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Chapters (86)
  1. Title Page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. Love
  4. Before
  5. One
  6. ONE
  7. Two
  8. TWO
  9. Three
  10. THREE
  11. Four
  12. FOUR
  13. Five
  14. FIVE
  15. Six
  16. SIX
  17. Seven
  18. SEVEN
  19. Eight
  20. EIGHT
  21. Nine
  22. NINE
  23. Ten
  24. TEN
  25. Eleven
  26. ELEVEN
  27. After
  28. One
  29. ONE
  30. Two
  31. TWO
  32. Three
  33. THREE
  34. Four
  35. FOUR
  36. Five
  37. FIVE
  38. Six
  39. SIX
  40. Seven
  41. SEVEN
  42. Eight
  43. EIGHT
  44. Nine
  45. NINE
  46. Ten
  47. TEN
  48. Eleven
  49. ELEVEN
  50. Twelve
  51. TWELVE
  52. Thirteen
  53. THIRTEEN
  54. Fourteen
  55. FOURTEEN
  56. Fifteen
  57. FIFTEEN
  58. Sixteen
  59. SIXTEEN
  60. Seventeen
  61. SEVENTEEN
  62. Eighteen
  63. EIGHTEEN
  64. Nineteen
  65. NINETEEN
  66. Twenty
  67. TWENTY
  68. Twenty-One
  69. TWENTY-ONE
  70. Twenty-Two
  71. TWENTY-TWO
  72. Twenty-Three
  73. TWENTY-THREE
  74. Twenty-Four
  75. TWENTY-FOUR
  76. Twenty-Five
  77. TWENTY-FIVE
  78. Twenty-Six
  79. TWENTY-SIX
  80. Twenty-Seven
  81. TWENTY-SEVEN
  82. Twenty-Eight
  83. TWENTY-EIGHT
  84. Eleven Months Later
  85. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  86. Copyright

After that, it becomes a regular thing. I meet Poppy every day after school. While the weather’s still warm, we find a bench or sit outside the café on Sydney Street, me in my uniform, her in her red glitter sunglasses, trying to absorb the last of the autumn sun. She keeps saying that there won’t be many more days like these, that we have to make the most of them, but I know now that she’s not talking about us.

Most of the time, though, we just walk around until the shops start to close and we realise it’s time to go home. Poppy isn’t like Adara. She doesn’t want to sit in Starbucks for hours, talking about make-up or complaining about school. God, I hope that doesn’t make me sound like an asshole. That’s not all Adara cares about, of course. She cares about her family, Mark, me. She cares that the world is burning and no one seems to give a shit. She cares that her baby cousins will grow up having only seen polar bears and orangutans in books. She cares about school and going to university and becoming a biologist so she can do something about it.

I never thought I’d be the type of person to forget about their friends as soon as I met someone. I hated it when Adara did it after she got together with Mark. But Poppy is just this force – this tornado – that sweeps you off your feet and takes you with her when she goes.

I didn’t realise how small my world was until I met her. We go to art galleries I didn’t know were there and down streets I’ve never been on, even though I’ve lived here my whole life. Her restlessness is infectious. There’s always something she wants to show me – a second-hand shop with taxidermy rats in top hats or that weird vegan shoe shop on Gardner Street, where she attempts to persuade me to ditch my leather DMs after reading something on the Greenpeace website about greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s always a dog she wants to pet, a lost cat she has to find, a busker she wants to listen to. She looks at everything as though she’s seeing it for the first or the last time and now I do the same. I wonder if she gets it from her mother, this incurable curiosity. When she’s like that, I can see her as a child, making mud pies in the garden and picking through the rock pools at Ovingdean Beach and I wish I’d known her then. But I know her now and even though she’s only sixteen, I already know that she’s going to live a long, loud life.