‘Ah, Felix!’ Mrs Lennon turns round from an oven. ‘You’re too late to start, so just join a pair.’

‘Over here, Felix.’ Jake waves his floured hands at me like a clown. Rebecca shakes her head, like she thinks Jake’s an idiot.

I drop my bag by the door and walk over to them.

‘Where have you been?’ Jake asks.

‘Nowhere.’ I shrug.

‘Reading for dummies?’

‘Don’t call it that,’ I say.

‘Writing for dummies then.’ Jake grins. He’s my best friend, but best friends can be annoying sometimes.

‘Don’t listen to him, Felix,’ says Rebecca. ‘Just check the instructions and turn the oven on.’

Rebecca is always on my side, trying to keep me calm. She’s one of the brainiest in the class and was my best friend in primary school. She used to come round my house lots, but her mum and mine fell out, so she doesn’t any more. She still is a best friend, but not as best as Jake now.

I look at the oven temperature on the recipe: ‘Temp 210 for 35 min’.

I walk over to the oven.

Jake’s mixing flour with his hands, like he’s forgotten what he just said. Writing for dummies. Reading for dummies. I was doing both, but everyone doesn’t have to know about it. I can read. And there’s nothing else wrong.

I bend down and turn the oven dial. The smell of gas stings my nose, reminds me of making bread with Grandma. When I’d sit on the kitchen floor and watch the bread rise through the glass and start to daydream of catching a train or a plane. And Grandma would join in and somehow we’d always end up in Nova Scotia, where neither of us had ever been, but it was always there because Grandma liked the name. And because it’s got coloured wooden houses – most of them are blue or red, but she remembered seeing a picture of a pink one in a magazine.

Was it two hundred and ten or two hundred and fifty? Thirty-five minutes or forty-five?

Two hundred and fifty?

Yes. Two hundred and fifty.

I set the dial.

Behind me I can hear Jake and Rebecca talking, something about the mix being too thick, but all I can think of is wishing I could go to Nova Scotia with Grandma again.

*

‘It’s okay, Felix,’ says Jake. ‘Maybe we just feed them to the birds.’

‘No, better not do that,’ says Rebecca.

‘No, don’t want to kill them.’ Jake laughs.

Rebecca puts her hand over her mouth, trying to stop herself doing the same, but I can see the water in her eyes and the creases in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but they are as hard as bullets.’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I meant to do it. Something had to get us out of that lesson early.’