My heart is fluttering. Fluttering. I’m gulping air. At least I think I am. I’m watching Manta in his tank and he’s doing the same, but he is gulping water. Water, into his body and out through his gills. Only I don’t have those and maybe that’s why I feel like I’m drowning.

My hands are earthquaking, but I put them over my face to make sure my mouth is open, and it is.

And then the door opens. And for a second it’s like breaking the surface of an impossible sea, because I’m sure that it’s Mum or Dad and they always know how to bring me back up to the surface.

But it’s not them. It’s Cecelia. She’s a blur of anger and mascara lines. A twisted glitter dress and a bright blue can.

‘Ce–’

She slams the door closed and the sound is a knife in my ears.

‘You didn’t come,’ she slurs quietly. She’s swaying in the middle of my room, too far away to cling on to.

I open my mouth wider and try to ask her to get help. Get help. Please.

She’s wearing a plastic crown made of little pink stars and she wrenches it off her head and throws it at the wall so the stars rain like an exploding sky over my body trapped under the covers.

She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t –

‘You’re supposed to be my best friend!’

Her voice is louder now and it’s knives knives knives.

I close my eyes and hear thunder feet stomping towards me as hands grip my wrists.

I am safe. I am hap–

‘You said you’d be there. You said it, you said – Look at me!’

I can’t, because the light is on and it’s spitting sparks into my eyes. But also she can’t see. She mustn’t see. I can’t let her see this.

I try to speak. Try to explain that I’m not sure what she’s talking about and if she could just explain …

‘My sixteenth birthday. That’s supposed to be special, you know. Sweet sixteen.’

Her sound has emptied so the words are forming now into things that I understand. And my insides plummet.

Her birthday party. It was today.

I open my eyes.

She has glitter eyeshadow tracks down her face to her chin. Her eyes are pink.

The text. I never sent her the text.

‘Go on, then. What’s your excuse this time? You were too busy, right? Or – or maybe you were off dancing with the leprechauns, or away with the lie fairies, or –’ She throws her arms around so the can she’s holding tips liquid on to the carpet and I smell beer.