Ash and Felix had been competing since year five.
Top marks. Sports team selection. Lead in the school play. It had started accidentally, continued by habit, and hardened into something neither of them had chosen but both had accepted as a fact of their lives.
They were not enemies. They were civil, even occasionally kind. They just kept score.
On the school residential trip, they were assigned to the same tent.
The first night was uncomfortable. The second night it rained very hard and there was a question about the tent peg that they had to solve together, at two in the morning, in the dark, in the rain, while everyone else was asleep.
They solved it. They lay back in the repaired tent, damp and relieved.
"This is ridiculous," said Felix.
"The tent or—"
"The whole thing. I've been competing with you for three years and I don't even know what your favourite subject is."
A pause.
"History," said Ash. "You?"
"Chemistry." A pause. "I didn't know you liked history."
"I didn't know you liked chemistry."
They talked until four in the morning. About school and their families and what they were afraid of and what they wanted to do.
None of it was competitive.
It was just two people who had been in the same room for three years finally looking at each other.
"We wasted a lot of time," said Felix.
"We have a lot of time left," said Ash.