School it was then. Which also meant having to walk to school with Philip, since he didn't have a car because he wasn't "old enough". Okay, how old was he?! It seemed kinda rude of me to ask that question out of nowhere but it was driving me crazy. Dude looked like he was nineteen but he couldn't drive a car by himself, but he did have a driver's license?

"How old are you?"

He looked over at me, a bit confused but mostly surprised that I asked that out of nowhere, like I thought he would.

"Didn't, like, the agency people tell you all about us already?", he asked.

I shrugged: "Not really."

Another moment of silence between us. It was almost like he was doing that on purpose now. He definitely tried to avoid answering my question, which I was definitely not letting him do.

"So?"

"I'm sixteen."

It felt like that number slapped me right across my stupid face. At first I was in shock but after having a better look at him I kinda saw it, but I would have still guessed he was between seventeen or eighteen, definitely not only a year older than me. 

He also had a few barely noticeable freckles on his face and was that a small scare on his cheek? By then I realised I was looking at him for way too long and he definitely noticed. Jumping away from him definitely did not help making myself any less obvious.

"Sorry.", I awkwardly mumbled, hoping he wouldn't get mad at me for staring at him like a weirdo.

"You're curious, I get it. I would be too."

These people seemed way too nice for my liking. Most of the time people would get easily ticked off where I came from, especially my family. So it was strange, I wasn't sure if it was a bad strange or good strange yet. Sometimes people would pretend to be nice at first and wait until I let my guard down to hit me with their true intentions. Like I said, you get a nice grandma or you don't, and by then I mostly got the latter.

We continued walking in silence. At that point I started wondering that maybe he was just shy and didn't like to talk, and by trying to force it I was making him uncomfortable. It wasn't like I wanted to talk anyway, even if I befriended him it wouldn't change a thing. I was going to leave that town sooner or later. There was no point in making any connections. 

Just before my thoughts could get any more depressing a freaking fox suddenly jumped out of the bushes in front of us and ran across the stone street. I obviously screamed and jumped back, that was the first time in my life I saw a real fox and it was only a few meters away from me. Philip just looked over at me, unfazed, well until he started laughing.

"You look like you've never seen a fox before."

"I didn't! Aren't they, like, dangerous or something?!"

He just continued chuckling to himself and kept walking, by then I really felt like he was laughing at me. After taking a deep breath I started following him again and he remarked:

"You really never saw a fox before? What about a bear? Or deer?"

"There are bears?"

He chuckled again, it was probably funny to him that there was someone that never saw animals like that before when he probably saw them on a daily basis.

He pointed at a forest off in the distance: "In the Black Forest there are some. Don't go in too deep and you should be fine though."

"Like I would even go there in the first place."

I definitely wasn't planning on it. The Black Forest was definitely the perfect name for that dark pit of hell that was that forest. It looked like something from a horror movie. You could barely see it behind the cramped buildings, I didn't even notice it before Philip pointed it out.

We started crossing a small stone bridge over a canal when someone on a bike saw us and quickly rode over to the end of the bridge and waved at Philip.

"Hi, Philip! Is that the city girl?", they smiled.

City girl? Is that what they know me as?

"This is Fifi. Fifi, this is my friend, Radoslav."

Radoslav smiled at me with the most perfect smile I've ever seen. If I had teeth like that I definitely wouldn't stop smiling just like him. As he got off his bike you could tell he was a bit shorter than Philip, but he still looked around his age, well maybe younger, although Philip wasn't the best reference point to determine someone's age. 

Unlike Philip his outfit seemed more organised. Fitted pants, tucked in white shirt with a barely visible design on it. He definitely took care of himself. 

He scratched his perfectly cut short brown hair: "Showing her around town?"

"No, we're just going to school."

"School? Girl has barely arrived and you're dragging her to school? No."

Radoslav leaned his bike against the short stone wall between the path and canal and put on his backpack.

"No. We're showing her around. Come on."

Before we could say anything he already started walking away. I looked at his bike that he just left there without even hooking it up to anything, is that town so safe he can just leave it there? Looking at Philip expected him to be annoyed by his friend but instead he seemed more amused than anything.

"You heard him."

Before I knew it we were going around town and Rudoslav acted as a tour guide of sorts. All of the buildings were close together making the paths at some points wide enough to fit only one person. There were also definitely more plants there than in the city. Vines grew all over the walls and some trees even grew out of the stone pathways. It felt like walking through a dense jungle. As he took me around he pointed at a few shops and houses and told me who worked or lived there. Mr Smith, Mrs Jones, Ms Emily, Mr James. I barely could keep up with the names let alone what they did. 

He stopped in front of a building that seemed to have flats at the top and on the ground floor a small red book shop. Honestly the red wood it was made out of looked like it was going to crumble at any moment.

"This is the most important building in town, the book café.", Rudoslav explained.

I looked at the book café again and back at him. In its conditions you wouldn't have guessed it was the most important building in town. Don't they have a town hall or something?

"It may not look like it but it has its charm.", he smiled.

"The owner allows us to get stoned there.", Philip cut in.

I looked over at Philip, Rudoslav didn't seem to appreciate his comment, maybe because it wasn't true or maybe because it was a secret and he didn't want new people to know about. Either way neither of them seemed like the type to smoke, well maybe Philip.

"Anyway, is there anything I forgot?". Rudsolav asked while still smiling.

Philip looked over at me and then him. With an unimpressed but also a bit amused look he replied: "The school."

"Ah, right. The school!"

It kind of seemed like Rudoslav was avoiding going there on purpose. Especially since as I learned when we got there, from the stone bridge the school was pretty close by and the "tour" he gave me made a zig-zag around it. 

You're probably wondering how the school looked, well not very noteworthy. It was a lot smaller than I was used to and almost like all of town it was made out of stone, brick and wood. It looked pretty old with its faded colours and stone paths that were missing some stones. It didn't look as old as the book café, though. At least it looked somewhat structurally sound. Walking inside did reveal its good side. The halls had white painted walls and were decorated with a checkerboard black and white floor. It looked nice. There were also some sommer decorations hanging on some walls and ceilings. Some cut out flowers and suns. It was also clear that the school didn't have that many students since there weren't that many classrooms. 

We suddenly stopped walking.

"That's the end of our tour. The principal's office is straight down the hall.", Rudsolav smiled.

The principal? Don't they have more important things to do than to chat with a new student? I guess in a small town like theirs, probably not. The guys went to class and left me alone to go to the principal. It wasn't my first time going to a principal's office, but it was the first time it wasn't for a bad reason.

The halls were weirdly quiet, I could only hear the footsteps of my worn out converse echo down the hall. In the city high school it was never that quiet. The quietest it got was when one time a teacher got so mad at my class that he left. Everyone was suddenly really quiet, until they weren't.

There was suddenly a door in front of me with a golden sign next to it, written on it was "Principal Lamb". What a terrifying name. With that name I imagined they probably baked cookies for the school on Sundays and never put students in detention. I knocked, there was no answer. Maybe they weren't there. Even with Rudoslav's tour I was still 10 minutes early. I tried opening the door but yup, just as I thought it was locked. Looking around I didn't see anything else left to do then just sit on a windowsill and wait. 

From that side of the building the white hall walls were almost golden from the sunrise. Sometimes I wondered why all days couldn't look like this. A sunrise 24/7. But I guess that would take the magic out of it. You look at a beautiful painting for too long and it just starts to look like a painting.

"We're not allowed to sit on the windowsills.", a voice down the hall called out. 

I turned and saw a pretty girl gracefully walking towards me. When I say gracefully, I mean gracefully. It looked like she had practiced waking like that beforehand. Just one foot after the other, perfectly in sync as her small heels' thud echoed through the hall. It was a bit of memorising. She stopped in front of me. Her thick ash blond curls looked almost golden in the sunlight.  She looked at me, her blue-greyish eyes sparkling. It took me a second to get why. The windowsill, right.

"Why is it not allowed?", I asked.

She looked a bit surprised at my question but still answered: "The window is open. You could fall and break an arm."

Her tone was snappy and confident, like no one would poke holes in her explanation. Well, I actually loved annoying people like her. Rich kids that thought they were better than everyone else. I'm saying rich because she clearly was rich. Her white buttoned up shirt underneath a black sweater and a platted paige skirt with a bag that looked like it cost more than a year's salary. Yeah, she was rich, probably old money rich.

"It's the ground floor. You really think I will break my arm falling from this height?"

She looked me up and down and quickly replied: "Yes."

Since it seemed like she was never going to leave if I didn't get off that stupid windowsill I annoyingly got off. I wasn't even sure it was actually a rule or if she had just made it up to annoy me. She seemed pleased with herself and took out a newspaper out of the ones she was holding, that I didn't even notice before, and handed it to me.

"Here. You might as well read something as you wait for Principle Lamb.", she faked a smile.

"How did you-"

She quickly cut me off: "You're clearly new here and he always wants to have a chat with the new students."

Ah right. This school had like only 100 students. Everyone will probably know that I was new. Great. I took the newspaper and just as quickly she arrived she left. That girl clearly thought she was the thing. 

Nevertheless I sat back up the windowsill and started reading the newspaper. First thing I noticed about it was that the ink seemed still a bit fresh. Not enough to smug but enough to be visible in the light. I don't think printers have ink like that. That was probably the most interesting part of that newspaper, everything written in there was pretty boring. A missing cat, someone cut down a tree, students cleaned out an old path and the school's president is trying to fund a new project. Boring. I never was the type to read but I think it would have been less boring to just wait then read that one page "newspaper".

Suddenly I heard footsteps coming down the hall and a very low and commanding voice said: "Get off the windowsill, please."