Scarlett and the Tuesday That Felt Normal

It happened on a Tuesday.

Nothing special about it. Nothing planned, significant, or worth marking on a calendar.

Scarlett woke up when her alarm went off. She put on her uniform without thinking. She ate breakfast, packed her bag, said goodbye to Pudding, asleep on the sofa in his particular Pudding-shaped way, and walked to school with the particular feeling of an ordinary morning.

Not new anymore.

Not strange.

Just Tuesday.

And somewhere between the front door and the school gate, Scarlett noticed it — the absence of the fluttery feeling. The one that had lived just below her ribs for most of September. The one that had arrived with the countdown and stayed through the first week, and the second and most of the third.

It was gone.

Or not gone exactly. Just quiet. Just settled.

She knew the way to her classroom without thinking. She knew which drawer was hers and where to hang her coat, and that on Tuesdays they had art in the afternoon, which she had already started looking forward to on Sunday evening.

She knew that Anya liked the same books she did, and that Maisie still saved her a seat, and that Sam always found her at break time even though they were in different classes.

She knew her teacher’s particular way of explaining things, and which questions she liked being asked, and that if you were having a hard day, she noticed without you having to say.

She knew things.

Not everything. Not yet. Not all the things you could only know from a full year of being somewhere.

Just enough.

Enough to feel like this was her place now.

She walked into the classroom, hung up her bag, sat down, and got out her things.

It was just Tuesday.

And Tuesday felt, quietly and completely, like enough.

That evening she told Lenny about it.

“Something happened today,” she said.

“What?” said Lenny.

“I stopped noticing school,” she said. “I just - did it. Without thinking about it. It felt normal.”

Lenny smiled. Not his small smile or his gentle smile. His proper, full, warm smile.

“That,” he said, “is what settled feels like.”

Scarlett turned that word over in her mind.

Settled.

“I like it,” she said.

“I thought you might,” said Lenny.

🫶 Dream big dreams.