‘Mama, my feet are cold.’ ‘Come warm your little toes by the fire, darling.’ I’ve always had cold feet. Colder than anyone else’s. Though not corpse-cold, but enough to have to keep wearing thrice the layers of socks as anyone else during winter, and occasionally during the warmer months. When I became a teenager, my cold feet syndrome kept me from joining the others in the pool, fearing I would catch a case of frostbite. Or rather, just about anything that required removing my shoes, basically. ‘Why are her toes purple?’ ‘They look like they’re about to fall off.’ ‘Maybe she’s a zombie.’ Or rather, I was just afraid. Of everyone else. It wasn’t as though I had no friends. I made plenty. There was a girl, Marie. She was just as different as I was. She had cold hands, like dead fish. And another, whose name was Lydia, had a complexion so pale, she could’ve very well been a vampire. Together, we set our own rules and ab...