Jesse and I met when we were fourteen. It was the middle of term three in year eight and my homeroom teacher asked me to show a new student around. This was the kind of job often given to me—look after the new kid, read the book out loud while the teacher had to duck out and get something, collect all the assignments off the desks and bring them to the front.

The new student was Jesse, and he stood leaning in the doorway waiting for me. He was tall, but lanky and thin, in the way of teenage boys who haven’t filled out or got comfortable in their bodies yet and seem kind of permanently surprised about it, like they’ve just woken up in a new stretched-out body. I knew the feeling. I’d had my growth spurt early. I was the tallest girl all through the last years of primary school, which made me feel oversized and on display, under pressure to be a good goal keeper in netball, bend my knees a little in every group photo and pretend I didn’t mind when people said ‘You’re Lauren’s little sister?’ with surprise.

I walked him around the school. He told me he’d just gone from living with his mum to living with his dad, but he said it in a way that didn’t invite more questions, so I changed the subject and gave him my ranking of the teachers from nicest to most likely to say something sexist.

A few weeks after that, we were paired up in English class for an assignment where we had to write a short story with an additional creative component. We spent all of the class talking about ideas and, on the bus on the way home, he sat down next to me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if we’d always sat together. From the day he’d arrived, he’d been welcomed by the various groups that sat towards the back of the bus, so walking halfway down to my spot in the middle was noteworthy.

He said, let’s figure out the plot together, and then you could write the story and I could illustrate it with a map.

He showed me a book full of sketches—houses and castles and towers. When I saw the lines and details and intricacies of his work, I could suddenly see the fantasy world we were creating. I had that itch in my hands, a buzz in my stomach, almost a taste in my mouth, that I got when I couldn’t wait to start writing.