When I enter the school gate, I'm heading to the building when someone taps me. I turn around to see Izzy behind me and Emily sitting near a tree.

"Emily came this early?" I ask in surprise.

"Yeah, I don't know why either," Izzy says. "Come as fast as you can but don't die," she jokes and I continue walking to the building.

When I reach the classroom, it's to see that Emily's bag is in the first seat of the row near the door and Izzy's bag is behind Emily's. Wondering why they never seem to save seats in the other row, I sigh and put my bag in the third seat, and then go downstairs. My friends are waiting near the canteen.

"We've got three tests!!" cries Izzy.

"Three tests? Aren't we supposed to have two tests?" asks Emily, confused.

I laugh as I join them. "What world have you been living in?"

"We've got the French test, English Grammar and Pure Maths test," answers Izzy.

Emily's eyes widen. "Wait what?! Pure Maths??!"

"Yeah. We've got a Pure Maths test today," I state.

"Let's go join the assembly," Izzy suggests because many students are already lining up.

After going to our line, Izzy warns both Emily and I. She orders me not to laugh and Emily not to sing during the national anthem, because even though she loves to sing, Izzy finds Emily's voice weird.

"Well not Emily, to be honest. Ian sings so bad that it makes me laugh. He always stands behind me and sings like a maniac. I mean, if you can't sing then just don't sing!" comments Izzy, and I'm sort of confused because I heard Ian sing once and it wasn't that bad...but then again, it could be someone else's singing.

After a while, I notice that Emily is standing in between Izzy and I, something she always does, and I go in between her and Izzy.

She tries to separate us once more, but I'm quick to act and reclaim my position no sooner than she takes it. She gets the hint, but moves far away. "I know why you don't want me in the middle, " I hear her say. Yeah, those tricks won't work on me.

"Why's Emily standing all the way over there?" Izzy asks.

"Maybe because she's so tall? I actually have no idea," I say, and then start to talk about how I hate the chemistry teacher, and how she hates me too. "And the reason why I hate her is because of what she did last year! I mean, she almost made me fail and have to redo the whole year, or worse, get expelled! And then the other day, she looked at me and still got my name wrong, and since people remember names by faces and physical stuff, that means she thinks I'm fat and all that stuff! Ugh, I hate her so much that I want to kill her!"

Izzy seems to be silent. I didn't know why she was doing that but suddenly I realise that Mrs Campbell was behind us. She hates both Izzy and I and insults us almost everyday because of laughing. I still remember that day when she asked me if I have laughing problems or not. It was so embarrassing because Nate was there too!

Once she's gone, I'm gasping for air due to how much I'm laughing. "I- haha- can't believe that I said all that and she heard it! Hahaha!"

Soon, the rest of our classmates line up and assembly starts.

We stand in silence for the rest of assembly, and then we get called onto the stage. The kid from last time waves at me, and I mutter, "Don't you dare."

I stare at a random tree so that I wouldn't laugh, and someone behind me sings terribly. I guess it's Ian... The song is over, and we return to the line, salute the flag, and go back to class.

I drink some water and start studying French, because it was one of the subjects we had a test for today, the other two being English Grammar and Pure Maths, both of which I was sure I could handle without much problem.

Izzy points to a few pages and asks me if I've learnt those stuff, to which I reply that I hadn't learnt it yet despite staring at the page for nearly the whole day yesterday. I'm terrible at French...

I decide to drink some water, and as I do so, Alice and Sonya come in, the former saying, "I couldn't even sing properly because someone behind me, probably Nathaniel, was singing so badly that it sounded like a frog croaking!"

I know for a fact that Nate sings nicely, because I was near him in assembly a few times and he's so wonderful at singing that I feel embarrassed of my horrible singing skills.

"Hey, did you learn this?" Izzy asks suddenly.

I look at it. "Yeah, I learnt all the vocabulary."

When the history teacher comes, I feel bad for her because no one's actually studying, we're all studying French. At first she talks about how the school might be closed for a month because a lot of people were becoming unwell, and that the government still hasn't said whether school will be shut or not.

She then moves onto the chapter and I briefly consider submitting the homework, but she just asks if anyone's done that but doesn't say to give it, so I just pretend to study history while I'm studying French.

Izzy tries to split the work between herself, Emily and I, but I tell her that we all should learn everything, not just one thing, in case someone forgets their part. I'm just about to say something when I glance over at Tyler to see what he's doing, and notice that his pocket has some white stuff stuck to it.

"Look at Tyler's pocket," I tell her, laughing quietly as she does so. "I bet he jerked off using it."

"Hahaha, I was about to say the same thing!"

"How long do you think it'll be before he realizes it?"

"Let's see," she says.

The French teacher arrives and begins handing out test papers. I write my name and other stuff on it as she writes questions on the board. The first question is vocabulary stuff, and I easily do it because I'm good at that. Next we have to write synonyms for some words, and I struggle a little bit with it, so I ask Izzy for help when the teacher isn't looking.

As I try to decipher her handwriting, she copies my answers for the first question, and I write what I can understand and we both move onto the third question. It's one that I can barely do- homophones.

Those confuse me so much... I write two or three that I remember and then take Izzy's help again. I finish pretty quickly, and with only one page- in fact, I only used one side of the paper- whereas most of my classmates had to take extra pages, even Nate.

A while passes, and the teacher begins collecting papers from those who want to submit. I put my hand up, but she never notices me, so I go and directly hand it to her.

There's nothing to do but wait now...

Once Izzy hands her paper, I say, "He still hasn't noticed."

She laughs.

Once the teacher has collected all the papers, she says, "You've received a notice from the school office, but don't make so much noise after seeing it."

She gets a stack of notices out, and once she's done, everyone starts cheering, apart from Izzy and I because I hate school holidays and this notice says our spring break has been extended a little, to last until the 30th of March rather than the usual two weeks.

"Don't you like breaks?" I ask Izzy.

"Nah, I just don't like clapping with everyone else."

Right now we have Biology, and the first thing I do is to ask to go to the bathroom because firstly, I actually need to go, and secondly, I didn't want to hear the teacher go on and on about how we all need to study and stuff.

I go there but someone gets there before I do. I wait ten minutes and the person finally comes out. Once I'm done using it, I try to wash my hands, but there's no water. Groaning, I go to the sink that's near the place where I can get tissue, and thankfully, there's water there. I return to the classroom as my hands air dry because the last time I got tissue just to dry my hands with, a janitor asked me why I was taking more tissue, and I didn't want a repeat of that.

The teacher lets me in, and continues talking about how all of us just think about how to copy from each other, not to study.

"First," she begins, "I want Sandra, Megan and Irene to stand up. Be honest with me," she says once they've done so, "Who copied from who?"

Sandra says that she let Irene copy from her and Megan copied from Irene, and that for some answers, she copied Irene.

They're told to sit, and then she tells Blake to stand up, and says, "You copied from someone."

"From the book," he corrects her.

"Who copied from you?"

"I helped Nathaniel with one question, and Mike as well..."

She tells him to sit and then asks Annabelle who copied from her. She says that Adela did, and is allowed to sit. I wonder if she'll ask Izzy and I some questions, but she just asks Sonya about her answers to which Sonya admits to copying from the book and Alice, and then the teacher starts the class, still talking about how we should all be honest and it's only a test, not an IGCSE exam, that a few marks less won't kill us, and so on.

She writes our holiday homework on the board, and then gives us classwork, halfway through which Tyler asks for permission to go to the bathroom. He returns five minutes later.

"I bet James told him," comments Izzy.

Laughing, I finish the classwork pretty quickly, and as the teacher's busy checking the test papers, I talk to Izzy.

"I thought we'd get caught," she says. "We sorta did copy from each other."

"Me too..."

Near the end of the class, the Maths B teacher comes and starts giving us homework from herself and a few other teachers. She spends a while explaining as she writes, but I'm too busy watching the clock.

It's already break time...

When the Maths B teacher finally finishes writing, I quickly write everything down and the three of us go downstairs, with ten minutes left for break. Halfway down, Izzy says she wants to use the bathroom, so we go to the third floor and she knocks on the door. Seeing that the light is off in there and no one would use it without the light, I roll my eyes and push the door open. It smacks against the wall and I look around to see a teacher in the distance, who didn't seem to notice it.

Izzy winces as she looks into it.

"It's so gross..." she says.

"Just use it," says Emily.

"No way!" But as soon as we start walking away... "Actually, I'll use it! Wait for me!" Izzy goes in the bathroom...and comes out straight away with her hands over her mouth. "I saw a used pad in there! Now I feel like puking!"

We go downstairs. There's not that much of a queue left now, and I decide to get a coffee because that's how tired i was.

However, as soon as I buy it and start to drink, the Guard blows his whistle, signalling time's up. Cursing the teacher, I drink it quickly, and my tongue gets burnt. Again. Just my luck...

"I'm scared for the Maths test," Izzy says.

"Pure Maths is easy," I tell her as we head up the stairs.

"You know, I'm sorta unhappy that school will be closed. I was looking forward to seeing how everyone would behave."

The teacher comes in a few minutes after we do, and starts handing test papers as well as question papers out. She tells us to tell her when we do the fourth question if we need help, and I register her words as I write my name.

I begin the questions, wondering if it'd be fine if I used the f(x) formula, and using my calculator, finish the first section pretty quickly. The second question takes a few minutes, and the third one has me stuck completely. I cross out my answer and solve it again, because when Izzy asks me to show it to her, she said it was wrong. I try again and answer it, but I still don't think it's correct, or at least, that's what Izzy tells me.

I decide to leave it as it is and move on. I finish the last question and spend a while looking over my paper as other people go to submit their paper to the teacher, who's checking it in class.

"What was your answer for the first one?" Izzy asks.

"Minus ten," I reply.

"It can't be...are you sure?"

"Yeah," I say.

"It's wrong."

"I'm sure it's right."

"What did you get for the second one?"

I tell her, and it goes on like this. "I'm going to submit it now," I say.

"Okay."

I stand in line, while Alice gets her paper checked. Tyler is hanging around here despite the fact that I saw him already get his paper checked, so I guess he's trying to see everyone's marks.

Flynn, Kenneth and Ian get their papers checked. The former two get twenty, but Ian gets seven as he's made a couple of mistakes, such as dividing when he should multiply, subtracting rather than adding, and he even skipped a question.

Once the teacher hands it back to him I quickly give my paper because I was getting tired of just standing here. It would've been better if Nate was here, but he's still writing.

Everything but question three was correct, and I get 17. As I go back to my seat qnd put it in my folder, I can't help but laugh a little because my roll number was 17, and I got 17 marks.

It's the English test now. "I hate this teacher," says Izzy as Mrs Stoneleigh hands out papers. "She always makes us write the question."

"I just dislike her because her classes are so boring," I say once the teacher's gone to write the questions on the board.

Tyler and a few other people ask if we have to write the questions, but I think she heard what Izzy said because she says it's not necessary. I write it anyways because it's a habit of mine, and it helps me concentrate better.

Izzy and I help each other out behind the teacher's back, occasionally getting stuck on some stuff. Seriously, the last time I heard of parts of speech was in like, class five, so yeah...

The teacher starts erasing the first part after everyone says they're done, and starts giving the second part, which is based on Degrees of comparison. It's easier compared to the first question, but there are still a few sentences here and there that I get stuck on.

Once I'm done, I change a few of my answers because I think they weren't correct, and then wait for the teacher to start collecting papers. She does so soon enough, and Izzy, Emily and I give ours. Emily then takes her biology test paper out and frowns at it.

"Pass it here," I say, getting an idea, and she gives it. I take my own paper out, and see how many marks she's gotten cut for each question. In the end, it's only five marks she's lost, not eight. "You should've gotten fifteen," I tell her as I put my paper back.

The teacher comes this way and asks me to hand the paper, I refuse, and she tries to take it, saying, "Time's over."

"Miss, this is a paper for another subject," I say, blushing and she goes, embarrassed.

"Hahaha, that was so funny!" Izzy exclaims.

"I know, right? She was gonna take Emily's paper just like that! Anyway, Emily, you should get the biology teacher to recheck your paper and give your correct marks as soon as possible," I say as I hand it back to her.

The accounting teacher -who also teaches us Pure Maths- comes and Emily asks her something, probably whether she can go and get her paper rechecked judging by the way she points to it. She's seemingly denied because she just sits down and the teacher goes to the board and starts giving questions.

As we walk down the stairs for what will be the last time in like, almost two months, I say, "You should probably ask her to fix it now."

"She'll be busy. I'll ask her when I go to her house for tuition," Emily says.

Izzy walks down the stairs and places her hands on my shoulder, which for some reason, I don't mind. "Hey, that's my signature move!" argues Emily and puts her hands there instead. I resist the urge to shrug it off.

After all, it's the least I can do to not make her think about anything she might have done wrong for the rest of the holidays.

Author's Note: Having a burnt tongue sucks. (I should probably go late to class next time if I've got a hot coffee.) So does school holidays, no matter for what occasion, because during them, my family just stays at home. All day, every day.