by Hilary McKay
‘Oh,’ said Charlie crossly, because he had not got a light-up watch, and anyway was useless at telling the time. ‘Ages till midnight. We’d better go to sleep for a bit.’
‘I can’t. I can’t get to sleep.’
‘Count,’ advised Charlie. ‘Count yourself scoring goals. Max told me that. It works.’
Henry lay uncomfortably beside his hamster cage and tried it. He dressed himself up in a red and white football strip, cut bright green grass into perfectly patterned squares, filled the largest arena in the world with cheering fans, added a background of ten magnificent red and white players not quite as good as himself, an opposing team in green and yellow, a terrified goalie facing his charge (a goalie who looked exactly like Charlie), and kicked relentless penalties one after another with a ball that left a trail of sparks in the air like a comet’s tail. Of course, with each goal the crowd went crazy, and even the opposing team couldn’t help but cheer. In fact, as Henry drifted off to sleep, everyone (and there were thousands, not to mention all the TV viewers) was having a wonderful time except for the opposing team’s goalie, who would not admit he was frightened.
Suddenly there was the most enormous sound in the world. And a bright light and screaming. The screaming was Charlie. And Henry, waking from a deep sleep, was aware of a spreading warm dampness.
‘Charlie, stop screaming!’ cried Charlie’s mother. ‘It’s only me! I am so sorry!
I only thought I would just peep in! I had no idea … Look at this! Lego everywhere! I’m sorry I woke you up, Henry! Go back to sleep!’
The light went off again and Henry became drowsily aware of Charlie, grumbling to himself as he collected Lego in the dark and rebuilt his fortifications.
‘Crikey, that made an awful noise!’ murmured Henry as Charlie clambered back into bed.
‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘I nearly wet the bed!’
‘I think I did!’
‘You did?’
‘I think so.’
‘Want me to fetch Mum?’
‘No. What’ll I do?’
‘Nothing,’ said the experienced Charlie. ‘It’ll go away soon. It sort of disappears. I don’t know why.’
‘OK,’ said Henry and sighed with relief, and then he asked, ‘How do you know?’
Charlie did not reply. He already felt he had said too much. Instead he started to snore, and the more Henry said, ‘I know you can hear me! And I know you know what I mean!’ the more he snored. So eventually Henry gave up. He went back to counting goals again, slightly damper than before, but on the whole much more comfortable. Charlie’s snoring became part of the roar of the crowd. Henry fell asleep.
5
Midnight Till Two O’Clock
(in the morning)
Henry was asleep, but Charlie was wide awake. He was sure he could hear something. Something alive, padding around the bedroom. Something sleek and black. A restless whisper that circled the bed. He did not know what time it was.
Charlie was too scared to move or make a sound and he had never felt so lonely. Henry was no comfort at all. The person Charlie wanted most in the world was Max. Max was scared of nothing in the world. Not even ghosts.
Now Charlie was remembering what Max had said, when he, Charlie, had wished to see a ghost.
‘Be careful what you wish for!’
The out-of-sight patch of blackness that was pacing the room seemed to come a little closer as Charlie remembered Max’s words. Charlie’s skin prickled and his heart thudded. He tried to breathe silently. He wondered if whatever-it-was knew where he was. And did it know that he was awake? And that his name was Charlie? And that he would do anything, promise anything, give anything – if only it would agree to get Henry instead of getting him.
It was right beside him now.
Charlie closed his eyes and waited to faint, and in the middle of his terror he thought how utterly unfair it was that of all the wishes he had ever made this one should be the only one to come true.
Then it jumped.
It jumped right past Charlie and up on to Henry’s bunk and landed with a rattle on the hamster cage.
Charlie laughed aloud in relief.
The thing that he had thought was a ghost was Suzy, the cat. She had finally located where the delicious smell of hamster was coming from.
‘Yrrummmm!’ said Suzy very happily.
‘No Suzy!’
Charlie scrambled out of bed and on to the bunk-bed ladder and grabbed in the dark. Henry yelled and woke and sat up with a jerk that shook the cage and overbalanced Suzy. She fell on to Charlie, and Charlie fell on to floor and they landed together in a yowling, struggling heap. Moments later the bedroom door was flung open and the Lego trap collapsed for the second time that night.
‘What is it?’ moaned Charlie’s mother, her hair all on end and Charlie’s father’s dressing gown clutched around her, inside out. ‘Oh! Suzy! Suzy, you bad cat, whatever are you doing in here? Give her to me, Charlie, I’ll put her outside. Are you all right, Henry?’
‘Is that the cat that ate Charlie’s hamster?’ demanded Henry.
Charlie’s mother made unhappy, don’t-ask-me-horrible-questions-at-twoo’clock- in-the-morning noises, caught Suzy, and backed painfully over the Lego to the door.
‘Is it?’ asked Henry, extremely fiercely.
‘I shall close your bedroom door and put her outside in the garden and put the catch on the cat flap so she can’t get back in,’ said Charlie’s mother, speaking as soothingly as she could between the pain of walking on Lego and an armful of scrabbling cat. ‘Go back to sleep, boys!’
She closed the door carefully behind her and Charlie and Henry sighed with relief because she had not noticed the hamster cage.
‘That was so funny!’ said Charlie, laughing.
‘Funny!’ exclaimed Henry. ‘Funny!’ and he leant over the side of the bunk bed, grabbed a double handful of Charlie’s hair and tugged. ‘That’s for inviting my poor little hamster for a sleepover with a cannibal murdering cat!’
‘I didn’t invite your poor little hamster!’ said Charlie, pulling away. ‘You brought it yourself!’ And he laughed again and lay on his bed with his feet pushing very hard at the underneath of Henry’s mattress, so that it tipped alarmingly.
‘I didn’t know you’d still got that cat! Stop pushing my bed! S’not funny!’
‘It is!’
Henry swiped as best he could below the bunk with his pillow.
‘Missed!’ said Charlie, choking with laughter, and pushed even harder.
Henry leaned dangerously far over the bunk rail and caught one of Charlie’s legs. Charlie kicked and they both fell on to the floor. The bedroom door crashed open again and this time it was Charlie’s father. His eyes were screwed nearly shut and he was wearing Charlie’s mother’s dressing gown, which was covered in peach-coloured frills.
‘Ouch!’ yelled Charlie’s father, as he fell over the skateboard and landed on the Lego.
‘What the de … What the bl … What on earth …’
He switched on the light, caught sight of himself in the mirror, and switched it off again.
‘I give up!’ he groaned. ‘I’m much too old for performances like this. I’m going back to bed!’
Henry and Charlie went to bed too, very quietly in case he decided to change his mind and come back and sleep on the floor, as he had threatened to do.
Henry said, ‘Doesn’t your dad know any proper swearwords?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie loyally. ‘He knows thousands! You wait till morning when he’s properly awake!’
The house became quiet again. Charlie fell asleep, and Henry nearly fell asleep. Then he remembered something.
‘Charlie!’ he whispered.
‘Mmmm?’ groaned Charlie.
‘We’ve got to eat that midnight feast!’
‘We will,’ mumbled Charlie.
‘When?’
‘Soon,’ said Charlie, after a long, long pause. ‘OK?’
>
There was no reply except a snore.
‘Oh well,’ said Charlie, and very soon he was snoring too.
6
Two O’Clock Till Four O’Clock
(in the morning)
Henry’s hamster was a very lazy animal. Also he was used to living with Henry, who was a bumpy, noisy sort of person to live with. So the arrival of Suzy the cat on to the top of his cage had not even caused him to turn over in his sleep. But between two and four o’clock in the morning he was in the habit of getting up and running very fast and excitedly in his little green exercise wheel. It made a screeching, rattling sound because it needed oiling. He also liked to chew the bars of his cage very hard. Henry’s mother said it sounded just like the drill that men use to make holes in roads, but really it was not as bad as that.
However, it was still loud enough to wake up Charlie and Henry. They woke up as bright and alert as if they had just had ten hours’ sleep instead of less than one. They discovered that they were both very hungry, and told each other what a good time it was to have a midnight feast.
‘It’s brilliant,’ said Henry. ‘Your mum and dad must be so exhausted by now that hardly anything could wake them up!’
Later on this turned out to be true.
Henry climbed down into Charlie’s bunk and they got out the salted peanuts, the strawberry bootlaces, cheese triangles, Coca-Cola, chocolate M&Ms and curry-flavoured crisps, and they ate the lot. All except for one bit of cheese triangle, which they gave to the hamster.
‘Max said we’d be sick,’ remarked Charlie. ‘Do you feel sick?’
Henry sat for a while in silence to check the way he felt and then said, ‘Not really. Do you?’
‘No,’ said Charlie, after checking carefully, and he added, ‘Max doesn’t know everything!’
It was the first time in his life that Charlie had realized this. The idea made Charlie feel good. It made him feel fine and frisky.
The room was no longer dark. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning and because it was midsummer, dawn was not far away. Outside, a bird was beginning to sing. Charlie pulled back the curtain. The garden looked all green and silvery-grey and cool and empty.
‘Let’s go outside,’ said Charlie.
Before Henry’s mother had left Henry at Charlie’s house she had told him to be good. And so far, he thought, he had been. But now he had a feeling that sneaking out into the garden at four o’clock in the morning would not be being good at all.
Charlie said, in a very good little boy’s voice, ‘It would be much nicer for my mother if we were sick outside instead of in here.’
‘I do feel a tiny bit sick!’ said Henry at once.
‘Well then,’ said Charlie solemnly, ‘we ought to go outside, Henry.’
‘Yes, Charlie,’ said Henry, just as solemnly. ‘I think we should.’
So Charlie and Henry went barefoot and silently down the stairs, feeling that in all ways they were doing the right thing.
They were very sorry to find that the kitchen door, the door that led into the garden, was locked. The key was nowhere in sight. Charlie and Henry sat on the doormat beside the cat flap and thought and thought.
Afterwards, neither Charlie nor Henry could remember which of them it was who said, ‘Suzy is a big cat.’
It was a big cat flap too, homemade by Charlie’s father, who was very clever at making things. It had a catch on it which could be moved so that it only opened one way. You could have it so that if Suzy went outside she could not get back in again, or so that if Suzy came into the house, she could not go back out again. Or you could leave the catch off altogether, so that Suzy could come and go as she pleased.
That night, Charlie’s mother had fixed the catch so that after Suzy had been shooed out through the cat flap she could not come back in again.
‘Suzy is a big cat,’ said whichever-of-them-it-was.
Then they had a short tussle on the doormat about who would go first and Henry won.
Henry stuck his head out of the cat flap, and then one arm, and then (wriggling sideways a bit) the other arm. After that, it was easy for the rest of him to get through. Charlie followed seconds later.
7
Four O’Clock Till Six O’Clock
(in the morning)
It was wonderful in the garden. It was not dark at all any more. The grass was cool and wet with dew, and very slippery to bare feet.
Charlie and Henry played skids on the grass until their pyjamas were soaking wet with dew, and striped from top to bottom with green grass stains and mud. They agreed that everyone who did not come out and play skids on the lawn at five o’clock in the morning was crazy. Charlie was perfectly happy, and Henry was almost perfectly happy except for one little thing. One tiny little thing that had been at the back of his mind, bothering him, since bedtime.
‘Charlie,’ he said. ‘Where did you get that toothbrush from that you lent me?’
Henry said this standing at the end of the lawn. Charlie took a run and skidded towards him, sweeping his feet from under him so that he toppled like a skittle. Henry always did fall down very easily, but it still made him mad. So he bumped Charlie’s head, which of course made Charlie’s nose bleed. Then they were both mad, and Charlie would not answer Henry’s question.
‘I know it was not new,’ said Henry, when he had asked his question three or four times more, ‘because it wasn’t in a packet and anyway it didn’t taste new.’
‘How did it taste?’ asked Charlie, interestedly.
‘Old,’ said Henry.
‘Oh,’ said Charlie, and he seemed to choke for a while, and then he said he was cold and he was going to go back to bed.
This time the cat flap was very, very hard to open. However, at last Charlie managed to force it far enough for him to get his head through. And one arm, but not the other.
All the time he was doing this Henry was demanding, ‘Where did that toothbrush come from?’ and saying how old it had tasted. The more Henry thought about it, the older it seemed to him that the toothbrush had tasted.
At about half past five in the morning Charlie became completely stuck in the cat flap. The catch was bent from Charlie’s forcing, so the cat flap was jammed half-open. Henry was no help at all. He just kept on and on about the toothbrush. So at last Charlie started shouting for help.
He could not shout very loudly, stuck on his stomach halfway through a very tight cat flap. After several minutes of calling, his parents still had not come down to rescue him. Henry had been right when he said that they must be so exhausted that hardly anything would wake them up.
Charlie was exhausted too. He said to Henry, ‘Ring the doorbell.’
‘What?’ said Henry.
‘Ring the doorbell,’ repeated Charlie, ‘and that will wake up Mum and Dad and they’ll come downstairs and get me out.’
Henry said he would only ring the doorbell if Charlie told him where the toothbrush had come from.
‘You don’t really want to know,’ said Charlie, which of course made Henry want to know more than ever. So at last, after a lot of arguing and promising and bargaining, Charlie agreed to tell him. And Henry agreed to ring the doorbell straight after.
Then they fell into complete silence.
‘Go on then,’ said Henry at last.
‘It was my grandma’s,’ said Charlie.
‘WHAT!!!!’ yelled Henry, and he ran around the garden with his tongue hanging out, shaking his head and roaring, and then he licked handfuls of grass, and after that he came back and demanded furiously, ‘Which grandma?’
‘Ring the doorbell!’ begged Charlie.
‘Which grandma?’ shouted Henry. ‘The big hairy one or the one you only let come at Christmas?’
‘The one we only let come at Christmas,’ said Charlie. ‘Now ring the doorbell!’
Then at last Henry did ring the doorbell. But before he did it he gave Charlie the most enormous stinging wallop on the part of him that was still stick
ing out of the cat flap.
8
Six O’Clock in the Morning Onwards
Charlie’s father and mother were very surprised and furious when they saw where Charlie was. Charlie’s father said he had a good mind to leave him there, and just use the front door from now on.
‘Good idea,’ said Charlie’s mother, and started to go back to bed, but then she said, ‘but I can’t be going right round by the front door every time I want to hang the washing out.’
So they decided to rescue Charlie after all. His father unscrewed the bent catch and pulled him through the cat flap. They would not let Henry follow, even though he tried to. They let him in the ordinary way through the door.
Charlie’s father and mother were not a bit sorry for Charlie, even though he was very sore, and covered in mud and blood and grass stains. They were not very polite to Henry either. Both boys were sent upstairs for a bath and a shower.
‘Not a bath or a shower, a bath and a shower,’ said Charlie’s mother.
‘This has been the second worst night of my life!’
She sounded so fierce that they did not even dare ask which had been the first worst. They did not dare to complain either. They crawled upstairs in silence, but when they were in the bathroom Henry caught sight of Charlie’s grandma’s toothbrush. It made him groan and moan and drink a lot of bathroom water out of the tooth mug.
‘Sorry,’ said Charlie to Henry.
Then they had a look at the bright red hand print that was glowing on Charlie’s bottom. Henry had done that, and he had meant it to hurt, and he could see that it did.
‘Sorry,’ he said to Charlie.
By the time they came out of the bathroom, very clean and scrubbed looking, Charlie’s father had gone to work. And Charlie’s mother was quite calm, even though she had now seen the state of Charlie’s bedroom, which was more or less covered in Lego and hamster cage sawdust and the remains of the midnight feast.