The Identical Boy by Matthew Stott Read Free Book Online Page A

believe anything he said. He’d keep that up, get the rest of the year off, maybe. He could still see his friends after school. Probably. Would they still be his friends? Of course. Or else.
    Or else what? What if they could smell the change on him too? Taste it in the air. Maybe they’d drop him. Kath would be the new leader. They’d come after him next. Sick in the head ex-bully Mark. It would be him on his knees in the woods as the others circled and jeered and thought of new things they could make him do.
    Someone entered the toilets. Mark kept quiet. Footsteps on tiles, click-clack over to the sink. The water ran. A paper towel was pulled and then disposed of. Then the footsteps passed by once again. Stopped. Walked back a step or two, then turned to face the door of Mark’s cubicle.
    Mark held his breath. Two scuffed shoes stepped into view in the gap between the door and the floor. Mark’s lungs burned as he denied them breath.
    ‘Knock knock.’ Sam’s voice.
    Mark said nothing, his back pressing against the cistern.
    The feet turned, click-clacked across the tiles, then left the bathroom.
    Mark realised he was trembling.
    He waited for almost seventeen minutes, then slid the lock aside as slowly and quietly as he could and crept out.

~Chapter Fourteen~
     
     
    Mar k was still five minutes from home when he realised that someone was following him.
    He didn’t hear anything, or really even see anything, but the hairs on the back of his neck? They knew.
    He stopped and looked around.
    The street was empty but for a cat asleep under a car.
    Mark carried on, turning into the park to take the shortcut home. The park where he’d gobbed in Sam’s face. The last place he’d felt completely whole and himself. Then that mad Ally had booted him in the side. It had all been downhill since then. The world had tilted and gone strange. He strode swiftly through the deserted park; the wind pulled at his coat.
    A squeak as the swing to Mark’s left began to move back and forth, but there was nobody on it. The wind?
    Maybe.
    Hopefully.
    Mark passed where he had sat atop a terrified Sam, where he had spat in his face; he increased his pace towards the exit.
    Down one street and the next he went, his pulse thump-thumping in his ears. Every few seconds he looked back, only to see nothing. As soon as he turned away again, he would feel his pursuer. They were keeping pace with him. In no hurry.
    Mark wasn’t sure when he’d started to run, but by the time he reached the field he was sweating and gasping for breath.
    He leaned on the fence that enclosed the field with the tall, thick, overgrown grasses, and sucked in oxygen. It was the field where he’d run from Sam. From both Sams.
    Mark knew he was in terrible danger out in the open, could feel it deep in the pit of his stomach. He desperately needed to get off the streets and into the safety of his home. Door locked, deadbolted, safe and sound. Cutting across this field achieved that quicker than going the longer route. In fact, it would shave almost four minutes off his journey.
    But still. It felt like a risk. Like tempting fate somehow. Last time he climbed into this field he’d stepped into another world. Maybe he should just go the long way.
    Feet shuffled sharply behind him and the decision was made. Mark grabbed the fence and swung himself over and into the field.
    The grasses and weeds danced back and forth before him, buffeted by the breeze. The noise sounded like a multitude of whispers swirling around him. Indecipherable, insistent, sinister. Mark kept his eyes on his destination, on the fence on the far side of the field, and fought his way through the thick obstruction.
    He would make it. He would make it. The far fence, up and over, then a short run to his house and safety.
    He would make it.
    A little over halfway across, he realised it was a mistake.
    Something moved behind him. Mark looked back over one shoulder, but didn’t stop. There was no one