My freshman year of high school coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. No one knew how to handle it, but especially not us kids. We were just learning how to make friends amongst this new milestone when we had to pivot and learn how to befriend black boxes. I still don’t exactly understand how, but somehow, we did it. Somehow, through Zoom meetings and Instagram group chats and socially-distanced picnics, we found the humanity in each other. It didn’t really matter that we were all wearing masks, or so physically distant from one another. At the end of the day, a laugh is a laugh, a smile is a smile, and love is love, and you can feel when it’s there. 

I met my friend Jaelyn, over the pandemic, and by no means was it a normal way of becoming friends. We had so much stripped away from us, but still, we became unbelievably close. This is her laughing.