The Last Day of School (Encore)

The elementary school bell rings on the last day of the year, and the whole village listens for it. When it sounds, the children walk or ride their bikes up through the little streets toward the park, and the shop owners along the way have prepared treats and surprises for them. People honk their car horns, pedestrians clap and wave. It is a slow, wandering parade, and it has been going on as long as anyone can remember.

A Village-Wide Celebration

The narrator runs a sundry shop—a place that sells plates and bowls, cuckoo clocks, watercolor sets, incense burners, jigsaw puzzles, and little tins of lemon candies. Elementary-age kids are not her primary customers, but she still wants to tickle their fancies. She sets out a big basket of small prizes: erasers, markers, stickers, mini notebooks, snow globes, and friendship bracelets, all wrapped in paper packages. Across the street, the record shop puts a turntable on a cart and finds the perfect summer album. The bakery has cookies and lemonade. The bookshop keeper made bookmarks in the school colors and plans to hand them out with her dog Alphabet, who is dressed in a graduation robe and cap. The flower shop has been gathering petals for weeks and tosses them off the roof like confetti. The bicycle shop offers free packs of baseball cards to tuck into spokes for the satisfying whap sound that will be heard all summer.