The long-awaited bell rang at last. As a gathered my binders, I couldn’t wait to get out of ELT and to PE with all of my friends. I rushed out of the classroom, only to see what looked like my entire grade running straight towards me, screaming with joy. The stampede of kids practically trampled me, but I managed to find one of my friends and ask what everyone was so excited about. “Didn’t you hear?” she screamed over everyone, “School is closed for two weeks because of that coronavirus!” Well, that explained why all the boys were yelling, “LET’S GO.” at the top of their lungs. I’d heard of the coronavirus but didn’t really know much about it. But if it gave me a vacation, I wasn’t complaining. I found all of my friends and headed to the gym, not knowing it was the last class I’d have for the rest of 7th grade.

The first week off passed by quickly, and although I wasn’t allowed to see my friends, I spent every second I could on Facetime or playing games with them. We were all ecstatic that we still had another week to relax. We didn’t seem to notice our parents getting worried about the death rates and constantly watching the news. But then we got a call, announcing that school would be closed for another two weeks, and we all began to wonder if things were worse than we thought. Then we began to move into online learning, and although they said we would go back to school soon, the date kept being pushed back further and further. I remember there was one day when I was in online school when it hit me. I was writing a paper about rioting in California, sitting in my room because of a pandemic, while we were all preparing for a tornado to hit. America was a mess. My friends and I became more aware of all the chaos being caused by the pandemic, knowing it was much worse than we thought.

School ended for the summer. Although we never returned that year, I was finally able to start seeing my friends again. Sometimes we went on socially distant bike rides or hung out outside. But I spent most of my time at my friends’ pool. We could all just have fun and forget that covid was even happening. We even started to have campouts, and I set up a tent in my backyard where we would spend many of our nights. In August, we started going to the outdoor mall in Westport and having indoor sleepovers. But near the end of August, cases started to spike in other parts of the United States. The parents got scared. Then, we got word that we would be going back to school, and everyone was so confused. It was like schools were ignoring the fact that the number of deaths increased each day. Nevertheless, we headed back to school in a hybrid system, always wearing masks and staying six feet in the hallways. But schools all around us immediately began having cases of covid and shutting down again, and we knew it was only a matter of time.

It is now November 30th, and we’re all having online classes through zoom, growing increasingly bored each day. We did, at one point, start going to school in-person full-time. That lasted about a month before cases were discovered in our system. Halloween came and went but it doesn’t feel like it really happened, with no Trick or Treating for the first time in many years. Christmas is on its way and people are all sad that no one can see their families. It’s depressing that I was able to sum up pretty much every kids’ year in four paragraphs. But recently, a new vaccine was created, and doctors claim that it is 90% effective. I just hope that the world will go back to normal soon.