Opposite Ends

Two weeks. Or was it three? It didn't matter either way. Every day blended into the next, nothing to look forward to which was unusually depressing.

Jamie closed her eyes picturing their last conversation. How many days had it been? She longed to see Carter, to hold his hand, to kiss him, to be with him. But he was stuck on the opposite end of the country and she wouldn't see him for a long time. Her phone buzzed, text messages from her friends, all complaining about missing prom, that would have been today, she realized with a sad smile. It was five o'clock, she would have been getting ready, curling her hair or letting Lola do her makeup.

She stared at the street, spattered with chalk drawings the little kids in her neighborhood had drawn, and then noticed her neighbor, Katie, on the front porch. Katie was nine soon to be ten, soon to have her birthday in quarantine.

Jamie waved at the young girl and Kate smile and waved back.

That was the house were Carter had been.

Jamie sighed imagining what she would have said if it was Katie's brother instead of Katie standing on the porch.

Hey she would probably say.

Maybe he would have smiled or laughed at her messy hair.

She would ask about his trip to Los Angeles, maybe about his sister who he'd gone to visit in LA. Shauna was pregnant with triplets.

But maybe they wouldn't have said anything.

Maybe Carter would have smiled at her and she would have smiled back and maybe he would have blown her a kiss.

And maybe she would text him something like Miss you.

He might text back. Can't wait till I can hold your hand again.

Carter was always a hopeless romantic.

But it wasn't Carter who was standing on the opposite end of the street, it was his sister, Katie.

Jamie stopped her imagining and smiled again at Katie just before she went inside.

If only they weren't on opposite ends. She leaned back onto the porch swing, picturing Carter standing before her. She too was a hopeless romantic. They were destined for each other and here was a world wide pandemic not only breaking them apart but also millions of families everywhere.

When Covid-19 had started spreading, she and Carter had had an argument about it. Carter had said that she wasn't taking it seriously, that people were dying from it and that she was acting like she didn't care.

People died everyday. It wasn't just because of the coronavirus. And she was taking it seriously. Taking the deaths seriously. Taking the rules seriously.

Then he'd left to LA and hadn't replied to any of her texts.

Jamie wondered if he'd blocked her.

Katie came back outside with what looked like a sketchbook under one arm. She sat at the table on her porch and began to draw probably one of her anime characters she was always working on.

"What are you drawing?" Jamie called over to her, sick of sitting in silence.

"Noen!" the girl called back not taking her eyes off the paper.

"Like the TikTok guy? The one with the ski mask thing?" Jamie like Noen Eubanks but she didn't think Katie did.

"No. He's one of my characters." Katie held up her sketchbook for Jamie to see.

Jamie squinted but shook her head. "I don't have my contacts."

"I'll show you later then." Katie bit her pencil and started drawing again. "He's in love with Wren you know."

"Who?"

"Noen's in love with Wren. The girl you helped me color at Christmas."

Jamie remembered Wren, a side profile of a pink haired anime girl wearing a green dress, like the one Carter had given her for Christmas. She had poured her heart in that dress which sounded dumb but it was true. For Carter she had. Everything she did for Carter, a sentence that literally described the word cliche.

"He wants to propose to her," Katie continued and Jamie nodded. She liked listening to Katie tell stories about her characters, not only were they entertaining but Katie was three times better at making stories than her despite being eight years younger. "But Wren's in-" Katie thought for a moment. "Beijing."

Jamie laughed. "Why is he in Beijing?"

"For work," Katie said. "And then everyone got quarantined. And he couldn't get back to Wren."

The story sounded familiar. Jamie wondered what she was hinting at. She leaned out of the porch swing as if that way she could here better. For some reason Katie's story seemed less fantastical then normal.

"So Noen had this crazy idea," the little girl added, putting her pencil down and staring at Jamie from across the street. "He bought a ring online, a really expensive one. And because he couldn't wait one minute longer, because he loved Wren so much Noen had it shipped to his sister's house. He called his sister, uh Loren," she held up a third picture, "and told her to give it to Wren. As a promise that one day he would come back, get down on his knee, and ask Wren to marry him."

Jamie felt tears pricking her eyes. She hated that she was crying because now she knew what was happening, why Carter hadn't responded to her texts. "What happened next?" she asked but the words came out watery.

Katie seemed to understand. "You'll see," she said typing something on her phone before putting on a mask, picking up a package sitting on the doorstep and dragging it across the street to Jamie's front steps.

Jamie let out a full sob.

She stumbled down the steps and opened the package which had already been cut at the top.

Inside was a smaller box. It was soft on the outside, like velvet, black velvet.

Inside that was a ring.

A real one.

A diamond one.

The most beautiful ring Jamie had ever seen.

Katie held up her phone and Jamie realized she was looking at Carter through FaceTime.

He was crying too.

"I love you," she whispered.

Nothing, not Covid-19, not distance, not time, not eve opposite ends could keep them apart.

When it feels like your alone, always look to the neighbor across the street.