All I could do was stand at the front of the room and wait for them to settle.

  After a while they did. In that short, fortunate window, I did what I always do first: explained the activity. I stood at the board and read the prompt written on the activity paper aloud.

  "What Will I Do This Semestral Break?"

  I told them what I was looking for, reminded them that the break was only a week away now and that they should have plenty to say.

  "In your own words, alright, kids?"

  A few of them were already squirming with it, practically vibrating with Halloween costumes and province trips and plans they'd probably been constructing since August.

  Then I gathered the papers and started moving through the rows.

  That's when I noticed him.

  Third row, second seat from the window.

  Jensen.

  He was already somewhere else before I'd even reached his row. His chin drifted toward his hand as his brown eyes aimed at the window. The same messy hair still somehow combed down. The same almost-chubby cheeks. All of him present and none of him here.

  I've learned to tell.

  His gaze pointed at something without touching it, like a compass needle that's wandered off true north. Whatever he was looking at, it wasn't the schoolyard.

  I kept moving. Handed papers down the first row, the second. When I got to Jensen's row, I didn't place his sheet on the stack to be passed along. I held onto it. Stood beside his desk for just a moment and set it down in front of him directly. The paper made the softest of sounds against the wood.

  He blinked. Came back. His eyes dropped to the sheet, then came up to me, and in that half-second I saw it on his face. That particular expression of a child returning from very far away, slightly surprised to find himself still here, still sitting in a classroom in October.

  "Take your time," I said quietly. In the voice I save for certain kids. Not pity. Something more than just pity. Something that tries to say I see you without making a production of it.

  He nodded and picked up his pencil.

  I moved on.

  ***

  The end of the day came the way it always does. Fast and loud and joyful in that specific way that only the last five minutes of a school day before a long break can be. Twenty-eight children suddenly allowed to exist at full volume. Bags unzipping, chairs scraping, a general eruption of energy that I've never quite gotten tired of, even after all these years.

  I collected the papers as they came in. The stack had grown warm and slightly crumpled in my hands they always do after passing through enough small sets of fingers.

  Jensen handed his in near the end. Didn't look at me. He was one of the last ones out the door.

  I poured the last of my coffee, which had been lukewarm for about an hour now. I sat down and started from the top.

  The students wrote usual things: beach trips, provincial visits, cousins, sleepovers, video games, food. I smiled at some of them. Made small encouraging notes in the margins and kept moving in a rhythm of familiarity. Comfortable.

  I was almost through the pile when I turned Jensen's paper over.

  My eyes adjusted.

  Where most of them had given me three or four sentences, Jensen had given me paragraphs. Small, careful handwriting that pressed itself into every line and carried over to the back of the page.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I put my coffee down.

  ***

  This semestral break, I do not have anywhere to go. But I will try to be as happy as possible.

  Sweet, I thought — and almost wrote how lovely it was in the margin. I kept reading.

  I will make sure to enjoy every day. I will make sure that I laugh a lot and do fun things and be with people who make me feel good. I will make a lot of happy memories. As many as I can before November comes.

  I stopped and read it again.

  Before November comes.

  I know this sounds silly, but I have a reason. November is a monster. It eats memories. But I found out something very important about it. It can only eat the happy ones. It does not eat the sad ones or the scary ones. Those stay. The happy ones are the ones that disappear.

  I set my pen down.

  I know this because it already happened to me.

  There it was.

  I cannot remember Mama's face when she was smiling anymore. I know she smiled because people tell me she did. I have seen it in pictures. But I cannot remember what it felt like when she smiled at me. I cannot remember her hugs. I know she gave them, but I cannot feel them anymore when I think about her. November ate those.

  I pinched the edge of the paper between my fingers.

  The only thing I remember clearly is that she always told me to study. Every day, study, study, study. I remember the sound of her voice when she said it. I remember coming home and sitting at the table for hours. I remember being scared to get anything wrong. That memory is still there. November did not take it.

  I looked up at the empty classroom.

  The light through Jensen's window was doing that late October thing — low and golden and a little melancholic. It made the empty room felt emptier.

  I sat in it for a moment.

  Study, study, study. Scared to get anything wrong.

  He'd written it so plainly. So without drama. The way children report the texture of their lives when they don't yet know that other houses feel different from theirs.

  He believed November took his mother's warmth. He was waiting for me to believe it too.

  I kept reading.

  It is the same with Dada. He used to be very funny. He made everyone laugh. But I cannot remember a time that he made me laugh now. I try and I cannot. One day he just fell. I do not know why. He was there and then he was on the floor and then he was in the hospital for a long time and when he came home, he was different. He does not talk now. He just lies in bed. I do not know what happened exactly. Nobody really explained it to me. They said something about stoke or steak? I do not really know.

  I stopped reading for a moment at that line. Just that one line.

  Stroke.

  What I remember most is visiting him in the hospital. The smell. How small he looked in the bed. How quiet he was. I remember that perfectly. But the way he was before. His jokes, his laughing. I do not have those anymore. November does not eat the hospital. It only eats the laughing.

  His father. The falling. The month in the hospital, and then the man who came home and was no longer quite the same man.

  I tried to remember if anyone had said anything.

  I have been thinking about this for a long time, and I think I understand why November works this way. Happy memories are lighter. They are easier to carry away. Sad memories are heavy. November cannot lift them. So, they stay and the light ones float away, and you are left with all the heavy things, and everyone wonders why you feel so heavy all the time.

  I sat with that sentence longer than I sat with any of the others.

  Because he was right, in a way. He wasn't wrong about the heaviness. He wasn't wrong about what stays and what goes. He had observed something real and true about himself and constructed something careful and logical around it.

  It was just that the logic had a gap in it. A gap he couldn't see from where he was standing. A gap that wasn't his fault at all.

  I didn't write anything in the margin. I didn't know what to write.

  So this semestral break I will not waste time. I will be as happy as I can. I will make so many happy memories that November cannot eat all of them. Even if it eats most of them, maybe some will survive. Maybe if I make enough, some will be too many to finish. Like if you eat too much and you have to stop. I am hoping November gets full.

  I exhaled slowly.

  I also want to make sure that the sad things that happen to me are as few as possible. Because I know those will stay. I do not want my future self to only remember the sad things. I want him to remember the good ones. So I have to make the good ones first. I have to make a lot of them. Just in case.

  This is what I will do this semestral break.

  — Jensen, Grade 4 - Sampaguita

  ***

  I sat in the quiet for a long time after that.

  I thought about the word first. I have to make the good ones first. As if the good ones hadn't come yet. As if they were still ahead of him, waiting to be made, and all there had so far been everything else.

  And I sat there in the late October afternoon, holding his paper, not quite able to put it down.

  I picked up my pen. Held it for a moment. Put it back down.

  There are things you write in the margins of a paper. And there are things that need to be said in person, carefully, in a room with a closed door and all the time in the world.

  I put Jensen's paper on top of the pile. Separate. Where I could find it.

  Tomorrow. Before class.