Cecelia’s pencil hit the library desk with a clatter. ‘What do you mean, you’re not going?’


I shrugged, not looking up from my Human Biology book. ‘No more dances, remember?’


‘But it’s the Year Twelve ball! You must go.’


I turned a page. I hadn’t finished reading it, but I was making a point. ‘Nope.’


‘Please, Gabby.’


‘Why?’


‘Because I’m going.’


‘Why?’


A pause. ‘I don’t know. I thought you were.’


Another ‘why’ was still the appropriate response, because why on Earth would she think that, but I set the textbook aside and looked up.


Cecelia twisted her blonde ponytail in her fingers, a lock of hair caught in her mouth. She saw my gaze and pulled it out. I didn’t care what she did with her hair – I’d been abusing mine with black dye and terrible haircuts for years – but it was a habit she was trying to break.


‘I have zero interest in ruining a perfectly good night with a school party,’ I said.


‘But it’s the ball!’


‘A farce of a ball. A set menu dinner with a crap DJ and bumping shoulders with the rest of the student body in a town hall. The Yule Ball movie-style, only without the civilised bit at the beginning.’


‘It’s an important part of Year Twelve,’ Cecelia insisted. ‘I bet your dad wants you to go.’


‘He does, but he’s not here.’ I stayed with my uncle Alex when Dad was away on work assignments, and Alex supported my social obligation boycott. Maybe we’d go to Harrys for Italian instead.


‘Is this about Dylan?’


I snorted. ‘If he’s going, all the more reason for me not to. He’s asked me about twenty times already.’


Whenever there was a school dance looming, Dylan Rickshaw cornered me in the library line at lunchtime to ask me out. Every time I said no. I wondered when it stopped being mindless optimism and became something more like harassment. He was always polite. And twenty might have been a slight exaggeration, but scouting for Dylan and trying to duck through the door to the relative safety of the library unnoticed felt like a constant state of being.


Cecelia’s brow creased. ‘Come with me. I’ll recite medical terminology if he gets too close.’


‘It’s too late, Ceel. Ticket sales have closed.’ I opened my book again. ‘And I don’t have a dress.’


Cecelia glared at me for a moment, then sighed and picked up her pencil.