Close Friends.

The New Year.

You know when it's the beginning of the school year and you genuinely do not want to go to school so you pull a crazy excuse out of your ass and it actually works ? Yes I managed to skip school for a whole week but unfortunately my luck ran out. Where's Aladdin's guinea when I need him?

Sighing heavily I walked into the school through the office gates because I was shit late and headed straight for my form class. Entering the class, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me. Shit I hate attention.

"Look who finally decided to join us!" My teacher exclaimed bringing the attention back to me again. I closed my eyes and without scanning the class, I took the seat right in front and occupied myself with my phone. In the middle of scrolling through Instagram, I heard my name being whispered somewhere at the back or was I imagining it? I ignored it but the whisper came again and this time around I turned to the source of the voice and making eye contact with one of my old classmates.

I immediately smiled at her and she pointed to an open seat in front of her making me get up from my seat and move there. "Welcome back." She laughed. "Almost thought you died or something."

I rolled my eyes but smiled nevertheless. "Kill me now."

Feeling eyes burning the right side of my face, I turn my head in that direction because I am always bold enough to ask a person why they think it's okay to burn their eyes into my skin but my breath catches in my throat when I make direct eye contact with the necklace boy. Not knowing what to do, I hold the eye contact and he does the same without faltering. We stare at each other for what feels like forever until the teacher breaks the staring contest by announcing that she will be doing the register.

I sit back in my seat and wait for my name.

"Billy." She calls out.

We make eye contact again. "Yes ma'am." I say.

I stare at him waiting to finally hear his name and it's as though he knows that because he smiles at me softly and leans back in his seat, still not breaking the eye contact.

I wait for what feels like forever until she finally calls out a name that I did not expect him to have. "Kai."

His eye contact intensifies. "Yes ma'am." He says and only then do I gain the courage to look away. I look down at my phone and fight a smile.

Kai. Hmm

"You staring at her like you want to eat her boy, just talk to her. You'll die." I hear one of the boys saying and I look up at him immediately recognising him, we call him Nkunzi.

"No it's not even like that, I know her..." Kai tries to explain.

"If you know her then you wouldn't be finding it difficult to speak to her. We see you boy." One of the other boys Jay says, laughing.

"Eish relax guys, let me finish my physics homework in peace." He said and went back to his books as I went back to scrolling my life away on Instagram.

After a moment, I look around the noisy classroom and everybody is engaged in a conversation, a boy behind me laughs out loud and I subconsciously smile at the sound of his laugh, going back to the book I was currently reading on Wattpad.

"Billy." I look up from my phone.

"Don't say my name like that." I frown.

He raises an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"Like you're unsure."

"My bad. Are you always on your phone though? You don't talk to people?" Kai asked, putting his physics book away.

"Hai she's antisocial this one." my old classmate, Fikile replies.

"Girl shut up." I looked at him for a brief moment. "No I don't like people."

"Okay." He looked at me.

"Cool." He turned back to his friends and began to engage in a conversation that I had no interest listening to. We sat in class for a little longer until the bell rang alerting us that we had to move to our first period. I checked my timetable and then proceeded to walk out of class without waiting for anybody.

I took the long way to class with my earphones in listening to blue jeans by Lana Del Rey until my shoulder was tapped and I had to pull my earphones out. Turning around to face the person, I came face to face with a teacher.

"You know that you shouldn't have earphones in madam. Do you want me to confiscate them?" I shook my head. "Exactly so put them away and get to your class immediately." I nodded my head and walked away, heading to class.

Making it to my maths class, I walked inside and so my day began. It was almost afterschool when my good day had to be ruined as usual. I was walking back to class from filling up my bottle when I saw my old friends walking towards me, I was mentally preparing myself for what was about to come by whispering sweet things to myself when I heard footsteps beside me.

"It's considered madness to talk to yourself in public, are you aware of that Ms Jubreel? Kai asked.

I gave him a blank face then proceeded to pinch him. "Don't ever use my surname again."

He flinched and held onto the hand that I used to pinch him. "Ow!"

"That's what you get." I laughed but it was immediately replaced by a frown when I heard my old friends stop in front of Kai and I. Lihle looked at the fact that Kai was still holding my hand, I didn't want it to look bad to her because I was aware that she really liked him and so I wanted to respect that, I made a move to get my hand out of his but he was not having it because he held on tighter, I tried again but he did the same thing. I sighed and looked at Lihle ready to tell her that he does not want to let me go but she beat me to it, as always.

"I always knew ukuthi you wanted him. All you had to do was just be honest about it."

I looked at her in disbelief. "It's a new year and you still think the same shit? We're literally not even friends."

"Mara you're holding hands." She laughed which made the rest of her friends laugh except Zinzile. I shook my head and was on my way to walking away when I felt Kai pull me back by the same hand that he was still holding. How did I forget that?

"Dude I swear if you don't let me walk away-"

"Askies, I wanted us to go this way." He pulled me in the opposite direction and this time around I let him hold onto my hand without fighting him, fuck what they had to say. We walked in silence until the last bell of the day rang and I managed to successfully pull my hand out of his this time.

"I need to go get my bags, I'll check you tomorrow." I told him, giving him a hug.

"It's the first time that you hug me." He mumbled.

"It's because I'm sad."

He held me tighter. "I know."

I held on for a little longer until I pulled away and fixed his collar, moving back. "Thank you. I need to go to netball practice now.

"Have a lovely day."

I smiled as I walked away. "You too Kai."

CLOSE FRIENDS: CHAPTER 3