Virus Gossip

“Mom. Really?” Monday. I watched in dismay as she packed an extra-large Ziploc bag with supplements, vitamin pills, four travel-size Purell bottles, and two lavender-scented spray hand sanitizers. “What the heck is that?” I demanded as she included a dozen black gummies. 

“Elderberry. Good for the immune system.” 

“I’m not checking in a bag,” I protested as she handed over her homeopathic voodoo, “this is going to take up half of my carry-on!”

“What do you need to pack besides a few bikinis and flip-flops?” my mom replied, “You’re going to Hawaii for spring break, not Iceland, for goodness’ sake. And have you been listening to the news? Your grandmother in Italy can’t leave her house because of the virus. You should be lucky they haven’t shut down Logan Airport yet.”

Over my dead body, I thought. Over the course of three short days in December, the spring break stars had aligned: my roommate’s uncle’s apartment on Waikiki Beach was suddenly made available to us, her boyfriend hadn’t bought his tickets to Europe yet, and my boyfriend was unexplainably willing to make travel plans two months ahead of time. It was the dream senior spring break: a weeklong double date with my roommate of four years at Boston College with free housing on one of the most beautiful islands in the Pacific. 

“You need to be so careful,” my mom reminded me as she dropped me off at school later that afternoon, “Disinfect everything. Don’t touch anything.”

“Yes, yes.” I leaned through the driver’s window to kiss her cheek, “Bye!” I ducked into my mod and reserved our north shore sunset horseback riding tickets for the following week.

Thursday. I sat on the floor of the Brighton Dance Studio with my classmates as I wrestled my ballet shoes over my bare feet. We cheered when our ballet professor told us that she wouldn’t be assigning homework over spring break, which was the following week. 

“Anyone flying anywhere?” the professor asked casually. Our class of all-girls looked around at each other, then a couple of us timidly raised our hands, my roommate Julia and myself included.

“Tisk tisk tisk,” she shook her head, “Let’s hope you don’t all bring the virus back to the rest of us.” 

Really? She was going to make us feel bad for having fun on our senior spring break? 

Irritated, I looked over to Julia, who she was biting her lip and looking anxious.

Absolutely not, I wiggled my eyebrows at her, we are not canceling our trip.

“What if we catch it there?” she whispered in between relevés.

“It’s an island,” I huffed as we executed three battéments, struggling to keep up with the actual dancers, “we’re much more likely to catch it here, on mainland America, anyway.”

“What if we already have it? What if we bring it to Oahu?” she asked in dismay.

“Don’t be silly. We don’t have it.”

“But the incubation period--”

“We don’t have it.”

After class we looked up the amount of Covid-19 cases in Hawaii. Just one person who had stopped by on a cruise ship – and he hadn’t even spent twenty-four hours on the island!

“We’re on,” I confirmed, elated. 

Friday. I helped Matthew pack his carry-on bag and found four face-masks, the kind his dentist father used in the office. I pinched one of the straps and pulled it out of a pile of swimming trunks.

“Masks?” I asked doubtfully. “I heard they don’t even work.”

“Better than nothing.”

I stuffed the masks into his backpack as he wrestled his suitcase closed. I’d secretly snuck a pair of my sandals in one of his exterior zippers when he’d left the room to use the bathroom.

“You haven’t…” I started uncertainly, “You haven’t thought about canceling Hawaii, right?”

“What?” he demanded, “You want to cancel?”

“No!” I replied emphatically, “No, of course not. I’m so excited about our trip.”

“Then what is it?”

“Just… something my professor said. About hoping we spring breakers don’t all bring the virus with us when we come back.”

“It’s a risk. But at least we’d just be infecting other college students – the age range that should have the greatest survival rate.”

I remained uneasy until I got an email notification reminding me to check in for our flight.

“Middle seats?” I groaned, immediately distracted by a seemingly more pressing issue, “For twelve hours?”

Saturday. Expecting some sort of post-apocalyptic airport setting, we proceeded through security with caution, but soon relaxed. No one was wearing masks or gloves, but Matthew made the two of us sport the ones his father had given him. I giggled as he tied it around my face, then we took a selfie as we boarded the plane. Once at our assigned seats, we sprayed all nearby surfaces with my lavender hand sanitizer, and then lent the passengers sitting behind us some Lysol wipes for good measure. Our corner of the aircraft smelled lovely, and I felt like a good, responsible citizen.

Twelve hours later we landed at the airport in Honolulu, ripped our masks off, and basked in the tropical heat while waiting for our Uber driver. For the following six days we suntanned, ate poke bowls, snorkeled with giant sea turtles, did crossword puzzles on the beach, and treated our sunburns with aloe before drinking fancy cocktails at happy hour. I used my phone to take panoramic pictures, and expressly not to look at the news. It was paradise.

Wednesday. “Oh damn,” Dylan, Julia’s boyfriend, muttered around the colorful straw in his Maithai. He scrolled through an article on his phone as I twisted in my seat to get a picture of the sunset shining through my pina colada. Matthew had excused himself to answer his mom’s phone call

“What?”

“Did you guys hear about the cruise ship?”

“What cruise ship?” Julia asked, looking up from the menu.

“The one stuck in San Francisco. It’s got corona cases onboard.” Across the restaurant, I spotted Matthew weaving through the other tables, making his way towards us.

“Did you guys hear about the cruise ship?” he demanded when he reached our table.

“The one stuck in San Francisco.”

“Yeah. It stopped by Honolulu first. My mom is freaking out.”

“Well, at least if Hawaii suddenly gets a bunch of cases, we’ll know it’s not our fault,” I suggested, earning myself a really? look from Julia’s side of the table.

 I sank lower into my chair, hiding my nose behind the menu. I didn’t want to talk about this stuff. I wanted to enjoy our time in the sun and postpone reality until I was dragging my suitcase across campus again. We were momentarily distracted when the waiting staff began singing happy birthday in Hawaiian to a kid at a nearby table. We clapped along, and when the noise died down, we went back to comparing our sunburns and making beach plans for the next day. 

Sunday. I scrolled through my phone’s camera roll, leaning across the table to show my parents the pictures from our hike to the top of Koko Head. The pacific blues and mingling pink skies on my phone’s screen contrasted starkly against the flat greys of march in the Northeast. Julia, Dylan, Matthew and I had landed at Logan Airport that same morning at six am. 

“Look at that!” I tapped on a picture of my last tropical drink. Julia and I posed behind a masterfully carved pineapple decorated with soft red flowers and bright curly straws.

“Were people wearing masks on the plane?” my mom veered the conversation again.

“Not really.”

“We’re glad you got to go on your trip,” my dad said, shaking the box of Hawaiian cookies I’d bought them, “but I think we should abstain from travel for a little bit, just until things calm down.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Now that senior spring break was successfully experienced and safely stored both in my memory and in my phone’s photo album, I could join in the virus gossip.  

Tuesday. Julia, another roommate Francesca, and I stood in line for the bathroom. Our ballet professor was making us all wash our hands after doing barre work. She didn’t high-five us at the end of class, like she usually did.

“Harvard just canceled the rest of the semester.”

“MIT, too.” 

“This is crazy,” my head spun as I ran my hands under the faucet, “such an overreaction. Has anyone even died in Boston yet? They can’t just do that.” 

Wednesday. I sat at the chocolate bar after having miraculously swiped a free table, but I was having trouble focusing on any of my work. The girl sitting on my right whispered over the phone in rapid Spanish, repeating corona virus at least four times. The couple on my left talked about how someone in their class had just flown back from a trip to Italy, and had refused to isolate for the quarantine period before coming back to campus. Paranoia and rumors had laced every conversation floating down the hallways and past my mod windows since Sunday night, when everyone had returned from spring break.

I adjusted one of my table’s wobbly legs by stuffing a napkin under the appropriate foot, then started scrolling through my email. I deleted some spam, then refreshed the page. A new email from Father Leahy appeared at the top of my inbox. I clicked on it. I froze. I reread it. I looked around. No one else was reacting.

It wasn’t my fault. I’d gone to Hawaii, not Europe. 

I stood unsteadily and slowly crossed the room to sit at Dylan and Matthew’s table. They had their heads bowed over piles of notes, last-minute studying for an exam they had in fifteen minutes. 

“Did you get the email?”

Both their heads bobbed up: “What email?”

“We’re canceled.” I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. This was absurd. 

This is because people went to places like Italy and didn’t quarantine like they were supposed to --

“Oh my God.”

My phone began vibrating with dozens of notifications, group chats exploding with disbelief. Showdown. Senior Week. Graduation. 

Let’s hope you don’t all bring the virus back to the rest of us, my ballet professor’s voice echoed through my head. 

We went to Hawaii!

“They can’t just do that.”

“All the other universities did.”

The chocolate bar slowly emptied.

“Do we still have to take our exam?”

“Let’s go find the professor.” Matthew and Dylan stood. Matthew squeezed my hand, “At least we both live in Boston.” A small relief in the light of this mess. Couples were suddenly forced into long-distance relationships. Friend groups torn apart earlier than expected. Plans dissolved. Certainty made meaningless.

I crossed campus quickly, with nowhere to be. A short journey without destination, motivated with the need to do something quickly, before everything fell apart. 

I took the elevator down to lower campus, then crossed the parking lot to the mods to find out that everything already had. I was shocked by what I found inside the black gates: loudspeakers blasting party music. Inebriated, sobbing friends hanging out windows, standing on picnic tables, draped over each other. Beer cans spilling into the dry grass.

“It’s over! It’s all over!” someone wailed.

I ducked into my mod and found one of my roommates crying on the phone, “They can’t send me home! I can’t leave without my work visa!” Maria Clara yelled. She ended the call, then immediately crossed the room and threw her arms around me.

Hawaii didn’t even have any cases--

A dozen people spilled into our living room from our open front door. We didn’t know half of them, but we were nevertheless swarmed into a group hug.

They probably went to Europe, or China. This is their fault.

Francesca entered from the back door and burst into tears as soon as she saw us.

“This is too soon,” she tried pulling herself together, “I’m not ready.” 

Night fell. The music continued. The crying continued. We sat around the table, silent. Julia, Dylan, and Matthew joined us. 

“At least we had Hawaii.” 

Travel bans blew up my phone as my cousins in Italy bemoaned their canceled plans, and my aunt and uncle immediately rescheduled their trip to visit us for my graduation.

It’s not our fault.