‘Weirdo’. Their shouts and catcalls echoed in my ears as I made my way home. I had half a mile to walk and every step was heavy, leaden, it seemed like I was walking a gauntlet of misery. For I was not alone, never alone. My tormentors wouldn’t just leave me, oh no. Around the corner by McAlister’s Hardware, the old store festooned with pots and pans, tools and pieces of odd shaped machinery, along the short row of decaying businesses, a couple of empty shops, the diner, the hairdressers and then past Nathan’s Wood, named after some bloody Civil War battle. They said that the souls of the dead walked the wood at night, but I doubted it, dead was dead. Every Monday afternoon when Mom was doing her Yoga class, or whatever silly trend she and her cronies were into these days, I had to walk home. There was no bus, we lived on a quiet country lane that was well away from the bus routes. ‘They’ knew the score, had latched on very early, knew which day I would be easy meat for them. ‘They’ made sure that they were ready for me, for the ‘weirdo’. Trouble was, I did feel different, knew I was different. But how? I’d spent my whole life trying to work that one out.

“Hello, Claire.”

‘They’ were here.

Stella Ryan stepped out in front of me, her pale blue eyes flashed with angry spite. “Where’re you going, Claire?”

I sighed. Jesus, not again, not every week! “I’m going home, Stella.”

“Yeah? That’s nice, ain’t it, James?”