Sampson was missing his lunch, again.

It’d been going on for a while; some days his lunch would disappear from his lunch box, some days it’d be there. He couldn’t work out whether he forgot to bring it or his mum hadn’t put it in his bag or what.

But lately, it had become pretty obvious someone was flogging his lunch.

I don’t know what his parents had been thinking when they named him, but if they were hoping he’d grow up to be his namesake – some huge, muscular, supernaturally powered, God-like dude – they must be disappointed. He was more like Mr Bean’s love child. And because he’s Sampson with a ‘p’, his nickname was Sampie, which had morphed into Swampie.

He’s got a lisp, too, making him Thampthon, but not everyone gives him shit about that, it’s not really his fault.

He told me his lunch was missing again so I gave him one of my jam sambos. ‘Who do you reckon’s taking your lunch?’ I said to him as he gave my sandwich the once over.

‘It has to be Banning or Lurch or one of those tools. I don’t know when they take it, but. I’ve tried hiding it in different parts of my bag, putting it in a different bag altogether. I’ve even put my lunch in my locker, but it still goes. So, someone’s onto me.’ Tho, thomeone’th onto me is how it sounded.

‘Have you talked to the Year Adviser?’

‘Do I look like I want to get my head punched in?’

‘We’ll just have to watch your gear then, find out who it is and fix them.’ How that would happen was another Year Nine mystery, but there had to be a way to do it. ‘It’s not as if we can do a stake out or anything, but maybe we could set up a camera?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sampson. ‘Put a GoPro on top of the lockers, or in the opposite classroom. That’d work. Wouldn’t it?’

‘I s’pose,’ I said. ‘Why not? Have you thought about bringing money to school instead?’

‘Good one, Dylan. Why didn’t I think of that? Mum’d be into that, too.’

‘Sorry. Fair enough. Secret camera it is.’ It sounded like fun, anyway. Set up a sting to catch the bad guys stealing stuff from the good guys. And maybe it was Banning and maybe I’d like to get back at him. ‘Just don’t tell anyone, okay?’ I warned. ‘The less people who know about this, the better.’

‘Sweet,’ said Sampson. ‘Have you got a GoPro?’

I grunted. ‘So maybe we tell whoever’s got a GoPro, but that’s it.’

It felt stupid, but I spent the rest of lunch trying to find a way to bump into Gracie Chilcott. She had to be alone, though, because there was no way I was going to barge into that group of girls and stand there like I had something to talk about.

I could see them in their usual spot on the other side of the Quad, doing their usual, not much of anything. Heads bent over phones, giggling, laughing and talking, then more heads in phones. Don’t they ever get up and run around? Their fingers were constantly jabbing or swiping, opening or pinching, and then they’d show each other their screens and fall about laughing or start swooning and gushing.

Gracie was between Isabella and Hannah. I’m not sure where Madison was. If she was with them, maybe I could go up and say hey, but only if I got the vibe it was okay to talk to her at school and not just at the dog park when no one else was around.

It would have been cool if she’d been at the bus stop this morning so I could have told her about ‘losing’ Ronnie last night and Mum fritzing out, but then maybe it wouldn’t be so cool if she knew that sort of stuff. She might think I come from some kind of loser family if she knew my mum hid my sister to teach me a lesson. That’s not normal. Or maybe, she might understand. That’d give us some other stuff to talk about because, as far as I can tell, pretty much no one gets their parents. Except for Ryan, but he’s Ryan.

Without Madison around, I concentrated on Gracie. She’d have to bin something eventually. She’d have to get up and go somewhere – to the toilet or the taps, somewhere on her own so I could pick up from yesterday morning. I pretended to be writing. I was up the other end of the Quad, sitting on a bench, leaning against the brick wall. Pencil in hand, but a thoughtless head, just looking around pensively at what might get the lead moving. It seemed pretty obvious that this was what she’d be looking to see, given she was so interested in ‘Me, Tree’, that story I’d written for class. It’s not like she’d have forgotten already, so I figured if she could see what I look like when I write, if she could see the process and the thought and the intenseness of getting words to the page, she’d be even more into what I was doing. It just made sense to me at that moment, so that’s what I did.

There was just me and a notepad and my empty brain.

I watched everyone, but especially Gracie, Hannah and Isabella. They laughed hard, forcing the air out of themselves in great, breezy gusts, trying to out-hilarious each other. I wanted to be in it, to know what they were laughing at. Who were they watching on their phones? Who were they texting? I checked my phone, it obviously wasn’t me. Were they Snapchatting or Instagramming or Facebooking? It looked fun and funny. How good would it be to laugh really hard like that?

There were games of handball going on, bad losers and worse winners. ‘It’s on the line.’ ‘Double Bounce.’ ‘You’re out!’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘You’re out!’ ‘I’m not.’ ‘Out! Out! Out!’ ‘Not! Not! Not!’ The usual sort of stuff because there’s always been someone not wanting to go out and someone else wanting to come in. Always. Everywhere.

Sampson came back and sat down heavily next to me, checking if I’d seen anyone eating his lunch yet. He didn’t actually know what was in it, so it would have been almost impossible to spot the person who’d taken it. ‘Just keep an eye out for anyone with two lunches, you know?’ he said. Yes, I knew. ‘I’ve got the use of a GoPro, too. It’s cost me, but we’ll find out who it is, and when we do, I’m going to get him.’

‘That was quick.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘Desperate times and all that.’

Ryan sat down, too. ‘Taken any good photos lately?’ he said across Sampson. With his head at a shifty angle, he looked like a deviant. I felt an embarrassed flush spread through the top of my chest. ‘Anything interesting? Anything strange? Any funky stuff, Dyl?’

‘No, why would I?’

‘I didn’t know you took photos.’ Sampson was looking between me and Ryan as if it was a tennis match. ‘How long have you been taking photos?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ryan. ‘How long have you been taking photos?’

‘Fuck off,’ I said to Ryan. It was meant to be playful, but it didn’t really come out that way. It was meant to be the long, laughy kind, fuuuck ooohhff, as if he’d just asked me one of his weird ‘would you or wouldn’t you’ questions. Like, would you prefer to eat chocolate pudding that tastes like shit, or shit that tastes like chocolate pudding? He’s always doing those things.

So when I told him where to go, it came out short and much meaner than I’d meant.

‘Oooohh,’ said Ryan. ‘Would you rather we didn’t talk about your photography?’

‘So you do take photos? What of?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Ryan’s just being funny, aren’t you, Ryan?’ I looked at him and wordlessly tried to tell him to shut up and that I’d offer him whatever he wanted not to continue talking about me taking photos.

‘How is it, anyway?’ asked Ryan.

‘What?’

I ignored Sampson who was clearly about to ask, ‘How was what?’

‘You know. How is it?’

Now I tried to look at him in a way that said, Dude, really? Enough. If we talk about it, someone’s going to find out about it. And once one person knows, the law of social media says everyone’ll know, so like, enough.

‘It’s fine. No worries. Really. Nothing, at all.’

‘Whaaaaat?’ said Sampson.

‘Nothing,’ Ryan and I said together. It wasn’t really fine, but I wasn’t going to say anything about it now. Or ever, probably.

‘Hey,’ said Ryan. ‘Would you rather know something no one knows but not be allowed to share it, or never know anything everyone knows?’

Sampson shook his head as if to clear the space for that to make sense. I didn’t bother.

The Quad was filling up, there were people all over the place. Hamish Banning was tossing little pieces of bread to a growing crowd of pigeons, even though we were told almost daily not to feed them. That’s probably why he did it. Within a couple of minutes there were a bunch of them clucking about in front of him like fans at a concert. I’d never thought of him as being nice to anything before, so it was kind of strange to have him surprise me like that.

I checked in on Hannah, Gracie and Isabella. They were still there, still cacking, still the most fun people in the school. ‘What do you reckon they’re laughing about?’ I said.

‘They’re not,’ said Ryan. ‘They’re pretending.’

‘No, I’m pretty sure they’re laughing for real,’ said Sampson.

‘I’m pretty sure they are, too,’ I said. ‘I think they’re looking at Facebook or Instagram and they’re laughing about people’s posts, checking out the weird stuff they get up to. It’s pointless, right? Sunrise pictures, every day? Who cares? Or dog pictures or new bikinis or –’

‘I like new bikini photos.’

‘Good point, Swampie. Then they’re laughing at bad new bikini photos. I reckon they’re seeing who’s friends with who and what people are following, that’s what I reckon. Because they sit there and look for a while, then they piss themselves laughing, then they all go back to their phones and find some other loser to laugh at. That has to be it, doesn’t it? It’s not like they’re ripping music, there’s nothing funny about that. Kook of the Day, maybe? And they’re not playing games because most people pull faces that make them look marginally mental.’

Sampson knew what I was on about. ‘And then they start dribbling because they are marginally mental.’

‘Yeah, Ronnie, my little sister, she moves her jaw from side to side and back and forth – she dribbles, too. No, I think they’re just laughing at funny stuff on their phones.’

‘Maybe. But they’re spending a lot of time tossing their heads about and being loud and looking around to see who’s looking at them, that’s all I’m saying,’ said Ryan. ‘Seriously. Have a look at ’em.’

Hannah was tossing her hair around the most.

She had looked over at the exact moment Ryan said, ‘Have a look at ’em.’ So the three of us were staring straight at the three of them, as if they were some kind of show to be watched. Hannah stopped moving. For just a few moments her eyes bored straight into mine. Her head tilted the tiniest bit to one side making her fringe fall across her left eye. She frowned. She did a kind of reverse smile as if she was trying not to fart, then nodded. All this while she was looking at me. Then she moved her hand to Gracie Chilcott’s elbow and gave it a squeeze. I’m guessing that’s what happened, because Gracie pulled her elbow away after giving a little yelp. Hannah put her hand over her mouth and said something near Gracie’s ear, which made Isabella stop what she was doing and look up as well. The three of them went from heads down to looking at the three of us.

‘Is Hannah Macrae staring at me?’ said Sampson.

‘She was looking at me,’ I said. ‘I think they’re all looking at me.’

‘Okay,’ said Ryan. ‘Sure they are. Wow. How did I miss that? I only just noticed that you must have been visited by your Fairy Godmather as well because somehow you’ve woken up looking exactly like the love child of Brad Pitt and Justin Bieber. Amazing. Of all the people, the guys from the swim team, the water polo players, the basketballers, the athletes with the buff bods and the beards, why would they be looking at you?’

‘Because,’ I said with my head down, scribbling furiously in my notebook, ‘they like my brains.’

Did I say that? I turned my back to the girls and gave Ryan and Sampson the twitter version of yesterday and what had happened with Gracie before being belted about in the change room by Hamish Banning. How she’d asked me to walk her to her next class and that we’d talked about some pretty cool stuff.

‘I’m going over,’ I said.

‘You are delusional,’ said Ryan.

‘Ryan, you should have been there. You should have seen her, for sure it was on, She was like, Do you wanna . . .? And then the teacher got her and –’

Ryan looked past me. ‘She’s coming over. Holy shit, she’s actually coming over here. Don’t turn around, just be cool.’

‘Who?’ I said. I was still facing Ryan and Sampson.

‘Gracie. Oh my God. She’s waiting for the others. She’s giving them the ‘come on, come on’, but they’re not moving. They’re sitting on the bench looking like they’ve had massive amounts of facial surgery. You know, they’re making this look.’ Ryan pulled the corners of his mouth way back into his face. He looked mutant.

‘What’s happening now?’

‘She’s ditched ’em. Gracie’s on her way. She’s about a third of the way here. This is intense. Sorry for saying you’re a bullshitter, this is pretty awesome.’

For a guy who didn’t seem too fussed about much, Ryan was pretty close to losing his shit. Maybe he liked her, too.

I’ll stay seated, I thought, and keep my back to her. If she taps me on the shoulder I’m going to turn the wrong way, as if it’s a stitch up. That’d be pretty funny. Or it’d be pretty weird. I’ll just turn in the direction of the shoulder she taps – if she taps me on the shoulder. What’ll I say? Hi? Or hey?

Ryan had a hand over his mouth and said, ‘Be cool, she’s nearly here. Be cool. Be cool.’ Physically he was holding it together, but his eyes screamed excitement. Sampson looked like he was about to wet himself.

So, my hand was poised over the pad, ready to go. There was nothing there, I hadn’t written a word. All that time pretending to look like I’m some world-class, tree-loving writer, and I’d done nothing. Of course she was going to ask me what I was writing and can she have a look. I’m such an idiot! But hang on . . . I made this big kind of thing where I used my pen to scratch my head, then I tucked it behind my ear and closed the notebook. Simple. She’d ask to see what I’d written and I’d say she had to wait. It wasn’t ready. But when it was, I’d show her. She’d be begging to see it. And then I could find the best time to show it to her, not in the Quad, but somewhere quiet. Just the two of us.

I squared my shoulders for the imminent tap.

I heard it before I saw it. There was this harried, thundery noise further down the Quad. It was the pigeons in front of Hamish Banning. They’d all taken flight at the same time, but a panicked take-off. Flight not fight. I could see Banning laughing his usual, idiotic ‘he he he he,’ as the birds took off. All airborne except one, which was flapping about on the ground.

‘You got one!’ roared Lurch. ‘Top shot!’

‘Shut up,’ barked Banning. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ But he was off the bench quickly and headed for a set of keys that were just beyond the injured bird.

‘His wing’s broken. You got him good enough to snap his wing.’ Lurch was like a kid who’d dropped a dollar into a chocolate machine and had a huge win.

The bird was flapping about like an angry drunk.

Banning pocketed his keys and motored for the far side of the Quad.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ said Lurch after him. ‘You should get it and do something with it.’

But Banning was gone. The whole Quad saw him take off; it was pretty obvious who was responsible for the bird’s injury.

I turned for Gracie. She’d have to be right behind me. Now we’d definitely have something to talk about. We could unite in the shared opinion that Hamish Banning was a total tool.

But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t even in the Quad. Hannah and Isabella weren’t, either. Weird. I looked at Ryan. ‘Where’d she go?’ I said.

Ryan shrugged. ‘Dunno. I was pretty sure she was on her way over. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was a bit nervous about meeting the great writer.’

‘Yeah,’ said Sampson. ‘Or maybe she wasn’t ever coming over.’

‘Maybe,’ said Ryan.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Good one, fellas. Thanks for that.’

The bell went. Before everyone cleared out, a teacher found the bird and was now trying to pick it up, but it still had enough mobility to avoid her.

‘Does anyone know what happened to the bird?’ she said, looking around the circle that had formed. No one said much. Hamish’s brother was there, so it’s not as if anyone was going to dob on Hamish. She looked at Lurch. ‘Get a box or something and pick up the bird. We’ll work out what to do with it once we know how bad the wing is. Everyone else, lunch is over, get to class.’

I looked around the Quad one more time for Gracie or the other girls, but they were gone. That was weird. Maybe she was never coming over to talk to me, but why would Ryan do that?