Then there was Cheezel, who said she didn't care if they called her Cheezel. WHY WOULD you do that to your hair? they asked, and the answer was you SHOULDN'T. It was just for attention, it was STUPID, and she needed to know. The hair was bleached, and dyed black, then bleached again, and dyed orange, and covered with spray and gel, then teased up and slept in for a week or three without further attention. Some parts were cheezel-coloured, but others were a murky grey-green. Now Cheezel had mostly stopped going to classes. We had no other friends so we would meet at lunchtimes, we would exchange mix tapes, and she would speak adoringly about Pencil, whose initials were HB. We weighed up the evidence that he knew or didn't know she existed, and thought about possible pathways for contact. We also made assessments of who was or was not certifiably FITH: Fucked In The Head. Word was that Cheezel's real father was her mother's brother, so she was definitely FITH. Pencil, who had been the Coppertone Kid as a toddler with his glowing auburn curls and dimpled bottom presented to the world, was probably definitely FITH as well.

One afternoon we left school and walked along K Rd to go through all the opshops. I always spent any pocket money I had on lunches I'd forgotten to make, or on replacement 10-ride passes when I'd lost the one my parents paid for, so I bought nothing. Cheezel bought some clothes that I would never have thought of wearing. Then we went down Ponsonby Rd, and stopped in a shop full of baby clothes. The clothes were tiny, and French, all white. It was $40 for a little cardigan. I thought I'd want to tell my mother about this shop but I knew I wouldn't be able to, because I was supposed to be in school, and because I knew we would not be buying those kinds of things for our baby.

The woman asked us if we were supposed to be in school, and we said no, we'd just been on a trip and had the afternoon off, and then we left. Cheezel said we should go around to visit Sana, who lived not so far away and perhaps was also not at school today - Sana was very mature, the most mature and maternal of all of our friends, though she hadn't kept in touch much since she'd changed schools. She had a pair of female mice, and she kept their cage scrupulously clean and adorned with limbs from the Barbie collection of her childhood. Usually Sana did what she liked and no one seemed much to mind, so there was a good chance she would be at home.

It turned out to be further than we'd thought to her house, but Cheezel was not interested in turning back.  We arrived and knocked on the door to the enclosed verandah. There was a huge plastic police dog positioned by the window, but Cheezel tried the door anyway. Should we? I asked. Often, Cheezel said, Sana's family would leave the verandah unlocked and lock the internal door instead. So we could go in and leave a note by the internal door. We opened it and went in. The internal door was standing open. Had they been robbed? I wondered. No, said Cheezel, probably it was just forgetfulness. Anyway, now we could write our note and leave it right in Sana's bedroom, surprise her.

We were crouched by the police dog writing the note when Sana's mother, cabaret dancer and heavy drinker, came storming out in her dressing gown, asking who the fuck we were and what the fuck we thought we were doing. We swiftly explained. She was shaking and squinting and her dressing gown was falling open at the top. And would it be all right, asked Cheezel, if we just finished the note and put it in Sana's room? FINE, said the mother and went back inside holding her head.

It took us a while to finish the note, because we wanted it to be funny. Somehow we were inside at the coffee table working on it when Sana's mother came out and yelled at us again. She seemed to have forgotten saying it was okay. We left. Cheezel seemed almost more cheerful than when we'd arrived.

Sana's place wasn't so far from Cheezel's place but to get home I had to go back past the school and to my own bus stop up on Symonds St. It was freezing. By the time I got to K Rd school had been over for ages, it was nearly dark, and everyone except the winos had long gone home.