by Jan Sobrie and Raven Ruëll from 8 years old
"Welcome to the club. In the 'you're in the shit club'."
This is how Sammy greets the new boy Ebenezer on the street in a gritty neighborhood. Sammy and Ebenezer know each other from seeing each other at school. Ebenezer is smart and comes from an educated family; Sammy is rough, lively and has problems with learning and social behavior. The two become friends in a flash. Ebenezer was forced to move with his parents to the poor tower block where Sammy lives. "It's only for a short time," his father said, but Sammy laughs at that. "That's what my father said too." The two children tell each other their story: parents with more and more problems, redundancy, demands for payment, arguments and tears, and at some point everything got smaller and smaller. Ebenezer's life went downhill: in terms of luxury and comfort, his world shrank until he could no longer breathe. When it became clear that Sammy and Ebenezer would not be allowed to go on the school trip, the ski week, because their parents could not afford the costs, the children initially reacted with pain and anger. But then they decide to stop talking at school from now on.
