Free Flip by Martyn Bedford Page B

Sam. David. David, who still hadn’t bothered to reply to Alex’s last message. Not that it mattered. He was cut off from them all, from everyone, utterly alone with his secret. Alex hadn’t realized he was doing it, but he must’ve been staring at Teri’s bare shoulders, speckled with water, and the bulge of the towel against her breasts.
    “Okay, here’s the thing, Philip,” she said. “You’ve got two switches in your brain: one labeled ‘girl,’ and one that says ‘sister.’ When you see me with hardly any clothes on, the first switch should be in the off position, yeah? And the second should be in the on position. Do you think you could manage that?”
    Then she was in her bedroom, with the door banged shut behind her.
    Alex went downstairs, grabbed his keys and his schoolbag.
    The last thing he wanted was to spend another day at Litchbury High as Flip—but as though in a daze, he was setting off to do just that. He was letting himself out of the house when he saw the dad’s wallet on the shelf in the hall. Mr. Garamond must have left it there when he came in drunk from his night out.
    Alex stood there. Looked at the wallet. Listened.
    The mum had already left, and by the sound of it, Teri was still in her bedroom, drying her hair. As for Flip’s dad, he hadn’t surfaced yet.
    Alex picked up the wallet. Opened it. Took out the cash and counted it. Then he put the money back and clipped the wallet shut. Continued to stand there, eyes on the wallet. Continued listening. Hair dryer. Beagle, snuffling about in the basement. The slosh-slosh of the dishwasher. Nothing else. He opened the wallet once more, emptied it, stuffed the notes into his pocket, set the wallet back on the shelf and left the house—quietly, clicking the door shut and carefully turning the key.
    Who cared about Flip’s PIN now?
    In fifteen minutes, he’d be on the local train into Leeds. By lunchtime, he’d arrive at King’s Cross. By early afternoon, Alex would be home.
    What he would do when he got there, he had no idea. What he’d say to anyone, or what they’d make of him. His parents. Would they “recognize” him, in the way Beagle sensed that Flip was no longer Flip? He’d once seen a TV program, about sheep farming, in which an orphaned lamb had another lamb’s fleece draped over it so the ewe mistook it for one of her own young and allowed it to suckle. Were human mothers so easily deceived? If he could just see Mum, would she know him for who he was—somehow, through some maternal intuition? If not, he could tell her things about himself, about his life, about the family, that only Alex could possibly know. He hadn’t convinced David that way, but David was his mate, not his mother—the woman who’d carried him in her womb, given birth to him, fed him from her breast, raised him for fourteen years. He had once lived inside her, as he now lived inside Flip. If anyone recognized him, in this strange boy’s body, with this strange boy’s face, it would be Mum.
    And if she couldn’t , if none of them could, he would leave. Go on the run, into hiding. Live rough if he had to. Live wild in the woods. Stranded inside Philip but no longer compelled to be him, or to live as him, with his family, at his school. Instead, he would escape, take off on his own to exist however he could. As himself . He had to hold on to that: whatever had become of his body, he was still Alex inside. His soul, his spirit, his essence.
    Whatever it was that had killed him hadn’t killed that .
    It must’ve been sudden, without warning, or he would remember. Brain hemorrhage, accident, heart attack. Something like that. Maybe he had been blown up by a terrorist bomb (unlikely while he was running home from David’s or fast asleep in his own bed). Beaten up, then: jumped by a pack of hoodies, given a kicking, stabbed. But Alex had no recollection of a fight. It would’ve been simple, the simplest thing in the world, to find out what had