Jenny Couldn't Wait

The pile of furniture and supplies beside the container had been growing for two days. A wooden desk with a chipped corner and one drawer that stuck. Two freestanding bookcases, flat-packed and held together with cable ties for transit through the portal. A stack of cardboard boxes marked in black pen — books, stationery, a set of laminated alphabet cards, a plastic tub of coloured pencils. Three folding chairs. A rolled-up rug that smelled faintly of mothballs and someone else's house. All of it sourced from Earth, carried through by Guardians on supply runs, and deposited at the Learning Grove site because someone with a list had decided this was where it belonged.

Jenny Triffett was still standing in the doorway when she looked at the pile and decided she was not going to wait for help. The paint was barely dry. The walls were still giving off the faint chemical sweetness of fresh emulsion. None of that mattered. She crossed to the desk, gripped the edge with both hands, and pulled. The legs scraped across the packed dirt and the desk moved perhaps half a metre before she had to stop, readjust her grip, and pull again. The desk was heavier than it looked — solid timber under the chipped veneer — and the ground was uneven enough that each pull required a correction to keep it tracking toward the container door.

Greta Smith saw her from the far side of the settlement's central clearing. Jenny was halfway between the pile and the container door, bent at the waist, hauling a desk across bare ground by herself, and showing no sign of waiting for anyone to offer assistance. Greta watched for precisely long enough to confirm that Jenny was not going to stop, then turned to Jerome, who was sorting seed packets, and told him to go and find Charles and meet her at The Learning Grove. She did not explain why. Jerome looked up, followed her gaze to the figure dragging furniture across the clearing, and left without asking.

Greta reached Jenny before the boys did. She did not offer to help with the desk. She put her hand on the edge of it and held it still, and Jenny straightened up, slightly out of breath, and the two of them stood over the desk in the afternoon sun and began to talk about where it should go.

The conversation was practical rather than sentimental. Greta asked which direction the desk should face — toward the door or toward the windows. Jenny said toward the windows, so the person sitting at it would have light on their work and could see anyone approaching from outside. Greta agreed, then asked about the bookcases. Jenny wanted them against the rear wall, flanking the desk, so the books would be the first thing visible when someone walked through the door. Greta suggested one against the rear wall and one against the side wall near the entrance, so children could reach the shelves without having to cross the whole room. Jenny considered this, conceded the point, and the layout was settled before a single piece of furniture had crossed the threshold.

Jerome arrived with Charles behind him. Charles was eating something and looked as though he had been interrupted in the middle of a more agreeable task. Greta pointed at the desk. Jerome took one end and Charles took the other and they lifted it through the door, angling it sideways to clear the frame, and set it down where Jenny directed — facing the northern windows, offset from centre to leave space for movement on either side.

The bookcases came next. Jerome and Charles carried them in flat-packed and assembled them inside the container, Charles holding the frames upright while Jerome drove the fixings. The shelves were basic — pressed wood, adjustable pegs, the kind of thing that filled a million student bedrooms and home offices on Earth — but they stood straight and held weight when Jerome pressed down on the top shelf to test them. One went against the rear wall beside the desk. The other went against the side wall near the entrance, exactly as Greta had suggested.

The boxes of supplies went in last. Jenny opened each one and sorted the contents onto the shelves while Greta directed the boys to carry in the folding chairs, the rug, and the remaining crates. Charles carried two boxes at once, stacked, and nearly dropped them both when his foot caught the threshold strip. Jerome caught the top box with one hand without breaking stride. Greta told Charles to carry one at a time.

The rug went down in the open space between the desk and the door — a reading area, Jenny said, somewhere children could sit on something other than bare plywood. It was a muted blue with a geometric pattern that had faded unevenly from years of foot traffic in whatever room it had occupied before. It did not match the white walls or the pale timber floor. It did not need to.

Jenny placed the alphabet cards along the top of the rear bookcase, leaning them against the wall in a row. She put the coloured pencils in a plastic cup on the desk. She shelved the books — a mix of primary readers, picture books, and a few chapter books that were too advanced for the youngest children but would be needed soon enough — in no particular order, filling the lower shelves first so small hands could reach them.

Greta stood in the doorway and watched Jenny arrange the last of the books. Jerome and Charles had already left, their work done, Charles's voice carrying back across the clearing as he said something that made Jerome shake his head. The container was quiet. The late afternoon light came through the perspex windows and fell across the desk in pale bars. The rug sat on the floor. The bookshelves stood against the walls with their shelves half full. The folding chairs leaned against the side wall, not yet opened, not yet needed.

It was not finished. It was not furnished the way a classroom on Earth would be furnished. There was no whiteboard, no pin board, no display space, no proper lighting, no electrical outlets, no running water, no bell to mark the start and end of lessons. There was a desk, two bookcases, some books, a rug, and a tin of coloured pencils. There was a door that closed and windows that let in light and walls that had been painted white by two women who had done the work because it needed doing.

Jenny closed the door behind her when she left. The latch clicked. The sound was the same small, definitive sound it had made when Nial tested it the day before, but it meant something different now. The room on the other side of it was ready for children.