Between Us, Part 12: Between Us

Between Us, Part 12: Between Us

The Story Begins

After the last bell, Class 8.B stayed open longer than usual. The teacher left the key on the desk, said she would be back in an hour, and told them not to leave a bigger mess than there had been that morning.

That last part was hard to manage. Crumpled napkins already lay between the desks, someone had spilled salty snack sticks, and plastic cups of raspberry soda stood on two tables that had been pushed together. Lucka had brought a bundt cake from her grandma, Matúš had brought two bags of chips, and Filip had, of course, brought nothing.

“I brought personality,” he declared when someone asked him about it.

“You can keep that wrapped up,” Kaja replied, reaching for another piece of bundt cake.

Everyone laughed. Even Filip. But his laugh was short, as if he had let it out from habit and quickly hidden it again.

Nela sat apart at her desk. Her sticker-covered notebook rested on her knees, but she was not writing. She watched the class slowly settle into little groups. Some stood by the window; others looked at their phones while pretending to listen. Meanwhile, photos of cups and bundt cake kept appearing in the class chat. Beneath one of them, a message already read: Last 8.B get-together before the holidays!!!

Adam stood by the window with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. His black backpack hung from one shoulder, as if he was not sure whether he would stay for five minutes or the whole hour.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Matúš called to him.

“Maybe later,” Adam replied.

“You only say that because you don’t know how good the cake is,” Kaja said.

“Or because he’s afraid Filip will eat it all,” Lucka added.

“Please,” Filip said, placing a hand over his chest. “I only eat for the good of the group. So you don’t feel guilty about eating alone.”

This time, only some of them laughed. The holidays were just around the corner, the grades had already been finalized, and yet something strange lingered in the room. It was not a problem anyone could point to. More like small gaps between sentences and glances that quickly turned away.

Nela remembered the new seating plan from autumn. Back then, moving two desks had been enough to make people who had barely spoken for months ask one another for a pen. This felt similar. It took very little to change the whole mood in the class.

Filip sat on the edge of a table and picked up a paper cup. “All right, everyone. Since the school year is ending, I propose an official program. Each person says what they’ll do during the holidays, and we explain why it’s a bad idea.”

“Finally, something you’re good at,” Kaja said.

The program really did begin. Lucka wanted to go to the seaside, Matúš to football camp, and someone else to visit her cousin in Orava. Filip had a comment for every answer. About Adam’s planned trip with his dad, he said at least Adam would have time to practise the expression of someone who had chosen hiking voluntarily. When Kaja mentioned her summer job at an ice-cream stand, he declared that the whole town would end up with sprinkles in its hair.

It was fairly funny. But little by little, everyone began turning to Filip whenever the conversation stalled.

When Things Start to Change

“Come on, Filip, save us,” Lucka said with a laugh when Matúš ran out of words while describing the camp. “Without you, this would only be half as fun.”

Filip raised his cup as if to toast his own fame. “Half? That’s a very generous rating.”

But then he set the cup down. For a few seconds, nothing moved. Matúš brushed a crumb from his sleeve, Lucka checked her phone, and someone by the door opened another bag of chips.

“Even half as much fun is still fun,” Adam said calmly. “Not everything needs someone to save it.”

Filip looked at him. A ready joke appeared on his face at first, but it did not come out.

“That’s true,” he said at last. “It’s just that nobody told me I was also the emergency service.”

Kaja smirked. “You’d probably have signed up for that yourself.”

“Maybe.” Filip played with the empty cup. “But sometimes I really don’t feel like constantly thinking up what to say. And when I’m quiet, everyone acts as if the internet has gone down.”

Silence settled over the class, not an uncomfortable silence this time, only a surprised one. Nela looked at him more closely. In class, he always had an answer; in the hallway, a comment; in the chat, a GIF before anyone else had even finished typing a sentence. She had never asked herself whether it tired him out.

“The internet hasn’t gone down,” Matúš said. “Sometimes we’re just waiting for you to load.”

Filip laughed. “At least something still works for me.”

The tension eased a little, but it did not disappear. Instead, it became something that could no longer be ignored.

After a while, the conversations split apart. At one table, they debated whether it was better to go to the swimming pool in the first week of the holidays or in August. By the door, two boys argued about a new game. Nela stood and walked over to the window, where Kaja was standing.

It was warm outside, even through the glass. Long tree shadows stretched slowly across the schoolyard, and hardly anyone was left by the bike rack.

“Your bundt cake is good,” Nela said, even though she knew Lucka’s grandma had baked it.

Kaja glanced at her. “Then tell Lucka. I only ate the better half.”

“You’re good at that.”

“At what?”

“Saying something so it doesn’t sound serious.”

Kaja turned back to the window. “We’re talking normally.”

“I know.” Nela pressed the edge of her notebook between her fingers. “It just sometimes feels as if we’re talking normally a bit too much. As if nothing happened.”

The red-haired girl did not move. In the window’s reflection, Kaja’s colourful hoodie and Nela’s hair falling alongside her face were visible.

“It’s fine now,” Kaja said. “Isn’t it?”

Nela felt the old, familiar feeling rise in her throat. The one that always told her to say nothing, smile, and let it go. But the whole get-together had felt like a series of things people were leaving hanging in the air.

“Maybe for you,” she said quietly. “I was hurt that we stopped talking afterward. And I didn’t know whether you were angry or whether you just didn’t care.”

Kaja crossed her arms. “I did care.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

The question did not sound sharp. That was why Kaja looked, for a moment, as if she did not know where to put her eyes.

An Important Moment

“Because I didn’t know what to say,” she admitted. “And I didn’t want to seem as if I cared about it more than you did. Or as if I was going to cry over something stupid.”

Nela looked at her in surprise.

“It wasn’t stupid,” Kaja added quickly. “I mean… you know what I mean. The whole thing was stupid. That message in the chat, then that photo, and everyone had an opinion about everything. I didn’t feel like explaining what I’d actually meant anymore.”

“Me neither,” Nela admitted.

“So we were both smart and silent.”

They smiled at that. It was not some grand movie reconciliation. Kaja did not say sorry in a way that erased everything, and Nela did not suddenly feel as if it was all fixed. But there was no longer only an empty gap between them.

Meanwhile, louder laughter rose from the table. Matúš was waving his phone.

“Adam, come here!” he called. “We’re voting on whether you’re officially one of us yet.”

“That sounds awful,” Filip remarked.

“It’s a joke,” Matúš said defensively. “You know. Whether 8.B is your class now and all that.”

Adam pushed himself away from the window. His expression remained calm, but Nela noticed that he gripped his backpack strap more tightly.

“And what if I say no?” he asked.

Matúš looked uncertain. “Then nothing. I’m just asking.”

Filip raised his eyebrows. “If you want an entrance test, Adam has to eat three snack sticks at once and say school lunches are the best.”

No one laughed right away. The joke fell between the desks and stayed there.

Adam looked at Filip, then at the others. “I want to be here. Really. But I don’t want to be one of you only if I do everything exactly the way you do.”

Kaja nodded before she could stop herself. “That wouldn’t even work. None of us does everything the same way.”

“That’s true,” Matúš added. “For example, I eat those lunches voluntarily.”

This time they laughed, Adam included. But no one immediately jumped to the next topic. It was as if they all understood that his sentence was not meant for a quick reaction.

Nela felt the notebook on her knees suddenly grow heavier. It held many sentences she had written when she had not felt like speaking. Sometimes that was enough. Not today.

She stood up. She did not need to speak loudly to be heard, but her voice still trembled slightly.

“Can I say something?”

Everyone turned. Filip sat up straighter, Kaja stood by the window, and Adam remained between the desks.

“It just seems strange to me that we keep acting as if everything is clear,” Nela began. “And it isn’t. I don’t mean only today. Things kept happening all school year, then we sent them to the chat, someone reacted, someone said nothing… and we moved on.”

For a moment, she thought she had said too much. So she continued before she could retreat.

“I don’t want us all to apologize now for every stupid moment. I just… it would be nice if we didn’t always have to guess what the other person thinks. Or pretend that nothing hurts us.”

Kaja lowered her gaze, then gave a brief nod.

“That’s pretty impractical,” Filip said. “Honesty doesn’t have an emoji or an undo button.”

“And it doesn’t have an audience either,” Adam added.

Filip looked at him and, this time, smiled normally. Not broadly, not in a way that made everyone else feel they had to laugh. Just normally.

What Comes Next

“Maybe that’s why it works better,” he said.

No one made a grand promise. Matúš did not say he would never ask an awkward question again. Kaja did not promise she would always say everything straightaway. Filip did not turn into a serious person overnight, and Adam still kept his backpack on his shoulder.

Even so, something had shifted. The class managed a few seconds without phones, without an ironic remark, and without anyone needing to save the situation with silence.

Later, they began packing up. Cups went into the bin, crumbs vanished from the tables into napkins, and Lucka guarded the last two pieces of bundt cake for the walk home. The teacher had still not returned, but no one was trying to use the empty classroom for anything silly anymore.

Filip swung his bag over his shoulder. “So, after the holidays, will we all be better people?”

“No,” Kaja said. “You just might not talk every three seconds.”

“That’s cruel. I was just opening up.”

“You opened up by about two percent,” she corrected him.

“That’s still progress,” Adam put in.

By the door, Kaja stopped beside Nela. For a moment, she adjusted the sleeve of her hoodie as if she were looking for the right words.

“It’s good you said it today,” she said at last. “I’d probably still be waiting until September. Or Christmas. Or never.”

“I would have waited too,” Nela admitted.

“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t wait today.”

In the hallway, the group slowly made its way toward the stairs. Adam walked among them, not quite in the middle, but not off to the side by the wall either. Filip was explaining something to Matúš with such serious hand gestures that it was funny. Every so often, Kaja turned to see whether Nela was coming behind them.

Nela looked back into the classroom one last time. The desks that had been moved were not back in their places, and a paper cup had been forgotten on the windowsill. It was not perfect. Maybe after the holidays, someone would be offended again by a message, a photo, or a stupid joke. Maybe they would all be more careful for only a few days.

That evening, she opened her notebook. She held her pen over the blank page for a long time, then wrote a single sentence:

Between us remains what we choose to mend.