The kids laugh, but not the nice kind of laughing. The mean kind that makes my stomach hurt.
"How old are you, baby?" the red-haired girl asks, stepping closer. "Five? Six?"
"I'm almost nine," I say, lifting my chin. "And I'm not a baby."
"Eight and still playing with stuffed animals," the blonde girl snickers. "That's pathetic."
I want to run home, but my feet won't move. These kids are just like the kids at my old school who used to whisper about how my clothes came from the thrift store and how Dad never came to the school fairs.
"Can I... can I play on the swings?" I ask, my voice smaller than I want it to be.
"These areourswings," the red-haired girl says proudly, folding her arms. "You can't just show up and think you belong here."
"But they're not really yours," I say, confused. "Mom says they're for everyone."
The boy with dirty hair laughs. "Wrong answer, princess."
Before I can react, hands shove me hard. I stumble backward, my feet tangling together, and crash to the ground. Pain shoots up my leg as my knee scrapes against the rough asphalt. Sparkles flies from my arms and lands in the mud with a squelch.
"Oops," the red-haired girl says, not sounding sorry at all.
Tears sting my eyes, but I blink them back. I won't cry in front of them. Just like Mom never cries in front of Dad. But when the boy reaches for Sparkles, something hot rises up in the back of my throat.
"Don't touch her!" I scramble forward on my hands and scraped knees, ignoring the sting.
"What's this thing made of, anyway?" He holds Sparkles up by one dripping leg, examining her like she's a dead bug. "Looks pretty flammable."
"Give her back!" I lunge for my unicorn, but he holds her higher. He's too tall for me to reach.
"Maybe we should see how well she burns," he says, grinning at his friends. "Bet she'd go up real nice."
"Please," I whisper, and I hate how my voice breaks. "Please don't hurt her."
The kids laugh harder, and I know I'm about to lose the only thing that makes me feel safe in this horrible new place. I'm about to start crying for real when a shadow falls over all of us.
He'shuge.
Bigger than any kid should be.
I look up and up and up until I see a face that makes my breath catch in my throat.
The new boy standing behind me is tall enough to be in high school, but something about his eyes makes me think he's closer to my age. They're dark and serious, and hard to see behind his even darker hair, but they're not hard and sharp like a grown-up's, or even a big kid's. Scars crisscross his face in angry red lines, and the lower half of his face is covered by a black and white skull bandana like the ones I see hanging by the cash register at Walmart. One of the scars is so bad it pulls down the bottom lid on his left eye, and when he blinks slowly at the other kids, it doesn't close all the way.
He doesn't say anything. Doesn't move. Just stands there like a mountain, staring down at the kids who were hurting me.
The red-haired girl takes a step back. "Mind your own business, Tank."
Her voice is sharp, but it doesn't sound sure at all anymore. The other kids aren't standing as close to her as they were.
Tank.
The name fits him perfectly. He's big and solid and dangerous, like the tanks I saw at the war museum when Dad took us last year. I don't know why they'd make a whole museum for something so bad, but Dad was excited about it and I liked listening to him talk about the different exhibits. It's one of the only times we ever went out together as a family, even if we had to drive two hours to get there.
Tank still doesn't speak, but he takes one slow step forward. With that one step, he's in front of me now. The boy holding Sparkles drops her like she's on fire and backs away.
"We were just playing," the blonde girl says, her voice high and nervous.
Tank's eyes go from one kid to the next. I've never seen anyone look so scary without even trying. The kids who seemed so big and mean a minute ago suddenly look tiny. Tinier than me, even. They're shaking.
