Tink, tink, tink. Viral tapped his fingers on his teeth. While Monica, beside him, hummed along with the tunes on the car stereo, Viral watched the strip malls pass like time. It wasn't but 48 hours ago that he was waking up in his dormitory on campus; 48 hours since he pumped the pedals on his bike share; 48 hours since the administrators of his college kicked him to the curb.
The eviction had been sudden; the change in demeanor of the leaders had been too. For all of his first year at the private, Ivy League college the professors, teaching assistants, and registrar midwives had been grinning hosts at a five star academic resort. When Viral had a problem with his schedule, for example, the young man at the building that looked like a cottage spent his morning guiding Viral through the long term academic calendar to help him compensate for the calculus class that filled so quickly. Until the morning of March 4th Viral had felt nurtured like a chickadee under the haunches of a hen. In the nest he felt safe; the rocks beneath that could dash his brains upon impact were figments of imagination like the dragons who stalked the oceans at the end of the world.
When Viral arrived at the lecture hall for his weekly recitation of his maths, all the students had been talking over each other, asking each other questions about an email they'd received. Viral pulled his phone from his backpack and swiped down to refresh the screen. The email from the provost of his school had the poetry of an Amber alert. In not so many words it said, "YOU GOTTA GO!"
"Are they going to prorate our tuition for the year?"
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"Is there alternative housing we can take advantage of?"
"What about the board included in my tuition?"
"Does this mean John Mayer won't be playing at the Spring indigenous peoples campus kegger?"
Viral too had been shocked by the cavalier disregard the University had shown the students, nearly all of whom in Viral's grade were mere months into their lives as adults. Who was there to hold his hand?
After reading the email from his school, Viral waited in the classroom for the teaching assistant to arrive. Surely, some representative of authority would speak to the freshmen gathered for advanced calc office hours, and rub their bellies during a national emergency. After an hour passed, Viral caught sight of the TA who had been scheduled to teach them pushing two suitcases into the trunk of an Uber and ushering his pregnant wife and child into the backseat of the sedan. Viral could have sworn his eyes and the eyes of his curly haired TA caked in fop sweat met for longer than a moment. In the panic swimming in the patina of the TA's forehead, Viral could see a man slapping waves for a port in the storm. The look in his eyes, said to Viral, that it was every man for himself, and that whatever balance of power had placed him, the graduate teaching assistant on course for a phD, above Viral as a figure of authority had become the first casualty of this pandemic. There were no answers here, the TA'S terrified face seemed to say.
As Viral watched the graduate student's Uber speed out of the parking lot, a fog of heavy took its place. He'd gone to college to get out of his childhood home; now that college revealed itself to be just a construct, Viral realized he'd never truly been on his own. When the world was on the brink of ending, Viral would not rise to meet the chariots of conclusion. Instead, he'd plug his Samsung Galaxy into a wall outlet for charging and do what he'd always done in times of existential fear -- he'd call his mommy.