‘Oh, I have detention. I got busted wagging RE this morning.’ The lie slips out beautifully—the best sort of lie, the one you don’t know you’re going to tell until it’s half-said. A good lie gives me a warm tingle. ‘I said I couldn’t stay after school so Mrs Preshill said I had to do it in my free period.’

Sarah pouts. ‘We have a theory. We need to tell you.’

I should be relieved, I suppose, that Sarah is talking about something other than herself. But if she says one more thing about Yin’s parents, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Marley nods furiously behind her. ‘But we shouldn’t discuss it here.’

Sarah ignores that. ‘It’s Mr Martell. You know, Tyrone.’

I do know. Mr Martell is the school’s official photographer and he’s not ancient and he’s rumoured to have had sex with a handful of Year Twelves, or at least copped a handful of almost-legal Balmoral boob.

Mr Martell is supposedly hot, but his legs are bandy and he’s going to go bald early, you can already tell. He’s a bagel in a shop full of sliced wholemeal bread: not that exciting, especially if there are donuts available right around the corner.

‘Did I tell you about the time during theatre sports when I caught him pointing his camera right at my tits? Right at them! I should probably tell the police that.’

And there it is again. The me me me-nologue. Sarah is sparking with manufactured outrage.

‘Teaghan said that Rochelle saw a folder on Tyrone’s laptop that was called “Sports Day Cuties”,’ Marley says. ‘He had close-ups of all these girls’ faces and was going to take them home, you know, to fantasise over.’

‘Fantasise?’ I say. ‘Don’t you mean “masturbate”? Also, you know that Teaghan lies for attention, remember?’

There’s no way that Rochelle could get access to that computer. Marley blinks at me, but Sarah takes up the thread.

‘We remember, Tal. But maybe Tyrone’s got a pervert room at his house with photos of Balmoral students covering the walls and that’s how he plans who he’s going to take next. It’s his special collection of favourite girls.’

‘You got that idea from Devil Creek,’ I say.

They’re squashing the buzz I built up during lunch, the fuzz that crowded out the bad thoughts.

I see I’m going to have to jog their memories. ‘That happened at the end of the first episode, remember? When they found that creepy shed in the bush? It was for only a split second before the credits. They’ll come back to it later.’

We binged three episodes of Devil Creek together on Saturday night, not together as in the same room, but messaging each other from our separate houses. No one else picks up any of the clues, though.