Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge #392
For three months, the backpack had been forgotten.
It sat in the corner while summer happened.
There were late mornings and even later nights.
Bare feet.
Beach days.
Ice cream melting faster than anyone could eat it.
No alarms.
No homework.
No rushing out the door wondering where someone had put their shoes.
Summer seemed endless.
Until suddenly it wasn’t.
She pulled the backpack from the corner and discovered the remains of the previous school year inside.
Two pens.
A crumpled piece of paper.
A forgotten hair tie.
And, somehow, one biscuit that looked old enough to qualify for archaeological research.
She threw that away quickly.
In a couple of weeks, the alarm clock would return.
So would packed lunches, books, teachers, timetables and the familiar morning cry:
“We’re going to be late!”
She wasn’t quite ready.
But then, perhaps nobody ever is.
She put the backpack on and walked down the road.
The same road she had walked before.
Yet she wasn’t exactly the same girl who had walked home on the final day of school three months earlier.
She was a little taller.
A little wiser.
There were new memories tucked somewhere inside her that weighed nothing at all.
Ahead waited another school year.
New lessons.
New friendships.
Probably some drama.
Definitely homework.
And somewhere between all those ordinary school days, she would grow a little more without even noticing it.
That is the strange thing about childhood.
We think we’re simply walking to school.
Only years later do we realise—
we were walking toward who we would become.
#FFFC
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With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
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