“What am I going to tell their parents?” Constance asks, frowning at a herd of giggling first-graders and wrapping her hands one over the other in a repetitive knuckle-cracking motion.
She flinches as one of the students trips, initiating a chain reaction that results in droves of coordinately challenged youths toppling like dominoes. Constance presses her palms to her cheeks and gnaws on her lower lip.
The thermometer reports an October high of 104o. There’s no telling how many gallons of sweet pumpkin wine have passed from various drinking fountains over pursed cherubic lips. Lips that only hours earlier whispered in unison the first public school sanctioned prayers in this century. They’d prayed for a miracle.
Constance stares at the mound of intoxicated children. With their prayers answered, she wonders for the first time if it might have been a mistake to bring God back into the schools.
Composed for Flash Friday #44.
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