Big Decisions Read Online Free PDF Page B

the hundredth 100%, the entire school would go skating.
    Lizzie smiled to herself as little heads bent to their goal of 100%. The classroom became so quiet and well-ordered that Lizzie heard the wall clock’s homey ticking. Little eyebrows were lowered in their focusing and tongues were bitten as erasers appeared. Students diligently erased work that was not good enough to achieve the prize. Hands held heads and twirled straying hair in concentration. Dictionaries were pulled from the back shelf and put to earnest use by students who normally would have chosen the faster, easier route of guessing when they were unsure of an answer.
    She loved her teaching job so much at times like this. Dear hearts, so innocent, responding to such a small prize. It almost didn’t seem fair. Lizzie loved ice-skating, and yet she didn’t need to work for it the way her pupils did. After about 10 days, Lizzie drew the hundredth stroke with a flourish, turning to her pupils.
    “Very good! I do think the first grade contributed almost half of them! It’s just wonderful, first grade! Good job,” she said.
    Anticipation ran high the following morning, as the pupils brought extra food in their lunchboxes. Thermoses of hot chocolate and a large container for water were set on the sleds, cushioned with old quilts. A toboggan, for the little ones, was carefully lined with buggy robes.
    Two older boys, Amos and Ben, went ahead of the group, pulling a sled loaded with a box of firewood and newspapers for the fire they would build next to the pond. The upper-grade students would stay warm all day, eventually shedding mittens, coats, and scarves as they heated up from the exertion of skating. But the little ones grew tired and cold, even crying that their poor little feet felt as if they were frozen.
    Lizzie bundled up, placing a whistle in her coat pocket. She blew the whistle only when absolutely necessary, but it never failed that some errant person drove her to blowing the whistle as hard as she could. The disobedient person had to sit on a bale of straw for 15 minutes.
    The day was sunny, the warmth of it promising spring. The air, however, was still wintry, swirling bits of loose snow across their faces as they bent to walk up the hill, then down the other side toward the pond. The day was so bright, Lizzie squinted against the glare of the snow. She wished she could wear her black sunglasses, but that would seem a bit gros-feelich , or conceited, she feared.
    Mandy said those big black sunglasses didn’t look quite right with an Amish covering, which was something to consider. But the truth was, they made Lizzie feel sort of cool, almost like former President John Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline. She admired that woman so much, and secretly, when she wore those sunglasses, she felt the way Jackie Kennedy looked. Oh, well, no sunglasses today. She was a teacher who commanded respect, and she needed to remain in control.
    The pond loomed ahead, a bit grayer than the snow. The top of the ice was not perfectly smooth. There were skaters’ marks all over it, and bits of snow, straw, and wood ashes left from other skaters on earlier evenings.
    The boys soon had the fire started. They put their skates on and slid across the ice, pushing the scrapers. Scrapers were homemade bits of aluminum fastened to broom handles that smoothed the ice on the frozen pond.
    As the boys worked, Lizzie helped the little ones tie their skates, arranged quilts on straw bales, and stoked the fire. Then she sat on a bale of straw and squinted into the sun as the pond became alive with black-garbed figures flying across it, looping and swerving, in a sort of intricate dance.
    She decided to drink a cup of hot chocolate before lacing up her skates. There was just something about a steaming cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day, Lizzie thought, that made your heart so cozy you could hardly stand it. It felt like the softest cashmere scarf around your stomach, soothing it and