Road Trip

It was the first weekend of June and the hot summer air was giving each student the rest. It hadn’t rained in weeks and only last week, a girl had fainted in class. Dehydration.

Okay, that first part sounds too serious. Let’s move ahead to the more fun part. I myself was always one step ahead of dehydration. I mean, beer is a liquid, right? If it isn’t, I should by sure be dead by now. Well, Moony, that’s one of my best friends, Remus, is telling me that if I don’t die by dehydration, my kidneys soon will come after me.

Talking about my friends, there’s Remus, I already mentioned him. He’s not the kind of guy who parties a lot. He’s more… you know, into books and college and all that stuff. A literature major. NERD.

Then there’s Sirius. Practically my brother. We all call him Padfoot, though. He’s just like me. As I already said: practically my brother. He enjoys the occasional drink, invented filling Vodka into water bottles and drinking it during class, and he digs the girls. He got a new one every day. EVERY. DAMN. DAY. Do you know how hard it is to remember all their names? He’s majoring in Physics. And he’s taken Astrology as a side class. He wants to be an astrophysicist.

And, then of course, there’s Peter. Wormtail, as we like to mockingly call him because he went to the same middle school as I did and all through middle school, he had a rat-tail in his hair. He’s a Medic major. By his looks, he’s (besides me) the most handsome of the group. Pity he hasn’t got a girl yet. But I heard he got his eyes on a girl from my EDUC class, her name’s Mary, I s’pose. Oh yeah, before I forget to mention. I currently major in Educational Science. Long for EDUC.

Oh, and then, there’s Regulus. Sirius’ younger brother. He’s an arts major. Good friends with Remus, I heard. Though Sirius doesn’t like it when we talk about him. They don’t have the best relationship. Abandonment issues and all that quirky shit, am I right?

And then, there is my girlfriend. Lily. BEAUTIFUL girl. The only problem is: she’s not with us anymore. Okay now I think that one out, it sounds a lot like she is dead. She isn’t. She’s just studying abroad. In fancy Italy. In Rome, to be percise. And she sounds so hot whenever she speaks Italian. Guys, believe me. French is not the language of love. Whatever language she speaks is. And she speaks a lot of them. English, some German, French, ancient Greek (who the fuck needs that, they’re all dead anyway), Latin (I will only repeat myself, who needs that, they’re all dead) and, of course, Italian.

But I speak something she doesn’t. At least I think she doesn’t. Spanish. That’s because my father is from Spain. But I already struggle with two languages. How does that girl manage five. I’d go off myself if I had to write vocabulary tests in five languages. Well, I don’t. And I am very happy about that.

Somewhere in high school, I picked Spanish as a second language and, believe it or not, I completely failed it. I had thought it’d be easy for me, since we speak a lot of Spanish at home but turns out they don’t ask you what: ‘Do the dishes’, ‘You’re a disappointment’ or ‘Dad, can you buy me some beer’ means.

Good for me, I had Peter. Peter is just like Lily. Multilingual. Well, he speaks English, Spanish and German - as far as I know. He moved to the UK from Germany around a decade ago. But he was already fluent in English back then. Apparently they all have to learn English starting at year two. As I already said: I’d go off myself. Peter carried me through all of my Spanish classes, Vocab tests and class tests. Maybe, languages and I are just a mismatch. Or maybe, I am just dumb and that’s it. But at least I’m good at EDUC. Or not. Who knows.

Let’s get to the whole point now. The first June weekend, we always threw a party. No matter what the teachers said. Well, last year I got detention because I might have partied even though the teachers cancelled the party due to a fire at school. Turned out the fire was not really a fire but rather a student, *cough* Sirius *cough*, smoking on a hallway to not be caught. Because apparently we have some policy that no one is allowed to smoke inside.

And turns out our fire detectors are more sensitive than we always thought they were, hence the no smoking rule. Sirius got detention for setting off the alarm and I got detention for not going outside. Now this year, the party was supposed to be better than all the other years combined. It was supposed to be legen- wait for it -dary. Legendary. I could spell it out for you now if I weren’t so bad with languages and maybe even a bit dyslexic. But I think you got the point anyway. It was supposed to be the best party every. Because that one, the teachers attended. Almost everyone had been invited.

Oh, and Regulus. Moony had invited him. And that, we cannot say anything against. I mean, it’s Moony. The brain of us all. If we told him he couldn’t invite Regulus, well then he wouldn’t do our homework anymore. And we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we? Now let’s get started with the party, shall we?

The air is thick and the lights flicker in a constant beat. The boom box is blasting ‘What is love’ by Haddaway. I am pretty sure my shirt is more beer and vodka than cotton and synthetics at this point and the cup in my hand is almost empty. ‘Hey, Pads! Wanna get a refill,’ I shout in the direction of my best friend. He turns around, his wet hair sticking to his forehead, a drink in each hand. ‘Sure, I’ll just chug these two bitches down, wait a sec,’ he replies and the second I look up again after finishing my drink, his two cups are already empty. I can’t tell if his hair is wet because it hasn’t dried yet from the shower he took earlier or if it is beer that somebody had spilled.

The two of us make our way to the bar and get another refill. On our way there, we meet Peter who apparently almost lives at the bar as far as you can tell from the way he acts and his breath smells. ‘Oi boys! Want some of the good stuff? I got us some Vodka,’ he shouts in Sirius’ and my direction. I look at Sirius, he looks at me and we quickly chug down the rest of our beers and make our way over to Peter. He pulls a couple of shot glasses out of his pocket. I wonder where he gets all that stuff from but don’t ask. I never ask Peter anything. He is kind of secretive but I don’t mind. ‘You two just gotta cross your arms like that,’ Peter explains and shows us, ‘and then you just do shots.’ He fills two of the glasses with the drinks and hands each one of us one. I try crossing my right arm with Sirius’ right arm and we quickly take our shot. I wince from the bitter taste of the drink but then grin at Sirius. He reaches for the bottle and refills our glasses.

I can’t remember the rest of the night after this but it must’ve gone somewhat like this: Sirius and I took more shots, resulting in the two of us getting super wasted. Then we went on to look for Moony and see if he was at least partying a little today. We ended up finding him in some closet with Maggie, his girlfriend. That’s some stuff I am happy about to have forgotten because according to Remus, he is very sorry that we Quote: ‘caught them like that’. Well, at least I cannot remember it. But now I got some pictures in my head what I imagine having walked in on. And that, I’d like to forget, too.

After Remus basically chased us away, we looked for Peter to get some more shots. Only that we didn’t. Well, we found him. But that one, I cannot forget no matter how drunk I was or could’ve been. Because our dearest friend Wormtail had been doing shots with Mme Hooch, our calc teacher. And apparently, he had gotten her very drunk because as far as I recall, when we finally found the two of them, they were making out in the teacher’s lounge.

Now that is something I’d really like to forget but I probably will never. Even if I’d suffer from total memory loss, that one will be stuck in my brain forever. It’s like glued in there with some super glue. I mean you don’t catch your buddy making out with a teacher every day. And with an old teacher, even less. I mean honestly, she could have been his grandma. Peter calls what I see now whenever I look at one of them ‘Kopfkino’. It’s a German word which means something like a cinema inside your head I think. Peter tried explaining it to me. Pretty much on point. Because when earlier today I bumped into Mme Hooch on the campus, I had this clear movie in my head of them making out. Yeah, I gotta wash my eyes out with soap.

Next thing that happened that night is that I bumped into Mary MacDonald, that girl from my EDUC class that Peter had a crush on. She was documenting that whole party with her camera and so I just had to ask her to borrow it for a while and took a little video of Pete. So I have something to hold against him, you know, in case I ever need to blackmail him. Then, the camera got to somebody else and I don’t really remember whom but whoever that was took a video of me. Making out. With someone who wasn’t Lily. I mean it was obvious that it wasn’t Lily since she’s not here but however hard I try, I can’t get my mind up to who it exactly was. I only remember that she had mid length black hair. And yes, at first I thought Sirius and I had made out but Alice assured me that she kept Sirius occupied for the whole evening by, guess what, making out with him.

The next morning, I wake up with a hangover. Probably the worst hangover of my life. It feels like my head is constantly being crushed between two big stones and someone is screaming in my ear whenever anybody talks. That is why I rush over the campus to get to Frank, a friend of mine who majors in medicine just like Peter does. Frank’s a year above the four of us though. And he always has a hangover cure for me.

On my way over to Frank’s dorm, I bump into Mme Hooch and the memories of the video tape come up again and I swear to God it isn’t in any way related to seeing her but the second she walks away, I throw up in a bush.

I get to the building where Frank’s dormitory is and let myself in. The key to the building isn’t the same as the key to where my dorm is but since Alice, Sirius’ current girlfriend, also lives in Frank’s building, Sirius has a copy of the key. And he doesn’t notice if it’s missing. I rush up the stairs and into the hallway where the room number 163d is. Frank’s room. The 1 in the beginning shows that it’s on the first floor. Corridor number 6. Room 3. The “d” stands for the building.

I knock. No sound of anyone bothering to open the door. I knock again, banging my fist against the wooden door. It aches in my head but I really want to get in. I hear steps approaching. The door opens and a boy who seems to be around a year older than me stands in front of me.

‘Frank, I think it’s for you. You know, another one wanting a hangover cure,’ he shouts into the room. My head was aches in a hammering way and it felt like someone is throwing stones on it. How can he recognise this from only looking at me for a few seconds. Okay, I probably look super hungover. Steps approach again. I hear them as loud as a pneumatic hammer is at three in the morning. Frank appears behind the boy.

‘Oh. Hey James. You had an interesting night I heard,’ he greets me. I flinch by the loud sound of his voice. ‘Don’t worry, I can keep it down if you’re too hungover for this,’ he suggests and I nod, still in the constant pain.

He is not the first one to call yesterday an ‘interesting night’ though. Peter phrased it exactly that way and so did Pandora, another friend of mine. But none of them wanted to tell me what exactly happened.

‘Yeah, would you mind summing up yesterday,’ I request, resulting in Frank bursting out in a laughter. ‘Wait don’t tell me you don’t remember,’ he giggles like a small schoolgirl. I wince once more. ‘Alright. Well, you came back from the teachers lounge looking super disturbed. It was like you just saw a ghost. I asked you what happened and you didn’t respond. You simply handed me the camera and took off. I didn’t know whose cam it was so I thought it was yours and I could make some videos with you. You know, to keep the evening on the tape. I was wandering around, taking small clips of everyone and everything. And I saw only you pressing somebody against a glass door so I started recording and I walked into the room and there you two were, making out. And I recorded it so you could see both your faces and then immediately quit the recording. You know. For privacy reasons.’ I frown.

Not only did I cheat on Lily last night and Frank recorded it but the other girl’s face is on that video. ‘Who was it,’ I question. ‘Who was the girl I was making out with?’ ‘Girl? Who talked about any girl. It was a dude. And if I were you I’d make sure that Sirius doesn’t sneaks a peak on that tape because I am positive that he will behead you.’

A guy? It feels like my brain is shattering. The whole idea of me shatters. Isn’t that even worse than cheating on Lily with a girl? A guy… I mean- that’s questioning everything. Is anything about me even true anymore? And like- who am I even? Me making out with a guy.

I can feel my head aching in the way it aches whenever my Migraines hit in. It throbs against the inside of my head. My organs feel like turning around and a sudden nausea overcomes me. ‘I think I need to throw up,’ I quickly exclaim. I want to rush to the bathroom but it is too late for me.

It is also too late for me to turn around because it suddenly feels like it comes shooting right out of my stomach. The green-brown disgusting liquid comes out of my mouth and lands right in front of Frank’s feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whine, ‘I’ll clean it up.’ Frank shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry, Prongs. I’ll clean it up. You better get inside and Xen here will make you a tea, right?’ He turns around and looks the boy behind him straight up in the eyes.

‘Sure,’ the other boy sighs and waves me in. ‘In the end it’s always me cleaning up the shit your friends do, Frank. Even if right now, you’ll be the one cleaning, I have to take care of him even if right now, I could study to finally get over with this crap called college.’ He seems super unmotivated as he leads me to the dorm’s sofa.

I let myself fall onto it. The boy pours water into a boiler and turns it on. Then he walked back over to me. ‘What’re you majoring in,’ I want to know. ‘Why so curious,’ he snaps. I shrug. ‘Can’t I ask a question anymore without being suspicious of anything?’.

He sighs again. ‘I’m a journalism major. You know, writing for a newspaper, being on TV and all that stuff.’ I chuckle. ‘You’re actually on TV,’ I question. He laughs and shakes his head. ‘Not yet. I’ve been writing a bit for the Guardian but currently am thinking about starting my own newspaper. But of course my dream would be to be on National TV one day. Like to be a lead anchor for BBC. But I guess it’s a long way to the top.’

‘But that’s still super impressive,’ I respond, ‘I mean, I’m an EDUC major and what have I done yet? Nothing. Done a few internships, was a camp counsellor once or twice but you know what? My name will never be on national TV or the Newspaper. I mean only if I become a mass murderer or something but that’s not important right now. But yours will. Because you’ll be the lead anchor of the BBC. And that’s the thing I kind of miss these days. You know, in high school, I had this best friend, Marlene. We aren’t that close anymore but she and my Girlfriend are pretty good so I know what she’s been up to lately. Marlene is studying acting. She’s been starring in a movie. She lives for the attention. She will go down in history. She’ll be on TV. And I, I will die and one day, my bones will be dug up and they’ll ask: “Oh, who was that young man?” and then they’ll say: “Nobody important.” And you know what? When you die one day, there will be a big fuzz about it in the news because the lead anchor of BBC News just died. And when I die, you know what? There’ll be a small card sent to my friends and relatives. Nothing more. Just that. Because I was nobody important. And I will never be. I’ll just be a stupid kindergarten teacher.’ The boy looks at me with that neutral look in his eyes that Remus always had whenever I rant about anything.

‘You still seem pretty drunk to me,’ he jokes. ‘I think I didn’t introduce myself yet, how rude of me. I’m Xenophilius. Xenophilius Lovegood.’ Xenophilius. It’s a rather unique name. A name you can easy remember because you won’t confuse him with your neighbour. ‘I’m James Potter,’ I introduce myself even though I think that at this point it’s not really important. ‘I know,’ he dryly replies.

The water boiler clicks and the boy stands up to fill the boiling water into a cup, put a teabag into it and hand it to me. ‘So, what’re the two of you chatting about,’ Frank chimes in, seeming to have finished cleaning up my mess. I quickly chug down my tea burning my throat. ‘Not much, just college stuff. By the way, do you know where that camera is now,’ I wonder. He shrugs. ‘Probably with Mary,’ he answers. Right. Mary. It’s her camera.

I quickly jump up and leave the room as quick as I could to rush  to the girls’ dorms. I knock on the first door on the hallway. A dark skinned girl with bright white braids opens it. ‘Hi, you’re lost?’ I quickly shake my head. ‘You know Mary? Mary MacDonald?’ The girl seems to think for a moment. ‘Yeah. Last door this hallway on the left.’ And as fast as I came, I leave again, rushing down the hallway to knock on the last door to the left.

Mary opens it. ‘Hey, James. Whassup?’ I am too out of breath to reply in an instant. My lungs feel like exploding. And I don’t even smoke. God, I really have to do more sports. Even Sirius is in a better condition than I am. ‘The tape, Mary. The one in your camera. Have you looked at it yet?’ After every word, I have to stop to breathe again.

She shakes her head. I stretch out my hand. ‘I need it.’ She just looks at me with disbelief in her eyes. ‘You are that exhausted because you just ran here in order to get a video tape, do I get that right?’ I nod.

‘Please, the boys and I want to take a look at it.’ Mary shrugs. ‘Alright. But don’t damage it. It’s for my school project. I’m doing a movie about the school showing it from both sides. The educational side and, of course, the fun side. It’s supposed to get more students to apply for our college.’ I nod. ‘I get it,’ I exclaim.

‘No damage. It’ll just be me and the boys looking at that. I- but you know, I heard that Frank recorded a pretty embarrassing video of me and I also wanted to know if you maybe could cut that one out and not include it in the movie.’ Mary smiles. ‘Of course. Oh, and tell Peter to come pick up his tape later that he recorded some days ago with my cam.’

She walks back into the dorm and seems to be looking for something. While she is in the back, her roommate comes out of the bathroom. It’s Alice, Sirius’ current girlfriend. She takes a quick look at me. ‘What brings you down to this room? Are you dating Mary?’ ‘Mary? No, gosh, she’s like a sister to me. Never ever would I do that. I just wanted to take a look at yesterday’s tape.’

Alice sighs. ‘Yeah, whatever. You still just want to get in her pants. That’s all boys want to do. Get into any girl’s pants.’ With those words, she turns around and struts back inside.

Damn. Strutting is my thing. That girl really has no manners. And also, she shouldn’t be talking about getting into someone’s pants. We all know that she is just together with Sirius because he was voted hottest boy last year.

Mary came back from inside. ‘Here, I found it. Anything else I can help you with?’ I have to think for a bit. I actually wanted to make a little room tour for Lily. We have been sending each other little tapes for quite a while now. ‘Uhm, can I borrow your camera? I got some tape on my own but wanted to make a little video. You know, for Lily.’ Mary nods, rushes back inside and comes back with her camera. ‘But if you break anything, God knows what will happen then,’ she kindly informs me. ‘Thanks.’ And as fast as I appeared, I disappear again, rushing to my room.

There I set up Mary’s camera on my desk, put my own tape in it and hit record. I sit down on my bed, facing the camera.

‘Hey Lily,’ I begin. ‘It’s been quite a while since I heard of you. I hope your sister is doing alright. Last thing I heard, she was in hospital. You know, I tried calling you but you never pick up so I thought why not send some evidence?’

I go back over to my desk, pick up the phone and pull it over as far as possible with the cord. I dialled the number of Lily’s dorm. It rings. Then, suddenly, someone picks it up. ‘Ciao, sono Dorcas Meadowes. Con chi sto parlando?’

My heart skips a few beats. It is only Lily’s roommate. ‘Hi, it’s me, James. Well, I wanted to talk to Lily. If that’s possible.’ Dorcas seems to think for a moment.

Then she responds: ‘Lily’s not here right now. She’s visiting her sister Petunia in rehab for two weeks. But I’ll tell her to call you as soon as she gets back.’

The phone makes the sound it always makes whenever someone hangs up. I quickly place it back on my desk and continue: ‘Guess that solves the question how your sister is doing. So you’ll see this one in two weeks then, I suppose. Since I have no clue what the address of your sister’s rehab is. Oh, Pete made out with a teacher on this year’s summer party. You remember Mme Hooch, the calc teacher from back when you visited me here. Yeah. They both got VERY wasted at the party yesterday and there, it happened. Yeah, taped the whole thing.’

I think about what else got taped and my guts turn around. I gulp.

‘I don’t want to waste your time with senseless storytelling though. So a quick summary of the past months. EDUC has gotten even more boring and maybe I am regretting every decision I’ve ever made. Remus is still together with Maggie, I wonder how long that’s going to last, haha,’

I chuckle. ‘Sirius. He’s just being Sirius. Breaking hearts all over school. But you know his last girl, Alice I think, she totally stole my signature move. She is strutting all over campus while I am just number two of the most sassy people here. And Pete, I mean I already told you what he did with good old Rolanda. But besides that, I think he’s on his way to becoming by far the best doctor there ever was. But enough about my life. I hope you’re doing fine. Studying abroad. I mean, do you even understand what those people are saying? Pizza, Pasta, Mamma Mia. I mean the only thing I understood when Dorcas answered the phone was her name. Anyways, this is my room. I share it with the boys. You may remember we had a different room when you visited me. But we had to move. This one’s a bit bigger though. Right over there, where all the mess is, that’s Sirius’ bed. And obviously, I sleep in the bed right beneath his with the only major difference being that I actually clean my shit up instead of him. And yeah, the other two beds are Remus’ and Peter’s. I really miss you, Lils. Remember Regulus? Sirius and him have gotten even worse. Sometimes I wish you’d be here. You were always that good at solving problems.’ I sigh.

‘But I guess I’ll have to do this one on my own. Can’t depend on you forever. Or maybe that’s the plan so you’ll have to marry me one day.’

The door swings open and Remus enters. ‘Hey,’ he greets me with a smile across his face. I smile back at him. ‘Whatcha doin’?’ I point at the camera. ‘Video for Lily. You wanna say something?’ ‘Sure.’ Remus sits down next to me. ‘Hey Lily. How’ve you been? I hope you got my last letter. And since letters always take that long to ship, I’ll just leave my message for you on James’ tape. So I read the sorrows of young Werther yesterday and I can only recommend it to you. Write me your thoughts as soon as you’re finished. Or call me. I haven’t heard your voice in quite a while. Bye.’ ‘Bye,’ I smile into the camera before I stand up and end the recording.

I take the tape out of the camera and placed it on my desk right next to Mary’s tape. My new tape is lying on the left. Then I turn to Remus. ‘I’m still sorry for bumping into you and Maggie yesterday. I really should have watched out,’ I apologise. ‘Hey mate, don’t worry. It was partially my fault, too. I mean I left the two of you alone on a party. I should’ve seen misfortune coming right up. I’m just lucky that you guys didn’t bump into Regulus or that night would’ve ended in world war three breaking out. And that one, we don’t want to, right?’

We both laugh. ‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘It’s for the better.’ He nods. ‘So, you and Maggie. Still a thing, I see,’ I state. ‘Yup,’ Remus nods. ‘Still a thing. But if I’m going to be honest, I’ve lately had doubts that I want to spend my whole future with her. I mean, look at her. She can be super annoying sometimes. And she just isn’t like me at all. And those things that she has in common with me just drive me crazy. And she’s not a supporter of that whole smoking thing. She says she doesn’t like it when my lips taste like smoke. I want someone who takes me the way I am. I want something like you and Lily have. Because she’s in fucking Rome and you are all the way over in London but still you two are perfectly working. If I only spent one day away from Maggie, I swear to god she’d break up with me.’

The spark in his eyes seems to have disappeared. I scootch over to him. ‘Oi mate. Don’t worry about it. If she wants to break up with you one day, then she’ll do that. But you’ll find another girl and she’ll be the most perfect girl you’ve ever met. And she will be your literal soulmate. The two of you will harmonise. She’ll like literature. She’ll like the smoky taste on your lips. And you will manage to go on even if one of you were on the other side of the world.’ Remus chuckles. ‘Maybe,’ he responds, ‘but I doubt that a girl like that even exists.’ ‘I am sure,’ I smile.

‘Hey, Sirius asked me if the two of us want to join him at a swim in the lake. Wanna get downstairs and cool off a bit?,’ Remus suggests. ‘Gosh yeah,’ I laugh. ‘I literally feel like I am melting right now.’ Remus jumps up and quickly grabs us two towels. Then he goes into the bathroom to puts on a pair of swimming shorts. Meanwhile, I put on mine in our room.

When he comes out again, the two of us rush downstairs and out of the halls of the college. Sirius is waiting in front of the water fountain and smiles at us. Right at that moment, Peter bumps into us. ‘Guys, I wanted to get down to the post office to mail some letters to my family. Should I take anything you want to mail with me?’ I think. I didn’t write any letters. But maybe Peter could mail the tape to Lily for me. I mean it’s not especially long but it’s something. I nod. ‘On my table there are two tapes. The left one is for Lily. Could you mail it for me?’ ‘Sure,’ Peter responds and walks away and right into the building.

Remus, Sirius and I head off to the lake to take a swim. We take our bicycles. We always go by bike. The feeling of the light breeze when driving is just amazing on the hot summer days.

The water at the lake is freezing and I have trouble getting in even though the air outside the water is burning hot and I probably burned my feet walking over the sand. Sirius and I start a water fight in which we include Remus who ends up getting all the water shoved into his face. Peter joins us some time later and the four of us lay down on the beach and chat about the party yesterday.

I make it my goal to find out if they saw me making out with the mystery guy yesterday but I don’t want to mention it directly. If I tell Remus I made out with someone, he will immediately tell Lily. And I want to do that myself when the time comes. If the time ever comes. Peter assures me that he mailed the tape on the left side to Lily. The day couldn’t be any better, I think to myself as I stare at the sky. I push up my sunglasses and look directly into the sun but it’s blinding me so I quickly put them on again. It feels we have summer break already.

Remus lays on his towel, a book in his hands. I try to catch the title. Something by Kafka. But I don’t really care. Most books that Remus read are too hard for me to understand anyways. As I already said, I ain’t that good with languages. Not that I am dyslexic or anything. Or maybe I am. I don’t know.

Sirius, on his towel, gazes into the air, trying to get a tan. Now and then, Remus throws in a comment that Sirius should put on sunscreen or he will end up with the biggest sunburn. Then he goes on with the fact that people that have their skin exposed to the sun without sunscreen have a higher risk of getting skin cancer.

He always lectures us about that. And Sirius is the only one who never takes it seriously. Kind of ironic. Because Sirius’ name sounds a lot like the word ‘serious’ but he never is. Peter also has a book in his hands. A school book though. In about two weeks, the big finals are coming up and Peter studies harder than anyone in his class. Not only in his class, I think no one at our whole college, not even Remus, studies that hard for our finals. Not that Peter would need it though, he is already super smart.

And I, I am sitting in the sun, wearing my super cool and good-looking sunglasses and am doing absolutely nothing. I just sit there and stare into the water and listen to “Smoke on the water” blasting through my earbuds on my walkman.

Lily made the mixtape that was playing last year for our anniversary. I gulp. It makes me think about the party again. I regret everything I did but there is no point in pretending like it never happened, right? I just try to push it away as long as possible.

The sun is already setting and when I take a look at my watch, I quickly take off my earphones. ‘Guys, we should really get going. It’s almost nine in the evening,’ I note. Sirius, who seems to be sleeping quickly rises and looks at us sleepy. Remus puts down his book, it is a different book than he was reading in the beginning, he seemed to have finished the first one, and puts it in his backpack. Peter puts away his school book and we all pack our things. The beach is not right next to the campus but it is a nice way back.

We drive back through the warm evening air on our four bicycles. The drive is almost half an hour to get back to the campus but we make the time pass by quickly by telling jokes and chatting about what we would do during our summer break.

Somehow during it all, last evening comes up again. And with that, Peter’s kiss with Mme Hooch comes up. Remus doesn’t believe me that they had made out and so I promise to show them the tape. At least the part with Peter and Mme Hooch. They don’t have to know about the part with me and the mystery guy. At least not yet. And maybe not ever. And they especially don’t have to know that it was a guy. If they ever find out, I will just tell them it was a girl. I mean what’s even the point in telling them the truth. I - or maybe Mary - will cut out that part and then I will burn it so there is no evidence left. It will just never have existed.

By the time we arrive at campus again, we are all tired. The day was long. But the boys are also exited to see the tape. Well, Peter isn’t that exited but he tells me it’s alright if we watch it. So I take the tape from my desk and put it into the player that is connected to our TV.

It starts with me walking away from the camera, sitting down on my bed in the dorm. ‘Hey Lily,’ I begin on the video. ‘It’s been quite a while since I heard of you. I hope your sister is doing alright. Last thing I heard, she was in hospital. You know, I tried calling you but you never pick up so I thought why not send some evidence?’.

I quickly press pause. Then I turn to Peter. ‘Did you mail the tape,’ I want to know. ‘Sure,’ he replies and points to the desk. ‘The one on the left side, right?’ I nod. It was the wrong tape. But I am so sure that I put this on the left. ‘Fuck,’ I mumble. ‘What’s wrong,’ Sirius tries to cheer me up, ‘I mean it’s just a video of Peter making out with Mme Hooch. I am sure Lily will enjoy it.’ It’s inevitable now. I have to tell them.

‘What I am going to tell you now can never ever be told anyone else. And especially not Lily, alright?’ Remus and Peter nod. ‘Have you cheated on her or what,’ Sirius jokes. I don’t respond. Then his face stones.

‘You cheated on Lily? You can’t be serious you fucker.’ ‘No he isn’t, cuz you already are,’ Peter tries to lighten the mood with our go-to joke but just earns a bitch glance by Sirius.

‘Okay, I don’t know with whom and I don’t remember it but it was on Mary’s tape. I borrowed it because I wanted to cut it out and throw it away but apparently Peter mailed it to Lily.’ Peter stands up quickly and tries to defend himself. ‘You told me the left one, I got the left one. Maybe you just put it on the wrong side.’

‘You don’t think I remember where I put the tape showing me cheating?’ Now Remus chimes in: ‘Guys, calm down, alright? James did a horrible mistake and I think we have to get back a parcel!’ I look down. I am not ready to look any of the guys in their face. But at the same time, I am surprised. I would’ve expected Sirius to be the calm one and Remus to totally freak out. ‘You’re not going to tell Lily,’ I ask cautiously. Remus is her best friend after all.

I feel his eyes fixing on me and the short moment of silence feels like an eternity. ‘No I’m not. I don’t have to. Because you are calling her like right now and you tell her what you did!’ Fuck. Confrontation. Of all the things in the world, I hate confrontation the most.

‘I can’t,’ I whisper, my voice cracking. ‘Yes you can. Or I’m going to make life a living hell for you, James Fleamont Potter!’. I shake my head.

‘She’s not at uni at the moment. She’s spending two weeks in rehab with her sister. That’s the whole reason I recorded a message and didn’t just call right away. I don’t have the number of the rehab clinic.’ In the corner of my eyes, I see Remus’ fist clenching. ‘Alright,’ he says. ‘Then you leave me no choice. We’re going on a Road Trip, James.’ I look up in confusion. ‘Why? Where the fuck would we be going.’ Remus stares at me with that fury in his eyes. ‘To Rome. We’re going to Rome and you’re going to tell Lily as soon as she gets back. Inperson.’