The Memory Game Read Online Free PDF

place like ghosts do on the telly, but I can push myself
through the wall and I do. 
    As the figure
passes under a security lamp I can see that the rucksack has flowers on it so I
must be following a girl.  I might be dead, but why change the habit of a
lifetime? Her breath unfurls in a white plume as her figure is briefly lit. She
has the tiniest shoulders and an odd, awkward stride, like her boots don’t fit
properly. There’s only one set of footsteps clicking on the concrete path and
the distorted whoosh of the traffic from the road in the distance, otherwise,
there’s cold silence. 
    Round by the
back of the kitchens there are huge metal bins next to the fence.  Once,
Matt and Paulie chucked a year seven in one of them.
We couldn’t stop laughing because every time the kid tried to get out, he just
slid right back down again. The girl ducks behind one of them and I follow to
see there’s a gap in the wire. She squeezes through it and onto the playing
fields.
     I keep a
good distance but I carry on following.  I’m not sure why, but it suddenly
feels like I’m intruding on her privacy. She’s walking slowly.  She either
doesn’t really know where to go, or she does, and really doesn’t want to get
there. I sort of know how she feels. But then the fields are black as anything
the further you get from the lights of the school, so maybe she’s only walking
slowly because she can’t see where she’s going properly.
    At the far end
of the playing fields is another fence. She walks the line of it and I follow.
After a while, she stops and pulls apart another bit of loose wire, then she
ducks through it and out onto the road. What the hell does Mr Allen do all
day?  Not fix fencing, that’s for sure.  Under the yellow glow of the
streetlamps now she turns suddenly and freezes.  It’s Bethany
Willis.  I shrink back into the shadows and she faces forwards again,
picking up her pace. I’m not sure if she knows I’m here but I think she
does.  She glances back and this time I don’t hide. She walks even faster,
and then starts a panicked half-run, her backpack slapping against her as she
goes. I run too. I could shout , tell her that she
doesn’t have to be scared of me, but I don’t think it would make any
difference. So I stop running and let her go. I watch her rush down the lane
that leads to the small cluster of council houses on the outskirts of the
village, until she becomes a speck to be swallowed by the dark.
    Do I follow
her?  I’m guessing that she lives in one of those houses but I don’t know
which one.  And I feel pretty bad now for freaking her out so much in
assembly. Even if she talks to me, how do I explain that? But she can see
me. For a few minutes, I don’t do anything; I just stand there looking into
the darkness. I know she won’t talk to me, but I can’t seem to stop my feet
from starting out on the road after her.
     
    There are only ten houses on this
stretch, overlooking a road and a scrubby field. There’s a lone, skinny horse
standing on the field eyeing me warily. Animals seem to be able to see me, or
if they don’t, somehow they know I’m there.  Which makes
me even more confused about Bethany . Not that I think she’s a horse or anything. But out of all
the people who are important to me, none of them see me, and this one girl who
means nothing can. The houses are all painted white - at least, they probably
used to be white, though not one of them is any longer.  Now, in the
gloom, they look grey with the feeling of army barracks rather than homes.
They’re grouped in twos that mirror each other.  I could easily get
through each front door and see who lives there but it suddenly seems like a
boundary that I shouldn’t cross so I sit on a wall and stare up at the curtain
covered lights at the windows. She won’t come out again tonight, I suppose.
It’s probably cold out here, though I can’t feel it.  I don’t even see my
breath in the air.  But if I