“I think it’s time we head to school now,” somebody says. “I happen to know there’s still a window open.”

I have a bad feeling this is becoming a tradition of sorts. After the prank we pulled last time, some of the teachers seemed rather confused and they did ask around for some time but then seemed to decide not to bother investigating any further because it had been rather harmless. The feeling of sitting in class and snickering among one another the moment the teachers had left the classroom had been intoxicating. Like we weren’t just people coincidentally attending the same year in high school. Like we’re something more.

Less than a minute, we’re out on the street, running, laughing, and it is that same feeling again. We are us, I am a part of this. I’m running with Kim and Sadie. And even though I’m slower than I used to be, even though I can’t keep up with Henry and Leon and Ben the way I used to, I love this. Because I still feel fast and I have them with me.

We’ve become a bit of a group now, we’ve done our homework together in the library or an empty classroom together a few times now and we’ve been meaning to meet up out of school again for some time now but never really found the opportunity. Kim’s incredibly busy, it turns out, but today is the time. After the party, her Mum’s coming to pick us up and we’re going to spend most of tomorrow over. The house is large enough that even with her parents there, we can experiment with makeup and the like and she also mentioned a walk-in closet with lots of clothes to try on.

Henry’s waiting for me by the open window, still slightly out of breath. The three of us had to slow down after about half the way. I could’ve still kept going a while longer but Sadie and Kim can’t run for quite as long.

The night is hot now and I open the zipper of my hoodie jacket, take it off and tie it around my waist. There’s a warmth wave right now. It feels absolutely ridiculous but just a few hours earlier, it was twenty degrees outside. And it’s February.

“The idiots are climbing out onto the roof,” Henry says with a crooked grin. “Feel like being an idiot today?”

I shrug. “Is it dry?”

He nods. “Should be, right? Hasn’t rained in days.”

“Okay, then let’s be idiots.” I turn and give the girls an apologetic shrug. “I assume you two won’t be coming along?”

Kim laughs. “Yeah, no way. You have fun though.”

She doesn’t even try to deter me. She knows it’s inevitable.

Sadie hits me lightly against the shoulder. “If you fall off the roof, I’m going to kill you, I swear.”

“Oh shit, I better be careful, then.”

Then, out of the blue, she steps forward and hugs me tightly. Her breath tickles my ear as she whispers, “Be careful, Lu.”

Immediately, I grow squirmy and even hotter, but when she lets go and I glance at Henry, he doesn’t seem to have heard. Sadie giggles and waves, I wave back.

A few seconds later, we’re making our way up the dark staircase, up to our classroom where the access to the roof is coincidentally the best.

“What did she say?” Henry asks casually.

“Hm?”

“Sadie. What’d she say?”

I try to wave it off, grateful that he can’t see my features properly in the dark. “Oh, nothing. She was just making a joke. You know her.”

He lets out a short breath and when I turn, I can just barely make out his grin. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I could get the impression that you two were hiding something from me.”

“Could you?” I realise way too late that he’s probably thinking of something entirely different than me. Sadie and I are rather close after all.

“Hey, you know I’d be happy for you. I’ve told you.”

Right. And I got upset at him for it.

Briefly, I pause to consider the possibility. Could I start liking Sadie? If she even still likes me…. I really like being around her, don’t I? She’s this safe space to me, where nothing bad matters quite as much and everything nice is just multiplied tenfold. I think back to the pillow fort we built over Christmas and the way she looks at me whenever she’s happy. Everything would be so easy. It would be so easy to ask her, it would be so easy to be with her.

“Who knows,” I say with a little giggle. I’ve noticed that I giggle a whole lot more now and I also do it differently. I don’t think anybody aside of me has picked up on it yet, or I hope so, anyway, but it’s more girly. I like that it is.

Lu.

Luisa Richter.

We arrive at the door to our classroom and hear the boys’ shouts outside. The window is wide open.

I snicker. “Just think what they’d do if we closed the window now and called the cops.”

He lets out a shrill laugh and gives me a light shove. “You’re nasty!”

One of the voices outside breaks off and just as we arrive at the window, Ben’s head peaks around the corner.

“Yooo!” he yells to the others. “The pros are here, it’s getting interesting.”

Henry laughs a little, in this quieter, more humble way he uses most of the time when something is just slightly funny, and climbs out onto the roof with practised ease. I follow, satisfied that I’m just as fast.

“You think they always do this? The upper-classmen, I mean. Can’t be the first to think of this, can we?” Ben asks as we walk across the roofing tiles. The roof has only a slight slope so it’s not exactly difficult. He’s already a lot less careful than us, he’s already been up here a bit so he’s grown confident the tiles won’t slip underneath his feet.

I shrug. “Wouldn’t we know, though? If they’ve done this for years, there’s bound to have been some sort of incident, even minor ones.”

“Nonsense,” Leon laughs from a little further up. “We’re teenagers! We’re invincible!”

In the dark, it looks honestly kind of epic, the way they stand scattered across the roof, half a dozen dark figures against the night sky. Like we could be the cover for a dystopian story.

Henry and I stop at the very top of the roof, where it starts to descend towards the schoolyard and look down. Kim, Sadie and a few others are standing there, looking up at us. I wave and they wave back.

“Wouldn’t it make a nice picture for our group chat if we turned on the flashlights on our phones now?” Felix asks from a little further down.

A few seconds later, all of us are holding up our phones. Sadie understands immediately, gets out her phone and snaps a few pictures.

“Henry, can you do a backflip up here?” somebody asks.

For a moment I’m hurt they didn’t ask me but at this point, it’s common knowledge that I’m the one of the pair who doesn’t flip.

Henry shakes his head. “I will definitely do no such thing. The roofing tiles can break, you know?”

“I mean, we could spot you, but yeah, I agree. It’d be pretty dumb,” I say in a voice too low for the others to hear.

He shrugs. “You always knew I wouldn’t do it.”

I nod. Yeah, I did. He’s not as much of a show-off as I am. Even though he does pull a lot of difficult or even crazy stunts, making sure the environment is at least safe is his one rule. Always test the railings before jumping to them, always test the grip on a wall, look for wet spots on flat surfaces, check for stones or shards of glass if you’re gonna safety roll onto grass.

Slowly, he starts walking away from the others and towards the back end of the roof from where we have a nice view across the city.

“Imagine we’d come up here on New Year’s,” I say with a slight laugh.

He snorts. “Yeah, when it’d just rained. Great idea.”

And also it was much colder then.

“Still pretty, though, isn’t it?” he adds then, glancing in my direction. “Like, I can already tell this is going to be a core memory.” His voice has this gentle quality suddenly. Like it was that night on New Year’s in the dark of Leon’s living room, except he’s talking and not whispering. Still, it makes me comfortable all around. “It’s a great start to spring, don’t you think?”

I scoff gently. “Yeah, like that’s happening anytime soon.” But really, I agree. This is a moment to remember. One I’ll definitely have no trouble remembering.

“Hey, do you think –” he starts but then breaks off.

“Hm?” I look up. His face is turned away from me mostly and in the dark I can’t read his expression.

“We should take a selfie, don’t you think?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Isn’t it way too dark for that?”

“We’ll have to get creative then. You hold the flashlight and I take the picture.”

I shrug. “Okay.”

I get out my phone, hold it towards him and say, “Hey, do you think that’s bright?” As I say ‘bright’, I turn on the flashlight. I catch him dead-on. Instantly, he doubles over, pressing his hands over his eyes as break into a fit of howling laughter.

“Fuck you! You colossal dickweavel, fuuuuck,” he wheezes.

“Huh,” I grin. “Gotta say, I kinda missed that.”

“Missed what?”

“The insults. You used to do that regularly, you know? Gets me all nostalgic now.”

“Oh that’s an easy fix, asshole!”

My grin doesn’t falter for even a second. “Right, there we go. You wanted to take a selfie, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, and then you casually blinded me! What kind of friend are you?” But he’s tentatively blinking in my direction again, even though I’m still holding the phone with the flashlight turned on – though it’s not directed at his face anymore. He’s grinning.

“Some things never change, do they?” he says, finally standing up straight again and getting his phone ready.

I smirk at him. “Definitely not me, anyway.”

And then I realise what I just said and my stomach turns. He doesn’t know yet. Shouldn’t I… at least stop feeding him opposing information at some point?

I’m not even certain yet.

And still, I feel vaguely sick.

Finally, Henry is ready and puts his arm around me. I lean into him, plaster the broadest smile I can manage across my face and direct the flashlight right at us.

It doesn’t even look bad from what I can tell. He looks like he always does with his short, dark hair and protruding cheekbones and clean skin. And then there’s me next to him, a girl for all the camera can tell, with my long hair and steely eyes, leaning into him and grinning a stupid grin.

“I’ll send it to you,” he says after taking several. Several more than necessary, probably, since neither of us really adjusted in any way. But I don’t mention it.

“Yeah.”

Slowly, I let my eyes glide across the roof. I need something to do. Something to occupy me. I want to fly. I want adrenaline.

Then the edge of the roof catches my eye. At one point it slopes down all the way to the first floor. There’s grass underneath. I always used to think that I could probably do that jump, last year. I can do that jump now. I’ll fly. Henry will call me reckless. People will cheer.

Henry sees what I’m looking at.

“Honestly, I’ve been waiting for that,” he says soberly. “Will you at least warm up before?”

I give him a false smile. I need to fly but he has a point. “Will you do it, too, then?”

“I’ll think about it.”

We do only a short warm up, exclusively for the legs. Ben spots us as we’re at it and comes over.

“You’re not seriously gonna jump, are you?”

I shrug. “We’ll have a look at it.” Because nobody likes braggers.

And then we’re done and leisurely make our way down the slope to the jump.

Henry leans forward. “Huh, doesn’t even look that bad. You’ve definitely jumped worse.”

But I don’t answer. My stomach is tied in knots. My hands are clammy. My jaw tight.

This isn’t the same. This is different. I used to be able to –

But it looks just so far now. It feels like my body’s screaming at me, warning me not to take the jump. Because I’ll fuck it up, because it’s too far. Because my body is no longer made for it.

Like I never jumped these very same distances to worse surfaces.

For a moment, I close my eyes, take several deep breaths, imagine myself going through the motions. Then I open them and look down again.

Nothing has changed.

“You okay?” Henry asks in a low voice and I can feel his eyes on me. Seeing me. Seeing me.

And I can’t deal with this. I can’t fly. And if I can’t fly, how am I supposed to –

This is what I was scared of. This is the whole reason I hated the virus and I’d just forgotten.

I want to scream. I want to force myself to jump and for a moment it feels like I will, but then I can’t.

SeptemberMorgan

A party - what could go wrong, huh?
By the way, the entry on urban dictionary for Dick Weavel is my favourite dictionary entry of all time. Look it up if you want a laugh XD
As always, please tell me what you think and have a nice weekend!