“Is that true Alyssa?â€? Janice’s mother asked, turning to stare at me.

“N—no ma’m,â€? I stuttered. I turned to Janice, looked for support—surely she would tell the truth. But no, she was still pouting, and was now doing some sort of weird, sniffling thing with her nose. But there was something else different as well.

She was…green. Well, she wasn’t green exactly, but there was a sort of light surrounding her that was. The light that had formerly surrounded her—and almost everyone I knew, with a few exceptions—was gone, only to be replaced by that awful…greenness. Not that I didn’t like green: I did. There was just something…off, about this shade.

It made her look…wrong, I suppose. No longer happy, no longer vibrant, just…wrong. Everything was wrong.

Things just went downhill from there. Janice continued to insist that it was me, and her mother believed her. She sent me home, and told my mother that I was a ‘horrible little girl who deserved to be punished’.

I didn’t talk to Janice much after that.