Kaiden

It’s cute that she thinks we need her go ahead to teach someone a lesson. We’ve been teaching lessons since the day we started primary school. I offered Georgie Benton one of my crisps and she took the lot, before throwing them on the floor and stamping on them, making me cry.

I wasn’t crying over the crisps. Or even over the fact that Georgie didn’t return my first ever crush.

No, I was crying because that was the first time my mum had had enough money to buy crisps for me in months and I didn’t know when I’d next be so lucky to get any again. We weren’t even poor, per se, but my father was such a controlling arsehole he kept my mother and me on an incredibly tight leash.

And Georgie had laughed at my tears.

So Axel taught her a lesson.

He stole the teacher’s sharp, grown-ups only scissors from her desk when she was distracted, and cut off Georgie Benton’s entire ponytail. She’d been proudly bragging that she’d never had a haircut in her life.

When she realised and Robert Carter suggested it had just fallen off, and then Zie had offered to glue it back on for her before dumping a pot of pva over her head, she bawled her eyes out.

And I laughed. We all laughed.

She didn’t return to our school but I saw her a few weeks later with her hair shaved super short. After that, no one ever laughed at any of us again.

And now, no one will ever bother Peony again either.