| About the author: | At various points Christopher Brookland has been a sculptor, a shelf-stacker in Tesco, an artist's model, a library assistant and the manager of a video shop in Wimbledon. Somehow he has also found the time to write lyrics, poetry, books and stories. In his spare time he shouts a lot! |
"Why are we here?" "To be punished." "Why? What did we do?" "Nothing. Someone just doesn't like us." Back then we moved house regularly, there was nothing unusual about it. A pattern had been established, well worn but reliable. Every four months or so we packed our things into the strawberry-red VW Microbus and got driven to some new house in a new place with new people and another school. The schools were all pretty similar. For a while the other children tolerated me, but from the start I'd be on the lookout for the sure signs that this honeymoon period was coming to an end. It always did. After a week or so a sudden and intense resentment in the other children would burn its way to the surface. They always pushed me about for the same reasons; because my head was full of dinosaurs all the time and my knees were covered in bramble scratches and I always got picked last when teams were chosen for playground football. Cat waded in to help, and from then on it would be her and me against them all. It didn't faze us. We were used to it. Cat was older than me, tall for her age, with a face like Angel Delight and a way of looking at you that made you think she knew stuff about you even you didn't know, which she probably did. Where my eyes strained behind milk bottle-thick lenses, her gaze was intense and unwavering and without pity of any sort. Nobody pushed Cat about, but then no one liked her either. Cat never bothered with friends. She just didn't see the point. Soon we'd be gone, she figured, and what use would friends be then? I felt guilty that, in helping me, she only brought more trouble on herself. I always felt it was my fault. Most things, I thought back then, were my fault. | 
