Friday 2 September

I wake exhausted because I studied late and then I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Frances Carter, how she walked into the auditorium that day, all wire and certainty. I lay in bed listening to her music – the beauty and strangeness of it. At least we don’t have orchestra this morning, so I don’t have to see Oliver.

I cram in as much study as I can between classes. Iris and I look over notes at lunch, and we study at night. She spends time catching me up when she should be going over her own work, and I want Clem to see this side of her. The side that doesn’t say I told you so, but sits with you late at night and explains the calculus problem you don’t understand and calmly reassures you that you’re doing the right thing, when every part of you screams that you’re not.

*

Our study plan is to work till midnight, then go to bed so we have at least seven hours sleep. It’s about quarter to midnight and we’re finishing up a practice exam on our computers, when there’s a hesitant knock on the door.

I stop the clock and Iris answers it. We both stare at Oliver in disbelief. My eyes cannot comprehend that he is here, in the boarding house.

‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Please invite me in. I’m scared senseless I’ll get caught.’

‘God, yes, sorry, yes.’ I pull him inside. ‘How did you get here?’

‘I used the portal. Came across school grounds in the dark. You’ve been very brave doing that all this time.’

‘He needs to go or we’re both expelled,’ Iris says.

‘Can we have two minutes alone? Go to the bathroom and when you come back, he’ll be gone.’

‘I don’t need to go to the bathroom. I need to do my practice exam.’

Oliver is holding my hand now. I’m not sure when he picked it up, but I know that neither of us is letting go till he says what he came to say.

‘Please, Iris,’ Oliver says, and she makes a big deal of putting on her dressing-gown and leaving.

‘Ten minutes,’ she says, which is so incredibly nice of her. I didn’t think she’d give us two.

As soon as she’s gone, Oliver kisses me. A full-on, fantastic kiss. A kiss that makes me wish Iris weren’t such a stickler for time and we were in his bedroom and the kiss could lead to other things.

‘Sorry,’ he says after. ‘I needed to do that first. I should have done that before. Earlier. The other day. When you told me. Because, the truth is, I might win because of our work, our song. I wouldn’t have had a real chance without you, hard as that is for me to admit. And you’re not a total fuck-up. Not even close. I’ve met some fuck-ups and you’re nothing like them. In fact, when it comes to fucking up, you’re a complete amateur.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. And I get the whole parent thing. I completely understand. I got all worked up because I like you. I really like you.’

‘It’s mutual.’

‘Excellent. That’s really very excellent. Look. I’ve got a speech here ready, and I feel I need to read it to you, but I wanted to say all that before so you know that, whatever you decide, I’m still with you.’

He takes out the paper and starts reading. ‘But you have to decide, Kate. You have to decide. I wasn’t angry because you chose the scholarship exam. I was angry because you seemed to be waiting for me to convince you to choose music. I spoke to Frances Carter that day she came. And she said it wasn’t easy to choose music. She had other choices. The arts are a bitch, they don’t pay, she said. People think you should do something sensible. I told her about my mum in the orchestra and she was impressed because that hardly ever happens. But I want to take a risk. I think you want to take a risk, too. But you can’t wait for someone to tell you to take a risk. That’s the nature of risks: you have to decide to take them.

‘So, to conclude: I really hope you choose the Iceland audition, but that’s entirely up to you. And if you change your mind – I mean, at the last minute – I’ve taken the liberty of mapping out a clear flight path from here to the audition. I’ll show you.’

He goes to Iris’s computer and I sit next to him, a part of me knowing I might need that flight path. I’m thinking about the kiss and risks and Frances Carter, when the screen comes alive and we’re looking at Iris’s emails. Oliver’s about to open Safari, but I catch sight of the subject line of the latest one. The sender is PSST. The subject Gfed is Now Following You.

Oliver lets out a long low whistle.

I motion for him to move and lean against the door in case Iris comes back. Why is Iris getting emails from PSST? I type quickly and do a search for other emails, hoping to find proof that it’s not her. A heap of PSST emails come up.

‘She’s got something to do with it,’ Oliver says.

‘She wouldn’t do that,’ I say, thinking about all the terrible things that have been posted. About Ady. About me. About her sister.

I can’t read any further because there’s a loud rap on the door.

‘Under the bed,’ I whisper to Oliver.

When he’s hidden, I open the door, yawning.

‘Library,’ Old Joy says. ‘No phones. Leave it all here.’

She keeps walking and knocking. Angela from next door tells me there’s a boy on the floor. ‘When we’re in the library they’ll check the rooms.’

‘Fuck,’ Oliver says from under the bed.

Angela looks at me and seems impressed. ‘We need to get him to the stairs,’ she says, and grabs a blanket off my bed. ‘Get between us,’ she tells Oliver, and together we walk, huddled around Oliver, all of us covered in the blanket.

I can barely breathe because I’m expecting Old Joy to jump out of a doorway at any second. Some girls notice the extra boy feet between us, but there’s a code, so they all look out for us, and somehow we get him to the stairs.

‘Think about Saturday,’ he says. ‘Find your flight path.’

He gives me the blanket. And he’s gone.

Iris stands next to me in the library, so I can’t let Clem know what I’ve discovered. I don’t have my phone, so there’s nothing I can do except give Clem looks that she clearly can’t decipher.

In hindsight, I guess it’s not unbelievable that it’s Iris. She hates the popular crowd. She knew about Ady because I told her. She’s good technically, and she’s a great listener. I still can’t believe it, though. Those posts were so awful.

I look over at her, moving her feet around in the cold, and try to see that meanness in her. She looks over at me and smiles.

Who are you? I think.