After the last bell on Friday, Harper and Cleo had to carry a tub of netball bibs and balls to the sports shed. With that done, they went to the small square area beyond the toilet block, where Cleo thought she’d left her lunch box.

When they got there, they saw Corey shove a younger boy. The boy fell backwards to the ground, landing hard on his arm.

‘Corey! What did you do that for?’ yelled Cleo.

‘He deserved it!’ Corey shouted back.

Ro was there. He picked up his bag and was about to speak when Cleo yelled again. ‘What did he do, Corey? Wear the wrong brand of runners? You can’t push people around.’ She helped the boy up. Harper had seen Cleo defend people hundreds of times, but this was unexpected. Maybe Cleo was finally seeing Corey for what he was. The boy hurried away.

‘It’s not Corey’s fault,’ said Ro. ‘That kid was being racist, Corey stuck up for me.’ And he turned to Corey. ‘Thanks, okay? But no violence, not my style.’ Corey looked as if he couldn’t decide if he was sorry or angry.

‘What happened, Ro?’ said Harper.

‘It wasn’t much. I asked him to pick up some rubbish because I saw him drop it. He said I wasn’t the boss of him, and something about curry. Because, you know, ha ha, I’m from India. Then Corey did that.’

‘I was helping,’ said Corey.

‘Yeah,’ said Ro. ‘But I didn’t ask you to hit anyone.’

This time Corey seemed to get it. He said sorry, picked up his bag and left.

‘I guess he was trying to be nice,’ said Cleo afterwards.

‘He’s never nice!’ Harper snapped.

Then she had to listen as they both gave her examples of how Corey wasn’t so bad. Corey was a good vice-captain. Corey bought Cleo a slurpie when she forgot her money. Corey let Ro bat first in cricket. Corey caught a pigeon in the art room and took it safely outside.

Corey Corey Corey.

Last year the three of them had pledged to hate him. Now Corey was a different person, according to them. But he wasn’t.

Harper stewed on this all the way to the bike rack.

It was those leadership roles.

Or was it something she’d missed? She never had mean thoughts about her friends—a smudge of jealousy, a flicker of annoyance, maybe, but not this.

She’d always been one of the quieter ones. In their friendship group, Cleo, Ro and Tahira talked the most and made the decisions. Augie and Jake were easygoing. Misha was always around but she was quiet and delicate. That left Harper harder to define.

She was someone who had a lot to say, but she had trouble saying it.

She was someone who hurt easily but looked like nothing bothered her.

She wasn’t an obvious leader. When Mr Glass gave her the library-captain badge, all those months ago, it wasn’t because he thought she’d be great but because there was no one else.

And now she’d gone and invited everyone to a party. It was the last thing she wanted.

As she buckled her helmet under her chin and caught a tiny bit of skin, she yelled out: ‘How can you like him?’

‘What?’ Cleo replied, looking shocked.

‘You’re actually friends with Corey now. So is Ro. We hated him, Cleo!’

Cleo’s mouth opened but nothing came out. That was a first.

Harper yanked her bike out of the rack and muttered that it didn’t matter, she had to get home.

She cycled along the river path thinking about what had just happened, first in the open heat and then finally into the long, cool corridor of trees, where her eyes had to adjust to the shade. She’d cancel the party. She only wanted to spend time with Will. She’d ignore her old friends and focus on finding out more about her new friend.

A bird swooped in front of her and Harper swerved hard. The front wheel hit the grass verge and she fell heavily on her side. She lay still, sizing up what hurt. Her leg, trapped under the bike. And the arm she’d fallen onto.

‘I’m okay,’ she said, quietly, with cold blades of grass against her cheek.

Easing the bike off her leg, she sat up and unclipped her helmet. The shock would pass soon. Her parents had taught her that: take a minute. Everything was peaceful. There was a faint smell of mint and honey in the air. The river: shiny and untouched. On a branch overhead there was a bird, tiny, black and white, shifting side to side and singing—did that tiny bird make her fall? It was the same as the one she’d noticed the day she found the badge and the same as the one that showed up on Lolly’s balcony when the shelves fell down. Seeing it now, she felt fear rise up out of nowhere.

It made no sense!

This was a normal little bird, completely harmless, but when she looked down the pathway she didn’t want to continue. It wasn’t just the bird, but all the nights lying awake, alone, not knowing if there was something really wrong and carrying a huge secret around: Will.

The chain had come off her bike. She faced the bike in the direction she’d come from. There was nothing chasing her and no danger she could put into words, but she walked as if there was, heading back to Riverlark. If she hurried she might catch Cleo and Ro. She regretted everything she’d thought that afternoon. They were her friends, she mustn’t lose them.

Suddenly Will was running towards her, his boots silent on the ground.

He called out, ‘What happened? Are you all right?’

Harper checked around to make sure no one would see her talking to nobody. ‘I fell off my bike and then…doesn’t matter, it’s embarrassing.’

‘I can’t even ride a bike, if that helps,’ said Will. She noticed that he wasn’t out of breath at all, even though he’d just been running. It must be so odd to be him.

‘I keep getting spooked by a bird,’ Harper explained. ‘You can laugh if you want.’

Will smiled. ‘When we were kids there was a big house on the way home that everyone said was cursed. Some people wouldn’t walk past it because of the old lady who lived there.’

‘But not you, I guess.’

‘Including me!’ he said, wide-eyed. ‘I was terrified of that old lady.’

Harper laughed, and when she next looked along the path, she felt calm again. It was strange how fear could come and go like that.

Will said, ‘Can I walk with you a bit? Which way are you going? This way?’ He pointed down the path that Harper used to ride along every day, which led back to her old house, where a family of strangers was living.

‘No, back the way I came,’ she said.

When they’d walked a while Will said, ‘Did you have any more trouble from that kid, what was his name?’

‘Corey. Well, not really, but I hate him. I liked you scaring him. Someone needs to, he thinks he’s so great.’

‘I can probably scare him even more if you give me some ideas.’

She could tell he was joking. Even though the books she’d read had said ghosts wanted revenge, so far Will just seemed a bit lost.

‘Did you believe in ghosts when you were alive?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Never thought about death.’

‘But you went to war, Will. You must have thought about death then.’

‘Didn’t think I’d actually die,’ he said.

Harper gave him a dubious look.

‘It’s true!’ he insisted.

‘I can’t believe how brave you were,’ said Harper. ‘I’m twelve and scared of going to high school.’

‘High school—what’s that, school for clever people? I’d have been more scared of that than going to war.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Because I didn’t know what I was in for. With school, I knew I was bad at anything to do with books. Teachers told me often enough. If I’d had a clue about what war is like, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to go. But I was the best at cadets at Riverlark and somehow everything I heard about war made it sound…like I had to do it.’

‘Oh,’ said Harper, seriously, though she was still far from understanding.

Next she asked him about the day he arrived back at Riverlark. Will described suddenly finding himself inside the gates. As though he’d been lost before but didn’t know it. It sounded a lot like when Harper woke in the middle of the night and realised she was not in her bed.

Will couldn’t understand why he was at Riverlark instead of anywhere else: his old house, the place where he’d died, or his uncle’s farm, which he’d loved. He’d hated school. That day he arrived, it was dark and though parts of Riverlark were still the same, beyond the gates the streets were so changed. He couldn’t understand the rows of cars.

Then he’d heard an owl and he was relieved: something familiar.

He stopped suddenly.

‘This place! I’d forgotten,’ he said.

They were by a tree with a long branch that stretched over the water.

‘On warm days we ran here for a dip after morning lessons. This was our swimming spot. You ever swim here?’

Harper told him that she’d never dared to because you couldn’t see the bottom and it was full of people’s litter.

‘In my day,’ he said, ‘the boys would jump in while the girls stayed on the banks. Except for two of them, my friends Molly and Mae. They were twins. They got into more trouble than all the boys put together. Especially Mae.’

Will talked more about swimming. Dares and races, and floating on their backs. Eels sliding around with them. Lunch on the banks: whatever his ma had wrapped up, cake on a good day. And there’d be games—jackbones, cherry bobs, hoops, marbles. Drying off in the sun. He looked happy remembering it.

‘Hey, would you look Molly and Mae up on the whatjercallit?’

‘Internet. Yes, if it’s working when I get home. What’s their last name?’

‘Lamb.’

That was funny. Lamb was Lolly’s last name. Charlotte Rosemary Lamb.

‘That’s who you reminded me of when I first saw you,’ said Will. ‘Not Molly so much, but Mae.’

Harper kept quiet about Lolly. It could be nothing.

They came to a fork in the river path. He followed her up the steep way to the main road. But shortly after they got to the top of the slope, Will said he was going back. He seemed bothered by something. Harper had never seen him so agitated.

Then, almost angrily, he said, ‘Look, are you going to help me?’

She felt scared again. ‘Help you? I don’t know, Will. What help could I be?’

He kept looking past her at the road, where streams of cars and trams were passing by.

‘I can’t stay here forever. Why is it just me left behind?’

Harper tried to see what he was looking at but there was nothing obvious. She turned back to tell him that she’d look things up on the internet as soon as she got home, but he’d vanished.