The Grounds

James

School was finally out and the summer of bliss had arrived, a fresh start to reinvent yourself. And that was certainly what I did. That summer, I had a bucketful of first times. The good ones: first love, first drink, first smoke; and the bad ones: first breakup, first time joining a satanic cult, first kill...

For the last four years, we attended an elite boarding school. It was hard work so seeing the end to it was euphoric. But what most of us forgot about was that a week into the summer, we would have summer school, it was compulsory. Being the leaders of the next generation wouldn't come easy. Luckily, summer school was only for three days a week with two to four lessons a day. That was enough for a head-start at the top universities. To get into the boarding school in the first place, you had to get an extremely competitive scholarship, although some rich parents paid the full fee for their child. You could easily tell who those kids were.

In the first week of the holiday when there was no summer school, I just chilled with my best friend Isaac. We relaxed and talked about our hopes and dreams for the future; you know the normal teenage stuff, having false hope of becoming this whole new person. Some students went home for a week with their families but for Isaac and I, we had been each other's family since the day we arrived.

The week flew by as Isaac and I skipped in corridors and burned revision notes at our midnight bonfire. There had been a bonfire tradition in our large 'friend group' for years now. The group was a clique called the 'grounds'. But we were never invited to the gathering as we weren't part of the inner circle. So Isaac and I had our own bonfire instead of it, no other fire could beat this one; just two best friends.

When summer school began, it was like a big slap in the face, the worst part being waking up early. The lucky students who'd been with their families were dragged back to the good ol' books.

When the first thing to note happened, it was the Monday of the second week of summer school. Four weeks until prom which came at the end of the summer.

Monday

I woke up unhappily and vigorously rubbed my eyes. I sat up in bed and looked around. My dorm was reasonably small but we still fit four people in it. I looked over at Evelyn and she smiled; that smile was the light of my life every day. "Hey beautiful," I said cheesily; I loved to make her cringe. In return, she gave me a shy smile. Evelyn was a morning lark and I, a night owl so in the mornings she came to sit on my bed and stroke my hair, but today she just sat there on her own bed.  I was exhausted but I groggily got up and on her bed instead and put my hand on top of hers. "Are you okay?" I asked. It was unusual not waking up to her smile looking over me. She gave me slinky dog vibes. I gently squeezed her hand. 

She then said three words, "student of honour." My brain ages to register the phrase but when it did, my heart panged. I completely forgot. This was the only thing that Evelyn had asked of me in so long, and I'd failed her.

"Oh," I said pathetically. I needed to change the subject, she couldn't know. "Uh, where's Alba?" I asked. I really couldn't care less. Alba had already left our dorm, or she stayed over in another dorm. She was always the outcast of our dorm because she was the only one who fit in with the rest of the girls. We were the strange kids in this school. 

"I don't know, sorry," I could hear the bitterness in Evelyn's voice, she was mad at me. I had to fix this today.

I glanced over to Ivy, the fourth girl in our room, who was still asleep.  Ivy and I hadn't spoken since our fight in the last week of regular school. We'd sorted it out but it didn't feel the same anymore: we were still distant and awkward.