’I have three words for you, Lily,’ says Missy, waggling three fingers in front of Lily’s face. ‘Jelly, custard, ice-cream.’

‘That’s four words,’ says Lily with a grin.

Lily, Missy, Kat and Jolly are doing some very gentle gymnastics on the oval at lunchtime. The girls have marked out a performance floor using their lunch boxes and water bottles.

Dr Rodriguez gave Lily a medical certificate, so she could have stayed at home all week. But after a few days spent cataloguing her slime collection, googling spooky stories to freak Sonny out with and studying fairytales, Lily was bored. She missed her friends.

Besides, thanks to the antibiotics, she is feeling okay! So okay, in fact, that Lily is certain she won’t need her tonsils removed after all.

‘You’ll have to get them out,’ says Kat, while walking on her hands. ‘If you don’t, you’ll just keep getting sick!’

‘Hmm,’ says Lily. It’s kind of hard to take Kat seriously when she’s upside down, but she does have a point. ‘But why does it get worse?’

‘Dunno.’ Kat tries to shrug, which makes her collapse. But, being such a bendy gymnast, Kat twists into an elegant roll and is back on her feet in a second. Awesome!

‘Maybe your tonsils will, like, fall off!’ suggests Jolly, who is stretching on the grass.

’Or maybe your WHOLE HEAD will fall off!‘ giggles Kat.

‘Phew, lucky I’ve had my tonsils out then!’ breathes Missy, ultra-seriously. ‘Oh, sorry Lily!’

‘That’s okay,’ Lily says, half-giggling, half-seriously. ‘Was it horrible having your tonsils removed? Were there any … ummm … needles?’

‘Nah!’ says Missy, waving her hand like she’s shooing flies. ‘It was nothing! I mean, I was only five so I can’t totally remember it, but I do remember the ice-cream, jelly and custard, and all the teddies my grandparents gave me.’

‘Still, I really think I’m too busy to go to hospital this week … I mean, I really need to focus on Into the Woods.’ Lily decides the best way to take her mind off her tonsils is to concentrate on being Little Princess Snow Bean and fighting her fears. Even though dealing with her tonsils means hospital, which means needles, which are her BIGGEST fear! Secretly, Lily is hoping the whole tonsillitis thing will go away and she’ll be on stage Friday afternoon, not in a hospital gown.

‘Oh! Is Into the Woods the one about fairytales?’ Jolly asks, dropping out of a backbend.

‘Yeah,’ mutters Lily. ‘Not that I like fairytales or anything.’

‘Yeah, no way!’ says Jolly quickly. ‘They are so babyish.’

’INFANTILE,‘ confirms Lily.

‘Is that how you say “fairytale” in Latin?’ asks Jolly.

Kat says nothing and kicks into a handstand.

‘Fairytales aren’t so bad,’ says Missy, matter-of-factly. ‘Sometimes they are really useful. Like for Katherine when she has her insulin shot.’

Missy’s little sister, Katherine, was born with a thing called diabetes. She needs to have insulin every day, so her body can process the sugar she eats in food. Lily knows the insulin comes in a (GULP) needle!

‘How does it help?’ asks Kat, pausing with her arms outstretched, ready to do a cartwheel.

‘Well,’ says Missy. ‘Katherine loves the Little Red Riding Hood story, so Mum started telling Katherine that the little needles were the wolf trying to have a nibble on her finger.’

’That sounds scary!‘ says Jolly.

Missy grins. ‘Then Mum bought Katherine a red cape and told her that as long as she has her red cape on – like Red Riding Hood – the wolf can never really eat her up!’

Lily crunches her nose up, thinking hard about what Missy said. Nose scrunching always helps when you have a tricky question to answer, or a problem to solve.

She finds all this information a bit spooky-weird. Is it possible that other kids ‘go method’ too? Lily always thought she was the only one.

As the end-of-lunch bell rings, Lily is thinking about Katherine ‘going method’ as Little Red Riding Hood, to give her the courage to face the needles. If Katherine can use fairytales to face her fear of needles, then Lily can too … maybe!