Because if I told her any of that other shit who knows what mental asylum she'll send me to, not to mention that I'm not sure it really happened myself.

"Oh my god! Dawn, you're not hurt, are you! Are you ok? You must be so scared!" Mom exclaims as I finish my story. "Oh, what would I do if you had been hit!"

Tears form in her eyes and I start to feel bad for not telling her the whole truth after all sometimes we're closer to best friends than mother and daughter. "I-I'm going upstairs for some sleep now..... Is that ok?"

"Of course it is Dawn! No way I'm sending you to that school today. I'll call them to tell them about the incident and that you'll be staying here today and tomorrow."

Whoa, two days off? With my mom and Charlie, that's almost unheard of, one time I had stayed home for a day cause I was sick but then the next day they sent me back even though my fever wasn't down. 'Education opens more doors than we could for you' is what they usually say when I ask. I'm also pretty sure that if I ever skipped school and got caught it would be an automatic death sentence.

But instead of putting too much thought into it I trudge up the stairs and when I get to the landing I go through the door on my right to my room. I used to think the off-white walls and the dark gray carpet were boring except for the one wall that was open brick, I had to beg mom and Charlie to leave it like that, gave it a better feeling to me. My favorite AEKI hanging shelves hang full of sketchbooks on the open brick wall and dark black curtains hang over my one window, an old wooden closet takes up one corner of the room and all the clothes that should be in it cover the floor like a blanket. Charlie and mom say it's masculine but I love it.

I still can't believe that just less than an hour earlier I thought I would never be able to see this room again.

I remember that I was going to check the spot that stuff the guy spilled on me landed, I'm never going to get the end of it if there is an acid burn and mom sees it.

I quickly throw off my hoodie onto the bed and my tee back with its friends on the floor. I look down expecting to see a scar..... but there's nothing. I look and I look and I look but there is no scar, I throw back a different shirt on since that one was stained and lie back down on the bed.

It was obviously an acid, it burnt like one but it didn't leave a scar. If anything the spot where it splashed me looks perfect, there isn't a single blemish on the skin.

I'm so lost in thought that I don't hear the doorbell ring or hear mom answer it, I only know that someone was here when mom comes up to my room three minutes later with an A4 size brown envelope in her hand.

She hands it to me and says, "Someone brought this over for you, apparently it's your time table, such a nice boy too. He said he was your Chemistry partner or something like that. I think he said his name was Jason Todd, he was very polite, said he thought I was your sister, well that's what I get for teenage pregnancy."

She closes the door after her and I tear open the envelope, my time table is in it, My name is proudly displayed at the top with the classes underneath. I think that's all that's in it until I notice an upsidedown photo lying on my floor that must have fallen out.

I flip it over thinking it might be a picture of the guy so I'll be able to recognize him at school but instead I almost drop it like it was a venomous snake. It's a picture of me getting up from when the guy ran into me and that crystal thing is falling off my back, and in red pen, at the top of the photo it says 'what are you?'

H-how could he know? H-he couldn't have seen, could he? Does that mean he saw me stop the car too? Oh god oh god oh god oh god.

***

A scientific base somewhere in America

"Dr. Abbott please look at this reading!"

"Yes? What is it?"

"W-we got signals that the chemical has started gene mutation on an unknown subject..."

"What?! How is that possible, the chemical should stay dormant at all times?! How did this get passed us?!"

"W-we don't know sir..... It just suddenly showed up on radar...."

"How many know of this?"

"F-five sir."

"... Good, keep it that way."

"S-sir should we send for the unknown subject to be brought in for testing?"

"Is it human?"

"As far as we know sir."

"Good. The human won't last through the gene mutation. They'll die by the end of the week, just keep them monitored and do not, I repeat, do not let this get to the board."

"Yes, sir."

Inside a dimly lit office, a man smirks to himself after the scientist left, lifting a wine glass to his lips he swirls the wine in the glass before taking a sip. "Well, well, well. A human has been infected with the gene mutation. I wish you the best of luck for survival, you'll need it."