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because of this. Her account was simple – she smelled a smell like roses, then she started to feel dizzy and sick, as if she had been poisoned, and began to vomit, and didn’t feel better until she was carried into the open air on the street. She hadn’t been ill before that, she didn’t have a cold or an upset stomach, she was a healthy girl. She didn’t know about the panics on the London Underground, the rumours of cyanide. She hadn’t read the stories about what happened in Tokyo in 1995 , when a group of elite sons and disaffected mathematicians decided to kick-start the apocalypse; never saw the pictures of people staggering out of the subway exits, clawing at their eyes.
    So why would she imagine such a thing? Why would anyone?
    The first girl who fell, on the day it began.
    She had come out of school with her friends, in her kilt and tie and red wool jacket, her thigh still feeling intangibly damp where the geography teacher had put his hand on it after class.
    â€˜Sid the Squid,’ snorted Lauren as they walked down the steps.
    â€˜God, he’s so gross. He’s just made of gross. And his wife is a hog and a half, seriously, I mean, she weighs like a thousand pounds.’
    â€˜She totally could sink the Titanic with her ass. I’m not kidding,’ said Tasha.
    The strangeness of adults, their clenched little needs.
    â€˜Yeah, can you imagine them in bed?’ said Lauren. ‘Oh, oh, darling, argh, I can’t breathe!’
    She hated her thighs anyway, they were rounded and fat, swelling against the hard chair.
    â€˜He’s
repellent
,’ said Lauren. ‘Hey, you know what, you know the Starbucks at Yonge and St. Clair is giving away free mochaccinos?’
    â€˜No way,’ said the girl, taking a tube of pink glitter lipstick from her backpack and opening her mouth slightly to apply it. She wouldn’t stay after class anymore, not without Lauren, not without somebody. ‘No way they are.’
    â€˜Yeah, because they had a sign in the window. But only till four.’
    â€˜I don’t even think.’
    â€˜Come on, then. I’ll prove you they are.’ Lauren pushed her hair back from her shoulders, and led them onto Yonge Street, into the shine and flutter of retail, the glimmering windows, people pushing past them with briefcases and plastic bags. The girl had a black canvas bag over her shoulder, with a yellow pin on it showing a rabbit holding a PEACE placard, and a pink pin that said
It IS All About Me, Deal With It
.
    â€˜I just feel so cheated,’ Tasha was saying. ‘Because every year after sports day they had pizza, like every year, and then our year we just have chips and Coke. Literally like a single chip each. And you expect you’re going to have pizza, you know?’
    â€˜I know, it’s so cheap,’ said the girl. ‘It’s like, hey, we’re saving five cents, we’re so awesome!’
    â€˜To me it’s like a betrayal,’ said Lauren.
    Starbucks really was giving away mochaccinos, and the lineup stretched halfway down the block, some of the other girls from their own school, and kids from the local high school in jeans and T-shirts, their coats slumping off their shoulders. The girl checked her reflection in the glass door, wondering fretfully if she had gained more weight, if there was a visible roll of fat at her waist. Joining the wave of young bodies, pushing and giggling. Contact in the crowd between hips, legs, the bare skin of a stranger’s arm, and she slid into the high bright relief of noise.
    â€˜I
so
need caffeine right now,’ said Tasha. ‘Or I’m physically
dying
.’ They reached the counter, and the desperate boy pushed forward another half-dozen cups. Each of them grabbed one, pressing through the aisle towards the exit, sipping the foaming liquid, bitter and milky. Aware of the public school boys, watching them from under their messy