Free Yellow by Megan Jacobson

their calorie-conscious lunches. It’s hard work trying to stay below size eight.
    â€˜Christ, have you ever seen a carrot stick split four ways?’ she asks incredulously, and returns to the clovers. ‘I don’t know how you stood it for as long as you did. Do you cut yourself as well? Because really, you have to be a masochist.’
    â€˜What? No. And speaking of masochism, why are you goading them? You’ll just make it worse.’
    â€˜Oooooh, I’m trembling in my boots, cupcake. Honestly, what can they do?’
    How can she not get it? I try to explain. ‘They can make you feel as small as a flea. Smaller than that. A flea atom. What’s smaller than that?’
    â€˜A quark?’
    â€˜That too.’
    Willow rolls over and looks at me seriously, her eyes a gunmetal steel. ‘Let Aunty Willow give you a piece of advice, little one. People only have the power to make you feel small if you let them. Don’t give them permission.’
    I swallow her words. They make sense. It’s easier said than done, though. I wish I were a boy sometimes, so that any disagreement could be played out behind the basketball courts after school, in a jumble of limbs and fists and blood, but over in ten minutes. The girls’ way, the way they pick at your self-esteem with painted nails, year after year, that’s worse.
    Don’t give them permission.
    I lay back down and the clouds look back at me.
    â€˜How’s your mum?’ asks Willow, after a beat.
    â€˜My mother is mad.’
    She throws a clover over to me. ‘All mothers are mad,’ she replies.
    And we lie there in a silence that feels safe.
    I close my eyes for a second and I hear a flash of footsteps pass by. I open my eyes and Lou is disappearing towards the quadrangle with my shoes in her hand. Cassie, Sasha and Tara are following, but their pace isn’t nearly as quick, probably due to the fact they’re almost falling over themselves with laughter.
    The school becomes blurry and the edges bleed into each other. Everything turns the colour of shame, and the air becomes thick to bursting with laughter as I chase after my shoes. I follow them around a corner, then another one, and then they’re gone.
    I’m standing in the middle of the quadrangle and the heat crawls out of the concrete, into my naked feet, and climbs its way up to my face so my cheeks burn red.
    A bindii clings on near my left toes.
    School kids prickle with their words.
    Lou and my shoe are nowhere to be seen.
    The bell rings and kids scatter, the classrooms eating them up. My shoes are nowhere to be seen, but what can be seen is Willow walking in from the oval, carrying my bag, and in her other hand are her sneakers. When she gets to me she squats down on her bare feet to shove them into her bag, and when she hoists herself up she pushes my things into my arms.
    â€˜So it’s maths,
Bush Tucker Man
style, huh?’ she grins. ‘Mr Bryant will have a fit!’
    She does a skip towards the classroom and a small jump where she claps both her heels together in the air, like Fred Astaire does in black-and-white movies.
    I’m not quite sure what the feeling is that’s washing over me, but I’m sure the Germans have a word for it. It’s something like relief at the fact that I won’t have to face this alone, but it’s more than that. I think it feels like friendship.
    Lou, Cassie, Sasha and Tara look smug as we enter, late. The class is seated and everyone’s relieved to have a distraction from working on quadratic equations or something equally exciting, especially as Mr Bryant’s face turns bright red when he sees us, and he blusters towards the door to block us as we’re trying to sneak in.
    He points to our feet. ‘Where are your shoes?’
    The kids crack up, but Willow just flicks her hair and eyeballs him. ‘We’re housing commission kids, sir. We’re too poor for