Tables
- Oct 30, 2020
- 2 min read
by Dan Crawley
I stood next to a table in the middle of the large classroom. I stared at my phone, at the text I sent the night before. Unsurprisingly, there was no reply. I’d written that if I didn’t hear from her ever again it had to be true.
I quickly texted, I shouldn’t let cheaters off the hook, because that was what I did with the previous text, full stop. I knew sending this new text was pathetic, desperate. My stomach ached.
Then I looked over the classroom, at all the round tables. It was like a library set up, and I didn’t like how my students had to crane their necks to see their peers at other tables. I moved chairs out from the nearest table and pushed this piece of furniture against the far wall. As I pulled chairs out and pushed another table toward the wall, a few students trickled into the classroom. The curving edge of the table struck the wall too hard, denting the plaster.
“Done with tables,” I said to these students. “Can you help put the chairs in a circle?”
More students arrived, and I said again, “Done with tables.” I said this to everyone who entered. I shoved more tables to the edge of the room. Students rearranged the scores of chairs.
Soon everyone sat in a big circle, holding small stacks of paper in their laps, ready to discuss. I told everyone that this was much better. Some students nodded. A few gave the thumbs-up sign to me. The students smiled; they saw each other. I glanced at my phone again.
One student, usually shy and quiet, said, “Tables can go fuck themselves.” This made her smile even wider.
“That’s right,” I said. I turned off my phone and placed it on the carpet. When I clapped my hands, I felt less nauseous. “Yes, exactly. Thank you.”
Dan Crawley is the author of the novella Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and the forthcoming short story collection The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears or is forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including JMWW, Lost Balloon, Tiny Molecules, and Atticus Review. His work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Find him at https://twitter.com/danbillyc.
