After lunch, Ms Vo talks about liquids, solids and gases.

She shows some video of people working with lumps of pitch and says, ‘Can anyone tell me what state that pitch is in?’

The person in the video clunks the pitch around on the table, then whacks it with a hammer and chunks break off. It looks like a kind of black rock.

Max puts his hand up and says, ‘It’s solid, isn’t it? Or is this a trick question?’

‘Does anyone think anything different?’ She looks around the room. ‘Is it a trick question?’

I put up my hand. I know the answer – we’ve already studied this at Bergvliet. It needs some emphasis, though. ‘Yes. It’s actually a liquid, Miss, but its rate of flow is bloody slow.’

Ms Vo looks surprised and says, firmly, ‘The answer’s right – it has the highest viscosity of any liquid – but that’s not a word we use in the classroom, Herschelle. The “b” word.’

‘Sorry, Miss,’ I tell her. I want to fix the problem right away, whatever it is. ‘I got it from a website. Koalanet.com.au I think it was. It means “very”, that’s all. In Australia.’

‘I know what things mean in Australia,’ she says, and it feels as if I’ve made things worse rather than better. ‘I was born at the Mater.’

‘I just mean I looked it up. There’s a website. They gave examples like “b-word hard yakka”, except they used the actual word.’

Around me, quite a few people laugh and Lachlan’s voice comes out with, ‘What does that even mean? Yekka . . .’

Ms Vo glares at him.

‘It’s from a website.’ I’m still stuck in the explanation. ‘Hard yakka. Australian for hard work.’

‘Oh, well, if it’s from a website, it’s got to be true,’ Lachlan says. ‘Like all those websites about people who reckon they’ve had alien probes up their –’

‘Lachlan!’ Ms Vo says forcefully. ‘I wouldn’t go there if I were you.’

Alien probes. The only alien in this room is Herschelle S van der Merwe, and he’s not interested in probing anything. He’s not even going to ask any more questions. Me, the swearing alien, who can’t even pronounce Australian words in a way Australians understand. The new boy from Planet Hersch, population one. The stupid weird new boy who says ‘bloody’ in class.

I can tell people are looking at me, so I look straight ahead, at the whiteboard. I decide to wait for Maths before talking again. Maths is safer. I’m going to try to speak only in numbers from now on. I can tell I’ve somehow insulted Ms Vo. ‘Born at the Mater’ – I don’t even know what that means.