Luckily the taxi didn’t take too long to arrive and the driver didn’t ask many questions.

‘When we get there, do you mind if I run in to get some money?’ I asked.

‘Sure, no problem,’ he said and I tried to relax and enjoy the air conditioning.

When we pulled up outside my house, I raced inside and grabbed the handful of change from Mum’s drawer. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I said when I handed the taxi driver mostly fifty-cent coins.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Have a good night.’

‘Thanks, you too.’

I went inside to lie on my bed and sulk. But then all of the tension that had been building over the last couple of weeks came flooding out and I started bawling. In that moment, my life felt unbelievably shit. I looked at the ceiling and somehow convinced myself that Dad and Mum didn’t love me. I knew they hated each other; that Dad only wanted me staying with him to get at Mum. And I thought that Caitlin was only nice to me to get Dad, and Katie and Jane were only being nice to me to get to the boys at my new school. And worst of all, I felt terrible about lying to my friends and everyone else about Mum.

I pulled my pillow to my chest and sobbed, to the point that my whole face was boiling hot and I was gasping for air. I had to fan my face to cool down and at some point had to consciously try to slow down my breathing because my chest was hurting.

After a while I turned on some music, determined to not ever get out of bed again. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the bad things in my life.

I thought about when I’d done silly, embarrassing stuff. About all of the people that hated me; the boys I’d liked that wouldn’t even look at me. About how much I believed people hated Aboriginal people, because they were always locking us up, or talking about us on television like we were all criminals.

And then I realised that I was making myself miserable, and needed to snap out of it. I sat up straight, took some really deep breaths and tried to think about something that made me laugh or happy. For a while I couldn’t think of anything. Then I remembered the time Katie, Jane and I had started playing a basketball game against our rivals, and about two minutes into it we realised this girl who always gave us hell had loo paper streaming out the back of her shorts. We couldn’t stop laughing and were threatened with a tech foul, which made us laugh even more. And then I thought about playing basketball with Dad, and Caitlin buying me a glass of Coke after a swim at the beach.