The librarian, Mr Wells, is our keeper today, and he takes great delight in handing out a ‘random’ essay topic to each of us. The catch is we aren’t allowed to touch a computer. Leafing through an ancient encyclopaedia with a brown cover and Bible-thin pages, I am looking for my topic: ‘Newtonian time’. When I finally get to the definition I send the old fart a glare. What a smart arse.

A spit ball hits my hand. I ignore it and my annoying twin.

‘Don’t be mad, Tace,’ she whispers.

Irritated, I flip a page I haven’t read yet and tuck my hand back into my lap. We’ve been giving each other the cold shoulder all morning but she’d caved after lunch and has been pestering me ever since. We both ignore the other person in detention with us.

Sam Miller had walked into the office not long after us. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. Mad May’s great-nephew, he’s the one who always goes to get her because he can keep her calm. The only boy left in year twelve, Sam has been in the same grade as us since preschool. Thirteen years of schooling and for most of that time we kept our distance. At school we can be civil, outside those gates he’s a Miller and we’re Thomsons. Sam never seemed that bad to me and Laney, but we’d never admit it to anyone else. As usual he picked the desk furthest away from us but I could see him, out of the corner of my eye, bent over his own book. It looked like he might’ve fallen asleep.

‘It’s your own fault, you know.’ Another spit ball from Laney but this one hits my neck. I keep pretending to read.

‘You’d have been on time if you hadn’t dragged me in, Tatas.’

Right, that’s it!

Whipping my hands out from under the desk, the rubber-band I’ve been carefully stretching goes flying. Bullseye! Direct hit fair on her forehead. Laney freezes in a second of shock and we both bust out laughing. Sam must’ve seen it because his shoulders are shaking.

‘What’s going on over there?’

Wells gives us the evil eye from his desk.

‘Nothing, Sir.’

We put our heads down and try not to giggle. A few minutes of silence tick past before I feel her stare again. Looking up I cock an eyebrow and she smirks back.

‘Can you cover for me tonight?’ Laney asks.

‘Why, what are ya doin?’

She smiles. ‘Better you not know, liddle sista.’

I do my best impression of Mum’s disapproving tight-lipped look. All it does is make her giggle.

‘Nah nuthin, I just wanna see Troy.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Gorn then, go hang around with Dickhead and leave me to Mum.’