Penguin Books Australia

Chapter 1

I sat on my unmade bed, clutching a shoebox to my chest and looking around the strange room. In that shoebox was everything that really mattered to me – shells from the last summer I'd spent with my father plus a photograph of us on the beach, a Chinese silk toy horse as small as my thumb, a shiny marble, a card from my best friend Fee and a CD of our favourite music, a Lego Darth Vader, a bronze owl, a pink curly pen, the wind-up musical bunny from when I was a baby, and a glass jar filled with cotton wool that held my first tooth.

A few days ago I had picked each one, my best things, and wrapped them carefully in tissue paper before the rest of my room had been packed up. But now these things didn't seem as important as they had in my old room. I suddenly realised it was the room that was important, and not the things at all. Not just the room, it was the whole house where my memories belonged, and they were too big to put in a little shoebox.

A dry lump rose in my throat. I didn't want to cry. After all, I was nearly twelve. And yesterday, my last day ever at Ellerslie Primary School, I had said goodbye to practically everyone I'd ever met without shedding one single tear.

All my class were going to Ellerslie High next year. Including my best friend, Fee. Yesterday I'd watched Kate and Fee walk off together after we'd said goodbye, their arms slung around each other. Kate had always been there, hovering at the sidelines. When Fee had gone to England for a term to help her aunt get married, Kate had moved to the desk next to mine and had come to my house sometimes after school to play. When Fee came back, Kate swapped again to her old desk. Everyone knew that Fee and me were best friends – that was the natural order of things.

But how could you be best friends when one of you was going to Ellerslie High and the other was moving a million miles away? It was two trains and a bus, and I'd never even caught one train by myself before.

Last week Fee cried in my room. 'I'm going to miss you so much,' she said. 'You're my best friend.'

'And you're mine.' I gave her one of my treasures, a pink coral bracelet. Fee slipped it straight onto her wrist.

'I won't find anyone as good as you at Ellerslie High,' she said. 'Who's going to climb the puzzle tree with me?'

It had taken Fee and me a whole summer to get brave enough to climb to the top branch of the big tree in Fee's front yard. Although it had lots of branches, there was only one way up, which is why we called it the puzzle tree.

'What about Kate?' I asked, shakily.

Suddenly Fee wasn't sad any more, she was annoyed. 'I have to hang around with someone. You did when I went to England.'

I didn't think it was a fair comparison. Fee had only gone to England for one term. I was moving away forever.

'We'll still see each other,' said Fee. 'We can ring and send each other emails. We'll still be best friends.'

I nodded. But part of me didn't believe it. And I was sure part of Fee didn't either.