Never had a person in Heather Holloway’s entire family ever escaped from Kingsley. Kingsley, however, was a trap and Heather was determined to break free from it. “I want to live in a big city,” she would say to her parents as a child. “Like New York! What if I was a Broadway star? Wouldn’t that be neat? That’s what I want to be.” Her parents, Michael and Sharon, would merely smile and shake their heads. “We wouldn’t want you to do that,” her mother would reply. “We want you to stay here with us!”
Heather knew her way around Kingsley like the back of her hand. She had lived within Kingsley’s four mile radius for her entire life, and had seldom been outside of it. Every morning, Heather would walk the short distance to school (there were so few children in Kingsley that there only needed to be one) and admire the same trees and flowers that she had admired nearly every day for her 12 years of life. She enjoyed Mrs. Paula’s yellow sunflowers the most. Sunflowers were summer flowers, however, and quickly disappeared after the start of the school year. Heather admired them for as often as she could. If she were a flower, she would most certainly be a sunflower. She imagined that there would be more beautiful flowers in a big city.
The summer months in Kingsley were a near perfect temperature of 75ºF. The sun beat down and gently warmed Heather’s face during her morning walk to school. Suddenly, a voice called from behind her.
“Hey, Heather!”
The voice was familiar. Heather smiled and turned on her heels. Standing directly in front of her was Heather’s very best friend, Mindy Miller. Mindy clutched a copy of the bible to her chest, as she did every day. Heather and Mindy attended the same church. In fact, everyone in Kingsley attended the same church. Kingsley Southern Baptist was the very word of God, in the opinion of most Kingsley citizens. Mindy exhaled deeply.
“Finally! I thought I’d never catch up to you,” she squealed in her usual excited tone. “Mommy wanted me to ask if you and your parents were coming to Bible Study tonight. I told her that you were, but she made me ask anyway.”
Heather turned the thought of weekly Bible Study over in her mind. She had only ever missed Bible Study once, and it was due to a town wide outbreak of the flu. She wondered what would happen if she told her parents she didn’t want to go.
“Of course I’m coming,” she responded matter-of-factly. “I never miss Bible Study.”
“That’s what I told Mommy,” Mindy said. “But she never listens. You know her. She always wants to make sure.”
Heather nodded and looked in the direction of the nearby school building. Inside, all of Kingsley’s children (89 children total) were preparing to start their usual day of school. “C’mon,” she urged Mindy. “We have to get going before the bell rings.”
If they had dawdled a second longer, then Heather and Mindy would have been late, and children in the town of Kingsley were simply never late.
