I sneak into the backyard; early morning dew clings to my boots as I trample through the patchy grass. I’ve got an hour before we’re due at school for The Meeting.

Vinnie’s Persian cat sits at the back gate, face like somebody rammed him into a brick wall. Which, ironically, is what I fantasise about doing to him every time I discover he’s left a ‘surprise’ in my boots. I hiss at him and he hisses back before squeezing his fat arse under the gate.

I grab a trowel and at the back fence I drop to my knees under the willow. I could easily dig with my hands because the earth is soft, but last time I did that there was dirt under my nails for days and Vinnie kept asking questions.

I drive the trowel in hard and cut a worm in half.

‘Shit.’

I part the dirt with the tip of the trowel and scoop up the two halves, placing them on my thigh. They don’t both wriggle off like I expect them to. I guess it’s a myth that cutting a worm in half makes two worms.

I dig a small hole just to the left and bury the worm, trying to match up the two halves as I lay the little guy in his grave. I grab a willow leaf and a piece of bark shaped like a cocoon. I poke the leaf through the bark to make a cross, which I push into the ground for a headstone.

Then I get back to digging.

The whole point of a time capsule is you bury it and leave it. Well, that’s what Daniel, my shrink, said when he came up with the dumb idea to help ‘curb my aggressive tendencies’. You dig it up when you’re divorced, fat, stressed, lonely and thinking about a nip and tuck. So far I’ve dug this thing up three times and I only buried it a week and a half ago. I keep finding things I want to bury.

The trowel hits wood so I scoop the mud away, slowly uncovering the pencil box I made in Year Seven woodwork.

When I slide the cover back, globs of dirt fall on top of the freezer bag inside. I shake off the dirt and open the bag, revealing the photo on top: the only picture I have of my father.

I think he’s my father. Vinnie said he is and he was living with Juliet when she had me so he could be. It’s not a great photo; he’s half cut out. But you can see a bit of his arm and half his face. He has a nice smile. He has my dark skin and my slightly hooked nose.

I don’t remember anything about him.

According to Vinnie, Juliet left me with him once when I was a baby. She went to the shops to get nappies, but she didn’t come back for a couple of days and when she did he’d overdosed. I was in my cot, my nappy falling off because it was so full. I almost died.

I pull the serviette out of my back pocket and shove it on top of the photo. I figure something that reminds me of the first time I met my half-brother is something that should go in a time capsule. I don’t know if Xavier saw me slide it off the table and into my back pocket yesterday. I hope not.

My phone buzzes. The screen’s smashed, cracks webbing in the top right-hand corner, but I can see Cara’s message: Good luck today, babe. No pressure but do NOT stuff this up. I NEED YOU BACK HERE.

Thanks, Cara Lam, oh wise and beautiful BFF. Because I need to be reminded of The Meeting. I so want to blab on for hours to Principal Vukovic about why I’m such a psycho.

Especially as I don’t plan on telling her the truth. All I want is to forget, forget about what happened in the corner of the library. I want to forget Steve’s Dorito-smelling breath and what he said to make me so crazy angry, angry enough to slap him with the fattest hardback I could lay my hands on. A fat book for a fat head.

I get a sick taste in my mouth. Guess I can joke all I want but the closer it gets to The Meeting the harder it is to laugh. Because I know what I did to Steve was bad. Out-of-control, out-of-my-mind, out-of-this-world bad. Not that I remember much: anger does that to me. Red ink blots smear across my vision. One minute Steve’s shooting his mouth off and the next there’s blood and an ambulance and . . .

No. Stop thinking about it.

I slam the lid shut and dump the pencil box back into the hole. I shovel dirt from all around and pile it on top; I accidentally unearth the little worm’s grave.

‘Sorry, dude,’ I say.

I give him a second funeral. This time I give a speech. I tell him how all his little worm friends will miss him. I tell him that the backyard just won’t be the same without him. I say how tragic it is that his life was cut short, but that’s a bad choice of words.

Covering his poor little body with the last of the dirt, I tell him I’m sorry for giving him such a shitty funeral. I can’t find the headstone again.

I push myself up, wiping the muddy earth from my jeans. It just rubs deeper into the fabric.

‘Frankie?’ shouts Vinnie. ‘Where the hell are you?’

Busted.

I hurry inside, letting the wire door slam shut behind me. ‘I’m taking the garbage out.’

‘Garbage is still here.’

Okay. So not such a good cover.

‘I know,’ I shout back. ‘I’m taking it out now.’

That’s what you get for lying, Frankie. Bin duty.