Leo’s Monday buddy, Mia, didn’t work out. She did what she had to do – showed him the toilets, the drink bubblers and the tuckshop – but then she left him alone in the eating area and sat with her friends. He didn’t mind and didn’t tell anyone about it. He wanted to get through the week without making people worry.

On Tuesday, he was told to stick with Finn at lunchtime – a mousy kid who took two bites of a sandwich and then ran to the library. Leo followed and found him playing a complicated card game with a group of boys. They were all hunched around a table, snapping and flinging the cards and calling out words he had never heard before.

‘Volta!’

‘Shuck!’

‘Double dink!’

Leo backed away. He dropped himself into a beanbag and thumbed through a book he didn’t want to read.

Wednesday and Thursday weren’t any better: a clumsy attempt at handball with a boy called Rafi, and half an hour listening to Nicola talk about her horse. A few times, Leo tried to speak, but his sentences fell out in stuttered spurts and the buddies didn’t listen. Both days left him deflated. He knew they were doing their duty for Ms Pengari, and nothing more.

The nervous Prep feeling didn’t drown him for the rest of the week, but it was always there, lapping at the edges. He tried a few things from The Plan, so he could tell Mum and Dad he had given it a go. As the weekend neared, he thought less about school and focused on his secret promise with Ralph. On the night he said goodbye, the promise had glimmered like a distant star inside his mind. Now it began to shine brighter, like a burning comet getting closer each day. By Friday, it was almost all he could think about.

His last buddy for the week was the biggest boy in the class. His name was Gus, and Leo recognised him from the first day, when the soccer ball had pummelled into his stomach. Gus was a bulky kid, as if his body was built from chunks of wood. His arms were like branches and his legs like trunks. At lunchtime on Friday, they ate on a bench seat, and Gus talked about the ball as he rolled it back and forth under his foot.

‘My dad gave me this ball for my birthday, years ago.’ His voice was softer than Leo expected. ‘I haven’t seen Dad in ages, so I keep it with me all the time.’

Leo had seen the ball trapped under Gus’s foot in class. He hadn’t thought about it much until now.

‘Most kids around here play footy. They want me to play too because I’m big. But I love soccer. One day I’m gonna move to the city and play for one of the big clubs.’

Leo peeled a mandarin. He hadn’t expected to hear this kid’s life story, hadn’t expected to care, but something about Gus’s quiet voice drew him in. He ran through The Plan in his head, searching for a question that might fit here. But Gus got in first.

‘What kind of things are you into?’

It wasn’t the question that caught Leo out. It was the pause that came afterwards. He wasn’t used to kids giving him time to talk and he found himself answering honestly.

‘I like … space.’ He waited to be interrupted, but it didn’t happen. ‘And I like aliens. Lots of people don’t think they’re real, but I do.’

Gus didn’t say anything. He didn’t walk away, either, but Leo assumed he’d wandered off in his head. Probably thinking about running to the oval and belting his ball into the goal. They didn’t talk for the rest of the day until the final bell. Leo was at the bag racks, zipping up his backpack when he heard Gus muttering to himself. There was panic in his voice.

‘No, no, no.’ He lifted bags and swept hats aside. ‘Where is it?’ He tipped everything out of his own backpack. Pencils and scrunched paper fell on the ground. ‘No!’

Leo stood still with his bag on his back. Everyone else had gone. ‘Are you—’

‘My ball!’ Gus pushed past him and hunted through a scraggly garden bed outside the room. ‘It’s gone!’

‘Do you remember, you know, where you last—’

Gus climbed onto a table and stood on his toes, trying to see on top of the classroom roof. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, ‘Who took my ball?!’

He jumped down and staggered back to the bag racks.

Leo hadn’t moved. ‘Do you, er, want some help?’

Gus didn’t answer. He scooped his things back into his bag and ran off. His shoes smacked the concrete like claps of thunder and Leo was left alone, like a small tree that had survived a storm. He knew the hurt of losing something precious. That’s why he’d tried to help. But Gus, like so many other kids, had ignored him.

It didn’t matter anyway. He didn’t need a friend. The week had almost passed and soon he could forget about lunchtime buddies and Mum and Dad’s plan. His promise with Ralph would fix everything.