Common Problems

We’re in the common room, Lisa and I. It’s Friday afternoon, about 2 - It’s partly-sunny and 45°f. outside. We’ve claimed the two squares of temporary rectangular sunlight like the Spanish conquistadors of old once claimed everything. I’m just drowsing, I had a test this morning, I got up at 3:30am to study for it and although I’m confident I did ok, I find myself rehashing it when I close my eyes. So I’m determinedly not closing my eyes - much. Lisa has a book open and she’s working on a chemistry problem set (called a pset) assigned as homework. Looking out and up, there’s only one, lonely, cumulonimbus cloud in the sky. It's there, as if placed - a piece of art - the rest of the sky remaining defiantly blank. At first glance, it resembled a man, hanging by his neck, blowing in the wind under a giant mushroom gallows - but he soon detached and floated away like a tattered kite. Lisa starts asking a question, without looking up from her book. “Ok, so when hydrogen acts as a metal instead of a nonmetal..” “Please don’t make me think,” I whisper in a tired monotone, “I’m unprepared.” “Ugh.” Lisa, grunted. She absorbed her disappointment quietly, without taking offense. We’re like two disparate species coexisting in the same landscape: the chemistry-tested and the soon-to-be-tested - neither diminished the other but we’re separate. Leong and Anna come in together, breaking off to their rooms to shed bookbags and coats but soon they’re filling the room with restless energy. “Has anyone heard from Sophy?” Leong asks. Sophy failed a rapid test yesterday morning and was hewn from the population like a cancer on the student body - and swooped off to isolation housing. “Yeah, I took her some stuff this morning,” I report, “She seems ok.” People are dropping to covid like flies. None of us are invincible, we roommates watch each other - as if any one of us could go full-on-zombie at any moment - not unlike I imagine dinner at the Trumps these days - everyone looking around, nonchalantly, wondering who’ll flip first - but here, if you cough, you’ll start a panic.