When People Burn

Chapter 1
A teenager, 17-year old Mairead O'Creesh, was seen wearing a poppy, she was in Belfast,, or what her late father called it, the City of the Poisonous Tree.

Her school was St. Peter's Catholic High School.

Despite the school being in an nationalist area, she had no problems making friends and a few parents sent their Protestant children there too.

Mairead walked inside the school gates, her teachers were very friendly, and were very open minded.

Tómas glared at her, unlike her friends, Tómas was very bigoted, rude, and was Angliphobic, hated Irish people of English descent.

During lunch, she read about WWI, Tómas came up to her.

"Take that bloody poppy pin off, this is a Catholic school, we don't commerorate Prod things." He said to her.

Mairead had always hated Tómas, the hatred started when they were at 2006's Easter Rising parade in Dublin, when her father came back with a souvineer Union Jack flag that he got from a Somme parade, and he began to bully her.

"You have no reason to hate the British whatsoever, We may have been born in 1993, but, You were born when they started losing support, I was not born back in 1916." Mairead said.

Unlike Tómas, Mairead, was very intelligent and loved reading books.

The teachers went up to the two.

"Tómas, leave Mairead alone, let her commerorate the Eniskillen bombing, you don't know what the people of Eniskillen went through." A female teacher said.

"Not until she takes that off." He hissed.

At the end of school, Mairead's poppy pin was broken, her hair ripped, and her uniform covered in chewing gum, she cried in her mother, Sinead's arms.

She always came home crying.

Since her husband died a year ago, she had difficulty raising her bullied daughter alone.

"Oh, your poppy pin, it's okay, I'll get you a new one." She said.

Chapter 2: Life is taken.
On the next day, Tómas continued the bullying, when they were learning about sectarianism, Tómas disrupted the class when Mairead wanted to give her speech on the poppy.

"GO BACK TO ENGLAND WHERE YOU BELONG! YOU PROTESTANT W****!" Tómas shouted.

Even classmates from Republican neighbourhoods looked disgusted with his behavior, a male gently went up and rubbed her shoulder in a sympathetic manner, one, Patrick, went up to embrace her.

Patrick knew he was taught better than this, he never bullied anyone.

He knew his uncle was killed by the UVF, but he never used his death to get in the way.

Chapter 3: Kill me now......
Mairead was reading about the Easter Rising, she loved it, it helped her relax, her mother bought a lot of memorabillia for her, like books, poems by the leaders, and even biographies.