‘Please don’t take your daughter out of school because we need your money to build a new theatre?’

‘Shit, do you think Grace’s party is going to get cancelled?’

This causes a wave of panic through most of the Year Tens. Grace Chapman’s sixteenth has dominated conversations this week. It’s amazing how people can switch from gossiping about our teachers providing DNA samples to what they’re going to wear on Friday night in one breath.

Teaghan sits behind Brooke, braiding her hair. ‘Can’t they see we want to have one night where we don’t have to think about anything?’

I jump off at the Junction with dozens of other Balmoral girls, feeling as if I’ve collected strands of everyone else’s hair on my blazer and need to shower.

After acquiring my usual can of lemonade and apple scroll from the bakery, I move on to the bus stop. I could do this trip in my sleep, if I had to. It takes me forty-five minutes to get home: a tram and a bus. The first three years of high school I could walk for ten minutes and be at the entrance to Morrison High.

A handful of army-green All Saints boys are at the bus stop, along with two pensioners and a tired mum with a stroller containing a sleeping toddler. The bus is late. I haven’t called Dad yet, and I haven’t spoken to Liana since last week or answered any of Katie’s messages.

I’d thought I could show up at school and do the work, then catch up with my real friends on the weekend. I’d make some friends at Balmoral, not close ones, and not heaps. Maybe a trio, like the one Claire, Milla and Yin formed, a loose bond with girls that are in a few of my classes. That would have been enough.

The thing is, I don’t think I can reverse my decision now.

I’ve seen what it’s like.

Balmoral girls get more homework, extra reading, extension exercises. The world is expected of us. Our teachers are available at lunch, after school and even on holidays, to go over our assignments and tests in detail. They’re paid to push us hard, we have to deliver, and I’m doing things that I wouldn’t be able to achieve at Morrison. I’ve got to pedal hard just to keep up with the pack.

I can’t go back to my old school.

If Liana could see the brand-new science labs we get to use, the shiny state-of-the-art equipment, she’d be amazed, and maybe furious. Sitting the scholarship exam wasn’t even my idea, it was hers.