I stay with Sadie for the remainder of the festivities. Stella texts me that she understands it and apologises for the behaviour of her children, I tell her it’s fine. And really, texting it from inside of the pillow fort with gingerbread in my mouth and a Christmas movie on the TV, it feels that way, too.

On the twenty-sixth, Henry comes over to visit. He seems pretty impressed at the decorations we put up. Together with him, we plunder the cupboards and spend the whole day in the kitchen. We make so many kinds of cookies I eventually lose count. Like Sadie and I always do these days, we listen to music and sing along and Henry seems to love it. When I streak my dough-caked finger along his cheek, he lets me, only briefly looking up at me with laughter in his eyes, his hands still buried in the dough he’s working. We end up with way too much, of course. I end up bringing a large box full of still-warm cookies over to my parents and Henry prepares one for himself but even so, we still have to much. The situation is only solved when Sadie proposes to just take them to Ben’s at New Year’s.

In the evening, Henry makes a vegetarian bolognese and settle in front of the TV to watch yet another Christmas movie. It’s a rather cramped space with all three of us, but none of us mind. I lie in the middle, Sadie to my right and Henry to my left and we spend the evening like that.

When, a few days later, we arrive at Leon’s door, the party has already started. Once again, Kim is the one to open the door and she greets us with her usual dazzling smile.

“Hey guys, so glad you could make it.”

And for just a second too long, her eyes linger on mine, just like the last time. Except this time, I know why. She told me. If at any point I feel uncomfortable or want to get out, I can text her or tell her and she’ll find a way to do it without raising too much suspicion. Funny, considering how both times it happened in the past, she was kind of the reason. But I don’t suppose I can hold that against her.

Leon’s place is a row house within walking distance of school. It’s not especially large but it’s large enough for at least our year to fit. It is also pretty central.

The entire ground floor is full of people. They’re standing by the kitchen counter, sit on the couch in the living room, around the dining table, on the floor, out in the corridor, on the stairs. At regular intervals, people seem to be coming down or up the stairs. The music is loud, the air is thick and hot. There are bottles everywhere and I’m honestly surprised to find the floor dry. Already throughout the last half year, I’ve spotted a trend of parties becoming more and more unruly.

It’s funny, being one of the somewhat-sober ones and seeing the boys get absolutely knackered.

We’re led to the kitchen, where both Linea and Leon are expecting us with prepared drinks. They know by now what we like to drink. A non-alcoholic drink for me, beer for Henry, something hard for Sadie. Then we disperse and mingle with the rest of the people.

It’s a loud and chaotic night but somehow we make it until midnight without Leon’s house being blown to bits. When the time finally comes, we gather outside and most of us hold sparklers while some of the boys fire the bigger firework they brought. Then it’s midnight and we all cheer and hug each other, careful not to light each other’s hair with our sparklers.

My hair is almost down to my chin, now.

And then somebody says that we should go to the school and watch the fireworks from the schoolyard because that way there’s less high buildings obstructing the immediate surroundings and we have better angles to look upwards. And somehow, everybody just agrees and before I know it, we’re all more or less running towards school.

The night is light. The freezing air smells of blackpowder and it stings my lungs as I run alongside Henry and Ben. We arrive at the school and it lies completely vacant, a sleeping colossus, dark against the backdrop of colourful explosions.

We stop and look up at the sky, and suddenly Ben is leaning heavily against me because he’s drunk and his balance is off and then Henry leans against me from the other side and he’s not drunk, and I am slightly drunk and I enjoy this. Them still being there, around me.

The others, the girls and the few boys who walked, arrive and Kim raises an eyebrow at me. I reply with a playful eye roll and she shrugs. I have no clue what that means but I grin still. Linea’s once again holding on to her arm, heavily leaning against her. Maybe she thinks it’s funny how similar our situations are.

Then somebody comes running up to our group and shouts, “The groundfloor windows to the boy’s toilet are open!” and the boy leaning against my right shoulder is very suddenly very awake again. Ben jerks away from me, almost throwing me off-balance in the process and sprints after the guy who brought the news at break-neck speed. A whole cluster of boys and even some girls, Sadie among them, follow them. I look at Henry.

His laughing eyes are already waiting for me. “You’re gonna go after them, aren’t you?” he says in a voice that’s probably supposed to sound resigned. But it doesn’t.

I nod. “And you’re not?”

He shrugs casually and grins. “’Course I am.”

I glance over at Linea and Kim. Kim whispers something into Linea’s ear, who howls with laughter.

I walk over.

“Wait until they hear you’ve got a key to the front door and all the club rooms,” Linea giggles as I come closer.

Kim catches my expression and gives me a playfully stern look. “Don’t tell them! No! Don’t you dare!” But she knows I won’t, of course.

“I’m more surprised that you aren’t spearheading the mission,” I grin. “Don’t you wanna see what the school looks like at night?”

She rolls her eyes. “I already know what the school looks like at night. She,” she says, nodding at Linea, “wants to go but, you know, what you’re doing there is kind of illegal?”

“Oh come on. If literally anybody comes and sees that you’re with us in there, they’ll just assume we have some teacher’s permission and leave us to it.”

She acts enraged. “I’m not that much of a teacher’s pet, you know?”

“You so are, though!” chimes Linea, coming to my aid.

Kim pushes her away. “You’re a filthy little traitor!”

But Linea only laughs. “Don’t act like you don’t love me, you’re bad at it.”

For a moment, Kim looks like she wants to reply something to that but then she only turns to me and says in a clipped tone, “Okay, let’s go then.”

I let out a victorious howl that makes Kim flinch but probably barely carries beyond the school yard with all the noise around town at the moment.

When they see Kim coming along, the last doubtful faces turn to excited glee and they come after us.

“Turn off the lights,” Kim says with an air of irritation as we emerge from the bathroom and step out into the familiar but empty hallway.

Linea immediately turns towards her. “Can’t believe those amateurs are having their first break-in?”

Kim only raises an eyebrow at her before pointedly turning off the light.

The others aren’t hard to find. The noise of their shouts and laughter carries easily through the otherwise eerily silent school. When we catch up to them, they’re currently busy going through the cupboards in the classroom below ours.

Leon’s eyes go big when he sees Kim enter the classroom. Then he turns to the rest. “Yo, guys. We’re all in this now,” he laughs. “Shouldn’t we do something with this opportunity?”

Linea leans into a swaying Ben and says in a low voice, “Y’know, if more classrooms are open, couldn’t we swap the interior?”

And of course, Ben being Ben, his eyes go instantly wide with glee and he shouts, “Guys, let’s swap the interior with some other classroom!”

It happens what has to happen and everybody cheers and shouts their agreement. I lean over to Linea and say, “You’re not going to be responsible for this, are you?”

She grins at me innocently. “Why, of course not. Did you ever hear me suggest anything like this?”

I want to say something more, but then a table, pushed by Sadie, nudges me in the backside and I turn to do my part.

It’s surprising how quickly and well-organised our class can work if they so choose. It takes us just short of twenty minutes and the entire interior of years five and eleven have been swapped. All of us gather in front of year 11’s classroom, sweaty, red-cheeked and slightly out of breath in the light of our flashlights. Even Kim and Linea helped. It’s somehow both funny and exhilarating to see them participate in something like this, however harmless it may be.

“Nobody say a word of this to anyone,” Leon says, his voice raised. “We go to school and act like nothing happened and they’re going to be none the wiser.”

Everybody laughs. As the others leave, Henry and I go on one last run through the school, simply because we feel like it and we’re both giddy with energy. Then we climb out the bathroom window and let Kim shut it from the inside because she’s responsible. As Linea distracts the crowd, Kim casually walks through the main entrance and locks it behind her.

Almost all of us end up sleeping at Leon’s. His parents are out for the night and everybody brought sleeping bags and yoga mats to sleep on.

By the time we get back to his place, it’s almost two in the morning yet still nobody seems to be really tired. Under Kim’s sober direction, we tidy up at least the downstairs so we’ll have places to sleep. When the floor is mostly clean and all the bottles have been put away, we set up our sleeping places, of course realising that there’s really not that much space once everybody’s lying. But nobody seems to care all that much. Most of us are still caught in various stages of the drunken state. People set up their sleeping bags underneath the dining table, behind the couch, in between chair legs. But we don’t go to sleep, then. Instead, we gather in a large circle and Kim gets out a game we used to spend days playing on class trips. It’s called werewolves and the goal is for either the werewolves or the village people to kill all members of the opposing party without actually knowing who they are. Sadie seems a little surprised to see the game in our hands because it’s a German game but I tell her that our old German teacher introduced it to us.

We play several rounds before we’re tired enough to go to sleep. The werewolves win only once and that’s when Sadie insists on becoming the game master instead of Kim and Kim ends up among the werewolves. Of course we appoint her village elder and of course, everybody believes her because she can just lie so well. Linea gives an outcry of rage when she finally dies at the fangs of her best friend because she’d been viciously defending her to the last second.

It takes until four in the morning before we’re finally all in our sleeping bags, another thirty minutes before everybody stops moving and giggling.

I can’t sleep. Not because I’m uncomfortable or anything – I love this, lying wedged in between Sadie and Henry with only centimetres to move. It has this distinct class trip feeling, this sense of nostalgia before the moment is even over.

Very slowly, very deliberately, I turn to look out through the terrace door into the small garden but find Henry’s wakeful eyes waiting for me. He smiles at me, a small hitch in his breath hinting at suppressed laughter and my stomach grows warm and fuzzy. Our faces are barely thirty centimetres apart.

“That was such a fun day,” I whisper. I don’t know why I say it, he knows, he was there, and still, the words leave my mouth light like morning air.

His smile widens. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He pauses and then quickly adds, “Not that I had anything to do with it but –” He interrupts himself and this time it’s me who has to suppress their laughter.

“But you did. You were there.” Vaguely, at the periphery of my consciousness, I’m aware that I would physically cringe at these words in the light of day. But right now, it seems perfectly fine to say them. Because this isn’t day. This isn’t normal.

His eyes shift in this barely conceivable way I can’t quite read. Then he whispers, “Well, I’m glad you enjoy my company, then.”

SeptemberMorgan

Sooo things are beginning to stir, aren't they?
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