Imagining in Isolation It was late spring and quickly turning into early summer. I wandered down stairs to my mom’s desk. My eyes were tired and my brain was sluggish. I had just completed one half of an online class day. I waited in the kitchen as my mom finished her conversation on the phone. “Aunt Mara is very scared of COVID, so we were talking about having the cousins stay with us this summer in Maine,” she told me after hanging up. I felt joy as I pictured us all living together, eating dinner on a picnic table, shadows of hydrangea flowers on the bright green grass. Wet toes, greasy corn on the cob hands, and crinkled tennis clothes. Chicken schnitzel sandwiches and wet bathing suits under sweaty hiking clothes. A campfire and a deck of cards. The six of us, Peter, James, Isabel, Teddy, JP, and I, we would sit on the porch, petrified as Teddy talked about outer space, the possibility of asteroids hitting the earth, and the collisions of energy, the process in creating the northern lights. The reappearing notifications on Google Classroom suddenly seemed as far as the other end of a blackhole, faint stars of galaxy’s elsewhere, and the beginning of time. “Yes,” I exclaimed. I ran back upstairs and prepared for finals. I could sense summer in the blasting AC of my room. My dog banged his head into the door and ran in, panting. My cat ran in after him, smelling the brink of summertime outdoors on his shaggy fur. My cat was an indoor pet, she ran to the window and gazed at the breeze brushing the trees. Leaves were removed like dry, dead hair. While adding final touches to my chemistry project, the topics of convection, temperature, heat capacity, and conductivity swirled in my brain. Beings of studious matter roamed my mind. I could not help but call Isabel and inform her of the plans. As we talked, a trail of coastline fog climbed a hill of pine trees, dodged a bike rack, and seeped through a blueberry bush. The murkiness rushed through the oak door of a shingled house. Spilling the fate of our COVID summer on a multicolored, multitasking circular rug: a dog bed, a door mat, a dance floor for Lizzo’s best hits, a movie night blanket, a flat scratch post for the cat, a bellow for the fireplace on a cold summer storm night. Suddenly, the door creaked, and I catched my brothers hovering. “Want to race the go-cart?” We were so bored in lockdown, so stuck in our home, we had repaired Razor scooters we hardly fit on anymore. Soon, I stood at the end of the driveway hill, at the part where our road meets the real road, with quick cars and walking neighbors. As I was in charge of determining the winner of this race, I sat at the end of the driveway and watched JP and Teddy race downwards. JP continued on the go-cart, zooming past me and into the road, as a car came flying down the road. “JP, stop!” Teddy exclaimed. “What are you doing, JP!” I yelled. The car stopped abruptly, meters away from crushing our brother. “Kiki, what are you doing? You were supposed to stop me,” he yelled, laughing.
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