Sixth Grade Beginnings

Chapter 39

The afternoon sun shone brightly on the white snow, causing a blinding light to pierce through the classroom window of Olga Pataki. She sat quietly at her desk while her students ran amuck outside, and smiled as she graded their work, listening to their joyful screams and laughs. From time to time, she would glance over at her own family's photo and feel the pleasant nostalgic feeling of wanting to be home again: The TV blaring loudly while her father watched whatever game was on, her mother and herself talking fondly over times passed and a cup of her freshly brewed, ethically sourced, single origin coffee. Her baby sister coming home from school, throwing her backpack on the ground before racing up the stairs to her room, leaving Olga to wonder what her day must have been like and wishing she were there to experience it with her.

A knock at the door, caused Olga to look up from her papers. "Come in!" She called out happily to whomever may be on the other side of that door.

When the door opened, the usual mail man stepped in and tipped his hat. "Ma'am" He addressed to her, before walking over to her and handing her a letter.

At first, Olga was overjoyed that her baby sister must have replied back to her letter, but her excited expression soon turned into a puzzled one when she overlooked the letter handed to her. "W...What?" She asked in confusion, turning the letter over a few times before looking up at the mail carrier in concern. "It was sent back? Why?"

The mail man readjusted his hat before walking closer to her to point out the small writing that had been written on the envelope. "Says its undeliverable, Ma'am." When the beautiful young woman before him eyes became wide and glistened as tears formed, he gulped and decided to explain a bit more. "Location must not exist or something. Double check the address you wrote is the correct one."

Despite knowing very well that she wrote the correct address, Olga opened her desk drawer and pulled out the letter that Helga had written her, and compared the return address to the one she had wrote down to send back: They were identical. "There must be some mistake..." Her voice trembled with uncertainty. "I wrote the address down perfectly... what could have gone wrong?"

The man became nervous as he could see this woman was beginning to crumble before him. "I don't know what to tell you, miss. Unfortunately, you may have to contact the local post office to the city of your recipient to see if there was some sort of mix up. Other than that, my only thought is the location no longer exists."

"No longer exists? How could that be possible?" Olga whispered to herself as the man slowly inched his way out of her classroom and shut the door quietly. She then looked over at her family photo and brought it closer to her. Her tears softly fell onto the glass of the photograph as her heart filled up with dismay and uncertainties.

Once class was over, she would have to call them up as soon as she could in order to get an explanation but being so far out of town, her cell phone had little to no signal, so calling them from her current location was near impossible. Even calling from her residence was choppy at best and if it were an emergency, she knew she could rely on her neighbors lending her their phone but... this was a long distance call. How could she possibly ask them to allow her such a call?

Loud cheering from the children outside, caused Olga to wipe away her tears and place the photo back where it belonged. "No..." She told herself firmly. "Now's not the time for this!" Opening up a small compact mirror, Olga quickly fixed up her appearance as to not allude to her emotions in front of her class. "You gotta stay strong for the children." She looked over the letter once more before taking both hers, and Helga's, and placing them back safely in her desk. "I'm sure it was just a silly mix up, or something. Big Bob's Beepers not existing?" She let out a little laugh to settle her intrusive worries, "That's crazy! Daddy would never let that happen!"