Even though you can tell he doesn’t want to lift a finger, Purdy comes over. I cover my mostly empty page with my arm, and turn away.

‘Why does there have to be a theme?’ Purdy says. ‘Break some rules. Let your imagination run wild.’

‘I’ve tried, and I can’t. I don’t like any of them.’

Both Petra and Purdy sound more annoyed than you’d think anyone would be about a minor task.

‘Year Tens,’ Purdy raises his voice and both his hands. ‘The exercise is very simple. How about less whingeing and more independent thought?’

‘How can he say that?’ Petra says, low and furious to Audrey. ‘Who does he think he is?’

‘Work independently, ladies,’ whispers Teaghan, doing her best deep-voiced Purdy impersonation, ‘and let me get back to watching my porn.’

DAY 59

Tuesday morning is quieter, but girls I don’t even know are still coming up to me in the hallway to compliment me on my photo.

It’s regular, standard-issue Balmoral, just with one major change, as if we’ve slipped into a parallel universe where people know my name.

I have a spare for second period, so I go to my usual table in the library. Petra is already set up there, tackling statistics, by the look of it. Thanks to art dominating my holidays, I figure I’m at least a month behind in my maths homework.

‘Room for me?’

Petra looks annoyed to be interrupted but nods and continues hunching over her books and poking at her calculator.

I sit down and begin the Chapter Ten exercises but it’s hard to concentrate. Petra is restless when she studies; she crosses and uncrosses her legs, scrunches bits of paper, sighs a lot, drums her fingers on the table.

After a few more minutes of my mind sliding over maths problems and not landing anywhere I catch Petra sneaking glances at me.

I put down my pen. ‘These graphs are killing me.’

It’s an excuse to talk—in fact the only good thing about stats is drawing nice neat diagrams on clean, checked graph paper. Petra looks tired. We haven’t bumped into each other at our lockers yet this week.

‘How were your holidays?’ I ask.

She looks away so I barely catch her words. ‘I went home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Karraton. The country.’

If I didn’t know better I’d say she’s upset about something. We’ve built up a tenuous connection since the notorious self-defence class, but none of that is there today. I try to think of a topic that will interest her but I fail and return to my calculations.

A few minutes later Petra packs up her things abruptly and leaves without saying goodbye.

I pedal as hard as I can on stats, trying to make up for my neglect. Mrs Wang has been trying to talk me into doing Advanced Maths next year, but I’m not sure.