The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay by Rebecca Sparrow

join us.’
    â€˜Sorry, I was with Mrs Ramsay. She told me to give you this.’ Nick hands over to Mr Verney the note that now doubles as a dental record.
    Mr Verney purses his lips in a sceptical fashion. Reads it. Nods.
    â€˜And I have that signed consent form,’ says Nick, reaching into his back pocket.
    â€˜You’re just full of forms today, aren’t you, Mr McGowan?’
    Nick hands him the form, smiles weakly, and says, ‘Yes, sir.’ Meanwhile, I resist the urge to vomit as I watch Mr Verney’s eyes scan down for the requisite signature. Nick doesn’t even look nervous.
    â€˜Very well. Welcome to the magic and the mystery that is Maths in Society. You can have this textbook until you get your own.’ Mr Verney hands Nick his copy of Let’s Learn Maths! by D.M. Barry (who thinks that adding an exclamation mark to a title makes Venn diagrams and prime numbers more exciting. Go figure).
    Book in hand, Nick turns now to face the class, looking for a seat. Our eyes meet. Nick mouths, Relax ! His eyes are amused, full of daring, telling me that we’ve gotten away with it, as though we’re the new Bonnie and Clyde. Then he winks at me.
    Mr Verney lets out an impatient sigh. ‘Do hurry up and take a seat, Mr McGowan.’
    â€˜Sorry.’ Nick makes a face at me as though Mr Verney is quietly mad. I can’t help but smile back.
    Then he takes the spare seat next to Sarah Neele and the lesson – the idiot’s guide to trigonometry – begins. And I realise we’ve gotten away with it.

Zoë spends our entire lunch hour trying to convince me to come up to Indooroopilly Shoppingtown after school. She has to work in her mother’s shop from four until six p.m., and reckons she’ll die without any visitors. I haven’t told Zoë about the brochures I found in Nick’s room, or about the consent form I signed for Nick. I’m not sure why – although I suspect that it’s easier telling other people’s secrets than your own. Plus if I talk about it out loud, it’ll seem even more real – and wrong. And at the moment I’m convincing myself that it’ll all work out okay: Nick will eventually tell his dad that he’s dropped down to Maths in Society, Mr McGowan will accept it, and my parents will never find out. I’m not ready for Zoë’s honesty. Sometimes it stings like Detol on a gash.
    When I walk into CopperWorld Zoë’s serving a customer, so I take the opportunity to look around. It’s a strange shop. Zoë’s mum has owned it for as long as I can remember. It’s a shop that seems to specialise in gold-painted pot-plant holders, plastic flowers, touch lamps and fake mahogany full-length mirrors – ‘in crap’, as Zoë likes to say. Zoë reckons this shop sucks the life right out of her. She spends most of her days accidentally chipping the furniture when she vacuums and then colouring the scratches in with a black Nikko pen.
    Finally Zoë’s at the till, ringing up a wooden hat stand. It’s another few minutes before the customer has left the shop.
    â€˜Hey,’ she says, walking over to me while simultaneously opening out a plastic fern. I can tell by the look on her face that she’s worried about something.
    â€˜What’s up? What’s wrong?’
    She sighs dramatically.
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜Zoë!’
    â€˜Well . . .’
    â€˜Well . . .’
    â€˜Well I just asked the Psychic Lettuce what my future holds, and it said, “You will live alone with sixty guinea-pigs. And they will all be called Peter. ” ’
    â€˜Hang on a second. You asked what? Did you say Psychic Lettuce ?’
    She puts the fern down.
    â€˜It’s a lettuce that predicts your future. I found it at the games arcade next door.’
    â€˜Lettuce as in vegetable? As in iceberg and romaine? There’s a lettuce in this shopping