Free Pale by Chris Wooding Page A

If you’ve had your head chopped off, you’re dead, and that’s that.
    There are some side effects. The drug turns your hair and skin white. It gives you those spooky eyes, too. No one’s sure why. But at least it makes Pales easy to spot.
    Once you’ve had the serum, your heart stops beating. You don’t need to breathe anymore. You’re dead. Only the serum lets you keep on going. Like a vampire or a zombie. And you stop getting older, too. Nobody’s sure, but they say Pales can live forever.
    Sounds pretty good, right?
    Wrong.
    The thing is, the drug only works on some people. You need to have the right blood type. Only one person in ten can come back as a Pale. The rest just have to die.
    That makes a lot of people jealous. Why should Pales get a second chance when they don’t?
    The other thing is, it’s selfish to live forever. I mean, there’s not enough room on the planet for everyone as it is. There’s not enough energy or food. So it’s not fair to take more than your share. You die, time’s up. That’s how it should be.
    Plus, there’s a lot of religious people who don’t like Pales. They think that God decides when you die, and so Pales are cheating. That gets them mad.
    So it might sound like a good idea to come back as a Pale. But it’s not. Because half the world hates you.

Chapter 3
The Missing Boy
    It was lunch break on the day Kyle tried to kill the Pale.
    We always met up at the same spot in the yard at lunch. Me, Kyle, the twins and Sadie. Sadie was my girlfriend. Everyone knew she was the hottest girl in school. And she was with me.
    I was first to arrive. There were some younger kids there, but I told them to get lost. Kyle turned up a minute later. He was in a good mood again. He’d forgotten all about what happened that morning.
    But I remembered. He’d been about to bash in that Pale kid’s head with a branch. I’d never seen him like that before.
    “You were only messing around, right?” I asked him. “You weren’t really going to kill him?”
    “Nah,” said Kyle. “I was just giving him a scare.”
    I wasn’t sure if I believed him.
    The twins turned up next. Nate and Ash. They were pushing each other and joking. I’d known the twins since I was five. We all used to hang out in elementary school. We’d been friends pretty much all our lives.
    Sadie came last. My Sadie. She ran up, threw her arms around me, and gave me a kiss. Whenever we met, she always acted like she hadn’t seen me for ages.
    “Get a room, for God’s sake,” said one of the twins with a grin. I wasn’t sure which one it was. I could never tell them apart.
    Sadie stuck her tongue out at him. “Deal with it.”
    It felt really good to have Sadie in my arms. When I held her, I could forget all about the boring lessons I’d sat through. Math. God.
    Me and Sadie had been together two years now. I hoped we’d be together forever. I would never admit it to my friends, but I really cared about her. And she cared about me. I could tell.
    We were all messing around and talking when Mr. Grayson came over. He was a miserable old man. Every school has one teacher everyone hates. Mr. Grayson was ours.
    “Alright, Mr. G?” said Kyle. He liked to be cocky.
    Mr. Grayson didn’t rise to it. He fixed us all with a cold glare. “Have any of you seen David Bloom at school today, by any chance?”
    “Never heard of him,” I said.
    “Don’t be stupid, Jed,” said Mr. Grayson. “He’s one of your classmates.”
    “Is he a Pale?” Kyle asked.
    Mr. Grayson gave him a hard stare. “You know very well not to use that word, Kyle,” he said. “If you mean ‘is he one of the Returned?’ then yes. He is.”
    You see, you weren’t supposed to call Pales Pales. For some reason, people thought it was an insult. You were supposed to call them the Returned. Because they’d Returned from the dead – get it? But everyone called them Pales anyway.
    “David Bloom didn’t come to school today,” Mr. Grayson went