Lily was lying on her stomach in the shrubbery at the outer recesses of the play area. None of the other three-year-olds had dared to venture into the long grass since Janie Williams had sworn she had seen it moving by itself when there hadn't been a wind.
Turning to her best friend, Lily smiled a rare smile. "I thought you weren't coming today." Her friend jerked his head in the direction of the other children, "I still don't understand why you aren't like the others. They're scared of me. I tried to talk to another little girl who looks a lot like you but she ran away screaming."
Lily's smile vanished and she clenched her small fists. "It isn't fair. You've never hurt them. You wouldn't hurt them. But they treat you worse than Tommy Heckler." Tommy Heckler was a boy who broke everyone's toys and seemed to wear fear like a cloak.
Her friend tilted his head very slightly to the side. Lily sighed, "I don't see why no one does anything. I don't understand it at all." She now squeezed her eyes shut, "I wish I was bigger. I wish I had power. The power to make people do things right."
Suddenly there was a scream. Sally the snitch was pointing at Lily's friend and screaming at the top of her lungs. "Stop it!" Shrieked Lily, panicking. But Sally just kept on screaming. Lily looked around for her only friend but he had dissolved into the grass and was nowhere to be seen.
Lily felt tears prick her eyes. He was the only one at this place who cared about things which actually mattered. The only one who didn't spend his days obsessing over things of absolutely no significance – such as whether there was a different Father Christmas for each country or whether he was actually one person who travelled all over the world in one night.
It all happened very fast. Her depression at her ridiculously immature classmates, her fear that she may never see her friend again, her anger at Sally for scaring him away all combined and it was as if she needed to manifest her feelings or explode. Grabbing a large stick from the ground, she took a menacing step towards Sally and struck her over the head. Hard.
