Lolly seemed distant in the morning. They ate granola in silence at the little table.

On the radio, a newsreader talked about how many people had the virus in Australia. Harper tried to pay attention to the crunching sound of the granola instead. She ate spoonful after spoonful with no gaps in between where the news could get in. Outside, the sky was blue and empty. There’d be no plane bringing Liz and Larry home any time soon. Harper squeezed the spoon handle tight and held everything in.

Riverlark was ten minutes by bike from Lolly’s. The route went along the wild, shady river path where she never used to ride. It was always quieter than the journey had been from her old house; there was often no one else around.

Halfway to school, her tyre got a puncture and she had to wheel her bike. It shouldn’t have been a big deal but she was jumpy and tired after the nights of disrupted sleep. As Harper walked along, there were moments where the air ran cold and any movement on the surface of the water or in the steep, overgrown banks made her look. She was on edge. At the same time she felt like a baby for being scared in the daytime. This path seemed so much further today and she wished there were other people around.

She didn’t get to Riverlark until five past nine, and it was a relief to walk into a full classroom. There was a stranger at Mr Kumar’s desk.

‘Come in, dear. Take a seat. I’m Mrs Kovac. Here today, gone tomorrow!’

Harper figured that was her strange way of saying that she was a substitute teacher.

Mrs Kovac was sitting very low behind the desk. Although she was much older and smaller than any teacher Harper had ever seen, Mrs Kovac had the attention of the whole class. Perhaps this was because of her bright-orange jacket, or her bold, drawn-on black eyebrows. She didn’t look scared of them, like some substitute teachers did.

‘Now then, class, Mr Kumar has left you some worksheets.’ She peered so closely at the papers she was holding that her nose was almost touching them. ‘Oh, these look dull. Well, you there’—she flapped the papers at Augie, who was closest—‘pass them around. But just between me and you, you may draw or read a book or, I don’t know, do some sit-ups if you prefer, as long as you don’t cause a ruckus.’

There were murmurs as everyone discussed how to use the free time. Mrs Kovac put on some electric-blue headphones and tapped in that old-person’s way on her iPad.

‘She’s funny,’ said Cleo.

Harper agreed. ‘She reminds me of Lolly.’

‘I’m going to be like that. Say whatever I like, ignore the rules and wear weird clothes. Otherwise, what’s the point of being old?’ Cleo said as she passed Harper a worksheet. Then she put on a prim voice. ‘Here’s your worksheet on complex and compound sentences. Enjoy that, won’t you.’

On the other side of Harper, Ro had his phone hidden inside his open book. He had one earbud in and was watching anime.

‘Ro, your book’s upside down,’ Harper said.

‘No it isn’t, I’m a professional,’ he said without even looking up. Cleo and Harper laughed.

‘This is what I call a ruckus. Shush,’ said Mrs Kovac with one headphone lifted off her ear.

Surprisingly, the class settled down.

Cleo started to draw. She was brilliant. She could make her drawings look real without seeming to try, even hands, which were impossible. Harper had never drawn a hand that didn’t look like a glove.

Corey Hurst was on crutches and the cut on his head was still sharply visible. He was counting sit-ups for Briar and her friend (or more like follower) Dree and telling them he could do loads more than them if he wasn’t injured. Augie and Jake were having an arm wrestle. Tahira was making a paper crane out of the worksheet and Misha was reading. Harper wanted to read too but she’d run out of books. Mr Kumar hadn’t taken them to the library all term because he said they had too much to get done. Since Harper had become library captain, she hadn’t set foot in it, or worn the badge.

‘I wish we could go to the library for this session,’ Harper whispered to Cleo.

‘Yeah? You should ask Mrs K,’ Cleo replied.

‘I can’t, I’m too shy. And no one else will want to go.’

‘So what? You want to. Who cares what anyone else thinks?’ Cleo nudged Ro. ‘Hey, you don’t mind coming to the library, do you?’

Ro didn’t blink. He was transfixed by whatever he was watching.

‘See, he doesn’t care,’ Cleo said.

‘But…you told me the library was pointless.’

Cleo scrunched her nose. ‘Did I? I say a lot of things—you know me.’ She stood up. ‘Um, excuse me, Mrs Kovac?’

Minutes later, thanks to Cleo’s natural talents, Mrs Kovac was leading the way to the library and unlocking the door. Harper was amazed at how easy Cleo made some things look.

The library lit up and was filled with bodies and noise. It was L-shaped. In one corner there was a room with a locked door that no one had ever seen open. They’d asked a teacher once and she said it probably had old props and furniture in it.

Harper had an armful of novels before the last people had even entered the room. Last in were Corey, Briar and Dree.

‘Whose dumb idea was this?’ Corey said, standing much too close to Harper.

‘Social distancing, Corey?’ said Harper.

Then Briar piped up, ‘Eww, Harper, did you brush your teeth this morning? I can smell your breath.’

‘Shut up, no you can’t.’

‘You’ve gone all red,’ said Briar. ‘I’ve got gum in my bag if you want it.’

It made Harper sick how low Briar could sink to impress Corey. Harper moved away from them, ending up in an empty non-fiction aisle. Such a pathetic insult shouldn’t have got to her but she breathed into her cupped hand to make sure.

Cleo and Ro were huddled in the opposite corner glued to Ro’s phone. They’d been spending so much time in leadership meetings with Corey that she wasn’t even sure how they’d react if she told them what had just happened. Things had changed since year five, when everything made sense.

Though Harper had a pile of novels in her hand, she was drawn to one spine in the history section where she was standing. Contagious. It was about another pandemic—the Spanish flu, more than a hundred years ago. It had a sticker on it that said ‘Reference Only: Not For Borrowing’, so she sat down where she was to read it.

The story of the Spanish flu sounded familiar in some ways. It had travelled around most of the world before it had got into Australia, same as the virus they had now. A few schools had been used as hospitals back then, which made Harper shiver. She wondered if Riverlark had been one of them—it was old enough—and if so which rooms they’d used for the patients. And how many of them hadn’t survived.

The thought of people dying at her school was horrible. Maybe that would happen this time, too.

That afternoon, as she climbed the back steps at Lolly’s, Harper could hear her grandmother singing along to the radio in the kitchen. Whatever strange mood Lolly had been in at breakfast, it was finished. When she was loud and lively, it stopped Harper from worrying so much.

A few days later, Harper was on her own at lunch. Cleo and Ro had asked her to join in with the leadership meeting they were having in the new garden, but it was a hot day with no breeze and she didn’t want to get sunburn while listening to Corey Hurst showing off.

She spotted Misha in the junior playground with some little kids, but she wasn’t in the mood for babysitting.

All her class’s bags were outside the art room, ready for double art in the afternoon, so she grabbed a book from hers and took it to the bench outside the library. It was an old hardback novel with pages that were brown around the edges, and it had been read so many times that it sat flat in her hands without having to be held open.

While she was reading, something passed over the page, like a flicker of sunlight. She shifted sideways on the bench. When it happened again, she looked up. The sun was hidden behind the tall slate roof of the old building. Harper tried to carry on reading but she kept seeing the light, and this time it lingered, almost pulsing. Someone must be playing that old trick with a watchface. She looked around for Augie and Jake, who were always pranking. Seeing no one, she looked down again. While the light had gone, a page lifted for a moment and fell back into place. Not with a flutter like a breeze would make it do—and anyway, there wasn’t one—but slowly, and deliberately.

And again.

She snapped the book shut.

Mr Glass was coming directly towards her, looking, as usual, as if he was about to complain about something.

‘Got a job for you, Harper,’ he said, and briskly unlocked the library door, propping it open with a brick.

She shook off the thought of the strangely behaving page and followed him through the fiction aisles to the picture-book corner at the back of the room. Here the beanbags looked saggier and dirtier every year, and the posters that had been on the walls forever were sun-faded with several corners missing where someone had stolen the Blu Tack.

The shelves looked like they’d been hit by a storm.

‘Our younger students have done their best to wreck the place, as you can see,’ said Mr Glass. ‘Since you’re our library captain, could you straighten it all up, please? Leave the door open. Strictly speaking you’re not supposed to be in here without a teacher, but as it’s you I think we can bend the rules.’

He said he’d be back shortly.

As it’s you. Harper smiled awkwardly at the praise, even though she didn’t like Mr Glass.

The rule about students not being in here without a teacher was the reason the library wasn’t open at recess or lunchtime. There was a teacher for art and teachers for sport, music and Italian lessons, but no one was in charge of the library. It wasn’t like the school libraries in books she’d read, where the characters would confide in the librarian, and sometimes the librarian turned out to have secret powers. Just a regular human would have been fine.

The first thing she did was use the computer by the window to return the book she’d been reading outside just now. She put it in its place on the shelf, and felt better.

Then Harper worked quickly at the back of room. The little ones clearly didn’t know their alphabet yet and had put the books back wherever they felt like it, including shoved down the back of the shelves. She found four used tissues, eleven pencils, three hair slides, two drink bottles and a small shoe. Using two pencils like chopsticks, she picked up the tissues and put them in the bin. The other things she lined up along the desk so that the next time the little ones came in, they’d find them.

It was like Lolly’s mudlarking. Harper arranged the objects like they were on the shelves at home. Though these objects were very ordinary.

Once she’d finished, she checked it over and let herself feel good about the transformation. She almost wanted to put her library-captain badge back on.

There were ten minutes until the end of lunch and she had to be here when Mr Glass returned. Harper wandered around into the non-fiction area to read more of the reference book about the Spanish flu, though she didn’t know why she kept wanting to.

She read that it was called Spanish flu because Spain was the first country to tell the world that their citizens had it, but it didn’t start there. Other countries wanted to keep it secret because they were at war. Harper could understand that—if Corey or Briar knew how sad she was about her parents, for example, or how scared she was about Lolly getting the virus, they’d somehow use it against her.

Then she read that the Spanish flu had come in three waves, and the second wave killed the most people. Between 50 million and 100 million people are thought to have died. Harper looked at that sentence for a long time.

She caught a sudden movement in the corner of her eye. Someone else was in the library.

‘Hello?’ she said.

Maybe some juniors had spotted that the door was open and crept in.

‘No one’s supposed to be in here except me,’ she said, trying to sound confident like a library captain should. The shelves were too tall to see over so she walked back to the main part of the room. ‘You’d better leave before Mr Glass gets back.’ She strained to listen for giggles or movement.

Perhaps she’d imagined it. She sniffed the air. There was a bitter smell like bonfire smoke.

Mr Glass arrived. She wanted to show him how tidy the books were but he ushered her outside and said the bell was about to go, he had a meeting and needed to lock the door.

Watching him turn the key, she had the oddest feeling that he was locking someone in.

At the end of the day, she came back to check through the big window. Nothing moved. There was no sign of anyone inside.

Harper woke up curled against the door as if she was keeping it shut. It was like being uprooted, waking each night somewhere different. In the dark, she felt her way along the wall to the bed. The numbers on the bedside alarm clock read 3:03.

It didn’t take long for sleep to pull her under.

The next night, Harper woke up on the carpet in the middle of the floor. Her arms were outstretched and she gasped when she saw that her right arm finished at the wrist. But, as she became fully conscious, she realised she could wriggle her fingertips: her hand was only hidden underneath the wardrobe. She pulled out her arm and sat up. Her hand was cold and she rubbed it back to life.

3:04.

This time she got back into bed and lay there filled with dread—not frightening images, or words, or nameable things, but thick stuffing. She wished she could pull it all out but all she could do was stare into the darkness, tired but awake.

She wanted her mum and dad to come into the room and make her feel safe, the way only they could.