Volume 1, No. 1

The Plague / Hooper ... 1

1968 was a bad year for the plague. You could tell it was going to be a bad year. You could feel it in the air. The winter had been long - dreary, cold, and rainy. But then one fine morning, the people in town opened their curtains to find that spring had miraculously crept in overnight.
The plague always struck in the spring. It snuck in with the first bursting cherry blossoms. It was there when the robins started stuffing their beaks with loose threads from the tattered winter clothes airing on the clotheslines. It even hung in the night air with the tom cat wailings in the back alleys. It was everywhere.
That year the plague struck first in Miss Gordon’s Grade 4 class. By the end of that day it had spread through Mr. Harper’s science class and crabby old lady Spencer’s art class. No Grade 4 class escaped. The Grade 3s, it seemed, were not yet susceptible; the Grade 5s were already immune.