“Hairy, airy, Sophie- four eyes, four eyes!”  

Every word is punctuated by a sharp slap, a swift kick, and a trickle of warm spit.

Then Mrs Maleigh appears on the porch, ringing the brass bell.

“Inside, everyone!”

The flushed tormentors scurry into the schoolroom, leaving Sophie Turner to sit up.

Snow powders her tattered coat.  She’s lost one of her precious winter gloves, but there’s no time to look for it.  She hurries after her classmates, knowing full-well why she is singled out.

The other children can smell it on her, the oddness.  She isn’t a townie.  She wears patchy old clothes and too-big boots.  Her frizzy black hair won’t sit in a sleek, fat plait like the other little girls’, and she has a pair of thick glasses like two telescopic lenses.  

As Miss Maleigh begins her lessons, mean fingers pinch one of Sophie’s old bruises.  She bites her lower lip.  Another pinch… and another, punctuated by giggles.  Then the fingers start on her hair.   One, two- three frizzy threads are yanked out by the roots.  
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