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up inside me. It’d be perfect! I raced into the girls’ bathroom, unlocked the window behind the last toilet in the row of cubicles, flushed and ran out again. Huddled against the wind, Lucy and I kept walking.
    â€˜Did you move down to Melbourne just for Ms Ellergren’s school?’ she said.
    â€˜Yes. And my whole family came too.’ Again, I held back from mentioning the NBS audition as the real reason. Instead I told her about Tam hating me, and Mum and Dad and the old rundown house we were renting.
    â€˜Your family has weird names.’
    â€˜Mum says they’re traditional family names, from Welsh and Celtic ancestors.’
    Ahead of us, two girls sat in the corner out of the wind. One of them held a ball that she bounced between her legs. Lucy pointed. ‘There’s Jade and Taylor. Jade’s school captain – she knows everyone and everything. Hey, Jade,’ she said, as we reached them. ‘This is Brynna.’
    Jade was the one with the ball. She glanced at me and didn’t say hello, then focused on Lucy. ‘Are you training tonight?’
    The other girl waggled her hand at me, nails covered in sparkly green nail polish. ‘Hi, I’m Taylor.’
    â€˜Hi,’ I said.
    Lucy shook her head. ‘Can’t. If I fell over and got hurt, Mum’d kill me. And then I couldn’t audition for ballet.’
    â€˜Dumb dancing,’ Jade said. ‘We need you on the team. Come on, pleeease. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with Kelly and she’s hopeless. Can’t even catch.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, I can’t,’ Lucy said. ‘You know it’s super-important to me.’
    I wondered what they were talking about. My guess was netball.
    â€˜Thursday’s the first semifinal,’ Taylor said.
    â€˜She knows that!’ Jade snapped. ‘She’s just being mean.’
    â€˜I’m not.’ Lucy scuffed her shoe back and forth, then she turned to me. ‘Do you play netball?’
    â€˜No – basketball. With my brothers, mostly.’
    â€˜That’s close.’ Lucy sat next to Jade, who was still pouting. ‘Brynna could play. She’d be heaps better than Kelly. Come on, you’re only playing Ashfield. You’ll cream them.’
    â€˜Might not. They’ve got a new coach, I heard. My cousin told me.’ She peered up at me. ‘Are you any good? Can you catch, at least? Defend? You must be able to defend if you play basketball.’
    â€˜Um, yeah, I guess.’ I pressed my lips together, hard, and folded my arms. I didn’t want to get injured either, but I didn’t want to use the same excuse as Lucy. Especially when Lucy thought I wasn’t going to try to get in the class. I stared down at my feet, feeling like a bug pinned to a board.
    â€˜She can play wing defence,’ Taylor said. ‘That’d be perfect. She looks pretty tough.’ She smiled at me, but I couldn’t smile back. I opened my mouth and shut it again. How was I going to get out of this?
    â€˜Ashfield is tough, too.’ Jade wasn’t giving me any free passes. ‘Let’s see how you go first.’ She stood up and walked a few paces away from us, then threw the ball at me, hard. I caught it as it hit me in the stomach.
    I sucked in a breath, hands stinging, stomach sore. ‘Thanks.’
    No apologies from Jade, just a slight sneer on her face. ‘Court’s this way,’ she said and left us to trail in her wake. I swallowed my annoyance and joined her on the lumpy asphalt court. The other end, where I’d played hoops with Ricky, wasn’t so bad, but this end was cracked, with holes and bumps.
    As I sized up the disaster zone they called a netball court, Jade said, ‘You gonna pass that or stand there half asleep?’
    My head jerked up and I threw the ball, hard and fast, the same way she’d thrown it at me, and felt a glow of satisfaction at the