Trudging through the snow, I look down at my feet. They're bare and red as a cherry, bleeding from the sharp stones hidden beneath the fluffy white snow. The birds cry above me. But soon they're gone, leaving me completely alone. My feet are aching, filled with the pain I should still feel in my heart. But I feel nothing there. And that's even worse.   It hasn't always been this lonely, or at least it didn't always feel lonely. I am an only child – meaning I have no one to talk to or understand my feelings. In nursery, I had no friends. I used to read books and try to talk to the other kids. But that was all. I never succeeded. But as a child, I didn't see it this way at all. I was oblivious to the reason why no one wanted to be my friend - I was a loser. Then I grew up and everything was fine, I guess. I had friends. Not many of them. Two of them, in fact. If you ever saw me in the playground, I'd be with them. They made me feel wanted and happy like I'd never felt before.   I first took a tumble - not in the literal sense, though - when I was in my fourth year of little school. I call it little because we were all short and puny. This was the year that I was picked on by a boy. The reason? Because I told him his markers smelled. Don't blame me, I meant that they smelled nice, but he didn't seem to understand. After that, though, everything went back to being rosy. Almost.   I also lost my best friend, a shorter blonde girl who was actually a few months older than me, to the class' famous... witches. They were “cool” and had boyfriends, and had my best friend's crush in their friendship group. And after years of rejecting her, her crush actually accepted her confession. It may sound lonely to lose your best friend to a boy. The boy that bullied me. But I still had my other friend and although I was still so very young, I was not a fool. We both knew that my best friend was going to end up broken hearted. And she did. She cut herself off from us for a whole six months, until her mum and mine got us talking again. And then she came ba