Wayside: A Serial Novel - Episode 3
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Episode 3: One by One
Bellamy Fisher scooped a tiny amount of shepherd’s pie onto a spoon, waited for it to cool, then sampled it. The potatoes melted in her mouth. The seasonings were perfect. A little extra cheese browned on top and it would be ready to serve.
The alarm on her watch began to chime. It was almost time for her guests to arrive. She took a final glance around to ensure everything was in order. For all her neighbors who’d been awaiting a Covid-safe restaurant dining experience, this was cause for great excitement.
For Bellamy, it was nothing short of a dream come true.
Upon arriving at Wayside the previous year, she had set up shop in the food court’s former pizza-by-the-slice joint. The Black Sheep had opened in late 2025 as a counter service restaurant, offering a simple menu of sandwiches, wraps, soups, and smoothies. As the first – and only– restaurant at Wayside, it quickly became the venue of choice for the lunchtime crowd.
As the number of people moving to Wayside grew, so did the demand for Bellamy’s cuisine. She expanded her lunchtime offerings and launched a breakfast menu within a few months of opening. It wasn’t long before Waysiders began asking for a dine-in option. Bellamy took the request before the Founders’ Council with a detailed plan for how to make it happen. With a few tweaks, it was approved. Renovations of the food court began in the days following.
The walls that had previously separated the grab-n-go food service counters were removed. In the broader space that remained, new kitchen equipment and a larger food prep area had been installed. Tightly packed rows of cement tables and benches had been replaced by hard wood dining tables and chairs on the dining patio. A retractable canopy was installed overhead. Bellamy had even invested in equipment for on-site testing so staff and diners could ensure they were negative for Covid or Influenza before entering. The restaurant had remained open for counter service throughout the renovations, but once the bulk order of test kits arrived, The Black Sheep would hold an official grand reopening as a full-service restaurant.
She’d promised to host the Founders’ Council for a soft launch. With so much to celebrate at Wayside, this evening seemed like the right time.
Bellamy stepped into the restroom to pull her shoulder-length blonde hair up into a bun, wash her hands, and touch up her makeup. Upon exiting, she snapped a picture of the dining patio and sent it to her fellow Founders’ Council members in their group chat.
Within seconds, the picture received a flurry of thumbs-up and heart emoji reactions.
Chow time! Bellamy texted. Head on over. Appetizers are warming in the oven and you’ll be the first to try our new dine-in menu! The forecast for the evening is clear, but if it rains, we’ll put the canopy up, mask up, and serve from the Sippin’ Sheep menu. We’ve got plenty of N95s and drinking valves if anybody needs one.
Josina was the first to reply. Looks amazing! She texted to the group. By the way, Benjamin will be a few minutes late. An old college friend came to visit him and just finished quarantine in the Gateway Lodge. He tested negative for everything so he’s cleared for entry. They should be along to join us shortly.
She followed her text with a picture of a negative Covid/Influenza A & B test.
Thanks for the reminder! Bellamy texted. I’ve got the table set for 12. Siado is still in New York City so we’ve got a spare seat for Ben’s friend. She added a picture of her negative test as well.
The more the merrier, chimed in Chaplain Reese Ternier. I may be a few minutes late too. I’m just getting back to Wayside. The Pine County Interfaith Council had their own World Peace Day service this afternoon, so I ventured into Pine Tree long enough to make a cameo appearance.
A picture of a negative test followed.
How did it go? Josina asked.
Weird, replied Reese. People are still bothered by the sight of an N95 and they’re not afraid to let you know it.
An angry face emoji appeared from Cassie Corio. Sorry to hear that, Reese.
Two photos of negative tests followed. Chris and I are all clear, texted Cassie. We’ll catch the next tram and head over. BTW I didn’t sleep well last night so I’m a little tired and cranky. My apologies in advance if I’m not a great conversationalist at dinner.
You’re eating for two so you’ll have too much food in your mouth to talk anyway, joked Bellamy with a laughing emoji.
Hate that I can’t be there tonight! texted Youtuber-turned-pop star and the council’s youngest member, 21-year old Maya ‘Siado’ Martinez. She sent a masked selfie from the board room where she was meeting with her talent manager and a trio of executives from a major record label.
How’s the meeting going? Texted Reese.
We’re in the home stretch, Siado replied. The only thing they pushed back on in my rider is indoor masking for the crew and staff of any venues where I perform. They’re saying they’ll have to pay everyone more to work under those ‘conditions’ so they said they’d have to trim down the amount they originally agreed to pay me. My manager and I made a concession and negotiated down the amount in the name of safety. They just said yes to it, so we’re all getting ready to sign.
Unfair, Reese replied. We’ve all been paying the price for keeping ourselves and others safe since the rest of the world unmasked and went back to ‘normal.’ Now you’re literally having to give up income. Sorry, Siado. That’s absurd.
Yeah it is, Siado agreed. But if that’s what it takes for me to share my music with the world and keep everyone safe while doing so, I’m okay with it. No matter what happens here in the outside world, I still get to come home to Wayside.
A flurry of heart emojis followed.
As the council’s text conversation continued, Bellamy added a few finishing touches to the long table in the center of the patio. Silverware wrapped in linen was placed atop the menu at each place setting. Floral centerpieces cleverly hid small, quiet air purifiers in case she needed to raise the canopy over the dining area. She checked the weather again on her phone. Sixty-eight degrees and no rain in the forecast; perfect conditions for outdoor dining. While the corners of the patio had both standing heat lamps and mounted fans at the ready, neither would be needed that evening.
Bellamy pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. This was huge. A full service dine-in restaurant was a major milestone for Wayside, and an even bigger one for her.
She’d been working as a dietician at a major medical center in Toronto when the pandemic began. To preserve personal protective equipment and lessen opportunities for exposure, staff had to limit time at the bedside. Patients who were in medically induced comas for ventilator support got tube feedings, while those who were conscious and alert received meal trays. She remembered how often the trays would return to the kitchen without any obvious signs of being touched. Patients were eating significantly less than they did before the pandemic. Bellamy knew the illness itself impacted appetite. Pain, stress, and too little sleep also took a toll.
As did isolation.
Before the pandemic, staff on nursing units knew what to do when they saw that a patient wasn’t eating enough. They’d encourage family members to visit at meal times. They’d come to the bedside and ask patients how the food tasted, prompting them to take a bite if they hadn’t yet. When all else failed, they’d turn on the TV and find a show or a music channel the patient seemed to like, then sit in the visitor chair making small talk until the patient started eating.
Throughout the 13 years Bellamy had served in the role, she’d come to understand that eating was inherently a social activity. Around the globe, across cultures, and throughout history, the vast majority of people consumed most of their meals in the presence of others. Breaking bread with family, friends, or peers present during mealtimes promoted feelings of normalcy and safety, while dining in isolation often had the opposite effect.
As food was a major focus of her career and an integral part of her identity, Bellamy had always enjoyed hosting dinner parties and gathering with friends at restaurants. Giving up social dining after the start of the pandemic had been difficult, but necessary. It pained her to see restaurants reopen at the expense of staff and customer safety. Her friends and colleagues poured salt into the wound when they rushed back to indoor dining with reckless abandon. She’d shared studies with them in which restaurants were found to be one of the highest risk settings for transmission. She told them how devastating and deadly Covid could be, having seen it with her own eyes. She wasn’t willing to gamble her life away on brunch.
She hated being the only one who felt that way.
Within a couple of years, Bellamy recognized there would be no return to safe dining in restaurants. She vented her frustrations on Waysidr. Others chimed in that they missed communal dining as well, and longed for protocols and venues where they could safely enjoy meals with friends and family.
It shouldn’t be that hard, she had posted in late 2024. There are so many ways to make it safer. Outdoor dining under an open sky. Everyone tests before getting together. Gathering only when wastewater indicates community transmission is low, and postponing dining events during periods of high transmission. I even have a concept for a Covid-safe restaurant that could work when any of these conditions don’t exist. Everyone dines in N95s with valves for straws and the menu is all liquids – shakes, smoothies, sippable soups. It would be so easy to do.
Josina had messaged her. Love your idea. There’s an opportunity to make this happen in the real world. Can we talk sometime soon?
One by one, the Wayside Founders’ Council had been built this way. Ben and Josina had honed in on discussion threads where Waysidr users were dreaming out loud about a Covid-safe community. They’d follow those who could articulate a vision and had the expertise to make it happen.
And when the time was right, they’d reach out to recruit them.
Like infectious disease specialist Dr. Su-Jin Kim, who had amassed a large following on social media during the early days of the pandemic. She held a passion for interpreting studies and data into plain language, making the science easy for all to understand. Once universal masking was lifted in healthcare settings, she’d raised alarm among her colleagues about the dire consequences in store. They labeled her an extremist with views too radical to remain in practice. In late 2024, she announced on Waysidr she'd been ousted from her medical group in Seattle and was seeking career opportunities elsewhere. Preferably in places where her commitment to remaining a Covid-cautious physician would be an asset rather than a detriment. It was Ben who reached out with an offer. There’s a team of us developing a Covid-cautious community in North Carolina. We’re forming a council of leaders and we’re looking for a medical director. We could use your help with both roles. If the east coast isn’t too far away for you to consider making the move, I’d like to talk with you soon.
Jessica Rae, an 8th grade science teacher from Wichita had posted a thread with a detailed plan for a Covid-safe school. Outdoor classrooms could be assembled with weather-durable furniture and equipment, with UV-blocking shade screens overhead. Classes would be held outdoors during the fall and spring, with a switch to virtual school in the winter months. Indoor classroom time with masking was to be limited as much as possible, reserved for situations such as science labs, standardized testing, use of audiovisual equipment, or the occasional unexpected rain shower. Meals were to be consumed picnic-style outdoors, with a longer lunch period than traditional schools allowed to give students time for taking medications, resting, meditating, or practicing other forms of self-care. Her proposed model focused on the flexibility that 3 different educational settings would allow, and how it could help schools avoid unexpected closures and disruptions in students’ academic careers. The following year, Wayside Community K-12 Academy opened to its first students under her guidance as Principal.
San Diego-based journalist Tony Angelo had posted on Waysidr about a Covid-related exposé he’d written regarding the commercial interests of certain officials-turned-minimizers. He knew from the beginning the story would be a risky venture but was willing to accept whatever impact it might have on his career. The story was never published and the mere act of submitting it to his editor cost Tony his job, but Wayside was calling. There was a need for a communications director and media liaison in the community. The integrity he’d shown throughout his tenure as a journalist placed him top of list.
Disabled veteran Joel Howard had been medically discharged from the U.S. Army in 2019, paralyzed from the waist down by a gunshot wound sustained in a training exercise. In 2023 he caught Covid at a civilian hospital following a spinal cord surgery. Against the odds, he recovered and returned home. The experience left him as passionate about Covid safety as he was about firearm safety. Joel had intended to spend the rest of his life educating others about the dangers of both and helping them avoid the harm he’d suffered. He hadn’t planned on leaving his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, but the growing hostility toward visibly vulnerable people – especially those in wheelchairs and masks – gave him pause. By the time Ben invited him to oversee safety and security for Wayside, he was ready to pack his bags and go.
Civil engineer Prateeka Singh was early to join the conversation on Waysidr about building Covid-cautious communities. She’d been recruited from New Orleans for her extensive experience in infrastructure repairs and renovations, as well as for her commitment to protecting marginalized populations and vulnerable people. When the conversion of an amusement park into a residential community seemed like a daunting task, Prateeka had assured Ben and Josina it would be a walk in the park compared to the work she’d done following Hurricane Katrina.
Bellamy watched as pictures of negative tests from the remaining council members hit the group chat. She hadn’t asked for them. She trusted her fellow council members with her life and knew the feelings were mutual. Bellamy had done her part by designing a restaurant experience which lowered risk as much as possible; she recognized the council members were doing their part as well. They were holding themselves accountable for keeping each other safe.
This was a dream come true for all of them.
One by one they arrived at The Black Sheep, exchanging small talk as they gathered around the table. Ben was the last to show, having detoured to the main gate to pick up his visitor. His fellow council members rose from their seats as the two of them approached the table.
“Everyone, this is my friend Kevin Richmond,” Ben announced.
“Friends, schmends,” said Kevin, waving his hand dismissively. “Nah. We’re brothers.” He clapped his hand against Ben’s back.
“I can totally see the resemblance,” joked Josina, poking fun at the contrast of Kevin’s blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and light complexion against Ben’s darker features.
Introductions and handshakes followed. Ben settled in the empty seat next to Josina while Kevin claimed one of the two empty chairs across from them. After retrieving two trays of tortilla chips with various dips and salsas from the kitchen, Bellamy sat next to him. “So Kevin,” she turned toward him with a smile. “How are you liking Wayside so far?”
“So far, so good!” His eyes lit up at the invitation to be the center of attention. “When Ben told me I’d have to quarantine for 10 days before I could come in as a guest, I’ll admit I wasn’t too excited about that part. But the Gateway Lodge was amazing. Luxurious, even. The bed was comfortable, the food was delicious, I got plenty of work done… I swear it was almost like a vacation. I’m starting to think maybe I need to come more often, just for the quarantine.”
The Founders’ Council members laughed. Several of them leaned in to give him an audience.
“How do you two know each other?” Bellamy nudged him.
“We were randomly assigned as roommates our first year of college,” Kevin explained. “We were total strangers the day we moved into our dorm room, but ended up becoming best friends. So we chose to keep each other as roommates, all four years we were there. Personality-wise, we’re really different, but that seemed to be what made our friendship work. We brought balance into each other’s lives. Ben helped me study when I was struggling with classes. He helped me become more organized, more thoughtful, less impulsive. He was the responsible grown-up, and I was the free spirit. I would drag him away from studying to go to parties and socialize and be more spontaneous.”
From across the table, Ben nodded in agreement but didn’t add to the conversation.
“Sounds just like the Ben we all know and love,” Bellamy replied. “Tell us about some of your adventures! You must have some wild stories from the college days!”
“Where do I start?” Kevin laughed loudly. “Oh, I know. The first week of October, our sophomore year, a hurricane came through and knocked out power in our dorm. Our RA came around to give out flashlights and bottled water and told us it might be a few days before power was restored. I called around till I found a hotel with empty rooms. Almost four hundred bucks a night, but I was going to spring for one for a couple of nights so we could enjoy the benefits of electricity again. I was getting ready to make a reservation for us but Ben talked me out of it. Instead, he insisted we go to a home improvement store. For less than what I would have spent on a hotel stay, we bought one of the last few power generators left, along with a few tents, air mattresses, a mini fridge, box fans, and several more cases of bottled water. We set up a little tent city in the parking lot of our dorm.”
“That’s brilliant!” Josina remarked. She glanced at Ben with admiration.
He smiled slightly, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back against his chair. Ben was typically quiet and reserved, but seemed to be taking it to an extreme.
“I was thinking it would be party central,” Kevin said with a laugh. “Instead, we had a few dormmates show up and ask to use our fridge to store insulin. Another asked to use our power generator to plug in her nebulizer for breathing treatments. Most folks just wanted a comfortable place to sleep. The windows in our dorm rooms were sealed shut, so it was like an oven inside the building. Our air mattresses and fans were a hit!”
“That sounds just like Ben,” Joel chimed in. “He’s been looking out for others all his life.”
“Trust me, I know!” Kevin assured him. “For my 21st birthday, a group of four of us went to Vegas for the weekend to celebrate. Our flight was delayed from Friday evening to Saturday morning, so by the time we got there, we literally had one evening to cram in all the debauchery we could. I spent the entire night gambling and partying with my two other friends who came along. Ben was supposed to have joined us, but he ended up meeting a girl.”
A chorus of excited oooooooohs echoed around the table. The council members were grinning from ear to ear, anxiously awaiting a tale of whirlwind Vegas romance, or at least a sordid one-night stand.
“It wasn’t like that,” Kevin chuckled. “This girl gave him a sob story about wanting to break things off with her jerk of a boyfriend. She was desperate to get rid of him, and Ben felt so bad for her he just wanted to help. So they went to the wedding chapel in the hotel and got pictures of themselves standing underneath the wedding arch. Ben pretended to be her groom so she could send the pictures to the guy, in the hopes he’d leave her alone once he saw she’d moved on.”
“Did it work?” Cassie directed her attention to Ben.
“I don’t know,” Ben shrugged. “I never saw her or heard from her after that night in Vegas. I certainly hope so.”
“Even better story,” Kevin continued. “I took Ben home with me for Thanksgiving, freshman year…”
Finally, Ben reacted with a smile. “I had almost forgotten about Thanksgiving.”
“Let me finish,” said Kevin with a big grin. “I brought Ben home with me for my family’s big Thanksgiving meal. We got in late the night before to find my whole family had gone to bed already. Ben stayed in our guest room adjacent to the kitchen, so when he woke up and stepped into the hallway the next morning, my mom was the first person who saw him. She assumed he had come to clean up with Rosa, our housekeeper. She showed him where the cleaning supplies were and put him to work. When Rosa arrived an hour later, the kitchen was already spotless, so she got to go home early.”
“Didn’t you tell her you were there as a guest of her son?” Tony asked Ben.
“I didn’t think anything of it,” he replied with a dismissive shrug. “My mother was a housekeeper. I tagged along on quite a few of her jobs when I was younger. She was always happy to have the help and I didn’t mind giving her a hand. She taught me how to clean up a mess. It’s come in handy throughout my life.”
Bellamy smiled broadly. “That’s kind of what you did here. Our lives were a mess. This place was a mess. You brought all of us together and made it a home.”
“To Ben!” shouted Su-Jin, raising her glass.
“To Ben!” Echoed the others. They toasted in his honor.
“No,” he shook his head. “It’s actually the opposite. Each one of you at this table… you made this happen. I just paid the tab, which was no big sacrifice on my part. If you want to applaud the leader of this effort, it’s Jo who deserves the praise.”
“To Jo!” Shouted Kevin, raising his glass.
“It’s actually Josina,” she corrected him, then smiled as she nodded politely.
Kevin wrinkled his brow with confusion. “Sorry. To Josina!”
“To Josina!” Shouted the rest of the table. Clinking of glasses followed. Everyone sipped their drinks.
Bellamy rose from her seat. “I’m going to check in with the kitchen. Be right back.”
“Wait,” called Joel from the other end of the table, “don’t you want to take our orders? Remember we’ve got to be at Bonfire around seven o’clock.”
“Actually, we’re preparing the entire menu for you all,” Bellamy said, backing toward the kitchen. “I’ll be bringing out large servings of entrees for you to sample and pass around.”
Applause followed.
“To Bellamy!” shouted Reese.
“To Bellamy!”
“To our first official dine-in dinner at Wayside,” she called out to the table. “The first of many to come. Cheers!”
“Cheers!”
***
After a decadent dinner, the council members exited the restaurant and crossed Main Street to reach the closest tram stop. Ben stepped aside, beckoning Kevin to come with him. “Go ahead without us,” he addressed the rest of the council members. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Josina tapped her watch. “Keep an eye on the time, everyone will be expecting you there for the welcome!”
“We won’t be late,” he assured her.
Ben turned onto a walking path. Kevin followed.
“Hey… I just wanted to say thank you again for letting me visit as your guest. Seriously. I’m so glad to be here,” said Kevin. He spoke with the nervous energy of a puppy fawning for attention, begging to be petted.
“You wouldn’t exactly take no for an answer,” Ben replied. “This really isn’t the best time, but your persistence wore me down.”
“Yeah… sorry about that.”
“So why was it so important for you to visit? Why now?”
Kevin hesitated before answering. “They’ve been running promos for the past couple of months for the Chat with Chatleigh episode you’ll be featured in tonight. I literally couldn’t turn on the TV or log into any of my social media accounts without seeing your face and hearing your voice in the video clips from the interview. I guess it finally wore me down. I realized I missed you and I wanted to make peace.”
Ben walked in silence. He suspected there was more to the story but remained quiet, knowing Kevin would keep talking to fill the void.
“We used to be close,” Kevin continued. “I know we’ve had our differences over the past few years, but I was hoping we could put it all behind us and patch things up.”
“Have you changed your mind about any of those differences?” Ben asked. “Because I haven’t.”
Kevin tensed. “The pandemic was—”
“The pandemic is,” Ben corrected him. “It’s not over.”
“Okay, okay. The pandemic is… hard on all of us. Especially those first few years of lockdowns—”
“There were no lockdowns,” Ben corrected him again. “There were stay-at-home orders and temporary closures in some states. No one forced anyone to stay inside their homes. Everyone still had access to grocery stores, medical care, and every other essential setting. And many workplaces, schools, and businesses were reopened by the fall of 2020. By the summer of 2021, most everything, everywhere, was back to normal.”
“I don’t want to argue about it,” Kevin said. “I’m just trying to say that it was a difficult time for all of us. We experienced it differently. We reacted differently.”
“You’re correct, we experienced it differently. In case you’ve forgotten about my experience, my mother got Covid in the first wave from cleaning up a rental property following a big party, which left her bedbound and eventually killed her after a long, torturous 18 months of suffering. Meanwhile, you were throwing parties at your own mansion in defiance of stay-at-home orders, shamelessly posting pictures of it on social media, calling Covid a hoax, and mocking those who were taking it seriously. And when Covid killed your father and you inherited the investment firm, you bullied your staff into unmasking. They were risking their lives to build wealth for you, and that’s how you repaid them.”
“I know I handled it poorly,” Kevin admitted.
“You gambled with peoples’ lives,” Ben told him. “Including your own. When I reached out to you to express my concern for your own safety, you laughed at me.”
“I know, I know. But that’s in the past, so can’t we just leave it there and focus on the present? I came all this way to see you and spent 10 days in quarantine just to get in here. I thought that would be enough of an olive branch to make things right between us.”
Ben didn’t respond. He stared at the ground as he walked.
“I love what you’ve done with this place,” said Kevin. “And your friends back there were great. Bellamy seems really nice. Is she single, by chance?”
“I don’t keep tabs on everyone’s relationship status.”
“I didn’t see a ring. She seemed interested in me though, don’t you think? When we walked up to the table, she smiled really big at me. I was betting she’d sit next to me and I was right!”
“Maybe she sat in the chair next to yours because it was the only empty seat at the table.”
Kevin laughed. “Oh come on. She was definitely interested. She was asking me all those questions.”
“Maybe she was just being polite.”
“You’re just as clueless as you’ve always been when it comes to women.”
“I take your interest in Bellamy to mean that you and Cheyenne aren’t together anymore?”
“We’re sleeping in separate bedrooms. It’s over, but we're both stubborn. Neither of us want to lose the house, so we're at a standoff under the same roof for now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ben and Kevin sidestepped a large group of people as they passed, walking in the opposite direction.
“Hey, this may seem like an ignorant question,” said Kevin, “but shouldn’t we be headed the other way? Seems like everyone else is.”
“You know I’ve never been one to follow the crowd,” said Ben. “We’re taking a detour.”
A few minutes later, they found themselves back on Main Street, having used the walking path as a shortcut to their destination. Ben stopped in front of the main gate of Wayside.
“What’s this… are you kicking me out already?” Kevin asked with a nervous laugh.
“No. I’m not kicking you out. Turn around.”
Once they faced away from the gates, a large mural painted on the side of a 2-story building came into view.
“What’s this?” Kevin asked.
“This is the Wayside K-12 Community Academy building. When we entered the park, you were talking a mile a minute, so I don’t think the mural on the side of the building caught your attention. I wanted to bring you back here and give you a chance to take it in.”
Kevin stared at the mural for a moment, then glanced at his watch. “It’s nice. Maybe we could come back and look at it later? We’re cutting it close on time.”
“We’ll catch the next tram. It will get us to the pavilion in under five minutes.”
“Okay.”
A long pause followed as Ben thought back to the day when the inaugural senior class of the academy – all four of them – came before the council with an idea for a special project. Their friends on the outside had been asking them what Wayside was like.
They found it hard to explain.
Still, they wanted to try. With the council’s assistance, they sent out a one-question survey to the adults of the community.
If you had to describe what it’s like to live in Wayside with just one word, what would it be?
With an 88% response rate to the survey, the students were satisfied the answers spoke for the majority. The top 10 responses included:
Safety
Home
Family
Healing
Joy
Purpose
Peace
Rebuilding
Community
Freedom was the word which appeared with the greatest frequency.
With the blessing of the Founders’ Council, the students designed and painted a mural on the side of the school building. The central image was a huge, tilted, asymmetrical heart. A vertical row of stitches ran down the middle, from the top of the cleave to the pointed bottom.
Because everyone’s heart had been broken in some way before coming to Wayside. Now our hearts are mended because we are free, the kids had explained.
The word ‘freedom’ had been painted inside the heart in the 6 different languages spoken by the current Wayside community. The students had left plenty of room for the word to be translated into additional languages as their community grew. The rest of the mural was a colorful word cloud with the remaining 9 terms from the survey results.
As the mural faced Main Street near the entrance of the main gate, it served as a visible reminder to residents of the ideals that had brought them there, and a declaration to guests as to what made Wayside different from the outside world.
Now, whenever curious friends and family would ask students of the academy what it was like to live in Wayside, the answer was at their fingertips. They could simply reply with a picture of the mural.
“You see the word inside the heart?” Ben asked.
“Freedom.”
“Yeah,” Ben affirmed. “While you’ve been throwing parties, rebuking masks, forcing your staff to work in unsafe conditions and calling Covid a hoax throughout this pandemic, my neighbors here at Wayside have been fighting. Fighting to not get Covid. Fighting for treatment when they did succumb to infection. Fighting to protect their children in schools and their elders in nursing homes. Fighting for access to vaccines. Fighting to hold onto the right to mask in public. Fighting for the right to live, Kevin. We all just wanted to live our lives in peace. We came here to live together, so we didn’t have to fight anymore. We came here to enjoy freedom.”
“Freedom from Covid?”
“No. Freedom from fighting. Freedom from people like you.”
Kevin exhaled loudly. “Okay, I get it. You’re still pissed off at me. I guess I deserve it. Why did you agree to sponsor me for a visit if this is how you feel?”
“We have a lot of history. You did a lot for me during our college years and I’ll always appreciate how your friendship changed me for the better. And yes, there was a time when we were more like brothers than friends. I was hoping your interest in Wayside meant you had learned from your mistakes. I really needed to believe that, because I was hoping we could be friends again too.”
“So why can’t we?”
Ben turned to face him. “You’ve never said you’re sorry. Are you sorry, Kevin?”
A blank stare. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Silence.
“Thank you for clearing that up for me,” Ben said coolly. “Now why are you really here?”
Next: Episode 4: The Interview
Song by @salamasinamusic
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