In the summer of 2020 I was seventeen years old. I graduated from high school with honors, and had high hopes of a challenging yet rewarding college experience at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. After a long, empty spring of social distancing, I had just two months to spend with the friends I had missed for so long, and for about six weeks, we did. We sang together, went on picnics, swam... I even went on a few dates. Well, quite a few. They were mostly with David, who I had liked for most of senior year. We became official on July 12, and I was happy for about a week.
On July 20, we suddenly got an official notice from the White House saying we all needed to go back to strict social distancing and only going out if it was for essential work. Within three weeks, the list of essential jobs had been cut to include only emergency medical professionals and high-level law enforcement officers.
There was little or no explanation for any of it. At first, angry and desperate people tried to see relatives or keep businesses open, but many of those that left their homes never came back. After that, it only got worse. Soon, we couldn’t use video calls, and then even phone calls were banned. Texting was limited further as time passed. No one dared disobey for fear that they or their families would disappear just like all the others.
I was devastated and confused. How could God let this happen? How could I live this way? How could any of us?
After a while, I sort of went numb. I was powerless to change the situation, so I just avoided talking or thinking about it as much as possible.
So it went on for five years.
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Broken Chords
AdventureWhat if quarantine never ended? What if the government was overrun by a group of people who thought just social distancing wasn't enough? What if no one remembered what it was like when singing voices joined together? Sara is a 22-year-old editor wh...
