Lacey and I hardly spoke for the rest of the day. The next day wasn’t much better either. I lasered everyone in the school with my eyes and tried not to faint from the symptoms of not-having-a-BFFEAE-anymore-itis. I was so happy when the day was over and I got out of there.

Back at home, the phone was ringing as we walked in the front door.

“Dara,” Mum said, holding it out to me. “It’s Vanna.”

VANNA!

I hadn’t spoken to her since the trampoline chat and I’d totally forgotten about her idea, which was just as well because otherwise I’d never have been able to keep it a secret. I’m spectacularly bad at keeping secrets. They bubble up like huge burps that want to escape from my mouth and I spend my whole life trying to stop them rising up and belching right out. I could never be a spy.

“Hey,” she said, “how’re you?”

“Yeah, ’K. You?”

“Yeah. I got news.”

I ran up to the bathroom and closed the door. “What?” I whispered.

“I spoke to my parents about Cambodia.”

“Whoa. You did? What did they say?”

“They said that if it was important to me, it was important to them too.”

“See?” I said. “They are nice. They might be Greenland but they do love you.”

“Greenland?”

“Never mind.”

“Listen, I know it’s crazy and short notice and everything but…we’re going. Over Easter! Dara, come with me.”

The skin all over my arms went chhzzzzzzztttt and the hairs stood upright. My face fizzed and flushed. “This Easter? But spring break is, like, next week.”

“I know! But during the summer I’m at camp and then in Spain, and this is the only other time my dad has off. We’re flying early next Thursday morning.”

“Whoa, that’s a week from tomorro—”

“Come.”

“Come? My dad nearly had a heart attack when I asked him about drama classes—he’s not going to fork out for a ticket to Cambodia, is he? And we’re supposed to be walking up Box Hill on Easter Sunday. Not that I plan to walk up any hill, especially one that’s shaped like a box.”

“My parents said they’ll pay for you. They think it’d be good if went together.”

“WHAT?” This was too much for me to deal with. I felt like my head was going to explode.

One side of me was saying, Go with her, Dara.

Go.

She’s your friend and she needs you.

Cambodia is part of you too.

The other side was saying, Um…duh.

Cambodia has nothing to do with you anymore.

That was the past. Your future is about acting.

Lead roles.

Maria.

Acting and being other people is way more fun than actually being yourself.

I was split in two.

I was English but I wasn’t.

I was Cambodian but I wasn’t.

I was in this family but I wasn’t really part of the family.

And now my heart was hacked in half as well.

“Dara, pleeeeease?”

I didn’t know what to say. This was so intense. So dramatic.

I let out a long, slow “Fffffffffffff.”

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

I was on the spot and in the bathroom. The bathroom is not a great place for making life-changing decisions; I don’t know why but it just isn’t. What if I went there and they changed the law again and wouldn’t let me leave? They’d lock me up in the orphanage forever and I’d never be able to come home. I’d never be an actor then. Or what if my birth parents turned up to claim me and I had to choose between them and the Palmers? I had so many things running through my head, and I had to think of it all while looking from the toilet to the bathtub.

“Don’t you want to see Happy Angels for yourself?” Vanna asked.

Well, ye-esss, but it wasn’t something I needed to do NOW. It was something I might do one fine day over there far away in the future. Now I was busy stressing about not being Maria and going to my first ever drama group that night.

“Err…I want to…but, like, you know, later on when we’re older—”

“Don’t worry,” she said softly, “it’s fine.” She wasn’t angry. She sounded as though she was kind of expecting me to say that. “I want you to come, not gonna lie. But if you don’t, I get that too. Think about it. You have until next Thursday to change your mind.”