They had, somehow, avoided getting caught.
Because the greenhouse was close to the arts building, the fire had quickly been detected and dealt with, and thus had avoided burning to the ground. Even then, most of the plants inside and in the surrounding garden had been lost, if not directly to the fire, but to other factors.
He has no idea how no one suspected Baz. Even if he wasn't the only fire user at the Academy, out of the few that attended, he was the most likely culprit. Out of all the students, only about twenty were Elemental Magicians, with only four being fire aligned. Apart from Baz, the other three were older: one in their fourth year and a model student and class representative, and the other two already in fifth year, about to graduate and preparing for the magician licence exams, meaning they were too busy studying to be fooling around.
(Kit had once asked Baz if they were all related, since they were Elemental Magicians.
"Maybe?" Baz had said. "I mean, I guess like some sort of distant cousins since they're part of the same clan, but…"
"But?" Kit prodded.
"I don't know," Baz shrugged, "I've never talked to them. Ah, but Elektra, you know her, right? Water aligned, from the year above? Well, she is my cousin. Second cousin, but it's the same thing, right?")
Kit hadn't been able to sleep at all, worried he would be called in to the disciplinary office the next day. He spent the whole night crafting a story ahead of time: he had gone straight home right after school because he hadn't been feeling well, he had no idea about the fire, and he would blow his nose repeatedly to make his acting more convincing. If it came to it, he would even get the coach to back up his claim.
But it never came to that. When he thought back on it, he felt stupid for acting so paranoid. The chances it would have been traced back to him were slim, at most. Like he'd told Dee, he had been a perfectly good student before he met Baz, and at that point in his second year, they had barely started hanging out together, so not many people knew of their friendship. They had also been extremely careful not to leave behind any traces that could be linked to them, reducing the chances of being discovered even more.
So even if Baz had been discovered, he would probably have been safe. He was confident Baz would not have snitched. At least not on purpose. (The disciplinary committee had ways to make people talk.)
But their (failed) heist had gone unpunished, and as more days passed and nothing happened, Kit relaxed once again.
And so, life went on.
Midterms arrived just as summer came into full bloom, and Kit managed to pass all his tests with an B+ average. As soon as exam season was over, it meant vacation. But summer vacation came and went in a blink, and before they knew it, second term was also drawing to an end, with finals looming on the horizon.
"This is bullshit," Baz groaned, stretching out across the library table. Several books strewn around him were pushed out of the way, and a few of them even fell to the floor. Even though Baz had been the one to ask Kit to come study at the school library, he had barely done any studying himself. "I feel like my eyes are going to fall off from all this reading."
Kit silently picked them up and set them in a neat stack on the corner of the table. He had been ignoring Baz's whining for the last half hour, and was completely desensitised to it.
"Seriously, aren't you tired?"
"Well, not all of us can afford to slack off like you. So stop trying to distract us," Vince said. He was a friend of Baz's, and had been the one who organised the study group. In reality, he had been the one to invite Kit, even though they didn't know each other very well.
What had happened was: Kit had gone to the library to borrow a book which he needed to complete an assignment, but Baz and a group of his friends from his year had also gone to study for finals. The library was set in a way that one would have to walk past the tables set out for students to work at in order to reach the bookshelves. One would enter the building where the library was and the first thing they would see would be the reference desk on the first floor. Past it, the place was divided into two sections, rows of tables stretched out all the way to the back, taking up roughly around a fourth of the first floor's space. They were placed along the left end, since there were long windows that would let in the sunlight, which was bad for the books, but provided excellent natural light for studying. The rest of the room was taken up with bookshelves, lined up perpendicular to the tables, which rose up to the roof, completely full of books. There were so many books, the shelves had to be placed closely together, almost side-to-side, only leaving extremely narrow passages in between each other for there to be enough space for all the books to be displayed. At the very end of the floor, there were the stairs leading to the second floor. On the second floor, there were even more books than on the first, and the layout of the shelves was such that one could, quite literally, get lost between all those books. There were books that hadn't been read in decades, lying forgotten in some corner of the second floor, and unless one were to venture into the deepest parts of all those winding and twisting corridors, they would remain untouched for the years to come.
Point was, because of the layout of the library, it was hard to go by unspotted when entering the library. They had sat on one of the tables near the history section, which was coincidentally the subject of the book Kit had wanted to borrow, making it even harder for Kit to go by unnoticed. Baz had spotted him coming over, and waved for him to approach.
Kit had hesitated at first; if it had been only Baz, he wouldn't have, but because he was with his friends, he was reluctant to do so. It's not that he disliked them, it was just that he was unfamiliar with them, and would feel awkward around them. He'd only interacted properly with all of them once or twice, and almost none of the talking had been done by him. Perhaps if it had been just one or two, he might also not have hesitated. But all of them felt a bit overwhelming.
But they were nice enough, so after a few moments of deliberating, he had decided to head over.
"Fancy seeing you here," Baz had said when he'd reached their table.
Kit shoved his hands into his pockets, "Shouldn't I be the one saying that to you?" He nodded towards the others, receiving a chorus of answering greetings.
"Hey, Kit," Vince had spoken up, "why don't you stay to study with us?"
"I don't know…" He didn't want to feel like he was intruding.
"You don't have any clubs today, right?" Baz asked.
He didn't. When exams season started, all extracurricular activities, even sports, were put on hold. "Well, no, but–"
"So you're free to stay."
"Look, there's even exactly one spot left for you," Vince pointed to an empty chair across from him and right next to Baz. There are six chairs per rectangular table, with three chairs on each side. The vacant spot is the last chair on the right, facing towards the library entrance, and because the table where they're at is one of the closest to the bookshelves there isn't another table on the right, just the expanse of floor where people walk past, meaning he wouldn't have to worry about having anyone sitting next to him (other than Baz, that is).
"Hey, hey, don't pressure him into accepting," Alec (another one of Baz's friends), sitting next to Vince, spoke up, "What if he already had other plans?"
"Ah, you're right. Sorry," Vince apologised to Kit, "did you have other plans?"
Because normally his schedule was packed with after school clubs, whenever he would find himself with a day off, he was at a loss on what to do. With no friends or anyone he was close enough to hang out with, his "plans" were always to simply head back home, heat up whatever leftovers were in the fridge, and lock himself up in his room to do his homework until he was finished or fell asleep. Whichever one came first. But going back to an empty house was a little too depressing, now that he thought about it, especially after having grown used to having Baz (commonly with one or two of his friends) hanging around him most of the time, and he found himself longing to stay around human warmth for a little while longer. It had happened so slowly, he himself hadn't become aware of it, but the loneliness he was so used to before was starting to become less familiar, and thus less desirable, to him.
But admitting this out loud would be too embarrassing for him, so instead he tried to act more nonchalantly. "...Nothing important," Kit said.
"Hey, that's great!" Baz pulled out the empty chair, motioning for Kit to sit down. "So you'll stay, then?"
Kit gripped his bag closer to himself. He still needed to check out the book he had come to look for, it was why he came here in the first place, but he felt as if by leaving, the offer would no longer be in place. "I–"
"Or do you need to notify your parents?" Alec asked understandingly, giving him an easy way out before Baz could keep pressuring him. For being Baz's friend, he was always surprisingly thoughtful most of the time. (Perhaps that's what being in touch with your emotions could do for you.)
"No, they don't mind. I just…" Kit glanced towards the bookshelves, "I wanted to check out a book."
"Oh, is that all?" Baz turned back to the book he was reading, "Go check it out and then read it over here."
Ah, so it wasn't that big of a deal then. "Okay. I'll leave my stuff here then?"
"Sure, go ahead," Vince made an inviting gesture.
Kit unslung the bag from across his shoulder, then set it on the empty chair.
After he had found the book, he went back, sitting to quietly read his book. But the section he'd needed to read was not that long, and he was done with his assignment in no time. He decided to take advantage of the time, and he took out his other classes' study guides. As the hours passed by, the light coming in through the windows grew dimmer and dimmer, until it got so dark outside the artificial lights overhead had to be turned on.
But after so much sitting still, Baz had grown restless, and had been trying to get some attention to relieve his boredom. And his main victim so far had been Kit. So far, Kit has gotten a minimum of twenty pieces of paper thrown at his face. After that had proved ineffective, Baz had given up, and was simply tapping his pen on the table's surface.
"For heaven's sake, can you please stop that?" Vince had finally had enough.
"But I'm so bored…" Baz whined.
Alec, who was sitting across from him, kicked him under the table. "Just be quiet."
"Why can't you be more like Kit?" Wesley, sitting on Baz's left side, teased. "He's actually nice and well-behaved. If you hang out with him so much, you should try to learn a thing or two from him."
Kit felt his ears warming up. It was a joke, he knew that, but he couldn't help feeling embarrassed.
Kai sniggered. "Ah, but let's hope Kit doesn't end up picking his bad habits instead."
"Hey!" Baz protested.
"If you say it too loud, it just might come true," Vince warned in a mock-stern voice. "And we wouldn't want that. Ugh," he shuddered, "just imagining it is bad enough."
"Kit, you have to promise us you won't get corrupted by this delinquent," Wes reached over to shove Kit playfully.
"You're being unfair! I'm not that bad!" Baz tried to defend himself. "Hey, Kit, you gotta help me out here!"
"Hm…" Kit pretended to think very hard about the matter, "No I think they're right."
The others burst out laughing at the same time as Baz exclaimed, "HUH?! You can't be serious!"
"But you are a bad influence," Kit deadpanned. This only made the others laugh even harder.
"You heard him yourself, Baz. You're officially a bad influence to the youth," Kai joked.
Baz threw the pen he was holding at Kai's head. "Shut up."
But the others just kept teasing him, their laughter getting more and more boisterous the more upset Baz got. Despite everything, Kit found himself cracking a smile.
Eventually, their antics got too rowdy, and one of the library's staff had to come and tell them to be quiet unless they wanted to get kicked out. They managed to calm down a little, but even after the librarian had left, they kept laughing quietly behind their hands.
Kit didn't even notice that by the time they left, they had been the only group left in the building aside from the staff. For the first time in his life, Kit was actually looking forward to the next school year.