Everyone was sitting around the pool, listening to music. The boys were drinking beers and Katie and Jane had glasses of wine. It was new to me, seeing the girls drink. They weren’t like the kids at my new school, where it seemed acceptable that we’d drink and try drugs and things like that. These were people I grew up with and I knew our parents expected that we wouldn’t take drugs, that we wouldn’t sneak around behind their backs and drink. In the past, Katie, Jane and I hadn’t needed those things. We could always keep ourselves entertained by just being in each other’s company, going shopping, heading to the cinemas or having a sleepover with a bit of junk food and Netflix. I guess time does change everything.

Katie and Jane both kissed me on the cheek and the boys said hi, trying not to give away too much. They were the cool gang at Wattleside High. Not the kids with the best grades, but definitely the best when it came to sport and cracking people up.

Dustin Green sucked on a vape like he’d been doing it forever and offered everyone else a go. Jane took a drag on it and I thought, Are you for real? Not only because she was vaping but it told me that she had a thing for Dustin Green again. The last time she was with him she said it was like kissing a sea slug and I wondered how a vaping sea slug was an improvement on the last time round.

Cody came over and joined us. He said, ‘I haven’t seen you at school for a long time Phoebe, have you been on holiday or something?’

Katie laughed. ‘She moved to a different school, Cody. How could you have not known that?’

‘Right,’ he said, nodding. ‘What school?’

‘The Steiner school down south,’ I said.

‘The hippie school?’

‘People call it a hippie school, though it’s not really.’

‘What’s it like then?’ Cody asked and I could see all eyes on me.

Of course I wanted to sound cool so I told them, ‘It’s really different, in a good way. The teachers are really relaxed and actually interesting. They do lots of things to get all the students to connect with each other.’

‘You mean you have to talk to the loser kids?’ Dustin said, almost coughing after dragging on his vape.

‘That’s the thing,’ I said, ‘there are no loser kids at my school. Everyone is cool. Sure, not everyone is the same, but everyone is cool in their own particular way. Like everyone is really good at playing music, like playing the guitar, or drums and singing and stuff.’

‘So lots of singing hippies?’ Cody joked.