I find my row. Two men in suits with an empty middle seat between them. The man in the aisle gets up, and I scoot into my seat.

He’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye, then turns toward me. “You look so familiar. Why do I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before? Maybe you go to high school with my daughter?”

“I was on the news for a hot second. Our hashtag got really popular. My … friend and I were sent to quarantine together. We’re both healthy now, though,” I say quickly.

He snaps his fingers. “Aha! I knew I recognized you from somewhere. What were you in quarantine for again?”

“Tropical mono.”

“The kissing disease?”

“Yeah, a mutated form.”

“And they let you on a plane, just like that?”

“I’m not contagious anymore,” I say, annoyed. “In this form, it’s only contagious when someone is actively sick. I haven’t been actively sick in almost two weeks.”

“Mono makes you really tired, right?” he asks.

“So tired. Like you think you’ll never be able to stay awake again kind of tired.”

“And you got to sleep a lot?”

“I wouldn’t say got to.”

“Hmm, well, I’d love to have an excuse to stay in bed for a few days!”

I don’t feel like explaining to him that it was hell to be too tired to even brush my teeth, even look at my phone. “Yep!” I say, with a fake brightness to my voice.

He goes back to his phone, and the man in the window seat ignores me the entire flight, which is fine with me.