The Shadow That Ran Away

Yazan had a rare talent: he knew how to disappear.

He wasn't a magician, and he didn't own an invisibility cloak. But he knew how to sit in the very back seat of the classroom, by the window, with his head bent over his sketchbook, until the teachers forgot he was there. He knew how to walk along the corridors pressed against the wall, how to eat his lunch in a corner of the library, and how to answer in a single word whenever anyone asked him anything: "Yes." "No." "Don't know."

He was thirteen, with curly black hair that refused to lie flat however hard he tried, and light freckles across his nose that his big sister hated and his mother loved. He always wore his grey hoodie, because it made him look like dust, and his red trainers, because they were the only thing he had ever chosen for himself.

And he drew. He drew everywhere: in the margins of his books, on his homework sheets, on his palm when he couldn't find paper. He drew the old houses of Willow City, the cats on the rooftops, the old men in the market and the great clock tower in the square. His drawings were very good... but hardly anyone had ever seen them.