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Julian was walking towards his favourite bank on the schoolyard, looking forward to fifteen minutes of quietly reading and eating his sandwich, when he could hear a familiar voice shouting behind him: “Hey, Julian. Julian!”. He took a deep breath, turned around and saw a boy his age run towards him. He wore a red hoodie, a beanie and his nasogastric tube, but nothing could wipe that shiteating grin from Marty´s face.
“Hi Julian”, he said, slightly out of breath, as he caught up with the blond boy, “how are you?” “I´m fine”, the other boy answered, “what do you want?” Marty looked at him, pretending to have been insulted but the mischievous glint in his eyes betrayed him. That and the fact that by now, Julian knew full well that this boy was never up to anything good.
“I was actually about to offer my help; I figured you might want to know how we both could improve our grades on the maths test on Friday…” Julian sighed. Marty had hit his weak point; the boy knew how much he was struggling with maths. “I assume your method of improving doesn´t include any actual learning for the exam tho, does it?”, the blonde boy asked, which was answered with a dark chuckle and Marty shaking his head.
“Not really, although I´m sure we´ll learn some other useful things. So, are you up for helping me?” Julian shrugged reluctantly. “What do you want me to do?” With a grin, the taller boy answered: “Well I saw that Mrs. Atkins has left her bag in our classroom. I am hoping that she already has a copy of the test with her and we could take a look at it to make preparing for it easier… But I need someone to watch out for her while I´m in there. So, you´d only have to stand in the hallway and make sure no teacher comes in while I go through her stuff. Alright?”
Marty was good at this. He made it sound like this was just a minor task, nothing to be worried about. And he knew how desperately Julian needed a good grade on this test. So, it was no surprise, that merely two minutes later, the two boys were walking down the hallway towards their classroom. Marty left the door ajar so he could hear Julian, who was standing outside, feeling very exposed and uncomfortable.
Everything seemed to go well at first, he was able to hear some quiet noises from the classroom, then the rustling of paper. But then, right as Julian could hear Marty´s steps walking towards the classroom door, Mrs. Atkins walked around the corner of the hallway, looking at him. “Hello Julian”, she said while walking towards him, “what are you doing in here? You children are supposed to play outside when it´s not raining.”
“Uhmmm I…”, Julian stammered, trying to think of an excuse, “I know we shouldn´t be here… but uh… well I accompanied Marty, cause… he´s not feeling too well. I think he wants to call his parents or something?” He could feel his cheeks heat up; he hated telling lies, but Mrs Atkins seemed to believe him without doubt, lowering her voice as she answered: “Oh no the poor boy, of course he can call home. Please just let me know when he is picked up, alright?” Julian nodded, answering in the most sincere way possible: “Oh of course, I will. Should I stay with him until his dad arrives?” The teacher nodded at him “Oh that would be lovely of you. Thank you for supporting him, Julian! I´ll have to go back out to supervise the playground, let me know if there are any problems.”
“Yes, thank you!”, the blonde boy nodded and watched his teacher as she walked back towards the schoolyard. Only a few seconds after she disappeared from his view, Marty pulled the door open, startling Julian by clapping on his shoulder. “Well done! Didn´t know you could lie this well!” “Me neither”, the blonde boy murmured, “did you find the test sheets?” “Oh yes I did”, Marty answered triumphantly, holding up his phone, “took pictures of all of them!” He shouldered his backpack and started walking towards the school’s main entrance. “Are you coming? You´re excused for at least half an hour and I don´t want to wait for my dad alone. It´ll take him a bit to arrive so we can play cards until he does!”
Well… that didn´t sound too bad. And now, that the nervousness was slowly fading into excitement, Julian felt like they should definitely celebrate their success.