‘Forced to fraternize with us lower classes,’ Bec replies. ‘I bet she’s furious with Rhys for slumming it. Very unbecoming.’

They’re right. You can practically see her clench from all the way over here. Kellen is a scholarship student, like Bec, and if it wasn’t for him being coupled up with Rhys, there’s no way the rest of the elite would tolerate him.

‘And yet she has to accept the relationship or she’ll seem homophobic,’ Chase says. ‘That girl is made to be a politician. She knows the game and how to play it.’

‘She’ll slip up eventually,’ I say. ‘Every politician has their downfall. It’s inevitable.’

‘We can but hope.’ Bec shrugs. ‘Anyway. Enough about them. This day’s supposed to be about us. Any idea what you guys are gonna write yet?’

She nods to the tattered old yearbook behind the glass before us. It’s an Oakbrook tradition dating back more than a century. Each year, for one night only, the headmaster (and it’s always been a ‘master’ – go, patriarchy!) takes it out of its cabinet so that the leaving class can write a message, and read those of the many that came before.

‘I wanna see what’s in there first,’ Chase says. ‘Like, is it meaningful words or just vulgar messages and gushing declarations of love?’

‘It’s probably the latter,’ I say. ‘I bet the kids in 1925 weren’t really all that different to us. I’m sure it’s just pages and pages of “Melanie loves Thomas” and cartoon drawings of questionably large dicks.’ Humanity seems to have an obsession with those. I’ve visited the British Museum. I’ve seen the ancient crockery.

‘Well, I’m leaving a quote,’ Bec says. ‘Some song lyrics or something.’

‘You are not going to quote Taylor Swift in a one-hundred-year-old book,’ Chase says, scandalized.

‘Watch me! It’s supposed to be like a time capsule. There’s probably lyrics in there from Elvis and Springsteen, and quotes from old black-and-white movies. The point is to capture how it feels to be right here, right now. So I think Taylor lyrics are entirely appropriate, actually. I quite like the idea of kids looking back at this in another hundred years and trying to imagine what it was like to be a Swiftie.’

‘I’m sure that’s exactly what they’ll be thinking,’ Chase says.

‘You really think Oakbrook will still be here in a hundred years?’

Bec nods. ‘If we’ve not been killed by climate change.’

‘Or enslaved by malicious AI!’ Chase adds cheerily.

‘What a comforting thought,’ I say, imagining killer robots tearing through the dining hall, the class of 2056 fleeing for their lives. Maybe I do watch too many movies.

I see Josh and Owen entering the hall then, heading down the stairs and parting ways to join their houses. Josh is with us in Sycamore, and Owen is over in Hawthorn. They’re the only two students who truly don’t seem to care about the house rivalry. Like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, except with less romance and significantly fewer stabbings.