Chapter 8: Friends for Life (pt.8)

After a few hours of watching over the classroom with Max, we finally switched out with Rachel and Hailey. I stayed back in the classroom to help print more posters as there were more customers than we all anticipated.

Max hesitated for a while, then said:

"Evan, I'll go first and look for Liam and the others, ok?"

He obviously just wanted to ditch the work.

"Sure thing. Go first, I'll catch up later."

Max quickly ran off and I walked over to the year 6 printer to photocopy more copies of posters.

Carrying the whole pile of posters was harder than I had thought, it took longer than I anticipated too.

"Damn that printer, why did I get a printing error nine times?"

Just getting back to the classroom already took more than 5 minutes, but when I got back to the classroom, I saw that there was a whole crowd outside the door... it seemed that our club was a little too successful.

I managed to squirm my way back into the classroom and sorted the posters on the display table. I squirmed my way out again to go and meet up with Max and the others.

The building with all the clubs was on the far west side of the school, opposite to where my group usually meets up. Whether I run or walk over doesn't matter, as we would still have until 9 in the night to be together, when the first day of the school festival officially ends.

In the courtyard south of the building, food stalls were cramped, filling the air with a delicious aroma of various delicacies. Loud music was blasted over the speaker, in which I recognised some older songs such as Love Story and A Thousand Miles.

The schoolyard was filled with cheerful sounds of people, and the number of stalls made it feel like I was really in an amusement park. The lively mood was a little too much for me to handle, but it was certainly nice for a change of mood.

I kept walking and was almost distracted by the smell of Takoyakis from one of the stalls selling Japanese food.

"No, Evan, you have to find your friends quickly..."

To stop myself from being distracted, I started running towards where my friend would usually meet up. However, when I reached the place, which was a bench located next to our school hall near the far east of the school, the bench was empty.

"Maybe they went strolling around the hall?"

I search around the school hall, but there were no signs of my friends. I almost gave up until I overheard some people talking around the corner outside the school hall.

"Hey, what do you think about Evan?"

"He's quite bossy. Sometimes I don't even feel like hanging out with him anymore."