Smog Days (2024)

It was the first day of the fifth week that the sirens rang to signal soft lockdown.

Through the pallid haze outside my front windows, the sidewalks and motorways were as barren as the air itself. I watched veins of smog whip in the wind like streaks of gray oil, racing through alleys and twirling skywards. It could have been beautiful.

Unabashedly in the nude, I crunched through cat litter crystals to my bedroom, which faced an old folks’ home and a smattering of windows above a dingy alley. Why should anyone care, I thought. Our dismal common future leveled us all; what would this uneven pair do but simply induce a few geriatric heart attacks and expedite their looming end?

I tapped my smart watch. Class started in three minutes.

I chucked on a button-up and a blazer with some sweatpants, shaking the litter from them. I kept up my 500 square feet but also shared it with three tomcats, each a trash goblin that I had spirited away from the alley between us and the nursing home. More than one cat would have caused the condo association to try to cast me into that same dank alley, but they never checked. I did enjoy my stinky little feline domain.

Cracking open my SnapBook with my left hand, I opened the Classroom app and started first period’s meet while dashing on a bit of mascara with my right, my mouth hanging open stupidly on camera. I always felt a bit better with makeup on, I guess. Not that anybody wore any right now; maybe it gave me a sense of separation from the bedheaded sophomores that began populating the meet, cameras black and mics silenced. Something had to come between us: some of my senior students were only six years younger than I was. I swatted away Ched, a fat orange cat who always tried to cut in on my classes and flaunt his butt to everyone.

“I’m going to ask that people please turn on their cameras; class has started,” my voice chimed into the microphone. I glanced at my smiling reflection in the camera, yearning that I wasn’t such a softie. Some of the older teachers used to gossip that I wouldn’t last three months teaching in this city–I could overhear it bouncing through the hallways with peals of laughter when they left my classroom. After classes end, empty schools share a betraying echo. I kept mostly to myself at work as a result, my own island of happiness. As much happiness I could work up to share with my students.

Three cameras flashed on as nine or ten students rolled in late. Natajah, Polina, Deshawn, Savannah, Josefina, this was typical of online school. I blocked one camera that broadcasted Mateo blowing thick vape clouds and flashing a peace sign with long coated tongue sticking out. We didn’t even write referrals for this kind of thing anymore–the parents were home; they could rat their own kids out, for all the school cared. A couple of other kids on camera waved to each other, small talking in the chat about what classes they had homework in or what they did last night. Honestly, I just wanted to teach the kids who paid attention about proper semicolon usage and then go about the evening ripping my own giant vape clouds with my students unawares. Some of us probably frequented the same head shops, which did give me a stomachache to think about.

I shepherded the few kids who were awake and listening to the assigned interactive notebook that I proudly created myself. When not grading or sweeping up cat litter, I had been teaching myself to code from scratch using free books and playgrounds. Most people just used AI generators and gemscripters to code nowadays, but I was stubborn and wanted to learn the dead languages that started everything. It wasn't unlike Shelley's monster teaching himself Latin in the forest, except I was less hulking and could only dream I were near the Alps.

I wasn’t really good on the back end: I did start with Ruby, then HTML and CSS, but I really fell into Swift and tried my hand at JavaScript to conjure up some very basic crash-laden animations. It was a lot to learn on a retro terminal app, but I ate it up fast and flex-formatted my little interactive notebook into existence. I wanted to design interactive materials in the old way, learning from the ground up--materials that might keep these kids engaged while we forced them to glue themselves to their CrummBooks each day.

Clicking through their individual assignments, I was pleased to see ten students had actually finished their vocabulary bell-ringers. Really, the whole class should have finished by now: it was rudimentary busywork. 

“Okay everyone! Now we’re gonna–”

One of the class’s–Genaro’s–mic turned on, and a familiar illicit drum lick blasted purposely through everyone’s speakers. My fingers flew to mute him. Then the chat sprung to life: 

haha

ahhh genaro

lol

hahha cause its PornHub

I could have pretended nothing happened. “You don’t think all of us know what that is? Now, let’s figure out semicolons and read some of The Tempest. Once we read one of the acts in my notebook, there’s a link to the movie with Helen Mirren.”

Nobody’s going to do this, I thought to myself. I knew these kids--they were not stupid by any means, but the script and the movie are both archaic and confusing to them. Why did the district assign this to us? At least give them one of Shakespeare's more relatable works.

I messed around writing code, unsure what to make of the lack of parent emails this morning. That was when I noticed the internet really took its time, shifting toes and frothing at the bit like an overworked carthorse. The "exit meet" sound rang out from my SnapBook, and I noticed that fifteen kids were gone in the middle of class. Not good--I called some parents and gleaned it was likely that half the city's wifi was down. Scouring the news for developments, I found it to be true. What were half the kids at school going to do now that their internet was gone? What about their parents and their work?

I thought of Ahmad, a sophomore in that class who was probably playing Bushido Rising, everything except his Tempest portion already done. He was probably going to become an artist someday. His quick wit and humility reminded me of my brother Jay, who worked as a graphic designer at a firm across from Millennium Park.

In Ahmad's room was probably his brother Zayn, who I had last year as an honors junior and who wrote a great paper on modern Islamophobia, and Genaro, the soundboard deviant from earlier. Genaro was one of those kids who you butt heads with but who could also make you laugh your head off. Despite his actions to look cool in front of others, he was a fellow softie and we harbored a mutual respect in person. I hoped silently that Ahmad was bugging Genaro to do his work, like he did in class.

I checked the notebooks of Natajah and Savannah, two best friends who brought life to the classroom every morning when things were held in person. They were two of the best students in the class performance-wise, and I barely had to glance at their work to know that it was well underway. Again, I just doubted they would finish the Tempest work, as almost no one in the class touched those assignments.

Natajah came from K-Town, like my dad. She was hard on the outside but soft on the inside, like one of those raspberry candies that grandmas hand out. I truly thought she wanted to end me the first few weeks of class, but she ended up being my undisputed favorite. Savannah was K-Town adjacent but was just as real--she lived in Humboldt. Despite being able to do anything she wanted with the complex mind on her shoulders, Natajah had her heart set on being an aesthetician and salon-based stylist like her mother. Savannah was always willing to act as a head for her to style, and Natajah would help her with her homework as she pulled her head back and forth into braid patterns that she would learn from her mother or off of UStream, each with a meaningful history of its own that Tajah would explain to the other girls who'd pore over her nuanced art.

A lot of other notebooks didn't have kids in the app, working on things: some were usual suspects, but many were students who normally worked hard. I hoped everyone was okay in their homes and that the outage didn't make anything worse during lockdown.

At the end of the hour, I kicked out each student who remained unresponsive on the meet. Back when I had the energy at the beginning of the enviro lockdowns, I would sing loudly to the students who were presumably asleep on the other side of the blacked-out camera until they retreated from the meeting in their embarrassment.

Today on my last student to kick out, I felt playful (this student, Kwan, was a talented saxophonist) and affected the band instructor's deep voice, demanding to know when Kwan was going to come in for his solo. Eventually he responded, whining that I had disturbed his slumber. His classwork was complete up to the Tempest portion, so I let that one slide, too. Keep 'em sliding, I whispered to myself.

A few minutes later, an email from the principal acknowledged that classes would end early due to internet outages. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened during lockdown, because so many used the internet at once for either school or work--but half of the entire city, that was unprecedented. Anxiety tugged inwards at my shoulders, and my pulse matched the bpm of the House music blaring from my grading playlist on Freetune.

"Hey Jeeves!"

badoop?

"Play Herbie Hancock."

Righto, Ms. Levin del Toro: playing Herbie Hancock and similar artists on Freetune.

"Rockit" brought me back to 2025, when I was in middle school and my parents were both still alive. We owned this place on a lake in Wisconsin, about four hours north of Chicago, where we would go to escape the fast life. On the lake, my dad would blast the soundtrack from Breakin' and similar breakdancing hits from the 1980s while pushing 35mph on his fishing boat. We would clutch the gunwale for dear life, hair whipped to Troll Doll heaven and turbulent waves doling out generous saddle bruising. Dad would beg us to watch the pop-lock movies whose scripts he had practically memorized in his youth and after would perform his own rendition of Turbo's broom dance for us in the living room. We'd watch from the couch, shifted to the side so as not to irritate our wave-bruises. So very smooth, my father.

When the smog got worse in the city, we would go up north more often. My little brother Jay and older sister Yanelis had pretty bad asthma, and the air up there was so breathable and clear that you could even see the stars out at night. Then Mom died, and my father sold the lake house. Visiting a place with such happy memories felt like a betrayal during that era of grief.

My phone pinged.

BREAKING: Internet outages affect 65% of Chicagoland.

Smog density reaches new critical level; CDC advises to stay home except for work commutes and grocery runs.

Federal government strikes down proposed stimulus checks for those affected by environmental crisis.

Yanelis had also texted me that her boss was making her go back to work in person as a construction foreman, which felt like even worse news. I knew this smog was going to cause Yanelis major problems in her line of work--Jay had chosen a career that allowed him to stay home permanently if needed. Yanelis, on the other hand, would be outdoors, on her feet, for up to fourteen hours a day, but as strong and stubborn as she was, her breathing problems were twice that. Her texts mentioned that there was no way they were going to let her drive her big truck to work unless she was carpooling with at least one other person, which was a huge to-do. I admitted to her that I was more concerned about her health than her ride.

As I was texting Yanelis, Ched the cat and his brother Otro got in a screaming match by their empty food bowls. Otro yowled with hunger, and I opened the closet door to find the kibble vat quite empty. My enormous third cat, Paperweight, wove between my wide-open legs and leapt headfirst into the vat, scrounging for crumbs. His ample body flowed over the sides of the container, and I could practically hear the suction as I pulled him out. My pantries were equally bare, because I had been putting off going outside for weeks.

I pulled on my down coat and thickest gloves, an N95 strapped to my face. Outdoors, the sun glowed a quiet orange, and it felt like I was on another planet. Up north in Wisconsin, the sun hurt to look at and glittered on the water. Here, Lake Michigan roiled dull, straining to punch the sky with its resentful waves. The ghostly frigid streets of West Town led me to Petri's Discount Market, where I picked up necessities for myself and also for Jay, who lived about a mile down on Division and Western.

At the self-checkout, an elderly man argued heatedly with one of the employees about the cost of the store's food, his stress level causing his voice to crack and shake. I think the few of us who witnessed knew that the employee could do nothing, and I felt sorry for her. Most of us watching the exchange could also flip it around and identify with the old man's money-related anxiety nowadays, too.

I arrived at Jay's, knocked out from the four-flight walk up but happy to be breathing cleaner indoor air again. Jay was neatly dressed in khaki slacks and a plaid button-up, his whorly black hair cropped closely at the sides and generously spilling forward at the crown. He was secretly fastidious about his appearance; any hint at how long he spent getting ready for the day would cause his slim face to pale and redden.

"Your socks match a month into lockdown," I smiled. "You really do too much." He grinned and embraced me.

"Thanks for the groceries. How much do I owe you? What is Yani going to do with the new hard lockdown? Want to see something I'm working on for our big client? I'm nervous!" His opaque brown eyes turned to saucers as he emoted differently with each sentence. He was 20 but had already been snapped up by that prestigious firm across from Millennium Park after graduating early with honors from the School of the Art Institute. I had no idea how he had so many ideas to crank out at once, though I'm almost positive he was fueled by Aeropress and unchecked anxiety.

"So many questions at once. Can you give me just a second to sit down?" I let out a long sigh after sinking into a vintage leather couch from West Elm. Mid-century modern had been on the outs since the 2020s, but Jay decorated his entire apartment with it, maybe for its nostalgic value or because it ran fast and cheap at Goodwill these days. I saw nothing wrong with Jay's style and rather liked it, however iconoclastic it was.

"Yani will be fine. She's thirty and can make her own choices."

"Being forced to go back to work in person is hardly a choice."

"She's also the one who decided to work construction in Chicago. The smog has historically been a problem for her. She's always been fine wearing a mask."

"Yeah, but you know that's not right. You know how it feels to breathe in those things for too long, Charlie. You sound like the government, 'It'll be fine, everyone. The smog is only getting thicker, but all the better time to send you back to work in person--'"

"I'm just trying to make you feel better about this shitty reality. And quit talking like an anti-masker; when are you from, 2020?" I put my hands on my hips. "That's high-key sus, fam. Period."

"Just don't lie to me, Charlotte. You're transparent like glass."

"Oof, hit with a simile. Just don't 'Charlotte' me, Jedediah." I faked a punch to his concave gut.

He showed me the work he was doing for a new financial firm, which was well done technically but a lot less imaginative than the work he did for college. I asked him if his job was soul-sucky, and he admitted it was, a little. He also said he loved it, though, which lifted my spirits.

"Hey, Jeeves!"

Yes, Master Levin del Toro?

"Play 'Interpolate' by Pixograff."

"Who even is Pixograff?"

A dreamy chorus with plinky Kalimba and a slightly off-key old piano. Some young male vocal, breathy and ethereal. Guitar line similar to Mac De Marco's, same pedal-heavy sound.

"What? They're from Chicago. The group that has Emoboi in it from Nightwave Syndicate."

"Uh huh."

"You really that ancient?"

To Jay, 24 probably felt like eons away. I could still recall when Kendrick came out with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, the first album that had me deep in my feelings. I remember riding passenger in my mom's Subaru and bobbing my ten-year-old head alone to "We Cry Together" turned way down on my SnapPods so she couldn't hear the cusses, rooting for the female voice so hard and viscerally feeling that weird piano beat pump through me. Jay was only seven then, but he was old enough to tell Mom that I was listening to a song with the f word in it. His disdain for anything rap made me dive deeper into the genre just to butt heads with him further about it. That and to find out that producers like The Alchemist could inspire me to save up for a midi to make my own weird beats.

My phone pinged.

Air quality index breaks 620 in Chicago (650 in Houston, 705 in NYC, 735 in LA).

Commercial air traffic to remain grounded "until further notice;" carpool laws expected to become more stringent.

School board: CPS to resume classes in person Tuesday among unforeseen outages.

Well, that was the first I'd heard of that.

That Monday, we teachers were asked to return to school without students for a day of "preintegration training:" keep windows and doors closed, masks are optional, if your Pandora Board doesn't work in the outage, do what you need to do as long as you award students PB (positive behavior) points and don't make much raucous, send students in uncontrollable bronchospasm to the nurse.

Everybody sat around pretending this was normal, myself included. I think we didn't know what else to do. My own Pandora Board didn't have online access--about five of ours did--so I decided that sophomores would just have to act out The Tempest in person. Using the offline features of the board, I drew an elaborate background of the desert island on one slide, another slide with Prospero's cave, another at a mystically bedecked dinner table in the middle of nowhere, all the settings we needed for the next few scenes. Then I wrote separate assessments for the actors and those in the audience and fashioned props using odd things around my classroom: a yardstick for Prospero's staff, a long sheet of construction paper for Stephano's cloak, a couple of sweaters I had in the teacher's cubbie for the fine clothing Prospero devises. A eureka moment: I could cast the more rambunctious kids as Prospero's hellhounds. Ingenious.

It reached 7pm. We didn't have enough No-Fear Shakespeare books to go around, so I used the ethernet connection to find it online to print off a class set. Slightly frazzled, I made my way to the other side of the empty school to use the copy room, which was locked behind two thick wooden doors. Before I could find my keys, the handle jiggled and the door swung open.

"I thought I heard someone trying to get in," an unfamiliar voice rang out.

Damn. Did he have sonar?

"Do we know each other?" I asked, spit getting stuck in my throat. I coughed frantically.

"No, but we might get to if you don't die of suffocation first," he smiled.

I smiled politely, near retching with spastic coughs. That joke was awful, considering the times.

"Let me get you a glass of water."

"No--"

He had already left. What a strange introduction. I held on to the copy machine, which was spitting out paper at a speed that would make mincemeat of your fingers should you try to catch the copies. He returned gingerly holding the tiniest Dixie cup with spindly white fingers.

I thanked him. "What are you copying 1,000 pages for, anyway? That's my job."

"I'm covering for Lemieux in Social Studies. Maternity leave. The name's Yejun, by the way." He stuck out a hand with those fingers. They were refined, almost. An instrumentalist's hands, if I had to guess.

"Charlotte. Charlie. To the students, I'm Ms. Levin del Toro."

"Charlotte? I think that name means 'free woman,' fit for royalty. And Levin del Toro. My last name's Lim. Two L names."

I raised my eyebrows. Okay, then. He beamed in return, pushing back his blazer to put his hands on a stocky pair of hips. "I'm printing a lot, but I can run yours through if you just let me know your key code and how many copies you want."

"I'm good, thanks." Who the hell knows name meanings these days--or did he trawl naming sites for kicks? I trained my gaze around the room for something to talk about and pointed to a flyer. "I think you look like the type who would derive some amusement from the play the kids are putting on. It's supposed to be a riot--one of Sophocles' humdingers."

"I think I might Oedi-pass. Fortunately, I cannot relate to mommy issues that severe." He chuckled, rocking back and forth on the heels of his Oxfords. "Unless maybe someone went with me."

My gaze shot toward him, and I realized only after that my eyes were probably bugging out. His face was round and lunar, and he wore round black plastic frames that suited him. Behind the frames were two smiling brown eyes. His mouth was open cheekily (no mask: whatever), and he raised his eyebrows in anticipation. He had really nice white teeth, I thought.

I honestly had no interest in Oedipus, either, which didn't actually matter. I was caught in the liminal space between feeling weirded out from being directly hit on and charmed by this amusing person. "Well I was planning on going this..." I glanced at the flyer, "Friday. If we still have school in person, that is."

"And if we don't?"

"I guess we could stream it from my place."

He gasped and winked. "How presumptuous that we should do this together. Where do you live?"

His copies stopped printing. The machine prompted us to refill paper.

I scoffed. "That's equally presumptuous to ask, but West Town. I'll give you more details later." Was he weird? I didn't know...yes? Something about him put me more at ease than other attractive men, but his awkward confidence made me leery as much as it charmed me. He was good at picking me up--maybe too good. Or maybe he was older than he seemed.

He peeled a piece of copy paper off the top of the stack he loaded into the number-three drawer. "Write your number on this."

I side-eyed him.

"Okay, I get it." He took out a pen. "I don't do this that often, you know."

"Right."

"Dead serious. Come on. Look at me, anyway." He pulled his hands back to show off his stature, which didn't peak past five and a half feet.

I looked him up and down and then continued side-eyeing him playfully, but I stuck out my hand again. "Pleasure to meet you, Yejun."

"Pleasure to meet you, Charlie." He wrapped my hand in both hands with those dextrous fingers and left a torn bit of paper with his number on it in my palm. Swag.

That night I texted Yanelis and Jay in our group chat about Yani's first day at work, which was horrible. She had an asthma attack while on a third-story roof and didn't have her inhaler on her, so she had to wait for one of the workers to fish the inhaler out of her purse in her truck and carry it up to her. I knew that during her attacks, every minute felt like an hour, and her wheezes and rattles terrified everyone, including Yanelis herself. It never felt like something you waited out until it got better; it always was something dire that felt like it was a near-death experience for Yani.

Yani mentioned that the young construction worker who retrieved her inhaler seemed like my type. She was always trying to set me up with "my type," which in reality was her type. She was really into build and height. I didn't care as much if someone could win a log-throwing competition: I just wanted someone nice who wasn't insipidly stupid or into himself. Intelligence, a sense of humor, and obviously basic hygiene were usually the things that drew me in to a person, no matter how sexy or ugly they were objectively. A wry smile didn't hurt, either.

I texted Yani that someone had given me their number at work today. She promptly asked for a staff picture, which the school didn't have posted because he was just a long-term sub. I told her he was shorter than me and seemed smart. Whatever you're into, she texted back, and I sat back and marinated in the irony of her words.

The next day, students arrived at school jetlagged. Many had become accustomed to sleeping in during the first few classes. Period One flat-out refused to get out of their seats to perform the play that day (even Genaro kept his head down and refused his hellhound part), so they read from their desks and we watched the next part of the movie. The next day wouldn't be so easy, I warned: those who didn't get out of their desks to perform would not earn points for the day. The class groaned.

Many first-period students returned to my class for fourth-period advisory, and they arrived chatty.

"Ms. Levin del Toro, have you heard of the new sub for that Social Studies teacher, Mrs. Lemieux?" Natajah asked as she fixed Savannah's hair neatly into a pineapple.

"Mr. Lim? Yes, I've heard of him." I was entering attendance.

"Well, during current events today, he told us that hospitals in London were so full because of the smog that they weren't accepting new people. And that people in India are the same way, with people dying everywhere in the street, so they're trying to evacuate the cities, but it's been what he called a 'fiasco.'"

I looked up from my computer. Lim wasn't experienced in the nuances of teaching dark material to teenagers yet. This could land him in trouble with the higher-ups. "What do you think of that?"

"Do you think that could...I don't know...happen here? To us? Dead bodies and no hospital beds."

My stomach seized up. I looked at the students in the room, who all had stopped chatting at this point and were staring back at me. At this point, everyone wanted to know.

"I don't think so, Tajah. We have plenty of good hospitals." I was lying out of my teeth; I had no idea what was going to happen, but what was I supposed to say?

A heavy silence filled the room as the students processed.

"Ms. L?" Savannah asked.

"Yeah?"

"What's a fiasco?"

During lunch, I caught sight of Lim in the lounge: most other teachers, including myself, were about as tired as the students and fighting to get through the day with long faces. He was beaming, a bag of Burrito King clenched in his hand as he struggled to feed a five-dollar bill into the soft-drink vending machine.

"Charlotte, strong woman!"

"Charlie, strange man."

He threw his head back laughing, blinding me with his white teeth.