I stripped out of my pyjamas as I connected my phone to Caitlin’s speaker then selected ‘Led Zeppelin mix’ on YouTube. I pressed play, cranked up the music and was playing air guitar before the water had even heated up. When I was in the shower, I listened to another deadly song called ‘Heartbreaker’. I loved it: the drums, guitars, the singing.

In-between the little pauses before each new song, I thought I could hear banging. I ignored it, thinking it might have been a weird beat – I mean, it’s not like I was really used to listening to heavy rock, after all. And then I couldn’t ignore it anymore because the banging turned into Dad shouting at me to turn the music down. ‘Caitlin’s practising!’ he yelled out. All I could do was smile as I stepped out of the shower and dried myself. I turned the music down a notch.

After I’d chucked on my clothes and walked into the kitchen, I discovered that Caitlin had prepared fruit, yoghurt and almonds for me on the table, even though I’d done my very best to annoy her.

‘What are you up to today?’ I asked her before she could get in with any questions.

‘I’m doing a class with my instructor and then I was thinking about having tea with some of my friends.’

Some people have got it all worked out. I thought about how hard Mum always had to work to pull off the huge events she manages.

Dad came in all irritated, throwing his dressing-gown around him. ‘Where’s Caitlin’s speaker?’

‘On my bed, why?’ I said, playing innocent.

‘You might want to ask before you use it.’

Caitlin ate her oats, not saying anything, not wanting to be the bad stepmother, but I knew that she’d put Dad up to it.

I ate my breakfast as quick as I could, keen to get to school and catch up with Caroline.

In class, Michael fed us a line about necessity being the mother of invention and then set us the task of debating the necessity of modern inventions like mobile phones, wi-fi and online banking.

I had to hold my breath. I knew that Aboriginal people were doing things thousands of years before any other people in the world, like making high-tech cutting tools, conducting surgery with the use of medicines, and building objects like baskets that today’s engineers describe as perfect in terms of their design and strength. Despite this, I knew the common put down from whitefellas was that us blackfellas hadn’t even invented the wheel.

Michael asked, ‘Are hand dryers necessary? Are they a good or a bad thing?’ He told us to stand on a certain side of the room if we thought they were necessary, and the other side of the room if we thought they weren’t.