Between Us, Part 7: The Group Project

Between Us, Part 7: The Group Project

The Story Begins

When the teacher placed a colourful box containing sheets of card on the desk, half of 8.B stopped rustling through their notebooks. The other half still acted as if it had nothing to do with them.

“We have a project for the next few days,” she said, writing in large letters on the board: A CITY YOU CAN LIVE IN. “You will work in groups of four. Each group will design part of a city and prepare a short presentation. This is not just about pretty pictures. I want to see how you reach agreement and how you divide the work.”

The classroom buzzed.

“Does that mean we actually have to work?” Filip called from the back row.

A few students laughed. The teacher looked at him over her glasses.

“Imagine that.”

Filip put a hand to his chest. “A hard day for art.”

Nela opened her notebook, the one with the little satellite sticker on the cover. Between her maths notes, she wrote: Groups pretend to be random, but they never quite are.

Around her, chairs were already being moved. Someone quietly called to a friend across two desks; someone else acted as if they did not care who they worked with, while looking only at one particular group. Adam shifted his black backpack from one shoulder to the other and watched the class as if he were calculating possibilities in his head.

But the teacher raised her hand before the class could divide itself.

“I will choose the groups. For once, you will not fight over who sits with whom.”

The back rows responded with unhappy sighs. Kaja straightened up and said quietly, “This will be interesting.”

Then the teacher began reading out names. When Nela’s name was followed by Kaja’s, Filip’s, and Adam’s, the four of them looked at one another for a moment.

It was not a bad combination. At least, that was how it looked from the outside.

Kaja immediately moved her chair closer to Nela’s desk. “Okay. We can do this. A city park, transport, some housing… we could make a really good presentation.”

“And I’ll be moral support,” Filip added.

“Can that be graded?” Adam asked.

“If you make it convincing, maybe,” Filip said with a smile.

Nela smiled too, though only a little. Even then, she could feel things starting to move faster than she could think.

Kaja pulled out a clean sheet of paper. “So, I’ll design the whole city. Nela, you make those nice things in presentations, right? Could you do the slides? Filip can find pictures, and Adam…”

She paused for a moment.

“Adam can work out the transport,” she finished. “He came from another city, so he has something to compare it with.”

Adam shrugged. “I can do that.”

“Great,” Kaja said quickly. “And we’ll sort out the sources somehow as we go.”

Nela looked at the paper. Slides. Sources. Maybe even putting the entire presentation together, if the others sent only pictures and ideas. She wanted to say they should decide exactly who would do what. But Kaja was already writing the title, and Filip was drawing a little cloud beside her with the words City Without Mondays.

“We’re not putting that in,” Kaja said.

“You don’t know that yet. It could be the main idea.”

Nela closed her notebook. Maybe it would become clearer later, she thought.

After school, a group chat was created in the class chat. Filip named it Urban Planners 8.B, But Normal. A minute later, Kaja changed it to Project – City.

That evening, Nela lay on her bed with her phone above her face. A desk lamp glowed beside her, and her schoolbag lay open on the carpet, with the corner of a notebook sticking out.

When Things Start to Change

Kaja: I’ll bring a draft tomorrow of what it could look like.

Filip: I’ll bring energy and maybe pictures.

Kaja: Not maybe. Pictures.

Filip: Fine, fine. Pictures. At least five. Our city should not be ashamed of itself.

Adam: I’ll look into transport.

Kaja: And Nela will make the presentation framework? So we have somewhere to put everything.

Nela’s thumb hovered over the keyboard. She typed: I can, but then it would be good if you sent me everything by Wednesday.

She read the sentence three times. It sounded too strict. Or too much like something an adult would say. She deleted it.

Instead, she sent: Okay.

A few seconds later, Kaja reacted to the message with a heart. Filip sent a thumbs-up. Adam sent nothing.

Meanwhile, someone in the main class chat wrote that the group by the window was already arguing about its topic. Someone else sent a photo of three classmates sitting over papers in the library. Under it appeared a message: We already have half of it done.

Nela imagined everyone watching to see who was falling behind. Not directly. Nobody wrote: You are doing nothing. But a few messages, a photo, and the time they were sent were enough.

She opened the group chat again. She wanted to write that a presentation framework was not just a few empty slides. That if she was going to make it alone, she needed to know what she was actually supposed to put together. In the end, she set her phone down face down.

The next day, they were meant to meet after school in the library. Kaja arrived first, with papers tucked into a clear folder. She had drawn a city plan: a park, apartment blocks, cycle paths, a small square, and even a community centre.

“Look,” she said proudly. “This is the centre. We’ll put the park here, because I don’t want it somewhere between tower blocks like a forgotten flowerpot. And here will be the shops. No huge shopping centre. That’s boring.”

“And where do we put the chip stand?” Filip asked as he sat opposite her.

“Filip.”

“Okay, okay. I’m taking this seriously. Maybe just a small stand.”

Adam arrived a few minutes later. He sat slightly apart and took out his phone. “I found a map of cycle paths from my old city. There are some pretty good ideas there.”

“Excellent,” Kaja said, nodding. “So transport is yours. Filip gets pictures and some interesting facts. Nela makes the presentation. I’ll prepare what we’ll say.”

“And the sources?” Nela asked before she could stop herself.

All three of them looked at her.

The uncomfortable moment did not last long. Only a second. Even so, she felt her face grow warm.

“Well… everyone adds their own, right?” Filip said.

“But if you send me a picture with nothing else, I won’t know where it came from or where to put it,” she explained more quietly. “And if I’m making the whole presentation, I need to know clearly what will be in it.”

Kaja leaned back in her chair. “We’ll put it together somehow. We still have time.”

“We have two days,” Nela said.

“Two days is forever,” Filip declared.

Adam looked up from his phone at the table. “Maybe we should write it down properly.”

Kaja sighed, not angrily, more impatiently. “Fine. Properly, then. Me: city design and the text we’ll say. Adam: transport. Filip: pictures. Nela: slides. Done?”

Nela stared at the paper. It was not done. It still did not say who would put together the sources, who would check the text, or who would decide what even went into the presentation. Still, she nodded.

An Important Moment

On the way home, what annoyed her most was that she had nodded. Not Kaja. Not Filip’s smile. Not Adam’s quiet “maybe.” Herself.

On Wednesday afternoon, the group chat lit up again.

Kaja: I’m sending the draft. I need you to send me your things by this evening.

She attached a photo of her paper plan. It looked good. Very good, even.

Filip: I have three pictures and one picture of a cat by a fountain. Not sure whether that counts.

Kaja: It doesn’t.

Filip: A city without a cat is not a city.

Adam: I have the transport, but I still need to rewrite it.

Kaja: By when?

Adam: This evening, probably.

A moment later, another message from Kaja appeared: Nela, do you have the slides yet?

Nela stared at the screen until it dimmed. She did not. She had an empty presentation open called Our City. A cursor blinked beneath the title. Everything else was in messages, photos, and vague promises.

She typed: I’m waiting for the material.

Kaja replied almost at once: But we are sending it.

Filip: Technically speaking, everyone has something. That’s progress.

Kaja: This isn’t funny.

Filip: Okay, sorry.

In the main class chat, someone asked whether the others already had presentations. Replies began to appear: We do. We nearly do. At least we have a topic. Then someone tagged Filip.

Filip: Our team creates under pressure. That’s how diamonds are made.

Nela felt her stomach tighten. It was not a huge embarrassment. Nobody had laughed at them directly. But suddenly she knew that their group was visible. That their small delay could be passed around with a single joke.

The next morning, they met before the first lesson at an empty table in the corridor. Kaja put the printed plan down a little harder than she meant to.

“So, what do we have?” she asked.

Filip pulled out his phone. “Pictures. Seven. I honestly chose two because they fit the topic.”

“And the others?”

“One is the cat.”

Kaja closed her eyes. Adam handed her his paper about transport. It was short but tidy. Cycle lanes, bus stops, a pedestrian zone. Nela read it and knew they could use it.

“This is good,” she said to Adam.

The boy only nodded. “I could have done more. I didn’t know whether you wanted it in the slides or just as notes.”

Just then, Kaja looked at Nela’s laptop. “Then let’s put it in. Nela, you can put it together now, right?”

Something inside her stopped.

Until then, she had been waiting for Kaja to notice how much was being left to her. She had waited for Filip to stop hiding behind jokes on his own. She had waited for Adam to say more than one careful sentence. But everyone was waiting for something else.

Nela placed her palms on the edge of her laptop.

“Not like this,” she said.

She did not say it loudly. Even so, Filip stopped scrolling through his phone. Kaja frowned, and Adam looked up.

Nela swallowed. “I don’t want to make the presentation alone out of things you send at the last minute. That isn’t divided work. Then I have to choose, rewrite, put everything together, and work out what belongs where.”

Someone walked past in the corridor and laughed loudly. But their table remained completely silent for a moment.

“I didn’t say you had to do it alone,” Kaja replied. Her voice was sharp, but then she looked down at the paper in front of her. “I just wanted us to get moving.”

“I know,” Nela said. “It’s just that we’re moving in a way where some people stand still and someone else runs.”

What Comes Next

Filip lowered his phone. This time, he did not smile. “Okay. That’s probably about me too. I could have chosen those pictures properly yesterday instead of sending a cat into a fountain.”

“That cat was pretty good,” Adam muttered.

Filip looked at him. “Thanks for the support, but you’re not helping me right now.”

Kaja ran a hand through her short hair. “Fine. We’ll do it differently. Everyone will put one part directly into the presentation now. Nela won’t just assemble everyone else’s work. I’ll do the city plan and the spoken text. Adam, transport. Filip, pictures and… what else?”

“Sources,” Nela said.

“Yes. Sources,” Kaja agreed. “And you’ll do the introduction and conclusion. But if you need help with something, actually write it. Not just ‘okay.’”

That last sentence stung a little. It had not been said unkindly. More truthfully than anything.

“Okay,” Nela said automatically, then corrected herself. “I mean… I’ll write.”

This time, Filip smiled, but only briefly. “That sounds promising. And I’ll send the sources before an archaeologist has to dig them up.”

After that, the work did not become magically easy. Twice, Kaja wanted to change the whole plan because she thought the park was too small. Filip sent one picture without the website name and had to find it again. Adam stayed quiet for a long time before adding on his own that there could be more bike racks near the school.

But Nela no longer let things hang in the air. When something was unclear, she asked. When text was missing, she tagged the person in the chat who was meant to add it. Her hands did not shake any less than before, but she no longer waited for things to sort themselves out.

By evening, they had finished the presentation. It was not perfect. On one slide, a photo of trees was slightly crooked, and Filip’s cat had finally appeared, small in the corner beside the park design. Kaja rolled her eyes at it, but left it there.

The last message in the group chat came from Adam: It looks good.

Then Filip wrote: Honestly, it looks suspiciously good for people who nearly argued this morning.

Kaja replied: Nearly isn’t arguing.

After a while, she added: And thanks for finishing it.

Nela looked at the message for a long moment. It was not an apology. Nor was it some grand agreement that fixed everything. Still, it was enough to let her shoulders relax a little.

Before going to sleep, she opened her notebook. She sat over a clean page for a long time without writing. For a moment, the ink paused at the tip of her pen, as if the sentence needed to gather courage too.

At last, she wrote: Silence in a group says something too.