Page 37 - WTP Vol. X #5

that ‘hurt’ is the word.
b. March 10, 1948-d. April 8, 2020
They carved that in stone, only it took extra long to get the stone. With all the new deaths and all. But the finished stone was put in place last week, end of May. You and your mom visited the stone in the graveyard near the Mystic Lakes. She watched you study the stone, like she was waiting for something. For the stone to crack. For you to crack too, snap out of it, maybe, though your mom didn’t say anything like that. She almost never mentions your weeks-long depressive daze or your trip to fucking Florida.
After which you Ex’d your Friends from your life because they didn’t want you mentioning Grandad dying of Covid anywhere online. Anywhere anyone they knew might see and connect the Covid-dots back to them. Not that the deadly ‘dot’ was any of them.
They all tested Negative. Lucky them. They’d all get to graduate, move on. It was up to you to remember that fateful Florida trip: over and over. Especially on Graduation Day; June 7th, 2020—as you biked off toward the non-ceremony in which you were a non- graduate. Under ugly muggy clouds, in the bike lane, you whizzed up Mass Ave, past Spy Pond, furiously fast.
~
Spring Break; late February, 2020. You can’t say you all weren’t warned. But—hard as this is to believe now—it was kind of a joke, back then. Students from China wearing weird medical masks in airports and on campuses, on TV. You never saw those masks for real till you were on the plane to Florida. Till it was too late to turn back. You’d already—this was one
of your arguments to your Mom, echoing what your girlfriends said to you—bought the tickets.
Yes, you were only Seniors, but all of us were 18. And Ana, the oldest and prettiest of us, had a boyfriend at Full Sail University. She’d met him while visiting her Cuban grandparents in Miami. And Ana’s ex-Dad—al- ways trying to buy back her love, like my no-show Dad and all the divorced Dads—he had a condo in Orlando, Spring Break Central. You’d all stay with him.
What did you get in Florida besides asymptomatic Covid-19? You got your second-best tan ever: you, who prior to April of 2020 was most famous within your circle for your tans. You got to feel the special
silky Floridian sand under your feet; you got to see the goddamn Gulf. The waters lapped the beaches more languidly than the chill crashing blue-grey Atlantic you’d grown up swimming and body-surfing. First wading into, on tiptoe, freezing. Then you’d be the one of your frozen friends to dive right in. One whole-body heart-stopping shock.
In Florida, the air felt humid yet lighter than here. Everything felt lighter in Orlando; you girls out on what Grandad called a weekend tear. Spending both days on the beach and both nights bopping in too- crowded too-sweaty group dance-parties. Crashing in Ana’s ex-Dad’s airy underfurnished condo. The Dad was supposed to be there but he wasn’t. You all were on your own. But you all washed all the dishes, like good girls. And you only slept with one guy. Well, gave him head. A UMass guy you already knew. You didn’t run wild, like Mom worried.
You flew home feeling A-OK compared to your girl- friends, throwing up their Bloody Marys in the closet-sized airplane bathroom while you guarded the flimsy vibrating door. A bubble of fear expanded inside your chest as you led your then-BFF’s, pale under their tans, back down the narrow plane aisle, noting those paper medical masks on a surprising number of faces.
What was up with that? And with those scary head- lines scrolling across the airport’s giant TV screens? Travel Bans, Lockdowns. We lucked out, you told each other sleepily as you dragged your wheeled bags across the Logan terminal and hopped in your sepa- rate Lyfts.
You knew there was a virus, sure, everyone did by the start of March. But Mom thought it was a hoax and we didn’t believe we’d all be ‘locked down’ within a week. You wore white, showing off your tan at that birthday party at Grandad’s twilight-blue bungalow.
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