Chapter 1 - Addy
Friday, March 13 2020
8:31am
Denver International Airport
Addy
“Oh sweetie, I’ll miss you so much, I’m so glad you ’re able to come out and meet us while we were in town.” my dad’s cousin Laurie says in a baby voice. I don’t understand why she’s talking to me like i’m 5. I’ll be eighteen next week. “I’ll miss you guys,” I tell her as she pulls me in for a big hug. “You all drive safe” I finish after she releases me from her death grip.
“I will, and have a safe flight baby girl, next time you better have that cute little sister with you!” she tells me as she and her kids start to walk off and I turn to walk into the doors of the airport.
Gosh, my dad’s family is a bit much, especially when all his cousins and kids were in the same house and I was alone with my family. I didn’t have my sister Calida, because she couldn’t miss her high school drill team tryouts. She’s gonna be an incoming freshman so really these try-outs make or break it. And our older brother Rocky just didn’t want to come. I don’t even know why we had our family reunion in Denver when all of my Colorado family lives in Grand Junction and the rest live in California. My dad and us kids are the only ones in Utah and really it would have been easier on everyone to have it in Grand Junction.
I walk straight to the security check and hand the guy my drivers License and ticket. He lets me through and I slowly walk through security. This airport is packed. People are probably trying to get home before we have to go on nation lockdown due to this stupid virus.
I finally get through security and I decide what I want for breakfast. After a hard decision I settle with Starbucks, an iced Strawberry Aćai and a heated croissant. The airport is seriously packed. I’ve never seen this airport this busy and me and my Cálida have been flying to this airport to meet our dad. He’s been here working for over two years. This Virus has everyone freaking out. I settle in my chair by my gate, I have three hours before My flight takes off and so I pull out my book, put my headphones in and drown out the commotion around me. I read tons. Mostly all of them our young adult fiction. But I read constantly. I like pretending I’m someone else and I can pretend when I’m reading and relating to these characters.
My phone beeps and I look down to see it’s my best friend Caroline,
Ads, are you watching the news? School got canceled for two weeks!!
Is she excited? It’s our senior year and I don’t need another week off from school then I already got. I hop on to Hulu and hope that KSL 2 News connects cause i’m in Denver and not Utah, but it does, and I get on to watch, It’s talking about how the schools in Utah are soft closure and we still have to do work over Canvas. Great.
I text back:
Schools not technically canceled. We still have to do our assignments.
Caroline responds fast: Yeah, but this school work will take us 2 hours instead of the 6 hours we were at school.
Yeah sure, we both know that we will procrastinate even with nothing else to do.
She knows i’m right, and I also know that’s what i’ll do because that’s what i did this whole week. I only have four classes but still I didn’t get shit done.
At least we can spend your birthday doing something fun instead of at school all day! Have you got on the plane yet? Caroline ignores my response cause she knows it’s true.
Almost, I’m sitting by the gate, I board in like an hour.
YAY!! I’m so excited! I’ve missed u!! She responds fast.
I put my phone away and start reading again. I just have to make it home. And then I’ll be able to relax from all this virus stuff.
