Question 1 of 16 · Reading
Setting, theme, and textual evidence · Curriculum connections: RL.7.1, RL.7.2, RL.7.3
The Other Side of the Bridge — original fictional story
Original classroom material; people, sources and data are fictional.
Across the bridge, the theater lights were already on. Anika could see their pale rectangles reflected in the river as she reached the barrier. A storm had loosened part of the bridge railing, and a worker was turning everyone back. The footpath around the river would take an hour. Her puppet performance began in twenty minutes.
Anika held the puppet case against her knees. She had spent six weeks preparing a show about travelers who could not understand one another. Her father suggested performing at the theater the following weekend. “The poster has today’s date,” she answered, as if the printed number could repair the railing.
Beside the barrier, a younger child asked what was in the case. Anika lifted the lid just enough to show a wooden bird. The child made a chirping sound. Anika’s bird answered with a whistle. A second child laughed. Anika noticed the dry space beneath the bus shelter roof. It was not a stage: it had no curtain, no lights, and no front row waiting with tickets.
She set the bird on her hand. Her father called the theater to explain. While he spoke, Anika moved a second puppet onto the case. The travelers in her story argued about which road to take. A bus driver waiting for passengers supplied a rumbling voice for a stone giant. Anika paused, then let the giant remain in the story. She had never planned a giant.
When the bus arrived, the audience scattered. There was no final bow. The younger child pressed a fallen leaf into Anika’s hand as a ticket. Across the bridge, the theater lights still shone. They looked less like the edge of everything that mattered. Anika wrote “stone giant” in her notebook before she closed the puppet case.