White Space Season 1

kitchen bar.
    Sarah looked down to see that her bagel was two different halves — one regular and one everything.
    “It looks amazing,” Sarah smiled, mustering as much enthusiasm as she could before the caffeine.
    Emma pranced to the living room and looked out the window. “We should bring our umbrellas. It looks like rain today.”
    A chill ran down Sarah’s spine. Not at the thought of rain. It always seemed like it might rain. This chill had nothing to do with the cold. It was an odd feeling — sudden and unmistakable and without a molecule of sense. Though the feeling might have been impossible to define, if Sarah were forced to give it breath, she would have an immediate answer:
    It felt like today was the day she was going to die.

    * *

    Sarah leaned over and kissed Emma on the forehead as she dropped her off in front of her classroom.
    “I love you,” Sarah said.
    Emma stared over her mother’s head at a row of lockers, clearly embarrassed as Hudson Ralston walked by into their classroom, stealing a smiling glance at Emma.
    “Who’s that?” Sarah asked, as though she didn’t know Wendy Ralston’s rascally son.
    Emma’s face turned red. “Nobody,” she said, shifting on her feet and obviously wanting to get to class.
    Oh my God, she has a crush! Too cute.
    “OK then, see you later,” Sarah smiled. “But I wanna know everything later.”
    “Stop, Mom,” Emma said, making her eyes big. She turned, waved goodbye, then disappeared into her classroom.
    Sarah watched as Emma sat beside Hudson. Emma looked up and waved a hand anxiously at her mother, shooing her away.
    Sarah smiled and turned toward her class, tears welling in her eyes.
    My baby is growing up WAY too fast.
    I didn’t like boys until … oh, wait. Yeah, about the same age.
    Sarah went to her classroom, then sat at her desk, waiting for her students to start shuffling in as she graded quizzes from the day before. As she moved the finished quizzes to their quickly rising pile, her thoughts kept circling back to Emma’s rather adorable crush.
    When Sarah was Emma’s age, she had a thing for Jon, even though she hid it fairly well so as not to upset the obvious crush Cassidy was carrying. If Cassidy had known Sarah liked Jon, she would’ve made Sarah’s life miserable. It wasn’t that Cassidy was a bully — though some people saw her that way — but she was super competitive with Sarah for reasons Sarah couldn’t understood at the time.
    It was only after Cassidy started dating Tommy Decker, when Sarah finally began entertaining the thought of liking Jon. When they started dating in middle school, Sarah was terrified that Cassidy would get upset. Things were great between them, better than ever, and she didn’t want to upset the harmony. Cassidy had taken the news surprisingly well. She was happy with her steady stream of guys, or at least it seemed so at the time. Cassidy said she would be bored to tears going out with one guy, especially a “rich prick” like Jon.
    “Hey, Ms. Hughes,” a girl’s voice cut through the chaos in her head, pulling Sarah from her train of thought, and moving her eyes from Ben Johnson’s quiz to the eyes of Melody Quinn, one of her best students. Early, as usual.
    “Hi, Melody,” Sarah said.” How are you this morning?”
    “Great!” Melody beamed, chipper as always. Sarah suspected that beneath Melody’s happy exterior, lurked the restless soul of a very sad girl.
    Or maybe you’re just projecting, Sarah.
    Yeah, maybe.
    Melody sat in the front row, and was quickly followed by a steady stream of incoming students until the first bell brayed against the soft sea of morning chatters. Of course, not all her students were there. But Sarah was lax. As long as everyone was sitting within a minute or two of the bell, she paid no mind to a few tardies. Some kids had to defy authority a bit, bend the rules to thicken their teenage blood — just like Cassidy. As long as it didn’t distract them from their best work, Sarah pretended not to notice.
    Sarah took attendance as the final few students took their seats. Two kids either absent, or especially tardy.
    “Today, class,” Sarah moved her eyes from the roll sheet to her students, “we will be writing to a prompt. I want you to choose one of the 10 prompts on this sheet.” Sarah held a stack of papers in the air, then stood from her desk and stepped in front of the class.
    “I’d like to see at least five hundred words from