Chapter One
This is a story about me: Cat Parkes Pérez. My mum just moved me and my great-aunty Jacinta from Perth to Canberra, our national capital and the ‘political beating heart of Australia’. Or so they say on the news. I left behind my friends, my school, my home – even my favourite taco place – to come here.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my mum. Everybody loves her. Well, maybe not everyone. There’s a group of people here – teenagers like me – called Action Uprising. I can see them outside my window right now, standing in the street, waving their signs and chanting their slogans. They’re protesting against the government’s climate policy, which totally stinks, by the way.
I should be out there with them. Instead, I’m sitting in a shiny government car, part of a convoy of other shiny government cars on their way to Parliament House. We pull up at a fancy set of gates, protected by a uniformed police officer. Moments later, the gates are open and we have arrived at The Lodge, the official residence of the Prime Minister of Australia.
And my new home. That’s because the Prime Minister just happens to be my mum.
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