I’d been writing stories since I was little. Mum and Nanna have stacks of little booklets I produced when I was seven, eight, nine. Stories about animals, many about horses, a chestnut pony called Star, specifically, that I thought I could manifest into reality out of sheer willpower. Then, as I got older, I started getting more serious, self-importantly thinking of the stories as ‘short stories’, and plotting out potential novels. When Dad first moved to Perth and Lauren was busy with her high-school friends, I would spend whole weekends writing. I instinctively felt I was good at it but, despite this belief, I was too scared to ever show anyone my work. It was my private triumph, too fragile to be entrusted to others.

But planning this story with Jesse gave me confidence. When I showed him what I had written so far for our assignment, he said with real awe and sincerity, ‘You’re a really good writer.’ It sent a jolt into me. It made me feel like I mattered. His map was amazing, beautifully and perfectly detailing the world we created together. We handed in the assignment and got an A+. Our teacher pinned the map up on the class noticeboard for everyone to admire. Jesse was mortified, but I was delighted.

After that, we always sat together in English. Sometimes on the bus home, he’d wait until Frances and Lakshmi, the girls I usually hung out with, got off and then he’d come and slide into the seat next to me for the last fifteen minutes of the trip. If we passed each other during the school day, we’d grin. We texted all the time, jokes and memes and links and random thoughts. A few times, we walked his family’s dog together. Our friendship wasn’t hidden, exactly, but it felt like a little bubble of secret happiness in my day. I would sit in class and look at the map on the wall and smile.

Lauren teased me that I liked him, which made me yell at her but, privately, I wondered. The mechanics of crushes—desire, emotions, lust—were all still confusing to me. Lauren had her first kiss when she was eleven, she’d had three boyfriends by sixteen, and I had just turned fourteen and had never been kissed and it was not something I saw happening in my immediate future. Lauren was the kissable sister, I was the one who read about it in my sister’s diary. Did I like Jesse in that way? How did you know what was just friendship and what was more? No one had ever liked me, so I had no baseline data. I needed a pro–con list, a deep-dive YouTube series, a twenty-page quiz, a how-to guide and a relationship coach before I could work it out.

Feelings were scary. I knew that much.