As I trudge out the front gate of the school, my uniform dress is already stuck to my back with sweat, wedged between my burning skin and my ten-kilo backpack. They should have a rule that we don’t have to do homework if the temperature goes over thirty-five degrees! And why does it have to be uphill most of the way to my place? As I stick my thumbs under the straps to ease the weight on my shoulders, I wish one of my friends could walk with me. But Tiffany and Olivia live in the opposite direction, and Charlotte has to take a bus.

‘Katie! Wait!’

I turn, and there’s Matthew galumphing up the hill towards me. I’m so glad to see him! But I shouldn’t be. I remind myself severely that he belongs to my old, daggy, primary school world. My friends haven’t come right out and said that Matthew and Stephen are losers, but lately they’ve been dropping a few hints.

‘Hot, eh?’ Matthew pants as he draws up beside me. I don’t want to have to talk to him. I want him to disappear. But when I imagine that, I feel suddenly lonely. God, I’m stupid.

‘Where’s your schoolbag?’ I ask him crossly.

‘Too hot,’ he answers.

‘How come you going this way, anyway? You don’t live near me.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I wanna walk further than I have to. I’m tryin’ to get fit.’

‘You do look fitter then you did last year,’ I admit.

‘I do?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How?’

‘How what?’

‘How do I look fitter?’

Sweat is trickling down my sides and I’m sick of this topic, but Matthew is looking so eager that I have to reply. ‘You’re taller,’ I say, ‘and thinner. And you seem … I don’t know … firmer.’

‘So do you!’ he says admiringly, his eyes running from my head down to my feet.

‘Jeez, Matthew,’ I mumble.

‘Oh, sorry.’ He looks at the ground.

At least it’s impossible for my face to get any redder. We’re walking downhill now, through the little shopping centre that leads to the train station. As usual, there’s kids from school hanging around the milk bar. How do they get here so fast? They’re drinking Cokes and eating ice-creams. Some of the older ones are smoking. I want to say to them, ‘I do have friends who are girls. They just don’t walk this way.’

‘Here,’ Matthew says, tugging at my schoolbag. ‘Let me carry that.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Why not?’ he asks in his wounded voice.

‘Because you said it was too hot to carry your own bag.’

‘But I wanna carry yours!’

I don’t want him to. I mean I’d like not to have to lug my bag under the tunnel to the other side of the railway line and then up the last hill to home, but it feels like if I let him carry it, I’ll be giving him something though I don’t even know what it is.

He pulls at my backpack again, really hard. I don’t want to make a scene, because we’re nearly at the station and there’s even more kids around. It’s easier just to slip my arms out of the straps and let him take it. I feel ten degrees cooler and so light I could fly. Matthew looks extremely satisfied as he settles the pack on his own back.

We walk down the station ramp and into the sudden dimness of the tunnel. Matthew says in a quiet voice, ‘I guess you need to do girlie stuff at school now.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what my mum said.’

‘You talked about me to your mum?’

‘Only a little.’ That makes me feel creepy, to think of Matthew telling his mother stuff about me. Like I used to tell my mum when Shelley hurt me.

We emerge from the tunnel, making the sun seem harsher than ever. Matthew turns to me and asks earnestly, ‘Is that why you don’t want to hang around with me and Stevo anymore? Cos you need to do girlie stuff?’

This isn’t fair. When people dumped me in primary school, I never followed them home and asked them why. Anyway, I haven’t even dumped Matthew and Stephen. Not really.

‘I don’t know. It’s just …’ I hesitate.

‘What?’ Matthew prompts, as though my answer is really important to him. Which makes me remember the times I would have liked to ask people why they dumped me.

I glance around quickly to make sure no one can hear us, then tell him, ‘I guess your mum’s right in a way. I do want to have girls as my best friends. But that doesn’t mean I hate you and Stephen.’

He looks a little relieved. But not happy.

‘Don’t you and Stephen still hang around together?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘but he goes to chess club every lunchtime.’

‘Why don’t you go, too?’

‘I’m no good at chess!’ He kicks a discarded Solo can into the distance. ‘I’m no good at nothin’ where you have to use your brain.’

Suddenly, an image pops into my head. Of Matthew sitting on a log, behind the canteen at our old school. I went to find him there, the morning of the first trivia quiz. When I invited him to be on my team, he insisted I have a bite of his Mars Bar. I can still remember how, when I took the chocolate, it was melting from the heat of his hand.

‘You knew which team in the AFL won four premierships in a row,’ I remind him.

‘Only cos it’s on my dad’s stubby holder.’

What can I do so he won’t look so sad? ‘Well,’ I say in an encouraging voice, giving him a little shove on the arm, ‘at least that proves you can read!’