Don’t go, a little voice whispered in the back of my head as I sat at the kitchen table for breakfast and opened the latest school email on my phone: Dear Miss Whitehall, get your tickets to the Wonderland Ball.


‘You should go,’ Dad said from behind me, between mouthfuls of Bircher muesli piled with fruit and pot-set yoghurt. ‘The Year Twelve ball is a rite of passage.’


‘Dad.’ I took a mouthful of my toast and strawberry jam. More jam than toast, really. ‘Stop reading my stuff.’


Dad put his bowl on the table and pulled out a chair. ‘Are you going?’


He had a gleam in his eyes, one he got whenever he asked if I had a boyfriend (I didn’t) or had decided on a university (I hadn’t) or was going anywhere special for Leavers, the week-long party that students in Western Australia went to after finishing high school (I wasn’t). He wanted me to have fun, to be normal despite my unusual upbringing. Everyone said being in Year Twelve was the best time of your life. Don’t blink. Don’t miss it.


But the thought of spending an evening wrapped in satin and gauze, making small talk with random students and trying to avoid dancing with sleazy boys – or not being asked or talked to at all – was, when I compared it to the thought of lounging on the couch in my pyjamas with a packet of crispy M&Ms and a whole season of something to binge-watch …


Well, there was no comparison.


I deleted the email.