“Saffie!” yelled Victoria Cunningham, the girl who had single-handedly made Saffie’s school life a living nightmare ever since she’d started at St George’s High. Saffie ignored her and threw what was left of the contents of her locker into her backpack. Today wasn’t just the last day of term before the summer holidays, it was her fourteenth birthday, and all she wanted was to be able to leave school without having an egg cracked over her head. There were many cliques in St George’s Year 9, and Sapphire Sparkes wasn’t welcome in any of them. She was neither intelligent enough for the intellectuals nor cool enough for the slackers, she was too static for the sporties, not edgy enough for the goths and the neo-emos, and nowhere near beautiful enough for Victoria’s social elite. Because of this, she’d never managed to make a close connection with anyone, and had spent the majority of the last three years eating lunch alone, something Victoria liked to tease her for. It was ju