It was the last day of summer break, and I was starting Spit Hill Middle School the next morning. I can’t say I was massively excited about going into middle school. There were loads of big loud scary kids in there—I used to see them coming out of the gate sometimes and getting on the bus. The girls looked even more dangerous than the boys. And in a few hours I was going to be walking through those gates myself. I was really freaking out about it. Maybe that’s why I got the idea in the first place. Panic can make you do insane things—that’s all I can say.

So that was the day Mum asked me go and pick up Bella from her friend’s birthday party. It wasn’t far, just a few streets past the park. The whole way I was stressing about the disasters that could happen in school. What if no one liked me and everyone made new friends except me?

There were twenty-eight kids in my class in elementary school, and only twelve of them were girls. They were okay, and I hung out with them because I didn’t really have much choice, but they weren’t majorly good friends or anything. None of them liked art. Most of the boys were annoying and the three that were almost okay were going to other schools. So I really needed this middle school thing to work out. I was seriously hoping to make some new friends.

Because it was a new school and everything, it flashed across my mind to pretend I was someone else. I could say I was an orphan and my parents adopted me from Korea. Or that my father was a rock star, and I flew to LA every summer to hang out in my heart-shaped pool. But kids from my elementary school would be there, and they’d wreck my story. Everyone would laugh at me. Making a good first impression on your first day is important. If you mess up then, everyone ignores or ridicules you for the next seven years.

I nearly walked straight past Bella’s friend’s house because I was stressing so much. As soon as I stepped in the front door I saw Bella: you couldn’t miss her. She was wearing this huge puffy pink party dress, white shiny shoes, and pink and white ribbons in her hair. She looked like a giant marshmallow. It was hard to believe we were even related. Her pigtails were bouncing up in the air, and she had chocolate smeared all over her mouth, her dress—everywhere.

I really didn’t want to hold her sticky, chocolatey hands so I asked the party girl’s mother if I could clean Bella up before we left. Seriously, if you had seen those hands you wouldn’t have touched them either. But that might be just me. Me and muck have this thing. We just don’t get along.

Once I’d washed her hands the best I could with her wriggling like an eel, I told Bella to wait outside so I could, you know, use the bathroom.

When I came out she was crying and rubbing her head.

“What happened?” I asked.

“That stupid Tommy Pyke,” she wailed. “He ran up the stairs and pushed me over and I banged my head on the wall.”

Tommy Pyke was only seven or something but he was molto violent, and he kept being mean to Bella. The first time was just after he joined our school, when he pulled her hair really hard and made her cry. Then he started tripping her on the playground and taking things out of her pencil case and throwing them at other kids in the class.

When we walked to the front door to leave the party, Tommy Pyke poked his head around the kitchen door and grinned. I took Bella’s hand and gave him my evil death stare. That usually works on Bella, but he just stuck his tongue out at me and ran away.

On the way back home, with me holding Bella’s hand which was now a bit clean but not extremely, we passed the playground.

A man was sitting in the sandpit playing with a little girl. The girl was only about two. She was pouring sand out of a plastic cup and talking to herself. Doing that at my age would be a molto stupido thing to do, and I was busy thinking about that when Bella stopped walking. She stood still, turned to the side, and looked at the little girl and her dad. She was still holding my hand and everything, but she just stood there watching them.

I tried to pull her away, but she didn’t budge.

“Bella!” I said. “Come on, will you?”

But Bella didn’t say anything. She just stood there, staring.

The little girl climbed all over her dad’s legs, smearing sandy footprints on his trousers. It would have really bothered me but he didn’t seem to mind. Then she plonked herself onto his lap. The little girl rested her head on her dad’s chest, and he put his arms around her and stroked her hair.

Bella stood there gazing at them. I had to stand there too because I couldn’t let go of her: I’d promised Mum I’d hold Bella’s hand all the way home and I knew Mum would check. So we watched the man and his little girl, which is a weird thing to do if you think about it. The man looked up and his face was, like, “What?” but he didn’t say anything.

I glanced at Bella, trying to figure out what she was doing. And then I saw it.

It was huge.

A gigantic, fat tear leaked out of Bella’s left eye and rolled in slow motion all the way down her cheek until it fell off her chin and onto her marshmallow dress. Then another tear followed from her right eye.

I knew exactly what Bella was thinking: that little girl could sit on her daddy’s lap, but Bella couldn’t because she didn’t have a daddy.

So I said, “Come on, Bella. Let’s go.”

And we walked home slowly, in silence.

The flat was quiet when we got in. Mum had a deadline, so she was working on her laptop in the sitting room. She told us to get something to drink until she finished, but Bella went to her room and I went to mine. I didn’t even draw—and I always draw, especially when I feel bad. But I just lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

My room was pretty small, but at least I didn’t have to share with Bella. Under the window was my desk with my drawing materials, which was my favorite place in the entire universe. On the right was my bed, a chest of drawers, and a small wardrobe. The walls were painted pale blue, and there were stars all over my duvet and pillow covers. When I turned off the lights, the glow-in-the-dark comets and planets on the ceiling shone. I loved my room. But even being in there didn’t make me feel any better.

Mum finished her work and called us to come out. She made scrambled eggs for dinner but the gunk on our plates looked more like clumps of wet toilet paper. Bella and I sat at the small table in the kitchen and stared at it. Neither of us felt hungry. Mum could tell something was wrong because we were both so quiet and Bella’s the most unquiet person in the world.

After a while, Mum said, “Oh, come on. The eggs aren’t that bad.”

But it wasn’t the food.

Not this time.

I looked at Bella. She was staring at the plate and her lips were twitching like she was going to cry any second.

And even though she was a complete pain in the butt, I felt sorry for her because now she knew what the black hole felt like—the one my dad left behind when he vamoosed. Maybe she’d felt it a bit before, but the man in the park made her realize what I had known all along. Something major was missing. There was just this humongous hole where our dad was supposed to be. Someone we had completely trusted and loved had left us suddenly and never come back.

A thing like that can make you feel really small. And I didn’t want to feel any smaller. It was bad enough wearing clothes for nine- to ten-year-olds when I was nearly twelve.

“Was the party that bad?” Mum asked, reaching across the table and lifting Bella’s chin up. “Did Molly’s mother lock you all in a cupboard? Because that’s not a bad idea. We could do that at your party, Bella.”

I didn’t smile and neither did Bella. I knew Bella was thinking about the little girl in the park and so was I.

That little girl had a dad and we didn’t.

He’d love her and look after her.

He’d make sure she didn’t get bullied by nasty boys.

He’d tell her exactly what she needed to do to make a good impression on her first day at middle school. And he’d probably buy her a really cool phone as well so she wouldn’t look like a cavewoman. (Dads just get stuff like that. Mums, if they’re anything like mine, just refuse to fork over their cash.)

It just didn’t seem fair.

In the end, Mum gave up trying to force-feed us rubbery eggs and took our plates to the sink.

“What’s going on, Amber?” she asked when Bella went to the toilet. “Anything I should know about?”

“Oh…err…not really. We just…we saw something a bit sad on the way home. It was a…um…this dead dog.”

Mum looked at me suspiciously. “If there’s anything wrong you can tell me, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Except I couldn’t tell her this. It would just make her feel bad. So I got up and went back to my room.