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floor drinking ginger beer and I was in bliss having all my favourite people around me. Mum and Nana loved her as much as I did.
    Mum and Nana were in the kitchen cooking chicken. Knowing dinner was a long way off still, Mia and I were planning the route for a race. It was going to be from the creek to Magpie Rock. Mia felt for the dusty curtains behind her and put her head outside; her nose twitched.
    ‘Is it going to storm?’ she asked when we stepped outside.
    One side of the sky was blue and the other was black, so it could go either way.
    ‘Don’t wait ’til the migar n maral,’ my grandmother would say to me. ‘Don’t wait until the thunder and lightning.’
    Mia was wincing at the first sign of moisture dropping from above.
    I goaded her. ‘You scared?’
    She gave me a hurt look, and mumbled something about having to get home. She disappeared into the darkness. And even though I would see her again the next day, I was devastated and I went to bed cradling her scent. The storm didn’t even hit.
    What I didn’t get was how the other kids treated her at school. Where they treated me with an acceptance sharpened by a respectful weariness, every class was built as a game around laughing at her. Mick Hammer called her names I didn’t quite yet understand. And Mick’s likely girlfriend, Emily (it wasn’t official yet), said she was dog ugly.
    Mia was still herself in class and Mum would say to her, ‘They’re just jealous of your looks, bub.’
    Mia didn’t talk of the family that she might have had and might have known. She loved her guardian, though Mia said she was always telling her not to do things. Mia would imitate her to a tee; ‘Mi, speak English! Mi, don’t swear, Mi put your shoes on, Mi don’t eat that.’
    One day Emily came to school unable to talk because of a toothache. She was struggling with it and she would have to wait ’til the weekend to go to the dentist.
    Mick held her hand as if she was dying. When they walked from class to class everyone stared at the way she held her mouth like it might fall off. On the third day of this, Mick said, ‘Can anyone help her?’ My mother was a nurse before she raised me, and the women in town often called her up to ask her things, but there was no way I was going to help Emily.
    Mia surprised me with her benevolence when she whispered, ‘Those berries we saw on the hill, Colin.’
    Mia went back there without me and got a handful of the berries off the tree. The next day she walked up to Emily on the playground. Emily looked at her suspiciously. Emily was the one that had started the trend for all the girls in our grade to not go within ten metres of Mia, and walk fast when walking past her, which meant that Mia was always by herself when the girls and boys were split up. If one of the girls forgot, Emily would snort her horse-like giggle and say, ‘Oh, you got fleas now.’
    Emily must have had the toothache so bad because when Mia said, ‘Here, put these in your mouth, they will help. Don’t swallow,’ Emily looked left and right and accepted them in her hand. When Mia lingered, Emily opened her nasty mouth and said, ‘What are you looking at, dog? Get away from me.’
    I took Mia away and said, ‘Why did you help her?’ Mia just shook her head.
    Before the next class, I went to have a smoke in the out-of-bounds area behind the stand-up shacks. Mia, like always, refused to come when I went for a smoke.
    When I got back to the classroom, everything had changed. I learnt Emily had had an allergic reaction, her mouth and her whole face had swelled up, and she was taken to the hospital. Mia was in the principal’s office. When the teachers scolded her, called her evil, she said nothing and looked down, refusing to make eye contact. She looked like she was smiling to herself. It infuriated them further.
    But when she saw me afterwards, she was upset and said quietly, ‘I didn’t mean to. Wasn’t gammon with her or anything. You know that,