Falling in Love with Vinnie Sparrow Inside and Out
Vinnie Sparrow regularly turns his eyelids inside out on the playground at break time. We squeal with grossed-out delight as he chases us with his sherbet-furred tongue sticking out and those pale pink slivers of skin half covering his sky-blue irises. It snows for four whole days in February, and a group of us goes to the top field to slide down with bin liners borrowed from the custodian’s cleaning cupboard. Vinnie loses control of his stolen canteen tray half way down and tumbles into the wire fence at the back of the football pitch. The packed snow drift behind the goal is splattered with crimson. I clutch him, and stare into the chasm of his gashed cheek, past the shiny amber jewels of fat globules, to the blank white smoothness of his jaw bone. Until Mrs Smithfield says they really need to get him to the hospital.
