Later, as Cedric and I were both watching "Tiger King" on Netflix, Mom came up to my room. "I got an email from your school," she said.

I hit pause and turned to her.

Mom glanced at her phone screen. "Since the shelter-in-place order was extended, they're going to start online classes. Remote learning, they call it."

My stomach sank. "So we're not going back to school at all."

"Doesn't look like it. Not until May first, at least."

So many things crowded into my head, but the one that came out was, "So no prom."

"Probably not." Mom turned and left without saying anything more.

I couldn't look at Cedric on my phone screen just yet. After yet another panic attack, I felt so tired.

"We could still do something," Cedric said. "Maybe by then, Dad will let me go over your house."

"Well, you're not exactly staying at home, though, are you?" I snapped.

His mouth gaped for a moment, before he shook his head a little and said, "Whoa, okay. What are you talking about?"

"You! Riding your bike all over. Going on hikes. Going to the grocery store. Shelter-in-place means don't go out."

"Okay, I mean, the governor says you're supposed to go out and get fresh air and exercise. Maybe you should go out once in a while."

I glared at him. "Is it so wrong that I don't want you to get COVID and die?"

"I didn't say it was wrong. But..." Cedric looked away and licked his lips. "It's not that dangerous for people our age. I mean, it's probably more dangerous for you because you have asthma, but even if we get it, we're probably not going to die."

"You don't know that."

"I don't, but... Look, they're saying that it's being spread by people who are asymptomatic. If you don't have symptoms, then it's probably not that bad, right? And you probably won't die. It's people who have a pre-existing condition—"

"I have to go," I choked out abruptly, and hung up, because my eyes had gone blurry and my hands were shaking and I couldn't do this right now. I dropped my phone on the bed and got up to pace.

My phone immediately buzzed once, then after a long pause, it buzzed twice more. I flipped it over so I couldn't see the screen. I sat down and gulped down air and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

This was a pandemic. We were living in a pandemic. This wasn't like the bird flu or H1N1 or whatever, where sure, lots of people had probably died. Schools didn't shut down then. The whole world didn't shut down. This was serious. How could Cedric possibly think it was no big deal?

He was going to get COVID and die. I just knew it, because in every one of my past lives, he had died. I stood up, going to my cigar box to dig through everything inside. I needed to find that one thing that would let me see if that's what happened. I hadn't been able to find an obituary for Henrietta in all my searches in Google and Ancestry and the library's newspaper databases. The only explanation was that she had died during the Spanish Influenza, and so many had died that Theodore couldn't get an obituary in the paper. It was probably also why I couldn't find her grave anywhere. Theodore's was listed on Findagrave.com, but not Henry's.

I cast aside the postcard. That was a dead end. I sorted through the photographs, picking up that one that I thought could be of Theodore.

Laying down on my bed, I held the photograph up to my face, pressing it very lightly against my forehead. "Please," I whispered. "Show me."

But the photograph didn't have the same magic as the postcard, and after squeezing my eyes shut for several minutes, nothing had happened. I growled and sat up, chucking the photo onto my desk. It fluttered to the floor instead. I left it there.

My phone buzzed again. "Fuck, Cedric." I reached for it. "Fine, let's talk about why I'm freaking out."

When I opened my phone, however, Cedric wasn't the only one who had texted me. Eli had sent me two texts.

Hey have you watched Tiger King yet, that show is WTF

You okay? I haven't heard from you in a couple of days

The first text had been from two days ago. I hadn't responded for whatever reason, and now I felt guilty. I'm fine, I texted him, then hated myself for lying to my best friend.

Actually I'm not really fine... I keep having panic attacks

The three dots immediately appeared and wavered there, like Eli was thinking.

You want to Skype? I think my mom would let me come over if we stayed outside and both wore masks. Would that help?

Pressing my lips together tightly, I texted back, Maybe Skype? I don't know, I just don't want you to risk your life for me

Dude you are on my zombie apocalypse team. That means I will risk everything 4 U

He added some fist emojis. I guessed he wanted to fist bump me and not punch me. I wiped at my face. Thanks man. Let's do Skype anyway

Cool I'm calling you now

The familiar electronic song that signaled a Skype call came from my computer. I wiped my eyes again before hitting the green button. Eli's face filled my screen.

"Duuude!" Eli squinted into his laptop camera and fixed his hair. "Okay, that's better. Dude, you look terrible."

I could see that. My eyes were red, and my hair stuck up in back. I looked pale, but thought it might be the lighting. Picking up my laptop, I rotated around my room looking for better light until I decided I was actually that pale. "Yeah."

"So what's going on? Are these panic attacks like when we had to do that oral presentation in seventh grade?"

"I forgot about that," I said, realizing that I had in fact had panic attacks before. I'd thought I was having an asthma attack and got sent down to the nurse. That was the last asthma attack I remembered having. "Yeah, it's a lot like that."

"Well, what are you panicking about? Anything specific or just the usual living-through-a-pandemic stuff?" A bag rustled on Eli's end and he popped something in his mouth that crunched loudly.

I was having a mental breakdown and he was eating popcorn. I sighed. "Okay, you remember my past lives, right?"

"Sure..."

"Well, I've been remembering a lot of stuff. And when all this corona stuff hit, I guess I realized that in all those past lives... In all of them..." My voice kept choking off. I cleared my throat and tried to gear myself up. "Okay, so in the most recent life, my soulmate died of AIDS. At least I'm pretty sure. And in the life before that, with the Victorian girl, I think she died of the Spanish flu. And there was another life during the bubonic plague, so you can guess how that turned out."

"So now you think Cedric is gonna die of corona," Eli said.

"Yes! That's exactly what I think. And Cedric's mom is a nurse, which means he's at higher risk, and he's been going out and—"

"Jamartha, take a breath, okay? Just because he died in your past lives doesn't mean he's going to die in this one."

"You don't know that."

Eli paused. "No, I don't know that. But it's not like a prophecy, right? It's just a pattern you noticed. But you also said you were pretty sure, which doesn't exactly sound convincing."

"I just haven't had a vision yet to prove it."

"Jameswell." Eli gave me a stern look, which only made me want to cry. No one was going to believe me, not my boyfriend, not my best friend. Blinking hard, I thought about all the conversations I'd had with Eli about my past lives. Then something came back to me.

"What about your Aunt Lulu?" I blurted. "Can I... talk to her? Meet her, somehow?"

Eli blinked in surprise, opened his mouth a couple of times before asking, "Why do you want to talk to Aunt Lulu?"

"You said she was into past lives and stuff. Remember?" I tried to remember when that was. It was the first time Eli had noticed the photograph of Henrietta. "Back in September."

"That was, like, a million years ago," Eli said, then, "I mean, sure. She would probably love to talk to someone. She lives by herself, so yeah. She probably hasn't had much social interaction since this whole thing started."

"Really? Okay, good. Good. Do you think she knows how to use Skype? Or Zoom? Or Facetime?"

Eli scrunched up his face. "Probably not. Maybe. Who knows, with Aunt Lulu. I can't imagine she even has a computer, she has this whole thing about radio waves and what they do to your brain. Lectures me about it every time I use a cell phone in her presence." He looked down and picked up said cell phone. "Here, let me just give you her phone number. But don't call her right away. Let me call her first to tell her you're going to call her. Or maybe I'll have my dad call her.... Nah, I'd have to explain all this to him. Ugh. I don't want to talk to her. She's so weird."

"Weirder than me?" I asked, trying to give Eli a smile. It didn't really work.

"Way weirder than you. Trust me." Eli gave me the number and I wrote it down. "Just, like, if it gets too weird talking to her... I don't know. She can really go off on a tangent. Good luck getting her off the phone."

"Okay. Thank you." I said the words again, because I truly meant them. "Thank you. This will really help, I think."

"Sure," Eli said. "Too bad you can't just go to a psychic or something, that would probably be a lot more helpful. But I'm sure the psychics are closed just like everything else."

I jotted a note to myself. There was a place downtown that I'd passed by on the way to the co-op, but maybe they had a website with more information. "Yeah. I bet they'd be making tons of money right now, if they could be open."

"Man, you'd think a few psychics out there could have predicted this shit." Eli's eyes grew wide. "Whoa, you think that 'End is Nigh' dude that hangs out near the Goodwill knew this was going to happen?"

I laughed. "Do you think he knows if Carole Baskin killed her husband?"

Eli slammed a fist down on his desk. "Right?? How many episodes in are you? Did you get to the part where the tigers are going after Joe Exotic and he shoots at them?"

As we talked and laughed, the knot in my chest loosened a bit. Maybe this was all I needed – a conversation with a friend. Only talking to Mom and Cedric and watching the news probably wasn't good for me. By the time Eli and I said good-bye, I had a better outlook on things. I was going to talk to Aunt Lulu about past lives, and I was going to do some yoga, and I was going to eat bread.

Now I just had to call Cedric and try to apologize for panicking and accusing him of... what? Being reckless? He was right. The governor had said that we should go outside and get fresh air. I'd seen people out walking. I'd heard them over the fence around our backyard, when I had gone out to sit in the sun on a particularly warm day. Cedric wasn't doing anything wrong.

When Cedric answered my call, he had a towel around his bare shoulders and wet hair smeared with something. "Hey," he said. "Sorry, I'm stress-dying my hair and I only have five minutes left before I have to get in the shower."

"What color?" I asked.

"Red."

"Cool." I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "Look, I'm sorry. About what I said earlier."

"No, it's okay. I'm sorry too. I guess I didn't realize you were taking the quarantine so seriously. I mean, I knew, but I didn't know." He gave me a tight smile. "I just wish I could be there with you. It's not the same through a screen."

"I know." The need to touch him, to wrap my arms around him and feel his skin against mine surged up. Closing my eyes, I tried to ride it out. It felt so much like the now-familiar feeling of panic rising. "I've probably not been doing my mental health any favors."

"I read something about that online. That a lot of people who might have been fine before are really struggling now, because all those things you might have done to deal with feelings of anxiety and depression aren't an option right now." Cedric looked off-screen, where the background noises sounded like Nic was pawing through the medicine cabinet. The noises stopped, and Cedric reached up to shut the bathroom door. "Maybe this will help you," he whispered, and lowered the angle of the camera.

I grinned. "Yes. That definitely helps."

But when Cedric had to hang up to shower, and I disconnected the call, I sat staring at the black screen of my phone, feeling utterly and completely empty.

___

Okay, fess up - did you watch "The Tiger King"?  I'm sorry to say I did...  I couldn't stop... It's weird to think how that was such a cultural thing that was everywhere for a few weeks and then it was gone!