A pink blush crept up Tilly’s neck. “Are you trying to unnerve me? So I’ll back down? Because—”

“—I’m not trying to do anything—”

“—because I’m not going to back down.”

They fell silent. Regardless of the fact that Kate’s time on Lords was quickly running out, she wasn’t about to let Tilly keep her from bringing St. Joan of Arc well and truly into the twenty-first century before she was gone. It was her English class too, not just Tilly’s. “It’s being taught,” Kate asserted. “The Color Purple may be the most important novel ever written. If you refuse to teach it, that’s fine, I’ll teach it during my lessons and you can pick up poetry during yours. But it’s being taught.”

At the suggestion that she didn’t have to teach the text herself, Tilly visibly relaxed. She dropped the novel onto Kate’s desk. “Fine. Which poet do you suggest I teach in the meantime? Otherwise, I could always begin with The Glass Menagerie—it’s on your prescribed list for this term too.”

“No. I just said that I’d like you to start with Gwen Harwood, please. We’ll move on to The Glass Menagerie in early December. The Melbourne Theatre Company is doing a production in the city and I’d like the Extension girls to see it before they start studying it. Lexi will come too—she’s studying Laura Wingfield for her Year Ten Drama monologue.”

“Fine.”

Kate dropped her gaze to her sixth period folder. “Great.”

“I’m not happy about this. Look at me, Kate.”

At the fierceness in Tilly’s darkened gaze, her stomach flipped. This was new…the confidence. Tilly hadn’t been like this as a teenager.

“I’d really like you to reconsider,” Tilly said.

Kate pushed her shoulders back as she glanced through the door and down the corridor. “Tilly, I appreciate your opinion, but I’m not changing the text list. We’re done talking about this. I have a music class. And honestly?” Their gazes locked. “I thought you were more progressive than this.”

The hair on the back of Kate’s neck bristled as she watched Tilly’s face fall.

Kate’s entire body hummed as she watched Tilly spin on her heel and disappear down the corridor. She’d never been in conflict with Tilly before, and the feeling was disturbingly foreign. Tilly had changed. There was a fire in her eyes, a charge in her determination. Kate had only ever seen Tilly react so angrily once before.

They’d been young—fifteen, sixteen at most. A girl in the church band at St. Gerard’s in Mornington had applied to board at St. Joan of Arc. Father Jeffrey, the priest at the time, had more or less threatened the girl’s parents—he would sponsor the girl’s enrollment under the condition that the parents contributed a sizeable amount of money to the parish donation envelopes each week. The girl had never ended up attending St. Joan of Arc, and weeks later, she’d changed parishes. Tilly had been so riled up that she’d been hell-bent on confronting Father Jeffrey about it when he’d come to host confession for the girls later that month. I’m going to do it today, she’d told Kate. But when the great and powerful Father Jeffrey had stepped into their tiny church, Tilly had chickened out. She’d sat beside Kate in the pew, so furious with herself that she was close to tears. Kate could barely stand it. So, she’d taken it upon herself to fix the problem.