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Caro” suits her much better.’ She sips her coffee.
    ‘A mundane surname is preferable to a weird one. I’m Nina Pretty. Other people remind me of that quite frequently.’
    ‘Oh, how delightful. Sounds like a surname for a Barbie doll. Mine’s McGregor. My great-grandfather was Scottish. I am not particularly Scottish, obviously, but everyone thinks I can do a Sean Connery impression.’
    ‘And can you?’
    ‘Not an outstandingly good one. I’m still working on it.’
    ‘I won’t ask for a demo then. So you address the principal as The Caro? And she’s okay with that?’
    ‘She loves it. I tend to drop “the” when speaking directly to her. It’s a bit too formal.’
    ‘She seems nice.’
    ‘I know she seems lovely, but she’s got the potential to turn nasty,’ Bridie whispers dramatically. ‘And she’s so old that when you get called into her office for doing something terrible and she’s got that scowl on her face and that growl in her voice, you worry she’ll whip out the cane. She’s been teaching long enough that she probably did cane kids when she started out.’
    ‘Wow. Not what I expected.’
    ‘You’ll be glad to hear everyone else at this school is exactly what you expect,’ says Bridie. ‘It’s all soulless teachers, over-privileged schoolkids, and shockingly bad canteen from here on in. Do you want me to show you around? What’ve you seen already?’
    ‘Sure. Nothing.’
    ‘You must have gone on a tour before you enrolled,’ says Bridie.
    ‘My dad’s teaching here,’ explains Nina. ‘Upper Primary History, I think. Substituting.’
    Bridie nods. ‘Gosh. Teacher’s kid. You must get hell for that.’
    ‘Not really. I don’t advertise it.’
    ‘Must be tricky, starting at a new school. I’ve never changed schools—I’ve been here since Prep—except for when I left and then came back, but that doesn’t really count, because it’s the same school, and it didn’t change at all while I was gone. Andy Warhol or Gandhi or somebody said something wise about changing the world yourself. Which I find I have to do a lot. Shake things up a bit. People here are terribly boring. I’m rambling now, aren’t I? I know everything that goes on here, so tell me if I’m overwhelming you. I’m not really omniscient. Did you feel okay about coming to a school you hadn’t even seen the inside of?’ Bridie is speaking even faster now.
    ‘Oh, well, I won’t be here too long,’ says Nina.
    ‘That’s what I always say,’ says Bridie. ‘Here for a good time, not a long one. Everyone’s gotta go sometime. Oh, wait, you didn’t mean that , did you? Of course not. Sorry. I interpret things weirdly.’
    Nina laughs. ‘It’s fine.’
    ‘Uniform suits you, by the way. I looked like a blueberry in mine until Year Ten, when I discovered tailoring. A cute blueberry, my mother assured me, but a blueberry all the same. And your hair is great. I appreciate a good blonde. I used to work at a hairdresser’s but it drove me insane. Well!’ says Bridie, clapping her hands together with a dangerous amount of enthusiasm for half-past eight on a Tuesday morning. ‘Let’s go to Homeroom!’

Spencer
    Spencer Jack loves words. Interesting words and beautiful words and strange words and especially words in other languages. Untranslatable phrases. Currently his favourite phrase is l’esprit de l’escalier . It’s French for the feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the witty things you should have said. The literal translation into English is ‘the wit of the staircase’.
    Spencer loves it because it’s the story of his life. He’s terrible at conversation—no one has ever told him this, they’re far too polite, but he knows it. All the smart retorts, the funny remarks, come to him long after a conversation has ended, usually in bed late at night, where he writes the phrase on the back of his hand, so he doesn’t forget it. It’s a shame he isn’t as