By the time the copier coughed out its last, streaky flyer, my classroom already smelled like panic and dried markers.
The panic was mine. The markers, thankfully, were the kids’.
“Miss Mila, my unicorn needs more sparkles!” Mia announced, thrusting a purple-stained page at me.
“That unicorn is one shimmer away from blinding us all,” I said, forcing a smile as I dug in the communal glitter bin. “But I respect her commitment to extra.”
Mia giggled, and for a second the knot in my stomach loosened. This room—half peeling murals, half crooked smiles—was the only place where I felt like I wasn’t failing at something.
On the back counter, the stack of freshly printed flyers waited: SAVE OUR KIDS’ CENTER! with a grainy photo of last summer’s art show. My cheerful clip-art font did its best to pretend the center wasn’t two missed grants away from going dark.
“Okay, artists,” I called, dusting glitter off my hands, “ten minutes until clean-up. Then we hang posters like our lives depend on it.”
Technically, only my job depended on it. I wasn’t telling eight-year-olds that.
A chorus of groans rose, punctuated by the thump of a basketball from the gym down the hall and the distant buzz of the failing fluorescent lights. The whole building hummed with barely-contained exhaustion.
Harper appeared in my doorway like she’d been summoned by the word panic. Her messy bun sat at a defiant angle, and her lanyard was a tangle of keys and stress.
“Quick meeting,” she murmured. “Now, before you adopt another stray child or medium-sized raccoon.”
“In my defense, he needed help,” I said. “And he was very polite.”
“That raccoon stole your yogurt.”
“Boundaries are a journey,” I said under my breath, snagging a wipe to clean glitter off my forearms. “Guys, keep coloring. No glitter fights or I’ll make you all draw still lifes of broccoli.”
“Ew!” they chorused, which bought me at least five semi-quiet minutes.
In the hall, the air felt cooler, the noise from other rooms echoing off cinderblock walls. Posters of smiling kids overlapped notices about funding cuts. Harper leaned against the opposite wall, one sneaker braced behind her.
“Board meeting was brutal,” she said without preamble. “We lost the city supplemental grant. They’re… talking timelines.”
Her eyes, usually quick with sarcasm, were dull.
“How bad?” My voice came out thin.
“Bad, Mila. Unless a miracle donation falls from the sky, we’ve got maybe three months. Six if we cut staff.” She forced a crooked grin. “I volunteered my own burnout as tribute.”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped, then lowered my voice when a group of kids thundered past. “We’ll fundraise. The gala, the online campaign, I’ll sell my organs on Etsy—”
“Pretty sure that violates their terms of service.”
“I’ll make it work,” I insisted. “I always do.”
Harper’s gaze softened in that way I hated—concern edged with pity. “You don’t have to bleed for this place alone.”
But I did. Because this center was the one thing that had never left me. Not like my dad, not like the boy who said my art degree was ‘cute’ before he broke up with me over text.
“I’ll get those flyers up,” I said instead. “We’ll shake the neighborhood until someone with deep pockets notices.”
“As long as you don’t flirt with any billionaires,” she muttered. “They’re bad for your health.”
