That year, school feels like it finally belongs to us.
There's no one above us, no seniors to measure ourselves against. Being the first Higher Secondary batch gives us a strange kind of freedom. Teachers are relaxed, almost experimental. Rules feel negotiable. Days pass quickly—football practice in the mornings, laughter spilling into classrooms, events announced without warning. It feels like the school is discovering itself alongside us.
Sarah and I slip easily into the middle of it all.
I still attend classes I'm not meant to. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it just happens. I'll leave a commerce lecture halfway through and end up sitting quietly at the back of a science class, pretending to be invisible. Sarah never turns around, but she always knows.
Later, when we're walking out together, she'll ask, "You skipped again, didn't you?"
"I needed a break," I say.
"You always need a break," she replies, but there's no anger in her voice.
Our time together grows without announcement. We don't mark it as something serious; it simply becomes so. We meet after school more often now, sitting on the steps while the campus slowly empties. Sometimes we talk about exams, sometimes about nothing at all. Other times, the future slips into conversation without either of us inviting it.
"What will you do after this?" she asks one evening.
"I don't know," I admit.
She waits for more. When it doesn't come, she says softly, "That's okay."
It feels like permission.
The first sign that the world outside school has noticed us comes quietly.
A question at dinner. A look held for too long. A casual mention of my name where it doesn't belong. At first, I ignore it. Then Sarah tells me, her voice lower than usual.
"My mother asked about you today."
I stop walking. "What did she say?"
"She didn't say much," Sarah replies. "Just... enough."
That night, I lie awake longer than usual. The certainty I've carried so easily all year shifts slightly. Not fear. Just awareness.
A few days later, it's my turn.
My father asks a question he already knows the answer to. My mother listens without interrupting. No one raises their voice. That somehow makes it worse.
"You're too young to be sure," my father says finally.
I don't argue. I don't agree either.
From that point on, things change—not dramatically, but undeniably. We become careful. Not because we want to hide, but because we don't want to lose what we have. We meet less openly, talk more quietly, linger less where we're visible. And yet, nothing between us weakens. If anything, it deepens.
We don't say us against the world.
We don't have to.
When the second batch joins, the school shifts again. Corridors fill. New faces everywhere. Juniors watch us closely, copying how we walk, how we talk, how we bend rules without breaking them. Most days, it feels harmless. Almost flattering.
Until one afternoon, it isn't.
The fight begins over something stupid. It always does. A junior speaks out of turn. Pushes someone he shouldn't. I step in before I think. Voices rise. Someone shoves back.
By the time teachers arrive, it's already over.
The boy is on the ground, bleeding, crying in shock. The silence afterward is louder than the fight itself. My name is written down before anyone asks what happened.
I'm suspended for a week.
At home, time slows to a crawl. Zaid and Faris show up daily, turning the incident into a dramatic retelling. Rohit tells me I brought it on myself—and then sits quietly beside me anyway. Sarah comes one evening, sits next to me on the steps outside my house.
"You don't always have to fight," she says.
I look at my hands. "Sometimes it just happens."
She doesn't argue.
When I return to school, things feel different. Not colder. Just more careful. Exams feel closer. Farewell posters appear sooner than expected.
And yet, when Sarah looks at me the same way she always has, the warmth remains.
We still believe this will work.
We still believe love is enough.