untitled coronavirus ripoff

Lil Intro

Author's Note: This is just a small part to start off and introduce the setting and characters, and see if anyone is interested. Kinda like a pilot IG. Please leave feedback, ty :)

Tia is freaking out,

Or maybe she's alright. She can't exactly tell. Nothing had happened, yet, but she had been taught (let's be honest, by herself) to live as though everything was about to happen, all to her, at the same time out of nowhere. And she knows she's right because all of her teachers have been acting like the world is ending. If her teachers can barely care about grading her tests correctly, there must be something wrong if they yell at her for using hand sanitizer instead of soap and water.

Regardless, her therapist is concerned, and when is he not? More importantly, perhaps, is he wrong to feel that way? She's not thinking rationally, he enforces, she needs to focus on the intellectual  thinking, not emotional. And he's right, sure, but... is anything happening now really that rational?

Oliver is losing everything,

Mostly his mind. Or at least that's how he feels when he looks down at the auditorium seating from the stage and finds nobody when just a few minutes ago the entire cast sat there, observing (or more accurately, looking at their phones) silently. Instead, he hears chatter in the cafeteria outside, mingled with some cries of joy and wails of despair. Stephen is off the stage before he is, almost flowing off, while Oliver trips and falls off close behind. As Stephen makes it to the doorway, Oliver is only a quarter of the way there. He can't be bothered today, not in the slightest. Tia has been going off the rails recently, and couple that with the rumors of school closure across the county, something he doesn't exactly want considering how much he needs this play, this one thing keeping him sane yet driving him crazy, he isn't exactly in the best place. So maybe, just maybe, if he never makes it to the doorway to the cafeteria, and never finds out the most definitely terrible news, he'll be okay.

But instead of that, Stephen turns around to look at him from the doorway, and even though he's only glowing a bit more than usual, it still knocks the life out of him. "Ollie, c'mon." Nobody calls him Ollie. He didn't even like being called that, not until Stephen started saying it. It sounds so nice coming from him. He speeds up, practically skipping as he follows him out into the cafeteria.

But it doesn't last. It never does.

Lori is perfectly fine,

She's never been one to talk to people. To leave the house. Her hobbies consisted mainly of lying on the floor, and watching youtube, and sleeping. She had been lying on the cool floor of the living room, her mom on the couch, her head in the clouds (clouds in a blocking-out-the-sun way, and not in a dreamy way), when the news came on. She didn't hear it exactly, some details were lost in between her mom running into the room, her sister screaming, her dad stumbling and dropping a plate in surprise. But she got the idea.

"Schools out... For summer..." She hums the tune under her breath.

She's on the floor for the rest of the night. She doesn't go to school in the morning either.

Caitlin is trapped at home,

And it's feeling a heck of a lot smaller with 9 other people, two, maybe more, of whom are screaming. She takes her ripoff AirPods out of her ears, pausing Hamilton and making the screams much louder, and hops off the treadmill. She's about to walk up the stairs when her older sister, who Caitlin now realizes was one of the people wailing, barrels down into her.

"Cait- Caitlin Caitlin Caitlin Caitlin," Allie trips over her words, out of breath and hoarse, probably from the running and the screaming.

"Allie. Slow down. Breathe," Allie's short, allowing her to easily wrap her arms around her, despite their 4 year age difference.

She pauses to inhale deeply. "School's out. School's closed. Two weeks. We did it."

She's right. They did it. She drops her earbuds.

She can see the terror in her sister and quickly corrects herself, "Well, not us. It came from the state."

"But it was us, wasn't it?" She's tearing up. She hasn't been to school in a week. She misses her friends.

Just as Allie starts to do her usual big sister comfort pep talk thing, her mom emerges at the top of the stairs with the other screamer, this one Emma, the baby. "Caitlin. Allie. Come help your father." She trudges up the stairs. Two more weeks.

Paige is not ready,

Especially not as she stumbles into class with, admittedly, all of the books she needs for the school day (even though technically two of them are borrowed), and finds that it is for the first time ever an 8 block school day. Meaning she has only half  of the supplies she needs, and only actually owns a quarter.

Fuck.

"Crazy, right?" Paige turns with a start as Tia appears at her side.

"God damn Tia, where the hell-" she cuts off as she wilts in front of her, "Sorry. You scared me."

"It's fine, hah, with everything happening, you're probably right being scared. I know I am," she mumbles.

Oh boy. "Scared of... what?"

"What do you mean?" She's looking at her as if she has eight heads; Paige ventures to guess this means she's completely oblivious to something, but hell if she knows what it is.

"Well... we have 8 classes... apparently I'm supposed to be scared, what's happening?"

"You don't know?"

She hates herself for being such a dumbass. "No...?"

"Paige... The school is closed for two weeks. Everything is closed for two weeks. We're under quarantine starting next week. You didn't know?"

Paige just laughs. Laughs and laughs and cries a bit, but mostly laughs. Spring break came early, just to fuck her over.

And Natasha is leaving forever.

She got picked up early from her last day, so early she didn't even get to go to drama, which is BS, because that's basically the only reason she goes to school. The only other reason: the play, which has been postponed, meaning she'll never get to do it. Ever. She gets in the car and sees her bag is already there, and sinks with disappointment. She had hoped, secretly, that her bag wasn't there. That they had forgotten, and she could go back to her home one last time, breathe in the air, take her dogs for a walk in the old neighborhood. And maybe, just maybe, she could stay for a bit longer, a week or two or three; she could perform in the play, see her friends, live.

But another part of her, the part that has lived in a military family her entire life, understands that life is nothing if not full of changes. That she will continue to live, regardless of a big move across the country.

But between everything, the disappointment, the drama, the fears, the most she faces, the most she feels, is the hope that her dad will make it to meet them there.