I spend the weekend doing stuff for my mother. She thinks Christmas has arrived. I go to town, I clean the cottage for her and so on Monday morning when I tell her I feel sick, she lets me stay at home. I know I’m being a coward. I know I should go to school and stand up for myself. But it just feels too hard.

I change my password again. This time I choose random numbers. On day three when I have to go back to school, I bunk and hang out at the Sandton Mall until the end of school. I do the same thing the following day. There’s only so much you can do at Sandton Mall. No-one texts me, not even Lerato. I can’t even begin to think about what that means.

After a week of not going to school I decide I’ll risk going in on Monday. No-one talks to me. Andile sneers when he sees me and Lerato avoids me. I see her hanging out with Andile and his buddies at break. I go to the library – there’s no point in hanging around alone at break. I stare at the computer not even knowing what to Google.

“Nothando.” Figo sits down next to me.

“I’m sorry, dude,” I tell him, “that I even thought you could be a cyber-bully…”

Figo laughs. “Don’t let these glasses fool you, dude. When I grow up Wikileaks will be a tame mare.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Did you ever find out who hacked into your account?”

I shake my head, “Nah. I’ve changed my password again, so hopefully now it’s over. I just want my life to go back to normal.”

“Sure. That’s why you’re no longer hanging with Lerato.”

“I’m not hanging with Lerato because … . Because.”

“Because she’s the hacker.”

“Are you psychic?”

Figo laughs again. “Nah. Just observant.”

‘Observant’, ‘tame mare’, ‘Wikileaks’ – I always knew this guy was a weirdo. Who uses those words? I look at him. He’s short, and those glasses are seriously beyond retro, but the eyes behind them are smart, and kind.

“Ja. I think it’s her. I don’t have proof though.”

“I’ve always thought it’s her.”

I feel like he’s hit me on both my knees with a baseball bat, I am so shocked.

“You’re cuter and smarter than she is. Like waaay.”

I stare at him. Is this him trying to get in with me? “If I were you I’d ask her straight,” he suggests.

“I have. She denied it.”

“Try again.”

The next day at break, I ask Lerato if I can talk to her in private. She isn’t very keen to be seen with me, so we have to meet in the toilets.

“I don’t have much time, so …”

“Why? Like… we’ve been best friends since we were ten years old.”

Lerato shrugs. “That’s what I thought too, dude. Until the day you moved out.”

“You’re pissed off with me for moving out of Alex? That wasn’t my decision. What did you expect me to say? ‘No, Ma, I’m staying with my friend’?”

Lerato’s face twists into something I haven’t ever seen before. “You didn’t even ask if I wanted to go with! We made that promise to each other.”

“When we were like, ten. Lerato …”

“Stay away from me, Nothando. You’re a creepy stalker chick.”

She swings out of the toilet as other girls walk in. They stand there and laugh at me. Miss McKinley’s wrong. I’m no Christopher Columbus discovering a new continent. I’m just staring over the edge at the end of the world, into a dark hole.

***

Tell us what you think: Should Nothando go to a teacher she trusts about this?