Saturday 3 September

Iris is dressed by seven, ready for our ‘special’ breakfast before the exam. I still can’t believe it’s her. I’m still hoping for an explanation and wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt.

‘I’m a bit too nervous to eat,’ I tell her. ‘Would you mind if I skipped?’

She grabs my shoulder, squeezes it, and I’m struck again by her kindness. She wishes me luck, smiles, and then leaves to get a coffee. The touch of my shoulder, the wishes of luck, her last-minute smile – they all seem genuine.

Clem arrives not long after Iris has gone. Ideally I’d break the news gently, but there’s no time. ‘I think Iris has something to do with PSST,’ I tell her. ‘I saw her emails last night.’

I explain, but she doesn’t believe it. ‘She wouldn’t do that. There’s no way.’

‘I’m hoping not either, but I need her password to find out for sure. I really hate to rush you, but time is running out. Do you know what she might choose as a password? I want to prove she didn’t do it, Clem.’

She thinks for a moment. Looks around the room. ‘I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure I know where she’d keep it.’

She walks over to Iris’s closet and looks around in the bottom, sifting through shoes, until she pulls out a black bound notebook. She turns to the back page where the passwords are listed and shows it to me. ‘It’s not her,’ she says.

I want to believe it. I want to believe that if Clem knows Iris well enough to guess where she hides things, she knows what Iris would and wouldn’t do.

I type in the password and get into her emails. And that’s when we see the whole sordid exchange between Iris and Theo Ledwidge. Iris has been feeding him information all year.

‘She hates me that much,’ Clem says quietly.

While we’re skimming, an email comes in from Theo. I open it and we read. Then there’s a terrible silence in which I try to reconcile the kind Iris who stays up late to help me study, with the Iris who would plan this.

‘Can you do something?’ Clem asks.

I nod and read through the email again, so I know as much as possible about what they’re intending. They’re putting PSST on the big screen at the formal tonight: Top Ten PSST Posts on display for everyone to see.

‘Can you shut it down before then?’ Clem asks, already texting Ady to let her know what’s going on. The two of them are what-the-fucking? to each other via text, while I’m starting to smile.

‘I can’t shut it down, but if I can get access to the computer I can mess with it.’ I start grabbing my things. ‘I’ll do it after the exam and before the formal. I’ve got it sorted,’ I say. ‘But first – the future.’

I sit at the front of the exam room, listening to the teacher give instructions before she hands out the papers. Iris is three rows in front of me. I stare at the back of her head, at those sloping shoulders. I imagine her sending secrets to Theo late at night.

She turns around and waves. Small face, small life.

Good luck, she mouths.

Good luck, I mouth back, but I mean good luck surviving the shit storm.

The teacher puts my paper on my desk. I stare at the cover, at the place where my name will be, at the dots I will colour in, each one corresponding to an answer. I do not want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

I stare at the dots.

Dot, dot, dot.

Fuck it.

I took the one I wanted to take.

*

Choices are all we have. It doesn’t matter if things don’t work out. It’s that we make them for the right reasons – to follow what we think is the best road. I know that when I tell Mum and Dad what I decided, they will tell me that the path of life changes. That the world forks off in inexplicable and unimaginable directions, and you take what seems the right path at the time. It might end, but then there’s another one, and another one, and if you’re lucky, at the end, you’ll look down at the roads you took and they will make the most beautiful, intricate, crazy pattern.

More beautiful, I think, than a straight line.

Whatever happens later, I will never regret this moment. Running hard through the grounds, fumbling with my phone to call Oliver, shouting into the phone that he shouldn’t go on without me. Grabbing my cello, hailing a taxi and getting in the back, breathless, leaving the biggest tip I’ve ever left because I can’t wait for the change, cutting a path through the cars, horns sounding, Oliver on the other side, waving at me, the two of us standing in the wings, tuning, breathing – breathe, breathe, breathe.

Play.