When Natalia shows up she’s wearing a black linen jumpsuit and strappy sandals and statement earrings and I understand straight away, and far too late, that my jeans and trainers aren’t going to cut it.

We don’t hug or kiss hello, but she does give me an overly friendly punch on my arm. Meeting up during school holidays feels like an amplification of our friendship that I’m not sure either of us are prepared for.

‘You ready?’ she greets me. ‘Let’s walk.’

‘Where are we going again?’ For someone half a foot shorter than me she sure can walk fast. Natalia is the kind of person who walks in a straight line down the road and forces everyone to swerve around her. All she would say in her texts was that she was going to take me to ‘a proper art opening, not a dweeby Balmoral thing’.

We pass a vintage clothes shop, several cafes, an art supplies store, a pilates studio, and still she doesn’t answer me. She’s been pestering me every day with multiple messages and now she has nothing at all to say. Go figure.

‘There.’ Natalia points at the crowd blocking the footpath, standing dangerously close to bikes and traffic, beers in their hands, cigarettes to their lips, hands on their phones.

I’m not at ease in this part of town, it’s the kind of street that people dress up just to walk down and be seen. Natalia, on the other hand, seems completely at home; she dives into the scrum, pausing only to check that I’m following her through the clogged doorway into a narrow corridor lined with framed pictures and up an even narrower flight of stairs. The name of the gallery—Park ARC—is stencilled on the white wall.

There are people everywhere, pushed close into each other, standing on every possible f lat surface. Yelling, laughing, taking selfies, dancing, drinking, screeching, hugging.

‘Who do you know in this exhibition?’ I grab onto the back of Natalia’s jumpsuit so I don’t lose her.

‘Not me, my sister!’ she yells back. ‘Some of her friends are in it.’

We reach the main room and the situation is no better. The gallery itself is even more crowded, if that’s possible. Natalia wiggles expertly into any possible crack between bodies until we reach a trestle table holding drinks. My bulky backpack—holding a change of clothes and toiletries to take to Dad’s house—is almost torn from my back.

‘Two beers,’ she says to a surly guy in a fisherman beanie. He points at the handwritten $3 sign and she hands over a note. He doesn’t ask us for ID.