EVERY SEPTEMBER, ON the first day of school, a very important tradition took place at Grittysnits. Before we walked into the classroom that would be ours for the next year, we’d get a special talk from our headmaster.

      Oh ho, you’re probably thinking. Aha. Special talk, eh? Something to kindle a love of learning? A pep talk about wisdom and books and the wonderful things that can happen when you learn and you listen?

      Nope.

      Mr Grittysnit never talked about books or knowledge or that sort of stuff. No. Mr Grittysnit liked to talk about inventions.

      And not just any invention. He wasn’t excited about toy robots, or potted plants that played music from speakers in their leaves. He preferred things that made the world tidier, cleaner, spicker and spanner. He idolised inventions that tidied up human existence and made it all a bit less messy.

      And each classroom was named after his favourites.

      This term, Mr Grittysnit had pointed at the silver plaque outside our Year Six classroom and fixed us with a solemn stare. ‘There is nothing more satisfying than putting a shiny plastic sheen over things,’ he’d said. ‘The most boring and insignificant things in the world can be transformed with a laminator. Put mediocrity through this machine and it instantly looks better.’

      Then he’d glared at us meaningfully for a while. I thought I heard him mutter, ‘If only I could do the same to children’, but I wasn’t completely sure.

      So, we were known as the Laminators. It wasn’t that catchy. But as I followed Neena into the classroom, the name suddenly made sense. Everyone did look as if they’d been put through a laminator – shiny, plastic, new. It was all gleaming teeth, scrubbed faces, fresh socks. Not one grimy fingernail, stray bogey or muddy knee. Mr Grittysnit’s competition had started in earnest, and it looked as if everyone in the Laminators was out to win.

      ‘Didn’t you read the letter, girls?’ teased the tall, red-haired girl nearby, checking her perfect French braid in a compact mirror. ‘The Grittysnit Star has to look amazing. Not –’ she looked us up and down, smirking – ‘like you’ve been sicked up by a cat.’

      I bit my lip.

      Chrissie snapped her compact shut and stared pointedly at Neena’s burnt eyebrow and my crumpled shirt.

      Neena shrugged. ‘This will scab over soon,’ she said evenly.

      Chrissie looked at me with disdainful emerald eyes. ‘What’s your excuse, Suck-up?’

      I stared at my shoes. Chrissie was the human equivalent of a funfair mirror. I always felt shorter and chubbier when she was around. How we normally interacted went like this: she’d say something mean; I’d bite my lip and pretend I was too busy thinking about something important to reply; she’d snigger, give me a pitying look and then saunter off. And repeat.

      I could feel her eyes boring into me, amused. I continued to admire the view of my black lace-ups.

      After a while, she laughed. ‘It’s your choice, I suppose,’ Chrissie said casually, flicking the collar on her immaculate charcoal-grey silk shirt. ‘If you can’t be bothered to make an effort, be my guest. Anyway, it’ll make it easier for me to win the prize.’

      The scrawny blonde girl by her side nodded adoringly, her silver braces glinting in the light. ‘Easier, no contest.’ I have to say this for Bella Pearlman, Chrissie’s sidekick: she seemed easy to please. All she needed was a couple of words to repeat once in a while. Entertaining herself in the school holidays must have been a breeze.

      I forced a smile out. Good girls don’t fight.

      After a pause, they sidled off towards their desks. As they walked away, I busied myself with my rucksack, brushing off imaginary specks of dirt.

      When I looked up, Neena was giving me a funny look. ‘When are you going to start standing up to her?’ she asked. ‘You could run circles round her if you tried.’

      ‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly. ‘I’d rather stay out of her way if she’s in one of her moods. Anyway, as Head of Year, I can’t be seen getting into arguments. That wouldn’t set a good example to anybody else.’

      Neena rolled her eyes as we walked towards our desks by the window. But even her Little Miss Judgy act wasn’t going to get me to change. Because no good could come from standing up to Chrissie Valentini. Only last term, a nice supply teacher had gently asked her to stop losing her spelling books. Chrissie’s parents had threatened to sue the school for defamation if the teacher wasn’t fired, and we’d never seen the nice supply teacher again.

      Mr Grittysnit did everything Mr Valentini wanted. Chrissie’s father was rich, he was on the board of governors and he gave loads of money to the school every year for school trips and supplies. Plus, he owned a big property-development company that gave Mr Grittysnit a cut-price deal on school extensions, which Mr Grittysnit was very fond of doing.

      So, yeah, it wasn’t ever a good idea to cheese off Chrissie. Which meant pretending her jokes were hilarious. Even if they were at my expense.

      *

      In the Laminators, silence reigned. Everyone sat upright in their chairs, hands folded neatly in their laps, waiting for our shy teacher, Miss Mossheart, to take the register. This was unusual. Normally, she had to beg to be heard above the racket you get when you put thirty eleven-year-olds into one room.

      Miss Mossheart flinched if the classroom was too loud, blushed if anybody looked at her longer than two seconds, and if she ever had to tell anyone off would spend the rest of the lesson panting quietly at her desk, trying to get her breath back.

      You might wonder why she went to work at Grittysnits in the first place.