The new whiteboard did not look like it belonged in Sam's classroom.

It was too new, too clean.

The surface was pure white.

It didn't have any scuff marks from old markers or any faint pink lines from where red ink had been erased one too many times.

There were no dense in the aluminum frame.

And it even looked like someone properly bolted it onto the wall.

He had not been brave enough to put his eraser to it yet, but he had a feeling that it would not shake and clatter against the wall when he swept his hand back and forth across the surface.

It was surreal almost. He wondered what would come next. Maybe they

would fix the broken window sill, or give them a desk where all the wheels were intact. He could

not imagine what it would be like to sit down and not immediately dip towards the opposite side.

Baby steps, he supposed, one thing at a time. Ten years. Baby steps, he supposed.

One thing at a time.

Ten years down the road, he might have a functional classroom.

Sam lined up his dry erase markers along the shiny aluminum strip at the bottom of his new whiteboard, red, blue, and black.

They were all ready for Monday.

His students would get to watch him diagram sentences on the shiniest, brightest white surface for about a week.

Not one of them would notice or care, but he did.

He just wondered how long he could keep any of them from touching it.

Knuckles rapped against the open open door and Sam looked up.

He caught sight of a dark swath of long hair before anything else, and then he locked eyes with Audrey Smith.

She taught history in the classroom across the hall. Their students shared a lunch schedule, so they had gotten to know one another pretty well.

She was in the middle of a divorce and had been clocking in extra hours to avoid going home.

...