When I was seven, Melanie Harper from down the road said that my Daddy probably left us because I was so ugly. I never saw Mama so angry as she was that night.
"Where does she live, baby?" she demanded.
Melanie didn't show up for school the next day, and school was cancelled the day after that. We moved away three days later.
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Two days after my eighth birthday, a boy named Sam pulled my hair in the playground and then pushed me over, grazing my knee.
Again, Mama asked where he lived. Again, he vanished.
Again, we moved.
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Later that year, the boy who sat next to me in Math class copied off my test, and got us both disqualified for cheating. I was furious. I'd practiced hours for that test, and I told Mama so when I got home.
I told her that it wasn't fair, that the teacher wouldn't listen when I said it wasn't my fault, that the stupid boy refused to admit that it was him and not me. I raged all night, even after Mama left around midnight, and was only beginning to calm down when she got home just before dawn.
No-one saw either of them again. I didn't mind.
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When I was ten, my best friend Lizzie called me stupid and said that we were only friends because her mama had told her to be nice to the freak with one parent. This time, when Mama asked where she lived, I refused to tell her. She found her address in the directory instead, and though I pleaded with her not to go, she jumped in the car and left.
I didn't sleep a wink that night - and when morning came, I knew that Lizzie, too, had vanished.
I was right.
_
The police arrived to take Mama away yesterday. They'd finally found their link; on the night each child was murdered, Mama showed up on the doorstep of their house, with watery eyes and clenched fists. The bereaved parents said that she told them that they needed to keep a closer eye on their little monsters, that they should be grounded "for their own sakes". When the parents asked her to leave, she grew angry, and told them that they'd regret not teaching their kids better manners.
Well, it didn't take long after that for them to find the skeletons in her closet - and the ones in the basement, too. Five white skeletons, all lined up, moved faithfully from house to house as we fled across the country.
They took Mama away, and gave me to a lovely pair of foster parents. A real daddy, and a new mama who never asked where my bullies lived and never visited them in the middle of the night. It was ideal.
Poor Mama. Not one of those parents ever took her warnings seriously.
And how can she stop me now that she's behind bars?
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