Life in Outer Space - Melissa Keil

Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1: A sort-of dance scene with a dodgy Humphrey Bogart

Chapter 2: Cartoon hearts and love-struck skunks

Chapter 3: Samuel Kinnison and the Extremely Gay Weekend

Chapter 4: How I never played Warcraft again, and other useless resolutions

Chapter 5: The unforeseen consequences of eggplant casserole

Chapter 6: Why Princess Leia hair is always a bad idea

Chapter 7: The X-Men had an invisible chick, but still …

Chapter 8: Proof that maths and meat cleavers will only ever be metaphorically useful

Chapter 9: When the theme music from Jaws is completely inadequate

Chapter 10: When punching people in the face is a great idea

Chapter 11: The healing power of John Cusack movies

Chapter 12: The reason they call it a siren’s song

Chapter 13: Awkward realisations [that should have been fairly obvious]

Chapter 14: The logical sequence of events that led to the above

Chapter 15: What is happening to my life?

Chapter 16: The Undiscovered Country

Chapter 17: The Miyagi epiphany

Chapter 18: Why kicking people in the shins is sometimes the best solution

Chapter 19: Awkward revelations [that apparently were fairly obvious]

Chapter 20: A sort-of dance scene with fifty billion Marilyn Monroes

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright Page

A sort-of dance scene with a dodgy Humphrey Bogart

I start this Monday by falling flat on my arse. A normal guy might think his day could only improve from here. I seriously doubt this is going to be the case.

I hear laughter and clapping. Someone cheers.

Above me, a giant sign hangs precariously from the corridor ceiling: a pink and purple, glitter-encrusted symbol of doom, handmade by the Spring Dance Committee.

Justin Zigoni takes a flying leap over me and slaps the sign with his hand. A shower of glitter descends from the ceiling and a piece lodges itself in my eyeball.

I close my eyes.

I wonder if it’s possible to induce a fatal stroke?

Justin cheers again, and pumps his fists above his head. A crowd has formed around him – a swarm of non-specific girls, and some guys who all seem to be wearing the same shoes. Assorted Vessels of Wank, gathering their day’s supply of glee from my arse-planting like squirrels storing nuts.

If there was an award for the world’s best high school cliché, Justin Zigoni would not only win, but they’d name the award after him as well. He would, most probably, gain permanent induction into the High School Arsehat Hall of Fame.

Judging by the look of pure smug on Justin’s face, I’m assuming he was responsible for what passes for wit at Bowen Lakes Secondary: tipping a bottle of cleaning wax on the floor right in front of my locker.

‘Nice trip, Sammy?’ Justin calls. The Vessels of Wank and their various minions laugh.

No-one calls me Sammy. My mother occasionally throws a ‘Samuel’, but I am, and have always been, just Sam. Sammy is a name for five-year-olds and game-show hosts and Shiny Happy People.

I am, definitely, not a Sammy.

Mike is peering down at me with semi-concern. Semi, because a) my best friend’s face rarely shows more than semianything, and b) Mike knows that displaying anything more will only lead to additional torment when I do, eventually, stand. I remain frozen for approximately nine more seconds until Mike holds out a hand and yanks me to my feet.

Adrian appears beside me, glaring down the corridor. He has his about-to-open-a-can-of-whoop-arse face on. Objectively, Adrian Radley has zero cans of whoop-arse to open. I fear that this day is about to go from bad to epic-level suckage.

Mike gathers the muesli bars that have spilt from my hoodie pocket. Then he adjusts his glasses and faces Justin with a frown.

‘You’re a knob, Justin,’ Mike murmurs.

‘What’s that, gay-boy?’ Justin says, hand to his ear like he’s deaf and not just stupid.

Justin does not know Mike is gay. No-one knows Mike is gay, apart from me, Adrian and Allison. Since I have no means of responding without outing my best friend, I make the logical decision not to react.

Adrian, however, has other ideas. Adrian barrels past, and it’s only a last-minute survival reflex that makes me reach out and grab him by the hood of his jumper.

‘Control the Troll, Sammy,’ Justin says. He’s still laughing, but it’s the laugh that movie supervillains do, right before they release the radioactive sharks.

Adrian barely comes up to my armpit. He has recently developed a layer of fuzz that stretches from ear to ear across the bottom part of his chin, which he refuses to shave. He has not cut his curly hair in years. He is very slightly overweight. I can see how, to people ill-informed about mythical cave-dwellers, Adrian might be considered somewhat troll-adjacent. Adrian has been known as the Troll since year eight. I’m not even sure if he minds anymore.

‘It’s okay, Adrian,’ I mutter.

Adrian’s face has turned purple. I suspect he is about to launch into a rant peppered with Star Trek references, but Mike distracts him with a muesli bar, and then with gathering my books, which are scattered across the corridor.

Justin smirks. ‘Seriously, if this loser factory was awarding Losers of the Year, you boys would be up for a Loser Grammy or something.’

The statement makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter to the Vessels. They laugh. I fantasise about Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre making an appearance in the school corridor. Then the bell rings, and Justin hip-and-shoulders me as he passes. I am taller than him, but he belongs to a more enhanced male genus. I allow myself to be shoved into the lockers.

The guys follow him, glaring at us. The girls disperse, giggling.

Adrian and Mike appear at my side. I straighten my jumper. ‘Have I mentioned I hate my life?’

Mike sighs. ‘Frequently.’ He looks at me blankly. ‘Ready for English?’

‘I could so take that guy,’ Adrian growls.

‘Yeah,’ says Mike. ‘And then we could take you to Emergency. Rein it in.’

We stand where we are for nineteen seconds, a silent agreement to wait for the length of time it will take the Vessels to reach our English classroom. We don’t look at each other. But when an appropriate interval of time has passed, we start to walk together.

•

I have never been a fan of Bowen Lakes Secondary. If my life were a screenplay, BLS is nothing more than the slug line above the first scene. But lately, it feels like events have been conspiring to turn my vague antipathy into full-blown, resolute detestation.

Zigoni’s knob-jockey-ness has taken on new life this year. Maybe he fell into a vat of some kind of knob-jockey supervillain juice over the summer holidays. Or maybe his three functioning brain cells are just extra bored.

In addition – despite the fact that the Spring Dance is nine months away – the Spring Dance Committee has turned the entire school into a fortress of glitter and pink.

Our walls, once papered with art projects and posters warning about STIs, now hold a sea of Spring Dance detritus. Collages of faces in various lip-joined poses have appeared everywhere, while movie posters have been bastardised in unforgivable ways. I am yet to be convinced that the ‘Glamour of Old Hollywood’ can be replicated on poster paper with art supplies from Target.

The chess club’s pin board is covered with a Casablanca poster. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman have been replaced by the faces of Justin Zigoni and Sharni Vane, Sharni’s vacuous eyes gazing into Justin’s vacant ones. I have been contemplating whether old-school moustache-and-horns vandalism is too good for them.

If the Spring Dance Committee stabbed me in the nuts with a blunt pencil, it would be marginally less painful than the selection of this theme. I tend to avoid movies that have anything to do with high school, dancing, or any combination of the above. However – if pressed – my top five all-time greatest movie school-dance scenes are:

The prom scene from Carrie. Chick goes ape and blows up her school with her brain. How could it not top the list?

The prom scene from the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for similar reasons as the above, minus explosive ESP but with the addition of bloodsucking vampires.

The prom scenes from Prom Night, if only for the vague hope that our own end-of-year dance will be graced by a rampaging serial killer.

The dance scene from the end of the original Footloose, only watched as part of the Extremely Gay Weekend.^* It makes the list for sheer lameness, and also because not a single guy in it possessed any sort of rhythmic ability, which is something I can relate to.

The graduation scene from Grease – a carnival that ends with a flying car. I believe the flying car is symbolic of a journey to the afterlife, which means that Sandy and Danny were probably shoved off the Ferris wheel, or maybe that someone put the muscle-man mallet to proper use. There was only one appropriate end for the smug, semi-brain-damaged jock.

Mike says it’s possible I missed the whole point of Grease as, apparently, I am dead inside. I choose to take that as a compliment.

•

Mike and I have English together now, but Adrian has maths with Mrs Chow. He walks us to our classroom anyway, even though he’ll have to backtrack and will therefore be late.

Mike shuffles unhurriedly to my left, and Adrian shuffles slowly to my right. Mike adjusts his glasses again, and then flicks my arm casually. Glitter drizzles from my sleeve. Adrian clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair. I do the same; another pink-and-purple glitter shower rains over the lino floor.

It is the closest I will ever come to coordinated movement with the other human beings.

Suffice to say, I am not going to the Spring Dance.

* This is not what it sounds like.

Cartoon hearts and love-struck skunks

First period. English.

I hunker down in my usual seat, third row from the front. Mike is beside me, expressionless and silent, as is his MO in any public setting. With his brown hair and brown clothes, Mike blends in to most backgrounds. I’m half-expecting him to develop the ability to change skin colour as well, like a cuttlefish.

On my other side, Allison Winfield is doodling on her loose-leaf with a chewed-on Hello Kitty pencil. She looks sideways at me and grimaces. She grimaces a lot. I don’t always understand why. But in spite of the Hello Kitty, I know that a habitual grimacer is one of my people.

Allison is my only female friend. She has the wispiest blonde hair I’ve ever seen, which is constantly statically attached to her face. She’s one of those girls who might hit puberty at twenty-five, if she’s lucky.

Mike is constantly hinting that in terms of girl-potential, Allison is as good as I’m likely to get. I dunno. I’ve tried, experimentally, picturing her shirtless; I suspect she looks like me when I was twelve. I am happy to report that this does nothing whatsoever for me.

Allison is chewing on her hair. Mike has shoved two pencils under his lip like tusks and is staring vacantly at the clock above the whiteboard. On his other side, Victor Cho has assumed his standard position, head down on his folder. He will be asleep and drooling in two-point-four minutes.

Mr Nicholas’s head is buried in his drawer, and the volume of the class is steadily increasing as the clock ticks. Mr Nicholas is okay, if a bit earnest. He lives in a uniform of jeans and vintage jackets, and I know he’s a fan of classic horror movies because I’ve seen him a couple of times at the Astor Theatre, which makes him slightly cooler than every other teacher at this school.

I’m normally pretty keen on English, but the latest Zigoni incident has left me in zero mood for Macbeth. I f lick to a blank page in my exercise book. I begin an intricate sketch of the Fortress of Solitude from the original Superman movie, which, if I time it correctly, should take me the rest of the class to complete.

There is a knock on the classroom door.

The door opens.

Our assistant principal Mr Faville enters, clearing his nose on his handkerchief in one noisy, gluggy blow. He looks at the contents for longer than is necessary, then squashes the handkerchief and shoves it into his pocket.

He is followed by a girl.

In movies – not art-house movies made in people’s backyards, but Hollywood movies where significant events are signposted for the clueless – there are certain tropes that let you know when something is about to change.

If life was a movie, this is what should have happened when the door opened that Monday morning:

The music should have swelled – pianos and violins. Maybe a cello.

A breeze should have blown through the room, bringing with it a flurry of leaves, probably in slow motion.

The entire male population of the room – minus Mike because he’s gay, and me because I’m dead inside – should have shot cartoon hearts out of their chests, à la Pepé Le Pew whenever he saw that chick cat.

But this is not what happens. Instead, the noise in the classroom wavers and dies.

Mr Faville hurries over for a hushed conversation with Mr Nicholas. Mr Faville nods at Mr Nicholas, and nods at the girl, and nods at the class, then hurries out of the room again without saying a word.

I have no interest in anything that happens at this school. I am, however, a fairly decent observer, like one of those scientists who spend their days staring at microscopic fungus. A new girl means fresh meat, a possible reshuffling of the social order, and maybe three lunchtimes’ worth of drama that I will somehow hear about regardless of how uninterested I am. All pointless, but possibly fodder for future screenplays.

I drop my pen on my Superman sketch. I poise my mental pencil over my mental social scorecard.

Mr Nicholas leans against his desk. The class is silent. The girl waits.

She is wearing a yellow dress that looks like it belongs to a 1950s housewife, and a pair of flat red boots. Her hair is longer than I’d imagine would be practical; it’s parted in the middle and hangs in brown waves almost to her waist. She peers around the room impassively. She doesn’t look terrified. She doesn’t look insanely overconfident, like Adrian that time in year seven when he performed a song as his book report for The Outsiders. Mike and I mark that event as ground zero for the downward social spiral of our group.

The girl looks neither scared nor full of herself. On the social scorecard, this is a plus one.

Mr Nicholas smiles at her. ‘So, it seems we have a new addition to our Bowen Lakes family. I trust we’ll make … Camilla … welcome. Tell us about yourself, Ms Carter.’

Camilla. Unusual name not filled with superfluous vowels. Plus one.

The girl shrugs, like addressing twenty-eight possibly hostile strangers is no big deal. ‘Well, we’ve just moved here. My dad and I. We’re from here, originally, but we’ve been living all over the place for a while now.’

She has a British accent. Plus two.

She is, objectively, attractive. Plus three. Although she is dressed pretty weirdly. I have no idea what girls find acceptable, but I suspect her clothes might be a minus.

She has a tattoo. An honest-to-god tattoo, a curly thing with blue f lowers on her left shoulder. I do not know a single other year-eleven student with a tattoo. There are a few murmurs around the room now. Plus five.

‘Dad’s a writer. A journalist. We lived in London for ages, but he was working in New York for the last year, and, well, we were bumming around the States for a while before that.’ She shrugs again with a half-smile. ‘Guess he was missing home.’

She’s from New York. With a British accent. Plus twenty.

Something weird happens to Mr Nicholas’s face. ‘Wait – is your dad Henry Carter?’

The faint whiff of celebrity is in the air. The energy in the room changes. My mental pencil hovers uncertainly over the scorecard.

‘Ah, yeah. You’re a fan?’ she says.

‘Are you kidding?’ Mr Nicholas stares at her like she’s wandered into the classroom brandishing Shakespeare’s head in a box. ‘Your dad – he wrote that piece on Grand Funk Railroad for NME, right?’

‘Yup. Dad loves his old-school stadium rock. Mark Farner’s pretty cool, though.’

She smiles. It isn’t embarrassed or self-important. It’s just a smile. Plus twelve.

Mr Nicholas seems to realise that there are twenty-eight other people in his vicinity, because he closes his mouth and packs away the giant man-crush he clearly has for this girl’s dad. He leans against his desk again. ‘What do you know. Class, Henry Carter has to be one of the best music journalists working today. He’s interviewed everyone from Lou Reed to Bowie.’

There are hushed whispers. Mostly from people who have no idea who he is talking about, but are vaguely aware that they are famous people and therefore worthy of hushed whispers.

Mr Nicholas rolls his eyes. ‘He also interviewed Kenny Elfin for Uncut magazine.’

Gasps and a flurry of hysterical murmurs rocket around the room. Kenny Elfin was runner-up on last year’s X Factor.

New girl just nods, and gives him that half-smile again. So her final score is plus fifteen billion. Another minion for the army of suck that is the A-group.

Mr Nicholas shakes himself out of his stupor. He gestures to a seat in the second row next to Jackie Nguyen. New girl walks casually to the table. A roomful of eyes are on her, but she moves like she’s in the room alone. Justin Zigoni almost falls out of his chair as he tries to get a look at her legs.

Mr Nicholas turns his back on us and begins writing on the whiteboard. No-one cares.

She sits. She pulls her long hair back into a lazy ponytail.

She slips a leather-bound notepad and a pair of cat-eye glasses out of her bag. She settles the glasses onto her face.

She pushes herself back from her desk and crosses her legs, balancing her notepad on her knee. Behind her, two girls discreetly do the same.

Victor Cho chokes on his own saliva and wakes up with a snort.

Beside me, Allison grimaces.

Mike removes the pencils from under his lip. He catches my eye. I know what he’s thinking. At least Justin and the Vessels should be preoccupied for the foreseeable future.

I roll my eyes. He crosses his. I try not to laugh.

I return to my Fortress of Solitude.

Samuel Kinnison and the Extremely Gay Weekend

Mike told us he was gay a year ago, on the weekend my parents were away for a silent meditation retreat. Two days of sitting in a field and refusing to speak. Apart from the field, I couldn’t really see how it varied from any other weekend in our house.

It was Friday night, and Mike, Adrian and I were in my lounge room rifling through my DVD collection. I was trying to convince them to commit to a Friday the 13th marathon, rather than watching Tron for the eighteenth time, when Mike took a giant swig of his Coke and said:

‘I think I might be gay.’

I looked at Mike. Adrian looked at Mike. Adrian looked at me. Mike looked at his Coke. I finally managed to say something semi-useful, which I think was:

‘Are you sure?’

Mike shrugged. ‘Probably.’

Adrian’s experience with sex extends as far as the various female-oids that plaster his bedroom walls. Since the likelihood was slim that either Princess Leia or a Number Six Cylon from Battlestar Galactica would be appearing in my vicinity, I was exploring the option of clinical asexuality.

So we did the only thing we could think of. We googled stuff.

After stumbling on some guy’s Olivia Newton-John fan page, we downloaded Xanadu, possibly the worst cinematic abomination that my eyes have ever been subjected to. At Adrian’s insistence we rented Lesbian Vampire Killers, which, quite frankly, was just confusing all round.

We watched Dirty Dancing. Mike fell asleep, but I had to admit I kind of liked it, which made me question my own sexuality, raising a whole heap of other questions I chose not to examine.

Adrian offered to take a bullet and kiss Mike. Mike suspected that Adrian hadn’t brushed his teeth since grade four. We checked out a bunch of scared-straight websites, but, according to Mike, nothing on any of them could rival the horror he felt at the thought of kissing Adrian.

Eventually I raided Dad’s vintage porn stash, and after poring over pages of girls with giant breasts bending over farm equipment, Mike sat back in Dad’s La-Z-Boy and said: ‘Pretty sure I’m gay.’

And that was that. We haven’t really discussed it since.

Not that it’s weird or anything. Mike is just Mike. Mike has been Mike ever since we met in that Building Self-Esteem through Drama workshop both our mums signed us up for when we were eight.

I don’t care that Mike is gay. I figure that since there’s little chance of either of us ever touching anyone else’s parts, our relative sexualities are somewhat pointless topics of conversation.

•

The Extremely Gay Weekend is on my mind today for several reasons. Partly because I’m concerned about Mike. But mostly because of Dirty Dancing.

The chain of events that led to these thoughts is as follows:

3.20 p.m. The final bell rings, and I head towards the IT office to meet the others. Apart from the morning’s arse-planting, I’ve coasted through this day under the radar. This is because the only thing on anyone’s radar today is Camilla Carter. When I catch occasional glimpses of her, she’s wallpapered by an adhesive layer of groupies.

There’s been much googling of her dad in between classes. Adrian is even inspired to look him up on his iPhone, and Adrian is rarely inspired to use his iPhone for anything other than Angry Birds.

The net is full of Henry Carter’s stuff: articles and reviews and photos of a dark-haired guy who looks way too young to be anyone’s dad. There’s one story about him and Camilla’s mum – some English model who was almost big in the 90s, who was married to her dad for, like, five minutes. Two photos of Camilla are also making the rounds; in one, she is leaning over her dad at the launch of the new Wombats album. In the other she’s hanging out with some of the cast of Harry Potter.

By this point I lose interest. I assume the vague proximity to celebrity will keep the Vessels occupied for at least a month. A potentially incident-free month, the likes of which have not been seen since we had that substitute teacher in year ten who looked like the channel-seven weather girl. I can’t guarantee that the reprieve will be anything other than passing. But I can guarantee a few things. There will be angst. There will be gossip. And unless new girl turns out to be a cyborg, she will be of no relevance to me.

What is relevant to me is the fact that Mike has dropped out of karate school.

Mike has been obsessed with karate since year seven, when he discovered that kicking people in the face was a legitimate sport. He trains almost religiously, and is actually fairly brilliant at it. He is definitely one of the best black-belts at his school.

Today he has wandered into the IT office, dropped six cans of Coke onto Alessandro’s pile of cables, and said in his monotone voice:

‘I’ve decided to stop training. I’m hanging up my shin pads.’

Even Alessandro, who only knows Mike from a distance, pauses.

Midway through last year, I was employed by the school as Alessandro’s assistant. Our IT coordinator does not really need an assistant. He needs a shower, and possibly a dentist. Alessandro decided to finagle my services after stumbling on a lunchtime incident between me and Justin Zigoni. The incident involved a cricket stump, a length of skipping rope, and a geyser-like blood nose that would have made even the most hardcore horror writers proud.

Alessandro looks like what I imagine Adrian might look like in ten years’ time, except Alessandro is six-foot-four and knows the passwords to everyone’s email account.

No-one messes with Alessandro. He’s happy for us to hang out in his office whenever we like. When we are here we are, basically, free.

We are listening to Foals in the background, because we always listen to Foals in the background. There is order to Monday afternoons, and in a world of stupidity and looming hostility I have come to depend on it:

On a normal Monday, Mike and Allison will show up at three-thirty with Coke and Mars bars from the shop across the road. Allison will perch on top of the filing cabinet with whichever Akira novel is on rotation that day. Adrian will engage Alessandro in approximately twelve minutes of argument about Call of Duty. I will have one computer playing Battlestar Galactica, which we don’t really need to watch with the volume up since we pretty much know it all by heart. Adrian and Alessandro will conclude their argument with some variation of the phrase, Why don’t you stick to Space Invaders/Checkers/Pong. And then Alessandro will storm out and not return until it’s time for us to leave.

Today, Mike is spinning slowly in his chair, his eyes on the ceiling.

Allison has stopped tapping her Volleys against the filing cabinet. She is chewing on her hair again.

Adrian is eating his second Mars bar because I am glaring at him so he doesn’t say something stupid, and the only thing that ever stops Adrian from saying stupid things is having his mouth full.

Mike stops spinning. He looks sideways at me.

‘Any reason why you’re quitting?’ I say eventually.

Mike shrugs.

‘Is it because of a guy?’ Adrian says, spitting a shower of chocolate over Mike’s arm.

I up my glare from stun to kill.

Mike sighs. ‘No. It’s not.’

I feel like I should add something more. Something insightful. Something quote-worthy.

But then comes the segue to Dirty Dancing.

My top five all-time greatest movie lines is a constantly evolving list. The ratio of Star Wars to horror-movie quotes varies depending on my mood – but there’s one line I can’t seem to shake from the list:

‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner.’

I agonised over its inclusion. For a start, it’s a girl movie. And it’s a dance movie. And it’s forever associated with the Extremely Gay Weekend, which, as mentioned, we do not discuss. If I’m narrowing it down to five lines only, a Dirty Dancing quote should not even make the top-hundred long-list. But, for pure cheese and applicability to multiple situations, I cannot not include this line.

I have very little hope that my own life will ever produce anything close to a single, great line. I’m desperately running through my mental movie-quote list as I try to think of something passably encouraging to say to Mike.

Except Mike is looking over my shoulder. His eyes widen. Adrian stops chewing on his Mars bar. Allison stops chewing on her hair.

And then I hear a voice behind me. The voice says:

‘Dude. Nice laptop wallpaper. Six in the slinky red dress? Did the blonde on a corvette have the night off?’

It may not be Dirty Dancing-worthy. But it turns my head anyway.

Camilla Carter is standing in my doorway.

‘I’m looking for Sam,’ she says.

The few times I’ve spotted her during the day, the only thing I noticed – apart from being surrounded by suck – is that she keeps changing her hair. Sometimes it’s up. Sometimes it’s down. At the moment it is twisted into some sort of bun-thing on the top of her head. I’m not sure I understand the schizophrenic hair-thing – I thought girls spent hours getting their hair right before they ventured into the world.

Adrian points at me. Mike points at me. Allison points at me. I realise – after staring at Six in the slinky red dress on my Battlestar Galactica laptop wallpaper for eight seconds – that I am, in fact, Sam.

‘I’m Sam,’ I mumble.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Camilla.’

I do not detect any exclamation marks in her voice. I detest people who talk with exclamation marks. Plus one.

She raises an eyebrow at my computer. ‘You do know she’s an evil bitch, though, right? Despite the spectacular boobs.’

No-one moves.

‘Sooo … the office sent me down here. I can’t get on the network. They told me you were the person to speak to?’

She is holding a MacBook Air in her hands. She sounds like Kate Beckinsale in Underworld.

‘If it’s a bad time I can come back later. Only I have some sort of welcome pack in my inbox, apparently. You know, map to the toilets and secret S&M dungeons and everything …’

No-one moves for another six and a half seconds.

Adrian stands. ‘Mars bar?’ He holds one out.

Camilla steps into the room and takes it.

The sequence of actions has the same effect as Neo finally figuring out how to control the Matrix. The room bursts into a flurry of misdirected activity.

Allison leaps down from her cabinet and Mike jumps out of his chair, and together they shove past Adrian and push a stool towards Camilla. She sits. She unwraps the Mars bar and takes a bite. She holds her MacBook out to me.

The only thoughts I am capable of thinking are that the sanctity of my safe house has been compromised, and the order of my Monday has been disturbed. I take the laptop from her without a word.

‘Thanks,’ she says with a mouth full of chocolate. ‘Sorry, I don’t think I’ve met you guys yet. It’s been a blurry day.’

Adrian sticks out his hand. ‘Adrian, Mike, Sam, Allison,’ he says quickly. ‘But you’ve already met Sam. I’m Adrian. Adrian.’

Camilla shakes his hand. She smiles at Allison. ‘Guess that makes you not Mike?’

Allison grimaces. ‘No. I’m Allison. Uh … nice to meet you?’

‘Likewise,’ Camilla says brightly.

I open up her laptop. Her wallpaper is a picture from a black-and-white movie that I think is called Manhattan.

I do not know what this means. But I figure the faster I work, the faster I can return the four of us to our status quo. I also know that no good can come from having someone like her in a confined space with Adrian.

I balance her laptop on my knees and start typing as quickly as I can. It is not quick enough.

Adrian pokes at her tattoo. He actually jabs his stupid fat index finger into her arm. I don’t need to look at Mike to know that he is holding his breath.

I know basically nothing about girls. But I’m fairly certain they don’t like it when you poke at them like they’re a half-ripe avocado.

‘Is that real?’ Adrian asks.

Camilla looks down at her arm. ‘Yup.’

Adrian frowns. ‘How did you get it?’

She shrugs. ‘We’ve travelled a lot. There are plenty of places that don’t ask for ID. And Dad’s big on self-expression.’ She f licks her fingers over the ink like she’s brushing off some imaginary dirt. I notice a row of tiny music notes twisted in between the blue flowers.

‘Did it hurt?’ Allison whispers. Several strands of hair are still caught in her mouth.

Camilla grins. ‘Like a bastard.’

No-one seems to know how to respond to that.

I click the Firefox icon on her MacBook and the school homepage pops up. I feel that I may be a few moments away from starting to sweat profusely.

‘Done,’ I mumble. I hand the laptop back. She takes it, and she smiles at me. I notice that Alessandro has tacked a new Barbarella poster to his pin board. I notice that Adrian has a dribble of caramel stuck to his chin fuzz. I notice that her eyes are hazel.

‘So what’s your realm?’ she says.

‘Pardon?’ I croak.

She points at my laptop, which has kicked over to my screensaver. It’s an image of a night elf from World of Warcraft.

I can feel the eyes of my friends burning into my head. ‘Oh, ah … Alliance … Frostmourne.’

‘Hey, cool. I’m trying to level-up a dwarf on Frostmourne.’ Camilla grabs a Post-it. She scribbles something and then hands the Post-it to me.

The Post-it says ‘AltheaZorg’.

‘I’m usually on around nine. It’s more fun when you’re not surrounded by bots.’ She slips her MacBook into her satchel. ‘Thanks, Sam. And thanks for the Mars bar, Adrian. Nice meeting you all. See ya.’ She waves, and smiles, and disappears from the office.

I stare at the Post-it.

Did she just ask me to play Warcraft? Is she a noob that I’m going to have to walk through a simple quest? Or have Justin and the Vessels of Wank put her up to something? Will there be a cast of the school’s biggest arsehats hanging out over a computer this evening plotting some brainless, but no doubt still humiliating, practical joke?

I have no idea. But there is only one solution.

I am never playing Warcraft again.

How I never played Warcraft again, and other useless resolutions

Monday’s routine has effectively been ruined, so I’m feeling less than cheerful as Mike and I walk home. Not even the combination of Battlestar and Foals could drown out the droneage that resulted from new girl’s visit. A school full of morons is supposed to be fawning over her; my friends are supposed to have more sense.

Besides, Alessandro’s office is my Neutral Zone, one of the few places I can be free of the many nemeses put on this earth solely to cause me pain.

I’m explaining all of this to Mike as we walk, but I’m not sure Mike is listening.

Mike is busy threading the cord on his jumper from left to right. He tugs the brown rope until it almost disappears inside his hood, and then he pulls it slowly the other way. He has been doing this for three blocks now.

I am an idiot. How did I not notice this sooner?

Mike Adams does not say much. His face is capable of displaying maybe three distinct expressions. But right now he might as well be holding a megaphone and yelling, ‘I. Am. Having. A. Problem.’

I forget about Camilla Carter. ‘So … karate?’

Mike squints at the road. ‘Yeah. Think I’ve had enough.’

We walk another block in silence. Unless he’s been replaced by a pod person, Mike would not just quit karate. His bedroom smells of Deep Heat and runners. Every available surface is covered with trophies. And last year he skipped the Star Wars six-film marathon at the Astor – one of the most important events on our calendar – because his dojo had a training weekend.

I clear my throat. ‘Just had enough?’

He shrugs. ‘Yup. Just had enough.’

I know he’s lying. I don’t know why. So we don’t talk about it.

We do stand on the street corner near the park for fourteen minutes, discussing Mr Norrell’s history assignment, the latest episode of The Walking Dead, and whether Adrian is going to make it through the month without someone punching him in the face. We conclude: pointless, awesome, and probably not. And then Mike waves, and I wave, and we go our own ways.

I add the karate situation to my list of problems.

I walk the four blocks from the park to my house, past the topiary and people with prams that seem to be multiplying daily, Night of the Living Dead zombie-style. I sometimes wonder what would happen if zombie hordes did invade. I doubt anyone would actually notice.

I know I should be able to find a story in anything. Good screenwriters can pull interesting films out of the asinine and mundane. But everything I’ve read about writing always begins with ‘write what you know’. What I know is: quiet streets, topiary, moronic high school arsehats, and homework. Has anyone ever made a film about homework? Probably. I bet it was French.

I step between the fake Grecian columns and open my front door. Mum is hunched over the piano in the lounge room with one of her students hunched next to her, a skinny kid named Kendra or Kendal or something. Kendra/Kendal is butchering Rachmaninoff, one finger at a time. She slips on the notes and turns. Mum swings around as well.

‘Hey, Sam! How was your day!’

How was your day! Not even an attempt at being anything other than vanilla. And yes, my mother is an exclamation-talker.

‘Hey, Mum. Biology quiz. Think I did okay.’

‘Well, that’s great! Sam, you remember Kelly?’

‘Hi, Sam,’ Kelly whispers. She kicks her shoes along the peach carpet, her cheeks turning scarlet.

I’m trying to think of something suitably insipid to say when I notice Mum is wearing her favourite necklace, the expensive one that she only wears when she’s feeling particularly miserable. My eyes wander across the lounge. They land on a pile of DVDs that Mum has set aside near the TV. I see Beaches on top.

This is not a good sign. This is a sign that my mother will shortly be descending into a blubbery mess as she sits in the dark watching movies where women die of various diseases while looking vulnerable and attractive.

Mum steers Kelly back to her lesson. I wander into the lounge and covertly hide Beaches behind The Thing in the bookshelves. I scan through my DVD collection until I find my box set of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later.

‘Mum? Zombie-movie marathon later?’

Mum turns around. The relief on her face makes me itchy. ‘Classic?’

‘Nah. Danny Boyle?’

Mum smiles. ‘Sounds great, Sam.’

Mum and Kelly are now both looking at me with watery eyes, so I back out of the room quickly.

Dad sticks his head out of the kitchen just as I attempt to sneak past. His face is set in that expression he always seems to wear lately: a little bit vague and a whole lot baffled.

‘Dad,’ I mumble.

Dad clears his throat. ‘Sam,’ he mumbles back.

We stare at each other for five more seconds. If my dad’s skin suddenly slipped off his body to reveal that he was in fact a lost, man-sized alien cockroach like that one from Men in Black, I’m not sure I would really be surprised.

I don’t mean to be completely rude about my father. Being mediocre is probably not a crime. But I do believe in reducing things to their component elements. And Dad is, unfortunately, really easy to reduce:

My father likes Harvey Norman, the Discovery Channel, and, for some reason, lizards. He last smiled sometime in 2008, which is one of the few thing we have in common. I think that was also about the time of his last proper conversation with Mum.

My dad also looks like me – i.e. sort of like a stormtrooper. And not the cool Star Wars kind. We’re both tall and blond and our facial hair is so useless it might as well not even bother to make an appearance.

I take the stairs two at a time and then close my door, exhaling the breath that’s been stuck in my throat all day. I clear a space on my desk and turn on my laptop, and I run a search for Yu Kan-do It Karate. Their latest newsletter has just been posted; there’s a training weekend coming up, and someone is selling raffle tickets. They have a new instructor from Queensland, and the DVDs of their last tournament are on sale. I can’t see anything that could shed light on the Mike situation. Apparently, I also suck at detective work.

I turn off my computer with a sigh. I should probably start on some homework. Instead, I open my desk drawer. I reach underneath my Empire and Total Film magazines, and Dad’s vintage porn that for some reason is still wedged between my stuff, and dig out my latest red notebook.

Killer Cats from the Third Moon of Jupiter is a screenplay idea I had while Mum was cat-sitting Aunt Jenny’s psychotic tabby. It’s supposed to be a combination of a classic invasion movie, with a bit of werewolf mythology, and a nod to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films. It’s still a working title – I did want to just call it Cats, but Mike pointed out that someone might have used that already. Anyway, the KCftTMoJ project is in serious danger of ending up in the same place as the rest of my notebooks – buried in the back of my wardrobe.

Thing is, I know what it’s supposed to be – a sleek sci-fi/horror with Tarantino-worthy dialogue and a kick-arse opening sequence. But right now, basically all I have is an unwieldy title, and a sketch of a giant cat.

I fight back a growing sense of doom as I stare at the page. Nothing in my wardrobe is good enough for my uni folio. And everything depends on The Plan. I will move to Sydney to study film, and Mike will move there to study law, and we’ll share a dodgy flat in a cool neighbourhood and it’ll be fine because high school will be nothing but a tedious, vague memory and I’ll never have to see Justin Zigoni or anyone from Bowen Lakes Secondary ever again.

I will write my cult classic. It will be full of quote-worthy lines. But until then, I will endure the status quo, and I will suffer the Domestic Routine.

I kill an hour on my screenplay and then face dinner with my parents – Dad’s orange chicken, which tastes like marmalade slathered on KFC. No-one says anything remotely memorable.

Dad disappears into his study like he does most nights. For all I know, he’s attempting to invent an alternative fuel source down there. I don’t bother checking in with him.

I watch two zombie movies with Mum, who makes popcorn and doesn’t cry once, which is as successful a night as I can hope for.

It’s partway through the second movie – about the time the pretty doctor chick shows up – that a thought starts prickling the back of my brain. I try to concentrate on the flesh-eating hordes on the screen, shoving the irritating thought aside.

It shoves back.

The second movie finishes and Mum goes to bed. Dad is still confined to his study. Perhaps my father is secretly Batman. Bruce Wayne is a bit of an arse as well. It would explain a lot of things.

I shower and throw on my trackpants and the old Superman T-shirt that passes for pyjamas. I stick a random Supernatural DVD on.

The school diary is still sitting on top of my book pile. I open it, planning only to sort through the worksheets and other junk that has become lodged in there.

A yellow Post-it flashes at me. AltheaZorg.

What does it mean?

It means nothing. It belongs to a minion, an A-group hell-spawn, which cannot, in any universe, be a good thing.

But if the knob-jockeys were plotting some new evil, surely they would have given up and gone home by now?

I turn on my computer.

I go downstairs to make a sandwich.

I return to my room.

I drink a can of Red Bull from the stash under my bed.

I stare at my Halloween and Evil Dead and Star Wars posters for three minutes.

I log on to Warcraft.

I haven’t played in a while. I only get caught in the game when my brain feels drained of movie ideas. And my friends aren’t really into it; Adrian has the attention span of a concussed fish, and Mike has training eight times a week so won’t engage in anything else that requires commitment. Or he did until recently, anyway. Allison occasionally plays, with a level-twelve gnome named ‘Mizuno’, but she is slow and hesitant and always seems to be facing the wrong way in Battlegrounds.

I connect to the server where my level-eighty night elf has been waiting since the last time I played. And then I do nothing. This is stupid. Besides, the whole point of Warcraft, like the best movies, is to sink into another world with zero reminder of my own pathetic one. There is no logic to this course of action.

I stare at my night elf. I open a chat window. I type ‘AltheaZorg’. I click enter.

A line of text appears on my screen. ‘Hey there, level 80. Cool name. DexGrifnor?’

I have a minor freak-out and consider logging off. My hands are frozen onto my desk.

‘Sam?’

My fingers somehow manage to find the keyboard. ‘Hey – you knew it was me?’

‘Well, I don’t know anyone else on here. Been playing on US servers till last week.’

‘Oh.’

I actually type ‘Oh’. So now, apparently, I am both verbally challenged and borderline illiterate.

AltheaZorg writes back anyway. ‘Sam, wanna help with a quest? I could use a hand.’

I check out the map. She’s not that far from me.

I picture the A-group gathered around her MacBook, Justin laughing his supervillain laugh. I think about KCftTMoJ. I really should be working on my screenplay.

I consider logging off. And then I look at the map again.

‘K. Can help. On my way.’

‘Cool,’ Camilla types. ‘Was about to give up. I’m wiped. First days are killers.’

It’s going to take me at least a couple of minutes to find her. I think for a moment as I watch my night elf fly. ‘You’ve had more than one?’

‘First days? Ha, yup. Lost count.’

Well, at least she didn’t type ‘lol’. I crack open another can of Red Bull.

‘How does Bowen Lakes compare?’ It seems like a reasonable thing to ask.

‘First glance? Same as every other school in this dimension. School is school. Unless it’s secretly training X-Men. I live in hope.’

I snort and some Red Bull comes out of my nose. I don’t know what to say. I type a smiley face. And then I feel like an idiot. I am not a user of emoticons.

She types a winking face back.

I remove my hands from the keyboard in case I’m tempted to type something else asinine. The chat window blinks at me. It’s just a couple of lines of flashing text. It’s not a real conversation. Is it?

I find her white-haired girl dwarf in a tavern. I jog alongside it, and Camilla makes it perform a few seconds of a dwarf-dance, its fat legs bouncing in an uncoordinated jig. It looks ridiculous. I feel my face tug into a smile. I type the dance command for my night elf, but then backspace over it. I can’t bring myself to make even a virtual me dance.

‘Hi,’ I type instead.

‘Hi,’ she types back. ‘Thanks for the assist.’

I take a deep breath. ‘What do you need?’

‘Trying to complete this stupid quest. I need to steal a sword. But I can’t get close enough without dying. Help?’

‘K. You lead, I’ll follow.’

‘Cool. Maybe this time I won’t end up in a graveyard. It’s becoming embarrassing.’ Her dwarf trots out of the tavern. My night elf scrambles behind her.

I steer my character with one hand and crack open the window above my desk with the other. The warm night breeze circles around my room. I can’t quite shake the image of Camilla surrounded by Justin and those guys, though I’m starting to accept that I might be somewhat, slightly, paranoid. Still, I can’t form a picture at all of where she might be. Mike would be perched on his black bedspread with his laptop on his knees. Adrian would be stomach-down somewhere beneath his piles of clothes and mouldy coffee cups, his computer on the floor in front of him. Allison would be stuck in front of the Mac in her parents’ study, since they won’t let her have a computer in her bedroom. Having a person I don’t know on the other end of the chat window is disconcerting – like speaking to someone who’s floating in a vacuum.

And then we reach the caverns and we don’t have much time for typing, which is probably a good thing since I’ve already used up the four sentences of polite conversation that I know.

Camilla is fast, and skilled with her weapons. Occasionally she will throw a question at me, and I will respond with a suggestion or comment, but mostly our characters fight side by side in silence.

We reach the heart of the lair. We shoot our way through the mobs, and Camilla grabs the sword. Her dwarf performs another dance. I make my night elf bow.

‘Nice work, Dex,’ she types. ‘I’m impressed by your crossbow action.’

I don’t know what to say. I type another smiley face. I feel like a moron.

She types a smiley face back. ‘Time for bed. Thanks again. See you later!’

AltheaZorg logs off.

See you later? What does that mean?

I glance at my phone. It is almost 1 a.m. I sweep the empty Red Bulls from the desk into my bin. Somehow, I have consumed five cans.

I think I may be experiencing a caffeine-induced heart arrhythmia.

In total, I manage approximately eight minutes of sleep.

The unforeseen consequences of eggplant casserole

I’m standing near my locker waiting for Mike and, even though I’ve checked my timetable three times now, I can’t seem to remember which class we have this morning. I’m feeling fuzzy from lack of sleep and twitchy from the remnants of the energy drinks still circling through my blood. I also have a headache that is working its way from my brain through to my eyeballs.

After some deliberation, I have decided that five cans of Red Bull at midnight is not a great idea.

Mike appears next to me. He frowns at the English textbook in my hands. ‘We have maths.’

‘Maths. Right. Thanks.’

‘Might want to hurry,’ he says.

I follow his eyes down the corridor.

Justin Zigoni and Sharni Vane are walking towards us, like royalty surveying their subjects. Steve Stanton is behind them with his arm around Michelle Argus, as if he’s worried she’ll do a runner if he doesn’t keep her attached to his hip. They’re surrounded by a bunch of girls who I’ve gone to school with for years but whose names I keep mixing up.

It’s normally about this point that I would make a run for it, but before I can slam my locker closed, something catches my eye. Right in the centre of their group is Camilla. She’s wearing red jeans, a faded Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a yellow cardigan that reaches her knees. She should look ridiculous. She doesn’t.

Sharni is whispering something in Camilla’s ear. My stomach knots but I can’t get my feet to move. I brace myself to end up – literally or otherwise – on my arse again.

Camilla untangles herself from Sharni. She raises her hand and gives me a short, sharp salute.

‘Dex.’

The volume of conversation dims. I can just about hear the gears cranking inside Justin’s thick head, but I can tell he hasn’t made up his mind how to react yet. I think this might be a good thing.

So I ignore him. I nod back at her. And I say the only word my mouth is capable of forming.

‘Zorg.’

Camilla winks at me and continues down the corridor with the Vessels in tow.

There is a scene in the very first Alien movie, where the alien spawn bursts out of the guy’s chest and scarpers off inside the spaceship. Everyone else just stands around, mouths hanging open, brains unable to process what has taken place in front of them.

I have a feeling that Camilla Carter has just created her very own alien-exploding-out-of-a-chest-cavity moment.

I’m not entirely sure how I figure into this scenario. I’ve always imagined myself as that disposable member of the crew who gets killed first and who no-one remembers anyway. Judging by the look Justin gives me as he walks away, I have just been upgraded to the guy who later has his entrails smeared all over the corridor walls.

Mike nudges my shoulder. ‘Explain?’

I swallow a couple of times. ‘She’s a dwarf.’

Mike considers this. ‘Okay then.’ He is looking closely at my face. That questioning look of Mike’s is never a good thing.

I clear my throat. ‘So. Maths?’

Mike nods at my hands. I am now holding my history textbook. I close my eyes for a moment. ‘Can it please be Friday already?’

Mike opens my locker and swaps my books. ‘If you could speed up time, would you really just skip one week?’

‘You mean if I was gifted with a talisman like the Time-Turner from Harry Potter? Do I have the option of fast-forwarding to thirty?’

Mike grunts as he slams my locker closed. ‘Why thirty?’

‘Well, I figure by then I’ll be living in LA, in a cool house with views of the Hollywood sign, and my first two indie movies will be on their way to achieving cult status. Oh, and I’ll have a dog.’

Mike pauses in the classroom doorway. ‘So you’ll have the sign and the dog – are you also planning on meeting any actresses?’

I think about this as we take our seats. I try to imagine myself surrounded by a bunch of blonde girls, but I can’t exactly see it. I try again. Now they’re in the picture, in bikinis and stuff like in all those dumb comedies Adrian makes us watch. They’re standing around my swimming pool. They aren’t doing anything much. I think I’m supposed to do something, only I have no idea what that might be. The blonde girls all seem to be staring at me now. One of them points and laughs.

I focus on Mrs Chow’s varicose veins. ‘I dunno,’ I whisper. ‘Do you think I can find some that look like Princess Leia?’

Mike shrugs. ‘It’s Hollywood,’ he whispers back. ‘And you’ll be in the movies. Probably.’

I think about Princess Leia sitting on a banana lounge by the side of my pool. She doesn’t look at all happy about this situation.

‘Maybe I should just skip to forty?’

•

I am not a complete moron. I know that movies, especially the movies I love, do not reflect the real world. Those films that try – the Eastern European ones about life on the farm or gulag or whatever – tend to be as depressing as my own life, which I think kind of defeats the purpose of film. However, everything useful I do know about real life I know from movies.

Through an intense study of the characters who live and those that die gruesomely in final scenes, I have narrowed down three basic approaches to dealing with the world:

Keep your head down and your face out of anyone’s line of fire.

Charge headfirst into the fray and hope the enemy is too confused to aim straight.

Cry and hide in the toilets.

From as far back as I can remember, Mike, Allison and I knew the first option was the rational one. Adrian, for as long as I have known him, has attempted the second option. Unfortunately, Adrian’s weaponry consists of the equivalent of a backfiring pistol and plastic Viking helmet. The enemy is usually in no way confused. Often, the third option is hastily implemented as a fallback plan.

Camilla Carter, clearly, selects option number two. In her first week she joins the volleyball team and the chess club. She also joins the Spring Dance Committee, which I guess was inevitable. Details about her filter through the grapevine: her mum runs a modelling agency in Singapore. Camilla has a boyfriend named Dave who still lives in New York. There is much speculation over the identity of Dave the Boyfriend but, as yet, no-one is sure who he might be.

She smiles whenever she sees me, and occasionally chirps ‘Dex’ as she passes by. I have no idea what her angle is, so I have defaulted to a standard response of a furtive half-wave before fleeing in the opposite direction. She is in my history and English classes, but is always knee-deep in Vessels-of-Wank suckage. She seems to slot right in, like the missing piece of a really lame puzzle.

I do not play Warcraft again all week. This is not entirely my choice.

On Tuesday, Mike and Adrian show up after school. We try to work on my screenplay, but since Adrian’s idea of a good movie is to have girls in PVC jumpsuits appear at random moments, I give up and stick on Wolf Creek instead. Despite Adrian’s sledgehammer questioning, Mike refuses to discuss karate.

On Wednesday, I come home to find Mum sniffling over The Notebook. Apparently Dad decided he ‘needed a night off’ and has gone to a movie, alone. I’m not sure what pisses me off more: the fact that he’s ditching Mum, again, or the fact that he’s doing it in a movie theatre. It’s like, he might as well just walk into my place of worship and pee all over the pews. Mum and I make tacos and watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We discuss the development of the slasher genre since the 70s; I know Mum is just exercising the former English teacher in her, but I don’t mind. It’s almost midnight when I fall into bed. I try to rewrite the opening scene of my movie. It still sucks arse.

On Thursday, Alessandro corners me in the IT office at lunchtime with a request to help test some new software after school. I end up stuck for hours while he scours IMDb for news of the latest Superman movie. When I get home, Dad is locked in his study and Mum is in bed. Not even the prospect of an Evil Dead marathon can entice her out. I make toasted cheese sandwiches for Mum and me, and watch The Evil Dead in my bedroom, vaguely contemplating the various ways in which a face-eating curse might be unleashed upon my father. I am not in the mood for Warcraft.

Except that I do log on, briefly. My night elf is alone.

By Friday I am tired. I am tired of school, and home, and Killer Cats from the Third Moon of Jupiter, and hiding out in Alessandro’s office, which – since the five of us have been crammed in there every lunch hour and free period this week – is starting to smell like the inside of a body bag.

‘I think we should have lunch in the dining hall,’ I say as I walk into the IT office. I didn’t even know the words were planning to work their way out of my mouth until I said them. Everyone stares at me.

We do not eat lunch in the dining hall. Not since last year, when Justin Zigoni and his minions and four strawberry milkshakes made it clear that it was best if we ate elsewhere. I was more than happy to maintain the status quo until graduation. I have no idea why I’m feeling so twitchy now, but regardless – I can’t spend another lunchtime stuck in this office talking about Battlestar.

‘Look, it’s just lunch,’ I say. ‘Besides, has anyone copped anything other than a couple of looks this week?’

Mike and Allison glance at each other. I’m starting to feel inexplicably annoyed.

Allison tugs her Doraemon T-shirt over her knees. ‘Well, no. But aren’t we better off not tempting fate?’

‘Tempting fate? What’s the worst that could happen?’

Allison looks pained. ‘I think that might be the definition of tempting fate,’ she mumbles.

Adrian tosses his sandwich in the bin. ‘Come on, guys. No fate but what we make.’ He grins at me. For once, his Terminator quotage might prove to be useful.

Mike stands and straightens his glasses. ‘Okay. I’m in,’ he says quietly.

Allison scrambles out of her chair. ‘If you want, Sam, I’ll come as well. I think it’s supposed to be apple-crumble day.’

Alessandro appears to be trying to clean his teeth with a USB key. ‘You guys need company?’

My friends are looking at me like I’ve become the leader of a possibly doomed expedition. I swallow. ‘Thanks, but we don’t need a bodyguard.’

Alessandro shrugs. ‘Your funeral.’

I grab my backpack and try my best to look casual. The ridiculousness of this situation is not lost on me; then again, neither is the memory of a strawberry-milkshake shower. I march out of the office before my legs have the chance to change their mind.

The four of us scamper into the too-bright dining hall, blinking like hibernating gerbils on the first day of spring. I grab a tray and join the line near the steaming bain-maries. Mike files in after me. Adrian is already in the middle of a conversation with the tuckshop lady about the Friday special – a greying eggplant casserole that looks like the chemical sludge from which comic-book supervillains are born. Allison huddles behind us, clutching her tray like a shield.

I pay for my lunch and make a beeline for an empty table near the door. A bunch of year sevens at the next table look up in alarm; I baulk before I realise it’s actually me that they’re looking at.

‘This isn’t so bad,’ Adrian says cheerfully as he slides into the seat across from mine.

Mike pokes at his eggplant casserole and frowns. Allison sits down with a small bowl of dessert. She looks paler than usual.

‘You okay, Allison?’ I ask.

She smiles faintly. ‘I’m good. Thanks, Sam.’

The noise of a hundred voices and chairs scraping on lino is verging on painful. I’m not exactly sure what part of this plan I thought was a good idea, or why. In my rush to break the tedium of my week, I’d forgotten I never actually liked eating in the dining hall, even pre-strawberry-milkshake incident.

I shovel in a forkful of casserole. If malevolence has a flavour, I now believe it might be eggplant. Just as I’m wishing I was four years old and could acceptably spit my food out, a shadow falls across my tray. I freeze, a half-chewed mouthful lodged in my cheek.

‘I would say to avoid the special, but I fear I’m too late. I think whoever made it hates tastebuds.’

‘Hey, Camilla,’ Adrian says, waving his fork in the air.

I spin around. Of course, I then proceed to choke.

Mike thumps me across the back a couple of times. Allison hastily pushes her bottle of water across the table. I take a few giant mouthfuls, my eyes watering.

Camilla’s smile wavers. ‘Sorry, Sam. Didn’t mean to lurk.’ She pulls out a chair and drops into it without even asking first. ‘You okay? Do we n

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 1028