‘I’ve been playing with my team since I was eight,’ I told her.

‘I only started playing in the local team last year. The team were short of players so I thought I’d give it a go,’ she said. I started to stress, wondering how good the other kids in the local comp were.

Hayley bumped my shoulder with hers. ‘You should come and tryout for our team. The comp starts in about a month.’

‘We’ve already got a full team,’ Matilda said as she walked past us, not exactly inviting. I wondered where her coldness was coming from.

When we got to class, Michael told us to sit wherever we liked. I sat cross-legged and knew I was slouching over and playing with my ponytail again, but we were already in our third class and we hadn’t even taken out a book yet. We would have already completed three tests at Wattleside High by now.

‘Now this is good,’ Michael said, ‘we’re all equal how we’re positioned here.’ He was sitting cross-legged with his back straight and his hair and beard falling down over his chest. I thought, Mum is going to blow up when I tell her about this place. I knew that she’d been really proud that I’d attended one of the better performing inner-city schools and had words with Dad about sending me to this new school. She was concerned that there’d be no discipline and I’d fall behind.

‘Learning shouldn’t be about rules, it should be about freedom. I want us to take some relaxed time to think about ways we can establish the class to maximise our freedom,’ Michael declared.

I facepalmed and whispered to myself, Just give me a test already.

Michael might have heard me because when I looked up he was staring straight back at me. ‘After all, our national anthem proclaims “we are young and free”, doesn’t it?’ he said.

I was tempted to say, apart from when it comes to wearing 36ers T-shirts at this weird school. And of course I could have said something smart about my people’s sixty thousand plus years of life on the Australian continent and the high rates of Aboriginal imprisonment and deaths in custody, but I let it slide.

Caroline, with her long, blonde hair in ponytails, tie-dyed T-shirt, blue jeans and Chuck Taylor Converse, said, ‘I think that if we need to get up and stretch, we should be able to do that whenever we like.’

Who places stretching in their top ten list of freedoms?

‘Do you need a particular space in the room to stretch, Caroline?’ Michael questioned.

‘No, I don’t think so. As long as we don’t get in people’s way and, you know, we don’t do yoga for the whole period.’

‘Yeah, unless it’s a yoga class,’ said the kid with the sweaty hand from morning circle. Even though it wasn’t funny, I was glad to find someone in the class seemed a little bit normal.

Michael had a satisfied look on his face. ‘So are you saying that freedoms are only virtuous when they don’t infringe on the rights and comforts of others, Caroline?’