For Lorna
Mrs Campbell surveyed Year 3 with growing unease. Twenty-eight children sat in perfect rows, hands folded, identical smiles stretched across identical faces. The same grey eyes, the same sandy hair, the same pale complexion repeated twenty-eight times.
“Where’s your usual teacher?” she asked.
“Miss Davies is still here,” they chorused in perfect unison, their sing-song voices creating an eerie harmonic resonance.
“I don’t see her.”
“She got tired of looking like a grown-up,” little Sophie explained, though her face belonged to someone else entirely. “She wanted to stay with us forever.”
Mrs Campbell stepped backwards towards the door, but it had already closed.
“Don’t worry,” the children said as one, rising from their chairs. “You’ll like being young again. Miss Davies did, once she stopped screaming.”
Their identical faces began to shift, features rearranging themselves into hers.
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