Dad sits next to me on the stairs and says, “It’s okay to be scared. But everything will be okay. I promise.”

“How do you know?” I ask, and he smiles.

“Because we’ve all had that first day…even me.”

I try to imagine Dad when he was eleven, but it doesn’t work.

Mum rushes into the hall with pink cheeks and a puff and says, “Are we ready?” Then she crouches next to us. “I’m so proud of you, Amy.”

“Wish your sister luck,” Dad says, and Will shouts it without looking away from the TV.

In the car, I cry a little bit, and I can’t get out right away. We watch the other kids go through the gate, and Mum holds my hand and says, “One day, it will be your brother’s first day at secondary school. And you can tell him how amazing it is.”

She wants me to be brave, so I am, even if I’m full of butterflies. I’m strong all the way to the hall where a teacher tells us the rules. And I’m strong in the classroom where Mrs. Solomon says she’s our homeroom teacher.

The girl sitting next to me whispers, “I’m Nia.”

“I’m Amy.”

She smiles, and I don’t feel scared anymore.

We sit next to each other in every lesson, and she’s good at making me laugh even when we’re not supposed to. At the end of the day, she hugs me and says, “See you tomorrow.”

Mum and Dad and Will are all in the car, and they ask so many questions. I answer them all, but my favorite one is, “Did you make any friends?”

“Yes,” I say.

Dad smiles. “I told you it would be okay.”

IIII I

“I need you to look after Will,” Mum says.

“For how long?” I ask.

“As long as it takes.”

I don’t ask what “it” is because Mum doesn’t like talking about work. Well, she does, but only on the phone and only to other people.

Bending down to my brother, she says, “Be good for Amy, okay?”

He nods hard and pushes his lips together like he does whenever he makes a promise.

“I won’t be long,” Mum tells me. “Thank you.”

We wave goodbye, then watch TV until Will says, “I’m boooored.”

You can tell how bored he is by how many o’s he uses, so I turn the TV off and say, “Let’s play outside.”

He jumps up and runs to the back door, and I have to wrestle his coat on and force a hat over his head because it’s not summer anymore.

“What shall we play?” I ask.

“Creatures,” he says, so I tell him about everything that lives in the places we can’t see.