Listlessness seeped into the classroom the way humidity soaks a summer’s afternoon. The looks on the student’s faces were stone statues staring off into the distance between Grace and the whiteboard.

She paused, inhaled deeply before deciding everyone should go outside for a walk. There was bushland surrounding the school and it would do everyone some good to get some fresh air.

As they meandered along the path, Grace listened to the conversations of her students. They were meaningless tidbits about the scheme of what she needed to teach, but valuable moments for the students to connect to one another.

She caught a snippet on the wind from a male student, but not much else. Just the fragment of a name, and she immediately thought of Peter and the company he now kept. Fringe dwellers on the margins of crazy town. Males spurned by past relationships were angry at everyone and everything.

Another word swept across the landscape and it angered her that these boys, fourteen at most, had such potential. She’d always seen them as vessels of hope, of a world where everyone was accepting of all the variables in life.

And then Grace stopped. She was just a flash within the stretch of their lives. What hope did she have of making an impact in making them good people?