Wildfire: The underdog

Chapter 9: Traitor

Day 160

I used to be interesting.

On a warm September, before the virus existed, I was huddled in a hammock at a Hilton Hotel, near the Miami coast, on a university convention field trip about gun safety.

We were eight in total, including Sal. We snuck away from the conference room and made our way to the ground level of the building towards the back, where the poolside, palm trees, and sea allied underneath the midday sky. We avoided the dreaded hour, hearing grown-ups gab about the future of students and "reinvent" American education. Stuff a fifty-year-old would be interested to hear.

The sole reason we chose to attend was for college merits—and the buffet table, including the bottomless pina colada mocktails. Our counselor, who was supposed to be our guide, was clueless about our escapade. And because tourists crowded the lobby hogging suitcases back and forth, no one questioned a horde of well-dressed college kids, laughing their way towards the salty air and the lulling waves crashing against the rocks in a clash of moss and foam.

There is a reason why that memory comes around on those quiet, lonely nights. Some of these friends I've made—have bonded with—had all the same thought: we are playing dress-up in the most boring Halloween costume party of the century. Who gives a damn about the future?

Three other people huddled beside me on the hammock as Sal would bicker with another friend in common about a previous field trip to a Chicago Museum, of how a curator supposedly farted so hard he soiled himself. Because Bianca was vegan, Pete would point out to the staff who mowed the lawn and tell her to serve herself a full-course salad. We'd laugh every time—never growing tired of the same jokes.

"I kid you not! I have never seen a grown man crapping himself. He ain't even that old!" Sal would say.

"He overdosed on Pete's prune cake."

"Go choke on a salad, vegan teacher! The man took one look at Hector and his godawful hair."

"Why are you coming at me now?"

"Well, someone's got to take the hit."

"She's right, Pete!"

"Rin, stay away from this."

"Hey, Alex,"

"Alex?"

"Are you OK?"

Each dialogue—those moments became pieces of a yearning past that brought me nostalgia. It's been years since I had one of those laughs where you throw your head back, and your stomach begins to cramp. These people were more than a group I had bonded with, and I never took those days for granted. But on days like these, it feels like I hadn't appreciated each second enough. I missed being there.

I missed mattering to someone.

"Alex!" It was Joyce. She caught me daydreaming, something I try to avoid whenever possible. But solitude seemed impossible to obtain, not even as I gathered wood near the lake.

I turned sideways to find Joyce with the evening sun painting a worried look in her olive eyes. "What?" I said through gritted teeth.

"What's wrong? Are you OK?"

I brushed a hand on an already humid cheekbone. The remembrance of my recovering—moving on from Delilah and counting friends for both quantity and quality—days seemed to touch a sensitive nerve.

"Just remembering stuff."

I had it all. I went through hell and back. I stopped mattering to one person, then became meaningful to many more.