She hadn’t been in the classroom since she’d last spoken to Miss Rogers. She’d actually planned on coming back and teaching in this very room, but with the school being sold and torn down, that was no longer a viable option. Sitting here, on her old desk, in her 4th grade classroom, Sadie could remember every single moment of her childhood clear as a bell.

She could remember the way Miss Rogers smelt when she leaned down to help her with a math problem, or the way the laughter of the students used to fill the classroom when they’d watch a movie every Friday afternoon. She longed to go back to these days. No other days in her childhood, just these days, in this classroom. Sadie stood up and walked to the desk where Miss Rogers used to sit and touched it with her fingertips, picking up lots of dust. She smiled as she remembered how she used to bring an apple to her once a week, thinking that was what you brought your teacher, and then the one time she brought her an entire box of chocolates during Valentines Day. She felt embarrassed because nobody else got the teacher anything, but Miss Rogers seemed pretty appreciative, and her smile…god her smile.

This was where Sadie became the person she would be for the rest of her life. Discovering the things she really loved, like reading and teaching, and how badly she wanted to be a teacher herself one day. This was where Sadie learned that how others felt about her didn’t matter so long as she believed in herself. This was where Sadie had learned she had a crush on her 4th grade teacher. This classroom was her life, her home away from home, and soon it’d be nothing more than a pile of rubble. The best years of her youth were spent here, and where would she spend the best years of her adult life? Certainly not where she was right now, living in a tiny one bedroom apartment, pining over her next door neighbor, the pretty brunette with the blue streaks in her hair and always smiled at her when they saw one another. No. She needed something more, something equal to this classroom. She’d thought about staging a protest; handcuffing herself to the desk leg or something dramatic like that, but she knew it wasn’t a good idea. She did want to get hired as a teacher eventually.

Sadie walked over to the chalkboard and ran a broken, run down piece of chalk along it, writing her name in cursive, and then over to the rack where they hung their coats and then to the cubby hole where they stuck their bags. God. This all seemed so fresh, like it’d just happened. Nothing else seemed so fresh. Is that what makes your best memories your best memories? Because you can recall them so vividly, comparatively to everything else? Perhaps. And what she’d give to speak to Miss Rogers again, just one more time. Tell her how her crush on her teacher allowed Sadie to realize it was okay for a girl to like girls, and that she inspired her to become a teacher herself. But that was also impossible. Miss Rogers had been in that car accident a few years back, and the last thing she’d ever told Sadie through their various e-mails while Sadie was at college was, “lol this cat is so stupid!!!”

The emails stopped coming, and soon enough Sadie heard the news, and was understandably devastated. You rarely get over your first major crush, but much more rarely do they DIE. This hurt on a number of levels. The first person she’d ever liked and the person who inspired her to choose her career was gone, and she’d never gotten around to thanking her for either. And now? Now her classroom would be gone as well. It wasn’t bad enough she herself had been ripped violently from this mortal coil, apparently, no. They had to rip her classroom from it as well. She sighed and then walked over to the rack, took her coat and walked to the cubby, took her purse and then stopped at Miss Rogers desk and placed her hand on the top of it, a few tears finally escaping and rolling down her eyes.

“Thank you,” Sadie whispered, before leaving.

Sometimes a room doesn’t even have to belong to a house to have had an enormous impact on you. Sometimes it can be something as simple as a classroom as well. She knew the demolition was scheduled for a few hours from now and figured she’d go grab lunch, come back and take a seat to watch it. This way it’d be a clean break from her past, and maybe she could finally move on towards her future.