I walked along the side of Katie’s house, knowing Katie and Jane would be in the pool. ‘Hey Pheebs,’ they called out when they saw me, before Jane clambered over Katie’s shoulders and dunked her beneath the water.

I stepped beneath the patio that covered the pool, pulled my dress over my head to reveal my bathers underneath, then sat on the edge of the pool dangling my legs into the cool water.

‘How’s things in The Village?’ Katie asked.

‘Awesome,’ I said, hoping that it would stop her and Jane from prying into my personal life.

‘Have you sussed out any hot guys yet?’ Jane jumped in.

I thought about some of the older guys at my school and said, ‘There’s a few,’ so they wouldn’t learn that I was feeling completely out of place at my new school.

‘Oh yeah? So who do you like?’ Jane said. I plunged beneath the water to avoid answering.

But when I came up for air, Jane asked again, ‘Come on, tell me who it is? There’s got to be one or two hotties at your school.’

‘Seriously Jane, not everyone is checking out boys every second of the day.’

‘Really?’ she asked straight-faced, and then laughed cheekily.

Katie and I both answered simultaneously, ‘Yes! Really!’

It did annoy me how Jane thought checking out boys was the most important thing in life. I mean, what was I going to do with a boyfriend? I didn’t even want to take my friends back to my place what with Caitlin being there, let alone introduce a boy to my parents. And the last two weeks I’d had were doing my head in enough without thinking about what I was supposed to do with a boy.

Jane didn’t really set that good an example of how to date boys. She’d kissed a few, and then they’d message each other for a while before she’d get sick of them not taking her out anywhere and then she’d drop them.

After swimming for a while, I said, ‘Do you want to shoot some hoops?’

Katie looked at her blue wrinkly hands. ‘Yeah, I’m starting to turn into a granny.’

We climbed out of the pool, grabbed our towels and threw them on the concrete, at the top of the lawn area next to the pool, beneath the basketball backboard. You had to shoot from where you caught the ball and then run back onto the towel before you burned your feet.

As I was taking my first shot, Katie asked, ‘Did your mum get her car fixed?’

‘Yeah, she did,’ I said after watching the ball swish.

‘I was really worried,’ she added and I took that as an extra apology for her dad calling mine, although I hadn’t shared details of what had happened after he called.

‘Thanks, but it’s all cool. Mum’s okay, we hung out last night.’ And then to change the subject, I said, ‘So what’s new at school?’

‘Cody Brown got so hot,’ Jane responded, almost jumping out of her skin.