One Empty Chair

This is a little short story I wrote after two kids at my school died in a car crash. RIP Mark and Drew.

 

One Empty Chair

That morning, the radio came on as it always did with the news of another day. The rising oil and gas prices, another arrested celebrity, blah, blah, blah. Nothing particularly caught my attention until the mention of two area teens who had died in a car crash. Their names hadn’t been released yet, but I heard enough to scare me. Both kids had attended my school, and they were about the same age as my friends.  That wasn’t all that had me concerned, though. The accident had occurred in the morning. That was significant to me because nearly everyone in my circle of friends drove to school early to attend morning band practices.

What if it was…?

When I walked into the school building, something got my attention—the noise. More accurately, the lack of noise was the thing to be worried about. It was completely silent, save for the tap of subdued footsteps. After a moment, I noticed that few people already there were barely even looking at each other, let alone speaking.

            I sat down on the edge of my usual morning seat, tapping one foot as I waited for my friends to start to arrive. I thought about asking someone if they knew which two kids weren’t coming to school again, but there was just something intimidating about breaking the silence that seemed to push everyone apart.

            My best friend walked around the corner into the cafeteria. Sighing with relief, I jumped out of my chair and hugged her ferociously.

“Get off me!” she laughed. “What’s your problem?” Apparently she hadn’t heard the news yet.

I stepped back to let her breathe and explained what little I did know. “This morning, two Eastern kids crashed in the country…but I don’t know who it was.”

She paled and stared at me. “Someone just asked me if I knew who it was, but I thought they were joking.” This time she was the one to hug me.

Looking around at the silent, but not empty, cafeteria, she then walked over to one of her fellow band members and quietly said something. Her expression did not change as she made her way back to me. She told me the names of the two boys that had crashed this morning.

I sighed. Neither of them had been friends of mine, but I had still known who they were. “This is going to be a long day,” I said, turning to head to my first class. Normally, I would have to fight through the flood of people to get anywhere, but today was different. I quickly got to class and took my seat in the front row.

Even before the teacher came into the classroom, it was completely silent. The only thing that changed when he entered and closed the door quietly was a sense of focus. He briefly scanned the room and went to the computer to record the attendance, one less than last week.

After he walked to the side of the lab table at the front of the room, he rested his forearms on the black tabletop, looking down at his hands clasped together. Finally, he looked at the class.

“We were going to have a test today; it’s ready, but…You guys can take it today, or you can take it Thursday. Take a minute to think about it.”

Teacher and class were both silent, the class’s eyes downcast, wandering, staring. His eyes kept shifting across the room searching for any response at all. Not seeing any, he straightened up and walked around the end of the table to lean his back against the front. 

Several times he looked at the floor and opened his mouth to speak and several times he closed it, not satisfied with the words he had in mind. Eventually, he spoke.

“Since I heard what happened, I’ve been trying to think of something to say…but I don’t have anything.” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts once again. “It must hurt you more than it hurts me because you’ve known him longer than I have.” He rolled both of his feet to the side, balancing on the outsides of his shoes. “I’ve been missing him today; I have—had—him earlier in the day as an assistant. And I’m missing him now,” he said with a nod toward a certain desk, “with his empty seat.” He blinked a few, slow times.

Never before had the deep set of his eyes and the light’s subsequent dark cast been more noticeable. His face looked worn, not with anger or frustration, just with simple sadness. And even though one and a half years of teaching had not prepared him for how to handle such a loss, the class knew what he didn’t have the words to say.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Thank you, Rose. Your experience is repeated far too often, I'm afraid. I'm sixty years old, but I'll never forget when I was a teenager and a student I knew died. Old people who'd lived at least 80 years died---we knew that, but not 14 year-old boys. Losing people we know never becomes easy.

[jmt8921]

Very powerful stuff. I think you handled the subject with just the right amount of emotion.

Good job.

[Lee E. Powell]

Im not really that good at giving reviews but i really liked this story. I also liked the way you wrote the teacher and i liked the fact that it wasn't overly dramatic. it was real and it was touching.

Mechanically it was very well written and flowed nicely
Thanks for sharing,
Lee

[Robert S. Samson]

I like the way you wrote the teacher, sounds like something one would say.

[Annie]

This quite literally made me cry.
This has never happened to me, but it's so realistically written (probably because it happened to you), that I can just imagine the empty chair and how it made everyone feel. It's beautifully written, and a lovely way to pay respect to the kids who died.