6TEEN

So there we sit, in a 30 degree English classroom, with the yells of the annoying Year 7’s handball competition floating through the opened windows. Usually, we’d be complaining about the disgustingly suffocating heat,

But today,

It felt like a warm hug.

Like it was an oven of love and we were the humble cookies, baking and expanding, eager to reach the finished product.

We were growing up.

Luca (our designated DJ) puts on a tik tok song compilation playlist and so forth the magical final lunch break of Year 11 begins!

So there us girls sat, intending to be productive and prep for the prelim ahead but instead succumbing to our teenage girl instincts and making tik toks and taking 10-second timer selfies instead.

We discuss Year 11. The weirdness of this year.

Surviving a global pandemic, reunited soulmates, dumb boys and the dumb heartbreak they bring in *cough cough* (a cough 4 me and a cough 4 Hridya), the woes of Viddy’s egg sandwich and just how utterly glad we were to be together again,

In this very moment.

We sway our hips to Icy Girl and realise that my giant head was blocking Steph the whole time and pout our lips to questionable group photos and debate with great ferocity about whose camera quality is superior and whether it looks like Olivia’s blinking or not.

I request the change of the soundtrack to Khalid’s 8TEEN. It seemed much more fitting for this moment.

And finally, the bell rings. We all pretend to ignore it but Hridya reminds us of the semi-demonic teachers that await us. As we trudge out of the decorated classroom, we make promises to do karaoke, locate any rogue butterfly clips and scrunchies and begin to discuss how stressed we all are. Or in Ayisha’s case, the lack thereof. As the overly-eager juniors begin to cue outside, I want to tell them, nay warn them, to savour every second that they are privileged to exist in that very room.

Before we leave, I pause and remind my girls,

‘This very moment is a Good Old Day.’

We all nod in synchronisation with teary-eyes, as we grip our laptops and binders, a shared and sacred knowing of this fact.

And then, with the realisation that moments like these that are left are dwindling in numbers,

We walk to class.

We are growing up,

Together.