Soon after she returns to school, Karen notices Ricky Stokes from Year Ten has started hanging around the auditorium entrance after her Monday and Wednesday choir practice. As she heads out of the hall with the other students, he calls out, “Where are you going?” or “Say hello.” At first Karen doesn’t realize he’s talking to her. But then he starts saying her name in a coaxing, sing-song way, as if calling a lost dog. “Kaaaaaa-ren. Come on, give me a smile, Kaaaaren.” She hurries past with her chin pressing into her neck brace, her mouth clamped firmly shut to hide her missing teeth, dismayed and surprised that he knows she exists.

She manages to avoid him during the day, ducking behind a corner when she catches sight of him. Like most of the Year Tens, Ricky Stokes looms over the younger students, but what makes him easier to pick out is the stark contrast between his pasty white face and his dark, spiky brush of hair. That plus his habit of loitering in the same spots at lunchtime—on the back steps of the auditorium or by the bike sheds—to smoke, or to fidget with his lighter or whatever object of interest he’s picked up off the ground.

This continues for several weeks until one day, Ricky Stokes does not call out to Karen. Instead he follows her out of the school gate, trailing at first a few feet behind, then jogging ahead so that he’s at her side. He asks her why she won’t talk to him after all this time, does she think she’s too good? Karen is alarmed by the accusation; she doesn’t think she’s better than anybody. She’s a middling student, not popular like pretty, athletic Kerry Davies, or delicate and revered like Elaine Lally with the hole in her heart, or even intimidatingly aloof like Lois Meadows, pale and scowling under her tightly knotted headscarf. And she certainly can’t boast of notoriety like Ricky Stokes, whose name is only ever mentioned in connection with some reckless misdeed or scandalous tragedy: a father in prison, an alcoholic mother and the string of unsuitable men she brought into her home, one of whom, Karen once heard a teacher say, knocked a five-year-old Ricky down the stairs during an argument with his mother.

Karen hunches her shoulders and keeps walking, suspecting that nothing she says will be the right answer. But her silence brings more questions:

“Why are you ignoring me? Are you deaf or something?”