sadness and distracted me from it a little bit. I found I was actually kind of glad I didn’t have to do that all alone.
It was funny. I was still sad about my parents being stuck overseas, but I felt like I was coming to terms with the situation after sleeping on it again last night. There was nothing I could do to fix the problem, and I had to trust they would be okay. Crying about it in my room wasn’t going to do anything other than make me sadder. Today was going to be different.
“Didn’t you hear me? The world is ending!” Zoey repeated.
My stomach dipped as I wondered whether there was a more serious tone than usual to the alarm in Zoey’s voice. Perhaps she wasn’t just being her normal dramatic self. Was something really wrong? Could there be more news on the virus that I’d missed? I jerked up in bed, my heart racing, as I considered what it could mean for my family.
“What are you talking about, Zo?”
“Have you checked your emails this morning?”
“Of course, I haven’t checked my emails.” Until my best friend had called me, I was still happily asleep. “So, what is it?”
“You’re not going to believe this.” Her voice sounded solemn, and the worry churning in my gut grew more pronounced.
“What?”
“School is shut for the rest of the year, and we’re going to finish our senior year online.”
“Oh.” My body relaxed at her words. She’d worked me up into a total state of worry, but her news wasn’t nearly as terrible as I’d imagined.
I wasn’t surprised the school closures were continuing, given everything going on in the world. The fact my last day of high school had come and gone without me even realizing was still hard to accept though. I was never going back to school, and it took a moment for reality to sink in. The last semester of my senior year was meant to be amazing. It was what we’d been working so hard for, and the fact it had finished via email was completely anticlimactic.
“Oh?” Zoey replied. “That’s all you can say?”
“Sorry, Zo. I was just processing. That’s such bad news.”
“And that’s not even the worst part…” she continued. “They’ve canceled the prom!”
“They have?” That was also kind of unsurprising, seeing as we couldn’t go to school. I found the news that our senior year was canceled far more difficult to stomach than losing the prom, but I knew better than to say that to Zoey. She’d been looking forward to our senior prom ever since we started high school.
“They have!” she said. “As soon as I saw the email, I knew I had to call you straightaway. I’m in total shock.”
I felt like I was handling this a whole lot better than Zoey. Mostly because she’d prefaced her announcement with the fact the world was ending. But, also, she tended to be more optimistic than me, and given the direction the pandemic was heading, I’d had a feeling this year might not end the way we wanted. Still, losing these life milestones was hard, and I couldn’t deny how disappointed I felt.
“Prom would have been one of the last times we’d all be together at school,” I murmured.
“I know. It was going to be such a fun night. And we’d bought our dresses and everything.”
Everything was a bit of a stretch. I might have bought a dress, but I’d been missing one key ingredient to make the prom night of my dreams: a date. There just weren’t any guys at school I was interested in though. A couple had asked me to go with them, but I’d gently turned them down. It didn’t seem fair to go to the dance with a guy I didn’t like that way.
Zoey had no qualms about accepting any old invitation though and had agreed to go with the first guy who asked her. Admittedly, the first guy who asked her was a super cute one who played on the basketball team, so it wasn’t all that surprising.
She let out a long sigh. “What are we going to do?”
“There’s not much we can do if it’s canceled.”
“I know, but I’d been planning my makeup for months…”
Zoey had been showing me her ideas for ages, and I hated to think of all her effort going to waste. “Maybe there will be another event you can wear your prom look for?”
She let out a little gasp, and the usual enthusiasm returned to her