It’s the last but one time, Henry. The last but one time that you’ll arrive at Dunbridge Academy after the summer holidays, get out of the bus with those excited butterflies in your stomach, and step onto the cobbled courtyard. I really wish I wasn’t so aware of this fact.
I spot at least five people I have to say hello to right away while I wait for my suitcase to be unloaded. Voices and laughter fill the air: Parents are chatting, teachers are hurrying to and fro between little groups of people and mountains of luggage. You can easily tell who’s new, because they seem kind of shy.
I look around for Emma and see that she’s already been pounced on by Tori from the welcoming committee. Meanwhile, Grace takes my arm.
“You are coming to lunch, aren’t you? Mum’s really looking forward to seeing you,” she says. She asked just now, on the bus, and this time I can’t avoid answering.
“Right now?” I glance inconspicuously in Emma’s direction.I’d actually been looking forward to showing her around, making sure she didn’t have time to feel homesick.
“We can just take your stuff up to your room and then go,” Grace suggests. I hesitate, yet it’s what we’ve always done. “Or don’t you want to come?”
“No, I do,” I say hastily. Her face is more tanned than before I went away, her hair longer. The fringe is new, though. “I have to be back by four at the latest. Mrs.Sinclair’s welcome speech,” I explain as Grace frowns.
“Oh, yeah, I’d almost forgotten, Mr.School Captain.”
I have to smile. Then I raise my hand and mess up her fringe. “This is cute.”
“Yeah, d’you like it?” She smooths her hair down again. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision I might live to regret. New school year, new me, you know?”
“Hey, lovebirds?” Sinclair calls, before I have time to reply. Soon after that, I’m hugging my best friend, who, like Tori, is wearing a dark-blue school polo shirt. “Want me to show you the way to your room?”
“Shut it, man.”
Grace rolls her eyes before greeting him.
“Excuse me? Is that the kind of tone my mother expects from her new school captain?”
“It’s just the jetlag,” I say.
“Jetlag? I thought you didn’t get jetlagged when—”
“You don’t,” remarks Grace, reaching for my case. “Coming?”
I glance apologetically at Sinclair, who responds with a shrug.
“See ya later, Henry Harold Bennington,” he calls as I follow Grace.
My room this year is on the third floor of the east wing, but we have to stop a few times on the way as I spot people in our year. I say hi to Omar and Gideon, who are on the rugby team, and Inés, Salome, and Amara, who are in my tutor group. Grace glances impatiently at the clock as I finally heave my suitcase through the doorway and step inside the ancient walls.
“Go ahead and I’ll come in a bit, if you like,” I suggest.
“No, no.” She shakes her head. “Unless you want to unpack first?”
I had wanted to, actually. Shower, unpack, maybe have a little nap, although probably better not the last one.
“You can have a shower at mine,” Grace offers, as if she’d read my mind. “You won’t have to use the communal bathroom just yet then.”
“Sixth form now,” I remind her as I carry my case up the stairs. Everyone at Dunbridge has known what that means since the junior school. No more dorms or shared rooms, and instead, a private room with an en suite. Space to ourselves, so that we can focus on our A levels. This may be Scotland, but like a few private schools here, we do our exams on the English system.
“Lucky you.” Grace sighs, even though she’s had the luxury of a room of her own for ages. I wouldn’t want to swap with her though. It might have been rough, sharing a room with so many boys, but I wouldn’t miss the memories for anything in the world. Even Sinclair doesn’t stay with his parents in Ebrington—since he first started at this school, he’s preferred to sleep in the dormswith the rest of us, and I think that says it all. Of course, as the head teacher’s son, he has a choice. Sinclair, Omar, Gideon, and I shared a room for the last two years, and that really bonded us. It’s almost sad that we’ll all have our own rooms from now on. But at least we’re on the same corridor.
I register with Mr.Acevedo, our houseparent for this year, who hands me the key to my new room. The window looks out to the east, and I can see the sports grounds. Apart from that, it’s much the same as the other rooms I’ve lived in here, just a lot smaller, of course.
I do indeed have a shower, and emerge feeling almost reborn.
“Are you ready?” Grace asks when I appear. She jumps up from my bed and is reaching for the door handle. “Mum wants to know where we’ve got to. I think she and Dad missed you more than I did,” she jokes, and I smile but feel a twinge of pain. Perhaps because I didn’t think as much about Grace as I should have during my five weeks in Kenya. In the past, we’d spent hours on Skype while I was away, but this time, whole days had gone by without us even messaging. And I can’t exactly say that I minded. I didn’t care all that much, and I don’t like that.
Then again, I’d wanted to focus fully on my time with my family. When we were younger, Mum and Dad used to spend all the holidays in Scotland, but for the last few summers, Theo, Maeve, and I have visited them wherever they’re based. Since last autumn, that’s been an international hospital a little way outside Nairobi. Not that we spent the whole five weeks there. Mum and Dad took some time off, and we traveled to South Africa together. I can just about remember our time inJohannesburg before I started at Dunbridge, back when I always went to school wherever my parents were stationed at the time. I guess it’s less common nowadays to go to boarding school when you’re twelve, and only see your parents a few weeks a year. If it hadn’t been for my older brother and sister, who started here at the same time as me and are now both studying at St. Andrews, I’m sure it would’ve been way harder. Without Maeve, especially... She made friends just as fast as Theo did, but she never made me feel like I was bugging her.
