‘Bleugh – I gotta go before Mum flips her lid.’ She kisses my forehead. ‘See you on Friday, yeah?’

Wait. There was something I needed to say to her before her party. Something I needed to do. An excuse I needed to make.

I sort through the jumble of letters in my head for the right words. But her fingers slip through mine too fast to cling on to.

22

Alice

And now I am dreaming again.

I’m back under the water, feeling the pressure tight round my legs, my arms, my wrists. But I don’t need to tell myself that I’m safe, or happy, or alive, because here, suspended in the middle of the ocean, I am.

But then I hear voices. Laughter. Coming from somewhere far away. And the sound is disorientating, like it’s coming from all around me at once.

I spin and my chest bites. I feel myself starting to sink. And down below me the rocks are waiting.

I look up. Up to where my parents and Cecelia are talking. Laughing. Living. And I kick. Kick with all the spoons I have. But instead of going up, I sink faster and faster, until a rock suddenly juts up in front of me, slamming into my body like a tonne of metal, and –

23

Rowan

And now I am sitting at the back of a classroom splashed from all sides with crimson paint and chalk and splinters of clay.

I want to shout out. Ask Rowan about the walls hung with artwork, the swirls of ceramic flowers in the jars on the side, the pots stuffed to the brim with pencils and brushes. But at the top of his notebook he’s writing letters in thick black pen.

SHHHH, I write.

LEARNING.

Although there’s not much of that going on.

At the beginning of the lesson

the supply teacher just declared

‘free drawing’. Again.

Honestly, if Alice hadn’t asked me to come,

I’d be leaving.

I can see a tangle of wires hooking over the camera lens, and I think he’s wearing headphones. I’m about to ask, when the person next to him moves.

‘I’m bored,’ says a girl with silver-tipped hair and a nose ring, lounging over Rowan’s art book. ‘What’s with the new phone holder, dude? Is this some kind of protest about the no-phone-in-class rule? Because I’m with you.’

She stares into the camera and I feel myself blushing as if she can see into the lens, right through to me still dressed in my brain-fog pyjamas.

‘Get off, Fran,’ I say, shrugging her away.

The girl holds up her hands. ‘All right, sorry, Mr Grouchy. But you know, if the supply teacher sees you with that, she’s gonna confiscate it.’

She looks away, but keeps her elbow over Rowan’s book.

‘Is she your girlfriend?’ I laugh nervously.