Larry and Liz had worked the same shift and were home together at seven for lasagne. Harper had already put it into the oven as instructed by post-it note. She was ready for her mum’s typical questions: Liz would be desperate to know if she’d got a leadership role but would try to make it seem like it didn’t matter. Harper got in first.

‘Ro got captain and Cleo got vice. Amazing, right?’

Larry nodded and said ‘Mm!’ with a mouthful.

Liz went overboard. ‘I’m happy for them! Such great kids, those two.’

Harper saw a twitch in her eye. Her mum loved Cleo and Ro, but she was faking.

‘I didn’t want a major role,’ Harper went on. ‘I’ve got enough going on with schoolwork and netball and…’ It didn’t sound like much compared to what some Riverlark kids got up to. She was too shy to start new activities; she liked netball, which she’d done for years, and spending time with Liz and Larry. ‘And reading,’ she added, to make the list longer.

‘Mm.’ Larry was chewing again.

‘Mm!’ said Liz, eating faster, like she often did when she was upset. Her eye was still twitchy.

Had she really thought that Harper would be school captain? Larry was the easy parent who couldn’t remember the names of Harper’s teachers and never asked her if she’d done her homework. But there was almost no point having one easy parent if you had a mum like Liz. She was the one in charge.

‘The roles don’t even mean anything, Mum. The other vice-captain is Corey, the worst bully in our year, so what does that tell you?’

Larry finally swallowed. ‘That school is a lot like real life.’

‘Of course it’s real life, Dad. It’s my life.’

‘You know what I mean. So, come on, did they give my Harpsicle anything?’

‘Just library captain, but it’s pointless.’

Liz threw her fork down with a clatter. ‘But that’s tremendous, sweetheart! Did you get a badge?’

‘Yeah, it’s in my pocket.’ Reaching in, she found the badge and remembered the other one she’d put in there before school.

‘Wait, I found something else too,’ she said. But the old badge wasn’t in either of her pockets. Perhaps it had fallen out in assembly. She felt a sense of loss even though she hadn’t thought about it since it had pricked her leg. ‘Oh, I guess I didn’t. Anyway, here’s the library-captain badge.’

Liz held it up to the light and made a giant fuss of it. ‘Wonderful! You love reading. You’re an excellent, excellent choice! Isn’t that brilliant, Larry?’

‘A toast to Harpsicle!’ said Larry at almost a shout, raising his glass. They both took a huge gulp of wine. Something was definitely wrong. Maybe Liz was going to have a baby. No, too much wine, and Liz was nearly fifty. A divorce, then! Or someone had died.

‘What’s going on? You’re being strange,’ Harper said.

‘You’d better tell her, Liz,’ said Larry.

Harper’s mum squeezed her hand, the one she was holding a fork with. It was very uncomfortable.

‘This year is going to look a bit different, Harpsicle.’

‘Different how? I don’t like different.’

‘Different exciting. Or, different challenging. Dad and I are going on that mission we spoke about, and after a great deal of thought’—she glanced at Larry, who nodded—‘we’ve decided you’ll be living with my mother while we’re away.’

Liz and Larry carried on explaining the mission while Harper’s body reverberated with the news like a glass hit by a teaspoon.

Away, she kept thinking. While we’re away.

In bed, in the dark, she untangled some of it.

Her mum and dad were going to be emergency nurses in a country where people had been fighting a war for years. Harper had to pretend she’d heard of the country. It was called Yemen; she’d never forget it now. Liz and Larry had described their mission more than once as extremely safe, nothing to worry about. They’d said, We spoke about this, sweetheart. This was technically true, though she didn’t think it was fair that just because they spoke about this it was all right that it was actually happening.

In a few weeks, Harper would move in with her grandmother. She didn’t know her very well and had never even been to her house even though it was right there in Melbourne, only a suburb away. They’d always spent their time with Larry’s parents, but last year Nana and Grampy had moved back to Bath, in England.

‘Couldn’t I go and live with them?’ Harper had suggested, but it was ruled out because the school system was so different.

After dinner the conversation had migrated to the kitchen for Harper’s dishwasher duties and Dad’s tea-making duties. Mum had sat at the bench showing Harper pictures of children in the extremely safe war zone they’d be working in.

‘You understand why we’re doing this, don’t you, Harps.’ Liz hadn’t looked up to get the answer, and her voice had gone down at the end where the question mark should be, instead of up.

The last thing Liz said before Harper closed her bedroom door for the night was: ‘You’ll get on brilliantly with my mother. Really, sweetheart. You two are quite similar, now I think of it.’

Harper didn’t know how to take that. The only comfort was that she would still be at Riverlark.

Cycling to school on the second day felt completely different. The year she was expecting had been crossed out; the feeling of what was to come jammed in her throat. She needed to tell Cleo and Ro.

It was literacy first and she was in Ro’s group but not Cleo’s so she put it off. Then it was maths and she wasn’t with either of them. She nearly spilled to Tahira and Misha when Misha asked if she was okay. But there was a natural order for something this big. She had to tell Cleo and Ro first.

Corey was in that class, too. Halfway through he said he had to go to sickbay because he had a headache. It wasn’t that Harper wanted him to have a headache, but she liked seeing the back of him.

Her first chance came at recess. The conditions were perfect: just the three of them in the new garden where the big old tree used to be. She waited for a gap in conversation, but it was like waiting to cross the bike path in the morning. Ro and Cleo talked back and forth in a fast stream. First it was about Cleo’s dad needing a new job or they’d have to sell their house and move to a different area. Harper had to admit that was a big deal, but it was not as big as her thing. Then they talked about all the things they wanted to do as captain and vice-captain. Cleo wanted to start a petition to bring back the tuckshop, which had existed when her big sisters went to Riverlark. Then they got onto the subject of food wrappers—there were always twists of cellophane or chip packets blowing around the playground—and the bin-raiding ravens.

‘Look at them, they’re as big as dogs,’ said Ro. There were two ravens hopping on the lid of the closest bin, as if testing it.

‘But we only want to get rid of the rubbish, not the ravens,’ said Cleo. ‘The school would fall down if the ravens left.’

Ro laughed and shook his head. ‘Riverlark isn’t the Tower of London, Cleo.’

Then they got onto all the places they’d travelled. And after that they looped back to the tuckshop and the foods they wanted on the menu, like sushi and samosas, chicken pies and poffertjes.

The more Harper listened to their plans, the more she felt how strange and difficult the next few months would be without her mum and dad.

‘You’re quiet, what’s up?’ said Cleo, finally.

Now Harper was on the spot, the words she’d stitched together seemed to fall apart. A plane flew across the sky. Liz and Larry were booking their flights today.

‘Headache,’ she lied.

Cleo insisted on taking her straight to sickbay. It happened so fast. She pulled Harper up and guided her through the playground, sat her down in the little room—it was more like a cupboard with windows—and knocked on the staffroom door to get one of the teachers. This was the last thing Harper wanted but she couldn’t seem to take control.

She remembered Healthy Harold telling them it was important to confide in their close friends as they faced life’s challenges, but Harper had just lied to hers. She was obviously doomed for high school.

She’d stay here with the ravens forever.

After the final bell they were near the new garden again, about to go their separate ways, when Harper suddenly came out with it.

‘My mum and dad are going on a volunteer mission. They’ll be away for months. I have to live with my grandmother.’

‘The funny English one?’ said Cleo.

Harper shook her head. ‘No, the one I hardly know.’

‘Oh. Well, we’ll look after you!’ said Cleo. She wrapped her in a hug that was tighter than normal. Harper tried to let the hug make her feel better, seeing as she didn’t really know what she needed. The words she’d used were just the ordinary facts. Cleo and Ro would have to work out the rest because it was impossible to describe how she felt.

‘You should come and live at mine,’ said Ro. ‘My mum says all she wants in life is a daughter.’

Suddenly there was a boyish yell. They were just in time to see Corey tumbling over the handlebars of his scooter, which kept going until it crashed into the friendship bench.

‘Whoops,’ said Cleo. ‘I told him not to ride that thing here.’

‘Guys, I think he’s hurt,’ said Ro.

Corey was moaning on the ground. As they walked closer, Harper saw a long, thin cut across his forehead. Very quickly he was surrounded by parents, teachers and kids. Harper stayed back but Cleo and Ro were right in there.

‘I think we need an ambulance,’ said Mr Glass. ‘Could someone, please?’

A mum said she’d call one. A couple of dads tried to lift Corey but he yelled in pain so they stopped. Even though there were lots of people crowded around him, it was oddly quiet.

‘You’ll be all right, mate,’ said Mr Glass. He sounded like he’d never used the word mate in his life. ‘What happened?’

‘Something flew into my face,’ said Corey. ‘Ow! My ankle hurts!’

‘All right, brave boy. Do you mean something like a stone from the playground or a twig or…It’s made quite a scratch,’ Mr Glass continued. ‘You know you’re not allowed to ride in here, but we’ll forget about that for now.’

Corey was always hurtling around, making kids leap out of his way. It was lucky he hadn’t hurt someone else, and now he was getting all this sympathy.

Then Corey said something that she didn’t hear. And the next thing, kids were looking on the ground all around her.

‘What is it?’ she asked Jake. ‘What’s everyone looking for?’

‘He said the thing that flew into him was metal. A badge or something.’

Harper joined in the search, though she had a strange, cut-off feeling as she was looking, as if she knew what the thing was.

But she couldn’t know; she hadn’t seen it happen.

No one found anything. Corey’s dad arrived in a black car with dark windows. Somehow he looked angry with everyone, as if the kids who’d stayed to look after his son were responsible for his accident. The paramedics came and stretchered Corey away.

Afterwards, there was a bunch of Harper’s year level hanging around to pick apart what had happened. All anyone had seen was Corey tumbling, but there seemed to be a lot of ways to describe those few seconds. Harper just listened. What she’d needed today was for Cleo and Ro to make her feel better about her parents. Now Corey, of all people, had them glued to his story.

Jake told everyone that Corey had gone to sickbay during maths with a headache, and maybe that was why he didn’t see the thing coming—whatever it had been—because Corey was usually such a good rider. Harper wondered if Corey had gone to sickbay with a real headache or a pretend one.

‘Poor guy,’ Ro said.

After the group dispersed and it was just Harper and Ro, she asked, ‘Did you mean that? Poor guy? After everything he’s said and done?’

‘Sure. Maybe? Dunno really. Does that answer your question?’ Ro’s mellow smile and the dimples in his cheeks made Harper decide to drop it. She said goodbye and walked towards the bike rack.

Corey’s words from yesterday popped into her head. This is nothing to do with you. She’d heard the paramedics say he might have a broken ankle. From the way everyone else was acting, Corey’s entire head had come off.

She didn’t feel one bit sorry for him.

She noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. It made her look at the library. She walked to the large window. None of the lights were on. The door was locked. Everything looked perfectly still and untouched, but she had a feeling someone was in there.

When the clouds moved, she could only see herself in the glass. Mystery solved: the movement must have been her own reflection as she went past. Some library captain.