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strong.
    ‘Let me past, please, Clarice.’
    Her face was thick with foundation and blusher. Her breath smelled of sour milk. ‘Why won’t you talk to us? Are you too good for us or something?’
    Acid began filling my chest. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ Lava bubbled up in the middle of my chest.
Think of Head Girl. Set the example.
    ‘Nothing to say? Not like you, is it? You had plenty tosay to Saul-Hudson when you reported me.’ She whipped her hair flirtatiously over one shoulder. ‘You never report Maggie and she’s done a lot worse than I have.’
    Avoid eye contact.
‘You had your revenge,’ I said, remembering the start of term. She’d put tacks in my outdoor shoes. She never admitted it, but I knew it was her.
    ‘Why don’t you ever report Maggie Zappa? Are you and her lesbi-friends now?’
    ‘I report people who do bad things, Clarice. Maggie doesn’t endanger life. Maggie doesn’t abuse children.’ I still didn’t look at her.
    She stepped back from me. ‘Abuse children?’ She looked back at the other two, who were laughing. ‘Who have I abused?’
    ‘I’m not going into it now.’ I tried barging through her, but she held me in place.
    ‘Whoa there, you can’t just say that and then walk off. That’s libellous.’
    She’d learnt that word in English last week. We all had. ‘Actually it’s slander, but it happens to be the truth. Now let me past, please.’
    ‘No, you’re accusing me of something, so accuse me. Tell me what I’ve done.’
    ‘Get off me.’
    ‘No. Finish what you were saying. I abuse children or something.’
    ‘You really want me to say it now?’ I glanced back at Allie and Lauren. They were transfixed, like they were watching some award-winning movie moment.
    ‘Say it,’ she snarled.
    I looked just past her, still not focusing on her eyes. ‘I didn’ttell Saul-Hudson about the five different St Anthony’s boys I’ve seen you sneaking up the back stairs in the past year.’
    She went crimson.
    ‘I didn’t tell her that you cheated in the Maths test or spat in the school governors’ tea. But yes, I did report that you pushed a new Pup down the stairs. And that I’ve watched you drag a compass across a Tenderfoot’s knee in Prep to see how long it would take for her to scream. I report people who do that kind of thing. Not because I’m a lesbian, but because
you’re
a psycho. Do you want me to go on?’
    I pushed towards the Chapel door. Allie and Lauren looked like two frightened lambs, lined up for the garrotting machine. I was on my way, my foot over the step, almost back out into the crisp, cold morning, when I heard her say it.
    ‘I hope your brother died slowly. In pain.’
    Died,
she said. Past tense. Deceased. No longer with me.
    Kill her.
    No more cooling voice of advice. I flew back into that Chapel like a wind and grabbed her by both shoulders, slamming my forehead against hers with an eye-watering
CLUNK.
    The rest I don’t remember.
    And before I knew it, I was running.

4
Jeepers Creepers
    I didn’t stop running until I was deep into the Landscape Gardens. I headed straight for the old wooden Wendy House, opened the yellow front door and shut myself in. It was freezing. All I had on was Bob Cratchit’s threadbare shirt and torn trousers.
    I’d often wondered what the consequences would be if I’d let the reckless part of my brain decide things for me. The part of my brain that wanted to key the cars of people my dad had fallen out with. The part that wanted to touch boiling hot surfaces. The part that wanted to shout back and swear all the time. The part that wondered what it would be like to punch Clarice Hoon in the face every time she laughed when I tripped over or got a question wrong in French. And now I knew. It felt horrible.
    I don’t know how long I’d sat there on one of the little toadstool seats, my head aching like I’d loaned it out as a wrecking ball, a ready-laid plastic dinner service set out beside me, when