The Empty Seat

The seat next to Jamie had been empty since October, when Priyanka moved to her grandmother's house in Edinburgh and left behind a gap in the register that the teacher read over every Friday as if surprised to find it still there.

Jamie had not minded the empty seat. He kept his water bottle on it. Sometimes his bag. It was useful, an empty seat next to you, the way extra space is always useful, and he had stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing furniture.

Then on the first Monday of February, a girl he had never seen before walked in with the school secretary, looked around the classroom once with calm dark eyes, and sat down next to him.

She moved his water bottle to make room. She did it without asking, not rudely, just practically, the way you move something that is in the way of something you need. Then she opened her bag and took out a pencil case and a notebook and set them on the desk with the efficiency of someone who had done this many times before.

Jamie's water bottle was now on the floor. He looked at it. He looked at her. She was already looking at the board.

"I am Suki," she said, without turning her head.

"Jamie," he said.

"I know," she said. "It is on your water bottle."

He looked at his water bottle on the floor. It had rolled slightly under the desk and was sitting at an angle against the chair leg, looking, somehow, reproachful. It did have his name on it, written in his mum's handwriting from two years ago when he kept leaving it on the bus. He had forgotten about that.

"Oh," he said. "Right."

She did not say anything else. The lesson started. Jamie spent the first ten minutes very aware that there was a person sitting next to him instead of a gap, and the next ten minutes trying to stop being aware of it, and the ten minutes after that mostly failing.

At the end of the lesson she picked up her things and left without looking at him again.

Jamie picked up his water bottle from the floor and stood there for a moment.

His friend Dominic appeared at his elbow with the timing of someone who had been hovering nearby waiting for the lesson to end. "New girl," he said helpfully.

"I noticed," Jamie said.

"She moved your water bottle."

"I noticed that too."

Dominic looked at him with the expression he used when he was about to say something that Jamie would find annoying. "You have gone a bit pink," he said.

"It is warm in here," Jamie said, and walked out before Dominic could say anything else.