"Everyone knows that," the boy who'd first spoken added.

"Oh," I muttered. "Well, as I said, I'm new here, so I can't be expected to know things that everyone else knows, can I?" I smiled, pleased to have made such a clever point on my first day in school.

"Get stuffed, asswipe," the boy said in response, which wasn't exactly what I'd been expecting.

"Pardon?" I blinked.

"You 'eard." He squared up to me. He was about a head taller, dark-haired, with a nasty squint. I could knock the stuffing out of any human in the school, but I'd momentarily forgotten that, and backed away from him, unsure of why he was acting this way.

"Go on, Smickey," one of the other boys laughed. "Do 'im!"

"Nah," the boy called Smickey smirked. "He ain't worth it."

Turning his back on me, he resumed his conversation with the others as though nothing had interrupted it. Shaken and confused, I slouched away. As I turned the corner, out of human but not vampire hearing, I heard one of the girls say, "That guy's seriously weird!"

"See that bag he was carrying?" Smickey laughed. "It was the size of a cow! He must have half the books in the country in it!"

"He spoke weird," the girl said.

"And he looked even weirder," the other girl added. "Those scars and red patches of flesh. And did you see that awful haircut? He looked like somefing out of a zoo!"

"Too right," Smickey said. "He smelt like it too!"

The gang laughed, then talk turned to the TV programme again. Trudging up the stairs, clutching my bag to my chest, feeling very small and ashamed of my hair and appearance, I positioned myself by Mr. Chivers' door, hung my head, and miserably waited for the headmaster to show.

It had been a discouraging start, and though I liked to think things could only get better, I had a nasty feeling in the pit of my belly that they were going to get a whole lot worse!