But Mr Walden was a good guy. He only made me stand there a minute, under all those stares, and then he told me to take a seat.

This sounds like a simple thing, right? Just go and take a seat. But you see, there were two seats. One was next to this really pretty tanned girl, with thick, curly honey-blonde hair. The other was way in the back, behind a girl with hair so white, and skin so pink, she could only be an albino.

No, I am not kidding. An albino.

Two things influenced my decision. One was that when I saw the seat in the back, I also happened to see that the windows, directly behind that seat, looked out across the school parking lot.

OK, not such an inspiring view, you might say. But beyond the parking lot was the sea.

I am not kidding. This school, my new school, had a view of the Pacific that was even better than the one in my bedroom since the school was so much closer to the beach. You could actually see the waves from my homeroom’s windows. I wanted to sit as close to the window as possible.

The second reason I sat there was simple: I didn’t want to take the seat by the tan girl and have the albino girl think I’d done it because I didn’t want to sit near anyone as weird-looking as she was. Stupid, right? Like she’d even care what I did. But I didn’t even hesitate. I saw the sea, I saw the albino, and I went for it.

As soon as I sat down, of course, this girl a few seats away snickered and went, under her breath, but perfectly audibly, ‘God, sit by the freak, why don’t you.’

I looked at her. She had perfectly curled hair and perfectly made-up eyes. I said, not talking under my breath at all, ‘Excuse me, do you have Tourette’s?’

Mr Walden had turned around to write something on the board, but the sound of my voice stopped him. Everybody turned around to look at me, including the girl who’d spoken. She blinked at me, startled. ‘What?’

‘Tourette’s Syndrome,’ I said. ‘It’s a neurological disorder that causes people to say things they don’t really mean. Do you have it?’

The girl’s cheeks had slowly started turning scarlet. ‘No.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘So you were being purposefully rude.’

‘I wasn’t calling you a freak,’ the girl said, quickly.

‘I’m aware of that,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m only going to break one of your fingers after school, instead of all of them.’

She spun around real fast to face the front of the classroom. I settled back into my chair. I don’t know what everybody started buzzing about after that, but I did see the albino’s scalp – which was plainly visible beneath the white of her hair – turn a deep magenta with embarrassment. Mr Walden had to call everyone to order, and when people ignored him, he slammed his fist down on his desk and told us that if we had so damned much to say, we could say it in a thousand-word essay on the battle at Bladensburg during the War of 1812, double-spaced, and due on his desk first thing tomorrow morning.