Another Me Read Online Free PDF

me!’ I screamed at them. ‘That wasn’t me!’

Chapter Eight
    My outburst finished any possibility of continuing the rehearsal. Donald wound the whole thing up and sat with me until Dad came to collect me. ‘Would you like to speak to Mrs Williams, the school counsellor?’ he asked while we waited.
    I snapped out my answer. ‘No! I wouldn’t.’
    Donald and his like thought the answer to everything was in counselling. I did want to talk to someone, but only so they could explain what was happening. But how could they? It sounded crazy even to me.
    Drew Fraser came up to me before he left. ‘Well, Lady Macbeth does go mad. Is this you building up to that, or what?’
    â€˜That’s enough, Drew!’ Donald scolded him angrily. ‘Fay’s had a bit of a fright, that’s all.’
    Drew shrugged his shoulders and went off sniggering,surrounded by his adoring fans – one of whom was Monica.
    Dad looked really concerned when he saw me. I had stopped crying, but my eyes were red-rimmed. ‘I got a real fright,’ I explained to him. ‘I thought someone was coming after me in the corridor.’
    Now he really was worried. ‘And was there?’
    Yes, there was, I wanted to say. Someone waiting in the shadows, watching me, laughing at my fear. But how could I explain it, even to him?
    â€˜It was the janny,’ I said finally.
    He breathed a sigh of relief.
    â€˜But Dad, funny things have been happening over the past few days. Things I don’t understand,’ I said on the way home in the car. ‘People keep saying they saw me, but I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me they saw.’
    He glanced at me, taking his eyes off the road for just a second. ‘Mistakes happen. Somebody told me only last week they saw me in town. Wasn’t me. I was fixing a woman’s washing machine in Airdrie at the time.’ He smiled. ‘Everybody’s got a double they say.’
    But tonight, I thought, in the school, my two best friends had seen someone, and were sure that someone was me. And they wouldn’t make a mistake likethat, would they?
    Dad had turned his eyes back to the road, and now his voice was bitter. ‘Happens to your mother all the time. People tell me they see her somewhere, but she always insists it wasn’t her. Couldn’t possibly be her.’ He glanced at me again. ‘So she must have a double as well, eh?’
    It was always the same. Everything came back to them, him and Mum. How could I ask him to help me understand now? I was better shutting up. I would try to work it out myself. It would never happen again. I wouldn’t let it.
    I turned and looked out the window. It was so dark all I could see was my own tearful reflection.
    How did I feel that night?
    As if I was on a train hurtling through the dark on a collision course. I couldn’t get off no matter how I tried.
    And I was the only passenger.

Chapter Nine
    â€˜Are you feeling better?’ Mum asked next morning as I was leaving for school. She had sat up with me late into the night, listening to me and trying to explain in the best way she could what had happened. I had told her as much as I had told Dad, and her response had been the same as his. People make mistakes. Everyone has a double somewhere. In the dimly lit corridor, she assured me, I had let my imagination take over. All sensible, common-sense explanations, but none of them had helped me sleep.
    Yet, this morning, I did feel better. Here, today, with a frosty sun hovering low in the sky and Kaylie and Dawn waiting for me at the top of the stairs, the fears of last night seemed stupid, unreal. There was a logical explanation for all this. There had to be.
    And all that day, nothing happened. I apologised toDonald and he patted me on the head as if I was a pet poodle. ‘Just know your lines for the next rehearsal,’ he said. ‘That’s all I ask.’
    Yet, as