"Nathalie North, the school president, your class president, the head of the school council."

How many titles did that girl have?

"Blond hair, blue eyes, kind of short.", Philip added.

Oh, now I could do something with that description. I looked over at Philip and wondered: "The rich girl?"

Rudoslav laughed: "That's the one."

Philip knew this Nathalie girl and it seemed like he knew her pretty well, since he could recognise her handwriting, or maybe she just handed out her notes to everyone. 

Both of them chuckled to themselves like I should have known her from the beginning. I literally just got there. Is she really that popular that a totally new kid was expected to know her?

"And she isn't just rich, she's like rich rich. Her family owns a mansion not far from here.", Rudoslav explained and as he finished eating his muffin added: "Amazing parties."

Amazing parties, huh? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to get to know her more if it meant I could be invited to one. Although I didn't think it would ever happen. She didn't seem like the type that would want to hang around people like me.

After that the lunch break seemed to pass pretty quickly. Before we could leave the girl, um.. Lila? Laila...? Whatever her name was came up to us with a big smile.

"Hey, Lola.", Philip said without even looking up at her. Right, Lola.

"Who will be on printing duty today?", she bluntly asked. Looking back and forth between Rudoslav and Philip.

Rudoslav and Philip both looked at each other, not confused but more in a questioning way. As if they were asking each other a question without even opening their mouths. 

After a few seconds Rudoslav grunted and leaned back: "Me... I guess."

I looked up at all of them, not understanding what exactly they were talking about, but I didn't care enough to ask. Maybe I would get it when I listened in more. 

Suddenly in my eye view I noticed a familiar face walking out of the school, Nathalie North. She stared right back at me, almost like she was checking I was really there, before turning around and walking back inside. That was weird.

Lola smiled, seemingly satisfied with herself and noticed me. She smiled even wider and gave the guys a knowing look: "I see you've taken in the new kid as your own."

We all looked over at each other. I wasn't exactly comfortable with her referring to what it was as "taking in", it sounded like we were all going to be friends. It was more like Philip was taking pity on me and also didn't want to get in trouble with his parents for not helping me. 

Before I could correct her Philip already stood up from the table and, again without looking at her, noted: "So what?"

She shrugged while still looking at me.

"Nothing. I thought it was nice of you. That's all."

There was now this weird tension in the room, well we were outside so more like near the table we were at. No one said anything but you could definitely tell something was growing inside the three of them, especially Philip. I didn't know him well enough yet to completely understand what emotion it was, but I knew enough to know that it wasn't a good one. 

So, without really thinking, I quickly jumped up from my seat and without saying a word I went on my way to class. I had no idea what that was, but I didn't want to be anywhere near it. I hoped I wouldn't catch the three of them together again.

I shuffled around the papers in my hand until I found my schedule to find out what lesson I had after lunch. Math. Great. Just great. I was already picked in class in the last lesson and I struggled to answer the question then, I could only imagine how bad it would be during math. The teacher could ask me the simplest question, I wouldn't answer it because I didn't know and then the teacher would probably be disappointed in me. 

I stopped. Disappointed in me? Why did I care what a teacher thought of me? I couldn't help but chuckle at myself, sometimes my own thoughts would surprise me. 

The classroom was only a few meters away when I made my final, and probably the best, decision of that day. I made a sharp turn and walked in the opposite direction. Some would call it cowardly, I would call it being rational. I wouldn't understand anything anyway so why should I even attend? Perfectly logical.

Skipping class was never something I was extremely proud of but it also wasn't something that made me feel guilty. It felt neutral. Like instead of eating the dinner your mother made you decided to eat fast food. Yeah, maybe not the best decision, and if your mother caught you she would be a bit upset, but nothing else would come of it. You’ve eaten what you wanted, you did what you wanted, and I definitely wanted to get out of that building.

The sky was still deep blue without any clouds, by now it would have been either cloudy or already raining in the city I grew up in. It was strange, at the time I didn't know if in a good or bad way but I didn't mind it. Not the weather at least. 

I walked a bit further behind the school and into an area with some trees to get some shade before I sat down on the grass. The whole school was now visible, and I wasn't even that far away, it was just that small. 

After a few minutes a bit further away I noticed two figures walking out of the school. At first I thought it was nothing weird but then when I looked more I realised one of the figures was basically dragging the other one out. Maybe someone is in trouble. 

I didn't think much of it and just laid down on the grass and closed my eyes. Taking in the fresh breeze and peacefulness of the town. After some time my thoughts began to flow in and before I could get annoyed at myself that I couldn't leave myself alone for 40 minutes. I felt a shadow on my face. I slightly opened my eyes and the sight of those blond thick locks told me enough about who it was.

"What is it? Am I not allowed to lay down because I might break my arm?"

I heard a slight scoff before she explained: "No, but you're definitely not allowed to skip class."

Her tone sounded even more pretentious than ever. Who does she think she is? Her constant persistence on making everyone fall in line really started to annoy me at that point. She lightly nudged my arm with her foot and I sat up.

"Are you in love with me or something?", I asked.

"What?"

"You're constantly following me around like a crazy person.", I explained as I stood up. 

I definitely did not think that, I just wanted to annoy her and it seemed like I managed just that, or I thought so at first. 

She gave me a glance that definitely read as "This girl..." but then she just blankly stated: "I'm not in love with you, Fifi Joeng. I'm here to make sure you'll attend your club meeting."

Club meeting. Ah right, "The News Club" club meeting. The club meeting that I definitely already decided on skipping. I just thought that I would let her show me where it was and as soon as she would leave me alone I would go somewhere else. It seemed like a simple plan. Too simple.

"Okay, Nathalie North. Thank you for showing me where the club room is.", I smiled, expecting her to finally leave me alone.

She just stared at me, before she turned the knob. With her smug face she turned to me and held the door open. Great. Maybe I shouldn't have thought that the girl that wrote a whole book of notes was dumb enough to leave me alone for a second. I walked in and to my surprise she followed me. 

Before I had time to think about it for too long a familiar voice called out.

"Fifi, welcome!"

Sure enough, Rudoslav was standing over a table waving at me. Lola was sitting in front of him and turned to see me, she seemed just as surprised as I was, and there was Philip sitting next to Rudoslav tapping a pencil on the table, until he saw me. 

He looked over at Nathalie: "I didn't know we had a new member."

"Me neither. Principal Lamb informed me today.", she answered while walking to the head of the table and sitting down.

There were so many thoughts going through my head at that moment. We were all in The News Club? It didn't make any sense to me. Lola, Rudoslav nor Philip seemed like the types to sign up for such a club. Nathalie maybe, but the others were a total mystery to me. She also seemed the most in charge there and also sat at the head of the table. Wait, don't tell me... is she the club leader?

Almost like in a trance I just walked over to the table and sat down next to Lola, Philip now right in front of me. I didn't want to be with the three of them, and definitely also not with Nathalie North in one room. But there I was. A bit stuck. The tension was definitely still around them. Before I could think about that for too long Nathalie clapped her hands together, snapping me back to reality, and smiled: "So, what stories do we have for this week?"

Rudoslav flipped through his notebook as the other two seemed like they were at least thinking about it. I found it strange that I wasn't at least introduced to the concept of the club first before we began, but I didn't complain. The faster they got it over with, the faster we got to go home.

Rudoslav was the first to propose something: "The book café is still gathering money for a renovation."

"We can include that.", she slightly smiled, clearly not interested in the topic.

She looked over at Philip and Lola. I couldn't put my finger on it but her look seemed different with those two. A bit quicker, not really looking directly in their eyes, it was barely noticeable but it was there, some tension.

"The popular girls are wearing leather skirts again.", Lola smiled.

That topic also didn't seem to interest Nathalie, but she still nodded and gave a modest smile.

"Mr James was robbed yesterday.", Philip said.

We all quickly looked over at him. Why didn't he start with that before we got to hear about the popular girl's awful fashion sense?

"What? Really? Do you think you can write about that?", Nathalie asked.

Philip just shrugged. Not in a "I don't care" way, but a "sure" way. 

Nathalie seemed to get the difference and smiled again: "Great."

There was an awkward silence where no one said anything for a good long moment. It was probably a few seconds but it felt like an hour. Looking over at Rudoslav he also looked a bit uncomfortable and, well, unsure. Maybe he also didn't know what was going on there. Maybe that's why he was the first one to break the silence.

"I'm going to head off to the printing room.", he stood up.

Oh no. Was he really going to leave me alone there? When it felt like you could cut the tension in the room with a knife?!

"You should show Fifi how to do it."

I immediately stood up. I didn't really care about learning how to print something (what's there even to learn about?) I just really wanted ro get out of there. 

So, I followed Rudoslav out of the room and into a small closet not too far away. He got out some empty papers and put them on the table in front of us along with a closed metal sheet. Okay, this definitely wasn't the type of printing I was thinking of. He opened the sheet and revealed... some hardened jelly thing?

"Ever used one of these before?", he asked.

I shook my head: "No, we usually had regular printers at my school."

"We do have those too, but they hardly work."

He pulled out a newspaper page out of his bag. The same one Nathalie gave me that day. He pressed it into the jelly thing, smoothed it out, removed it and it revealed the backwards copy of the paper in the jelly. He then placed an empty page on that and pulled it out before showing me. It was a perfect copy of the newspaper.

"It's that simple.", he shrugged and placed the paper on the table.

It was pretty simple. Maybe not as simple as a modern printer but nothing to cry over. I could definitely see why during lunch the three of them didn't want to do it, it took so long to make these copies. We were two people and it still took a while to make 50. On the last 2 I began to realise that we were going to go back to the others soon, if they hadn't died from all the tension in that room yet. 

This did make me wonder: "I am the only one that feels weird when Philip and Lola are around each other?"

He looked up at me a bit surprised before shaking his head. "It's worse when Nathalie is around. I have no clue what is going on there either. One day I just came to a club meeting and it just was like that."

"You never asked?"

"Hell no! Philip is my best friend if I should know something he would tell me. He didn't tell me, so I shouldn't know."

Rudsolav rather violently finished the last page and picked up everything before leaving the room. Wow. Just wow. Never in my life did I see someone that trusting. He didn't tell me, so I shouldn't know. I could never be that... understanding? Trusting? Dumb? If I knew a friend wasn't telling me something I would bug them about it for the rest of their lives or until they told me.

...Am I the weird one?