Five Meters
I ended up in the wrong class. Everything was wrong—the room, the people, the energy. Didn’t belong there. Didn’t want to. And they didn’t want me either. My best friend from the old class was the only thing keeping me from completely losing it. But what actually got me through was seeing Marcel between periods. During lessons I couldn’t focus on anything else. Phone vibrating every ten minutes. I knew he’d written. I had to get back.
Not that my phone bill was going to survive this much longer, and my face was getting stuck in a permanent frown. He’d actually fought for me that first week, tried to get me moved back. Then I blew it—couldn’t abandon my friend, the only person who had my back completely. That’s how we are together. So we started pestering the teachers. Showed up at parent night, told them we were being bullied, that nobody could stand us. It wasn’t entirely a lie—we felt isolated and hated. Turns out we were paranoid. Other students didn’t mind us. Teachers didn’t either. Three of them wanted us in their classes.
I only wanted one.
We did something that was supposedly impossible. The school said the records couldn’t be changed, that moving us back would require too much work. We wore them down anyway. Now we’re back in the original class. Real material, stuff we’d actually missed while we were in that other place where they didn’t have enough teachers. No more pointless assignments. Computers now. He’s five meters away from me the entire time.
Being this close is strange. You have to be on, say better things. It feels like being sixteen again. I stop paying attention to the actual lessons. Five meters and I’m thinking about him instead. This is how it’s supposed to be.