Tuesday 6th December, 10:45 AM – The school toilets

A VERY IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT HAS JUST OCCURRED.

I don't know why it's important. I'm not even completely sure what it was. But right now it feels like a Very Big Deal. Also, I think Lizzie and I might be friends again.

Okay, so I was in class, right. The teacher was talking about hyperbolas and exponentials and I was only half paying attention because I hate maths. Mainly because everyone's always telling me that I could be really good at it if I bothered to practise and that makes me feel bad because they're probably right, but I still can't be bothered to practise. It's a vicious cycle, really. But anyway, Tony's parents had a dinner party last night and he had to keep an eye on all the kids (I would kill my parents if they made me do this – actually, they'd probably kill me first for somehow managing to lose the kids or set them on fire or something accidental like that – but Tony loves children so that's okay I guess) and there was a giant bottle of Coke left over that he managed to sneak away. He brought it into school and we ended up having contests by the Bad Touch Tree Stump over who could chug the most before coming up for air.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I almost won, too. But now, less than twenty minutes into the lesson, I was beginning to regret my judgement. Suffice it to say that nature was calling.

I considered just trying to be strong, but there was no way I was going to be able to hold it for over forty minutes. I put my hand up. "Sir?"

"Yes, Beillschmidt?"

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

He looked over his glasses at me. "I don't know, can you?"

I did not have time for his shit. "May I go to the bathroom, then?"

"Yes, you may. Be quick."

I was not quick. I was determined to take this sacred reprieve from graphing and make the most of it. I strolled down the corridors with my hands in my pockets, glancing briefly through the windows of the rooms I passed for no real reason other than to feel superior to all the other students still under the thrall of whichever teacher owned their souls for this period. I never feel more free than when I'm out of class and everyone else is in it. Out here in the corridors was nothing but fresh Gilbert-scented liberty and inside the rooms I passed were evil teachers, mind-numbing work and…

The sound of crying.

I stopped and listened harder. Someone was definitely crying inside the room next to me. It wasn't even the sort of crying you can mistake for laughter, either; it was wet and choking and completely, frighteningly miserable. I peered through the window, angling my head to see past the blinds. The room was empty. Whether the class scheduled to be in here was somewhere else for this period or the teacher was away sick or whatever I didn't know, but the tables were clear and a set of intimidatingly complex biological diagrams had been half-wiped from the whiteboard. What was that even supposed to be, anyway? Some kind of plant? An organ? Why are teachers always the world's worst artists?

Another sob, wet and muffled and louder than the others. I stopped squinting at the board and followed the noise to its source. Someone was sitting huddled in the far corner, almost hidden by desks. Their face was buried in their knees but I could tell by the uniform that it was a girl, and by the thick brown hair, flower barrette and knee-high lacy socks that it was...

Wait.

Lizzie?

I'd backtracked down the corridor and slipped inside the classroom before I knew what I was doing. The girl raised her head from her knees as I shut the door behind me. It was Lizzie, though I hadn't seen her like this in years, with her eyes swollen and her face red and blotchy. She glared at me through a film of tears and opened her mouth to say something, but her throat kept closing up and she only managed a hoarse little, "Go away," before she was crying into her knees again.

Okay, I admit it. I am not very good with crying people. I haven't actually cried properly since I was nine, so I've sort of forgotten what it feels like. Ludwig is the same. I still remember the time when Feliciano broke down in tears in our living room when he still couldn't get his head around quadratic equations the evening before a test, and Ludwig and I just sort of sat there and stared at each other in alarm for five minutes or so before I decided to evacuate the premises and leave him to deal with it. Feli's his best friend, after all. I came back in later to see Feli curled up on his lap sobbing and Ludwig just patting him awkwardly on the head. Maybe it's because we're German. Germany's famous for lots of things, but sappy emotional touchy-feely shit is not one of them.

If I was sensible, I'd probably just done what she said and got the hell out of there. But I think we've established by now that I'm not really that sensible at all, and there was something small and weak and broken about those words that gave me no other choice but to cross the room, sit down in that corner and put my arms around her.

With another great sob, she threw her arms around my neck with such force I nearly toppled over and buried her head in my shoulder, shuddering as new waves of tears overtook her. I held her close, resting my chin on the top of her head and running one of my hands up and down her back. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that we were kids again and she'd hurt herself or broken one of her toys. She used to brag all the time that she never cried, but if something truly upset her then she'd hide herself away where she thought no-one could see her and weep until she made her eyes sore. And I would find her and we would sit exactly like this, twined together with her breaths hot and ragged against my skin and tearstains slowly spreading across my shirt.

Lizzie always seems smaller when she cries. Even when we were little, before I got my growth spurt and we were more or less the same size, she always seemed to deflate when she was sad. Come to think of it, I haven't seen her cry like this since she came back from Hungary. The difference in height between us seemed even more obvious than usual. She felt like a doll in my arms, tiny and fragile, which made me even more worried because Lizzie's never fragile. She might not be particularly big or tall but she can still sock you one with enough force to give you a black eye for about a month that makes your eye socket sting when you move your head like she actually managed to crack the bone or something and that goes all ugly and yellowish around the edges before it heals no matter how many ice packs and disgusting creams from the pharmacy you put on it.

I had no idea why she was suddenly so distraught or what I could do to make it better, but that didn't stop me from muttering comforting nonsense into her hair. God, her hair smells nice. I tried to ignore it because something was obviously terribly wrong and Lizzie's feelings were definitely more important than the shampoo she used, but that didn't change the fact that it was all sweet and flowery and intoxicatingly smooth against my face. Focus, Gil. You are a lean, mean comforting machine.

It was about ten minutes before her sobs began to fade away. Even if I skipped the bathroom now there was no way I was getting back to class in any reasonable amount of time. Ah, well. Might as well do the thing properly. She lifted her head off my shoulder and sniffed loudly, her eyes still all bloodshot. I wiped away some hair that had stuck to her face with the dried tears. "Better?"

She nodded. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

I didn't ask what was wrong. I think maybe she was grateful for that. She unwrapped her arms from around my neck but stayed leaning against me, our sides pressed together and her ear against my shoulder. We sat there for a few minutes, just silently together. I didn't even notice the wet patch she'd left on my shirt.

Finally, without moving her head, she said, "Please don't go to Germany."

"Since when was I going to Germany?"

"I don't know." She sighed deeply. "It's just… everyone keeps leaving, don't they? And when they come back everything's always different."

I leant the side of my head against the top of hers. "Maybe we're just growing up," I said. "We're not kids any more. Maybe we're not always going to be how we were."

"I know." Her voice was quiet but at least there were no more sobs in it. "Do you think we're changing for the better, though?"

I would've shrugged, but her head was still on my shoulder and the last thing I wanted to do was prompt her to move it. "I don't know. Depends. The important part is that we're moving. We just have to trust our instincts and do our best. That's all anyone can ever do, really."

"But everything's just going to hell," she said.

Maybe it was the phrase 'going to hell' that did it, but something pulled the Gazette to the forefront of my mind. I desperately wanted to help fix whatever was going to hell for Lizzie but I had no idea what that could be and I wasn't about to start grilling her for information. So I latched onto the closest thing I could think of. "Are you worried about the Gazette?"

She sighed again. "Partially."

"Well we saved it once, we can save it again, right? It was only one bad week. I'm sure everyone will forgive us if we make the next one especially awesome."

She raised her head off my shoulder to look at me questioningly. "How do we do that?"

"It's the sports carnival this week, right? I say we do a giant spread on that. Feliks can take pictures, we can interview all the winners, cover the different events, it'll be great. Everyone loves the sports carnival."

She smiled then, and it was one of her wide, hopeful, weightless smiles, like the one she smiled just after we'd raided the cafeteria. I hate it when she does that. Instant nausea, just add Lizzie. I was so busy trying to keep myself from dissolving and blowing away like Voldemort at the end of the last Harry Potter film that I almost didn't catch what she said next. "That's a really good idea. It might work, too. We'll pitch it to Feliks this afternoon?"

I nodded. It was all I could really manage, to be honest.

"He'll love it." She paused and glanced at the clock on the opposite wall. "Don't you have maths now?"

"Um… yes. Technically. Supposedly." It was a testament to how much damned control she has over me these days that I'd completely forgotten about the half-litre of Coke I'd drunk. "I was on my way to the toilets, but then I heard you crying and..."

She smacked me over the head, snorting with laughter. "Go! We've been here for ages, you are going to be so dead."

"You sure you'll be alright?"

"I'm fine. I have the carnival to look forward to now, right?" She flashed me another smile bright enough to convince me that she wasn't about to start crying again, so I gave her a last hug, climbed to my feet and left the classroom.

I made it about six seconds after closing the door before my emotions began to malfunction. I was just feeling so much of them and I didn't even know what most of them were and I just could. Not. Handle. It. This was less Newton's First Law and more chaos theory. Entropy. The end of the universe as I knew it.

Okay, maybe it wasn't quite that drastic. But I was feeling a lot of feelings and I'm pretty sure most of them were good. I was also pretty sure that I'd been out of class for over twenty minutes now and going back would mean being skinned alive or worse, asked intrusive questions about what had taken me so long. Besides, there was no way I was letting maths class ruin my mood. So I high-tailed it down to the bathrooms and locked myself in a stall, and that's where I am now. I think I'm just going to stay here until the period ends and hope the teacher doesn't notice I never came back.

So here are the most important developments of my life so far today:

I am going to the sports carnival. It is going to be awesome. We are going to write a giant spread for the Gazette and that is going to be even more awesome, and everyone will buy a copy and forget it ever sucked. I know I'm still technically grounded, but my parents have to let me go to the carnival, right? I'd be letting down the newspaper club if I didn't go and they're always big on responsibility.

I don't know but I think Lizzie and I are probably friends again. And that is a Big Deal, okay, because even though she's still going out with Roderich that doesn't change the fact that being on the newspaper club with her has been the most awesome part of my life for the past few weeks. She's still kind of a crazy psycho, but now we're back on speaking terms I never want to stop speaking to her again.

But for the next ten minutes I am going to be sitting on a plastic toilet seat reading graffiti that's about as intelligent as a YouTube comments section and coming up with a good excuse to use for when someone inevitably notices that I just skipped class. So that's it for the interesting stuff. I'll write again tomorrow. Or when something else happens that's worth writing about. I'll just write again at some point, okay? I don't like to pigeonhole myself into deadlines.


MAKE LOVE NOT WAR

The Gakuen Gazette's very own love guru is here to solve all your relationship problems!

There's someone very special to me and I keep trying to show him how much I care, but all he does is act grumpy and swear at me! What am I doing wrong?

Ah, mon ami, love manifests itself in many different forms. Sometimes love can be confused for hate – both are strong emotions of the heart, oui? It sounds like your little friend is too nervous to properly express l'amour. Love cannot be rushed; just keep chipping away at his outer shell and he will melt into your arms eventually.

I'm completely in love with the most amazing, beautiful girl in the entire world. I just want to buy her presents every day and treat her like a princess, but I think she hates me. If she doesn't murder me then her older brother will but I just can't let her go! What should I do?

Fight for your lady! So what if they tag-team and kill you? True love is worth dying for! And courage is very attractive, you know.

I have the perfect boyfriend. He's a complete gentleman with flawless manners, he takes me on the most romantic dates and my parents adore him. But lately it seems like all the fun has drained away. There's no passion. He hasn't done anything wrong but I can't stop myself wishing for something more. Am I being selfish?

Of course not! Everyone deserves passion and excitement. I suggest trying to spice up your relationship; does your boyfriend have any hidden kinks or roleplaying fantasies? If not, ma cherie, then you must ask yourself a question: do you love him? Is what you have worth trying to save?