“Dale… Hey, Dale, snap out of it, will you?”
I glanced up from some kinda daze to see Mrs. Lutz snapping her fingers in my face.
“Huh?”
“The rabbits cages need changing, and don’t forget to stock the bird seed on isle five, people are already getting things for spring.”
“Sure…” I mumbled.
“Hey, is something wrong?” Mrs Lutz had never had any kids of her own, but she was a really mothering person. She and her husband Dan ran Feathers n’ Fur, a pet shop that had been in business longer than most stores in our town. We had a nice little shopping center, but rent was high so people were always coming and going.
Feathers n’ Fur had what I call “staying power.” I’d been visiting that place since I was seven, and worked there all through middle school into my then senior year of high school. I don’t know why it stayed in business so long. Maybe it was because you couldn’t walk out of the shop without feeling pressure to buy something. Maybe people in the suburbs cared more about their purse dogs than anything else. My mom said it was because the Lutz’s treated everyone like family. Which was great, except for these kind of moments when Mrs. Lutz would fold her arms and look at me, willing me to tell all with her deep brown eyes.
“Come on, our with it. You’ve been moping around all day. What’s the matter?”
“It’s nothing, it’s just…” Why did I have to say ‘it’s just..:’ Now, she would pounce on me...
“Ah ha, I knew it. Out with it!”
“Well… there’s this really nice girl who just moved to our school.”
“Hmm… what’s her name?”
“Jamie,” I said, staring sideways.
“Cute name,” Mrs. Lutz nodded approvingly.
“Yeah… anyway, she’s really great at sports, especially basketball, but I don’t know if she likes me or not. She smiles and waves to me at school, but she kinda does that to everybody.” I shrugged, trying to be indifferent.
“Well that’s a really good sign in a person. The better than can treat everyone, the better they can treat one person.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you can treat one hundred people nicely in all their moods and tempers, you won’t have too much of a problem with just one person.”
“I guess so…” I nodded.
“Why don’t you ask her to hang out with you sometime?”
I turned about a thousand shades of red and protested, “Oh no way, Mrs. Lutz… that’s like asking her on a date. I’ve had my share of girlfriends… I just I don’t know, she’s different.”
“Don’t make it complicated,” Mrs. Lutz shook her head, “just ask her like you’d ask any friend to hang out with you. Get to know her like a person.”
“But she’s a… well… you know…”
“A cute girl. I totally get it. But she’s more than that. Or at least I hope so! Just be her friend, her true friend. Don’t think about yourself and whatever happens you’ll be ok.”
The doorbell rang and Mrs. Lutz pointed and smiled at me, then went to take care of the customer. I lifted off the top of the bunny cages and scooped up Fruffles and Fringles into a laundry basket with a blanket and some snacks while I cleaned out their cage.
Mrs. Lutz’s was talking happily with the customer at the cash wrap when suddenly their voices lowered. I wasn’t much of an eavesdropper but I couldn’t help sensing that something was wrong and stopped my work for a moment to hear.
“Do you think it’ll get that bad?” Mrs. Lutz said quietly.
“I don’t know…” the lady customer answered. Their voices became too low to hear much else, but I heard the word “virus” pop up occasionally. I looked down at Fruffles and Fringles and realized I had been spacing out for awhile. “Sorry guys…” I whispered to the rabbits and resumed my work.
The virus. I had heard something about that on the news. But, it was overseas, a million miles away, right? No way it could reach us, with modern technology and everything… People were just overreacting… right?
Mrs. Lutz’s voice suddenly broke into my thoughts.
“Dale, I want you to finish the cages and then I need you to go get some supplies, mostly cleaning and antiseptic things. I’ll write a list.” Mrs. Lutz was not an easily disturbed person. She dealt with snakes and spiders and had what I would call a pretty hearty constitution. But she looked pale and serious. That’s when I knew… overreacting or not, something was happening.
-
“Dale!”
“Yeah Mom?”
“Will you come and watch this?”
Mom never had the tv on. She hated “programming” and I can’t say I blame her. Who could stand the news machine these days? She was usually pursuing YouTube to stay up to date on things, but she’d let the TV run most of the week.
Everyday it was something new. First it was wash your hands. A few deaths were announced. Then it was school closures. Six weeks of no school. That’s when things got dicey. People started to panic and stockpile stuff. Business after business closed their doors. I wasn’t too nervous until they started closing down restaurants and all sports events. What in the world was going on? I was too young to remember, but I had read a lot about Y2K. Maybe it was like that and it would all blow over…
“The Governor just announced that we are going on lockdown for fifteen days…” Mom said, nodding at the screen. “Think you can do a supply run for me?”
“Sure Mom, just let me know what we need,” I said sitting down on the couch.
Mom sighed. She was so tired. She was already really frail, and to see her stressed bothered me. Since dad had left us it was just Mom and me. I tried my best to take care of everything, but I still felt like a little kid sometimes.
“I don’t really know, sweetie. I’m gonna leave that to your judgement. You’re pretty good about our groceries and everything. I’ll give you some of my allowance from your Dad, it won’t be much but we should be ok.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. I had quite a bit of cash saved up for a trip I’d been planning for months with my best friend Ryan, but I knew it was probably going to have to be spent on stuff we needed now. It was typical in my family, but at least I was able to provide. I wouldn’t let Mom know I’d spent any of my own money or she’d kill me.
“Ok, well, I’ll look around the house and see what we need!” I made myself cheerful for her, kissed her on the head and started looking through our pantries.
“What do you need in an apocalypse…” I thought with a smirk. How many times had my friends and I played games like this when we were kids. Dystopian teen fiction stories flooded my head. Most of the time the first thing the characters needed were weapons. I thought how useless a weapon would really be if it came down to actually finding stuff to eat. What was I going to do, skin a squirrel?
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Ryan.
“Hey! Have you seen the whole quarantine thing?”
“Yep, just looking around to see what we need for supplies…”
“I made a list, hang on.”
Ryan was always planning for some natural disaster.
Soap
Salt
Hydrogen peroxide
Hand sanitizer
Rubbing alcohol
Bandages
Soil
Food seeds
Water purifier
Back up generator
Toilet paper
“Dude…” I texted back “you act like someone’s gonna die.”
“Hey, it never hurts to be prepared.”
30 DAYS LATER.
Everyone was still in quarantine. At first I thought I was going to lose my mind not having any contact with the outside world. But then, Ryan got a bunch of us kids from school in a group text and we all felt connected to people again. It was funny, most of us had kind of been happy just to come home after school and sit in front of the tv. Now, it was like we had all these ideas and all this energy that wasn’t being siphoned away at school or work.
Ryan challenged us to completely clean out our house. I found so much stuff in my room, even made a little cash selling some things I didn’t need anymore online. Once my room was completely clean, my brain felt more organized. I sat down at my desk and felt like I had some control over my life. Maybe not a lot, but it was something!
“Ok gang, how is your house project going?” Ryan texted.
May - Great! I found some old journals of mine and I started reading them the other day. It was really nice to reflect on things.
Zane - I actually read a book. It wasn’t too bad. I don’t even know why I picked it up, I usually hate reading but I wanted a challenge. The story was pretty cool too!
Zach - I started planting some seeds in the house. My family thought it was kind of crazy at first but my mom let me have some plants in the kitchen and my little brother is helping me water them.
Jamie - I’ve had time to do some drawing! I haven’t done that since middle school, I forgot how much I enjoyed it.
I was happy that Jamie was in the chat.
I replied - I’ve been working on cleaning things mostly. Guess I want to start on the garden thing next.
Ryan - How is everyone for supplies?
Zach - We have enough toilet paper for a little while! Haha!
Jamie - If we run out, there’s always leaves, haha!
Me - No way, I am NOT using leaves!
Jamie - Beggers can’t be choosers!
30 DAYS LATER
The internet was going to be shut down for awhile. It was really tough dealing with that fact. The Governor told us that different areas of the country would get internet access at certain times but due to the overload we wouldn’t be able to handle everyone being on the internet at once.
Jamie and I had called each other a few times. I called her to check in before the first blackout hit us.
“Hey, how is everything?”
“We’re ok. My dad is kinda stressed but he’s glad he already had a garden going. I’m so glad he and my mom work from home. We are all so used to being around each other all the time. I think other families are finding it isn’t so bad. Family is really important. Talking is really important. I’m praying for your family, hope you don’t mind.”
“Yeah… thanks.” it had been awhile since I’d junked out on Netflix. Not having sports stats in my feed constantly was hard at first, but I felt my brain waking up in ways I didn’t know it needed to.
“Well, as soon as this while quarantine thing is over, we should get everyone together and do something fun!” I said.
“Yeah! My dad says that we probably will break quarantine by Thanksgiving. We will have a real feast, even if it’s just our garden veggies!”
“Yeah, we’ll all be thankful for real this year!” I thought about how many times I had had gobs and gobs of food without a second thought. I wasn’t starving by any means but eating the same foods every day and only being able to go out every other week for groceries was tough. The stores didn’t have all that much anyway. I started some seedlings the last couple weeks and hoped that it would be enough to have something on hand.
“All in all,” Jamie said, “this has been an awesome apocalypse. I’ve seen people be so supportive of each other and actually start caring about their families again. I don’t even really want to be on the internet all that much. I just want to be with people again!”
“Yeah, me too…” I wondered how long it would be until we could all sit down and share a meal again. But just like the seeds we had planted, we were all growing in our own ways. We were leaning discipline and skills that our ancestors had known and we had completely forgotten.
When quarantine finally broke, Jamie’s dad invited all of us kids over to the house for a celebration.
“Ryan! Jamie!” I yelled and waved to them as I jumped out of the car. I felt like a little kid.
We played games outside and then sat down to eat healthy food a lot of which we had all grown and were really proud of.
“Mr Christen, do you think we will be able to go back to work pretty soon?”
Mr. Christen leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I expect so, yes. But I think it’s going to be awhile before this get back to normal. We might have a new kind of normal…”
“Well, I like this new normal a heck of a lot more than just staring at a screen all the time. I feel more alive, more like me!” Jamie said stuffing her face with chicken. She told me later she hadn’t had chicken in months.
“Nothing like a crisis to help pull everyone together! I found myself really being thankful for what I’ve been given.”
I looked around the room. No one was looking at phones. We were looking at faces.
Mr. Christen was right. It was a long time before things went back to normal. But we were all in it together, and we were ready for a new adventure.
Beautifully written. Let's hope and pray for the best while being smart and diligent, we will ride this thing out and in the end will feel so much more grateful for our Family, Faith and Friends.
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet story. I love how it ended.
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