Mitch came and stood next to the fire with us, sipping a beer. A few minutes later Jamie rocked up with another of Mitch’s friends from Year Twelve. It was weird seeing Jamie drink a beer. He went about it like he was an old man who’d been drinking forever. He kind of sipped it occasionally, like it wasn’t a deal. At some stage, I thought, Where’s Trent?

‘How do you like the school?’ Mitch asked me.

‘It’s way different to my old school,’ I said, ‘but I’m starting to like it.’ I didn’t actually know if I did, but I realised that if I was still in the city there’d be no way that I would be at this party sitting around a fire drinking wine with boys.

‘So why did your parents send you to our school?’ Jamie asked.

‘It was all my dad’s girlfriend’s idea,’ I answered.

‘What’s her story?’

‘What do you mean?’ I said defensively and then looked into the fire to try to hide my embarrassment.

Jamie said, ‘Well, it seems like all of our parents have sent us to the school because they think it’s going to protect us from something or make us into something. My dad used to burn his books at the end of each term, he hated school so much. That’s why he sent us to this school. He thought there wouldn’t be much homework.’

‘Mum was bullied,’ Ashley said, like it was funny. ‘And she wants me to be like Greta Thunberg or something.’

‘Who?’ Mitch asked.

‘Greta Thunberg,’ Ashley repeated.

‘Who’s she?’

‘You know, the Swedish girl who started all of the school strike for the climate rallies,’ Caroline explained.

‘Oh yeah, she’s cool, gave us a day off school,’ Mitch said before taking another scull of his beer and stepping closer to the warmth of the fire.

‘And Dad and Mum are just plain old hippies,’ Caroline said.

Mitch laughed and joked, ‘And like you’re not?’

Jamie chimed in, ‘I reckon Mum sent me to try to protect me from bad public school architecture,’ which I thought was pretty funny.

I thought about why Dad and Caitlin had sent me to the school. I repeated what they’d told me: ‘Dad’s a lecturer and he reckons independent learning – focusing on what you enjoy – is the best way to learn. That’s why they sent me.’ Secretly, I thought that it was to get me as far away from Mum as possible.

‘A lot of people think our school is all arts and crafts, song and dance. The reality is that it actually gets pretty hard in Year Twelve,’ Mitch said before taking a mouthful of his beer.

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. School was already tough enough.