What is the Moon?
CHARLIE
“What is the Moon, Becca?” I looked up at her, expecting a straightforward answer.
“What do you mean Charlie?” She scoffed back, her eyes rolling like marbles to the back of her head. “It’s the moon genius, it’s just the moon.”
I paused; I knew she didn’t want to talk to me, but I had to know. “But Becca, what does it do?”
“It doesn’t do anything I told you, it’s just the moon.” Her voice, grated.
“It has to do something-”
“It doesn’t.” She snapped and I knew the conversation was over.
I went downstairs and sprang onto the sofa, flicking through channels on the remote. Tracy Beaker was on.
*THE NEXT DAY*
“Hey Becca, what’s the moon?” I asked again, hopeful.
She sighed, lifting her plaits from the desk, brushing a stray hair away with a purple felt-tipped finger. “I told you yesterday.”
“No, you didn’t” I shook my head so fast that the jewels at the bottom of my braids flung against my face. It hurt a little.
“Yes, I did.” She barked back without hesitating.
But she didn’t, I know she didn’t and I wasn’t about to go anywhere. I stomped my trainers, firmly. The bottoms of my soles flashed pink for a moment but I think I made my point.
“Why do you even want to know? Becca caved, irritated.
“I don’t want to tell you,” I said, but I only got out a whisper.
“UGH! CHARLOTTE Are you kidding? You better be kidding. I don’t have time for this, you know.” Her tone was that level of irritated that she reserved for my full name.
“Why, what are you doing?” I asked, knowing I’d get the answer I always got.
“UGH GOD, I’m writING, DUH!” She flung her hands in the air, gesturing at a blank page.
And the door slammed in my face.
*THE DAY AFTER THAT *
“Nope, nope go away Charlie.” She was shaking her head violently as she talked, not even lifting her head from her desk to confirm it was me standing in the doorway.
“I haven’t asked anything yet!” I accused back, bewildered that she knew exactly what I was going to say.
“I know what you are going to say-“
“No, you don’t.” I cut her off. She totally did.
“I’m so fed up of you asking me about the moon. It’s up there, in the sky, that’s it. That’s all you need to know. End. Of. Story. You done now?” Her sentences were shorter than a Tamagotchi’s lifespan.
“Yeah okay, we’re done.”
*THREE DAYS LATER*
BECCA
“CHARLIE? CHARLIE WHERE ARE YOU?” I screamed up the stairs from the sofa. “DINNER’S READY!”
No answer.
“CMON CHARLOTTE! MUM SAYS IT’S GETTING COLD!
But more silence followed.
Reluctantly, I thundered upstairs, putting extra weight on each footstep so that she knew how mad I was.
“CHARLIE, ARE YOU UP HERE?” I looked in our room despite it being shrouded in the dark, flicked on the big light and flung up her bed covers and mine. Nothing.
I sped down the stairs to the garden, inspecting the Wendy House, the old lop-sided swing set and the garage we weren’t supposed to go into. I noticed that some of the radioactive blue rope was missing from the bag at the front door, the one that usually sat on top, spiralling down to the concrete like blue raspberry laces. Nothing.
If she wasn’t in the house? Where would she go? I had to find her! She was all alone.
I raced out of the garden and out of the cul-de-sac without telling Mum and Dad a thing. I’m sure I’d regret that later but I couldn’t think straight. My brain felt all jumbled like blue raspberry laces. I didn’t know where to begin looking for her.
I cut across the pitch to see if she was sulking outside school. Nothing.
I dashed over to the supermarket, praying she’d decided to sneak off with her pocket money and scran a pick-and-mix to herself. No sign of her.
I collapsed to the curb, my legs buckling underneath me, defeated. I just wanted to hold my head in my hands and cry her name, beg her to come home, beg her to give me a chance to say sorry….for everything. But I couldn’t. She was still out there somewhere, Goodness knows where but I had to find her. Otherwise, y’know Mum and Dad were going to kill me.
I tried down by the Avon where she’d skip stones and up by the Leisure Centre and the secret park where we used to play sometimes. I doubled-backed by the park near our house and dodged the cars on the turning circle until I was completely out of places to look.
I cut through the shortcut, my last industrially paved mile of freedom. I was a grounded girl walking. I turned into my garden, snuck through the gate and hunched over on the slabbed steps in shame. Where was she? Why did she run away? My mind reeling with all the things I would say to her if I could and how much better a sister I would be if only I-
*THUD*
I look up from hands even though they were holding my face together to see a coil of blue raspberry rope half a metre in front of me. The rope was limp but distinctively blue, tied into a loop at one end.
I picked it up, balancing it in my hands and looked up at the sky, the sun was setting, I could only see faint slither now, just above the fence.
“HEY!” A shriek cried out that didn’t seem to come from anywhere. “ Can you give me that back, please?!”
Dumbfounded, I called out the only reasonable explanation. “CHARLIE? Is that you?
“Yeah! Course, it’s me, dummy. I’m in the attic. Can you bring it up?”
I followed Charlie’s voice to the attic, clambering the ladders like a monkey at the zoo, as I had done instinctively as soon as I was old enough to. I peered my head through the hatch and turned to find her scaling up a poorly built skyscraper of vivid pink boxes.
CHARLIE
“CHARLIE!!!!” Becca shrieked from the hatch, my foot wobbled. “GET DOWN FOR THERE!”
I regained my balance and did what she said, when she screamed like that, you knew your life was at risk one way or another.“What? What is it, Becca? It was my turn to be irritated for a change.
But I could tell from the fury steaming off her face that wasn’t about to fly. “What do you think you’re doing? You could have got hurt! You’re not big enough to do that-” She trailed off as she looked around the room, trying to piece together what was happening around her like it was a 1000-piece puzzle of a Japanese garden. “Wait, what are you even doing?”
I crashed into the carpet and crossed my legs, patting the matted green space beside me, instructing her to sit. And she did, obediently.
“I…was trying…” I looked over at her, her eyes hanging on my words. She nodded at me, encouragingly. “I was trying to lasso the moon.”
I looked down at my palms, not sure what she was going to say or do. I hoped she’d say something so I wouldn’t have to look or guess what she was thinking. But she didn’t say anything. Too much time had passed that I couldn’t bear it any longer, I looked up through my hair, preparing for the worst. But she only smiled. Her smile was soft like melted chocolate would be if you left it out in the sun for too long. I didn’t know her face could do that.
“You wanted to lasso the moon?” She pressed, gently.
“Yeah, course. Mum and Dad always say that that’s what they are going to do for us. That they love us that much, to the moon and back. So, so that’s what I was gonna do for them.” I explained. “But I couldn’t reach from downstairs, or from our room so I thought I’d try up here through the window. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reach. And, now I’ve let them down, I’ve let you down and I don’t have anything to give them for Christmas now.”
She reached her arm behind my back and hugged my arm firmly. “Yes, you do. I have an idea.”
*CHRISTMAS MORNING*
ELAINE & DAVID
“David, the girls are awake” she kissed his cheek, trying to soothe his shoulder and him awake.
“Eughhhhhh. No, they’re not. They can’t be.” He groaned, as his half-dead arm reached for his watch, “it’s 04.30. They’ve only just gone to sleep…they can’t be up already.
Elaine smirked knowingly. “It’s Christmas morn-“
Suddenly the door swung open and the bedroom succumbed to enemy occupation. The girls knew all too well that it had to be swift and quick to get a victory. The element of surprise was key; guerilla warfare under the shroud of darkness.
The prisoners of war were lugged down the stairs and despite having to drag their lifeless limbs down each step, nothing deterred the excited shrieks of their torturers.
“Alright, alright. I’ll put the kettle on and then we can open pressies. Pick which one you want, I’ll be back in a minute.”
David towed his body into the kitchen next door like it was a snowed-in truck at the end of a cul-de-sac, metres from home. He reached up and hauled the coffee cups out of the cupboard, placing them on the counter and dividing the remaining instant coffee between them equally, operating like a robot on a conveyor belt factory line.
He picked up the kettle, pouring the boiled water into the cups until the coffee flavoured steam circled the air around his nose. He topped it off with milk. He stumbled back through, handing one to his wife who was wiping the sleep out of her eye, but turned gratefully- clasping at the mug- when she saw him.
“Right girls, what will it be? Charlie, do you want to go first?”
Charlie looked over at her sister, who looked back at her, and quickly scrambled to her feet like a penguin on ice, skating against the carpet.
“Actually, we wanted it to be you,” Becca said, mysteriously as Charlie placed a piece of paper in front of them.
A picture of two girls, one with blonde and the other with brown hair, holding on to a bright blue loop, which was lassoed around the moon.
