The Mongols killed around 40 million people. That's almost two Australias, although maths isn't necessarily my strong suit. There was one Mongolian general who built a pyramid out of 90 thousand human heads. That's, like, two thousand Anonymitys. I don't know what it is about old societies and decapitations, but they also went around catapulting heads into enemy territory and using corpses infected with the Black Death as weapons.

Joey's pranks kind of pale in comparison. The cruellest thing he ever did was put a bag of mulch and hair the same colour as Mr Matthews' cat behind the man's front tyre. Oh, and there was the time that he put flour in my hair dryer before my first date so I had to shower again and was two hours late instead of my usual forty-five minutes and had to wear my only other dress, which turned out to be a blessing since Steve hates turquoise.

It had been a while since his last foray into prankitude and Mary was cracking down harder and harder, so as Joey put it, he might not 'have much more recreation time before the cell's slammed for good'. Nobody could control Joey so even if the analogy was correct, he'd forget he was even in a rehetori-cell when an opportunity presented itself. Joey dismissed this critique and asked for my help in choosing a victim.

'Well, Callum's the only person in town you've never spoofed. Maybe it's time to initiate him into town.'

'I really should branch out to include the new people,' Joey grinned. This was allegedly funny because we were hanging out in a tree. I was lying in one branch and Joey was hanging by his legs on the other side. 'Are you really setting him up with Li'l Lisa?'

'Nobody's forcing him to go out with her. Steve's just testing the waters.'

'CJ's from the Big City, Heather. I don't think he's interested in going after a small fish in an even smaller pond.'

'Oh, he has fish. Any pranks you can pull there?'

'Not without their lifeless bodies being flushed down the toilet. What else you got?'

'You're the joker.'

'And you're the researcher. I need a jumping off point. Trees don't grow without their roots.'

'I think we've exhausted analogies for the day. I know he likes music. He's always going on about his entertainment centre.'

'You don't mess with a man's stereo, Heather,' Joey said, with as much horror as he could muster.

'What about his iPod? We can change all his songs to Nickelback or something.'

'Oh, should we put sugar in his salt shaker too? Come on, that's child's play.'

'Well, you're the closest thing to a child I know.'

'Heh,' Joey chuckled. 'A heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.'

'Actually, I think kids go hee-hee-hee but it wasn't really that funny.'

'I've got it.' Joey dropped down, caught the branch beneath him and swung down to the grass. 'I need one of his ex's names and their email.'

'Okay, well, I can ask...'

'No, if he mentions an ex only to be contacted by them the next day, he's not going to fall for it.'

'How about Facebook?' I suggested.

'Excellent. I'll go through CJ's old statuses and this time tomorrow, he'll have an illegitimate child he didn't know about.'

'It will only work until he calls her,' I said scaling down the tree.

'It's a prank, not a con,' Joey retorted. 'But if you want to milk it, you can replace his ringtones with nursery rhymes, leave pacifiers in his room, pram catalogues in his mailbox, that sort of thing.'

I spent the weekend teaching the piano to Akala. I wanted the money and she wanted to play a track for a new routine Chelsea was working on so it was mutually beneficial. Anyway, because of the tutoring, it wasn't until Monday that I heard about the results of the prank. We were standing at one of the laboratory benches dissecting a rat, which is always a pleasant start to the week. Mrs Keating was generally a Physical Education teacher but had to teach science on the side, since she was the closest to knowledgeable on the subject. However, she wasn't particularly enthusiastic so we were working on the same rats that had been in the freezer for the last three years. I was fairly relieved, to be honest, because I always had the inkling they were going to be used at the tuckshop. Even if it would make the food more edible, I wasn't too keen on chewing the rodents that brought death to millions of people.

The feeling was mutual. All the students, with the probable exception of Mary, would rather have been running around outside kicking a ball than learning the physics about how that ball moves, or in this case, how deteriorated a rat's organs become after being thawed out. At least I was using the knife provided. My lab partner was busy making the rat's legs move.

'I'm telling you, this guy is good,' Joey said.

'Yeah, he must be dreaming about chasing elephants,' I yawned.

'Not the rat. Callum.' Joey had a habit of picking up conversations from days ago. It probably has something to do with his limited attention span. 'So I send him an email as Emily saying he'd knocked me up and I want the first payment by the time little Andre is born.'

'Andre?'

'After her grandfather.'

'Nice touch.'

'I thought so. But within an hour, CJ forwarded the email to Mary.'

'He ratted you out?' I turned the rat inside out for emphasis. I don't recommend it. 'That doesn't sound like him.'

'Gloves, Heather,' our teacher yawned. I never liked the feel of latex so I decided to wait for my third warning. Mrs Keating was big on discipline out on the oval but didn't punish people in the classroom unless she had to. Three warnings seemed to be the magic number.

'It wasn't a dob. It was a trap.' Joey poked the rodent. It didn't respond. 'Mary came to me and asked why CJ would go to her for advice. So either I confess or waste time helping with a fictional problem.'

'So what did you do?'

'What do you think? I spent all weekend planning a baby shower for CJ to show his support for Emily.'

'Streamers?'

'Hell no, they're a choking hazard. Balloons or nothing.'

'You went with nothing.'

'Of course. I'm not a millionaire.'

'I think you're vastly overestimating the cost of balloons. Especially rhetorical ones.'

'Technically rhetorical balloons can cost as much as I want them to.'

Our intellectual conversation was interrupted by Mrs Keating dropping last week's reports on our bench, before moving onto the next one without a word. Mine had a respectable mark of B- in the corner, but our eyes were naturally drawn to the giant red F taking up the top half of Joey's incomplete cover page.

'If only these marks were rhetorical,' Joey said, scrunching up the report and throwing it to the front of the classroom. It hit the rim of the rubbish bin and fell to the floor.

'I don't like your chances of a sports scholarship either,' I said helpfully.

Joey shrugged. He'd never shown the slightest interest in higher education, regardless of what his girlfriend might have to say about it.

Mrs Keating picked up the ball, flattened it out and returned it to our bench, handing me a pair of gloves before going back to the desk.

When she looked down at her phone, Joey scrunched the paper back up again and attempted his shot again. It was a high throw but hadn't gone three metres before it hit the ceiling fan, which fired it off to the other side of the lab, hitting Steve in the head, snapping him out of his daydream.

'Nice shot,' I said.

'Thanks.' Joey gave a small wave to my boyfriend. He caught Mary's eye and quickly turned his attention back to the rat. 'What's that do?' he said, pointing at its diaphragm.

'Nothing now, it's dead.'

'That's going in the report,' Joey said, jotting it down, while slyly peeking over at Mary to see if she was still staring.

'It's hard to believe you're failing,' I said.

You know what? This really doesn't have anything to do with anything, so I'm just going to skip ahead. Tangents are kind of the only thing that interrupts the flatline around here so I guess I got a little distracted.

The bell rang and while Joey pocketed the rat for future pranking endeavours, I made a beeline for Callum.

'So are you going to ask Lisa out?'

'Hello, Heather. I'm good. How are you?'

'Yeah, yeah. So?' I was an amateur at setting people up but I've never been fond of losing.

'I don't really go for shy girls,' Callum muttered.

'You'd rather go out with Bree?'

'N-yes, but there's got to be a happy medium.'

'This is Anonymity, CJ. There's not many girls to choose from.'

'You might be right. At least she won't put up much resistance.'

'That's not funny.'

'Hey, if she won't let me get to know her verbally, I'll just have to get to know her in my own special way.'

'I don't think you own that special way.'

'Shows what you know. I bought it at Hugh Hefner's auction for twenty bucks and a broken watch.'

'Bargain.'

'Well, it wasn't exactly mint condition.'

Like I said, tangents. Better get used to those. 'So that's a yes?'

'I guess. But I can't promise more than one date.'

I smiled. An above-average grade and a successful match-up all in the same hour.

'Don't you smile,' Callum said. 'I'm only going because Steve said Mona worships me. That's kind of flattering, right?'

I was about to counter this argument when Akala came up to me with a question about the 'F' key. We are a white-ass town. Don't get me wrong, none of us treated her any differently. After all, her race was in this country first. But it must have been weird for her, being the only dark-skinned person in the entire school. I once asked her about this and she joked that eight percent of the school was aboriginal. There was a loneliness behind it but it obviously didn't bother her enough to whine about so that was the last time I brought it up.

I'd barely finished answering the question when Akala spotted Chelsea and hurried after her. Patience was something Akala was lacking but hanging out with Chelsea for too long will do that to a person's manners.

'Hello?' Callum repeated. 'Is that flattering or what?'

'Oh, who cares?' I said and walked off to the drinking fountain. I don't know if I've mentioned this but I try to avoid as much of maths period as I can.

'Hey, that's a fake father you're talking to,' Callum shouted after me.

'Well, I've had enough of fake fathers for one lifetime,' I would have retorted if I was quicker on my feet and more open about my feelings.

At the drinking fountain, which was pretty much a tap turned upside down, I heard a familiar rev. I glanced over the small fence to see Vince's wheels tearing asphalt around the corner. It was obviously him, not only because he owned the only motorcycle in town but because he never wore a helmet and his hair was easy to spot considering it hadn't been cut in four years. The bike was a birthday gift from his father who had taken it out of impound. Given that he was the only official cop in a town with a low crime rate, the sheriff could make his own rules. Everyone called Papa Anchorage the Sheriff, even though his official title was something like Police Chief. This is mainly because he doesn't work out of a police station but rather the family home, which just has a sign saying 'Police' on the gate.

I hadn't seen Vince all day so I had to presume he was just taking a lap around the block before making his unfashionably late entrance. Maybe it was the perk of being the Sheriff's son, but he was the only student who got away with not wearing a uniform to school and, and this is just an assumption based on his odour, go days without showering.

Sure enough a minute later he came speeding into the school lot, paring his bike on the side of the oval. 'Shouldn't you be in class, Muse?' he said, barging between me and the tap and splashing water under his armpits.

'Guess you're rubbing off on me,' I said, watching his bike fall to the ground.

'Bloody kickstand,' Vince muttered. Unsurprisingly, he hadn't brought a schoolbag. His outlook on class work was something along the lines of 'I don't need to write anything down, I just sit back and let the knowledge soak in.' His grades aren't much worse than the rest of ours but I'm relatively sure only manual labour jobs lie in his future.

Vince stretched his arm through the gap between the fountain and the wall and retracted it, now carrying a packet of cigarettes, a lighter and a rather nasty-looking spider bite. He didn't even consider offering me one before lighting up himself. But I'm not a big fan of spider bites.

'So Jackson still putting in his due diligence?' Vince said, barely comprehendible with the durry between his teeth.

'His drawing is getting better. He's thinking about looking for a partner to write a comic with.'

'I meant in the sack department.'

'I didn't realise people still used the word "sack".'

'This is Anonymity, Muse. People still use the word "hip" unironically.'

Then the only person in town who wore a suit made a beeline for us. 'The fuzz,' I warned.

'No, I ain't heard anyone say that for ages,' Vince shook his head. I pointed to Principal Begley marching squarely in our direction. In one fluid motion, Vince flicked his cigarette into the drinking fountain and tossed a piece of chewing gum in his mouth.

The balding, middle-aged warden stopped in front of us. 'You lost?' Vince asked before Mr Begley got a chance to.

Mr Begley had to settle for his other conversation starter. 'Shouldn't you two be in class?'

Vince blew a bubble in response.

'What he said,' I agreed.

'Yes, very philosophically put, Vincent,' Mr Begley said without changing his expression or tone. One of the downsides of being in a small school is that everyone knows who you are, so it's hard to weasel out of trouble. 'Park your motorcycle on school grounds again and you and I are going to have a serious conversation.'

Vince saluted, while continuing to chew, and walked around our principal towards the classroom. Without trying to sound too disrespectful, Mr Begley does take longer to walk around than most people. I went to follow but not before being barricaded by Mr Begley's step to the left. 'Heather, at least try to be punctual. Ms Eyre says you're always sneaking in after the bell.'

'You rather I charge in and disrupt the class?'

'I'd rather you show up when everyone else does.'

'Sounds like we need to make a compromise. I'll show up to all my other classes on time and will skip maths altogether so Ms Eyre doesn't get confused about the addition of one kid when she turns around.'

'Heather, do I need to warn you about...'

'Sir, I'm trying to get to class and you're stopping me. Do you want me to stop learning? Besides, I'd hate to think you're lecturing me harder just because none of my parents are officers of the law.'

'Just get to class.'

'You're really obsessed with this "education" thing. Anyone ever tell you that?' I pivoted around the last of Mr Begley and went off to attempt equations.

I'd barely made it to the other classroom when someone hissed my name from around the side. I was starting to wonder whether anyone actually showed up that period or if Ms Eyre was inside, talking to the captive audience of an empty room. All the same, any excuse for a break after the thirty metre stride from the fountain was welcome so I glanced around to make sure the punctuality police weren't still watching and ducked between the buildings. There, standing with one foot against the wall like a model on a mechanic's calendar, was one of the Fowlers. Not surprising to those of you paying attention, it was Bree, given that skipping even a moment of schoolwork would cause Mary's brain to collapse. Still, it was unusual for anyone to hang out by themselves in the shadows, with the possible exception of Lisa.

'You're a guy, right?' Bree's conversational skills could use some tweaking.

'No.'

'Come on, Heather. You don't care about fashion, all your friends are guys-'

'Not all my friends are guys. I have sex with guys.'

'So did my grandpa, that didn't make him a girl.'

'Where is this going, Bree?' I had a pretty good idea where it was going. Bree was boy-crazy. When she wasn't talking about being with boys, she was talking about how to get them. Of course, she didn't need my help getting them, unless she wanted advice about hooking up with Joey, which wouldn't make her a particularly good sister. And even though she'd dragged me out of sight and was calling me a man, I didn't think she was interested in me being her next fling. Which meant she was only starting with a topic she was comfortable talking about before getting to the point. While I tried to keep my interactions with Steve's ex-bounce buddy as limited as possible, there were three things I knew revolved around Bree's world: sex, God and the ludicrous dream of being the first person to surf a comet around Saturn, though to be fair that last one may have changed since third grade. Considering I wasn't an expert on any of those things, she must have needed to talk to me about something I did know. Nobody but me cared about history, so that left deductive reasoning or dysfunctional families. 'What did your dad do?'

'He doesn't have time for me anymore.'

'You still see him every day?'

'Well, yeah.'

'Then what's the problem?'

'What could be more important than his daughters?'

'He runs a dozen businesses. Why are you hiding back here?'

'I'm worried about Mary. I think she needs a male influence.'

'She's got Joey.'

'Oh, yeah, there's a role model.'

I failed to see Bree's logic. If anything, she was the Fowler sister who needed a steady influence. But that didn't seem like an appropriate thing to say aloud. 'What's wrong with Mary? Too overachieving? Not as pretty as you? Too self-disciplined?'

'I don't know,' Bree said helpfully. 'She's just different.'

'She doesn't seem different.'

'I've known her my whole life. Something's going on with her.'

'So talk to her.'

'Nah.' Bree was getting on my last nerve so I took the drastic measure of turning around and attending class. Bree walked in a few minutes later, glaring as she walked past me.

Class was unusually quiet. Ms Eyre was marking homework. Mary was writing down all the equations that were up on the blackboard. Bree was watching this with undue concern. Chelsea was taking selfies with her phone. Akala sat behind her, braiding Chelsea's hair. Vince was at the back of the class, leaning back on his chair, with his feet on the desk. Steve was scribbling in his book, but from where I was seated, the strokes of his pen were not in the shapes of letters or numbers, unless there is a mathematical symbol in the shape of a caveman. Bree occasionally put her arm around him in some vague attempt at getting back at me, but he shrugged her hand off without looking up. Brian and Callum were tossing a tennis ball back and forth from opposite sides of the room. At one stage Callum fumbled and the ball hit the wall. He quickly scooped it up into his lap before Ms Eyre looked up, saying a bird flew into the window. The second the teacher looked back down again, they were back at it. Lisa was always quiet, so that wasn't a big surprise. To be honest, I have no idea what she was doing but it was probably leering at Callum, practicing her apathetic expression or possibly even studying. Joey was the biggest surprise. He wasn't even trying to disrupt the class. I wanted to ask him whether there was any truth to Bree's insinuation that I was a guy, but he was in deep concentration. I had to assume he'd already found a way of getting the dissected rat into Callum's lunchbox so he wasn't contemplating the prank war. I'd never seen him engrossed in any subject matter at school, but there was always the possibility Mary was making him pay attention. Any other day, I would have prodded Joey and gotten the answer out of him but it was too quiet to speak unnoticed and he didn't look like he wanted to be disturbed. I stared at the blackboard and tried to make sense of all the nonsense scrawled across it, but watching everyone else do nothing was far more interesting.

I must have zoned out more than I realised because it wasn't until later that I found the note. I got home and tipped my backpack upside down. The textbooks, stationery and half-eaten sandwich fell out onto my bed. That's when I noticed something flutter out of my maths book.

It was a torn scrap of graph paper with a few jagged lines depicting the rise and fall of something that started with 'hospita'. I could only imagine what it was referring to. But common sense told me to turn the paper. I read the note. Meet me at the Runaway House.

The Runaway House is an ingenious system. I used to go there all the time when my parents broke up. It's an abandoned house towards the end of town. In a rare unselfish moment, Vince got a key made for the front door and left it behind the bulb of the porch light. Every student knows about the house, so whenever they have trouble at home or get into an argument or just want to be alone, they can go to the house for as long as they want. If the key isn't in the light fixture, it means someone is already using the house and you have to give them their space. First in, best dressed. Nobody can stay there too long because there is no electricity connected, there is a strict no-toilet policy and none of us can afford to live off diner food for more than a few days. Besides, it isn't in the spirit of the sharehouse to hog it. We'd have the occasional party in there, using the music from our laptops and drinks from an esky. It's a privacy paradise. Of course, it's primarily used to hook up, which is why the bed and couch are the only two pieces of furniture, bar a small bookshelf, with an assortment of donations ranging from my interesting history texts, Joey's comics, Steve's fantasy novels and someone's pornography stash. My money's on Bree.

When I arrived, there were a few bags of chips in the kitchen. Whoever finishes them off is supposed to restock but the cupboard is empty the majority of the time. I grabbed a packet of salt-and-vinegar and sat down on the couch. I didn't know who the mystery note-giver was, but since I didn't recognise the handwriting, it was either Brian or Lisa, neither of whom I was keen to hook up with.

Just when I was beginning to curse the note for neglecting to specify a time, the door swung open. Well, swung is a misleading word. The doorknob gets stuck quite a lot, so I heard the jiggling for several seconds before the door co-operated, so I was already looking in the right direction when Brian walked in, closing it quickly behind him. I'd never seen him so paranoid and I'd seen him eat eight special brownies at Vince's garage sale last year. He'd been acting normal in class so I wasn't sure what had happened since.

'Chip?' I offered.

Brian shook his head as he sat next to me on the couch. 'Coach has got me on a strict diet regiment to maximise my performance on the field.' Brian's coach also happens to be his mother but he always refers to her as Coach because I guess Mummy weakens his jock status.

'Beer?' I said, pulling a stubby out from under the couch.

'Hit me,' Brian replied, snatching it out of my hands and opening it swiftly with his knuckle. Nobody can put away alcohol like Brian Keating. He has the metabolism of Mustafa Atatürk. Still, you can always count on him to be the life of the party. The minute things die down, he'll pull some stunt, ranging from a backflip to four backflips.

'Thrown in your jersey for a benchwarmer yet?' I haven't spent much time with Brian. He's a nice guy. We just move in different circles. So the only memory worth noting between the two of us is the time I walked in on him shedding a tear watching Rudy, so that's always my conversation starter. This was the first time one of us had actually requested a meeting, outside of a basic party invite, but it seemed rude to bluntly ask why he'd brought me here.

Brian was still in his sweaty gym clothes so it was safe to assume it wasn't a hook-up. He didn't have any problem with confidence so I couldn't imagine he'd come to me for dating tips. It's no secret that he had a crush on Chelsea. I heard he'd dropped several sitters over the season because he was busy staring at her in the cheerleading section. Of course I heard this from Chelsea so the information isn't without its asterisks. And I get the sense that Chelsea isn't unwelcoming to the prospect, if it's possible for her to actually have adoration for someone other than herself. People don't take four hour round trips just to dance for ten minutes. Then again, Chelsea does love attention. And it doesn't account for her turning Brian down on at least two occasions.

Anyway, it was that fateful afternoon that Brian decided to drop a bombshell. 'I'm gonna run for school captain.'

'You're not school captain?' My jaw dropped to the floor.

'Anonymity High's never had one.'

'Anarchy!' I declared, resisting the urge to spit beer over the floor.

Brian smirked. It was nice for my snark not to be ignored for once. 'Dunno why you're surprised. We don't even have a mayor.'

That's true. Anonymity is severely lacking in the leadership department. We have a quasi-sheriff, the Fowlers practically run the business side of town and the only time our town is even brought up is in the annual jurisdiction disputes between Fortitude and the capital. Let's just say neither of them wanted anything to do with us. The last time the mayor of Fortitude visited Anonymity, I was in diapers and didn't even get a kiss on the forehead. It was just as well. I've seen his photo in the paper and I'd be as scared of catching germs from him as he was of contracting them from our hick town.

My companion clicked his fingers in front of my eyes to snap me out of my internal recap. 'Coach says I need to get my extracurriculars up for my future and stuff.' I would have mocked Brian for believing in the extracurricular myth but I didn't want to get on the bad side of someone who could become the most powerful student in the school, as if he didn't hold that position in everything other than title already. 'You're gonna help me run.'

'I don't think you need help in that arena. Athletically or campaignally.'

'Come on, Heather. It'll be boring by myself.'

'Why don't you get Chelsea to do it? She's an actual people person.'

'But then it would just seem like an excuse...' Brian hesitated. 'For her to run.' As obvious as the cover-up was, it was accurate.

'Alright,' I shrugged. 'I'll be the Merlin to your King Arthur. The Tom Watson to your Alexander Bell. The Baron Von Stuben to your George Washington.'

'There a reason you're a dude in all these scenarios?'

'But if you get impeached, don't expect me to put a spin on it.'

'Cool.' Brian wringed his hands.

'Brian. Was there something else?'

'You reckon I've got a chance of winning?'

It took a lot of effort not to be condescending at that moment. Brian was running unopposed and he was afraid of losing. I had no idea how important everyone's opinion was to him. 'You're not very perceptive, are you?' I'm not entirely sure my tone wasn't patronising but my non-response seemed to do the trick.

'I'm proprioceptive,' the insignificant presidential nominee replied, flashing a grin. It was my turn to look stupid and I must have because Brian quickly clarified. 'Coach is a science teacher. Some of it's bound to rub off on me.'

There's something to be said for ambition. The guy whose sole goal in life was to play footy with his mates had discovered it and I was sitting on the sidelines eating paste. Eh, ambition's probably overrated.