Enter the dungeons and you’ll find that the lockers and the doors and the rubbish bins are small, even the toilets are made for dolls. Tinytown, infantville, the basement corridor where we can observe the lowest of the low in their natural habitat, the Year Sevens and Eights.

I’m a giant of course, metres taller than the rest—I’ve been almost twice my usual size for six days now. Walking on stilts, walking the corridors like I have army boots on, not scuffed school shoes, stomp stomp stomping on the cack green carpet with my loyal supporters trailing behind. New headphones clamped on, shiny gold ridiculous, but what no one knows is that there’s no music trickling through them. The corridor sounds muffle down to almost nothing and I move to an imaginary beat and that’s how I keep fooling everyone.

Sarah is with me, and Marley too, but Ally is in sick bay with monster period pain under the care of patchouli-reeking Nurse Lee and Nurofen Plus, but only two every four hours because dependency on legal drugs is almost as serious as dependency on the fun ones.

The Year Sevens cling to their lockers like scared little baby dolls, with round faces and big eyes and squidgy mouths and spiky eyelashes. They hobbit about doing babyish things with their lunch hour, building forts with the tables, swapping worthless plastic bracelets, trying to figure out what they can afford at the tuckshop with their last $2.30.

‘That’s Natalia,’ I see one mouth to another. ‘Year Ten.’

Let them see my summer uniform hitched high, hair unbrushed for days, Sharpie tattoos on my thighs. Let them know they don’t have to care about the rules despite what everyone says. Disobey, but don’t get caught.

I ignore the lapping at my ankles, the still-rising tide of if it happened to her it could happen to me, the swishing I need to be ready and what if I’m next. Put your gumboots on because, they haven’t caught him he’s still out there and it’s not going away, how long will it be before he gets the urge again.

I’m high and dry because I gave up at 36 hours, along with the police. Because you can choose to be hopeless, that’s what I’ve learnt.

After six days it’s almost as if she never existed at all.