Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) Read Online Free Page A

whoosh by her.
Too close. Part of her wanted to scream only that would be wasting
breath she sorely needed for running. All that running and the
crack of light seemed to be almost no closer than earlier. Katie
kicked down and pulled on her energy reserves, picking up her pace
and trying to keep in a straight line. The steps sounded as though
they were merely inches away now. The crack of light was a few
inches wide and tall enough to be a door. But the light not only
gave Katie something to run towards, it threw light into this dark
room. Not much, just enough to tempt a person into looking around
too see exactly what was chasing them. The girl willed her feet to
run that little bit further, her protesting legs which felt like
they had run so far and so hard this night – and then threw herself
towards the light with eyes squeezed shut so tightly. She didn’t
want to see the faces of the things that followed her – if they had
faces – or the hand that would reach out for her, grab her and pull
her back until she could no longer be seen amid that dark, moving
mass.
    “Moving
time!”
    “Wha -?”
    Katie whipped
her head off her desk where she was slumped over her empty desk and
drooling over her old, ratty Romeo and Juliet. Most of the boxes
had already been taken away, Dad was carting them downstairs and
singing to himself a song with word he had made up and in a tune
no-one had ever written. It was mid-morning on a Monday – no-one
had the right to be that cheerful. Katie looked over at her sister
who was bouncing on the bed.
    “I’m gonna miss
you, Dan.”
    “Yeah, yeah,
it’s not like you’re never coming back.”
    “No, but it is
a long time. I’ll phone and email though.”
    Dan rolled her
eyes. “Do you have to?”
    Katie laughed
and pushed her out of her room so she could get dressed. Gone was
the twelve year old tomboy who had hugged her and made her a gift
and reminded the world she actually had a vulnerable side and back
was the moody, hard as nails pre-teen. Katie had been like that not
too long ago. She still had moments when her attitude got the
better of her and probably always would. How would she cope at the
academy with no-one to rein her in?
    There was a
loose tracksuit draped over her bed which was so old and mucky she
was happy to ruin it in today’s move and finally put it out of its’
misery. Katie picked it up and started to cross the landing to the
bathroom. The hot jets of water bean to rain down and Katie lifted
a leg to hook the hanging shampoo bottle without having to leave
this lovely bubble. She tried to bend her foot to snag it with her
toes and an explosion sent needles of pain shooting up her leg.
What happened? She had no memory of injuring herself. But this had
happened before. She had tripped over on a run with school and
twisted an ankle. It had felt fine at first and she’d even finished
the run. Then, after sitting still for hours in the subsequent
exam, she had barely been able to walk. It was stiff and sore but
the pain had more or less disappeared when she had walked on it for
a while. Katie gave her hair the quickest wash ever, dressed and
went downstairs. Mom was buttering toast and there was a bowl of
cereal on the table. Katie ignored it for the moment and went to
the freezer fashioning a crude ice pack out of ice cubes and a tea
towel.
    “Are you okay,
love?”
    “You remember
when I twisted my ankle last year? Well, I reckon I just worked it
too hard this weekend. It’ll go off in a while like before.”
    Mom finished
scraping the toast and put it down in front of her, taking over the
ice pack duties while she ate. The school nurse had warned them
that this might well happen. The ankle was weaker now. It could
even break. And then there was Dan, who had fallen from a post and
only ended up with a sprain, which was no doubt why Katie always
decided to run through the pain because everything would turn out
fine. But Dan was at home where they could keep an eye