Today I want to write about a strange thing that happened.

Don’t get too excited, Ms Hiller. It isn’t flying-saucer strange or Loch Ness monster strange. But it’s strange enough to be tickling my mind still, almost a whole day later.

It happened on the sports oval, after school yesterday.

I was on a Run of Doom.

Runs of Doom happen every couple of days, and they happen because my friends think I’m fat. They haven’t told me that, explicitly, but I know the truth. They are trying to ‘help’ me lose weight by taking me running around the oval. They pretend the running is for them, but it isn’t. They’re trying to ‘fix’ me. They jog next to me, shouting encouragement; telling me that I am doing good. I think they’ve been watching too many television weight-loss shows.

I hate the Runs of Doom.

Firstly, the actual running is boring. Secondly, I hate the reason behind it. I hate that my friends want to change me.

Chelsea-Grace and Cleo think the body size of most Hollywood movie stars represents the average woman. They think Taylor Swift has a figure to aspire to. They don’t understand that some of us are never going to look like that and that’s fine and actually good, because wouldn’t the world be boring if we did all look like Taylor Swift? I don’t mind being a size fourteen. I don’t want to be super-thin like they are.

I don’t want to wear tight skirts and boob tubes. I like my jeans and jumpers. I look at the skinny girls in the magazines and, while some of them are beautiful, I know I’d look funny if I was that slender. I’m not meant to look like that.

Also, I like eating; I don’t want to starve myself. The people I look up to aren’t the glamorous celebrities in the magazines. The life I’m aiming for isn’t dependent on a certain size of trousers. Writers are admired for their brains and their words. Nobody cares if they have wobbly bits or crazy hair or wonky noses.

Which is exactly as it should be.

But Cleo and Chelsea-Grace don’t think so. And so they make me run. And as I run, around and around, I become more and more grumpy, and they seem to me more and more like horrible motivational speakers from some trashy television show, until after a while I don’t recognise them anymore, and a while after that, I don’t recognise myself.

And so it goes. Every few days. Always the same.

Except for yesterday. Yesterday, something changed.

Yesterday, there was a boy.

He was sitting on the hill behind the sports field, under the big cider-gum tree, and he was drinking tea, poured from a china pot into a tiny china cup.

And he was dressed like Sherlock Holmes.

I watched the new, strange boy for so long that Chelsea-Grace ran backwards, grabbed my hand and pulled me towards her. ‘What are you staring at, hon?’ she asked. ‘Not that crazy guy up there? Who is he? Is he new? He looks like a total freakazoid! Oh, oops. I mean . . .’

Chelsea-Grace has this new thing. She read in a magazine somewhere that good people look prettier; that their ‘inner virtue’ gives them a glow that mean people don’t have. So Chelsea-Grace is trying to be good. Which is difficult for her because, while she’s never mean on purpose, Chels does have a bit of a problem with talking before she thinks. The effort of trying to be Snow White makes her face flush and her cheeks puff out, as if all the little catty ‘truths’ she’s holding in have turned to marbles in her mouth.

The ironic thing is that with her long, wavy dark hair and peaches-and-cream skin, Chelsea-Grace could easily play Snow White in a pantomime, if only she traded her skin-tight floral mini-dresses and jelly sandals for a flouncy princess dress and velvet-bow shoes. (Unlikely to happen.) Looks-wise, she doesn’t need to change one bit: she’s beautiful. She’s the only one who doesn’t know it.

‘Of course she’s not staring at him,’ Cleo answered for me, adjusting the sparkly clip holding the fringe of her edgy blonde bob away from her face. If Chelsea-Grace is Snow White, Cleo is Sleeping Beauty, albeit with a much more modern haircut and skin by St Tropez. ‘As if anyone would stare at him. He’s bizarre. He . . . Does he have a picnic basket?’

She was right, Ms Hiller. The boy did have a picnic basket. A cane one, with a red cover. And he had a red picnic rug as well.

‘Plus, he’s not good-looking enough to perv on, is he?’ said Chelsea-Grace. ‘Sorry if that sounds rude, but it’s the truth. So it’s not rude. Is it? Is it rude if it’s the truth?’ Chelsea-Grace seemed to have arrived at a genuinely complex moral crossroads. I decided to leave her there.

‘He doesn’t look so bad.’ I sneaked another glance, taking in his deerstalker hat and the strange tweed cape he wore. It looked vintage. As if it might be his grandfather’s. It was definitely odd. But it was intriguing.

As I was watching, the boy looked up. Even from a distance I could see that his eyes were piercing.

And then the strange thing happened.

He smiled at me.

And it was a nice smile.

I would have smiled back, only Cleo took my hand this time, and yanked me along, with a roll of her eyes and an irritated grunt, and before I knew it I was running again. ‘Don’t worry, Clem. You may never find a guy as hot as my Todd—’

‘Who isn’t even your Todd,’ Chelsea-Grace interrupted, poking her tongue out.

‘Yet,’ Cleo said, with emphasis. ‘But he will be. And we’ll find Clem someone who is nearly as hot, or at least better than that weirdo. Don’t lower your standards, Clemmie. Keep running.’

And so I did. Inside my head I mimed sword fights and pistol duels with the girls who were meant to be my best ever friends. But on the outside, I kept running. By the time we came back around the boy was gone. And I grew more and more grumpy, and Cleo and Chelsea-Grace became more and more like horrible motivational speakers, until after a while I didn’t recognise them anymore, and a while after that, I didn’t recognise myself.