The school was closed for the holidays, but nothing marked that fact except the absence of sound.
It stood at the end of the path, past the football field where the grass was worn thin in uneven patches, as if play had decided where it could last. The river moved nearby, close enough to be felt rather than seen. The school was reached on foot, or by boat, depending on the day and the water. The building waited the way places here do, without fences, without signs, without urgency.
The classroom smelled like wet chalk and old wood. Not the kind of old that gets polished and admired, just the kind that has been touched too often and repaired too simply. From where I stood, the floor dipped slightly near the windows, as if the building had learned to lean over time. Light entered through the open windows in uneven bands, landing on desks that stood exactly where they had been left.
I stood there longer than I meant to, listening to nothing. A boy stood next to me with the patient certainty of someone who knows where things are. I had not heard him arrive. He did not announce himself. He was simply there now, hands loosely at his sides, watching to see if I would ask something or continue pretending I was alone.
“This is our school,” he said.
He did not say it proudly. He did not say it apologetically. He said it the way one might say this is the river or this is the path.
“Camilo,” he added anyway, as if names still needed to be said out loud.
I already knew his name. He was the son of the finca where I was staying, but we had not spoken much before. The name suited the way he stood, still, attentive, unhurried.
He stepped past me into the classroom and motioned with his chin, inviting me to follow. His shoes left faint marks in the dust on the floor. They did not bother him.
“The desks stay like this,” he said. “So they don’t forget.”
“Forget what?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Where they belong.”
He walked between the rows, touching the edge of one desk with his fingers as he passed, as if greeting something familiar. The desks were old, their surfaces scarred with initials and lines carved by hands that had needed to move while listening. One desk wobbled when Camilo pressed on it. He frowned slightly and nudged it back into place.
“That one is not good,” he said. “But it’s not the worst.”
He pressed down on the desk again, slower this time.
“When the water comes, they change.”
He led me to a desk near the window and tested it carefully, pressing from different angles.
“This is better,” he said. “It doesn’t move much. When it rains, we move these ones first.”
“Move them where?” I asked.
“Back,” he said, pointing toward the center of the room.
Along the wall, hooks were fixed in a neat line. Only a few had bags hanging from them now, forgotten things waiting patiently. Most hooks were empty.
“This one is mine,” Camilo said, pointing to an empty hook.
“I took my bag home,” he added. “But I leave the hook.”
The chalkboard stood at the front of the room, its surface clouded with pale traces of old lessons. Even clean, it remembered. Camilo reached up and ran his finger along the lower edge, where chalk dust collected like fine sand.
“The teacher writes here,” he said.
He paused, then added, “When school is open.”
“When is it not?” I asked.
“When it rains too much,” he said simply. “Then we stop. Or we go home. Or we wait.”
“We put buckets,” he said. “But sometimes there are more drops than buckets.”
Near the window, the paint peeled in a long, curling strip. Beneath it, the plaster was darker, softened by water that had arrived many times and stayed too long. I paused there, and Camilo noticed.
“That’s where it starts,” he said.
“When it rains a lot?” I asked.
He nodded. “Or when it rains many days. Then it doesn’t stop. The roof gets tired.”
“The books don’t like it,” he added.
“No,” I said. “They probably don’t.”
As he spoke, the sound of the river shifted slightly, closer now, the air inside thickening with it. Outside, the sky was heavy but undecided. Clouds hung low, not yet convinced they should do anything. In the Amazon, even clouds carry weight. Camilo glanced up as a drop struck the roof.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Not enough.”
Not enough rain. A scale I recognized.
I rested my hand against the wall, feeling the damp plaster beneath the peeling paint. It was cool to the touch. Familiar. The stillness pressed gently against me, and without warning, another stillness answered it, one from far away.
A school in Turkey, years ago. A village not far from where we lived. Two classrooms, nothing more. One for the first and second class, the other for everyone else. The teachers were a couple, friends of my parents, and on some weekends we went to visit them. While the adults talked, we played with the village children, running in and out of the rooms as if the building belonged to us.
The walls were painted blue on the outside, champagne inside. Old paint, coming down in places, the way buildings do when they are used more than they are repaired. The children did not seem to notice. Neither did we. Lessons went on. Games went on. Learning and playing shared the same space, without asking the school to be anything other than what it was.
Here, there was only one room. Children from first to eighth grade shared the same space, but the difference felt smaller than it should have.
Standing here now, the memory did not feel distant. I had traveled far to arrive somewhere I already knew.
Camilo climbed onto a chair near the window and leaned forward, peering at the ceiling.
“It comes from here,” he said. “Then here. Then sometimes there.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then school is finished for the day,” he said. “Even if it’s early.”
He hopped down and straightened the chair, aligning it with the others. He did it carefully, with the seriousness of someone entrusted with order.
“Do you come here during the holidays?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “I come to meet others. We play football.”
“And you come inside?”
He nodded. “After playing. It’s cooler here.”
He picked up a piece of chalk from the floor and turned it over in his fingers. It was broken, but usable. He placed it back neatly on the ledge.
“Do you miss school?” I asked.
He thought about it.
“I miss this,” he said, gesturing around the room. “Not when it rains too much.”
We stood there for a while, listening to the sky decide. Today, the roof would hold. Other days, it would not, and learning would have to wait.
Before leaving, Camilo went back to his desk and straightened it one last time. He checked the hook again, even though nothing had changed.
“You like our school?” he asked.
The question was not a test. It was an attempt to place me.
I looked around, at the desks that remembered hands, the walls that remembered rain, the room that had learned how to pause and resume. It felt as though the room held things longer than the people passing through it.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
Camilo nodded once. That was enough.
He walked with me back along the path toward the football field and stopped there, not following further. The school remained behind him, open and waiting.
As I walked away, I understood something with a gentle certainty. This place did not fail because it leaked. It endured because it kept opening, even knowing it sometimes could not.
Camilo turned back toward the classroom and the room settled back into itself.
The river moved on, close enough to be felt.
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