The Last of the Bread Crumbs
The lake had retreated a couple of feet since the last time Everest Wei had visited the Arboretum… which wasn’t that long ago she realized. Every year, their school, Spring Academy, took a single bus to the botanical garden. Yes, the whole k-3rd grade school in one mini bus. A private school, the adults called it, but that didn’t mean anything to the children. She remembered how just last year, in the second grade, the murky moss water had reached the edge of the dirt pathway and how her class, twice the size it was now, used to throw rocks in there. But now, a round downhill beach was exposed. The strange palm tree that grew horizontally and then out of the water was now totally climbable in the dry air as Everest watched her classmates, Christopher Chen and River Arguello dare each other to do it.