Eli still hadn't gotten back to me two days later, as I was preparing to head back to school. Every student had been given a specific twenty-minute time period to go back into the school building and retrieve anything they hadn't taken home with them on that day two weeks ago, when we hadn't realized that we wouldn't be going back to school.

What time are you, I texted him.

10:30, Eli texted back.

I'm at 11.

I sighed, knowing I wouldn't be able to bug him about his Aunt Lulu, and picked up one of the masks Mom had ordered online. It was a basic tan color on one side and a blue print on the other. Mom thought it "fit my aesthetic." I looked at myself in the mirror, adjusting the mask over my nose. Then I snapped a selfie and sent it to Cedric. Ready to go out into the world, I texted him.

To say I was nervous was an understatement. I'd barely slept last night.

We were told we could go to our lockers, and then any classrooms where we might have left anything. I was hoping the photography room would be open so I could grab my negatives, though I worried they had been ruined by hanging in the drying cabinet. I just hoped Mr. Strickland had remembered to turn off the heat. He was a bit absent-minded – half the time he managed to get dry-erase marker on his face and walked around like that until someone pointed it out.

"Do you want me to go with you?" Mom asked from her new home office in a corner of the living room. She had rearranged the shelves and couch to fit a small desk she'd rush-ordered from Amazon. The desk allowed her to face the TV so she could binge-watch while she sat through endless meetings with her microphone muted. Behind her, she had hung an art print and added some plants to make the corner appear to be a separate office.

Mom did have an actual office, but she found that she preferred to catch up on her shows while working. "It's called time management," she huffed when I gave her a disapproving look.

"No, that's okay," I said now. "I'm eighteen. I'm an adult. I'm going to adult."

"This isn't about adulting, James," Mom said softly.

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I picked up my empty backpack with another tote bag stuffed inside. "I'll be okay."

"You have your phone?"

I held it up.

"Mask? Hand sanitizer?"

I put on the mask and showed her the sanitizer before putting it in my backpack.

"Okay," she said. "Call me when you're done. If you don't call me by eleven-thirty, I'm calling 911."

"I'll be fine," I insisted, with a lot more confidence than I felt, and headed out to my car.

The sun felt too bright. The air was moving. I got in the driver's seat. It felt like I hadn't driven in months. I checked and re-checked the rearview mirrors as I backed out of the driveway, riding heavy on the brakes.

The streets were empty except for the Amazon and UPS vans, at least until I got to the main roads. Then I was nearly sideswiped by a Prius going about twenty miles an hour on a road where people regularly went forty-five. When I braked to avoid it, a black Honda CR-V zoomed around me, going way faster than the speed limit.

Gripping the steering wheel, I did my best not to die as I pulled into the school parking lot. One cop directed traffic in and out, another watched as people lined up outside the building on spray-painted lines that were presumably six feet apart.

There were so many people.

It took me a while to get out of the car. First I waited for everyone in the cars parking beside me to exit their vehicles and walk up to the building. Then I checked all my mirrors in case anyone was coming from the row behind, and I jumped out of the car.

Halfway to the door, I pulled out the sanitizer and poured some on. Some dripped on the ground as I walked up to the end of the line. I recognized a few of my classmates but no one waved to me. I only felt relief at that. I didn't want to talk. Didn't want to deal with any germs.

The line seemed to be moving quickly. I looked for Eli among the students leaving, and saw him walking near a girl with red hair who I thought might be in our history class. They were definitely not six feet apart. I watched them both pull out their phones.

A minute later, he looked up and saw me and waved, then went back to his phone. My phone buzzed inside my bag. I didn't pull it out. It would contaminate my hands that I had just sanitized. I could check it later.

At the school entrance, the nurse was standing there wearing mask and goggles and gloves, and she was taking everyone's temperatures and squirting hand sanitizer into waiting palms as the principal told us to, "Visit only your locker and any classroom you may have left items behind. Stay six feet apart at all times. Leave your locker open when you are finished."

The school hallways at once felt deserted and too full. I hurried to my locker and for a minute I completely forgot the combination. With trembling fingers I tried to call up the muscle memory, and finally I wrenched the door open and took stock of what I had left there: a few notebooks and textbooks, a case of extra pens and pencils. I wished briefly that I hadn't risked my life to come back for this, before shoving it all in my bag.

As I wound through the hallways, the sense of emptiness became more pervasive. Open classroom doors revealed rows of desks, waiting for students who weren't returning. Without so many other students crowded around I slowed down. I passed my English classroom, with notes still written on the board about Hamlet.

I was never going to be back in that classroom. It was my senior year. I wasn't going to be coming back here for classes ever again. Next year I'd be in college. There hadn't been time to feel nostalgic for my time in high school – I thought I'd have time for that later, during the weeks between prom and graduation.

We were going to miss all those milestones. Prom definitely wasn't going to happen, and graduation was a huge what-if. We weren't going to have a senior class trip. School as we knew it was over.

When I saw the doorway to Mr. Mendez's classroom, I went inside and stood there. There was the poster of Abraham Lincoln wearing sunglasses that said, "That was so four score and seven years ago." And the Uncle Sam poster that said, "We want you to do your best." Along with the overwhelming sadness for a time I'd never have, a wave of something else hit me as I stood in front of Mr. Mendez's desk.

Dizziness.

I closed my eyes, trying to feel my heart beating. I didn't want a panic attack here, in an empty classroom. Only when I opened my eyes, I knew it wasn't a panic attack, because the posters had changed. Now there was a poster with a picture of John F. Kennedy, with the quote, "We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or make it the last."

I shook my head, sucking in air so hard the fabric of my mask pressed against my nose and mouth.

But it was too late.