I’m getting closer to them now, but they still haven’t seen me. They’re too busy talking and messing around with a couple of boys from the year above us. Then one of them spots me and says something I can’t hear. They all stare at me as I walk past. I think of Mum’s advice and imagine myself rising above them, far up into the sky like an angel, my delicate wings fluttering in the breeze. But it doesn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t. My cheeks go red.

“Here she is. The girl who pushed Alice Dawson in front of a train.”

I stop dead and swing round to face Melissa Davenport. I can’t let her get away with that. I just can’t.

“No, I didn’t! Alice was my best friend! I had a seizure, you know I did.”

“So you say,” she taunts. “We’ve only got your word for that.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Because you don’t want to go to prison,” she says.

Tears of anger prick the backs of my eyes. “You’re talking bollocks!” I say, and they all pretend to be shocked at my language, even though they say far worse things than that all the time.

Melissa steps toward me, a horrible mean expression on her face, but I stand my ground. I won’t let her get to me.

“Wash your mouth out with soap, you ginger freak!” she snarls in my face. Someone in the group sniggers and one of the older boys meows like a cat.

“Alice’s sister knows what kind of person you are.” Melissa sneers at me. “She says you’re evil. She knew it from the first time she set eyes on you. You were jealous of Alice coz she was prettier than you. She didn’t want to be friends with you anymore so you killed her. You might think you got away with it, but we know the truth. And so does he.” She points her index finger toward the sky.

I launch myself forward and yank her finger right back as far as it goes. She lets out a bloodcurdling scream and stumbles back. “She’s broken my finger. The evil bitch has broken my finger!”

“No, I fucking haven’t!”

“She has! She really has!”

—

The headmaster’s office always smells. Alice once joked it smelled of fart and aftershave, and the memory makes me smile.

“What’s so funny, Lizzie?”

“Nothing, sir. I was just thinking of something Alice used to say.”

He sighs deeply and laces his fingers together on top of his desk. “The last couple of months must have been awful for you,” he says, and before I know what’s happening, tears are streaming down my face.

Mr. Davis pushes a box of tissues toward me and waits while I wipe my eyes and blow my nose.