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Chad hovered nearby, trying to look uninterested but failing miserably. He was watching me, always watching. They both were. I felt their gazes like a gentle weight on my shoulders—a reminder of who I needed to be for them.
The afternoon unfolded in a blur of activities: homework help here, an impromptu game of tag there. It was controlled chaos—the best kind—and somewhere in the midst of it all, I found my rhythm.
When Mrs. Kinney from the local bakery dropped off a tray of cupcakes for our bake sale fundraiser, I was there to greet her with open arms. “You’re an angel,” I told her as we arranged the colorful treats on the table.
“Anything for you and this place,” she said with a fond pat on my arm.
The children swarmed around us like bees to honey, their laughter infectious. Rachel and Chad joined in, selling cupcakes with the same fervor they might show at a lemonade stand on a hot summer day.
As evening approached and the center began to quiet down, I sat back and surveyed the room. Volunteers swept floors and wiped down tables while children gathered their belongings.
“You’re doing great work here, Mila,” Mr. Andrews commented as he helped stack chairs. He’d been volunteering since before I could remember—a true supporter of our little community hub.
“Thanks,” I replied, but my eyes drifted to the mural my mother painted. It was her work we were continuing—her vision we were bringing to life.
***
I was threading yarn through the fingers of eager kids, teaching them the basics of knitting when the buzz started. Like a swarm of bees disturbed by an unwelcome intruder, voices at the community center rose in a crescendo of worry.
“What’s going to happen to the after-school programs?”
“Did you hear about the development plans?”
Those words snatched my attention. Development plans? I tied off the yarn on little Maria’s project and stood, weaving through clusters of concerned volunteers and parents to get to the heart of the commotion.
At the center of it all stood Mrs. Ramirez, her face ashen as she clutched a newspaper. The headline screamed in bold, as if it too knew the gravity of its words: “Portman Industries Announces New Downtown Development.”
“Can you believe this?” Mrs. Ramirez waved the paper like a flag of surrender. “They’re planning to tear down half the neighborhood, including this center!”
The room spun, my breaths coming in shallow bursts. Cassius Portman—whose lips I knew all too intimately—was behind this?
“Can they do that?” someone asked.
I reached for the paper, skimming the article with disbelief clouding my vision. There it was, in unforgiving print: a sleek depiction of glass towers where our humble community center now stood.
“Apparently,” Mrs. Ramirez continued, “they’ve been planning this for months.”
Months? That meant Cassius knew all along, even as he danced with me at the ball. A surge of anger tightened my chest. He had no idea, of course, but still…
The irony stung—a Cinderella tale turned twisted joke.
I crumpled the paper in my hand, feeling each printed word weigh like lead in my palm.
Enough was enough.
I raised my voice above the hum of worried conversations. “We can’t just stand here and let this happen.”
Heads turned toward me once more; this time, I welcomed their attention.
“We need to fight this.” My declaration hung in the air like a challenge. “This center is more than just bricks and mortar—it’s home to many, a lifeline to some. We can’t let someone’s corporate greed rip that away from us.”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd.
“How?” Mrs. Ramirez asked, hope threading through her earlier despair.
“We organize,” I said with newfound resolve. “Petitions, protests—whatever it takes. It’s still not approved by the City Council, so we have a chance.”
My personal feelings for Cassius—whatever they had been—were now buried beneath an avalanche of determination. The community center wasn’t just another notch on a developer’s belt; it was where kids learned to paint and dance and dream—it was where memories lived.
