Their departure was the next morning. Aaron stood with Gui Gui, Jiro and Genie, but they were all silent. Aaron thought about the whole summer camp. Most about Gui Gui. He couldn’t deny his feelings anymore, but his conscience would for sure keep him for showing it openly. He decided to support her in her every doing, but silently.
Gui Gui also had a troubled look on her face. She occasionally looked worried at him, obviously remembering how much beer he drank last night. Also the teachers were suspicious about that many of the students had a hangover.
Genie and Jiro looked pretty carefree, but blushed every time they looked at each other, until Genie broke the silence and asked him about if he had a hangover, and Jiro of course answered that he had not, as he was forbidden to drink. Genie remembered this too.
When the bus arrived, the guys from Wang Zi’s school, inclusive Wang Zi, ran to the back of the bus so that they could sit together in one row.
Gui Gui, Aaron, Genie and Jiro were therefore forced to sit in two groups, but found some seats close to each other, so they could chat with each other. Aaron and Gui Gui sat behind Genie and Jiro.
When everybody was in the bus, except for the teachers who drove home themselves, the bus started to drive. And to everybody’s surprise, Jiro started doing paper cuts.
“Jiro, what are you doing?” Genie asked interested.
“One of the teachers told us about an old, Danish author who is dead now, but also was good at paper cut. I want to try it too,” he answered.
“That one… H.C. Andersen? I remember they spoke about it. May I try too?” Genie asked, and took some of Jiro’s paper and a scissor.
“I want to try too!” Gui Gui said, and followed Genie’s example.
“What about you, Aaron?”
“Thank you, but I have a hangover,” Aaron answered. He wasn’t really in the mood for cutting something into pieces.
“Aaron?” Jiro asked with the tone of a little boy innocently asking for candy.
“Can you tell a fairy tale of Andersen?”
Aaron thought for a second, but then nodded. Why not?
“Yay!” Jiro said, and happily returned to his paperwork.
“I should tell… ‘Little Ida’s Flowers’,” he decided. The first one that came to his mind.
“Little Ida and a student is sitting in a room.
"My poor flowers are quite dead," said little Ida. "They were so pretty last evening, but now every leaf has withered and drooped. Why do they do that?" she asked the student who sat on the sofa.
She was very fond of him because he told such good stories and could cut such amusing figures out of paper-hearts with dancing ladies inside them, flowers of all sorts, and castles with doors that you could open and close. He was a rollicking fellow.
"Why do my flowers look so ill today?" she asked him again, and showed him her withered bouquet.
"Don't you know what's the matter with them?" the student said. "They were at the ball last night, that's why they can scarcely hold up their heads."
"Flowers can't dance," said little Ida.
"Oh, indeed they can," said the student. "As soon as it gets dark and we go to sleep, they frolic about in a fine fashion. Almost every night they give a ball.",” Aaron told. And he continued to tell about the castle where the flowers would dance at night, and how little Ida watched the flowers dance in her own house. Jiro’s eyes were big, and he looked deeply concentrated in both the story and his paper cuts.
Gui Gui and Genie looked fascinated as well. This fairy tale must relate to girls, Aaron thought.
“…In the garden they dug a little grave. Ida first kissed the flowers, and then she closed the box and laid it in the earth. Adolph and Jonas shot their crossbows over the grave, for they had no guns or cannons,” Aaron ended the story.
“Why did they bury the flowers in the end?” Jiro asked. “My mom just throws them into the Dumpster.”
“Because… Because little Ida thinks of the flowers as persons,” Genie tried to explain.
“Can you tell one more?” Jiro asked, and hadn’t seemed to hear what Genie said.
“Can it be a sad one?” Aaron asked. “I can tell a funny afterwards.”
“As many as you can, it’s going to be a long journey,” Genie said, as she started cutting a rabbit into the paper. Aaron looked at Jiro’s. He was busy with a very detailed merry-go-around.
Gui Gui had stopped cutting and looked outside the window.
“Are you fine with it?” Aaron asked her carefully.
“Of course,” she said.
“Okay. And it’s not like it’s a completely tragedy story, the ending is half happy, you can say. I’ll tell ‘The little Match Girl’,” Aaron said. The others became quiet again.
“It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Evening came on, the last evening of the year. In the cold and gloom a poor little girl, bareheaded and barefoot, was walking through the streets. Of course when she had left her house she'd had slippers on, but what good had they been? They were very big slippers, way too big for her, for they belonged to her mother. One she had lost, one had got stolen by a boy who taunted her. And so the little girl walked on her feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold. In an old apron she carried several packages of matches, and she held a box of them in her hand. No one had bought any from her all day long, and no one had given her a cent,” Aaron told, and continued about how the girl the matches and imagined pictures of warm stoves, great Christmas meals and Christmas trees. When he came to the part where the girl saw a shooting star, and her grandmother came down to carry her to heaven where she would no longer starve or freeze, Jiro got all sad and sniffled.
“…"She wanted to warm herself," the people said. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, and how happily she had gone with her old grandmother into the bright New Year.” The story was over. Gui Gui and Genie also looked pretty sad. Aaron just realized what kind of stories he had just told three persons, who had all experienced that someone near them passed away.
He didn’t know what to say or do.
“I once heard a song that was made for this story,” he said careful.
When no one replied, he started singing it.
“Girl from the cold north, where is your daddy and mom, when you sit here in the snow, without your slippers.
The snow is slowly coming down, I wonder why they don’t know, that you’re becoming red and blue, from the awful cold…”
He couldn’t remember where he had heard the song, but he liked the melody. When he sang, Gui Gui, Genie and Jiro at first looked surprised at him, and then impressed like the rest of the people in the bus, who became quiet and listened to him singing.
“…just a poor girl.” When he had ended the song, Genie and Gui Gui looked stunned. Calvin shouted from the back:
“This is why you shouldn’t join the basket club!” as a joke. Aaron looked around, and first at this point noticed, that everyone had been listening to him.
“Why don’t you sing more often?” Gui Gui asked in a low voice. Her eyes were dreamy.
“Only at home,” Aaron said shyly. How long had people listened?
“Oh my God, Jiro!” Genie suddenly exclaimed. Aaron and Gui Gui looked at Jiro’s paper cut. It was a perfect cut little girl, with some matches in her left hand and flowers in her right.
“How did you do that?!” Genie took the paper cut and turned it around. Jiro just said confused with the scissor in his hand.
“I just… cut it?” he said unsecure.
“Well, painting isn’t you only talent,” Gui Gui said. “Just as we just found out that writing isn’t Aaron’s only talent.”

When the bus arrived at their school as the last (all the others had already been dropped of at their own schools), four pairs of parents was waiting. Or, three pairs of parents and a pair of stepparents. And when Aaron got out of the bus, he saw another person standing next to his parents.
“Hey Aaron, welcome back!” his mother said happily. “We’ve missed you so much!”
“Guess who have come to visit,” his father said, and pushed the other person – a girl – forward to him. It was first at this point Aaron recognized her.
“Sam…?”
“Aaron, so good to see you again!” she said loud, and hugged him.
“Samia called last week and asked if she could stay here until the summer vacation was over, and of course we said yes,” Aaron’s mom said.
Jiro and Genie was about to say goodbye to each other, and Genie blushed when Jiro hugged her (as he always did, but Genie wasn’t used to it). But Gui Gui had noticed what was going on, and looked at them while putting her bags into her family’s car.
Samia came back now? No, no need to worry. She would only stay for two weeks.
“Sam… How good to see you,” Aaron said in a tone which clearly showed that he wasn’t.
Samia asked if it had been a good summer camp, and started chatting.
“Hey, are you really tired or something? You didn’t use to be this quiet,” Samia said. Aaron’s parents looked worried at each other. Genie now also noticed what was going on.
“And you’ve changed school? I liked the old one better. What kind of school is this? Is that your friends over there?”
“They’re my classmates,” Aaron said hesitating. He hadn’t said the word “friend” for ages.
Gui Gui walked over like she wanted to test the new girl out, or maybe protect something she wanted to have herself. All Aaron knew was that she had a resolute look on her face.
“Of course we are his friends,” Gui Gui said. Why did she say that? That word. He didn’t deserve it.
“Oh really?” Samia asked energetic.
“My name is Gui Gui.”
Samia looked like she wanted to laugh.
“Gui Gui? Ghost? Isn’t that a… really weird name? Well, it matches somehow,” she said.
“Shut up!” Aaron nearly shouted. The smile faded away from Samia’s face.
“Are you mad?” she asked. Gui Gui looked somehow hurt by Samia’s words.
“Yes. And you should take care of your mouth, and not let such dirty words out.” Aaron took his bags and left Gui Gui and Samia shocked.
“Aaron, calm down,” his mother tried to say, while he threw the bags into the car. Jiro was already gone, Genie had watched the scenery from her car, and Gui Gui’s parents waited for her to get in their car.
“Well then… See you!” Gui Gui said in a spiritless tone. Samia shrugged her shoulders, and then acted like nothing had happened. When she sat next to Aaron at the backseat of his parents’ car, she started chatting as before, even though she didn’t get much answer.

***
Uuhh ~ a new girl appeared! (fictional xD) But the question is still alive; who was the first person Aaron kissed?
I need to make some credits:
“Little Ida’s Flowers”: http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/LittleIdasFlowers.html
“The little Match Girl”: http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheLittleMatchGirl.html
And the song to “The little Match Girl” is written and composed (originally in Danish, I translated some parts) by my old teacher, for our musical in third grade. That must be credits enough xD

Please write a comment about what you think about this chapter – so much thanks to all of you writing comments! I love you! And especially those who comment on every chap <3
Gives me a lot of encouragement!
Keep tuned for next chapter, I promise it will be more exciting (I think this was a little boring) =)
- Blitz