#qarantine

The plus side of quarantine is rediscovering things that you forgot you had. For instance, a knock-off magic eight ball that was won at an arcade bar two years ago during his last year of college that had ended up between an old Pringles can full of candy and a clump of pens picked up from a job fair.

That and a drone.

Percy can’t believe he forgot that he actually owned one. Snatching it up, he proceeds to ask the most important question of them all, if his Uber Eats will deliver his Taco Bell before five’o’clock. Shaking it once doesn’t produce any results, and he remembers why he forgot it existed. The knock-off never gave answers on the first try. However, the second shake reveals the answer.

Don’t bet on it.

Damn. He was hungry. He shook it again, trying to think of other questions to ask: will this end soon, will he ever find love, is his cat secretly plotting against him?

Looking down, he sees the magic eight ball has landed on answer.

Undeniably.

Welp. He has no idea which question that’s for, but he’s hoping it’s not the one about his cat.

Moving on, he turns his attention to the drone. The drone that had been, for the better part of a year, sitting in the back of his closet, only used a few times before he had gotten distracted by something else.

He opens it up and takes it outside, onto the small roof of his equally small apartment building. As expected, there’s no one around, so he starts to mess with the drone.

Glancing around at the other apartment buildings, he catches a glimpse of yellow on one of the other roofs. He moves farther to get a better angle. What is that?

The better vantage point reveals a girl, on one of the neighboring roofs, clearly practicing some sort of dance routine. She’s actually pretty good and he finds himself unable to look away.

Once her song is over, she moves to get a water bottle and catches him looking at her. He feels his face flush and is about to stammer out a nervous apology when he realizes she wouldn’t be able to hear him and probably can’t tell he’s blushing.

In his moment of awkward panic, he waves.

The girl, who has a stunning shade of golden blonde hair by the way, waves back tentatively.

As if trying to prove he’s not a creep, his brain tells him to give her a thumbs up.

Great, now he looks like a creep.

Mortified and ready to run back in, he contemplates if taking his drone would slow him down.

Luckily, the girl just laughs and throws a thumbs up back, and he thinks that she must be the coolest person ever for not judging him right away.

But where do they go from here?

Realizing he should probably look away so she can keep dancing or whatever, he turns his attention to his drone and his brain helpfully supplies an insane enough idea that makes the other dumb moves he’s pulled so far seem tame.

What if he gave her his number via drone?

He wants to write it off as stupid as it is, but the magic eight ball answer looms in his head and his Taco Bells isn’t arriving anytime soon anyway.

Besides, she could just ignore him, and they’re far enough apart that even if she does ignore him, it’s fine and he’ll probably just never see her again.

Also, it’s quarantine and he’s bored out of his mind, and this and Taco Bell are the only exciting things to have happened in the past two weeks.

So he rips off a piece of paper of the front page of the instructions that only has a few non-important words, grabs a pen from his pocket and scribbles out his number, jamming it onto a small hook-like thing on the drone, hoping it’ll stay.

He glances back up to the other roof, where the girl is actually looking at him now. When she sees that he’s caught her, she gives a small wave. It strengthens his resolve.

Standing up, he picks up the controller and starts to fly the drone.

The first thing he learns is that it’s still harder to control that he thought (even after messing with it). The second thing he learns is that all his video game experience has led to this one moment.

Where he navigates a drone to give a cute girl his number who’s a roof away.

It’s a shaky flight, but somehow the drone makes it, the girl following it with her gaze and looking surprised as it lands (somewhat neatly) a few feet away from her.

Hesitantly, she steps up to it and bends down.

At that point, all he can hope is that she’s grabbing the piece of paper and not destroying his drone.

A second later she stands up, waving the paper with a big smile on her face. He won’t lie and say it doesn’t make him giddy to see that. In fact, he’s so giddy, it takes him twice as long to get the drone back to him than it did to get to her.

Just as the drone lands by his feet, he feels his phone vibrate.

Hoping to see a text from her, he’s only a little disappointed to see that it’s actually his Taco Bell that’s arrived. He picks up his drone, sends a wave back that he’s not sure she sees because she’s bent down tying her shoes or something and walks back in.

The arrival of his food takes precedence for the next ten minutes as he attempts (and fails) at eating slowly to savor it.

Maybe it’s the Taco Bell, or the excitement of seeing another face, or the knockoff magic eight ball he found, but it’s the first real good day in a long time.  

And for the first time since quarantine started that he doesn’t feel stuck in a rut, each day just barely passing by as he goes through the motions. He’s beyond grateful that he managed to force himself to actually do something today. Cleaning out his closet and ordering some food were the best decisions he’s made.

And the feeling only strengthens when he feels his phone vibrate once more.

And maybe in some weird way knockoff magic eight balls are truly magical because the text reads:

Hi from your neighbor on the roof :)

Gobblers- They know what it be

2. Spellwrit Screamers- The event was eh and they just look CRUSTY

3. Warhorns - We got NIPPLE. Need I say more

4. The Kraken- this man be rocking an 8 pack. Who let him out like dat

5. (The New) Fire elves- what is that?? WHAT IS THAT??? I don’t like him, his giant head or his beady little eyes