At no time was Jack more aware of the ‘wide variance of physical and emotional maturity in adolescent populations’ than when he had to front up for his Monday afternoon double lesson of PE.

For a start, Mr Delphi was the kind of PE teacher who didn’t see any problem leaving it up to students to choose sides for team sports. Jack was a long way from being top pick, which was bad enough as weekly humiliation went. But that wasn’t even the worst thing.

The worst thing was the changing rooms.

Jack was pretty sure Vivi and Darylyn and all the other girls got to disrobe in civilised silence behind their own personal bamboo screens, possibly with gentle Oriental-style music piping into the changing room through a speaker somewhere. The boys’ changing room, on the other hand, was basically an open-plan dungeon built for maximum psychological torture.

The building itself appeared to have needed repairs for decades. The floor was carpeted with a mulch of stray socks, the air was a haze of weird body odours and stale deodorant, and there were occasional random stocktakes of whose testicles had dropped and whose hadn’t.

There was one other major difference between the girls’ changing room and the boys’ changing room.

The girls’ changing room didn’t have Oliver Sampson.

Oliver Sampson was in 8D, and had the exact opposite problem to Jack – if being rigged like a horse between your legs really qualified as a problem. Like Jack, Sampson had gone to primary school at Upland West. And then, sometime between the end of Grade 6 and the start of Year 7, Sampson had been swept up in the biggest testosterone tsunami in recorded history. Over the course of a single summer holiday he’d tripled in size in every direction. When he’d stripped down in the changing room that first week of high school, the other new Year 7s literally cowered, as if they’d received a visitation from some extraterrestrial superbeing. (‘Who is this god who walks among us?’ someone had whispered.)

But as the months passed, the rest of the boys cowered no more as they inched towards the benchmark Sampson had set. Soon they were no longer boys, but fledgling dudes.

All except Jack. Even Kenny Hodgman – Jack’s last ally in Year 8 pubelessness – seemed to have betrayed him. Just since the end of Term Three, the Hodgemeister’s voice had dropped so far he sounded like Darth Vader to Jack’s Jar Jar Binks.

Jack dumped his backpack on one of the benches furthest from Sampson and the others. He stood looking at it, contemplating how to get his school clothes off and his soccer shorts on before anyone noticed he’d finally become the only minnow in the shark tank.

‘Hey, Jack!’

Jack looked up. It was Philo Dawson, Vivi’s younger cousin. He zoomed towards Jack, shoulders jerking forwards, as though his whole body were being reeled along by the semi-crazed grin that seemed to leap a mile ahead of the rest of his face.

‘Hey, Philo.’

‘Can you believe it’s the last term already, Jack?’ Philo shook his head wistfully. ‘Year 8, almost over.’

Technically, Philo should have been looking forward to the end of Year 7. He was a full year younger than Jack, but his parents had insisted he be pushed up a year level so he could finish school sooner and take on his responsibilities to the family business: Sultana World.

It was wrinkled grapes that had put Upland on the map. Sultanas had become such big business that a previous generation of Dawsons had built a Sultana World amusement park in the middle of Upland. They called it Sultana World World. So when Philo’s parents had demanded that Philo – sole heir to the Sultana World empire – be accelerated to a higher year level, the school council had agreed. Partly because agreeing with Philo’s side of the Dawson family was just what everyone in Upland did. But mostly because the sooner Philo finished school, the less likely he was to accidentally burn it down.

Philo unzipped his long, old-school gym bag and pulled out his soccer gear. ‘So how were your holidays, Jack?’

Jack was about to answer when he heard an unwelcome sound behind him: the many-octaves-too-low voice of Oliver Sampson.

‘Yeah, Sprogless, how were your holidays?’ Sampson loomed behind him, shirt off, chin raised, shoulders absurdly wide. ‘Didn’t see you at the Under 15s sign-on.’ Being spoken at by Sampson was like the verbal equivalent of being jabbed in the ribs. ‘What happened? Finally get booted back to the Under 12s where you belong?’

Jack was pretty sure the only kind of under-15s club Sampson deserved to join was a club for people with 15 IQ points or under, but he didn’t say this. He put on a disappointed face and shrugged. ‘I’ll probably have to give cricket a miss this year. Got a bit of a … groin problem, actually.’

‘Groin problem?’

Jack bowed his legs and made a half-hearted pelvic thrust. In theory, it was meant to suggest a massive weight in the front part of his underpants. In practice, it looked like he’d suffered an accident in the back part.

Sampson snorted. ‘As if. Everyone knows you’re a total baldy-balls.’

The changing room turned into an echoing cavern of laughter. Only Philo and Kenny Hodgman remained silent. Sampson merged back into the mass of wide shoulders and underarm hair that was everyone else in the changing room who wasn’t Jack Sprigley.

‘He’s such a nong,’ said Philo.

‘Y-yeah,’ said Jack.

‘I mean, he called you “Sprogless”, and that’s not even your name.’

Jack grabbed his backpack and headed for the toilet cubicles next to the showers. Sampson had decided one thing for him, at least. There was no way he was going to get changed out in the open now.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Philo.

‘Where does it look like I’m going?’

‘But why are you taking all your stuff with you?’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, glancing down at the open backpack. ‘Well, that’s because … I’ve got these new Nikes? They cost heaps. Probably shouldn’t let them out of my sight.’

‘Are you sure they’re new? They look a little worn.’

‘That’s … designer scuffing. It’s the new thing.’

‘I can watch them for you if you’re worried –’

‘No, really, it’s fine. I’ll just take my gear in with me. Actually, since I’m doing the whole toilet thing anyway, maybe it’d be just as easy to get into my shorts and stuff while I’m in there.’

‘Okay,’ said Philo. ‘I just thought you might have been worried about the … you know. The pubes thing.’

Jack snorted. ‘I’m not worried. Why would I be worried? Sampson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I’m totally normal, pube-wise. I’m just the same as everyone else.’

Just then, Jack caught a glimpse of Kenny Hodgman, who was doing his best to get his soccer shorts over the significant deposit the puberty fairy had recently paid into his underpants. Jack blinked in disbelief. It didn’t seem possible that one person could need to grow that much genitalia in such a short space of time. Who needed to reproduce that urgently?

Philo waved a hand in front of Jack’s face. ‘Are you okay, Jack?’

‘Y-yep.’

‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’

‘I’m okay. I’ll … I’ll be out in a minute.’ Jack closed the cubicle door, dropped his backpack and leant against the wall.

He wasn’t fooling anyone. Sampson saw right through him. Even Philo knew the score.

Which meant Vivi and Reese and Darylyn probably saw through him too.

The tide was rising on Pubeless Island.

The PE double turned out to be only marginally less humiliating than the changing room. After some warm-ups, half of Mr Delphi’s combined class of 8C and 8D were sent off to practise dribbling and passing, and the rest gathered at one of the soccer nets to choose sides for a game.

Jack hung at the back with Philo and Vivi as Mr Delphi selected captains for each side.

‘Oliver Sampson. Your turn again. And … let’s see –’ Mr Delphi’s eyes roved closer and closer to where Jack stood with Vivi and Philo.

Not me, not me, not me, thought Jack. The last thing he wanted was to show the world how very far he and Sampson were from being equals.

‘How about young Vivi Dink-Dawson?’

Jack breathed a sigh of relief as Vivi and Sampson stepped forward and took turns choosing their sides. Sampson’s first pick was Tom Ziyadi – an instant expert at whatever sport you threw at him.

‘Not the most imaginative choice,’ Mr Delphi said.

Vivi’s first pick was Jack.

Mr Delphi raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe a little too imaginative there, Dawson.’

‘Want to go goalie?’ Vivi whispered, as Sampson made another predictably athletic choice for his second lieutenant.

‘Sure,’ said Jack. For one thing, it spared him the embarrassment of rubbing shoulders (or not) with the other, more advanced, male specimens out on the field. He hoped that wasn’t why Vivi had suggested it. He preferred to think of it as a vote of confidence: her way of saying she was happy for Jack to have her back.

Once the sides were picked, the players jogged out onto the field, leaving Jack alone in the goal square. For ten, then fifteen minutes, he watched the game play out in the distance. Jack didn’t want to complain about his team’s unexpected prowess against Sampson’s pack of supermen, but he was starting to get bored. He was just wondering if he’d ever get involved in the action when Sampson suddenly burst free from a misjudged tackle from Philo and streaked out in front of the rest of the field. Startled, Jack inched forward, trying to guess which way Sampson would strike.

Sampson locked eyes with Jack – and shot for goal.

Jack made a desperate lunge towards the ball, but he couldn’t get his hands to it in time. The shot went right through his defences.

A whistle blew. There were muted grunts of victory from out on the field, as though the result had never been in doubt. Sampson threw a look over his shoulder.

‘You could’ve saved that if you were bigger, Sprigley.’

The match finished one–nil. One winner.

And one loser.