My phone makes a noise, and I realize it’s my dad trying to video chat me. I figure it’s a mistake, that he probably sat on his phone or something, so I ignore it. The phone makes the noise again, so I tap the ACCEPT button skeptically. Immediately an image of my dad pops up. He’s wearing the same tattered bathrobe he’s had since I was little. It reminds me of pancakes and Saturday mornings.

“Flora!” he says. There’s some expression on his face I don’t recognize. “Are you okay?” His voice sounds funny too, and I realize the expression on his face is fear.

I don’t know why, but I feel tears well up in my eyes. I just saw him yesterday, but suddenly I desperately miss him. I want to breathe in the smell of maple syrup and him again. The smell of his aftershave, of him reading the funnies with me, the smell of him carrying me to bed after I fell asleep on the couch—like he used to before he and my mom got divorced.

Then Goldy pops in the frame and the spell is broken. “Flora!” she says. “We’ve been worried sick about you. Did you get my texts? Did you see my posts?”

The we makes me shudder. “Yep, sure did.” As usual when I talk to Goldy, I don’t try to hide my annoyance, and as usual she doesn’t seem to notice it anyway.

“I’m so sorry we invited you to visit us right where this disease started. We had no idea,” my dad says.

We, us, we. I shudder again.

“Do you have the chills? Are you okay?” My dad suddenly leans forward toward the camera, and his voice echoes around the hospital room. I’m aware of how quiet it is on Oliver’s side of the room, wonder what he’s doing over there, remind myself I don’t care. Remind myself what he said about me ruining his life.

“Your mother called me to tell me what happened. She said that you had a fever but otherwise your vitals were okay and you weren’t showing any other symptoms yet.”

“I’m okay, Dad.” His concern just makes me mad all over again. Especially when I see Goldy’s hand on his shoulder.

“I should probably go, though. Get some rest. Save my energy.” I just heard Oliver say something similar to his mom and I hope he doesn’t think I’m ruining his life by borrowing his excuse.

“Of course. We understand,” my dad says.

We. I resist the urge to shudder.

“We love you.”

I wait a second, both of them looking at me, then quickly say, “Love you too,” and hang up the video call before they can say anything else.

It’s still quiet on Oliver’s side of the room, and I look around again, wanting to slam a door and throw something and yell and stomp my feet. But I don’t do any of those things. I can’t do any of those things.

I look out the window, to the empty room across the hallway. I wonder if anyone will be in that room. I wonder if anyone else will get sick. Sick. Everyone thinks I’m sick.

Someone is outside our door, slipping into a hazmat suit. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman, not that it matters. The person steps through the antechamber, and I realize it’s Joey, and he’s holding two trays. “Lunch!” he says. “Sorry it’s so late. It’s almost time for dinner! I don’t usually handle food deliveries, but the food staff was freaked about giving you food. Not that they think you’re gross or anything, just that you might be crawling with germs, so I volunteered.” He grins at me.

Does this mean he wants to spend time with me? I feel that giddy feeling again but resist the urge to giggle. I am not a giggler. I have no control over the grin on my face, though. He pats my head, a gesture I find both comforting and disorienting since his hand is in a huge rubber glove in a hazmat suit. He puts the tray on my bedside table and goes to Oliver’s side of the room.

As I’m picking at my food, my mom calls. It’s hard to concentrate on what she’s saying.

“Good news, I’m on a flight to Miami in two days. I wish I could get there tomorrow! But your uncle and I are trying to find care for Randy, and he hasn’t had that many sleepovers, and the soonest he can stay with someone is tomorrow and—”

“Mom, please, you don’t need to explain yourself,” I say gently. “I’m just really … happy you’ll be able to come down. Thank you for going to all that trouble.” I feel so guilty for what I’ve done that I’m dizzy.

“It’s no trouble, Flora,” my mom says.

We’re quiet for a second, and my mom says, “Dr. Demarko said you’re in quarantine with another teenager. A boy?” She stops, waits for me to say something. It’s just like when I was a kid and she tried to lead me to admit that I cut my Barbie’s hair.

“Yeah,” I say carefully.

“She also said the reason the boy is in quarantine is because you kissed him?” It’s the way we used to talk before my dad left us. Back when we were happy, when we could talk about other things besides Goldy being dumb and being mad at my dad. “Flora, was that your first kiss?” She says it softly, calmly.

I don’t say anything. I’m suddenly very aware of Oliver’s silence on the other side of the curtain.

My mom is quiet too, waiting for me to continue. But then I hear Randy’s voice in the background, asking my mom where the stapler is. “Right side of the desk in Flora’s room,” she says. Then she asks me, “Do you want to talk to your cousin?”

“Nooooo!” I hear from my mom’s end of the phone. She sighs. “Sorry, Flora, he can’t find what he’s looking for. You know how it goes. I know that I put—”

“Wait, Mom, before you go,” I interrupt.

She’s quiet, and I hear Randy really lose it.

“I just want to say I’m sorry. Again.”

“Flora, honey, for what? Why do you keep saying that? You can’t help that you got sick. It’s not like you did it on purpose.”

I laugh uneasily. “Right, of course not.”

“I need to help Randy. You just worry about getting better, making that fever go away, okay?”

“Okay,” I say in a small voice.

Just as I hang up, a woman in a hazmat suit walks through the antechamber and into the room. “Vitals check.” She seems so bored, like she wears a hazmat suit every day. She probably does, come to think of it.

Vitals! Right! They’ll figure out I don’t actually have a fever, that I’m not actually sick, that Oliver won’t get sick. Which means maybe we can both go home, and it can be just some big misunderstanding that Oliver and I will laugh about someday. Not that I’ll ever have a someday with him.

The woman looks at the clock on the wall and mutters something.

“What did you say?” I don’t know why I’m trying to make conversation with her.

She looks at me, eyes narrowed, like she smells something rotten. “I said that I’m late. This isn’t my usual floor. I’m not really familiar with where I’m going.”

“It’s okay, I’m not really sick,” I say without thinking.

She looks at me through the clear plastic covering her face. “Never heard that one before,” she says, then rolls her eyes.

“No, really. I’m not really sick. It’s all a misunderstanding.”

I hear Oliver rustle around on the other side of the curtain, hope he’s listening.

“Oh yeah? What kind of misunderstanding would that be?” The nurse looks at me sympathetically, pouting her lips, like I’m five years old.

“I didn’t really have a fever. I faked it! Can we go home now?”

The nurse rolls her eyes again and jabs the thermometer in my mouth.

When the thermometer beeps, she pulls it out and looks at the number, looks at me. “Absence of fever,” she mutters, squinting. She holds the thermometer between two fingers like it’s venomous. I feel suddenly defensive of my saliva. I’m not poisonous. I’m reminded of how Oliver recoiled from me and suddenly I want to grab the thermometer from her fingers and poke her in the eyeball with it.