I’ve heard enough. I walk back upstairs, not bothering to be nearly as careful this time. Fury rises up in me. I go to my bathroom, splash my face with cold water, splash it into my mouth too and spit it out, but a scream still wells up.

I shut my bedroom door.

How many of her friends has she been calling to talk about my moods? Sarah’s mum too? The whole neighbourhood?

I grab my pillow and scream into it, dig my fingers in and gouge just like we learnt to do in self-defence class.

After pummelling my fingers I sit very still on the edge of my bed until my boiling blood subsides. I scroll on my phone, looking at photos of the traitors Sarah and Ally in Florence, posing sluttily in front of the Uffizi, attending a paper marbling workshop—of all the things they would not be interested in. Sarah’s main motivation for going on the trip is to lose her virginity to an Italian guy because apparently that’s the fanciest cherry-popping a girl can have. Those two don’t even care about art, not like Chloe, who would actually appreciate seeing everything they’re taking for granted.

Chloe.

She plain disappeared last night, poof! into thin air, sending me a message saying she had a headache and was on a train home, but then didn’t reply to any of my messages after that.

I asked her if she talked to anyone interesting, I asked her if she’d hooked up with Genital Gerard, I asked her if she liked the art, I asked her if she thought my sister was nice.

I send her another message now: Good morning are you completely inspired now?

Because that was the whole point, to inspire her. So that she could meet proper real-life young artists and talk about paint and balsa wood or whatever things they go ga-ga about and make connections and then have her first exhibition and live happily ever after and always remember that I was the first person to believe in her vision the end.

I stare at my phone. She doesn’t reply.

I want to see our photo, I want to get back that energy of doing something together. She listened to my ideas and opinions and I don’t think I was imagining that I was a good team player even though my school reports always say ‘Natalia is not a team player.’ We had that feeling and then it slipped away and I want it back.

It’s 7.30 a.m. and I have how many hours to fill until it’s not too sad to go back to sleep again and then start another day after that, and another, and then go back to school having done almost nothing all school holidays, other than doing a great impersonation of a dead person.