Between Us, Part 4: Filip’s Perfect Day

Between Us, Part 4: Filip’s Perfect Day

The Story Begins

Morning, When You Have to Pretend You’re FineFilip came into school exactly as the bell rang at the entrance. He had his sports jacket half open, messy blond hair, and the look of someone who had arrived to save Monday from boredom.

“Pay attention,” he called from the doorway of Class 8.B. “Today I came on time. If this happens again, I’ll have to see a doctor.”

A few people laughed. Someone slapped him on the shoulder from behind. Filip bowed so low that he almost hit his forehead on the doorframe.

“That would be a shame,” Kaja said. “We don’t have the budget for a new comedian.”

“Don’t worry, I work for free,” he replied at once.

The class laughed again, and the tension of the morning arrival, wet jackets, and sleepy faces faded for a moment. That was often how it was with Filip. When someone argued over the seat by the window, he made a remark. When the room was too quiet before a test, he made a fool of himself. When the teacher was late, he could turn an ordinary board sponge into the subject of a scientific debate.

Nela sat at her desk by the window and slowly took out her notebook. Its cover had stickers of stars and tiny cats, and one corner was already peeling away. She looked at Filip as he laughed with the others.

His laugh was loud. A little too loud.

At the same time, he ran his fingers briefly beneath his eyes, as if something itched. Then he smiled again at once.

“What about the playground after school?” a classmate at the back desk asked him. “You promised us a rematch last time.”

“Sure,” Filip said without hesitation. “Today I’ll take you apart piece by piece.”

“You always say that,” someone called out.

“And it always sounds good,” Filip added.

Adam, who sat one desk away, glanced at him briefly. Then he looked down at the phone he had just managed to hide beneath his notebook before the teacher came in.

Nela opened her notebook. She did not write anything. She only drew a small circle in the blank margin of the page.

The Assignment He Forgot

The first lesson was Slovak. The teacher placed a pile of notebooks on the desk and looked over the class.

“I assume everyone has the description of a place ready, the one we talked about last week.”

Paper rustled at the desks. Kaja pulled out her notebook at once, as if she had been waiting to be called on. Adam calmly uncapped his pen. Nela turned to a page with several crossed-out sentences and let out a quiet breath.

Filip remained perfectly still.

First he looked in his bag. Then in his pencil case, although he knew the description could not be there. At last, he opened his maths notebook and flipped through it so quickly that a wrapper from his snack fell out.

The teacher came to his desk. “Filip?”

He lifted his head. His smile was ready, exactly as always.

“Miss, my assignment is very modern. It exists only in my head.”

A few amused sounds came from the back desks. But the teacher did not smile.

“And will it exist on paper too?”

“Of course. It’s just… the paper didn’t seem to reach me today.”

“So you don’t have the assignment?”

For a moment, the classroom fell quiet. Filip rubbed the back of his neck.

“I don’t,” he said. “I forgot it.”

Kaja turned around. “Wait, yesterday you texted me that you’d already finished it in the evening.”

When Things Start to Change

She said it quickly, without thinking. As soon as the words were out, she frowned, as if she wanted to take them back.

Filip turned only halfway towards her. “I had. Mentally.”

This time, almost nobody laughed.

The teacher made a note on the list. “Bring it tomorrow. And please, no more modern solutions.”

“Sure,” he mumbled.

When she turned back to the board, Filip kept pretending to look for a pen for a while. In truth, he was staring at the empty page in his notebook. The smile remained on his face, but only on one side.

Adam quietly pushed a spare sheet of paper towards his desk.

“For next time,” he said without looking at him.

“Thanks,” Filip replied, sounding normal. Too normal.

Nela noticed that he did not raise his hand once during the whole lesson. That was unusual. Even when he did not know the answer, he usually said something that made the others laugh.

The Hallway, the Chat, and One Bad Line

After the bell, the class poured into the hallway. There were open lockers everywhere, wet trainers, the smell of sweet pastries from the snack bar, and voices overlapping one another.

Filip took out his phone. The class chat glowed on the screen.

8.B – no teachers

Lukáš: Who’s going to the playground after school?

Kaja: Not me, I’ve got training.

Lukáš: Filip is, because he owes us that rematch.

Then another message appeared.

Lukáš: Unless his lost assignment suddenly turns up too 😀

Two laughing reactions appeared beneath it. Nothing terrible. Things like that came up in the chat all the time. A short comment, an emoji, someone replied, someone did not. A few minutes later, people were talking about something else.

Still, Filip stared at the screen a little longer than he needed to.

“Hey, star,” said Mišo, a classmate beside him, nudging him lightly with his shoulder. “What’s up? You’re quiet today. Say something so we can wake up.”

Filip looked up. “Sure. Do you know why notebooks go to school? Because they’d be bored at home.”

Mišo looked at him.

“That was awful,” he said at last.

“I know.” Filip laughed. This time it was so loud that a girl by the lockers turned around.

Then he shoved his phone into his pocket and walked down the hallway. He did not hurry, but he did not stop to speak to anyone either.

Nela stood by her locker with a history book in her hand. She saw his shoulders drop for a moment when he thought nobody was looking. But two seconds later, two boys from the next class passed him, and Filip straightened at once.

“Hi, legends,” he called after them.

Nela closed her locker more quietly than usual.

The Break When You Can’t Keep Playing

During the long break, most of the class gathered around the desks by the window. Someone played music softly from a phone, someone opened a bag of crisps, and Kaja was trying to explain the rules of the game they wanted to play on the playground after school to Adam.

“No, you can’t stand by the basket all the time,” she said. “That’s not strategy. That’s just standing.”

“So far, it works,” Adam argued.

“So far, you’ve played once.”

Filip sat off to the side on the windowsill. He kept tossing an unopened bottle of water between his hands. Lukáš turned to him with an expectant smile.

“Come on, say something bad about Kaja’s coaching. You do it better.”

“Kaja is a great coach,” Filip said.

An Important Moment

Everyone went quiet for a second.

Kaja raised her eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

“Completely. I’m just trying to be a better person.”

“Don’t,” Kaja said before she could stop herself. “When everyone acts as if we have to wait for you to cheer us up again, it’s weird anyway.”

The words hung in the air. Kaja looked away at once.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she added quickly. “Well… I did, but not against you. Just… you know what, never mind.”

Filip shrugged. “It’s fine. Everything is fine. That’s my life motto, right?”

This time, nobody laughed.

Adam made room beside him on the chair. He did not say, Sit down. He simply moved his backpack to the floor and handed Filip the unopened raspberry soda that had been by his foot.

“I bought two,” he said. “I don’t want one.”

Filip looked at him. “You don’t drink raspberry soda?”

“I do. But today I feel like water.”

“That’s a pretty weak excuse.”

“I know.”

Even so, Filip took the bottle. He sat in the empty seat and, for a while, only twisted the cap. Nela stood by the window with her arms folded. She noticed that he smiled whenever someone walked past their group. As soon as the strangers looked away, the smile disappeared.

Soon the bell rang. Everyone moved at once, as if someone had pulled them by an invisible string. Filip was among the last to stand.

When a Joke Is No Longer Enough

After the last lesson, a small group stayed by the back exit. Most of the class had hurried home or to catch buses, so the hallway was unusually quiet. Grey clouds gathered beyond the glass, and somewhere near the gym, a door slammed.

Filip slung his backpack over one shoulder. His phone vibrated again. He looked at the message but did not open it.

“So, the playground?” Adam asked.

“Probably not,” Filip said.

“But you said you’d take us apart piece by piece,” Kaja reminded him carefully.

“I’m off disassembling duty today.”

Nela stood by the wall with her notebook in her hands. She did not have a good line ready. In moments like this, she usually thought of ten, but only later, when she was already home.

Filip looked at each of them. “What?”

“Nothing,” Adam said.

Kaja brushed her short red hair back from her forehead. “Sorry about the break. I was being mean.”

“You weren’t.”

“I was. I just had this feeling that when you’re not acting fine, everyone suddenly doesn’t know what to do. And that made me angry. Not at you. More at… all of it.”

Filip dropped his eyes to the toes of his trainers. “It’s fine.”

“You don’t have to say that every time,” Nela said.

He looked at her. It was not an accusation. She said it so quietly that nobody would have heard it in a noisy classroom.

The boy smiled a little, but this time he did not finish the smile.

“I don’t know,” he began. “When I’m quiet, people immediately ask what happened. When I say nothing happened, they tell me to be my usual self again. And when I make jokes, at least nobody deals with anything else.”

Adam leaned against the wall beside him. “Maybe they don’t deal with anything else because you don’t give them a chance.”

“Thanks, philosopher.”

“You’re welcome.”

Filip let out a breath through his nose. Then he looked outside through the glass doors for a moment.

What Comes Next

“When I’m not the one who makes everyone laugh, I feel as if I’m just… another quiet boy in the class. And there are plenty of those.”

Kaja opened her mouth, then closed it again. This time, she did not try to answer faster than the others.

Nela pressed a finger against the corner of her notebook. “I’ll notice you even then,” she said.

It was a short sentence. Maybe a little awkward. Nela felt her cheeks grow hot, but she did not look away.

Filip looked at her, then gave a quiet laugh. Not loudly, not for the others. Just like that.

“That sounds almost scary,” he said.

“It was supposed to sound normal.”

“It does sound normal.”

Adam shrugged. “And by the way, a quiet person at the table isn’t a problem. At least he doesn’t have to keep saving the conversation from dying.”

“You’re new. You still don’t know how awful our conversations are,” Kaja said.

“That’s exactly why I’m saying it.”

Kaja finally smiled. Filip did too, though tiredly. Then he tucked his phone deeper into his pocket.

“I’m not going to the playground today,” he said. “And maybe I won’t even send them a whole novel explaining why.”

“That will be hard for them,” Kaja said seriously. “Without your novel, society will fall apart.”

“See? You can manage without me too.”

You Don’t Have to Be the Funniest All the Time

The next morning, there were fewer people in the classroom than usual. Some had not arrived yet, and others were still digging through their bags. Outside, it was raining, and thin drops clung to the windows.

Filip came in without a big greeting. He simply raised a hand towards Adam and sat down at his desk.

Nobody panicked. Nobody started asking why he was not funny.

After a while, Kaja pulled her chair closer to their desks. “By the way, yesterday Adam stood by the basket so long that a pigeon landed on him.”

“That’s a lie,” Adam said.

“It was only a very small pigeon,” Kaja added.

Filip smiled. “So the strategy still works?”

“For the pigeon, definitely,” Adam replied.

They laughed. This time, Filip did not add another three sentences just to keep the laughter going. He let it fade naturally and opened his Slovak notebook. On a clean page, he had begun his description of a place. He held his pen over the first sentence for a moment, then began to write.

Nela took out her notebook. For a while, she watched rain slide down the glass and Filip calmly cross out one word before replacing it with a better one.

At last, she wrote:

Even the loudest laugh can be a shield.