Heather Milton, aged 13 years

They were still there when I came back from taking Fred for a walk in the dunes.   Two huddled figures on the beach, wearing a school uniform that I did not recognise.  They were watching the breakers pound the shore – they weren’t running around or talking or eating, they were just staring at the green-brown sea.  And it was weird, I thought, because all the schools around here had broken up a couple of weeks ago. Fred trotted over to say hello and to sniff around. The girl ignored him and turned around to glare at me with dark, accusing eyes, while the boy, who was much bigger, continued to observe the murky waves. Suddenly Fred got spooked and started to growl.  I trudged across the sand and grabbed him by the collar but even as I pulled him away he just kept on growling. It was then, in a flash of recognition, that I saw the boy’s face.  I should have obeyed my first instinct and run, run like there was no tomorrow, but I didn’t.

“What you staring at?” snapped the girl. …

I"Oh," I stumbled, my stomach jolting. I hadn’t been expecting either of them to say anything. In my head I’d seen them as two mysterious souls, enchanted forever to guard the vague line where the murky ice-cold water crept up the sand. But that was just my overactive imagination again - they seemed to be perfectly normal people, the same as me. If you could call me ‘normal’, that is. I knew I had a lot of problems, but nothing particularly intriguing or exciting like magical powers or special talents. So maybe I was normal- too normal.

"Well?" the girl demanded. "Stop gawking at us like we’re animals in a zoo. What’s wrong with you?"

I felt my cheeks blushing rosy pink with embarrassment. She didn’t seem to be the type of girl to be under a mystical enchantment at all, unless it was some kind of curse forced upon her by an evil sorceress with a crooked nose and long gnarled fingernails.

I liked fairy tales a lot. They provided a good escape from reality into a happier, more optimistic environment. That’s the one thing you can always rely on with fairytales - they have a happy ending.

As cliché as it sounds, I found it reassuring somehow.

What with my mum being incredibly unsympathetic and ignorant of my condition, things at home weren’t great, so I spent most of my free time in the town library. It was warm and comforting in there, and when I was sat busily occupied reading it felt like nothing could touch me. My school was small, dull and simple, so there were hardly any books at all upon its dusty shelves, just essential science textbooks and thick, tatty encyclopaedias. But the town library was overflowing with books, so I went there as often as I could - after school, at weekends, at midday when they let us out of school to go get our own lunch. I stayed in there, tucked up in a comfy corner with a good book, until half past five when I had to start walking home for dinner. Mealtimes in our house were a very formal affair. Me and my mum sat down at precisely six o’clock on the dot to whichever microwave meal she bought from Tesco on her way home from work. If I was late, she would start without me. She usually ate as quickly as she could without choking,then shut herself up in her study so that she didn’t have to talk to me. I tried asking her why she avoided me so much, but she was very vague and wouldn’t give me a straight answer. I wasn’t fooled - I knew the real reason. She didn’t like it that I wasn’t her simple and uncomplicated daughter Polly any more. Because Tara was a part of me too. My mum didn’t like Tara one bit.

"Who’s eating dinner with me today, then?" she would always ask stiffly when I returned from the library. More often than not it was Polly sitting down at the table with her, but sometimes Tara took my place. Mum wasn’t very understanding about it at all. She refused to talk to Tara and called my psychiatrist whenever my alter ego made an appearance. Sometimes Ruby was there, and sometimes she wasn’t. Ruby never stayed as long as Tara, and she never did anything as drastic.

Ruby was fairly tame, almost nicer than me, probably because she was a few years younger. Mum knew about Ruby but mostly she just ignored her. But Tara was bossy and boisterous and Mum wouldn’t stay in her presence for more than a few seconds after she had registered her arrival.

"Why are you looking at us like that?" the boy on the beach demanded, his large hands digging into the soft sand. It was starting to get dark, and the sea water sparkled with the luminous glow of evening light.

I knew I should have run away. I should have left as soon as I recognised his face. I’d definitely seen him somewhere before, but I couldn’t place quite where. That was usually a bad sign. More often than not it meant that Tara had had something to do with it.

The girl frowned, the sea breeze sweeping her dark hair this way and that. She irritably lifted up a dainty hand to brush the strands away from her face. She looked ever so pretty; I was somewhat jealous of her neatly-proportioned features- large watchful eyes, defined cheekbones, neatly pouted lips. Her eyebrows were immaculately shaped, as if she had spent hours in front of her mirror with a pair of tweezers. Yet she didn’t look like she was wearing much make-up, and if she was then she was very subtle about it. She had a certain air about her, as if she knew she was intimidating and enjoyed it.

But the boy seemed to be incredibly different to his companion.

Where she was pale and gaunt, he was tanned and glowing. His hair was floppy and more fair than was usually seen alongside his skin tone, his smooth fringe cutting perfectly across his face, obscuring one beautiful eye (or at least I assumed it would have been beautiful, if the other eye was anything to go by). The girl was slender but the boy had a larger build. I myself was neither; I’d always been told I was exactly in the middle, not fat and not thin. My hair was uninteresting and dull, hanging limp and straight- cut around my shoulders, plain mousy-brown in colour.

Fred barked loudly, reminding me of his presence.

"Sorry," I stammered nervously. "About my dog."

I tried to tug him away but he wouldn’t co-operate.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" the boy asked briskly, his eyes fixed

on me in suspicion. The girl looked even less welcoming. In fact, they both seemed quite hostile.

"I... I don’t know," I mumbled. "I’m Polly."

The girl squinted, her curved eyebrows quirking. "You look exactly like somebody else we saw," she remarked, as if this was supposed to interest me somehow. "Only she wasn’t called Polly."

I knew exactly who they had met without even asking them, but I had to anyway. "Oh?" I breathed. "When... when was that?"

The boy’s brow creased. "About a week ago. My sisters and I are new to this town. We asked for directions. She wouldn’t give them to us."

I winced. I remained silent because I wanted him to stop talking, but he didn’t seem to need a prompt to continue. "We haven’t seen our sister since."

Both of their eyes were watching me fixedly, as if I had them under the spell. As if I were the sorceress that had bestowed the curse of unkindness upon them.

They didn’t understand. It was Tara. It was all Tara. Tara was the sorceress, the witch, the villain. Ruby was a sweet little fairy.

Most of the people who knew about her found her irritating but she was harmless. And as for me, Polly... I was a frog. The kind of frog that none of the princes wanted to kiss because they didn’t know which princess I would turn into.

"You wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?" the girl asked sweetly, as if she were trying to pretend that they didn’t suspect anything of me at all.

"No," I answered truthfully. I didn’t know where their sister had gone - though I was certain Tara did. But Tara wasn’t here, and she probably wouldn’t tell them even if she was. She would just smirk nastily and tell them they would be seeing their sister very, very soon.

"You’re lying," the girl accused, getting to her feet so that we were on the same level. "You’re lying, aren’t you?"

That’s why I knew I should have run away as soon as I made eye contact with them. It wasn’t for my sake, it was for theirs.

Because I knew exactly what was going to happen.

"That’s an incredibly rude assumption," Tara sneered. "I don’t appreciate people being rude to me."

"Who do you think you are?" the girl wanted to know. She seemed to rapidly be growing angrier and angrier.

Normally I hate questions like those, because I’m never entirely sure of the correct answers. But Tara knew exactly who she was, and she wasn’t afraid to tell people. She was the wicked witch, the cunning sorceress, the evil villain.

"I’m Tara," she declared, smirking slightly. "The least you could do is remember my name."

They looked taken-aback by her change of character, and this made Tara grin smugly.

Heather Milton