“Have you seen The Other?” The voice wasn’t like anything he’d ever heard before, partway between a rasp and a squeal. The figures didn’t move.
“No?” Alex’s throat was dry. He took another step backward in the snow, back toward the path. Needles ran to his side, her hair on end.
Which made her look enormous. And scared.
“Beware The Other,” the eerie voice rasped. Alex gulped.
“Oh. Okay!” He took another step backward. He did NOT want to turn his back on the dark strangers. The weird voices.
“Thank you!” he called, edging closer to the path. One more step back. One of the figures moved into the clearing. Then the second one. The moonlight shone on them, the snow fell around them, but Alex couldn’t quite make out what they were.
Tall strangers. Too tall. In a strange green fog in the dark.
They took a step toward him, in perfect unison.
They had bright green eyes!
Alex stared. Then he turned and fled.
“NEEDLES! RUN!” Alex tore back down the path. Blindly. He fell and tripped in the snow, banged a knee, lost a mitten. Needles ran beside him.
Soon Alex could see the horse barn beside the house. He jumped over the paddock fence, then stopped, gasping for air. The kitchen light was on. Something about the kitchen light being on made him feel slightly better.
Kitchens were normal, where people did normal things.
The weird breeze stopped as suddenly as it had started. Alex stood gasping in the moonlight, all ears and eyes. Listening. Watching. But the woods were still.
Something moved in the tree above him. Alex looked up into the wide eyes of his cat.
There was a tiny blob of green on her tail. The ooze from the clearing!
“Needles! Come down!” Alex called. Needles stared at him from the tree, twitching her tail with the green blob.
Then she hissed, “Beware THE OTHER!”
Alex let out a screech that made birds fly out of the tree. One of the horses in the barn answered with a frightened neigh. Alex tore across the yard, through the kitchen door, and up to his room.
Carl was on the computer as Alex ran by. He didn’t notice his little brother.
But then Carl hardly noticed anything when it came to Alex.
Chapter 4
Fuss on the Bus
Alex lay in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin.
He tossed, he turned, he stared out the window at the stormy sky, the pitch-black forest.
He shivered and worried all night long.
What was going on?
Beware The Other.…
There was NO WAY his cat said that. He must have had a reaction to the tall strangers in the forest. The green stuff, the pile of smoking junk in the clearing. It was all weird.
Maybe I’m coming down with something? Alex thought.
The problem was, he wasn’t sick. In fact, he felt fine. It occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he should tell someone. But really, other than his parents, who would he tell? And they just happened to be on the other side of the planet, anyway.
And Carl was right out.
He’d never told Carl anything in his life, and he wasn’t about to start now. And anything he did say would just sound crazy.
My reflection winked at me this morning in the mirror at school.
Then tonight, two tall … whatever those were … in the forest asked me about something called The Other. And there was this strange green goo in the snow.
Oh, and Needles talked to me, too. Like, with words.
When dawn came, he decided that he must have imagined the whole thing. He didn’t like to admit it, but he always got a little jumpy when his parents went away. Especially at first. He quietly got out of bed, dressed, and tiptoed past Carl snoring in the guest room.
Even his snoring sounded like a whistle.
Alex slipped out the kitchen door and into the dark, cold morning. Needles wasn’t in the tree. She wasn’t in the barn with Pins and Minnie. She wasn’t at the back door asking for her breakfast.
Where was she?
Alex looked for his cat for over an hour. At seven o’clock, he heard Carl’s pickup truck pull out of the laneway. But he kept looking. It wasn’t that unusual for Needles to stay out overnight, even in the middle of the winter. She hardly ever slept in the house, anyway, preferring the barn. It wasn’t even that unusual for her to disappear for a few days now and then.
But she’d never talked before. That was definitely on the unusual side.
Alex bit his lip raw worrying about where she might be. But he had to give up looking. The school bus would be there soon. He went into the kitchen and made a quick breakfast of oatmeal and orange juice. There was a handwritten note on the table: Gone to McGregor’s farm. Some trouble with panicky pigs. Carl.
When Alex’s watch said 7:35 a.m., he had to go. He grabbed an apple and went out into the cold morning. He called for Needles a few more times, but she wasn’t anywhere.
He took a few bites from his apple. He rounded the barn.
And stopped.
A girl stood at the end of the lane. She had her back to him.
This had never happened before. Alex’s farm was in the middle of nowhere, outside of town. There were no kids around, no farms nearby. The nearest farm was the McGregor’s, way down the road. And they didn’t have any girls. Old Farmer McGregor lived alone.
Alex gulped and drew up his courage. He crunched as quietly as he could down the snowy lane.
“Hello, Alex,” the girl said without turning around. She kept her back to him. She had a long, thick braid down her back.
He stopped. “Um, hello? Do I know you?” Now he was closer, he saw that she was wearing jeans, a blue shirt, a ski jacket, winter boots, and gloves, exactly like his. She was his height. His size. Her hair was the same colour and just like his, except for her braid. He didn’t have one of those.
There was something odd about it, though.
Then, very slowly her braid … moved. It twitched, then began a slow wag, from side to side.
His heart started to pound.
“W-w-who are you?”
“I think you know who I am, Alex,” the girl whispered.
Then she turned around. A face like no other stared at him. A face that looked almost exactly like his if he were a girl.
And a cat.
Alex tried to scream, but nothing came out. He went weak in the knees. He dropped his apple … and stared.
The girl’s face was covered in fur; even her ears were furry. She opened her mouth and smiled, a startling, pointy-toothed smile. Her long braid swayed gently back and forth.
Just like a cat’s tail!
The girl bent and picked up Alex’s half-eaten apple.
She took a bite.
Alex was just about to yell at her to get away from him when the school bus drove into view. He ran to the end of the lane and threw up his arms.
“Help me! HELP!” he shrieked. The bus stopped in the snowy road, and the door opened. Alex leapt on and shouted, “There’s a weird cat girl out there! Help!”
“Sit down, kid,” the bus driver snarled and pulled the door shut. Alex wheeled around, grabbed the back of the driver’s seat, and looked at the laneway.
It was empty.
The girl was gone. Alex stared in disbelief as the bus drove away. He staggered to his seat and sat down as the bus lurched toward town.
“Oooh, a weird cat girl is after me,” one kid mocked. Everyone laughed.
Alex didn’t even care. He stared out the bus window with a horrible thought in his head: That girl! That girl WAS A CAT!
Chapter 5
The Reflection
Alex sat on the bus, trying hard not to panic.
The weird
strangers in the clearing last night, Needles … now that girl.
I wonder what it feels like to go crazy? Would I know I’m going crazy, if I was? he wondered. He stared out the window. Someone whipped a rotten sandwich past him, but he didn’t even flinch. He hardly noticed. It wasn’t meant for him, anyway. Probably.
When he got to school, he walked the halls in a daze. He sat in math class, barely listening. He was good at math. Whenever he knew the answer to a question, he usually put up his hand.
But today he didn’t.
Alex sat through art class and made a passable drawing of a bowl of fruit. The art teacher hardly noticed, but Alex was too preoccupied to care.
Something very, very strange was going on. Possibly he wasn’t quite as totally sane as he should be.
Who was that girl? Or what?
He slowly decided that whoever she was, he must have been so worried about his cat he imagined that she looked like one.
It must have been a hallucination.
Whatever was happening, he needed to be alone. To think.
At lunchtime, Alex planned to vanish quietly into the basement. He didn’t really want to go back down there, not after the wink yesterday, but it was the only place he could be alone.
Besides, much weirder things are going on here than a wink, anyway. Maybe I DID wink at myself yesterday.
He slipped past all the kids laughing and pushing each other as they lined up for the lunchroom. He slid along the hallway, and no one noticed. He walked silently past the boiler room in the basement and opened the creaky, technically off-limits boy’s bathroom door.
The bathroom was empty.
As usual.
Alex settled against the wall, but he was too upset to eat. There was nothing at all normal about whatever was happening. He looked down at his hands. They trembled a little.
He stood up and held on to the sink. He looked into the mirror …
… it was just him in there.
His quiet, shy face.
“What’s going on? Am I going crazy?” he asked his reflection.
“Don’t ask me,” his reflection answered.
Alex jumped back. He stared, his mouth open.…
“Wh-what?” he whispered.
“I said, ‘Don’t ask me,’” his reflection repeated. “I’m in here, you’re out there. I’m pretty sure you know as much about our state of mind as I do.”
His reflection took a step back, deeper into the mirror, and crossed his arms. Except for the different movements, it was Alex’s reflection in there. Same clothes. Same hair. Even the same tiny fleck of mud from the barn on his sleeve.
Same Alex. But not.
“Don’t look so surprised. You saw me yesterday, remember?” his reflection said. Then his reflection winked. Alex-outside-the-mirror shook his head, opened and closed his eyes. Just then a snowball hit the outside of the bathroom window, hard, and Alex-outside-the-mirror jumped. His reflection didn’t.
“I don’t believe you’re really talking to me,” Alex whispered and closed his eyes. But when he opened them again, there he was. His reflection, with his arms crossed, shaking his head.
“Why wouldn’t I be talking to you?” Alex’s reflection said. “You can be you in lots of different ways at the same time, you know. And frankly, you need a friend right now. I mean, does anyone even KNOW you’re down here? Do you even HAVE any friends?”
Alex put his hands on the sink and drew up close to the mirror. He looked at himself, made a face, stuck his tongue out. His reflection just smiled at him.
“Cute,” his reflection said.
“But … how is this happening?” Alex-outside-the-mirror whispered. Alex and his reflection were nose-to-nose, which is pretty much what you expect when you look at yourself in a mirror. Except his reflection wasn’t him. Or was, but it wasn’t doing any of the things he was doing.
“Look, Alex,” his reflection said gently. “You’re under stress. You’ve seen some strange things in the past twenty-four hours. I don’t blame you if you think you’re cracking up. But I’m here to tell you something important.” Alex’s reflection looked genuinely concerned.
“You have to watch out for that girl with the braid, Alex,” his reflection whispered.
“How do you know about her?”
His reflection rolled his eyes just a little.
“I AM you, you know. I do KNOW things. Now listen. This is important. You have to beware …”
Don’t say The Other.…
“… The Other.”
Alex gripped the sink so tightly, his hands hurt. “I know that. Those tall strangers told me last night. Even my cat told me that! But what IS The Other, anyway?”
He swayed slightly, leaned into the sink, and stared at himself.
“I don’t know! How would I know?” his reflection answered. “I’m in here, remember? That’s what YOU have to find out! Do a little investigating, why don’t you? You could start by trying to get people to notice you, be less invisible to everyone,” Alex-inside-the-mirror said. “You’re practically fading away, my friend,” his reflection added.
Alex was about to answer, but the bathroom door opened.
Which had never happened before.
The janitor stuck his head in the room and was startled to see Alex standing there, clutching the sink in front of the mirror.
“Hey, kid, you okay? I heard voices.” Alex just stared at the man. He was so out of place, so unexpected, that for a second Alex wasn’t sure he was real.
“Shouldn’t you be out throwing snowballs with your friends?” the janitor said, not totally unkindly. “Scram,” he added nicely. This was a new janitor, much younger than the usual janitor.
“Are you new or something?” Alex asked, gathering his lunch together and stuffing everything into his backpack.
The janitor shook his head. “Nope, not really. Not unless six months of working here is new. You’ve just never noticed me before. Now out,” he said, shuffling Alex out the door.
Alex took one last look at the mirror before the man hustled him out into the hallway. There was no one in the mirror. Nothing winked back at him. The mirror was empty.
Which is pretty much what you expect from mirrors, when there is nothing to reflect.
Chapter 6
Now You See Me …
Alex left the bathroom. The janitor said goodbye with a cheerful wave and went back to mopping the floor.
Alex walked up the stairs to the sound of kids getting ready for an afternoon of school. The bell rang, and he barely heard it. He walked in a fog, his face set, his eyebrows drawn together.
He was trying very hard to tell himself that whatever just happened in the bathroom mirror wasn’t real. He had to have imagined it. That, along with everything else weird since last night.
What’s happening to me?
Alex looked down at his hands. His feet. He was really there.
But he didn’t feel like he was. He was beginning to feel very strangely NOT there. Like he was split in two. All over the place. The bell rang again, and it was time for his first afternoon class. A group of bigger kids headed toward him, laughing and talking.
You could start by trying to get people to notice you, be less invisible to everyone.…
Alex stepped into the middle of the hall.
The loud, laughing kids moved around him, like water around a rock in a stream. They jostled him. But they didn’t look at him.
They didn’t see me!
Alex ran down the hall and burst into his classroom. He ran to his chair, pulled out his books, and no one noticed him. The teacher took attendance and checked off his name without looking up.
Alex did his work quietly. He went to French class. He sat and conjugated verbs, he repeated French sentences back to the teacher, just like it was
a normal day.
But nothing was normal. HE wasn’t normal.
He got through the day. Somehow. He tried to put his hand up as often as he could. He tried to make people notice him, but he’d spent so long being invisible, everyone was used to him not really being there.
Even his reflection in the haunted bathroom mirror knew that.
Alex tried not to think about his reflection.
At the end of the day, he stood in line for the school bus. The line moved forward. Just as Alex was about to get on, the driver shut the door in his face and drove away.
The bus driver didn’t see me!
Alex gulped. THAT had never happened before!
He pulled out his cellphone to call his brother for a ride home, but it was dead. Of course. He didn’t have any friends to call; the only person he ever texted was his mother, so he hardly ever used it. Not enough to remind himself to plug it in regularly, anyway.
Alex zipped up his winter coat and tugged his wool hat onto his head. He started the long, cold walk home.
Chapter 7
Panicky Pigs
The winter sunlight cut across the dark trees, and a cool breeze blew over the fields. The snow clung to Alex’s boots, slowly soaking through to his socks.
He walked home in the darkening afternoon. An hour later, frozen and snow-covered, he walked up the laneway to his house. He slipped into the barn.
Maybe Needles will be in here.…
“Needles! Where are you?” But his beautiful cat didn’t appear. The horses looked up, though, at the sound of his voice, then went back to their fresh hay.
He sat in the straw and tried to warm up. A tear started at the corner of his eye, and he angrily brushed it away. He missed his cat, wherever she was. If she was there, he’d feel so much better.
What am I going to do? I’m going crazy. I should probably tell someone about the strangers, the girl.… I could leave out my reflection talking to me maybe, for now. And poor Needles. I hope she’s okay. But even if I was going to ask for help, who would I tell? And what would I say?
Alex and The Other Page 2