This is pastoral America. At 6:01am on the dot, as it had done so many times before, the alarm clock whined and shrieked until she rolled out of bed with a low groan of annoyance. Amy rubbed her face, her palms roughly kneading her eyes; she shuffled her way out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen table.

   Her father was sitting there, sipping a cup of steaming coffee while her mother was standing at the sink.

   "Good morning,” Amy mumbled, stuffing bits of a muffin into her mouth.

   “Well, good morning, sunshine!” Her father smiled.

   “Why do have to be so chipper?”

   “And why aren’t you, Amy?”

   She gave her father a fake smile.

   “Aw, now there’s a beauty of a smile.”

   Grabbing the portable radio off the table, Amy mocked a laugh and continued toward the back door. Zipping up her sweatshirt, she stepped outside into the fresh morning. The air was crisp, teasing her entire being to awaken as her lungs yawned and expanded. She made her way to the stable, kicking stray rocks in her path.

   Reaching the stable, Amy pushed the wooden door open, leaning into it so it creaked. The fresh sunlight spilled in. “Rise and shine.” She made her way across the stable to a stall at the very end. A nut-brown horse released a drum roll greeting.

   “Good morning to you, too, Lady.”

   She set down the radio, turned it on, and grabbed the oval brush that was hanging on the door; she stepped into the stall. “Come here, Lady. Time for your morning brush—your favorite part of the day!”

   The horse stepped towards her, nuzzling against her shoulder. Amy laughed and patted its sleek neck. Softly, she ran the brush along the glossy coat so that it shined even brighter than it had before. She hummed and sang along to the radio.

   She began to talk to the horse as she had done so many mornings before. Lady, the beautiful, gentle mare, was a quiet companion, patient and serene in ways that her 12-year-old human friends could never be. “Today’s Friday and you know what that means, don’t you—spelling test!”

   "I know I’ll probably do well, but there are some tricky words. Let’s see… perfunctory was one of the words. Um, I think it’s p-e-r-f-u….n? C? T-o-r-y. Not sure if that’s the spelling but it sounds right. And I even know what it means! ‘Routinely done’!”

She stopped brushing and patted the belly of Lady, who turned around. Amy smiled at the horse and switched sides.

“I guess that’s what brushing you means: perfunctory. It’s perfunctory because I do it every morning. Another one I have to know is: efficacy. E-f-f-i-c-a-c-y. This one’s easy to remember: effectiveness. I can definitely use that one in a sentence: I brush you with efficacy. There: two out of two’s not bad!”

   As she finished brushing Lady, Amy whispered to herself the syllables and letters of the words on the spelling test. Amalgamate: a-m-a-l-g-a-m-a-t-e. Preclude: p-r-e-c-l-u-d-e. Astrology: a-s-t-r-o-l-o-g-y. She latched the door in the stall and gave Lady a final pat.

   Forty-five minutes later, she was showered, dressed, and ready to catch the bus to go to school.

   After school, Amy took her seat on the bus, reviewing her perfect test paper. She stuffed it into her backpack, as her friends began to sit around her, not wanting them to see her flawless score.

   The Ridgeway stop was the last on the route. When the bus finally hissed and creaked to a stop, Amy was the last off the bus. She hurried along the gravel shoulder of the road so that she could get home to show her score to her parents.

As she continued to walk towards home, the sound of an approaching car hummed behind her; it gradually became louder until she saw it pull over on the shoulder.

   She turned around to look at the car full on. The car was a sleek, brand new Porsche that gleamed like onyx in the late afternoon sunshine. She caught her breath, never having seen anything in her little town so new, so shiny, so… cosmopolitan. (Cosmopolitan: c-o-s-m-o-p-o-l-i-t-a-n.) Yes, cosmopolitan was exactly what it was. In that brief moment, staring at the car, she conjured images of it gliding along city streets, twisting and winding between tall skyscrapers.

   She saw movement in the front seat; a window rolled down and a head peered out. She noticed that the man who it belonged to was young--not as old as her father or uncles.

   “I’m sorry, but I think that we need some help.” His voice was smooth and gentle, sleek and smooth like the car. He turned to a second passenger, a young woman. “I think that we got lost—can you tell me where we are?” He looked her square in the face with a confused, curious smile.

   “Well, you’re in Greenville.”

   His head disappeared for a moment, conferring with the passenger; and then, just as suddenly, it popped out again.

   “I guess I took a wrong turn; we’re headed to Minneapolis for a wedding.”

   “Well, I don’t know how to get there. I can’t drive yet.”

   He laughed. “That’s quite alright. I didn’t expect that you would.”

   “But—but there’s a gas station. If you keep going on this road there will be one.”

   "Oh, ok—thanks for the help.” He disappeared into the car again, and switched on the turn signal.

   She watched as the car crunched across the gravel, creating an epidemic dust that rose and mingled in the breeze. The Porsche sped down the road, and her eyes followed it until it was out of sight. Amy could not forget how beautiful it was. She had seen trucks hauling trailers, beaten-up sedans, and even rusty mini-vans; but never a sleek car like that.

   For an ephemeral moment she looked down the empty road, scanning the flat, insipid fields around her. She knew she would not see tall, sleek buildings reaching towards the sky, but for the first time she wished she would. Letting out a slow sigh, she continued down the shoulder, heading towards the creaky barn that was waiting for her.

(All stories are copyrighted to the Collaborative Learning Center and are not available for redistribution without explicit conset. For more information please e-mail PapeD@ripon.edu. The 100 Words Projcet is property of the Collaborative Learning Center, Ripon College, Ripon WI. All rights reserved.)