The First Day
Aug 8, 2026 · 21 min · 9 segments
Summer is over, and the Jones children head into a new school year at Glendale Christian Academy — where, this year, the halls are full of family. Their aunts, aunt Jessica and aunt Tanya, are…
Aug 8, 2026 · 21 min · 9 segments
Summer is over, and the Jones children head into a new school year at Glendale Christian Academy — where, this year, the halls are full of family. Their aunts, aunt Jessica and aunt Tanya, are…
The last morning of summer does not feel like the other mornings of summer.
It has a different air to it.
There's a new lunchbox on the counter and a stiffness to the new shoes and a whole school year standing out there in the dark that nobody has walked into yet.
The Jones house was up before the sun that morning, and it was nervous, though every single person in it was being nervous in an entirely different way.
Allison was moving up this year into the upper grade classroom and the big kids and the hardest work she had ever been handed, and her teacher, of all the teachers in the world, was going to be Sister Banda,
who
also happened to be her own
aunt.
You would think that would settle a girl's nerves.
Instead, it handed Allison a brand new one.
Everybody would be watching to see whether the teacher's niece got treated soft.
And Allison would sooner walk into the sea than get treated soft.
On top of which, Aunt Jessica was famous for teaching deeper than the worksheet.
And Allison did dearly love a worksheet.
Addison was nervous in a quieter place.
Her outfit had been laid out for a week and it was right, and for once the clothes were not the problem.
The problem was that her best school friend Janet had moved away over the summer, clear across the state, and this was the first August in Addison's memory that she would walk into a classroom without her person already saving her a seat.
Cousin Alyssa would be aiding in the fourth grade room, which helped, but an aide is a grown-up, and a grown-up is not the same as a friend who saves your seat.
Anna, for her part, was not nervous even a little bit, and made up for the household shortage of calm by narrating everyone else's nerves at an impressive speed.
She was headed into Sister Johnson's room, also an aunt and cousin Alexis for an aide, and her own little sister beside her, and as far as Anna was concerned, the second grade was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to anybody.
And Ava Grace was nervous in the biggest way of all.
and said the least about it, which is exactly how you would expect it to go.
She was six now.
Six meant a real classroom for the first time, the combined first and second room down at the end of the little kids' hall.
She knew Anna would be in there, and cousin Alexis too.
The last morning of summer does not feel like the other mornings of summer.
It has a different air to it.
There's a new lunchbox on the counter and a stiffness to the new shoes and a whole school year standing out there in the dark that nobody has walked into yet.
The Jones house was up before the sun that morning, and it was nervous, though every single person in it was being nervous in an entirely different way.
Allison was moving up this year into the upper grade classroom and the big kids and the hardest work she had ever been handed, and her teacher, of all the teachers in the world, was going to be Sister Banda,
who
also happened to be her own
aunt.
You would think that would settle a girl's nerves.
Instead, it handed Allison a brand new one.
Everybody would be watching to see whether the teacher's niece got treated soft.
And Allison would sooner walk into the sea than get treated soft.
On top of which, Aunt Jessica was famous for teaching deeper than the worksheet.
And Allison did dearly love a worksheet.
Addison was nervous in a quieter place.
Her outfit had been laid out for a week and it was right, and for once the clothes were not the problem.
The problem was that her best school friend Janet had moved away over the summer, clear across the state, and this was the first August in Addison's memory that she would walk into a classroom without her person already saving her a seat.
Cousin Alyssa would be aiding in the fourth grade room, which helped, but an aide is a grown-up, and a grown-up is not the same as a friend who saves your seat.
Anna, for her part, was not nervous even a little bit, and made up for the household shortage of calm by narrating everyone else's nerves at an impressive speed.
She was headed into Sister Johnson's room, also an aunt and cousin Alexis for an aide, and her own little sister beside her, and as far as Anna was concerned, the second grade was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to anybody.
And Ava Grace was nervous in the biggest way of all.
and said the least about it, which is exactly how you would expect it to go.
She was six now.
Six meant a real classroom for the first time, the combined first and second room down at the end of the little kids' hall.
She knew Anna would be in there, and cousin Alexis too.
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