The Imaginary Friend

Chapter 3
Chapter 3

The next morning, after Ashley had gone off to school, Aaron slipped out and hiked back to his house. Along the way, he waved, shouted and gesticulated to passersby with no discernable effect. Not even the dogs gave him a second look. It was as if he were a ghost.

He found his Mum in the backyard hanging out the laundry, but no amount of jumping, stomping and screaming could get her attention. Entering his house, he was shocked to discover he was missing from the family photos, and his room had been converted into a playroom for his toddler sister. It was as if he had never existed.

Despondent and exhausted, he trudged back to Ashley’s house. Now he was convinced this was the pixie’s devious way of getting back at him. The ring was still snug on his finger, but the prospect of being stuck in this helpless form for 100 days felt like an eternity. He perched on the bed and stared out of the window until Ashley got home.

“Aaron, why are you crying?” she asked as she dropped her bag on the floor.

“I… I want to be real again.”

She walked over and sat beside him.

“Aaron.” she said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “You have been my best friend since we were little. You’re absolutely real to me.”

“But… I want to be real to everyone else too.”

Her eyes went distant, and she ran her hands thru his hair. “Sometimes, I wish that too. And if only we were the same age as well…”

His heart leapt. He struggled for the right words to say, but was paralyzed by shyness.

“But if you became real, there will be a lot of things we’ll no longer be able to do together.”

“Such as what?” he said and blushed as he remembered their bath last night.

“Why, you won’t be able to go exploring with me anymore.” she laughed.

“Exploring?”

“Just what is the matter with you today?”

She dragged him downstairs and into her backyard. There was a dilapidated play fort in the corner, the paint on its adjoining slide badly corroded. They clambered up a ladder onto a creaky platform which shuddered under their weight.

“Are you ready?” Ashley asked.

“Ready for whaaAA!” he gripped her legs as the fort shimmered and transformed into the gondola of a magnificent hot air balloon, gliding thru the cloudless sky. They were soaring over wild tropical jungle dense like broccoli and freckled with glittering gemstone lakes. As they approached a rise in the landscape, she set the balloon down on a sweeping, stone-dotted ledge.

All around was the cacophony of bejeweled macaws and the low rumble of water from a deep cleft. Traversing a swinging suspension bridge wet with the spray of tumbling whitewater, they plunged into the virgin forest, leaping over mossy ledges, trampling through emerald tunnels formed by giant ferns and gnarled trees draped with garlands of spongy moss. They were in the midst of exploring an ancient vine-choked temple with hissing vipers when Ashley’s mum’s voice came echoing from above the canopy, summoning them for dinner.

Aaron was enthralled. Over the next few days, they built an igloo on a high glacial basin surrounded by granite ridges, crouched in a dark nomad’s tent in the middle of a sunbaked nowhere, and got pleasantly lost in the maze of an old world market bazaar with the full explosion of smells and color and noise. Ashley’s imagination seemed to have no limits, and whenever she chose to envelop him within its embrace, it was as if they were sharing a special, secret world together.

Perhaps being her little imaginary friend, at least just for a while, wasn’t such a bad thing after all.