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On Sunday mornings, the young students of St Rose’s Academy for Boys sat down at their desks and spent the early hours writing letters home to their families. As the Headmaster prowled the room, peering over the shoulders of young boys to spy on what they were all saying about life at boarding school, all that could be heard were his heavy footsteps and the sound of pens furiously scratching against paper. If anyone was ever caught talking, they were in big trouble, and usually would have the key to their tuck box taken away, leaving them without the most precious items from home that were stored inside.
Jean had faced punishment for talking out of turn more than anyone else in the school, as he wrote his letters home to his mother quickly, and ended up getting very bored while he waited for everyone else to finish. His favourite way to pass the time was to flick his pencil sharpenings onto the back of Armin Arlert’s head.
Armin was a quiet boy who always had his head in a book. He was terrible at sports, and for a long time, Jean knew him only for that and the intense homesickness he suffered for a few days at the start of every term. It wasn’t unusual to hear crying from the other boys in the dormitory at night, but Jean had noticed the sniffling from the bed next to him a little more. Soon, though, he began to notice more things about him.
Armin wrote more than anyone else on Sundays. He would write pages and pages, his hand flying over the paper. Jean thought he probably wrote more words in one minute than he said over the course of an entire day, because Armin was very quiet unless it was the teacher who was speaking to him. Jean liked to do little things to irritate him, just to see if he could get him to snap or become angry, but Armin never seemed to pay him any attention.
On the rare occasion when they got to have pudding of any kind, Armin seemed happy. Jean decided he must have had one hell of a sweet tooth, because eating dessert was one of the only things to make him smile, other than reading that huge old book he stayed up with every single night.
One other thing that Jean noticed about Armin was he never seemed to get any packages or mail from home. It was normal for the other boys to get packages from their parents once or even twice a week, as the Headmaster encouraged families to send over as much food as they liked. Jean’s mother always sent him a currant cake and a savoury pie, along with anything else he asked her for when he wrote his weekly letters. That food always got him through the week, as the boarding school didn’t provide much to eat at all. Whatever he had left was useful to swap with the other boys, and Jean had a collection of items that he was quite proud of.
Jean always wondered why Armin never seemed to get any packages when he was obviously writing so much home, so one Saturday morning while the rest of the boys were packing away their parcels from home, he asked.
“Arlert,” he grinned, leaning over to the other boy as he untied the string of his package. “Why doesn’t your mother ever send you any food to eat?”
Armin looked up at him quickly. His eyes were wide and a little nervous; Jean had a reputation for getting anyone around him into trouble.
“I don’t have a mother,” he said simply, holding on tight to his book. Jean frowned.
“Liar,” he said. “Everyone has a mother. You can’t be born without one.”
“Well, I’ve never met her, then,” Armin said, not looking over at Jean at all.
“What about your father?”
“I’ve never met him, either.”
“Did they die?” He asked, and when Armin nodded, Jean felt just a little bit bad. He got up from his bed to go and sit on Armin’s, still opening up his parcel. “Where do you go when we go home from school? Do you live at an orphanage in the holidays?”
“No!” Armin frowned. “I go home to stay with my grandfather.”
“Is that who you write those really long letters to?”
Armin looked embarrassed, his face turning bright red. He pulled his sleeves down over his hands and fidgeted, avoiding making any eye contact with Jean.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“What do you have to talk about?” Jean asked incredulously. “You go on for pages and pages! Surely there’s nothing that interesting here.”
“I tell him all about our lessons, and what I’ve been reading and learning,” Armin mumbled. “When I go home he tells me it makes him happy, so…”
“If it makes him happy, why doesn’t he write you back?”
“He can’t,” Armin said, staring down at his bed, eyes welling up with tears. “He’s suffering very badly from sickness, and he cannot hold a pen or go to the post office. But he’s too stubborn to let anyone help him...”
Jean’s eyes widened with surprise and he could do nothing but stare at Armin for a moment as he listened to him speak. He looked down at his package from home and felt as if he had been taking his mother for granted.
“Here,” Jean blushed, thrusting one of his cakes at Armin, who just seemed to stare, not knowing what to do.
“What are you doing?” He asked. Jean could tell he was about to cry and he didn’t understand his own emotions at the sight.
“If you don’t want it, give it back!” Jean said, but Armin pulled the cake close to him as the tears fell from his eyes.
“I do want it!” He sniffed. “I thought you were making a cruel joke.”
“No!” Jean exclaimed. “I just - I don’t like that cake anyway! I was just trying to get rid of it!”
“Can I try it?”
“It’s yours,” Jean grumbled. “Do what you want with it.”
Armin nervously pulled a chunk off the side of the fruit cake and seemed to savour the smell of it before putting it into his mouth. His eyes lit up instantly, and he smiled wider than Jean had ever seen him smile in the entire time he’d been observing him.
“It’s really good!” He exclaimed excitedly. “Does your mother really make this?”
“It’s nothing special,” Jean lied. “She’s always sending me way too much anyway, I’m sick of it.”
Jean scrambled to his feet and stormed back to his own bed, taking his parcel with him, not noticing the letter that fell out. He started quickly shoving the contents into his tuck box without even looking at them, and the matron shot a nasty glare his way for being so hasty.
“Jean,” Armin said, leaning over and handing out the letter he forgot. Jean snatched it back, his cheeks still bright red. “Um, I… thank you.”
“Don’t you dare tell anyone I gave that to you,” Jean said darkly, looking around to make sure nobody was watching.
“I won’t!” Armin exclaimed. “I’ll keep it a secret. But… can you please tell your mother I said thank you when you write your letter home tomorrow?”
Jean balled his hands into fists, feeling a strange emotion, and huffed as he looked away.
“Fine,” he said. “But you owe me.”
The next day, Jean sat at his desk behind Armin, staring at the back of his head as he wrote quickly and methodically with his pen. Jean’s paper was blank because he had no idea where to start. He couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Armin’s face when he tried that first bite of the cake. Why did he want to see that happy smile again? That wasn’t like him.
The Headmaster scolded him when he leaned over Jean’s shoulder and saw that he hadn’t written a thing, and Jean didn’t want to get into trouble again, so he got to work. The entire time he was writing, he had a little frown on his face, biting his bottom lip as he focused harder than he ever had on writing a letter back home to his mother.
What must it be like to not have a mother to go home to? Jean couldn’t imagine. His mother nagged him so much, was always sending him letters and parcels, and it had become the norm for him. The idea of it all stopping and just having nothing… it made him think twice about how he always acted.
He wrote for a little while about various things, answering the questions from the letter she had sent to him the day before, about playing football and his lessons, and what he might like for Christmas when he came home. When he looked up to the clock, he saw that he only had ten minutes left, and he quickly moved onto his last paragraph.
Please can you send more cakes with your next parcel, or maybe something new? I have decided to take pity on one of the other boys and share my food with him as he doesn’t get a thing from home. Yesterday I let him have the currant cake you sent to me and he told me to say thank-you on his behalf. He had a big smile on his face when he tried it. His name is Armin.
Jean quickly finished up the letter after that, his handwriting much messier at the bottom of the page than it was on the top, but Jean knew his mother would probably be excited to read so much from him as she was always nagging him to tell her more about his life at school. He felt a little bit nice after doing a nice thing, but the scowl on his face as he filed out of the room with the other boys would never have given him away.
After letter-writing, all the boys from St Rose’s filed up and walked to the nearest village, where they all attended church. Usually, Jean’s favourite part of this trip was getting to look in the windows of the shops on the small high street, but he found himself having fun as he walked side-by-side with Armin. He’d spent so long annoying him to try and get him to talk, but until now he’d never considered just starting a conversation.
“I told my mum what you said,” he told him. Jean always dragged his feet as he walked, which was why his shoes scuffed so easily.
“You did?” Armin beamed; his smile was so bright that Jean had to take a step back and look away.
“It isn’t a big deal!”
“Thank you! I haven’t gotten a present like that since my grandfather gave me my favourite book.”
“Is that what you’re always reading?”
Armin nodded. “I read it every single day!”
“What, the whole thing?”
“Yeah!”
“Don’t you get bored of it? You must know it word by word by now.”
“I could never get bored of it,” Armin said, shaking his head.
“It must be the best story ever, then.”
“It’s not a storybook,” Armin told him. “It’s a book full of real-life facts about the world.”
“That sounds boring!”
“It’s not boring one bit! It’s amazing. It teaches you all about the creatures in the ocean, and the rainforest, and the desert, and all sorts of interesting places. My grandfather used to go travelling around the world, and he would see so many wonderful things, and when I go home he tells me all about them. That’s why… that’s why I love the book, because it’s like… a letter from him.”
That was the most amount of words Armin had ever spoken in a row, Jean thought. He had that strange feeling in his stomach again, one that made him want to be closer to Armin, and to be his friend. It scared him a little bit, but he didn’t know why. It was confusing.
“...It doesn’t sound that bad, then,” he murmured, not looking at Armin or the way his eyes were shining brightly with tears.
Jean-Boy,
It was wonderful to hear so much from you this week! I was delighted to read about what you’ve been up to and I’m so glad to hear that you have been having fun and making friends. You know I worry so very much about how you are getting along at school, and if the other boys are kind to you. It makes me happy to know things seem to be changing for the better!
I may have gotten a little carried away with baking, but I have sent everything to you, along with some fruit and a few wooden toys for your friend. What you wrote about him made me very sad, so please be good and share nicely with him. When you write next, please include anything he might like and I shall see if I can send it over. Both of the parcels are identical, so don’t worry about who gets which one.
Jean was bright red in the face as he read the rest of his mother’s letter. He folded up the paper and put it away before anyone else could look over his shoulder and see; the last thing he wanted was to be teased. He could feel a pair of eyes on him as he picked up one of the two parcels that had been addressed to him.
“Armin,” he whispered, looking around the room to make sure nobody else heard. The other boys were all busy with opening their own parcels. “Come here.”
Armin closed his book and tucked it under his pillow before coming to sit cross-legged on Jean’s bed, looking up at him nervously. For the last few days, they had been spending their free time together, sat side-by-side at lunchtime, and Armin had even been helping Jean with his homework.
“What is it?”
“Uh… I told my mum about you in my letter, and… she wanted you to have this,” Jean said, not looking at Armin as he shoved the parcel at him.
“This… is mine?” Armin asked. Everything about him seemed small to Jean - his voice, his stature, his frame.
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” Jean blushed, looking away. Armin nodded, staring down at the parcel. “Are you going to open it, or not?”
“I’m sorry!” Armin said, shaking his head before untying the string. He folded back the layers of brown paper, unwrapping the contents, and when he was done, he seemed to stare at what was inside like he was in some sort of trance. Jean took a bite out of a bright purple plum as he watched him, eyebrows furrowing as Armin didn’t say a word.
But then he saw the first of Armin’s tears fall onto the paper and he had no idea what to do.
Armin brought both of his hands up to his face and his shoulders started to shake as he sobbed into his palms, and Jean panicked, looking around the room with confusion, not understanding what was going on. He really didn’t like the sight of Armin sad like this, not when he’d actually tried to be nice for once.
“Hey!” He said urgently, leaning forwards to poke Armin, getting plum juice on his shirt. “Stop crying, it was supposed to make you happy! What are you getting all upset for?”
“I am happy,” Armin cried, only leaving Jean more confused.
“Then why are you crying?”
“I - I would never have expected something this nice to happen to me,” Armin sniffed, unable to stop the tears streaming down his face and dripping off his chin. “Thank you.”
“It was my mum, it wasn’t me,” Jean deflected, not wanting the image of him being nice to get around. “But… you’re welcome. I’ll, um, I’ll tell her it made you happy.”
“This must have been so expensive,” Armin breathed, looking at the range of fruit inside the parcel, as well as the toys and cake. “I can’t afford to pay you back…”
“You don’t need to,” Jean told him. “My mum said you can ask for anything you want.”
Hearing that only made Armin burst into tears again, and Jean felt a little awkward, but mostly sad himself as he waited for Armin to calm down.
“I don’t understand why,” he sniffed, and Jean scratched his head, not looking at him.
“She’s just - she’s excited that I have a friend,” he said quickly. “Because I guess I’m always getting into trouble with the Headmaster, and I didn’t have any friends at my last school, and I never really talk much in my letters so-”
“A friend?” Armin whispered, and Jean felt his face heat up as he realised what he said. “We’re friends?”
“Huh?!” Jean exclaimed, scampering backwards, more embarrassed than he’d ever felt in his life, not even after he was the only one not allowed to go out to town one Saturday because of his poor behaviour and the other boys had teased him. “You didn’t think we were friends?! What the hell would I write to my mum for -”
“Oh,” Armin said. His eyes were so big and so blue, Jean noticed. He swallowed.
“We don’t have to be friends,” Jean muttered. “It’s not like I-”
“I want to be your friend!” Armin exclaimed, still crying. “I really want that!”
“You do?”
“Yes! I promise! I just… never expected anyone to say that to me…”
“Yeah, well, I did,” Jean told him, and he held out his hand for Armin to shake, just like he saw his dad doing when he was doing important grown-up things.
Armin looked surprised for a moment again before he shook Jean’s hand, and though his cheeks were stained with tears, he had a wide smile on his face.
“Friends?”
“Friends.”