Most of the kids are holding little cardboard tubes from toilet and kitchen paper rolls, taped together with adolescent clumsiness. When the kids hold them up to their eyes, the wrinkled, colored plastic wrap on the opening of the tube is visible.
"It's too bad you couldn't make one."
"Yeah, I can't believe you forgot to bring the tubes!"
"It's okay. I didn't want to make one, anyway."
The girl's hands are empty unlike her friends'. The apparent lie flows from her mouth, but anyone over the age of nine (which there was none in the vicinity) would have seen the envy in her eyes as she stared at the poorly-made toys.
They're petty things, really, just simple contraptions that, when you look through one, you see everything in the room in tinted color. Just a toy to keep the children occupied during a free class period.
A cold breeze blows through the open windows, way above their heads, but none of the children notices it, too busy playing with their tubes.
The little girl is bored, and her eyes trail through the other kids in the line, up the walls, and across the wide windows. She's glad that she listened to her mom and brought her winter jacket. The November weather surely is bipolar.
She doesn't see the sun, hidden behind thick, gray clouds. Maybe it'll rain today, she thinks. She grimaces, because that would mean she would have to walk home in the rain without an umbrella.
The line's only moved forward a few inches but she doesn't mind. She doesn't feel that hungry.
If her friends notice that she isn't paying attention to what they're saying, they don't mention it. They just go on playing with their new toys.
She likes the color of the sky even though it's her mom's least favorite weather. It isn't intrusive like the sun or indecisive like the clouds; it is just solidly gray.
No one else notices the small, white flecks come through the open windows except the little girl. The first snowfall of the year, and the children don't even bother to look up from their trinkets. The proctor doesn't even bother to close the windows.
The line moves up again, but the little girl doesn't take her eyes off of the open windows.