Not a Waste

Not a Waste

            A shadow droops in her seat in a bright classroom. Darkened eyes and lost night hours and hours of worry weigh her down. The constant barrage of voices raised above each other washes away her frail, sleep-deprived thoughts and the smell of all of the students packed together is oppressively humid. The air clings to the shadow’s lungs.

Across from her, Katie pulls up a chair and sits neatly, straight-backed. She grins at the shadow with a smile brighter than the classroom.

“Hey, are you excited to get back our project? God, I really hope it passed. I mean, I’m a hundred percent sure the project is fine. We put so much work into it and that has to be enough.”

The shadow simply responds with a wilted half-smile. Katie persists,

“Anyways, where’s Emmett? I even tracked him down this morning before school to make sure he knew to come.”

But it seems as though the other person in their group forgot. The shadow was a bit surprised when he started to say this project didn’t really matter after all, that it’s not our fault it’s so difficult. She always knew him as hardworking, and he always seemed to care. Come to think of it, she is not quite sure why she cares so much either. The grade is all that matters after all, she reminds herself. The grade fills the shadow with some vague and empty feeling of accomplishment. But then she thinks of the hours of pointless work wasted, weekends full of queasy stomachs and frustration at caring too much about something so trivial for all the wrong reasons. It had pressed into her like emptiness. She just wants the teacher to hand back the project already and be done with it.

“Hey you guys, look at our project. We got it approved!” The table group next to them is suddenly laughing as though its shadow has dissipated.

“Wow you are way too excited about this,” someone else in the group replies, but the second person is also clearly “way too excited.” The shadow overhears a third voice laughing, too:

“Yes! And I spent so long on this. Almost five hours, I think. I guess the hard work really paid off. And we got a one hundred percent!” Five hours! Both she and Katie must have spent, what, at least fifty hours each? And for what? To be rejected again? To lower the heads which used to be so high with confidence in a project well done? She turns to Katie and tells her how ridiculous this whole project is.

“But we learned a lot! Our topic was really interesting, don’t you think? Oh—here comes our project!” Katie grins. The shadow cannot understand how Katie seems almost as excited as the other group.

            The teacher, holding the most sinister stack of papers imaginable, picks her way through the chattering students. Then, with an anticlimactic rustle, the papers fall onto Katie’s desk.

            The shadow glances at the paper with detachment. The most concise summary of failure is stamped onto the front—“Redo.”

            Oh thinks the shadow.

            “Oh well,” says Katie. “Yeah, I guess this is kind of sad. But that’s okay. We worked as hard as we could and we did learn a lot of interesting stuff, and with a little more time, we can make this better so it passes for sure, right?” Katie grins again as the shadow picks up the offending packet of papers. But we are going to get a terrible grade, is all the shadow can think. She just sighs.

She packages her failure in a backpack. It is out of sight, but waste and hard work weigh her down. As she stands up to escape the air heavy with rejection, she muses over Katie’s suspicious excitement. Does Katie enjoy suffering? The shadow is empty and cannot understand it.

The shadow opens the door to the empty hallway with its blue and white checkered floors. It is a peaceful kind of empty. The air is empty of suffocating stale classroom. Splinters of brilliant white sunlight fall on the ground in front of the glass doors at the other end of the hall.

This is ridiculous. I am being hopelessly melodramatic, the shadow thinks to herself as she begins to dissipate. She remembers how she and her other group members had begun this project with enthused voices which had dissolved under the pressure of work. It was not all a waste.

            “Hey, Catherine! Have you been in that classroom worrying about your project this whole time or something? I haven’t seen you in forever.” Her friend is shouting at her from outside. Catherine, the former shadow, grins as she opens the glass door to eat lunch with her friend.