For the first time since my first day, I go to school in a good mood. Maybe I’m ready for Australia now, and it’s ready for me.

The mood lasts about ten minutes before Lachlan Parkes comes up to me.

‘I’m about to go to the toilet,’ he says. ‘I might see if I can push some lunch out for you.’

He puts one hand behind his pants and pretends to strain. He and his dumb friends laugh as they walk away.

‘What?’ I don’t get it.

‘Word is you eat poo sausage,’ he says over his shoulder.

Poo sausage. It’s like a slap. That wasn’t for here, for school. There’s only one person it can have come from. I want to be wrong, and I want to prove it.

Max is tying a shoelace when I find him sitting on a bench underneath our classroom.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I tell him.

‘Sure.’ He goes to smile, but it doesn’t quite work. I think he knows what I’m here to say.

So I’m not wrong. And that’s a sickening thought.

‘Poo sausage. Someone told Lachlan Parkes about boerewors and called it poo sausage.’

‘Um, yeah. But it was funny.’ Max slides his feet back on the concrete. The lace is still untied.

‘Not the way he talked about it.’

‘But I said lots of good things.’ He starts to frown. ‘I said it like I did yesterday, as a joke. Lachlan made me tell him what happened.’ He’s talking quickly, breathing quickly. ‘I had to tell him stuff.’

‘So he could then use it against me? Why else would he ask you that stuff? You think he likes South Africa? You think he’s interested? Lachlan Parkes? He was always going to say something stupid.’ My best day in Australia is spoiled. ‘Surely you know that he’d –’

Max talks over me. ‘I had to tell him.’ He looks smaller than usual, scrunched down on the seat. He glances down at his feet.

‘Really? Had to?’

He doesn’t say anything more.

The siren goes for us to head upstairs.

I wonder what else he’s said, and who he’s said it to, and why. Max seemed totally impressed with the food yesterday and now, instead of telling everyone how good it was, he’s turned up to school with his ‘poo sausage’ line ready to go.

A girl steps between us, heading for the stairs. I turn and follow her.

For the rest of the day, I can’t keep ‘poo sausage’ out of my head.

At the start of lunchtime, I decide to go to the library and speak as little as possible. But on the way there, Lachlan walks past, holding a sandwich near the back of his pants and saying in his stupid version of a South African accent, ‘Let me know if you’re hungry, Hershie, and I’ll make you a snack.’

I don’t know where Max is, and I don’t care.