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“The thing is,” started the headmaster. “Well, there’s no easy way to put this really. The thing is that we’ve been put on the closure list.”
“What?” It was Hope that reacted first. “The closure list? What on earth for? You can’t be serious.”
Ava looked at her, sensing this was very serious and not quite understanding. Surely the closure list didn’t mean what she thought it meant?
Jake skimmed his hand through his hair again. “I’m afraid I am serious,” he said. “And again, this has nothing to do with teaching standards or competence. The truth of the matter is that Whitebridge Primary is a small school and our numbers are dropping. It’s beginning to be unfeasible economically to keep the school open.”
“But—” began Hope.
Lowell held up his hand. “Nothing is decided yet. The way I understand it is that three of us small schools from the local area are on the list and at least one of us will be closed with the kids being diverted to one of the others. We’ll know more in a few weeks, but the council won’t be sitting on this one for long.”
Ava felt a sharp pain go through her chest. She blinked hard, not letting herself lose control. And when, a few minutes later, Jake Lowell sent them all home, she hurried back to her classroom.
???
Hope couldn’t quite believe what she’d been told. There was no way that the school was being closed, not on her watch. There had to be something they could do and she was willing to sit with Jake for as long as it took to discuss options.
But Jake waved her away. “I know, Hope, and we’re going to do everything we can. But there’s a council meeting tonight and I need to get there, so I don’t have time for a chat right now.”
Slightly mollified, but still reeling, she looked around to see Ava hurrying off down the corridor. Slowly, she followed, thinking that perhaps the woman had forgotten something and that they could walk home together.
When she reached the classroom though, Ava was standing with both hands on her desk, her head bent.
“Ava?” Hope heard a slight sniffle but she could have been wrong.
“I have a few things to do here,” Ava said, voice tight.
Hope stepped further into the room, closing the door behind her. Ava turned at the sound and for a second, Hope saw a glimmer of tears in her eyes. “Ava? Are you alright?”
“Fine.”
“Yet you’re not,” said Hope, coming closer. “Is it about the closure?”
Ava sighed. “I just… I was just thinking that I was starting to belong here.”
“You are,” Hope said. “But even if you weren’t, the closure shouldn’t affect you too much. At most you’ll have to go home a term early.”
“Home.”
The way she said it made Hope think it was a dirty word to Ava. “Surely it wouldn’t be such a big deal to go home a little early,” she said, trying to comfort Ava even though she didn’t truly understand what was wrong.
“Home?” Ava said again. She shook her head. “There’s nothing there, Hope. Nothing. You don’t understand. My life imploded the second my wife left me. I have no house, no family, and next to no job, unless I feel like working with my ex and her new boyfriend every day.”
“There have to be other schools,” Hope began.
“Sure,” said Ava miserably. “But it all means starting all over again. It all means finding a place where I fit in, where I can belong. I came here to change, to try and, I don’t know, get over things, find a new me. And just when I thought that perhaps it was all starting to work, perhaps I was beginning to heal, it all gets snatched away again.”
Hope put a hand on Ava’s arm, half-expecting her to move away, but she didn’t. “We’re not closed yet,” she said. Seeing Ava like this, so human, so near to tears, was somehow both touching and scary.
“But we might be soon.”
It was the ‘we’ that did it. The sign that Ava truly was a part of the school, that she truly did care, that this wasn’t just a temporary thing, that she wasn’t just a high school teacher that had been flung into Whitebridge by mistake. She was more than that. She was a part of things now.
And she wanted to be a part of things.
Ava turned to Hope and her eyes were glistening again and Hope took a big breath and did the only thing she could.
She kissed her.
