The next morning I could hear Bella singing in her bedroom. I couldn’t just go off to school when she was being so happy. It was driving me nuts. So I zipped into her room, which was even tinier than mine. Just a shoebox really. And painted pink, obviously.

Bella was supposed to be putting her uniform on but she was sitting on the tiny space of floor in her Hello Kitty pajamas, making a cheesy bracelet.

“Bella,” I said, “I think you’ve got the wrong idea. About that letter, I mean.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thanks for reminding me, Amber.”

And she handed me an envelope.

“Bella—”

Mum was coming down the hall so I had to hide it up my shirt. I knew Bella was going to get in loads of trouble because she had to leave for school in five minutes and she was still wearing pink, had wild hair, and hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.

I zipped out of the door just as Mum arrived, saying, “Please tell me she’s dressed.”

I gave Mum the kind of grin that meant “Yeah, right” and ran away just as Mum went into Bella’s room and started roaring.

At the table I guzzled my cereal nervously.

What was in this new letter under my shirt?

Ba ding. I got a text. From Chloe Cain.

Goin 2 bus stop. Bus in 4 mins. Comin?

It turned out that Chloe lived, like, three streets away so she’d been super excited about going to school together every day. I wasn’t dying of happiness about it or anything but she did have this app on her phone that told her exactly when the bus was coming. It was so cool. She could plan when to leave the house so she could get there exactly when it arrived. Cavegirl losers like me had no idea of bus times, so we missed it and then had to wait decades in the wind and the rain for the next one. Like in the Olden Days.

Mum was still yelling at Bella to get dressed so I sent Chloe a text back.

comin.

I read Bella’s letter as soon as I was out of our house.

Dier Dad,

Shal I wer the ornge and green dresse to my party or dresse up as a unicorn? Nonna seys she has a unicorn coustume for me. What do you think?

Love, Bella

xxx

This was bad.

Wait.

Unicorn costume?

I couldn’t imagine my nonna buying a unicorn costume. She just wasn’t that type of nonna. She was the kind who would buy a fairy costume or one of those flouncy princess dresses. If you ask me, that’s where Bella gets all her ideas about being a princess from. Grandmas are really good at messing up a kid’s grip on reality.

You could never tell with Nonna though. Her English wasn’t great so she got things wrong all the time. Last year, she phoned to tell me she bought me a badger for my birthday. Mum overheard me saying, “You bought me a badger?” and freaked out. She yelled, “tell her she can’t bring it over here! We can’t keep a badger in a flat! It’s not even legal to own one as a pet. They’re dangerous!”

So I told Nonna but she said, “Chiacchiere! Nonsense! I coming now. È carino. He very sssweet. I show you, no?” She insisted they were good pets and she had already bought it, along with a lovely cage, so there was nothing to argue about and she was bringing it round.

When Nonna turned up she was holding a cage.

We all stared at it.

In the cage was a small green budgie.

Even Mum thought that was hilarious. I took it back to the pet shop though because it makes me sad to see birds in cages. I got a pad of sketch paper and Bella got the bracelet maker from Hobbycraft instead.

On the way to school, Chloe was talking and talking, but I really didn’t hear anything she said. My head was burning up with stress and confusion. I wanted to take it off and leave it somewhere to cool down.

Now Bella thought Dad was coming to her party. It was a catastrophe. Why had I written back to her?

On top of that, I’d done a brilliant job of ruining middle school before the very first week was out.

I went through the gates feeling ill.

I kept my head down all morning. I didn’t see Joanne Pyke. It’s not like she’s in my grade or anything. I spent most of my morning classes racking my brain to find solutions and turn it all around.

To start with, I pleaded with my guidance counselor, Mrs. DeLuca, to let me drop Miss Figgis’s class, but she said it was mandatory for certain students and I was one of them.

I looked up the word “mandatory” in a school dictionary during break and it means “you have to, sucker; you have no choice,” which was molto depressing news. Actually, that’s not exactly what it said in the dictionary, which is a shame. Imagine how cool it would be if the dictionary actually said things like that!

Then the break ended, and I had to go to my classes. Middle school is annoying because there are all these completely random subjects like history and French and geography and none of them seem very useful. I don’t know why they insist on teaching you all this stuff you’ll forget as soon as you walk out of the door. What about teaching you how to get out of doing things you don’t want to do? Or sorting out complicated messes and getting violent girls off your back? But noooo. Instead we learn algebra, which isn’t going to help much when I’m traumatized about my classes for kids with trauma.

When I went to put my stuff away, I saw Locker Boy again. As soon as I saw him, I did an about-face and stood at the window pretending to watch the caretaker cut the grass. I put Locker Boy to the back back backest part of my mind. He was the least of my problems. But I had to admit, he was a problem. I have no idea why, but when I saw him, my brain went “aaahhhhh, nice thing” like it does when it sees chocolate cake smothered in thick chocolate icing, and not “ew, yucky thing” like it does when it sees doggy doo or snotty tissues.

At the end of school, when I was coming out of the gate, Joanne was up ahead of me with a group of big kids. Luckily, she was a bit far away or I’d have been in serious trouble. She turned around and looked at me. Then she smiled the coldest, most dangerous smile I’ve ever seen in my entire life and at that moment I knew it. I was going to need more than a few karate katas to get out of this one.