The Other Side

Chapter 1

It was the first day of his summer break. Tom stepped out through the front door of his house, intending to head for his local park. As he closed the door and turned, he spotted the small red car parked on his driveway. He took another three steps towards it before he noticed her.

Her head was slumped on the steering wheel, her eyes were closed and her arms dangled by her side. She looked to be asleep, or dead. He briefly wondered why he thought the latter before he felt a sudden surge of familiarity.

He knew her.

Tom walked down the concrete slabs that cut across his front lawn and peered inside the car. There was very little of her face to be seen. Half of it was pressed against the steering wheel and the other was partially covered in her long red hair.

Who was she? How did he know her?

He felt an impulsive urge to knock on her car window, to wake her up, to ask her. He even raised his hand to do so when she stirred. And then he realised that he was standing over a car, staring in at a sleeping person. It didn't matter that he thought he knew her. It was still weird. And she was about to wake up and catch him in his moment of oddness.

Tom took a step back and briskly walked past the car and down the road, purposefully avoiding looking back. He was going to the park, that was what he was going to do. Not stare at a sleeping woman. That was weird and creepy.

And he might be a little weird by some definition, but he certainly wasn't creepy.

Once at the park, Tom plonked himself down on a bench. Before him, a group of children ran around kicking a ball. He had shared classes with a few and knew most of their names, but he doubted they knew his.

Tom was a bit of a loner.

He wasn't really sure why. Aside from the hunchback, the puffy cheeks, the loud huffing and puffing after a sprint or a short walk, he was a fairly normal thirteen-year-old boy.

Oh, and he could move things without touching them. He imagined that to be sort of unique. It wasn't something he bragged about. He had seen one too many movies to know it was best not to.

He had told his sister though. He had to tell someone. He needed to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. And the best way to do that was by showing someone, and having them say it was so.

As Tom watched the children play their game of football, his thoughts drifted towards the red car parked in his driveway and the woman sleeping in it. He wondered why he thought he knew her. He barely saw any of her face. If someone asked him to describe her now, the only thing he could say was that she had long red hair.

There was another person sitting on the bench, and a while passed before he noticed. She was in her early twenties, had long red hair, red lips and red eyes. She sat next to him and stared at him brashly.

It was her, the sleeping woman from the car.

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