Chapter Text
— PART ONE: CONCRETE EXPERIENCE —
There’s something eerie about a high school without its students. Even when Lucy was still a student herself, over-eager and one of the few actually showing up for the optional summer classes, walking in through the gates without the hustle and liveliness of the student body always made her feel like she was trespassing.
Weirdly, it’s no different now. A week before the start of the school year, she’s finally been handed the key to her own classroom, and walking through the empty halls in search of it is a strange feeling, armed with a cardboard box filled to the brim with some of her classroom supplies.
Her sneakers squeak against the linoleum floor, sending a shrill echo down the empty hallway, and Lucy makes a mental note to pick a different pair going forwards. She doesn’t want to become a walking target the moment the school year begins. In that respect, she’s grateful for the empty halls providing her with a test run, allowing her to iron out all the kinks before she earns the nickname Clown Shoes Chen for the rest of her career.
The walls passing by as she traipses the halls are relatively bland, lined with off-white lockers and the occasional poster for some end-of-summer event. Clearly, maintenance haven’t quite gotten round to prepping for the new school year just yet. Although, to be fair, neither has she—but she’s beyond excited to.
In contrast, the classroom doors are a different story, many of them proudly displaying patchwork collages of each subject. The sociology teacher’s room has cartoon illustrations about families and vague graphs about crime rates, while the geography classroom has a collection of country flags dotted around a world map. The decorated doors are one of the first things she’d noticed when she’d done her first few tours of the school—once right before her interview, and again for her orientation days last week. As she’d walked through the halls, determined to ask interesting questions that made her seem like the right choice for the job—yes, even after they’d hired her—, her focus had been repeatedly pulled away by the various decorations, the teachers’ nameplates at the centre.
But all these classrooms she’s passing… they aren’t hers.
A-19, that’s the one she’s looking for. Her new home for the next however-many-years.
Even now, she can’t quite comprehend any of this. She fell in love with the idea of teaching back in school, but was talked out of it when her parents droned on about the thankless hours and limited pay. After spending her time majoring in Psychology and ultimately leaving college a little clueless, it took Lucy a while before she allowed herself to step out from beneath the weight of her parents’ influence, allowing herself to bring her dream of becoming a teacher to fruition. She pivoted, took the relevant courses and exams, and spent some time working as a TA before finally landing this job.
Sure, high school teaching isn’t the most glamorous, but it’s been her dream for so many years. And after years of dreaming, hours upon hours upon hours of effort and work, and a trek across a long and uncertain road, she’s made it.
Slowing her footsteps slightly, Lucy breathes it all in. The smell of the cleaning solution the janitors are using on the floors. The quiet peace of the empty hallways, where even the smallest sound echoes into the distance. She knows she might occasionally miss the quiet once the school year starts and the hallways are full.
She even relishes in the unfamiliarity of her surroundings, the unknown of it all. Soon enough, she’ll be able to navigate these halls with her eyes closed, the thought of ever having to use the printed-out floorplan of the building like she is now a ridiculous concept. Everything new and fresh around her will soon become second-nature, so the takes this feeling in while she still has it.
Pretty much every classroom she’s passed has been empty, her fellow teachers clearly not all back from their vacations just yet. Which is fair enough, since they’re not having to wonder what state their classroom was left in by whoever used it last.
Door after door after door only shows glimpses of grey walls as shadows cloak the still-unoccupied classrooms. That’s why it’s a bit of a surprise when, a little further down the hall, the glass panels in one of the doors reveal warm yellow light glowing from inside the room.
As she approaches the door, Lucy battles with herself for a moment—she doesn’t want to come off as a creep to a possible co-worker, but she’s nosy, what can she say?—and eventually plucks up the courage to step up to the glass.
A man is sat at his desk at the front of the classroom, typing with ease, attention focused on the monitor in front of him. Squinting a little, trying to make out what he’s doing, Lucy recognises the slideshow program he’s using—obviously, as it’s the school standard. She spent her evenings last week familiarising herself with every program attached to her newly assigned work email, and could pretty much navigate most of them in her sleep by now if she had to.
Regardless, she can make out the program, but not exactly what the man is doing. Since his back is to her, she takes the opportunity to step a little closer, trying to guess what subject he teachers, but the walls of his classroom are bare. He must not have gotten around to decorating just yet.
Turning on the spot, Lucy glances around the hallway, trying to figure out exactly which department she’s in. And right there, hung next to the classroom door directly across the hall, she sees it.
A-19.
Her classroom.
Instinctively, she takes a step closer. And sure enough, engraved in the shiny new nameplate on the door:
Ms. L. CHEN – PSYCHOLOGY
Unexplainably awestruck, Lucy stares at the silver metal plate reflecting the fluorescent lights of the hallway. It’s clearly brand-new, freshly engraved, and she almost wants to take a picture of it, knowing it’s as new as it’s ever going to look, and while it looks like this maybe it’s something she could actually show her parents—
She stops herself, of course, because maybe that’s just a little too pathetic.
Taking another step towards her new beginning, excitement coursing through her, Lucy decides she can say hi to her apparent classroom-neighbour later. Instead, she glances down at the key that’s now made an imprint in her palm from the way she’s been clutching it like it might disappear. It turns in the lock with a satisfying click, and Lucy can’t help the smile on her face as she pushes the wooden door open.
The room she steps into is cold, void of any personality. Just rows of desks, with a teacher’s desk, a whiteboard, and a projector all up front. Despite that, though, it doesn’t feel hollow—it feels like a fresh start. A clean slate, ready for Lucy to step in and make her mark.
That’s all she wants, really.
She wants to change a life. Whether it’s one or two or many, she wants to be the teacher that has the same impact on her students as her teachers had on her. Paying it all forward.
And that journey officially starts now.
As she scans the room again, feet still planted in the doorway, Lucy takes a slow intake of breath. The air filling her lungs is stagnant and cold, admittedly, but it won’t be that way for long. Her exhale is sharp and excited, and she gives herself a small nod as she lets the door swing shut behind her, entering her new classroom.
Aside from putting her belongings down on the wooden desk at the front of the room—her desk, now—, Lucy doesn’t get off to the immediate flying start she’d imagined. After wrestling with the cords of the grey blinds, finally managing to pull them open and let the natural light in, she pushes at the window handles before realising they’re locked.
It takes her a few minutes of hunting around the windowsill and the tops of the shelving units beneath the window, but she finally spots the key sitting at the bottom of a random black pen pot sitting on a shelf. With a silent cheer, she plucks it out victoriously.
Look at her, problem-solving already. Off to a good start, Chen.
Back on track, Lucy pushes every window open as far as they allow, metal bars on either side of each frame stopping them from opening the entire way, but it’ll do. Now, the cold September air flows in alongside the rays of autumnal sunlight, and the combination makes Lucy feel like the room is coming alive for the first time since the school year ended. As she perches on the edge of her desk, feeling the smooth, varnished wood under her fingertips and watching her classroom practically begin to glow, some piece of her clicks into place. Like this is exactly where she’s meant to be.
Just like she did in the hallway, Lucy takes time to exist in the quiet, to observe her clean slate and its full potential. By the end of the week, the walls will be filled with posters and pictures and infographics, and her desk with sticky notes and handouts and lesson plans—and once this classroom is filled with brightness and life, she’s never reverting it back. How could she?
Pulling her box of supplies closer from where she’d set it down behind her, Lucy glances at everything she’d brought with her, debating where to start.
Her desk supplies poke out over the sides of the box—her pencil case, her lamp, her planners—so it probably makes sense to start there.
Hopping off the edge of the desk, Lucy pulls the small yellow desk lamp from where it’s been precariously balanced atop everything else, and places it in the corner of her desk, on the opposite side to where the monitor is set up.
She squints at it slightly, tilting her head one way and then the other, pondering symmetry and how the lamplight might cause glare on the monitor if she’s here late in the evenings. After a beat, she moves it over to the left side of the desk, slotting it between the edge of the desk and her monitor.
There. Perfect.
Well… a little more to the right.
There.
The small burst of pastel yellow already makes the room feel more like hers, and Lucy can’t help but smile as she plugs the lamp into a socket beneath the desk. She feels like she’s had the epiphany so many times since she set foot in these halls, but at the sight of her lamp—the one that’s the perfect shade of her favourite colour, the one that she bought when she first moved into her college dorms, the one that lit her endless evenings of studying for exams and the equally endless nights of panic as she convinced herself she was going to fail—, that very lamp, sitting a atop a desk in her classroom which has her name etched into the plate on the door… that’s what makes the feeling collide with her chest full-force.
She’s not Lucy, straight-A student or the class TA anymore. She’s Ms. Chen, the high school psychology teacher.
She’s really, really doing this. And she’s so excited.
Relishing in the content excitement that warms her soul against the cool breeze blowing in through the windows, Lucy gets to work unpacking the rest of her box. She has another couple in her car, of course, but she didn’t want to make herself look like a moron in front of any new colleagues that might see her inevitably spill the future contents of her classroom across the parking lot if she tried to carry it all at once.
Her desk gets filled out first. Her favourite pens sit in the lattice pen pot she places on the desk, with any spares safely inside the pencil case tucked into the top drawer closest to her chair. Her planner is placed right in the centre, since she’ll be using that a lot this week, and her memory stick with her lesson plans ends up sitting next to her keyboard so she remembers to upload them to her work drive. Not that she’d forget.
Piece by piece, the desk morphs into hers. It’s almost like it serves as the room’s focal point, too, she realises, as when she steps back to admire her work, it makes the whole room seem more lived-in.
The next thing in her box of supplies is a small cardboard show-box that she knows holds several little print-outs, and Lucy can’t help the soft grin that creeps onto her face. They’re the decorations for the outside of her door.
Picking up the small box, Lucy heads out into the hall, letting the door close. She even locks it, so she doesn’t keep pushing it open while she’s sticking everything down.
Pieces of blu-tack vaguely sticky between her fingers, Lucy begins to plot out some sort of aesthetic layout for her door. Various psychology-related cartoon illustrations slowly start to surround her metal nameplate, like cartoon diagrams of the brain and silhouettes of people talking. She keeps stepping backward to see the bigger picture, to observe how the little symbols balance each other out. Most get swapped or shifted after she squints at them for two seconds too long, overthinking everything down to the smallest fraction of an inch.
This feels like the biggest challenge she’s faced since she interviewed for this job. This is her classroom door, the first impression her students are going to have of her when they walk through these halls next week. It needs to be perfect.
“You know the kids will just tear that stuff down,” an unfamiliar voice comments from behind her. Having been so lost in thought that she didn’t hear anyone coming, Lucy startles before turning around.
Across from her is the man she’d seen in the classroom across from hers, leaning casually against the wall next to his door. He’s taller than he’d looked sat at his desk. And now that she can see his face, she can’t help but immediately admire his sharp blue eyes and muddy blond hair.
Caught-off guard, Lucy laughs lightly. “Let them. I have spares.”
Blank expression not giving anything away, the man shrugs. Silence fills the space between them pretty quickly.
Well. Lucy guesses that’s the end of that. But she’s never one to let a silence become too awkward.
Balancing her supplies in the crook of her elbow, she steps forward with a smile, holding out her hand. “Lucy Chen. I’m the new psych teacher.”
The man glances at the classroom door behind her, where her name is proudly displayed. “I figured,” he says. It’s not disapproving, or dry, or warm. It’s just… a fact. He stares blankly at her hand for a second before begrudgingly giving it a shake. “Tim Bradford. History.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Tim.” She motions at the short distance between their classrooms. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other this year.”
Shoving his hand back into his pocket, Tim exhales in a way that Lucy could swear sounds a little exasperated. She’s probably just misreading it, though.
Eventually he nods, shifting his weight onto his back foot, and it seems like their conversation is going to end the way it started—abruptly.
“See you, Chen,” he says, stepping away. She gives a polite wave, but he doesn’t see it, already walking down the hall.
As far as introductions go, that was a little odd. But Lucy supposes everyone’s stress manifests in different ways—and the start of the school year is stressful. There’s a lot to prepare for, and Tim must be busy if he’s already here when most of his fellow veteran teachers aren’t back from their vacations.
As she’s turning back towards her own door, Lucy catches sight of his nameplate out of the corner of her eye. It’s right there in the centre of his door, clear against the wood grain, and she doesn’t know how she missed it before. She was probably too distracted by the fact his classroom seemed even emptier than hers.
With a small shake of her head, Lucy puts her focus back onto more pressing matters. Should this doodle of the brain go above her nameplate, or below it?
When lunch rolls around, Lucy heads towards the quad feeling accomplished with the amount she’s managed to get done. Nolan and Jackson are already settled on one of the benches on the perimeter, waving her over, and she takes a seat in between them as they greet her.
She’d only met the pair last week during their on-boarding sessions, the three of them all having been hired as the newbies this school year, but they’ve quickly become firm friends. Lucy has to admit, it’s nice having two people alongside her going through the same process she is. It kind of feels like they’re students again, navigating the school halls in the early days of the school year like the buildings could swallow them whole.
“How have your mornings been?” she asks, leaning back against the wooden bench. “Liking your classrooms?”
Jackson hums affirmatively as he swallows a bite of his sandwich. “Mine’s nice. Cold, though. I need to figure out how to work the heating panel.”
Echoing his agreement, Nolan nods. “I’ve got a good spot—closest hallway to the cafeteria.” He raises his sandwich as though evidencing his point, and Jackson sighs.
“Lucky. The science block is so far from the cafeteria, I’d be better off walking home to grab food.”
Laughing lightly, Lucy bumps her shoulder into his. “You’re such a drama queen; I’m sure it’s not that far.”
Jackson scoffs. “Alright for you to say, you’re with Mr. English Teacher over in your cushy humanities department.”
“Cushy?” Nolan echoes in mock-offence. “How dare you.”
“Yeah, you heard me.”
As the conversation shifts from quiet laughter into a momentary lull, Lucy looks out over the quad, and at the buildings along its far side. A pretty brunette woman wearing a graphic tee and tailored grey trousers leaves the entrance of one of the far buildings, and even from here Lucy can hear the muted tap of her heeled boots against the path as she walks in another direction.
“That’s Angela Lopez,” Jackson says, gesturing in the woman’s direction. “Chemistry teacher. We talked a little this morning; she seems nice. Said she’d be around to lend me a hand if I needed it.”
“Are physics teachers even allowed to be friends with the other science teachers?” Lucy jokes. “Could swear my science teachers were always at war when I was at school.”
Nolan hums in agreement, deadpan. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s something in the contract about it.”
At that, Jackson rolls his eyes, trying and failing to hide his smile. “Very funny, you guys.”
“Hey, at least you’ve met someone,” Nolan says. “You two are still the only two people I know in this place. Pretty sure everyone in my hall is still on vacation.” There’s a beat of silence as he sips at his water, before he continues, “you met anyone yet, Lucy?”
She nods slowly, thinking back to the slightly odd interaction she’d had with the man. “Yeah, one. Tim Bradford, the, uh, history teacher.” She keeps her voice pretty neutral, she thinks.
But Jackson clocks on almost instantly. “Oh, that’s not a good face,” he observes.
Well. So much for neutral.
Lucy tries to straighten out her expression from whatever it’s doing without her permission. “No! No,” she says, voice raising an octave. “I’m sure he’s nice enough. He just seemed a bit, I don’t know... cold, I guess.”
“Maybe he’s just stressed,” Nolan offers. “Start of the school year is hectic.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lucy says, exhaling softly. “We’ll see. I need to remember that not everyone puts the same weight into first impressions that I do.” She wonders if the uncertain laugh she lets out comes across as self-effacing or nervous and unsure. She’s not sure which it’s supposed to be. “Anyway,” she figures, “it’s not like I have a choice, since he’s right across the hall.”
Jackson shrugs. “Well, you’re here to teach the students, not him. If you end up not liking him all that much, you can just pretend he isn't there.”
“Exactly,” Nolan nods. “It’ll be fine, Lucy.”
“It will be fine,” she agrees, trusting that she’s telling herself the truth.
As the silence once again falls between them, an idea occurs to her, and she reaches into her bag for her metal water bottle, motioning for her fellow teachers to do the same.
“To the start of the journey,” she toasts, raising her bottle into the air in front of them.
Jackson nods. “We’ve got this.”
The three bottles clink together, the metallic clang resounding through her ears like a school bell.
To the start of the journey.