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it,’ Vila added.
    ‘Are you going to?’ Susie shot back. Vila shook her head. ‘Well then, no one else is going to neither. Who needs that kind of trouble?’
    The bell rang for home room, and we walked together through to our class.
    ‘Here,’ Vila said as we sat together in the middle row, offering me the calculator back.
    ‘Are you finished? You can keep it if you like. Otherwise you’ll get in trouble.’
    Vila laughed, and waggled it for me to take. ‘I’m already in trouble. I haven’t understood anything in maths class since we stopped learning the times tables off by heart. I can’t add up correctly even with this.’
    I sat still for a minute, feeling a glow of friendship that I wasn’t familiar with. It would be nice if I could keep hold of that for a while longer. ‘I could help you if you like. My mum used to be a tutor for this sort of stuff, it’s how I picked it up. I could take you through it.’
    Vila smiled, and leaned her head forward. ‘Really? You’d do that?’
    ‘Sure,’ I nodded. ‘I’d be glad to.’
    ‘I can’t pay you, you know. My parents don’t have that kind of money.’
    ‘Neither do mine. I meant for free.’
    Mr Dorman came into the room, and frowned at me as though I was the only one talking. Sometimes I wondered if I had a beaming light over my head, drawing everyone’s attention to my massive flaws.
    ‘I’ll talk to you at lunch,’ Vila promised as we settled down to wait for the long school-day to be over.
    ‘Catch you then,’ I replied. Smiling.
     
    ***
     
    Vila plonked herself down next to me at the wooden bench by the tuck shop. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
    I was trying to manoeuvre the stapler into a position where it could easily pull together the two pieces of fabric on my skirt. ‘I tore this yesterday. Didn’t have time to fix it last night, and I don’t want it to get any bigger.’
    ‘Come to mine after; my mum’ll be able to fix that up for you. She doesn’t work Wednesdays.’
    ‘Except for sewing,’ I joked back.
    ‘Yeah, well looking after me isn’t really a job, is it? It sure doesn’t pay much.’
    I clicked another staple into the line and then gave it up as a bad job as it jammed on the fabric, and nearly tore the rip bigger as I struggled to get it free.
    ‘Leave it,’ Vila ordered. ‘She’ll be happy to do it.’
    I left it alone. It wasn’t as though I was making any headway with it anyway.‘Are you sure?’
    ‘I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t. Anyway, if you’re going to be helping me, then I need to do something to help you back. It’s not right otherwise.’
    I shifted my weight. The wooden bench was too hard to be comfortable. Not to mention the peeling paint, and the high risk of splinters. We should get danger money for this type of stuff.
    ‘Where’s your lunch?’ Susie asked as she plonked herself down hard beside Vila. ‘Are you on a diet?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘The diet of “I ran out of time to make anything this morning”.’
    ‘Really, do you want my sandwich? I’m getting a pie so it’s just going in the bin otherwise.’
    Susie handed it across the table to me without waiting for a response. It had meat, lettuce and cheese all layered between soft, white bread. I couldn’t imagine why she would rather get a greasy pie with god-knows-what in the filling, rather than eat this, but I wasn’t about to challenge her. ‘That’d be great, thanks.’
    She was already gone, queuing up in the tuck shop line.
    Tracy sat down with a sigh and stretched out her legs. ‘I’m so sick of school. I wish it were holidays right now. I could use the time to get a tan.’
    ‘Sun’ll kill you,’ Vila said, an automatic response by the look.
    ‘Something’s got to. If it’s not the sun it’ll be the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, bitches!’ Susie said as she rejoined the table. She wavered her hand from side to side, the middle fingers tucked in, and her forefinger and pinkie making the