Head Over Heels ✓

17 / drunk on love

december, age 16

Asher's seventeenth birthday fell on a Saturday, one week before school was due to finish. It seemed barbaric to most of the students that they had to keep going until the twenty-second of December, the vast majority of the exciting Christmas run-up wasted in the classroom, and many of the teachers agreed. While the private schools in the area had already broken up, St Matthew's had no intention of releasing the pupils so soon.

The last week of term never meant anything more than teachers drilling into them that they had their mock exams in January, the same thing they had been repeating since the start of September. It was getting old now, and the boys were prepared. Sixth form seemed to suit Asher: the teachers were more understanding; the classes were smaller; his grades were better.

After getting used to his comfortable Bs, except for his fairly consistent As in art, he had seen a spike recently. It was as though the subjects suddenly made sense after five years of struggle, his brain wrapping around the facts with newfound ease. As his peers found physics more and more difficult, it was clicking all of a sudden; the theory side of his design and technology class had fallen into place.

In the least patronising way possible, Lucas couldn't be prouder of his best friend. Over the past few months, he had watched his transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly; from a struggling student to one enjoyed the classes that were suddenly working in his favour. They had always spent a lot of time together but now, sharing physics as one of the most notoriously tricky A-levels, the two spent even more time working on past papers together.

Along with Mika and Mawar, they had formed an unofficial study group. Despite having four different timetables, they had one free double period each week that they had taken to spending together in whatever empty classroom they could find. In that seventy-five minute period, they helped each other out with whatever needed the most help: sometimes Mika and Mawar worked on political essays together; sometimes Mawar and Lucas got together to break down what their history assignment was asking them to do while Mika and Asher discussed what they were doing for their art coursework, sharing pieces they had come across that would help the other.

Mawar had slipped into the group with ease. She was friendly and bright and she had never said a single thing that could be taken the wrong way: she and Mika were virtual twins, Lucas thought, two of the most impossibly nice people he had ever met, though Mawar did have a bit of a wild side that had come out after a month or so. Behind her innocent eyes was a brilliantly dark humour that had shocked Lucas at first, though he was growing used to it. He quite liked it, in fact. She was fun and she was funny, and nothing seemed to faze her. And, without pushing him, she helped him to step out of his box.

Every Wednesday, the sixth form had games all afternoon. From two until four, they were expected to play a sport or head to the gym, or pursue their own physical activity off school grounds. Mawar took full advantage of that leeway: after lunch, she signed the four of them out under the pretence that they were heading to their own gym and they headed into town. At first, Lucas had felt bad for skipping games until she had pointed out how much he hated it and how pointless it was. The P.E. teachers didn't care about anyone except their own teams.

What had once been a part of the week that Lucas feared, bunking off school to head to the coffee shop, was now one of his favourite times.

*

The sun disappeared early in December, the light fading before it was even four o'clock on the dark Saturday afternoon and by seven o'clock, the sun was long gone. Although Farnleigh was lit up by the glow of shops and cars, the sky over Rooks Hollow was heavy and black, dotted with the stars that could be seen in the countryside. With hardly any houses around other than Asher's, it was ordinarily deadly quiet with only the occasional crunch of tyres on gravel if someone dropped by or an expostulation of foul language if Ishaana stubbed her toe.