Love Songs
by Emma Russell-Trione
February
I think I am in love.
“It’s Wyatt,” I whisper to Clara at lunch. She squeals and shoves me, and my pretzel sticks spill and clatter across the cafeteria floor like marbles.
We share shy smiles in class, and fleeting glances across the heads of our classmates in the gym lineup. Sometimes in math, when we have to share a compass, our arms brush and we jump away as if we’ve been electrocuted.
On Valentine’s Day, I get to school early. I run to my locker and throw open the door, visions of cardboard hearts and confetti clouding my vision. When the smoke clears, my heart thuds, flops, falls. It’s empty.
“You shouldn’t worry so much,” Mom says when I tell her. “After all, you didn’t give him anything either.”
I don’t tell her about the second reason I went to school early, or the unopened box of chocolates at the bottom of my bag.
February/March
After Valentine’s Day, the conversation moves from crushes to coronavirus. Clara chews her fingernails in worry as she speaks, but Ginger snorts and rubs her hand back and forth across the floor, then licks it, as if to prove the virus is nothing, that she is invincible. Afterwards, Clara worries, bites her nails, remembers why she’s worrying, stops. I watch her hand go from her mouth to her lap and back again, secretly wishing we could go back to talking about love.
March 13
On March 13th at 4:58 p.m., I am in choir rehearsal— our last one before spring break. Mr. Hatton waves his arms up and down, cutting through the air with angry slashes.
“Louder! Faster! Altos, you’re flat!”
The room swells with our sound, and my heart expands with it. I love choir more than anything, love the way our voices grow as one. We have reached the crescendo of Fuego, Fuego when Mr. Hatton’s phone begins to buzz. He waves at us to continue, but we are all watching as the colour drains from his face.
All of the singers are flat now, and I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when I remember Clara biting her nails. Mr. Hatton sweeps the sound into his closed fist. The silence is deafening.
“The board has just announced that school will be closed for two weeks after spring break.”
This announcement is greeted by whoops and high-fives, but my gut feels like lead when Mr. Hatton doesn’t even flinch.
“Why?” I ask, and I don’t think he’ll hear me over the cheers, but he does, and he says the word I am beginning to hate most in the world—
“Coronavirus.”
Mr. Hatton sends us home. I see Clara in the hall and wave, but she shrinks away and scuttles down the corridor, hands firmly in her pockets. On the subway, people wear masks or pull scarves and coat collars up over their noses, casting terrified glances around the half-empty car.
What is happening?
March 14-17
On March 14, I meet Ginger in the park across the street. As she speaks, she scrapes her boot back and forth across the frozen woodchips. “We’re going to Cuba. My parents think we’ll be safer there.” I don’t mention that day at lunch, but we are both thinking about it.
On March 15th, we cannot see anyone anymore.
On March 16th, the government announces we have to stay two metres apart from anyone we don’t live with.
On March 17th, a state of emergency is declared. High-risk activities are prohibited. I read the list with growing disbelief.
Sports. Socializing. Swimming. Singing.
April 1
On April 1st, it snows. Big, fat flakes fall from the sky, collect on the branches, cover the ground and the new spring flowers. That evening, Hannah, Christine and I drag our toboggans to Trinity Bellwoods Park. Hannah, who’s ten, slashes at bushes with a stick, sending flurries of snow falling onto the wet, slushy sidewalk. Christine, six, holds my hand and glances around fearfully. She thinks coronavirus is a monster that sickens people after dark.
We get to the slope that leads to the dog park. Hannah whoops and throws herself onto her sled, careening down the hill. We follow, Christine holding tight and screaming all the way down. Run, slide, drag the sled back up the hill. Repeat until our gloves are frozen and our coats are soaked through.
It starts to rain—wet, icy drops that make the snow slick and slippery. Christine wants to go home, but Hannah refuses. She gets on the sled and tears down the hill, screaming, screaming, screaming for help because she’s lost control, and I’m throwing myself down the hill after her because running in this rain is too dangerous, and I grab the rope and pull her away from the tree in front of her, and then we’re rolling into a heap at the bottom of the hill. And Christine is crying because there’s a police officer standing next to her, telling her that sledding is dangerous, and we’re breaking restrictions, and we should be at home.
We walk home in the rain. Christine cries. Hannah, for once, is silent, aware of how close she came to crashing. And I burn with anger.
There was no one else on that hill. We stayed apart the whole way there, and we’re related. Why doesn’t the government arrest the protestors who gather in front of City Hall every Saturday, spewing garbage about how coronavirus is fake? Why don’t they break up the parties in the AirBNB across the street?
Not fair, not fair, not fair.
April 2-30
The snow doesn’t last. Within a few days, the watery spring sun peeks out from behind the clouds, and the clean snow is replaced with dark mud that freezes in clumps and sticks to our boots like Superglue. We start online school. Our teachers are burnt-out. Our technology glitches. Our grades are suspended. Wyatt doesn’t come to class anymore, and after a while, neither do I. There’s no point to it, no function. Just dull hours spent with my eyes glued to my laptop.
In drama, we take photographs and play games, pretending that this is theatre. I sing in my room every night. Sometimes I play recordings of our choir, imagining that we are all together, that I’m not actually alone.
May
In the middle of May, the clouds break and the sun streams down on the still, frozen city. Case numbers drop. I see Clara, socially distanced, wearing masks and talking over a splintered picnic bench. She asks about Wyatt and I shrug, ignoring the sharp stab of regret in my gut.
I expect to be sad when we get the news that school is closed until September. Instead, I am not surprised. Mom shrugs, sips her coffee, and goes back to her laptop—the office she carries with her to the bedroom, to the backyard. Hannah and Catherine and I turn off the news and go play outside.
June
School’s almost over. I send emails to all my teachers, thanking them for the small things: a good grade on an assignment I thought I’d failed; games of virtual Mafia; Google Classroom chats, when we reached out and remembered others existed, that there was life beyond our tiny family bubbles.
The government announces that we are moving forward slowly, stage by stage. Curbside pickup starts at the library: paper bags of books, like presents, that we tear open and devour in days. I step inside a store for the very first time since March and buy a beef patty, the spicy meat filling dancing on my tongue.
July
A quarantine summer is not so different from a regular summer. Long days at the pool; climbing out and waiting in line every forty-five minutes so the lifeguards can clean. Ice cream sandwiches that melt all over our hands. Lots of books. Hannah, Catherine, Mom, and me. A quiet, cheerful loneliness that we have all grown accustomed to.
August
By August, the question everyone asks is, “Are you going back to school?” The government is sending us back—cramming too many kids in tiny classrooms and pretending masks will keep us all safe. People write letters, protest. But no one is listening.
I’m going back. So is Ginger. Clara is not. My longing for Wyatt comes back with a vengeance. During the last week of August, I bike to his neighbourhood and ride by his house two, three, four times.
September
They push the starting date of school forward, then forward again. Two weeks after Labour Day, I wait in a long screening line with Ginger, scuffing away the social distance markers spray-painted on the woodchips. No one’s following them anyway.
Ginger reaches for a twig and snaps it in half over and over, speaking as she does so. “I. Am. So. Tired. Of. This. Shit.” I don’t know if she means the pandemic, or the government messing everything up, but I agree.
I get to class at ten o’clock. It’s math. I stare out the window, missing Wyatt. At break I meet up with Ginger, and we compare first-period stories until our teachers holler at us to get away from each other.
Classes last four hours and end at twelve-thirty. I get up in the dark, bike to school, and bike home in time for my virtual class. There is no choir. I watch for Wyatt every day, but he’s not there. I make a playlist called Love Songs and listen to it, thinking of him. I remember when we thought we would be dealing with this for two weeks, when we didn’t know the meaning of the word pandemic.
October
It’s a cold, wet fall. I whiz through my homework, try not to think about Wyatt, and sing sing sing. I am determined that when choir starts again, I will not have fallen behind.
On Halloween, it rains. Mom takes Catherine to the houses that are giving out candy. Hannah decides she’s too old for trick-or-treating, so we stay inside and watch Coraline, eating fun-size candy bars until we feel sick. I try not to think about what Wyatt’s doing, or about all the parties that should be happening but are not.
November
Our first quadmester is almost over. I’ll miss math, miss writing long, tidy columns of numbers. I never told Wyatt that what I like best about math is the way the numbers line up on the page.
Clara messages me. They closed registration for the Virtual School.
Did you see Wyatt in any of your classes? I reply. I already know the answer. I ask her every week.
No, Clara answers. Why don’t you DM him on socials? I’ve tried. Wyatt’s internet presence is non-existent.
I am scrolling through Instagram when I see it. A red dot under the heart at the top of the screen. Which is odd, because I haven’t posted in forever.
I read the follow request, my breath quickening. A new account. Wy=mx+b. He’s such a dork. I accept the request, follow him back. The next day, a message in my DM’s. Is my screen name too nerdy?
It’s perfect, I reply. Then, heart pounding, I add, I miss you.
The three dots appear, disappear. Miss you too.
We message every night. We talk about school at first. He’s in the Virtual School, taking Advanced Placement classes. He tells me about his plans for university, his dog. I tell him about Hannah and Catherine, and what it’s like learning both ways, one foot on either side of a precarious teeter-totter. He asks me to send him a selfie. I send him one of me with my hair mussed up, in my favorite T-shirt and jeans. He sends one of him and his dog. They are both smiling. I make it my phone wallpaper. When Mom sees it, she smiles and rolls her eyes.
December
Clara and Ginger hit the roof when I tell them.
“Oh my God! When did this happen?”
“When were you going to tell us?”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Ginger wants to know.
I shrug, tracing a pattern on my duvet with one finger. Is Wyatt my boyfriend? “I don’t know,” I tell them, suddenly wishing I hadn’t said a word.
COVID cases are rising again. I’ve hardly noticed, but on the last day of school, everyone seems more reluctant to leave than usual. We hang out in the halls, the library, the covered circle where kids release plumes of cigarette smoke into the frosty air. We are all remembering spring break.
There are no exams, so when classes are over, I’m free. Hannah and Catherine and I spend hours playing board games or tossing a ball around in the alley behind our house. Wyatt and I FaceTime long into the night. I let him listen to my playlist, and he sends me one of his own. Sarah Jaffe, James Blunt. Songs I’ve never heard of before but love. One evening, a few days before Christmas, I ask,
“Are you my boyfriend?”
He seems taken aback, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “Do you want me to be?”
I swallow hard. “I think so.”
“Then it would be my pleasure,” he says, and grins so goofily I can’t help but laugh.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Mom lets me bike over to the Junction (after I promise to wear a mask and stay far away from Wyatt.)
He’s waiting for me outside his house. We go for a walk. I ache when I remember we can’t bump shoulders, can’t hold hands, can’t go into a coffee shop for a hot chocolate when we get cold. We stop in an empty playground and sit down on a bench.
“Here.” Wyatt pulls something from his pocket and holds it out to me. I unwrap a fragile glass bird, wings spread, beak pointing towards the sky. “It reminds me of you,” he says, “because you never stop hoping.”
We can’t kiss, but it doesn’t matter. We sit on the bench, smiling under our masks, and our hearts soar up and fly through the slate-grey winter sky, singing.