Why would there be fae in school? The very idea is laughable.

Yanny lifts his brows. ‘You OK?’

‘Yep. Sorry. Fine!’

‘Miss Olive, this is the new girl, Stella.’

His voice seems to boom, and all of the easy conversation stops as everyone looks at us. At me.

‘Good morning, Stella.’ The teacher looks up from her screen and smiles, standing. ‘8E! This is Stella . . . ?’ She looks over at me.

‘Brigg,’ I whisper, my skin prickling as I look around at all the curious faces.

‘Stella Brigg,’ she announces. ‘I’m sure you all remember your first day, so I expect you to be welcoming!’ She turns back to me. ‘Take a seat with Yanny; he’ll see you through. I’ll print out your timetable now, once I can get the thing working . . .’

‘Thank you,’ I whisper, darting with Yanny to a table at the back of the room, my face burning under all the intense stares.

‘Sure you’re OK?’ Yanny asks, staring even harder while I try to get my coat off. It’s become some sort of woolly mammoth and wants to smother me entirely.

‘Yes,’ I say, finally yanking it off my arms and letting it fall in a heap on the floor behind me. Some of the kids are still looking. I take a deep breath and hook my ankles around the chair legs, fixing my eyes on the table. Slowly the room settles, until it’s just Yanny peering at me.

‘I’m fine,’ I say.

He’s still staring.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing at all. Welcome to Broadmere.’

His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but my heart lifts a little anyway because here I am, in my first ever classroom.

After a while, Miss Olive hands me a timetable, which is a grid that seems to have been written in code, and then a bell starts clanging, and everyone rushes out.

‘Where are we going?’ I ask Yanny.

‘Lessons!’ he says. ‘Let me see . . .’ He looks at my timetable. ‘You’re with me for science – come on.’

I follow him gratefully, through the clatter of bodies that yesterday I craved so much. I had no idea how loud they would be, or how close. I get jostled and bumped and nearly go flying down the stairs, but somehow, keeping Yanny in sight, I make it in one piece to science.

The teacher, Mr Hocking, hands me a thin blue-covered book and barks my name to the class, before starting his lesson on force and trajectories. I clutch the book and squeeze in next to Yanny, barely noticing anything else about the class in my rush to get rid of my coat and find my pencil.

It’s a heads-down kind of lesson. Mr Hocking has sharp blue eyes and an even sharper tongue, so there’s no talking. I look over at what Yanny’s doing, and he indicates the massive text book between us.

‘That one,’ he whispers, pointing to a triangular diagram.