I suppose Dad will have told the teachers about Mum, but that doesn’t explain why everyone else is staring at me. I keep checking to see if I have toilet roll on my shoe or a giant spot in the middle of my nose.

‘What do you think, Saff?’ Elle asks halfway through lunch.

I turn to her, eyes wide. I realize I haven’t been listening. I’d been thinking about the strange dream I had at the hospital yesterday.

Izzy saves me. ‘I think he’s cool,’ she says.

That’s when I realize they’re talking about Matty Chung, Elle’s latest crush. I glance over at him, where he sits with his best friends Jonnie and David.

I don’t know how to respond because I don’t really think anything of him, or any boys, for that matter.

I remember when we were in Year Seven and no one else talked to us. Sounds weird, but I preferred it. We used to have a sleepover at Elle’s house every Friday night. We would do our homework first while Elle’s mum baked. It was usually cookies or a cake that she would let us have as a treat before dinner. Afterwards we always watched a film and then stayed up late chatting or playing silly games in bed when we were supposed to be sleeping.

But then Year Eight happened, and we made more friends, and now everyone wants to hang out at Maccies after school or go to the cinema with boys. Everything’s changing so quickly that it feels like my world is crumbling, just like in the dream. Like everything I’ve ever known is made of sand; one big wave could wash it away into the ocean.

‘Saff !’ Elle whispers furiously. ‘Don’t stare at him. He’ll know we’re talking about him.’

‘Sorry.’ I smile sheepishly and turn back to my lasagne.

‘What’s the latest anyway?’ Elle asks. ‘How’s your mum?’

Three pairs of eyes turn to me just then, and I want to shrink away from their sympathy, hide from their curiosity.

‘I don’t really know,’ I admit, playing with my food. ‘Mum’s in a coma still. Apparently she had some sort of stroke. There’s a fancy name for it, but I can’t really remember it now.’

What I do know is that being in a coma is kind of like you’re asleep, except you can’t be woken up by loud noises or dogs licking your face in the morning.

Often the patient – which is how they keep referring to Mum – wakes up after a few weeks, once their body has recovered from the trauma. I don’t think about the other outcome, which is that some patients never wake up.