‘Do you think I should cook dinner?’ He sounds so unsure, and for some reason this pleases me. I like the idea that he’s trying to do something nice for Maggie.

‘Yeah. I reckon you should.’

Matt taps my arm with the sponge. ‘Didn’t your parents ever tell you it’s rude to put your elbows on the table?’ he says.

‘Yeah, but I don’t listen to them anymore.’

He grins. ‘Then this weekend we rooftop!’

‘Really?’ I shift back from the table so my elbows are now by my sides.

‘Really. Unless you have better things to do,’ he says.

I look up at him as he brushes the hair off his face for the hundredth time, and I grin. As if I have anything better to do.

Chapter 12

I’m sitting next to Ellie at one of the large round red tables in the library. It’s always busy here after school. I’ve been trying to avoid my friends, but today Ellie found me. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve hung out with her alone since the holidays, and it’s strange. There’s a Bridge-sized hole and we’re both a bit lost without her.

‘Running club starts Friday,’ says Ellie quietly. ‘You going to come?’

I turn my pencil around and around in the sharpener, wondering how many more times I have to turn it before it becomes a tiny stub.

‘Maybe,’ I tell her.

‘I reckon it’ll be fun,’ she says as she rules a perfect line across her page.

A couple of weeks back I would have thought so too, but now I’m not sure what’s fun and what’s not.

‘Clem, is everything okay?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. I was hoping to avoid this. I know they’re probably angry that I haven’t been responding to their messages, but I pretended that my phone died to escape the ‘chat’.

‘You sure?’ Ellie’s green eyes find mine. After everything we went through last year, when I was so mad with my mum about the fire that I told Ellie she had died, you’d think that I’d have learnt my lesson about telling the truth. But how can I explain that I feel ‘on the outer’? I should be happy my best friends are now best friends, too; I shouldn’t be feeling all angry and jealous.

‘Yeah. I’m good,’ I say finally.

‘Tam said to say hi,’ says Ellie, ruling another line on her page.

‘Really?’

Ellie laughs. ‘No. Actually she didn’t even mention you.’

Tam and Ellie have been friends forever, but Tam didn’t like it when I started at their school and became friends with Ellie, too. I wonder why Ellie is bringing up Tam right now. Is she trying to tell me something?

‘How’s she going?’

‘Do you really want to know?’ says Ellie.

‘Nope,’ I say with a smile.