"Damn it, our seats are taken."

"There's an empty two seats at the front," I said, glancing around the Spanish classroom. The back rows were already filled up.

"I don't wanna sit in the front, she picks on me every single time we laugh!" Lena complained.

"She picks on you. And that's because you laugh at everything, Lena."

"Not- well, yeah." She sighed and took one more look around the classroom.

It was the sixth class of the day, and I could tell that everyone was waiting for it to be over so we could just go have lunch. There was so much catching up to do after the winter break, everyone had been on the coolest holidays.

That is, everyone but me. My brother was a senior this year, so he'd been drowning in university applications. Adding to that, he had exams starting from next week, so we hadn't gone anywhere while he stayed and studied day and night.

I had just stayed home and chilled, studied a bit, and just hung out with my family.

Boring, I know, but my best friend May was off in Singapore for two out of three weeks, and spent the rest of the time getting over her jet lag. I didn't have much to do, really.

Lena had gone to the Bahamas with her family, where she'd met some of the other kids in our grade, and another friend of mine, Ray, had just driven down to Houston to meet some friends. She'd said her trip was nothing glamorous, but her Instagram feed said otherwise.

I'd had plenty of fun travelling with my family in the past, so it surely was okay to miss out just this one time.

***

"Girls, are you going to stand there and block the doorway all day long? Please get to your seats."

"Sorry, Ms. Aguilera," I muttered, sitting down at the seat in the front row. Lena shot me a glare and took the seat beside me.

"Oh, no, no, no. You girls are not sitting together. No."

I rolled my eyes. Lena was a distraction by herself, teachers achieved nothing by separating her from her friends.

"Called it," said Lena, standing up.

"No, Lena, I think you stay where you are. Delilah, honey, you can move over there." She pointed to the seat diagonally behind where I was sitting. I picked up my stuff and moved over.

"Now, I know you guys don't remember anything from last term, so we're going to refresh your memory with a little quiz!"

The class gave a collective groan.

I didn't really mind: I liked Spanish, I was pretty good at it. Best in the grade, actually, but I didn't like to remind myself; I would get overconfident, like I did with math. That's when my grades would fall.

"Hey, Del," someone whispered from behind me. "You studied over the holidays, right?" 

I turned to face Sam, whose hair looked weirdly long all of a sudden. I hadn't seen him in a month, so that seemed about right.

"Well, not much."

"Help me out with this quiz though, please?"

"Sam, it's a quiz. Nobody cares even if you get a- a four out of ten. You'll be fine." Sam was pretty smart, like eight or nine out of ten smart. I didn't know why he was asking me.

"Del, if you got a four, would you be in a good mood the rest of the day?"

"Well, no, but I wouldn't beat myself up about it either."

"Suuure. Hey, listen, Suraj was asking about you, he wanted to know if you're still going for that debate club thing."

"Yuck, no. I went that one day and decided I'd never go again. Debate is not my thing."

"Really? I thought you'd be good at public speaking."

"You thought wrong, sweetie," I said as I leaned over and pinched his cheek, laughing at his ears turning bright red.

Sam was a huge flirt most of the time, and had been almost everyone's middle school crush, but it still often took him by surprise when he had people address him as things like 'sweetie' or 'honey'.

Once I found that out I made a point to address him as such, and teased him for his reaction every single time. It was never not funny.

I had been his first girl best friend, and he was my first guy best friend, but despite what people expected, there'd really never been anything romantic between us at any point. Honestly.

It was ironic, almost, that we would become such good friends, since we used to hate each other back in elementary school, for no good reason.

Looking back on it now, things couldn't have been more different back then. He was the annoying, rude boy who was usually pretty badly behaved in class.

I was the class monitor, with my regular group of friends, and the one who would answer all the questions when the teacher asked. Not the teacher's pet, per se, but definitely better behaved than he was.

Less than a year after we became friends, Sam glowed up big time. He'd always been sporty, but he filled out, grew taller. Got that real basketball player's body. He stood straighter, more confident, a newfound kind of maturity in him.

He'd always been kind of smart, but he began putting more effort into his studies, participating in class for more than just making jokes. 

We formed a study group with a few of our friends, and helped each other out with topics the other didn't get, and traded notes if we had different teachers in the same subjects.

What I liked though, was that even though he matured, it wasn't like he couldn't act like a kid every once in a while. The same guy who could beat pretty much all of our grade at beer pong could also play with his dog Sally for hours a day.

We hadn't been hanging out at each others houses as much over the past couple of months, but we were definitely still just as close as before.

After all, he was the only one of my friends that had been there in Los Angeles when it happened. He'd been there, and-

"Sam, ¿Quieres intentarlo?"

"Huh?" He blinked a couple of times as his eyes focused back on the board. I whirled around as well, and realised that by a quiz she just meant she was going to ask us some revision questions.

"Te pregunté, ¿vas a usar el subjuntivo aquí o no?"

"Oh! Um, no, I don't think so. Right?" he glanced at me and I gave him a discreet nod.

"Muy bien. Entonces-" she moved on to the next.

"Hey, by the way, have you met the new kid yet?" he whispered to me.

"There's a new kid?"

"Yeah, he's Thai. I don't know his name though, I didn't speak to him."

"Cool, I didn't know. Is he in any of your classes?"

"None so far, but we're bound to have some classes together. Maybe you can meet him too. Maybe not scare him off with that friendly personality of yours."

I grinned. "Haha, very funny. But yeah, poor guy, it must be difficult moving into a school middle of the year."

"I guess. We should probably help him out," Sam replied, running his fingers through his too- long hair.

"Sam, Del, please stop talking, or I'll have to separate you two as well."

"Sorry Ms. Aguilera!" We chanted in unison, turning back to the board.

***