The classroom was already noisy before the first period had even started. Students moved between desks, bags were being pushed under chairs, and conversations overlapped badly enough that it was sometimes difficult to tell who was talking to whom.
Near the back, Eris sat sideways on top of her desk with one leg hanging down while Clara stood beside her, holding several sheets of paper against her chest. She had been staring at the same page for the third time in as many minutes.
"I think I forgot something."
"You said that three times already," Eris said, without looking up.
"I know. And I still think I forgot something."
Eris finally glanced at her. "You didn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because you've checked those papers so many times that if something was missing, the page would probably tell you by now."
Clara lowered the papers and frowned at her. "That's not how papers work."
"Then why are you asking me?"
Clara opened her mouth, closed it, and looked down at the page again. Eris smiled faintly.
From the seat ahead, Chris had turned around to watch them. "Are you two actually going to tell us what you've been planning, or are you just going to stare at those papers until graduation?"
"We're telling everyone now," Clara said.
"Finally."
Luna, sitting beside him, rested her chin in her hand. "You look nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
"You checked the same page four times."
"That's because I want to make sure everything is correct."
Chris nodded with great seriousness. "That's what nervous people say."
Clara gave him an annoyed look. "You're not helping."
"I wasn't trying to."
Eris slid off the desk and straightened her uniform. "Just explain the important parts first. Venue, food, price, rules. If someone asks something you didn't mention, answer it then."
Clara took a breath. "Okay. I think I'm ready."
"Then let's do it."
They walked toward the front together. Clara stopped near the teacher's desk and looked around the room. A few more students had just arrived, and the noise was still building.
"Everyone, can I have your attention for a minute?"
Her voice wasn't loud, but something about the directness of it made several students turn around immediately. Others followed when they saw their classmates looking toward the front, and within a few seconds the room had gone quiet enough to listen.
Clara held up the paper in her hand. "As most of you know, I've been thinking about organizing something to mark the end of middle school properly."
The room immediately broke open.
"The farewell party?"
"Are we actually doing it?"
"I thought we were still deciding."
"Did they already choose a place?"
Clara smiled awkwardly as the questions spread across the room like a wave. "That's what we're going to explain." Eris stepped forward, lifting the four sheets she'd been carrying, and walked to the front desk of each row to hand one off. "Pass it back after you're done," she said, and returned to the front.
Students leaned in immediately, craning to read over each other's shoulders before the papers had even made it past the second desk.
"The place we've chosen," Clara said, once the noise had settled slightly, "is Maccha Café."
Another wave.
"Maccha Café? Where's that?"
"Isn't that the new one?"
"Yeah, Aaron mentioned it before."
"It's the same one," Clara confirmed. She began explaining what they'd found when they visited: the lounge area, the seating, the open space in the center. "They have enough room for all of us without anyone being crammed around a corner table. There's also space for activities, and they have musical instruments available."
A hand went up near the middle of the room. "They actually let us use them?"
Clara glanced at Eris, who nodded. "We asked. They're letting us use the instruments during the party."
"What instruments?"
"There's a guitar and a few others."
Chris's hand went up immediately. "Can I bring my own?"
Clara looked at him. "Why?"
"In case theirs are bad."
A few students laughed, and Noah looked up from his lunch. "You don't even know how to play."
"That has nothing to do with whether the guitar is good."
"It has everything to do with it."
Clara shook her head. "We're not discussing Chris's musical career right now."
The laughter this time was louder.
The papers continued moving through the room. Clara kept going, explaining that they'd arranged a fixed menu rather than letting everyone order individually, which kept the total cost manageable. "The total comes to V₣10,000 for the class," she said.
The room noticeably quieted.
"Ten thousand?"
"For everyone?"
"That's not bad."
"How much per person?"
Clara raised a finger. "There are thirty-two students. A little over V₣300 each."
A boy near the front had already started calculating under his breath. Someone beside him said, "Three hundred and twelve," before he got there.
"That's still cheap."
"Does that include drinks?" a girl near the window asked.
"Yes. The fixed arrangement includes food, drinks, and dessert."
Students exchanged looks.
"Okay, I'm in."
"Same."
"What are we eating, though?"
Clara glanced at the menu. "The fixed dishes we agreed on with the café."
"That's not an answer."
"It's an answer."
"It's a very vague one."
Eris stepped in before it could go further. "You'll survive not knowing every dish in advance."
"Easy for you to say."
"Why?"
"Because you already know what it is."
"Then come to the party and find out." A few laughs. The energy in the room had shifted somewhere between excited and argumentative, which for their class was essentially the same thing.
Clara pressed on. "One more thing. We're allowing friends from other third-year classes to come."
"Really?"
"Can I invite someone from 3-B?"
"Technically yes," Clara said, "but anyone outside our class has to pay their own contribution separately. It won't come from our V₣10,000."
That cooled the more enthusiastic reactions. Chris raised his hand again.
"What if I invite ten people?"
"No," Eris said.
"Five?"
"No."
"Two?"
Clara pointed at him. "You haven't even named one person yet."
He lowered his hand. "That is a very good point."
"You were just testing limits," Luna said.
"I prefer to call it planning ahead."
"You were planning to invite half the school."
He considered this. "Only half?"
Clara pressed her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh. The papers had reached almost every corner of the room by now, students reading and passing them back and leaning over to compare what they'd seen.
More questions came: how long would they have the space, could they sing, was there a seating arrangement. Clara and Eris answered them one by one, and the room gradually settled from surprised and chaotic into something closer to genuinely enthusiastic.
"No problem from me."
"V₣300 is reasonable."
"I'll bring the money tomorrow."
"I'm definitely coming."
Clara looked at Eris. Eris looked back. The smile between them was brief and quiet, the kind that didn't need an explanation. For the first time, the party didn't feel like an idea they had been talking about for weeks. It was actually happening.
Then the classroom door opened, and Ms. Hart stepped inside with her usual bright expression. She stopped after two steps, her eyes moving from Clara to Eris to the papers still circulating through the room.
"Oh?"
The class went quiet.
Ms. Hart placed one hand on her hip. "Should I ask what my students are organizing without their teacher?"
Clara smiled. "We're organizing our lives, Ms. Hart."
"Your lives?"
"Yes."
"That sounds very serious."
"It is."
Eris quietly covered a smile. Ms. Hart glanced at the papers. "So this is the famous little party planning I've been hearing about?"
"It's not little," Chris said from his seat. "It's very professional."
Ms. Hart raised an eyebrow. "Professional?"
Chris nodded confidently.
"Don't encourage him," Clara said.
Ms. Hart laughed. "Well, if you two are finished with your planning committee, can we have our class back?"
Clara gave an exaggerated sigh. "Fine. But we're not giving you membership."
The class laughed. Ms. Hart pressed a hand to her chest. "Rejected by my own students. What a cruel morning." Another round of laughter, and then she stepped aside.
Tyler walked into the classroom behind her.
His expression was exactly what it always was: calm, unreadable, nothing in his face giving anything away. For everyone else, he simply looked like Tyler.
But the problem from last night was still sitting at the back of his mind, quietly, the way a sound continues after the source has gone.
Sunday. One week earlier.
He had replayed the conversation enough times to remember every detail of it, yet he still couldn't find the point where the timeline had shifted. The meeting should have been later. He knew it should have been later. And yet his family was already preparing to leave this weekend, and he still couldn't trace the reason back to anything he had done.
Clara saw him first. Her expression had been bright only a moment earlier; it softened into something more ordinary, not unhappy, just slightly adjusted. She gave him the same easy smile she'd been giving him every morning lately. "Morning, Tyler."
He looked at her and gave a small nod. "Morning."
His eyes moved to Eris. She had been smiling when Ms. Hart walked in; now that smile was simply gone, not replaced by anything in particular, just ordinary. She held his gaze for a moment before looking away.
Tyler didn't say anything. Ms. Hart clapped her hands once. "All right. Everyone to your seats."
He walked toward the back of the classroom. Eris followed a few steps behind him, and there was a sentence forming somewhere in the back of her throat, some beginning of whatever she had been trying to say since this morning, since yesterday evening, since the moment she realized something was wrong.
"Tyler..."
It almost came out. She stopped it herself, and Tyler kept walking, pulled out his chair, sat down. Eris reached her own desk and settled into it. She placed her papers down and looked at him for a moment, then looked away.
Tyler sat with his notebook open in front of him and copied the first few lines from the board, then stopped. The lesson continued around him, and he listened well enough to answer when Ms. Hart called on him, but most of his attention was somewhere in Gulmerg, in a government office, on a Sunday that had arrived a week earlier than it was supposed to.
His family would leave Saturday evening, arrive around nine, stay the night, and be at the office the next morning by eleven. The same Sunday his classmates would be at Maccha Café for the farewell party. Two events that had never overlapped in the life he remembered, now sharing a date for reasons he still couldn't identify.
Beside him, Eris shifted slightly. "Hey, listen..."
He didn't respond. The thought had its hooks in him too deeply.
"Tyler?"
"Eris," Ms. Hart said from the front, "focus on the lesson."
Eris straightened. "I was just..."
"Whatever it is, you can talk about it later."
She nodded and turned back to her book, and for a moment she actually tried to follow the lesson. Then her eyes moved sideways, and Tyler was still watching Ms. Hart, hadn't glanced at her at all.
She turned back to the page.
I'll talk to him in Lunch then.
They would have more time, and nobody would interrupt them.
That was what she told herself.
The lesson continued. Tyler answered questions, copied notes, looked at the clock at intervals so small they barely registered. Nothing about his behavior seemed obviously wrong. Eris noticed anyway, because she had known him long enough to notice the absence of things rather than the presence of them. Usually, even when Tyler was quiet, there was some small sign that he was aware of the person beside him: a glance, a short response, some dry remark that only made sense if you realized he'd been paying attention the whole time. Today there was almost none of that.
She rested her cheek against her palm and watched him for a moment. He didn't notice, or he did and simply didn't react, and somehow that possibility irritated her more.
She turned back to the board.
Fine.
Lunch.