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flicks the deflated fake lung to the ground. “Don’t know what Georgia sees in him.”
    Lauren starts drawing a diagram of an airway blocked by mucus and constricting muscles.
    “Oh no, wait, I do,” Sienna continues. “He lets her style his hair and pick his outfits. They spend their lives preening each other like monkeys, and presenting themselves as the hot couple.”
    “Style over substance?” I venture.
    “Exactly.” Sienna blows hard into a spirometer, then checks the reading on the plastic cylinder. “Well, what do you know? I’m not asthmatic.”
    “That’s unfair, Sienna,” Lauren jumps in. “Aside from the fact that he has the attention span of a gnat, he’s excellent at hockey, skateboarding, can play the guitar…”
    “Sounds like you fancy him.”
    “Not even a little bit. I’m just saying he’s not a total loser delinquent.”
    Sienna shrugs.
    “What about Finn?” I ask, careful not to look either of them in the eye and let on about my little crush.
    “You like him, don’t you?” Lauren asks, pausing mid-bronchi-annotation. Clearly, I’m rubbish at hiding things. First rule, don’t mention your crush by name. Rookie mistake.
How can I save this?
    “Just curious about the social workings of Thorncroft. Still getting my bearings.”
    “Lauren used to fancy him.” Sienna smirks.
    Lauren throws Sienna an evil glance. She taps her biro on her book. Her eyebrows do the trick my dad’s do. Together they could put on the Incredible Anti-Grav Eyebrow Show and make millions! Fleas could ride tiny bikes and do wheelies between the hairy caterpillars.
    “You did?” I ask, intrigued by the first juicy bit of gossip since I arrived … but also, and I know this sounds stupid, a little jealous.
    Lauren shifts on her chair. “It was a moment of weakness in Year 10. I broke my finger in basketball and he took me to the school nurse. I was crying. He calmed me down. I was probably concussed. He can be quite charming.” She scrunches her hair behind her head.
    “You can’t get concussion from a sore finger,” I say, raising an eyebrow really high too. Perhaps I’ll join the face circus and be a millionaire as well.
    “Anyway, so what if I
did
like him? He has more to recommend him than Greg, in my opinion. He’s intelligent, funny, sporty … helps damsels in distress. Just never expect him to be on time for anything. He wouldn’t know a watch if it bit him on the ass.”
    I’d bite him on the ass.
    “And, she said it herself, even Greg’s not
that
bad, so Finn must be practically Gabriel Grayson,” Sienna says.
    “I love Gabriel Grayson in that movie
Last Night in Manhattan
,” Lauren adds.
    “We all love Gabriel Grayson,” I say. I’m struck by how easy it is to talk to these girls. I’m not at all nervous around them. I feel like I could fit into this puzzle, no problem. “Hey, do you want to do something after school? Go into town?”
    “Can do,” Sienna says.
    “What about the market?” Lauren suggests. “Loads of food, second-hand books, records. Not exactly Portobello but it’s something to do.”
    We agree to meet up later and walk over together. I’m actually looking forward to it. This is where I belong. This is where I fit.
    At the end of the lesson, I nervously await the results of yesterday’s impromptu test on the cell cycle. Lauren and Sienna get a
B+
and an
A
, respectively.
    Tillsman puts the paper face-down in front of me. I get a lump in my throat, but needlessly. Turning over the test, I see an
A
in red pen with the words, “Well done, Carla.”
    Hello, Smugville.
    At lunch, in the common room, Finn beckons me over to where he and Greg, Georgia and Violet are sitting.
    Sienna raises her eyebrows. “What do they want with us?” she asks.
    “Carla, need your opinion on something,” Finn calls from the middle table.
    “Ah, let me rephrase, what do they want with
you
?” Sienna says.
    “No idea,” I say.
    I wander over, trying to saunter the way