As Wide as the Sky by Jessica Pack

Author:Jessica Pack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

15

Amanda

One day, eleven hours, forty-two minutes

Amanda waited outside of Skyline High School Friday afternoon after having made good time on the drive. According to the bell schedule posted online, there would be a class break in about two seconds. When the mechanical bell sounded, she entered the front doors, blending with the mêlée of students as she walked past the reception area. This situation didn’t necessitate a conversation with anyone, and therefore she’d planned her entrance to avoid one.

She reached the library a few minutes later—identified via the evacuation maps posted intermittently through the halls—and stepped out of the gurgling mass of students making their raucous way to class. What was it about teenagers that made transitions, which could be carried out in absolute silence, such rowdy affairs? Back when she’d taught in an actual school, she’d had a theory that, for boys especially, their vocal cords were connected to their arms and legs. They could not physically move without making noise about it.

A thin boy with blond hair came careening around the corner, looking over his shoulder to laugh at something. He almost ran into her, except that she stepped to the side, butting her shoulder against the wall.

“Sorry,” he said, facing forward and catching her eye. He lifted a hand to push the shaggy hair off his face. For an instant, he was Robbie. She knew he wasn’t, of course. He was too tall and this boy had brown eyes and thicker hair. Yet he was Robbie, in a sense. Robbie had been young, carefree, happy, and innocent within the walls of a high school not much different from this one. Once upon a time.

“It’s fine.” Amanda looked away; the eye contact was almost painful. The boy moved forward, his mind already past the middle-aged woman he’d nearly run over. His future was wide open—“As wide as the sky,” Amanda used to tell her children when they would stress or strain over some aspect of their future. “There is nothing in your way, your potential is limitless.” Then, bit by bit, choice by choice, that sky became a window. Not that every choice was bad, only that choices imposed focus, which in and of itself invoked natural limits. Choosing which college to attend limited the people and ideas they would be exposed to. When Melissa had become Paul’s girlfriend, her future, to a point, had become set. She changed her major from Accounting to Elementary Education because a career that would allow her to stay on the same schedule as her no-longer-vague children had become important. Amanda had been proud to have her daughter follow in her footsteps and pursue teaching, proud of Melissa’s ability to see her future and plan accordingly, and she was relieved to like the man Melissa was falling in love with. But the choices were limiting all the same. Not every choice led to a better path, the way Melissa’s had, and therefore resulting in a lovely window with amazing views. These kids here at Skyline High School still had the sky above and around them.

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