by Jamie Knight
Most of the things in the box had been in my desk back at school. It included a bunch of knick-knacks, change, paperclips and other tiny things. It took about twenty minutes of picking through the grass to find them all!
It turns out I had slipped on a dog toy. What a non-surprise. Phil just let his dog leave his crap everywhere. He really was such a jerk.
After gathering up all my stuff and the rubber bone, I finally managed to get into the house. I was sweating because it was unseasonably warm for March and I was still wearing a jacket.
“Hey, Tracianne,” greeted Daphene, my new stepmother, as if we were good friends. “Do you need help unloading your car?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, trying not to engage.
“Oh, it’s not trouble. I could get Phil to help.”
“No thanks,” I insisted.
As if I wanted this woman to touch and look at all my stuff? Uh, no thanks. And great. Phil was home already. So, I had to deal with that jerk, too. I brushed past Daphene and went upstairs.
Cresting the top step, I could smell the vape juice. So disgusting. Why do people vape? It’s like they repackaged smoking and resold it to stupid people.
“Hey,” greeted Phil, sucking on an electronic cancer stick. “Is that all the stuff you had at school? You travel light.”
“No,” I growled. “And here’s your dog’s stupid toy. Try not to leave it in the yard next time.”
“He’s a dog. He doesn’t put his toys away.”
“I know, that’s why I’m suggesting you do it.”
“I didn’t know it was there. What’s the big deal?”
“Well, besides the fact that someone will run over it with a lawn mower, I nearly broke my neck stepping on it!” I informed him.
“Jeez, sorry,” he laughed. “You seem really annoyed. But that’s pretty much you all the time, isn’t it?”
“Screw you,” I sneered, closing the door in his face.
I texted Diamond.
“Just got home. He’s here already.”
“Send me a pic!” joked Diamond, adding a tongue emoticon. “Also, I’m blowing up on Tik Tok.”
Checking the feed, I saw that Diamond had done a rant while driving home. She was annoyed that the state couldn’t figure out the virus faster.
Basically, she complained about first world problems from her car, which her parents gave her--- leaving her college, that her parents paid for--- and going home to luxuriate for God-knows-how-long in her parents’ huge house. Tough life in America.
I wanted to wait until Phil left the hallway. The less interaction we had, the better. He was just hanging out there, sucking on that Juul stick. Giving him five minutes, I saw that he still hadn’t left, so I just decided to go back to the car.
“Got more stuff in the car?” he asked.
I was pretty sure he was just asking to annoy me. Rather than give him the satisfaction of a reaction, I just went downstairs.
His dog passed me on the way, nearly tripping me. He was one of those big, friendly, dopey dogs. You had to watch yourself with a drink if you sat on the couch, because he’d just leap onto your lap without warning and knock it over.
He was definitely a cute dog and it wasn’t his fault he was so bad. It was all Phil’s fault, of course. You’d think he would’ve trained him, but no.
Back outside in the car, I decided just to grab my comforter. Since it was so bulky, I could carry nothing else.
Halfway back across the lawn, the sprinklers came on and I got wet. I ended up getting the comforter damp. I took a detour to the dryer and threw it inside for a tumble.
Upstairs, I could hear Phil laughing. Did he know that? Did he turn on the sprinklers?! I marched upstairs and saw him on his phone, still standing in the hall.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said suspiciously. “What are you watching?”
“Some stupid video about a talking squirrel.”
“Oh.”
I went back for more boxes. With the sprinklers on, I decided to move the car closer to the side door. After moving it, I opened the trunk.
Of course, during the drive, everything had shifted, and I had books and notebooks all over the place. Additionally, one of the boxes I had them stacked in burst open from the weight.
Grabbing an armful, I trudged back up the stairs.
Phil was still in the hallway.
What is wrong with this asshole?
I struggled to open the door.
“Ya know, you might help me,” I griped.
“You told my mother you didn’t want help,” he noted, still staring at his phone. “Plus, I had offered, and you turned me down, too.”
Well, I didn’t want his mother’s help. If I was being honest, I didn’t want his help either until now that I was getting tired. I was damp, annoyed, had grass stains on my pants and generally just wanted to lie down.
But it was true I’d been offered help and refused. So, I guess I did this to myself.
Back to the car, this time I grabbed my laptop, a backpack full of stuff and an armful of clothes. This time, I was careful to stick to the driveway and sidewalks.
It took a little longer, but I didn’t want to drop my clothes since it had just rained. When I finally trudged upstairs, Phil was gone.
Diamond texted me. She wanted to know what I thought of her Tik Tok video. I said it was great even though I had barely watched it. The compliment was enough to get her going, I guess. Not she even asked how I was doing.
God! How many more trips did I have to take to the car?!
Now I wanted some food and a shower and just to stop walking back and forth to the damned Prius. This time, I grabbed some more clothes.
Normally, I’d bring suitcases back to school during the last break. Now, though, I didn’t have them. Fortunately, the Prius was clean, so I just stacked them inside. I had, unfortunately, closed one of my shirts in the trunk door. It now had a black mark on the sleeve.
Great.
Going back inside, I put detergent on the offending area, set the washing machine and threw it in. With some more detergent and washing it by itself, I was hoping to save the shirt.
Then I took the rest of the stuff upstairs. Phil was now sitting at the bottom of the stairs, vaping and looking at his phone. I stopped because he was in the way and he slid to the right without looking up. I walked around him.
Jeez, is this what I was going to have to put up with every day? It was a good thing some of my high school friends live in the area. If I had to hang around here all day, I’ll probably go insane.
Avoiding Phil was hard enough, but Daphene never seemed to leave when dad was out of the house. It was going to be crazy being trapped with all these people.
I made one final trip to the car. I scanned it for anything I could’ve possibly missed. I lifted up seats and checked under them. Finally, just as I was ready to lock the doors and be done with this, I heard the last voice I wanted to hear.
“Who is doing laundry now?” asked Daphne, on my way in. “Is that you, Tracianne?”
“Yes,” I sighed, exasperated.
“I’ll be happy to do some with the rest of the---”
“No, it’s fine, I got it,” I dismissed her.
I was a grown adult and knew how to wash laundry.
God, this woman was already constantly up in my business!
Walking past Phil, I got up the stairs and sighed.
“Hey, do you need help?” Phil asked.
“My car is empty now, dumbass!” I snapped.
“I’m just kidding,” laughed Phil. “I wasn’t really offering.”
Growling to myself, I went into my room and shut the door. I threw down my stuff, flopped on the bed and tried to take a nap. This was going to be a very long quarantine.
Chapter Four - Phil
What a brat my stepsister is! God, she can’t even unload her car without turning it into a drama! If she had just come inside and asked nicel
y, I would’ve been happy to help empty her car. But of course she had to insist on being the center of attention.
I spent the morning answering emails, eating breakfast burritos and generally looking at the Internet at stupid shit. It was relaxing, if unproductive. I was just about to get into a groove when I could hear someone gently knock at my door.
“Excuse me, Phil?” asked Richard.
“Yeah, what?” I responded.
“Family meeting in ten minutes. You decent?”
“Yeah.”
He opened the door. I was still in my underwear.
“I thought you were decent.”
“I’m always decent, Richard.”
“Well, put on some pants, please. We’re having a family meeting,” he repeated.
“I heard you. Why can’t you just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me?” I asked.
“Because we’re all going to be living here and it’s easier if we talk as a group, okay? Now come on, please?”
“All right, all right,” I relented.
“Now, please.”
“You said ten minutes.”
“Oh, right. I did. Ten minutes.”
Jeez, this guy forgets what he said thirty seconds after. Guess he’s just nervous being here. Hope no one’s infected yet. What a nightmare if we all get it. Then it’s off to the hospital to what--- Be put on a respirator, I guess. At least I wouldn’t have to listen to Richard’s bullshit for a while.
I went downstairs. Mom, Richard and Tracianne were already sitting at the table. Traci had one of those plastic cups with a straw. Not the kind you’d get at McDonald’s or something, but one of those high-end store-bought ones. You know, the straw was reusable and you had to wash it.
She just sat there, occasionally sucking on it and playing with the straw with her tongue. What’s her deal?
“Okay, everyone,” Richard began. “First of all, glad you’re both safe. Thanks for being here. I expect the smoothest of stays, right Phil?”
“What? What did I do?” I objected.
Tracianne put her hand up and started smiling. She was enjoying this.
“Nothing, I’m just trying to stave off trouble,” Richard said.
“You’re challenging me like I did something,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Not saying you did.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“There’s no problem and I don’t want there to be one,” Richard repeated, again, making me feel like he was blaming me for something.
“It’s fine, Phil. We all just want to get along, right?”
I could tell mom really wanted to make this work. For her, I sucked it up.
“Yeah, sure,” I muttered.
“Good,” she smiled.
Tracianne was smiling with glee. What the Hell is wrong with her? So petty.
“We’re planning on shopping in rotation,” Richard explained.
“What good will that do?” I asked.
“It’ll keep some of us from getting infected,” Richard pointed out.
“Yeah, but it has a two week incubation period. Unless you’re going to stay away for over 14 days, it’s not going to matter if you end up coming back to the house,” I pointed out.
“We still think it’s best.”
“But it’s not doing anything.”
“Phil,” ma said warning.
“Ma, it doesn’t. Think about it.”
“Okay, you made your point,” said Richard. “But we’re doing it anyway.”
I threw up my hands. I make my point and they just ignore me. This sucks. Speaking of which, Tracianne was smiling at me with the straw in her mouth. She was clearly overjoyed I was frustrated. What a weird chick.
“Is there anything else either one of you want from the store?” mom offered.
I threw out my food list. Tracianne added a few things. She was playing innocent. Is she bipolar, I wonder? She wanted a bunch of food that was all die, of course. Probably anorexic, now that I think about it.
Mom and Richard head out. He looked at the list of food on his phone and made a face. He was probably editing my request. I got the sense he was like that--- Had to be the smartest guy in the room, right?
“Oh, you didn’t need that junk.” I can just hear it now. The door shut and I was left at the kitchen table with the brat.
“Smooth sailing, Phil,” she repeated.
“That’s not what he said, dumbass,” I corrected.
“You know what I mean.”
“You’re so full of yourself and keep sucking on that straw, by the way.”
She suddenly realized what she was doing and put down her cup angrily.
“What are you implying?”
“That you have some kind of oral fixation, I guess.”
“Ew!”
“Do you even know what that is?”
“I know what it sounds like.”
“Hey, I was minding my own business and your father just comes at me,” I pointed out. “What’s the deal with that?”
“He’s not going to take any of your crap and neither will I,” she said smugly. “So watch it.”
“You watch it,” I warned. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“I never said I was. I want nothing to do with you,” I said, getting up.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
I got up and walked out of the room.
“You’re a weirdo,” I commented as I left.
“You’re the weirdo, how late do you sleep? Past noon?”
“Sometimes I stay up pretty late, as if it’s your business.”
“Didn’t say it was, but you made the whole family meeting run late.”
“I didn’t know we were having one!”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t know that.”
“What you don’t know could fill an iPhone. A good iPhone.”
She thought about that for a minute. That would be an insane amount of information.
“You’re an asshole!” she snapped. “Just leave me alone.”
“The kitchen is a communal area,” I pointed out. “This should be the neutral zone. It’s where the food sleeps.”
“And the pantry too,” she added. “Take it easy with the food there.”
“If you’re dad is smart, he’s buying food in the can,” I noted. “We could see food supply lanes disrupted. It could mean many more people could starve outside the United States.”
“Do you even know what you’re talking about?” she asked suspiciously. “Because if you don’t…”
“The virus causes flu-like symptoms, but it incubates for like, two weeks in the body,” I pointed out. “During that time, people are contagious and that’s how it spreads. Everyone here might already have it.”
“No one’s sick.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Asymptomatic variants could be anywhere. You go to the gas station, the mini-mart, a public bathroom--- Anywhere people go. They don’t know they have it. People are coming back from Italy and China showing no signs. No one is stopping them at the airports. And if they did, they’d have to quarantine them for at least two weeks.”
“They could test them,” she pointed out. “There must be a test.”
“It’s called the novel Corona Virus because it’s new. They don’t have a reliable test. The Chinese tried taking everyone’s temperature, but again, that doesn’t work. If you have the virus and a temp, you got infected two weeks ago.”
The light bulb finally went off as she began to realize how insidious the virus was.
“Oh, God,” she said, thinking about it. “My whole campus probably has it! We had a lot of exchange students.”
“Not necessarily. They may have come to the U.S. long before the virus started to spread in other countries,” I noted. “But they trace this thing--- Rumor has it--- As far back as November. The new
semester started after Christmas, so…”
“Now I’m trying to remember if anyone I knew was sick. I mean, even at two weeks, that might be an indication.”
“Yeah, me too. The good news is, for us, the younger you are, the less likely you will be effected unless you have a serious underlying medical condition. It’s going to be a few years before they figure all this out.”
“So this lockdown is, for what? Two weeks?”
“Nah-nah-nah,” I said shaking my head. “That ship has sailed. I don’t think there’s any chance they can put the brakes on this. The only thing they can do is slow it down so the hospitals don’t get overwhelmed. But if the asymptomatic variants are as numerous as they say, it may not matter. And the lockdown will be for nothing.”
She got out her phone and started looking at the Internet.
“Let’s see what the news says,” she announced, as if comforting herself.
I wasn’t going to tell her that the news was practically useless these days. Instead, I decided it was probably time to just chill and take a nap in my room. If the world was going to end, I wanted to be well rested for it.
Chapter Five - Phil
I was up in my room, reading comic books. God, what a horror show! I mean, I used to love this shit--- Don’t get me wrong. But they just aren’t what they used to be. I got nostalgic.
It used to be these superheroes would do things. They would track down criminals, get into fights and most importantly, save the day. Now all they did was sit around, complain and try to “deal” with their relationships. WTF? Who wants to read this nonsense?
And the worst part--- The WORST part was the politics. All through every issue now it was full of politics, politics, politics. Don’t get me wrong, back in the day there were a few creators that dabbled in politics in comics. But they didn’t automatically assume that anyone that disagreed with their point of view was an ignorant dummy, unfit for mere acknowledgement.
The writers and editors now were so deeply out of touch of what their readers wanted. Just wanted to see some guy wail on criminals, thanks. Don’t try and sell me on whatever their politics might be. Like so many other former comic fans online, I was doing videos about it. I wasn’t the best, but I did okay.