My parents who live a few hours away have been checking in with me, and for the first time, I’ve felt it’s a good thing they divorced after I graduated high school because, now, I get two phone calls instead of one to keep me entertained. Everywhere is closed, and when you live alone, you really start to realize how much you rely on outside interaction to keep you going. Now that it is Friday, I’m itching to go out, but I can’t. By Tuesday, I was starting to twiddle my thumbs. Yeah, that lasted all of about three days before I was bored out of my mind. I stopped by the supermarket before I went home, grabbed everything I needed for two weeks, and planned on enjoying the time off by relaxing and doing whatever I wanted.

Canceling schools is a big deal, so when that surprising announcement came, I prepared for more. As a sixth-grade teacher, I knew shit was about to go down when they canceled school for two weeks before the shelter in place was even ordered. There are only a few cases in my small town of the dreaded coronavirus, but just a few miles up the road, a few hundred have been reported, so they’ve put us all on lockdown to stop the spread. I’m on day ten of a shelter-in-place mandate from the Governor of California.

If I don’t get my boredom eating under control, I’ll gain weight during all of this, and also my food storage is starting to dwindle. I open my fridge for the fifth time today. No claims have been made over songs and/or lyrics written. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Visit my website at Editor: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Day One by Lauren Runow