Page 39 - WTP Vol. X #5

on your bike handlebar. Because you can touch a bike lightly and it obeys. Balanced beside you, ready to whiz you off.
Distant cheers arose: like a parade without live mu- sic. Or no: faintly, different rock songs played from different cars so it sounded all mixed up, jangly. Your stomach churned. Shit, what if you threw up? You swallowed hard, remembering throwing up your pink Cosmos into the toilet of the Condo bathroom of your ex-friend’s ex-father—who never did show up. Blame my Dad, Ana (let’s call her Friend A) insisted to you when she pulled you aside at the funeral she had no business even attending. But at least she did, unlike Friends B-D.
They all stopped talking to you after you blew up at them, the last time you ZOOMed together, when they asked you not to mention Grandad dying of Covid on, like, Twitter and shit. Which you (coward that you are) didn’t wind up doing anyways, not wanting to get known as Arlington’s Typhoid-Whoever. So you quit Twitter—and kind of quit school, too.
Grownups kept sending you messages all April and May, the Counselor ZOOMing you and your mom when you stopped ‘attending’ the lame Zoom classes. Now—unless you finish this story, finish your final Incomplete for your English Lit teacher—you may not graduate at all. Not that anyone in your Covid-19 Class got a real graduation ceremony, got to ‘walk.’
Instead, the Arlington High Class of 2020 formed a Car Parade: decorated cars and SUVs rolling up Mass. Ave. Closing in on you: everyone blowing horns; yelling at Friends and Family on the curbs; strains of Cardi B. and BTS mixing with Billie Eilish from the green-headed girls.
“Go SPY POND-ERS,” not-green-haired cheerleaders chanted from their own corner.
Guys you used to like waved in the Arlington High Spy Ponder hockey shirts they’d been so proud to earn, that wouldn’t mean much after today. The Drama Geeks in sparkles swung Rainbow flags and the shy kids smiled stiffly from back seats; Student Government kids hoisted Black Lives Matter signs. A hailstorm of car horns, dueling soundtracks, noise- makers, shouts.
Everyone cheering but you. In your old helmet and new mask, you stood watching like the masked Death
(continued on page 63)
“T
hey all stopped talking
to you after you blew up at them, the last time you ZOOMed together, when they asked you not to mention Grandad dying of Covid on, like, Twitter and shit.”
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