This is the 41st installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
Poison ivy grew through the fence they said was impenetrable. Asher poked at it with a stick and hoped maybe, someday, something else—something better—would get through too.
The professors said the fence kept out the dangers of the forest. They referred students to their textbooks for more information on the land mines and the great mutated beasts that lay beyond the barbed wire—but Asher had begun to doubt. Maybe it was hormone-riddled teenage rebellion. Maybe it was critical thinking.
Maybe it was a bone-weary restlessness screaming for something, anything, to change.
Weeks ago, he’d noticed a patch of fence line where the bottom didn’t reach all the way to dirt. Asher guessed one of this month’s thunderstorms had created the gap, and he stared at it now, considering how his broad shoulders might fit through.
Miles Away 