I’m used to being in the bottom. It’s usually because I “need time to catch up”. Teachers don’t always realise how hard it is to move around and change school. Even those rich kids with tutors would struggle if they’d been to three different secondary schools before Year 9.

That’s one reason I’m glad Kandi went to her dad’s. She only had to move school once. The last time I heard from her was six months ago and she said she’d made some friends. Then the social worker said that Kandi lost her old phone and her dad won’t let her give me the new number.

Kandi’s clever. She’ll be all right, but me … It’s hard trying to catch up with the school work, but it’s even worse working out who wants to be your friend. In most schools, the kids have known each other since Nursery. How the hell am I gonna stand a chance with that? One of my social workers said that I should just let my natural cheeriness shine through. She’d clearly never been the new girl in the middle of Year 9.

But I like History. Of course, none of it’s my history, so it’s like stories. And they more or less tell the same stories at every school. I know the ending too. In my last school, there were only three other kids who weren’t white. Here, we’re much more mixed up and most of the white kids are from Poland. Mr Mann, our teacher, makes us discuss what we’re learning too. He says we should be able to see different viewpoints and learn from each other.

Today’s topic is: Is there ever a right side of history? I even looked up stuff in advance about the Scramble for Africa. It’s when countries in Europe cut up Africa and gave bits to each other. Annie helped me find out the info in between hunting down dinosaur pics.

But when I walk into the classroom, there’s no Mr Mann. Hell’s gonna break loose. We got a supply teacher and I’m already feeling sorry for her.

If I had an older sister, she’d look like this supply teacher. Me and her have got the same hair, skin, nose shape and style. I want to like her. She yells for us all to sit down and get out our books and I’m kind of impressed. That’s definitely an older-sister voice – an older sister who’s got badass siblings that she needs to keep in line.