I Miss You, I Hate This by Sara Saedi

Author:Sara Saedi [SAEDI, SARA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

PARISA

I have a confession to make: I haven’t left my house since the first day of lockdown. More specifically, that means I haven’t gone on any afternoon strolls around our Bay Area neighborhood, or made a quick coffee run for a double oat milk latte, or seen any of my friends. It’s been nearly five months since I’ve gone anywhere. My parents and my older sister have started to suspect, of course, that I’ve been too nervous of getting sick to venture out. But no one else does. I haven’t told my best friend because I’m afraid that she won’t understand. I’m embarrassed to admit to anyone who’s not related to me that my anxiety, which I try to hide when I can, has potentially evolved into full-fledged agoraphobia. Some of my classmates have braved airports and airplanes to quarantine closer to grandparents. I haven’t braved anything.

There’s no telling right now how long this pandemic will last. Some experts tell us to expect a series of lockdowns until a vaccine is widely distributed, which could take at least twelve to eighteen months, and that’s being optimistic. No one knows if schools in California will reopen during that time. No one knows if my first year of college will take place in my childhood bedroom. Like most teenagers, I don’t do well with uncertainty, but another part of me is comforted by the thought of twelve to eighteen months of staying indoors.

For the first time in my life, I feel safe. I realize that might not make any sense considering there’s a very infectious and deadly disease hunting down people in my age group, but as long as I stay in my tiny bubble, I’m hopeful I won’t fall victim to it. Sure, I still go to sleep terrified that the San Andreas Fault might end it all, but at least if I stay home, I don’t have to worry about dying in a head-on collision in my mom’s old Volvo or getting kidnapped at a gas station and sold into sex slavery or getting murdered in a school shooting.

I don’t have to worry about school shootings.

If only I could measure how much of my brain energy has been freed up during remote learning now that I’m not sitting in a classroom, bracing myself for what to do if a maniac rushes in, guns blazing. I miss my friends and my teachers, but I don’t miss the residual anxiety of active-shooter drills. I’ve always made it a point to be nice to everyone at my high school, so if the day came, and one of my classmates snapped, they’d remember my gestures of kindness and spare my life.

The irony that I attend Winchester High School is not lost on me. We’re named after Sarah Winchester, whose husband was a firearm magnate. Sophomore year, our history class went on a school field trip to the Winchester Mystery House. As legend has it, Sarah Winchester moved from New Haven to San Jose on

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