After what felt like an eternity, the bell rang, and we all stood up to clear our books.

"Delilah! Before you go, can I talk to you for a second please?" Ms Aguilera asked me as my classmates filed out of the room.

"Uh, sure." I turned to Sam and Lena, who were waiting at the doorway. "You guys can go ahead, I'll catch up to you."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, go ahead. I'll meet you guys in the cafeteria."

They walked out, leaving me in a somewhat awkward silence with Ms Aguilera.

"Del, you're doing really well, you've consistently been at a near- full score. I was wondering, would you like to help out some of the younger children with their Spanish? The middle schoolers?"

"Huh?"

"A lot of children struggle a lot with Spanish, but you picked it up really well. I think you can help out the younger children. If you like."

She looked as if she were worried I would reject the offer.

In all honesty, I didn't want to do it. I had a lot going on, and frankly, I just didn't want to spend the little time I had now tutoring kids. Plus, its not even like it would help with my extra credits. 

"I'll give you some time to think about it. I know you're a busy kid, Del, and if you don't want to do it, thats perfectly okay. This would also help you out for your extra credit as well. Though you probably don't need any more."

I thought it through. I couldn't really say no right now. A sinking feeling in my gut told me there was no way to get out of this, but I could at least procrastinate the thing. "Um, may I get back to you tomorrow?"

"Of course, of course, take your time. You can let me know by the end of the week."

"Okay." I smiled. "Thank you, Ms Aguilera!"

"Thank you, thank you. See you tomorrow!"

I rushed out of the class, stuffing my books in my bag. Tossing it towards the pile of bags outside the cafeteria, I walked to the hand wash area.

"Del!" Someone tackled me in a hug from behind.

"Hey, Maeve. How was french?"

"Ugh, terrible. First day of the term, and he made us do like six comprehensions."

"It was three comprehensions," said Ray, joining us at the hand wash, "but yeah, I get what you're saying. The man can't live a little."

We made our way over to the queue.

"Where's Lena?"

"She's here somewhere, with Sam."

I glanced over my shoulder to locate them. It was difficult, in the sea of students, all dressed the same, to pick them out. Private school uniforms could be a good thing sometimes, but otherwise it was kind of annoying.

Finally, I located them on one of the last tables on the far end of the cafeteria. Sam was talking to two other guys, and Lena was leaning over to talk to another girl I didn't know very well.

I waited for Maeve to finish piling the beans onto her plate before starting to walk towards the table. She followed me, leaving Ray behind.

Although Ray was a friend of mine, she kind of had her own group at school, so we usually hung out in or between classes.

"Hey, Del! What did Ms Aguilera want? All ok?" Sam asked, as I set my tray down and set beside him.

"Yeah, she asked me if I wanted to help tutor some middle school kids."

"Damn, smarty. So, are you gonna do it?"

"Probably." It wasn't exactly like I could say no.

"Cool, cool."

We continued chatting, and were joined by the remainder of our group within five minutes. Kyle and Lewis, the two other boys, followed by Suraj.

Kyle was kind of like Ray in the sense that he was a part of the group without doubt, but hung out with some other kids as well.

He was friends with the group of kids that Lena had met in the Bahamas, the very rich ones.

Yes, I know, private school is full of rich kids, and it's not like my family wasn't affluent either. Everyone here had parents with net worths over ten million dollars, for sure, some substantially more.

My friends all knew that, but we classified the kids as rich depending on how much the kids actually spent, or rather, how rich they looked. They were the ones who wore fancy shoes, drove fancy cars, and lived in fancy houses.

My house was big, but it was homely. Messy, things scattered around everywhere, warm colours and plants. We called kids the rich kids when their houses looked like hotels. Marble flooring and white lights.

I didn't really like the rich kids, to be honest. It was a stupid prejudice, but sometimes I found myself resenting that they were draining resources in the way they did.

I hated how easy they seemed to have things, that they could just go to school and do whatever they liked and know that they'd inherit their parents' business one day.

Yes, it was judgemental, and I wanted to fix that, but I couldn't help it sometimes.

"Del? Earth to Del." Suraj snapped his fingers.

"What?"

"Are you coming? Yes or no?"

I looked around and realised that all my friends were standing up, ready to leave the cafeteria. Usually we went to the basketball court now, the boys would play, and I would walk around with Maeve and Lena.

Some days if I was feeling brave, I might even attempt to play basketball with them, but it was clear that it just wasn't my sport. It was still fun, though.

We dropped our bags in a pile next to the basketball court while Kyle went to get his basketball from his French class, where he had forgotten it.

My mind was still wandering, not really focused on whatever the boys were discussing. Maeve and Lena were walking a few feet behind us, talking about one of the anime series they watched.

"Hey, Del, who do you think is stronger, me or Sam?" asked Lewis.

I glanced over and stifled a laugh.. The two of them were standing side by side, each trying to look as 'masculine' as possible. 

Lewis was in my head the most closely associated with one of those tiktok boys. Josh Richards, maybe?

He was tall, blonde, and muscular, the type of guy where you'd show up at his house to work on a project but he'd open the door shirtless and offer you sodas instead to postpone the work.

Sam was slightly more stocky, as opposed to Lewis' more lean figure.

"Lewis, probably."

"Hey!" Sam protested. "The guy cant even do proper push ups!"

"Really?" Lena asked, poking her face out from behind me.

She and Lewis had been in this awkward friends-or-more situation for the last couple of months, but they seemed to want to keep things ridiculously slow.

"That is not true," he mumbled, his face turning slightly pink as his voice cracked mid- sentence. He cleared his throat. "Ahem- I mean that that is so not true."

Sam snickered. "Okay, twenty push- ups, buddy, you and me. Let's go."

I looked over at the girls and we rolled our eyes in unison. As entertaining as they were to watch, the boys' testosterone battles could get annoying.

Thankfully, we didn't have to experience the push-up competition, thanks to the interruption. Kyle came running over, Suraj right behind him with the basketball in hand.

"Okay, girls, you playing?"

"Nope."

"No."

"Have I ever?"

The three of us shot them smiles and began walking away.

We did a couple of rounds around the open area where most of the other kids were before returning to the court. A bunch of other kids had also joined the boys in playing, and they were now five on four.

"Hi, uh, I- can I also play? Or are they almost, uh, done?" A guy's voice, unfamiliar, rang out from behind us. We turned to see a tall, broad guy, even bigger than Lewis. Asian. 

This must be the new kid.

His sentence, though not very heavily accented, was somewhat fragmented, as if he weren't really very comfortable with English.

He looked intimidating, if I was being honest, his face serious and unsmiling. 

But he also must be so nervous, I couldn't imagine how hard it would be to join a new school in the middle of the year.

"Hi!" I plastered a smile on my face. "What's your name?"

"I'm Khit."

"Well, Khit, it's so nice to meet you. Are you new here?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. If you need anything, you can ask me, or any of us," I said, gesturing towards Lena and Maeve.

I realised, frustrated, that they had already begun to walk away. Maybe I was the most 'outgoing' of the group, but could they really not help out a new kid?

I pasted the smile back on my face, though, turning back to the new guy Khit. "I'm Del. And that is Sam, Lewis, Kyle, and Suraj." I pointed each of them out. At least the guys, I hoped, would be more helpful.

Khit gave me what almost looked like a half smile. Could be a cringe, there would be no way of knowing. "Thanks."

"They're almost done, since class is starting soon, but just come by at the beginning of break tomorrow and you can play as well, I guess."

I stood there, watching the basketball game for a few more minutes before the guys finished up, thinking through what I would do in the evening. We hadn't got too much homework, so maybe I could do something fun.

My brother had been going on about how much he was craving cookies the last few days, so maybe I could bake a batch. Poor guy deserved some kind of treat after all the studying he had been doing.

"Hey, Del, we have biology now, right?" Sam picked up his stuff and made his way over to me and Khit. He smiled and introduced himself.

"Yeah." I turned to Khit. "What class do you have?"

"Um," he pulled out his schedule from his bag. "Chemistry."

Sam peered at the schedule over his shoulder. "Oh, that's Mr. Davis's class, we can show you the way."

"Thank you," he huffed.

"So, Khit, did you just move here from Thailand?"

"Yes, I lived in Phuket before."

"Oh, wow. Del has been there before, right?" Sam glanced at me as we led him to the school block.

"Yeah, I went there last year."

"Here, this is the chemistry class," said Sam, saving us from an awkward silence that threatened to follow.

"Thank you."

"And you have computer science after this, which is just on the end of this hallway," said Sam, pointing down to the computer lab.

Khit gave us both a nod and went into the class just as the bell rang.

I glanced over at Sam as we walked to the Biology class in silence.

His kindness in this respect, sure, it was a small thing, but the fact that he out of all my friends had been the one to do so was somewhat surprising to me, for whatever reason.

Never thought the almost bad boy would be more helpful than the others, but Sam surprised me in that way sometimes with his decency of personality.

"What?"

"Huh?"

"You're staring. Is there something on my face?"

"No, I was just- thinking. Sorry."

We rounded the corner and reached the biology class. Everyone else was already in their seats, so we rushed to take ours.

I sat down next to Maeve, ignoring the irritation I had from before, when she had left me behind with Khit. 

"Hey," she whispered as I slid into the seat. "Dude, did you hear about eco?"

"Huh? What about eco?" We didn't even share an economics class.

"My teacher's on maternity leave, so my class is being split into three, and we'll go into the other classes."

"Oh, nice, nice, which class are you in?"

"Yours!" she gave me a smile.

"Damn, that's awesome! My teacher's great." I'd pretty much forgotten that I was irritated at her already.

"I know, I'm actually quite excited."

"Great, great. That's awesome! Now we'll have three classes in common rather than two."

"Yeah, but unfortunately Amir is gonna come to the class too."

"No!" I yelled a bit too loudly. My teacher sent me a glare, and I sank back into my seat.

Amir was one of the very very few kids, by which I mean the only kid, that I genuinely disliked. A homophobic, judgemental, hypocritical weirdo that seemed to want to pass comments on everyone around him, whether or not they wanted it. Honestly, they never wanted it.

"Man, that sucks," I mumbled to her under my breath.

"Yeah. But it'll be fine. I mean, we have each another."

"I hope so."

***