The classroom smelled of chalk and wet jackets. Droplets ran down the outside of the windowpanes, gathering into rivulets that looked like thin threads. I felt like such a thread myself – uncertain whether I wanted to hang or flow. The board was already half filled with writing, lines, arrows, explanations – I saw them, but they didn't reach me. It was as if I stood behind glass while someone else learned, breathed, and spoke through my body.
The neon tubes hummed above us, a quiet, nervous sound. I wrote something in my notebook – numbers perhaps, letters, disconnected – just so the teacher would think I was present. But in my head, I was elsewhere.
With him. With that moment behind the equipment shed. With his voice echoing in my chest like an echo: I'll hold.
