Other Alice by Michelle Harrison Read Free Book Online

two of us that was taken a couple of months ago.
    I put it down and looked round Alice’s room. Maybe it was because I wasn’t used to being there without her, but I felt her absence more strongly than ever. I was surrounded by her
things and yet without her the room was so hollow that it seemed as though a loud noise would echo.
    A memory of a story Alice had written last year came back to me. I looked over my shoulder, uneasy, but the attic was empty, of course.
    What if , I thought, the girl I’d seen was one of those things Alice had written about in that story? Those people who look exactly the same as someone else . It was a
funny word, one I’d never heard before that tale. Alice said everyone has one, somewhere in the world. Not a twin . . . a doggle something? Wait, no. A dopp  . . . doppelgänger.
    That story had stuck in my head. It had been about a boy who started seeing an exact version of himself in the town. At first, he’d wondered if he had a long-lost twin, but it turned out
to be his doppelgänger. Slowly, the doppelgänger took over his life, worming its way in and stealing the boy’s family and friends. In the end, the boy had saved himself only by the
use of a clever riddle proving that he was his real self.
    At the time, I’d loved it. Now, though, the thought of another Alice – an almost Alice – walking around was just creepy. Who was she? And did she know anything about
where the real Alice was?
    I turned the doppelgänger story over in my mind, picking at the threads of what Alice had told me. It still didn’t make sense. If it was a doppelgänger, then surely it’d be
pretending it was Alice, not that it wasn’t  . . . unless it was trying to fool me. Playing a clever game before it moved in. Because, if it wasn’t Alice
playing a joke and it wasn’t a doppelgänger, then what else could it be?
    There was another possibility. Something I’d been trying to push out of my mind, but which kept pestering me like a gnat . . . and it wasn’t so much the strange girl
that was making me think it. It was the cat. A talking cat . . . just the sort of magical creature that would come from Alice’s imagination. The fact that they had both
appeared on the same day told me that somehow they must be connected.
    A draught whistled round my ankles and my eyes went to the skylight. It was closed. I’d been the one to pull it shut when I came up here earlier, looking for Alice. At some point during
the night, or this morning before I’d woken, Alice must have opened it.
    Could she have seen something, or someone, that had made her leave the house in a rush? Someone she’d wanted to speak to . . . or hide from?
    I climbed on to Alice’s bed and opened the window. A chilly breeze flew in as I peered out across the rooftops. There was a clear view of the street, all the way down to the corner
shop.
    Had Alice looked out and spotted the girl standing there?
    I’d seen the girl well enough from the street. Enough to think it was Alice. Now Alice was gone without telling anyone where she was going, without her phone, or even her purse. I
tried to imagine how I would feel if I saw someone who looked exactly like me. Excited? Confused? Afraid? Probably all three. I didn’t have to think about what I would do – I already
knew that. I’d follow them.
    The problem was that the girl was gone. She couldn’t be followed. But there was a chance she’d gone into the shop and, if she had, there might be a clue to where she was now. If I
could find the girl, perhaps I might also find Alice.
    I started to pull the window closed, my gaze drifting to the bushes at the front of the garden. A memory hovered at the edges of my mind. A figure skulking behind those bushes in the dead of the
night . . . and Alice cowering in the corner of the attic. Wide-eyed, terrified, whispering, ‘You do see him, don’t you?’
    I shuddered, pushing the memory away, and clambered down. My