Read The Shadows: A Novel for Free Online

only the same height as James. But there was strength in numbers, however unexpected it was to have them, and right then I was grateful.
    Or at least I was until Charlie spoke.
    “I dreamed about you last night, Hague,” he said.
    He sounded so serious that it took a second for the words to sink in. Whatever I had been expecting him to come out with, it hadn’t been that. Hague was taken aback too. He shook his head.
    “What the fuck are you talking about, Crabtree?”
    “Just what I said.” Charlie smiled patiently, as though he were talking to a slow child. “You were lying on the ground, and you were badly hurt. Your skull was smashed open, and I could see your brain pulsing—your heartbeat in it. You only had one eye left, and it kept blinking at me. You weren’t dead, but you were going to be. You knew it too. You knew that you were dying, and you were terrified.”
    Despite the disparity in their sizes, Charlie didn’t seem remotely afraid of Hague, and there was a buzz to the air, as though he were channeling something terrible—some inner power he could unleash if he wanted to. Hague was more used to physical confrontations. He had no idea how to respond to something as alien as what he’d just heard.
    He shook his head again.
    “You—”
    The whistle blew behind us.
    All of us instinctively took a step back—all of us except for Charlie. He remained standing exactly where he was. Still smiling. Still staring intently at Hague.
    “Six of you made it.” Goodbold’s voice echoed across the field. “It would have been nine if Crabtree and his friends hadn’t left the line. Think about that next time, lads.”
    Hague and his two friends headed off toward their line, Hague glaring back over his shoulder at us. I reached down to give James a hand, pulling him to his feet.
    “You all right, mate?”
    “Yeah.”
    But although it was me who was helping James up, it was Charlie he was looking at right now. Charlie, who was still smiling to himself. Beside him, Billy met my eyes for a second, his expression blank and unreadable.
    “Let’s try that again,” Goodbold shouted.
----
    After gym class, the four of us ended up traipsing back up the field together. It didn’t feel like an accident to me, but I also wasn’t quite sure how it had happened; none of us seemed to seek each other out, and yet somehow we found ourselves walking side by side. It felt like, even then, there was already a design to what happened.
    Hague and his friends were a little way ahead, and Hague kept glancing back at us. The effect of what Charlie had said had faded by now, and he had regained his usual angry swagger.
    Charlie seemed indifferent to the attention.
    “I wonder,” he said idly, “how many times Mr. Goodbold will come into the changing rooms on the pretense of making sure we all shower.”
    I checked quickly behind to make sure Goodbold was out of hearing range. It wasn’t clear that he was.
    I turned back. “At least we’re not too muddy.”
    Billy kicked at the hard ground. “Only good thing about winter.”
    “It’s not winter yet,” Charlie said.
    Billy looked a bit hurt. “It feels like it, though. It’s as cold as winter.”
    “Yes,” Charlie conceded. “That’s true.”
    “I don’t want to hear about you dreaming about me, you fucking gayboy.”
    Up ahead, Hague had turned around and was walking backward now, staring at Charlie. He was talking a lot more loudly than Charlie had been, so this time I was convinced Goodbold could hear. But, of course, he wasn’t going to intervene.
    Hague made kissing noises. “I know you can’t help it, though.”
    Charlie smiled at him. “Who says I can’t help it?”
    “What?”
    “Who says I can’t help it?” Charlie repeated. “Maybe I choose to dream about you dying, with your eye burst and your brain hanging out of your head. I mean, who wouldn’t choose to dream that? It was a wonderful sight.”
    Despite the recovered bravado, a little of the