Fade Into The Classroom

The screen is black. A name, “Evie,” appears in white script before dissolving and we fade in on two students walking down the hallway. They pass what appears to be a memorial on a locker, but the viewer has no time to examine it before fading out. Fade in again on a teacher at the front of the classroom, announcing the death of a girl named Evie. Fade out then into the stairwell. The door opens, a pair of shoes step out. Fade out. We’re now in a classroom, where the bullies mock and exclude a girl— Evie— until the bell rings, whereupon all leave the classroom and the screen fades to black. We open again on the same classroom, the same students, the same desks, except Evie is missing. The students are awkward, uncomfortable, and distracted

The two feet move forward, one steps onto an untied shoelace. The next thing we see is a pair of legs (wearing the same shoes as the feet in the previous shot) stumbling down several more stairs. Fade to black and open on our bullies at lunch, silent and remorseful. One tries to crack a joke about velcro shoes until the others stare him down. The table to their right is conspicuously empty. Fade into Evie, sitting at lunch with only a book for company until a piece of garbage flies toward her. It comes from the left, where her tormentors sat in the scene previous (one guess who threw it); fade out. We now fade into a wall and window. The camera pans down and we see, lying with her limbs and neck at unnatural angles, Evie at the bottom of the stairs. Fade into show one of the bullies alone at a desk writing a post it note. It reads “I’m sorry, Evie.” Fade out. The screen is black for a moment. Next, we see the memorial from the beginning, prominently featuring the sticky note our ex-bully just wrote. Fade to black. Roll

This is just one instance of a scenario we all know quite well— you do something wrong, something calls it to your attention, and you have to work to fix it in order to become a better person. This story is about a smoker quitting his addiction. It’s about how a failed suicide attempt prompted someone I know to seek help for their depression. It’s about a lazy college student starting to work harder after discovering she may not graduate on time if she keeps going the way she has been. It is about any and every life change that any and every person has made, will make, and is making. Evie is not one of us, but she is why we work to become better versions of