I was in the village, hunkering behind the tailor’s shop as a pack of other children threw stones at me. My forehead started bleeding, and the pain made me furious. I threw the rocks back at them and screamed as they ran. When I hit one of the girls in the head, I laughed. I was fighting boys in the Tumbledown schoolyard, no longer willing to wait until rocks were thrown. They pulled my hair and punched me, but I punched harder, and besides, I bit. The parents called me a wild animal when they came to retrieve my latest victim. “She’s half feral.” “She shouldn’t be allowed near the other
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