Thirteen Days of Midnight by Leo Hunt Read Free Book Online

before. She’s still smiling, expectantly.
    “Luke Manchett,” I say finally. “I’m on the team? The rugby team.”
    Someone kill me. Strike me dead.
    “We know who you are,” says the girl next to Holiday — named Anna or something?— thin and sour-faced. You can just tell by looking at her that everyone knows her as “Holiday’s friend.”
    “Alice,”
Holiday says. “Luke, do you know Alice Waltham?”
    “Nah,” I say. “Hello.”
    “Hi.” Alice glances up at me with industrial-strength disinterest, and then gets a cigarette pack out of her coat and starts fiddling with that instead.
    “Do you smoke, Luke?” Holiday asks me brightly.
    “No,” I say. “Training. I mean, I can’t because of training.”
    “I don’t smoke either,” she says. “Mum’s got a nose like a bloodhound. I’d never get away with it, even if I wanted to. But, like, I think my
little
brother
is smoking, and he’s twelve. Do you think that’s weird? To smoke when you’re twelve? I mean I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure he does. And Mum doesn’t say a
thing.
”
    “Even twelve-year-olds don’t know what twelve-year-olds should be doing,” I say, which I don’t think really makes sense, but Holiday laughs anyway. I can’t believe we’re actually having a conversation. It was this easy the whole time. I just had to walk over and talk to her.
    “Do you have any brothers?” Holiday asks.
    “No, just me.”
    “I ought to know that,” Holiday says. “My mum actually knows yours. They were on a Reiki retreat together or something. My mum’s into some weird stuff like that.”
    “Oh,” I say, “I didn’t know that.” I’m really surprised to hear about Mum talking to anyone else in Dunbarrow. She’s never really been that interested in getting involved in the town. She’s happy to live in the countryside, and that’s as far as it goes. I don’t think she knows the names of the couple who live on our right-hand side. I have a sudden chill when I wonder if Mum told Holiday’s mum about Dad and the separation. Whether Holiday knows I’m Dr. Horatio Manchett’s son. If she does, she hasn’t shown it.
    We talk a bit more, about school and exams and mutual friends, and somewhere along the line Alice snorts extra hard with contempt and gets up and leaves us alone, and I sit down on the slide beside Holiday. Things are going smoothly and our knees are just starting to touch when I look up and see something at the tree line, up the bank, that nearly makes my heart stop.
    The two guys from the bus, the skinhead and Blotch-Face, are standing under the farthest street lamp. The skinhead is leaning on a tree, mostly in shadow. I can see the glim of a cigarette at his face. Blotch-Face stands ramrod straight, right under the lamp, and he’s looking directly over at me, like he wants me to see him watching.
    “Luke?” Holiday says.
    “Yeah?”
    “Are you all right? You’re shaking.”
    She’s right. My hand is fluttering on my knee. I grab at it with my other hand, to try to keep them both under control.
    “I think . . .” I try to find a way of putting this. “I think there’s someone following me.”
    She raises an eyebrow.
    “These two guys . . . two weirdos. They’re right over there, at the top of the bank. Don’t look yet. Look slow. Over by the street lamp. They were watching me on the bus, and now they’re here. I’m serious.”
    “What guys?” Holiday says, smiling.
    “
Those
guys,” I say. “I can’t point at them. They’re by the lamp.”
    “There’s nobody there!” Holiday punches me in the leg. “I know it’s nearly Halloween, but stop trying to scare me! My dad pulls this all the time. I’m not falling for it.”
    “Holiday,” I say, looking her dead in the eye, “I’m really serious. There’s two of them watching us. Right up on the bank.”
    “There’s nobody there,” Holiday says. “I know you’re messing with me!”
    She just looked right at them. Do