the red door of a classroom
it’s a memory, not a story.
[Twenty-nine children race into a room. Some are older than fifteen but they all act no older than three. Chairs are haphazardly arranged into a messy array and backpacks are littered in random intervals. Yesterday’s materials are still stacked in as some shove others around and a few stack three chairs to seem taller.]
[‘You’d think with our advanced math placement we’d be able to form a circle or a square.’]
[‘Well, we kinda suck at logic.’]
[‘I’m still convinced 1 + 1 = 3: we made a whole proof, remember?’]
[‘Yea I remember. I also remember that proof was invalid.’]
[‘Oh, shut up for once you guys.’]
We used to live, you know?
We would enter the classroom brimming with so much energy it spilled over our souls and into another’s and another’s and we’d be a domino effect by ourselves. We’d chatter and laugh as the teacher tried to quiet us down long enough for a lesson. We’d play games for warm-ups, seven of us stepping outside the classroom to “think outside the box”. And after lessons we’d run like it was Black Friday to grab textbooks from the back of the room, textbooks left open but unused. Instead of doing our work, we’d take EXPO markers from their containers and throw them across the room at each other, complaining about our classes and the work in front of us that we weren’t doing.
[‘Did you even write your name on the paper yet?’]
[‘…No.’]
[‘Dude, it’s been 30 minutes.’]
We’d try a round of stay-silent-for-a-minute but fail in 5 seconds no matter what. We’d get ourselves hyped up for the dumbest thing in existence––
[‘Hey, the calibration game wasn’t dumb!’]
[‘The teacher was literally clicking dots on a screen to make sure it worked.’]
[‘And?’]
We would perk our necks up with childish eagerness just to watch the Smartboard screen recalibrate while trying to bribe our teacher to shorten the proofs. And for tests, the air was free and weightless and filled with suppressed giggles as Dylan raised his hand for the nth time that period and Om made multiple-choice complicated and Farhan put ‘yes’ for True or False questions. We would overuse our individual whiteboards, leaving “1+1=3” on every single one or scribbling “I eat rice” in over seven languages or playing battleship or, as the teacher claimed, ‘wasting her EXPO marker ink’. We would watch as the mini American flag was taken from its place so the teacher could attempt to stop us from reciting the pledge of allegiance at 2 in the afternoon.
We’d shuffle our spots in line to end up on the same team for test review games, pushing others in front of us and yelling when too many smart kids were in one group. We were supposed to be enemies but we’d pass around our notes to compare answers while hiding watches and backpacks from their owners. We would choose sacrifices––
[‘––to the pagan gods!’]
[‘Andrew, shut up.’]
[‘I see no god up here. But me.’]
[‘You’re 5’1”.’]
––to go up and answer on the board first. We would abuse the rolling chairs and flock to whoever’s table we wanted. We were supposed to be rivals, but we never really were.
[‘–unless you were Keryssa!’]
[‘Keryssa’s rivalries were such a joke though.’]
[‘I’m right here, you know.’]
Content would circle out bodies and curl gently around our necks while we got drunk from Life’s blood and hysteric from Laughter’s infection. And as we snickered under the breath of the Quadratic Formula Song, Joy found its nest in our hearts.
…we would have so much fun
We didn’t know it’d be our last day, we didn’t think there’d be a last day. We thought we’d get more closure, another chance––one last chance.
(There won’t ever be, we know now)
As kids fled the campus from fear of a rumor, we stayed behind in the classroom that was almost a home––a haven, maybe––where we were safe from the expectations of reality. In our last moments we lived, laughing at the number of students broadcasted to head home, joking and yelling in the face of something we didn’t yet understand.
Now we’re gone and we’ll never be able to go back.
There’s no one to open the red door of the classroom and there’s no more laughter buzzing through the air. The EXPO markers stay in their boxes; the textbooks are stacked neatly in their shelves. The tables gather dust as they stand in a straight arrangement with the chairs pushed in neatly. The whiteboards are empty with no lame drawings or messily scrawled jokes on them, the marks of battleship games long gone. The floor is clear of haphazardly placed backpacks that shouldn’t be as far as they are from their owner. The flag is hung neatly where it ought to be since no one uses it to recite the Pledge midway through a lecture.
And if you enter the classroom now, it’ll have students who sit obediently in their chairs at the right spots. There’ll be no one astray to talk with a friend; the games for test reviews will be silent with teams interacting in small, subdued groups. If you enter now, the classroom won’t be the same.
We won’t be the same. We won’t ever be able to, not with these new weights we lug around and these chains that bind us to our textbooks and backpacks. Rather than crowding around to play on the Smartboard, we’ll be lining up to get new schedules. Our words will be different and our minds will be too. Now we’ll fret over grades and tests taken with a heavy air and stress if this class will affect our transcript or help us get into an Ivy League.
[A groan in the crowd, ‘I miss the easy days.’]
[‘Don't we all?’]
…Well, that’s it.
[‘Wait, that’s it? No way. We did so much more in class.’]
[‘Yea, but do you remember it all?’]
[‘…I wish I did.’]
[Twenty-nine young adults exit the room, stacking chairs on their desks and packing up their bags. The air is still light and golden as they reminisce their dumbest moments and laugh aloud freely. The shackles on their necks ring indefinitely––a reminder of their burdens––but they suffocate it with songs and rhymes.]
[Slowly, the noise disappears into a faraway land, a distant memory, a hopeful wish––another chance.]
[They lived for a bit, Life hums.]
[They did, didn’t they? Laughter rejoices.]
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