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but I take his point. Scott says he’ll ask Lyyssa to order a tennis outfit for me, and arrange lessons at a gym twice a week.
    ‘Can you swim?’
    Can I swim? I think about this. When I scan my brain for swimming, I come up blank, just like when I try to remember anything about my mother.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Everyone should learn how to swim,’ Scott says firmly. ‘We’ll sign you up for swimming lessons once a week.’ He makes a note for Lyyssa to get me a swimsuit as well. ‘That should be enough for the time being. If you decide you want to spend more time at the gym, speak to me or Lyyssa. We can look at getting you a pass so you can go as often as you like.’
    Scott gives me some pamphlets about healthy eating and exercise, and tells me to call him if I have any problems.
    It’s a short walk from the physio’s office to the Refuge. When I get back, I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of milk and spoon in some Milo. I’m planning on having a nice afternoon snack by myself, so naturally Bindi and Cinnamon have to ruin it by barging in.
    ‘Better not drink too much Milo, Len,’ Bindi snipes. ‘You’ll put on weight.’ Bindi is an ectomorph, tall and angular, with razor-sharp cheekbones. Her hair is naturally curly, but she irons it straight every morning and pulls it back into a skin-tight ballerina’s bun.
    ‘Yeah, you’ll get even fatter, as fat as Karen,’ stupid Cinnamon chimes in. Cinnamon shouldn’t talk – she’s a pear-shaped endomorph. But she probably thinks her big boobs make it okay to have a big arse.
    ‘I’m not fat ,’ I say. ‘I’m a mesomorph .’ I say the word slowly and carefully, so they’ll understand. Bindi and Cinnamon have a vocabulary of about a hundred words between them, not counting the four-letter ones.
    ‘A MESOMORPH!’ Bindi screeches. She and Cinnamon start screaming with laughter. ‘Come on, Cin, let’s get some food and leave the mesomorph to pig out on her Milo.’ Bindi grabs a bag of Doritos from the cupboard and Cinnamon gets two Cokes from the fridge and they clatter out of the kitchen, hooting and saying ‘mesomorph’ over and over. They’ve left their school books from Ramsay on the kitchen table. Remedial English. Mathematics for Morons. History for Retards. Design for Delinquents.
    I stare at my glass of Milo. I spoon out the chocolatey grains floating on the top and flick them into the garbage. Then I make myself drink the rest of it, even though I feel like dumping the whole glass down the sink.

Chapter 11

    I’ve been here for a couple of months now. My life has settled into a routine. I have lessons with Miss Dunn. No matter what they tell me, I’m afraid they’re going to send me to Ramsay if I don’t learn enough, so I always do my homework. I read books from the library. I go to tennis lessons and swimming lessons. I avoid Bindi and Cinnamon, without making it obvious that I’m walking around them. You can’t let someone know you’re afraid of them.
    One night I don’t have anything better to do, so I look into the lounge room where Bindi and Cinnamon are sprawled on the lounge and Karen is in the brown chair. I survey the room before going in, working out that I can sit on the red two-seater couch, across the room from Bindi and Cinnamon. Karen doesn’t take her eyes from the TV. Even though there’s only some noisy fast-food commercial playing, you’d think it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. Cinnamon gives me a quick glance of mild dislike, and Bindi stares at me for a moment with her eyes narrowed. They don’t try to keep me from coming in, though. The lounge room is common property and they know it.
    I settle myself into the sagging, musty-smelling red couch. The couch got here just a few days after I did. Some man showed up at the door and made a big deal about having a ‘donation’ for us, when all he really had was an old piece of furniture that he couldn’t sell at his garage sale and