Selena thinks about that for a while. Chris bends over his shoelace, untying and retying it. His cheek glows. Selena can feel the heat of it, deep in her palm.

She says, ‘I think maybe Becca doesn’t want to be that.’

‘So? It’s not like those are the only two options. Be some bitch or be some freak. You can just be normal.’

‘I don’t think she wants to be that either.’

Chris’s eyebrows pull together. ‘What, like she thinks she can’t because she’s not . . . ? I mean, with the braces, and the . . .’ He nods downwards. ‘You know. She’s flat. She’s worried because of that? Jesus, that’s no big deal. It’s not like she’s some total ditch-pig. She just has to make, like, this much effort and she’d be fine.’

He was telling the truth about not being into Becca. He doesn’t want anything from her. He’s doing it all wrong, but all he wants is to build a castle around her and keep her safe.

‘Your sister,’ Selena says. ‘Who you were talking about. What’s her name?’

‘Caroline. Carly.’ That brings up a smile on Chris’s face, but it gets jammed with worry and breaks apart.

‘How old is she?’

‘She’s ten. In a couple of years she’s going to be coming here; Kilda’s. If I was at home I could talk to her, you know? Prepare her or whatever. But I only see her for, like, a few hours every couple of weeks. It’s not enough.’

Selena says, ‘Are you worried she’s not going to like it here?’

Chris sighs and rubs a hand up the side of his jaw. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I worry about that a lot. She won’t . . . aah. She does stuff like Becca: like she’s actually trying to be weird. Wearing jeans to the Valentine’s dance, that’s totally something she’d do. Like, last year everyone in her class was wearing those stupid bracelets, right? The ones with the different-coloured links and you all wear each other’s colours to show you’re friends, I don’t know. And Carly’s all pissed off because some girls slagged her for not having one. So I’m like, “Get one, I’ll buy you one if you’ve run out of pocket money,” right? And Carly turns around and tells me she’d cut off her arm before she’d wear one of those bracelets, because those girls aren’t her boss and she’s not their slave and she doesn’t have to do anything just because they want her to.’

Selena is smiling. ‘Yeah, that’s like Becca. That’s sort of why she’s wearing jeans.’