It turns out, even in the confines of your own home, you are still not immune from being completely mortified in front of your peers.

Parisa

Guess who texted me today?

Gabriela

Mr. Dennery!

Parisa

LOL, No. Andrew. First text since August.

Gabriela

Whoa. I’m a little sad he didn’t resurrect our group thread.

Parisa

I mean, I think he knows we’re all pretty mad at him. I basically told him never to talk to me again at our last band practice. I think he’s just testing the waters. Plus, I guess in quarantine he could date Lizzy Pearson and still try to be friends with us.

Gabriela

So… how is he doing?

Parisa

Fine, I think. He acted like he had some questions about college applications, but I think he just misses talking to all of us.

Gabriela

Good. Let him miss us. I have no sympathy.

Parisa

I don’t know. I’m conflicted. He told me he was at the store with his mom yesterday. She made him wait in the car, cuz of Adema. And as she was walking with her groceries, someone screamed a racial slur at her. They said to stop bringing viruses into our country.

Gabriela

OMG. That makes me sick to my stomach.

Parisa

He was really upset. He felt so bad that he didn’t do anything.

Gabriela

You can’t really reason with crazy, though. Sometimes you just have to learn to let comments like that roll off your back.

Parisa

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that we all have to learn to do that sometimes because of where our families are from.

Anyway, it made me sad to talk to him. It made me remember how we promised we’d go to prom with each other if we weren’t dating anyone by senior year. Not that any of that really matters now. Will we even have a prom?

Gabriela

I hope so. I will literally go insane if we’re still stuck inside our houses in May.

Parisa

Can people just suck it up and wear a mask, so we can put on pretty dresses and have our pictures taken, pleaaaassssse? I’m gonna have to go stag, aren’t I? You’ll end up going with Wes and I’ll end up flying solo.

Gabriela

Stop! I’ll be your date to prom.

OMG, speaking of Wes—did he tell you what happened today?!

Parisa

No…

Gabriela

We were using the Zoom chat in Trig and didn’t know the whole class could see what we were writing.

Parisa

OMG. No. No. No. No.

Gabriela

Yes.

We called Mr. Holcomb a dick and Wes told me I looked pretty and I told him I liked his hair.

Parisa

OMGGGGGGGGGGG

Gabriela

I didn’t realize Wes wasn’t messaging me privately. It’s his fault!

Parisa

It’s totally his fault!

Gabriela

Now we have a week of detention.

Parisa