Nobody knew what to do without her. There was a bullying void. People struggled to pass the time without tormenting her.

  Then, months later, Amelia ran into 8D’s form room before registration one morning, phone clutched in her hand, announcing, “You’ll never guess what? Dog Face was on the TV yesterday!”

  The clip travelled around our year group quicker than a superbug. There was our beloved Dog Face, on a documentary, speaking passionately about how school bullying is an epidemic and that’s why she’s now home-schooled.

  “I had to leave,” Melissa said, her eyes wet. “I tried to tell the school what was going on but they were useless. They kept saying there was a ‘lack of evidence’.”

  Amelia shrieked with laughter as she held the clip up. “You hear that, guys? Lack of evidence? She’s the one covering up the evidence that she was a crazy psychopath.”

  There was a moment before the class’s laughter joined with Amelia’s. Granting her the power she wanted. By Year Eight, the ecosystem was decided upon. You could either accept it, or leave. Melissa Nutley left. Because of us. Someone dropped out of school because of us.

  Never let yourselves forget that.

  Cormac struggled to stuff his long legs under the desk in the newsroom.

  “Does this really have to go into the yearbook?” he complained, folding his knee at an awkward angle. He was so tall he must resemble a pretzel by the end of each school day.

  I looked up from my notepad, which, so far, only had his name and the date on it. It was December 11th, with just under two weeks of school left before the Christmas break. A whole term had passed somehow. A third of Year Eleven was safely under my belt.

  I left a silence for him to fill in with consent – one of my favourite journalistic tricks. The quieter you are, the more the other person talks.

  “I mean, it was years ago… I guess it was sort of funny… I was bloody terrified at the time though.”

  That was a good quote. I noted it down.

  “So, what happened?”

  Cormac scratched his ear. “Well, I was hanging out with Joe and Ethan and that lot, and we were quite bored. I mean, you were on the Canterbury Tales trip, right? It was just loads of weird cardboard robot things popping out and talking about the olden days.” He went through the laborious process of recrossing his legs. “Anyway, we decided to play hide-and-seek, but I guess I hid too well as I was so small. By the time I realized no one was going to find me under the Miller’s Tale, I wriggled out and tried to leave but the door was locked and it was all dark…”

  I followed my “What happened?” question with “And then what happened?”, letting Cormac tell his own tale in his own words. As yearbook work went, this was certainly the least painful thing I’d had to do. Cormac had always been vaguely popular. This hide-and-seek-story was pretty funny. No one was seriously harmed. And, despite his pretence he was embarrassed, really Cormac couldn’t believe his luck that this was going to take up a whole page. “…and I couldn’t even use my phone to ring for help because Mrs Collins had bloody confiscated it…” He leaned back in his chair to give himself more room. “I only had a snack-sized Mars bar with me. I thought I’d starve…”

  The central heating pulsed through the overly hot room and rain speckled the window. It was already pitch-black outside. A limp piece of tinsel dangled half-heartedly over the door, reminding me that Adam was coming home soon for the holidays.

  “Anyway, as you know, they finally came and rescued me. A week’s suspension was pretty harsh if you ask me. It’s not like I chose to pee in that ornamental pot.”

  I smiled. “Great, thanks, Cormac. I remember you being suspended,” I said. “Well, I remember Grace starting a petition against it.”

  He laughed and rolled his eyes. “Grace is obsessed with petitions, isn’t she? Still, it seemed to work for Joe when he threw that stupid Brazil nut.”

  After the public outcry, Joe unsheepishly returned to school after only two days of suspension. Charlie had been social Chernobyl since. Having finally come back to school after more than two weeks off, he slunk around quietly, ignored.

  I was careful to keep my face neutral as I nodded at Cormac.

  “Are we done?”

  I nodded again and turned off record on my phone. “Yup. Thank you. You’ll be able to read it in, like, six months’ time.”

  He laughed. “Thank you…er, what’s your name again?”

  It felt like a stab in the eye and I blinked the hurt away. I’d spent five years growing up with Cormac – three of those in his English set. “Paige.”

  He’d already turned away, swinging his bag over his long back. “Right. Cheers, Paige.”

  “Bye.”

  I took my time reading back my interview notes, putting stars next to any bits I thought would be useful. Mostly I just wanted the halls to empty out. I spent another ten minutes carving out the words I exist on the desk using my maths compass. Back to my old pathetic tricks.

  It had been two months since I’d left my hopeful scribble in The Handmaid’s Tale and, for a while, it had transformed my attitude towards school corridors. I’d felt hope and actual thrill walking from lesson to lesson, trying to get a good look at everyone, wondering if they were Red Pen. But now my hope had dwindled to a sputtering spark that failed to ignite. I’d initially checked the stash of The Perks of Being a Wallflower every day to see if they’d replied. Sometimes even twice a day. But after a term of disappointment, I only checked once a week.

  I sighed and stood up. It was Friday. Another empty weekend loomed. I padded past quiet lockers and let my brain relax. I’d been anxious about interviewing Cormac as he had such dangerous friends but it turned out that even if I’d done something dumb, he didn’t even know my name. I decided to go via the library, to check one last time.

  “Hey, Paige?” I heard, echoing down the empty English corridor.

  I froze, blinking into the full beam of Grace Langdon approaching.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Wait up a sec.”

  Fear fastened me to the carpet. It never failed to stun me how miraculously pretty she was. Grace had won every genetic lottery going. It was like her dad was a film star and her mum was a supermodel…which wasn’t far off actually. Word was her dad used to be an actor, and her mum used to be an underwear model (not a glamour model, never a glamour model, no matter what Amelia said about her during their epic three-week friendship war in Year Nine).

  “How did the thing with Cormac go?”

  “Yep, it was fine.”

  “Great. That’s going to be such a good page.”

  I used the gift of silence again and she stumbled into it.

  “I was worried he wouldn’t want us to put it in,” she explained, eyes wide with drama. “You know? Because it happened back when he was super short? I mean, who else could’ve hidden under the robes of a robot?” She giggled. “He gets pissed off when we mention how short he used to be, you see.”

  I kept quiet but smiled politely.

  “…anyway, great that he was up for it. It’s so nice when people are willing to laugh at themselves, you know? Unlike Lisa freakin’ Heartly, if you know what I mean.”

  At the mention of Lisa’s name, the corridor erupted with landmines. Lisa was on the kill list since she’d refused to give an interview about her “glowing up”. I’d been the one tasked with trying to get her to talk. She’d ignored all my emails, and, when I’d cornered her with her boyfriend by the Astroturf, she’d just given me a look of complete pity.

  “I want nothing to do with this Trojan Horse of a yearbook Grace is making to tug herself off to,” she declared, before exploring the inside of her boyfriend’s mouth while I was still standing there. The whole thing was so stressful I’d stopped going to the school newspaper meetings, telling Ms Gordon I had too much work to do. I didn’t dare drop out of yearbook though…

  Grace tilted her head at me and laughed. “You really are quiet, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Jeez. No need to apologize, I was just saying. I think I’ve only heard you say, like, three sentences since we started being on yearbook together.”

  I hugged my arms and wished I could vanish into the wall entirely.

  She tilted her head the other way. “Have you got, like, social anxiety or something?”

  I laughed inwardly. Like I would tell HER.

  “I’m just quiet. Everyone always says so.”

  “It kind of makes me nervous.”

  And I thought, You have no idea how loud it is in this head of mine. You have no idea of the thoughts I have about you, and how none of them are good. You are nervous because you know I hate you, and you know so many others hate you too, and what makes you nervous is that you know you deserve the hatred.

  “Oh, okay, sorry.”

  She laughed again. “Right, I better go. There’s that party tonight at Joe’s, isn’t there?” she asked, knowing there was no way in sweet hell I’d ever be invited. “I’ve only got two hours to get ready and I have no idea what to wear because Amelia bought this jumpsuit that’s really similar to mine but she’s claiming it’s not similar and is insisting on wearing it, even though I bought mine first, but, anyway, I don’t care. But, yeah…anyway…have a great weekend, er… Miss It’s Always the Quiet Ones.” She waved as she walked past while I waited for my heart rate to return to normal.

  I held my hand to my chest. “We made it,” I told my heart. “We made it, we made it, we made it.”

  I waited until Grace was fully out of sight before continuing to the library. I felt even more drained now, like, if I were a balloon, she’d sucked the last bit of helium out of me.

  “Paige! You’re here late. We close in ten minutes, you know?” Ms Gordon wore an outfit made entirely from different shades of yellow. Mustard dress. Neon tights. Pale cardigan. Lemon shoes with actual pictures of lemons on them.

  “I know, I know. I’ll be quick.”

  She looked up at the clock. “I love your enthusiasm but seriously, ten minutes. I have swing class.”

  “I’ll only be five.”

  I scuttled upstairs and settled down, cross-legged, next to the copies of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I skimmed through a copy. Then through two more. I wasn’t really paying attention at this point. Half distracted by the thrumming drone of rain hitting the dark windows. Then I flipped over one final page and promptly dropped the book. I swore, and picked it up again.

  Red pen.

  Everything fell away. The rain on the windows. The jarring yellow of Ms Gordon’s outfit. The emotional hangover of the Grace encounter. My face stretched into the most enormous smile. I traced my finger along the words. They’d found my old messages too! Who was this person? I searched for clues in their note. They liked Perks of Being a Wallflower – that already made them an excellent person. They liked the same line as me! Then there was the additional insight…their favourite book was Catcher in the Rye. That meant, almost definitely, that they were a boy. It was such a boy book. The new knowledge sent a flurry of tingles across my skin, and narrowed down the mystery. They were in Lower Sixth. They were male. They did English. That made it around one hundred potential candidates…

  “Paige?” Ms Gordon called. “I’m a librarian, not a publican. I’ll never be cool enough to permit any kind of lock-in.”

  I dropped the book on the floor again before scrambling to pick it up.

  “One sec.” I stuffed it unceremoniously under my arm and jogged over to the “S” section. There were only two copies of Catcher in the Rye on the shelf. I grabbed the first, pawing through the pages so roughly I almost ripped one.

  “Paige. Please. I need to learn the Charleston otherwise the hipsters won’t let me live in Hackney when I grow up.”

  “Coming!” I shoved the empty one back, yanked out the other and flicked. A blast of red pen. My heart combusted. I shoved it into my armpit and flung myself down the library steps.

  Ms Gordon’s face fell as she clocked my books, contrasting with her happy yellow outfit. “Paige. You’re taking those out? I’ve closed down the computers.” She checked her watch, which had a yellow strap. God only knows how she’d managed that. Then she saw the frenzy on my face. “Okay, okay…if you’re that desperate for Holden Caulfield and friends, I can write them down and input it later.”

  “Thank you,” I sighed. “Have a good weekend, miss,” I fired over my shoulder and I practically ran out, the doors clanging shut behind me.

  Adam is coming home for Christmas. Did you know that Adam, yes Adam, is coming home for Christmas? Yes. Adam. Christmas. He’s coming home for it. First term of uni over. Yes. So proud. So grown up. Can’t wait to see him. He’s coming home for Christmas.

  It was like the Dalai Lama was popping over to stay for a month.

  Adam’s impending return was all my parents could talk about. Mum upped her homemaking so intensely she would’ve made a 1950s housewife look like a lazy sloth. The house sparkled and shone. Weird chores were discussed that I didn’t even know needed doing.

  “Phew, I’m knackered,” she’d say, leaning back in the polished kitchen chair and mopping her brow theatrically. “But I’m glad I got the inside of the washing machine cleaned ready for Adam coming home.” I hadn’t known the insides of washing machines were particularly dirty… I’d always assumed they were kind of…self-cleaning, but only the best for Adam.

  “Have you got the ham shaped like a bear?” Dad asked, when Mum returned from the supermarket the day before my brother’s arrival, laden with bags of all his favourites.

  Her hand froze in the bag-for-life from which she’d been unpacking three tubes of sour cream and onion Pringles. Adam’s best flavour.

  “He’s not eaten that since he was a boy.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jane, it’s his favourite.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go back right away.”

  The air crackled. Over the last few days of school, when teachers were too exhausted to do anything other than shove us in front of a movie, I’d return home to daily fights, tears and Dad slamming doors.

  “What do you mean he’s not coming back until the fifteenth? But he broke up on the twelfth.”

  “I don’t know. That’s what he said on the phone.”

  “Why was he calling you anyway?”

  “You were at work.”

  “What did you say to him to put him off coming home?”

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  “It’s your stress levels. You’re always so stressed. No wonder he doesn’t want to come home.”

  Usually I’d be absorbing all the unpleasant emotions but, this time, the drama of Adam’s homecoming was on low-volume, eclipsed by the boy who wrote to me in books.

  I’d run home the night I found his first message, and laughed into the winter’s air. I stopped at the end of my road, my body both freezing and sweaty. I slumped onto the bus stop bench and my hands shook as I whipped out Catcher in the Rye. I’d read the book last summer so I reckoned it was okay to skim through. He’d desecrated it with red ink and underlined more than he’d left. It really must’ve been his favourite. This person. This person I did not know who had left me a message in his favourite ever book. I knew I’d reread the book once I’d found his message. The fact he clearly loved it so much was contagious. I wanted to see the story through his red-pen eyes. But there wasn’t time for that now. My freezing fingers flicked till the text became a blur, my eyes trained to spot the red pen, glancing over it all, looking, looking…

  There.

  The red ink was slightly brighter. Only noticeable to my trained eyeball. A brand-new scribbling, right next to a paragraph about how Holden hates everyone at his old school for being “phonies”.

  I must’ve read that page a million times. I could hardly think of anything else in the coming days, as I stayed up rereading Catcher in the Rye, just so I could feel close to him by seeing what bits of the book he liked. I spent the weekend hiding from my parents, agonizing over how to reply and in which book.

  The last Monday before term ended, I sneaked past Ms Gordon, who was comforting Candise as she freaked out about her mocks, and ran over to the “S” section and returned my copy of Catcher in the Rye, with the added message:

  I padded over to the location of my chosen book. I’d been tempted to choose an important literary novel to impress him, but after all his underlined passages about “phonies” I knew I couldn’t. I’d never been into stuff like that. So I went over to the YA section and hunted down the neon-pink cover of one of my favourite books. I’d read it in Year Eight, during a particularly painful patch, the loss of Ruby a fresh scar. I must’ve read it at least twelve times. I pulled out a copy and flipped through the pages, and blushed when I came across a message I’d forgotten I’d left there.

  I exist, my old handwriting read. It must’ve been Year Eight because I’d dotted the “i”s with hearts. I felt a pang of tenderness for past me, thinking hearts over her “i”s would make her stand out in some way, any way, trying anything to make anyone notice her. I turned the pages quickly, looking for the sentence I remembered loving when I first read it. Worried I’d miss it. But no. I skidded to a halt as I saw a star in the margin.

  I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.

  I smiled and each word carved themselves into my heart. The trueness of them. I clicked my biro and wrote next to it.

  I read back what I’d written, closed my eyes and said a quick prayer. Please, I sent out to every omnipotent being. Please let this happen. Please let it be good. I need this.

  I needed it so much.

  The hope I’d dared hope was re-blooming. It was stretching out its sleepy limbs, yawning, and apologizing for getting up so late. What I was doing was crazy. So, so unlike me. I felt sick, but in a good way. Terrified, but too excited to let the fear win. I shoved the book back onto its shelf and left the library. My heart going berserk like I’d just got away with a crazy crime. Hoping it wasn’t self-harm to still have hope.