I walk into the building, pushing open the heavy dark green door and holding it out behind me for someone else. The space I enter is marked with colorful square tiles on the floor and blank colorful bulletin boards on the back walls that eventually lead into hallways. As I look around I hear all the familiar noises of a familiar place. I hear little kids running around and parents chatting away and teachers directing families to their childrens’ classrooms. The conversations are lively and the faces are beaming. I can feel the excitement in the air as people prepare to go back to school. 

I look at the water fountain nearby and immediately feel how dry my own mouth is. I don’t think I drank any water at all today. Very bad idea in this scorching weather. As I approach the fountain, I have to bend over a little to drink the water. 

I bend slightly. My mouth still can’t reach the water. 

I lower my back even more. I push the bar on the side of the basin and the water just barely gurgles above the spout. The greenish rust lining the hole is vibrant against the smooth steel and I completely lose interest in drinking the water that refuses to meet me halfway.

I stand upright, suddenly embarrassed. I look around to see if anyone noticed how I just randomly changed my mind. This little boy is leaning against the wall outside a classroom and he’s staring right at me. He’s fidgeting with his Spiderman t-shirt and rocking on his feet.

And he’s still staring at me. No one is paying him any attention as they walk by. I give him a small nod and start walking in the other direction.

I find myself walking briskly, and with purpose. It’s ironic because I haven’t really decided where I’m going yet. I pass my third favorite room, the art room. I slow down only a little to glance inside and see my beloved former art teacher laughing with a couple parents whose children will be her students in less than a month. She doesn’t notice me pass by. It’s for the better, really. If she saw me she’d think I was familiar, and I don’t want to burden her with trying to remember my name. 

Turns out, my feet knew where they were going all along. To the library. My second favorite room. I go inside and stop. Everything is exactly the same as I left it. The sloping ceilings and the sunlight streaming through the skylight and the dark green carpet and wooden shelves and the SmartBoard in the corner. It’s deserted though.

I make a beeline towards the more mature fiction section, which is at a sixth grade reading level at most, scanning and searching for any recognizable titles. The top of the shelf is so high that it’s … just eye level. Huh. I have to step back to see everything below. I spot a group of pink and purple books and I feel my eyes go wide as I recognize the series I devoured in third grade. I reach down and pick up the first book. As I run my hands along the jacket it feels smooth and velvety with glossy lettering and explosions of color in the illustrations. The pages are yellow. One of them is sticking out after having been torn and then haphazardly stuffed back into the book. It desperately needs replacement. But the worst part is, as I’m flipping through the book … it doesn’t grab my attention anymore. It’s so boring. I don’t know why I expected it to hook me in again now that I’m older. My disappointment is really my own fault. 

I put the book back and look around again. Really look around. These shelves against the wall are the only ones even close to my height. The ones in the middle of the room barely reach my stomach. I can see clearly over the tops of them even with their decorations on top, all the way to the opposite wall. It’s unnerving. 

There’s somewhere else in this school I still need to visit: my fourth grade classroom, also known as my favorite room here. I leave the library and within a minute I’ve walked through the halls and the door I’m looking for is nearby. Funny how those same hallways used to be so much longer and so much wider. 

This area, unlike the library, isn’t deserted. There’s a small crowd of people in the hallway because now we’re surrounded by the classrooms of the most popular fourth grade teachers in the school. I go inside my classroom, and see about five people, both parents and kids, walking around the room waiting for my teacher to return from wherever he went. Once again, I look around and the memories come flooding back.

There’s a clear plastic bucket full of marbles on the windowsill. Back when I was in his class five years ago, my teacher promised us a pizza party if we filled up the bucket with marbles. We started off with the bucket empty and for every accomplishment he put in marbles, but he also took them away when we didn’t follow directions. And at the end of the year, we somehow hadn’t made it. I always thought he’d give us that party anyway because we wanted it so badly, but he never did. To this day I wonder if he ever intended to. That was such a disappointment for fourth grade me that when I graduated from this elementary school I wrote him a poem and included a joke about not getting the pizza party. 

That bucket isn’t the only thing that catches my eye though. At the back of the room, behind the desks all arranged in little tables, there’s a blue carpet in an open space. I slowly make my way over there. The seating options on the ground vary from bean bags to upside down crates to a rocking chair. They’re all arranged in a big oval, probably for morning meetings. I can feel a wistful smile on my face as I remember what is possibly my fondest memory of elementary school, with my favorite teacher in my favorite room. One day in the middle of the school year my teacher randomly announced that we would just read the entire day that day. And that’s what we did. Everyone was delighted that he was letting us do nothing all day. I read and read and it was so peaceful. We all just sat on the crates and bean bags and read silently in our corners with our friends. 

I crouch down to touch a blue bean bag. It feels soft but durable under my palms. I can’t help but sink myself down in it and marvel at how fast time flies. It’s been fun visiting memory lane. It’s the only place where time stops and reality gets hazy and nostalgia reigns free. But I can feel my travels coming to an end for now. I wish I could stay here forever.