"SHADOWS"


Chapter One

The car interior smelled of warm black leather. A fly buzzed quietly against the rear window; its wings beat helplessly at the glass. Justin watched its useless plight thoughtfully. Sometimes he felt like a fly trapped behind a pane of glass. As if the rest of the world was there for him to see but not touch, taste and feel. And most of all Justin wanted to feel.

Should he let the fly escape? It could be easily done. Press a button on the controls beside him, watch the window slide down, feel the fresh air blow in. It would smell of warm pavements recently dried from spring rain, of school corridors and cheap perfume. It would smell of them. The others. The clones. The normals. Justin had many names for the people who made up the earth’s population – or cancer, as he preferred to call it.

He was not one of them. He had been made different. And if not born that way, carefully moulded, bullied and cajoled into the man he now saw staring back at him through the front mirror. Sometimes he didn’t recognise himself. It was as if every face was a stranger – even his own. And strangers were to be feared. Not as much as friends, though. They were the real enemies.

He widened his eyes now, watching how the pupils softened in the sunlight. Carefully, he relaxed them again. They were magnificent. A natural shade of dirty grey-blue but enhanced by a thick black ring of colour surrounding the iris, and luscious dark eyelashes that often tickled his own skin as well as those he allowed to get so close. They stood out all the more because he was fair-haired. Just like neither of his parents. He’d inherited his blonde locks from his father’s parents. No joy in believing he might be adopted. His birth had been recorded and he had watched it many times just to make sure. He was their son. The useless. The selfish. The destroyers.

A figure moved out of the double doors ahead and Justin quickly left his own face to investigate the new. It wasn’t him, though. Not yet. But soon. Justin checked his watch. He was never late. Never spontaneous. He’d be along soon. And only then would Justin roll down the window in hopes of catching just a teasing droplet of his scent.

He ran his hands down his thighs. They were starting to sweat. He always got anxious around this time. It sometimes felt to Justin that he waited the entire day just for this moment. Sure, he attended most of his lessons, he ignored his idiot classmates and sought refuge in the library during allocated break periods, but his mind, his essence, was always in this car, at this time of day, waiting. If he died, this was where his spirit would reside for all eternity.

It beat all the longful looks from the back of a sweaty class. The teacher’s droning voice always spoilt them moments; the pupils noisy chattering also ruined the mood. And even if he was lucky enough to see him wandering the corridors between lessons, Justin always stepped out of view. He didn’t want them to meet in school, didn’t want their first words to be mundane.

Looking up, Justin checked his reflection again. His skin was starting to sweat, beads had broken out across his forehead. He rubbed a sturdy hand across the surface and then blinked back at himself. Something wasn’t right. Then he remembered. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. He had nearly made a very silly error.

He leaned forward and took his favourite sunglasses from the glove compartment. Settling them down around his ears, he adjusted them in the mirror. He looked good in glasses. The square frame suited his square face and, because they hid his dazzling eyes, he looked just like every other student streaming from school. No one would remember him. No one would even spare him a glance. And that was how he preferred it.

Just then, Justin saw him. It was as if the clouds parted and the sun shone down on him. It was that way to Justin every time he lay his eyes on him. The beautiful. The perfect. The star. David Rhydian Sands. Rhydian to his friends and family.

Rhydian Sands stood at six feet and one inch. He had neatly cropped dark brown hair that fell softly around his forehead, bringing a person’s gaze right to his sparkling blue eyes. And they did sparkle. Justin saw them often enough to know. His mouth was wide, his lips thin and a dark shade of pink. More importantly, he was the captain of the football team, every girl’s dream date and Head Boy of Year Twelve. He was everything Justin wanted to be. Except everything Rhydian was Justin hated.

>> next page [2]