She’s wearing a stylish, slightly oversized mint-green tracksuit today, with her Afro loosely tied up in a matching headscarf. She has a whistle dangling around her neck, and she’s carrying a cardboard box filled with red and blue bandanas. She drops the box on to the end of our table and wipes the sweat that’s beading on her forehead.

‘All right, you lot,’ she says, clapping her hands together, ‘I want volunteers for team captains.’

Tiffany’s hand shoots in the air before she can even finish the sentence.

‘Why am I not surprised?’ Madzikanda says as Ethan gets an elbow to the ribs and his hand shoots up too. She takes out a couple of red bandanas and tosses them over.

‘And Sycamore?’ she asks, turning to our side of the room.

Bec puts her hand up, and so does Cameron, pitting the Clark twins against each other. Classic sibling rivalry. Exactly what we expected.

Madzikanda hands them both a blue bandana. ‘Heads or tails?’ She is looking straight at Bec as she takes out a large silver coin that looks more like pirate treasure than actual money.

‘Heads?’ she suggests, turning to her co-captain for approval.

Cameron nods. ‘You know, a toss is statistically more likely to come up heads? Something about the way the coins are weighted.’

‘So you’re telling me this isn’t a fair process?’ Madzikanda pretends to be shocked. She flips the coin and catches it. ‘Tails,’ she says. ‘Hard luck.’ She turns to Ethan and Tiffany. ‘Top or bottom?’

‘That’s a bit personal, miss!’ Josh jokes, demonstrating his class-clown credentials.

Madzikanda sighs. ‘You know, when I tell my friends how many queer students we have here at Oakbrook, they always say, Oh, how refreshing! They must be so well behaved!’ She looks around the hall, giving ample side-eye. ‘If only that were true.’

‘Ah, don’t be like that, miss. You love us really,’ Josh says, and she shoots him a knowing look, a glimmer of a smirk on her face.

‘OK, well, allow me to rephrase,’ she says. ‘Which base do you want?’

‘We’ll take the hill,’ says Tiffany.

Our half of the room lets out a collective groan because everyone knows that between the hill and the woods the hill is always the better option. Better for attack because you get a 360-degree view of the playing field, and easier to defend because the enemy has to run up the slope to steal your flag. We’re already on the back foot and we haven’t even started.

‘Great!’ Miss Madzikanda says. ‘As for the rest of you –’ she addresses those of us without bandanas – ‘come on up and grab your team colours. Whistle is in thirty!’

Cameron bounces ahead of us, waving our blue flag proudly as he leads Sycamore through the woodland. He’s enjoying this just a little bit too much, but he’s so cute his enthusiasm is infectious. I never thought I’d say it, but Chase was right: we are making core memories today. There’s just something in the air. I’m glad I didn’t skip this.