Leo and Ralph, page 10
‘I’m really sorry,’ Leo said. ‘I wrecked the whole day when I told you to go.’
The soccer ball was between them. Gus picked it up and turned it around. ‘Felt like I wrecked it when I talked about Ralph. But I don’t know why.’
Leo felt a squeeze on his finger.
Ralph was right there. He blinked his glassy eyes, and his fur was sunnier than ever. ‘Go on,’ he said in his soft growly voice. ‘Tell him.’
Leo had brought an exercise book from his desk. He opened it to a fresh page and fished a lead pencil out of his pocket.
‘There are some things I haven’t told you,’ he said. ‘About Ralph.’
The thump and shout of a footy game echoed across the school as Leo started to draw.
‘He’s a bit shorter than me,’ he said. ‘About a metre tall. And he’s all furry, like this.’
He scribbled a hairy lump in the shape of Ralph’s body. Gus leant over the page, hardly blinking. Ralph sat close with a paw on Leo’s shoulder.
‘He’s got these pointy hands and feet, a bit like scruffy socks.’ He added them to the page. ‘And stubby horns on top.’
‘Horns?’ said Gus.
‘Yeah. They wiggle around.’
Ralph stroked the little stumps on his head.
Leo kept drawing, describing each part of his friend as it appeared. The bulgy black nose, the long flappy ears and those sparkly eyes. When the sketch was done, he sat back and looked from the picture to Gus, wondering if this was a good idea. He had opened the cage that held his secret, and he didn’t know what came next. On the hottest day of his life, he suddenly felt cold. Ralph’s fur cooled to an icy grey.
Gus picked up the book. ‘This is Ralph? With those big ears?’
Leo nodded and that old jellyfish woke up in his belly.
‘And he’s … an alien?’
Another nod. The jellyfish stirred.
‘So Ralph is—’
Leo finished the thought. ‘My imaginary friend.’
Gus didn’t take his eyes off the page. His eyebrows squashed together. He must have been wrestling with his own memories, leafing back through their conversations. Then his face brightened up and he looked at Leo. ‘He looks so friendly. Did you really make him up?’
A breath eased from Leo’s chest and the jellyfish settled again.
‘I thought you’d laugh. Like you laughed at that picture I hadn’t finished.’
Gus shook his head. ‘Sorry … I didn’t mean—’ He smiled again at the drawing. ‘I just didn’t expect it. I’ve never had an imaginary friend. What’s it like?’
For the next few minutes, Leo told Gus everything about Ralph: the day their friendship started, all the games they’d played, the telescope, the great pig chase and the night they said goodbye. Then he talked about Saturday, when Ralph had disappeared to the tower and Leo sulked on the fence.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was stupid.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Gus twirled the ball on his finger, but it wobbled and fell to the ground. ‘Wait—’ His eyes searched around Leo. ‘Is he here now?’
‘Sitting next to me.’
Gus stared at the space beside Leo. Ralph was there, smiling, but to Gus, it must have been just a patch of empty pavers. ‘I wish I could see him,’ he said. ‘He sounds like the best friend in the world.’
‘Yeah. He is.’
Ralph’s fur washed gold and Leo felt the same. He had shared his biggest truth and now another had emerged – that there was more than one best friend in the world: real-life Gus, a boy twice his size, who could kick a soccer ball as high as the moon; and Ralph, his flappy-eared alien that no one else could see. Leo looked at his furry friend, huddled beside him, and remembered what he had said. I’ll be here as long as you need me.
In the days leading up to Dundle After Dark, everyone helped Leo and Gus get ready. Dad collected the sausages for the barbecue. Mum borrowed boxes of lanterns and lights from her boss, Mr Oliver. Gus’s mum polished the telescope and cleaned the eyepiece and lens. The boys stuck up posters, printed out programs and put messages in the school newsletter.
When no one else was around, Ralph wanted to play their old games again. They bounced the moon around Leo’s room, hunted for asteroids in the garden, and stomped through an obstacle course in the yard, pretending they were somewhere in space. The friends threw themselves into the games and tumbled in laughter. At night, they lay on the blanket and played Other Worlds. They didn’t invent new planets or aliens but talked about their old favourites. The species that looked like doughnuts. The planet of tiny elephants. Ralphora and its fairy-floss trees and lemonade rivers.
The night before Dundle After Dark, they sat on the verandah. Trees rustled with nighttime creatures and a newsreader droned on from a television across the road.
‘I can’t wait for tomorrow,’ said Leo.
‘Me too.’ Ralph stared straight ahead. Jupiter shone bright and he couldn’t take his eyes off it. ‘Leo – before you moved to Dundle, you wanted to see a spaceship. Do you still think about that?’
‘Sometimes.’ Leo raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
His friend didn’t answer. They sat a while longer, padded off to bed and said their backwards goodbye.
‘Tomorrow you see.’
‘Tomorrow you see.’
Leo didn’t go home after school the next day. His bike stayed in the racks while he and Gus set up the lights for Dundle After Dark. They hung a pair of camping lanterns at the front gate, planted a trail of small garden lamps near the oval, and made an arrow of tealights that would lead to the telescope. Last of all, they wound fairy lights around tree trunks and hung a string of coloured bulbs outside the toilets.
Most of the class had stayed back to get things ready. They decorated moon cakes and hammered signs into the ground. When Leo and Gus finished their jobs, they sat on the double slide in the junior playground, waiting for the sun to fall and for families to arrive.
‘Where’s Ralph now?’
Leo pointed. ‘Over there.’
Ralph rocked on one of the swings. He watched the sky without blinking.
‘Thanks for telling me about him.’ Gus lay back on the slide and used his soccer ball as a pillow. ‘There’s something I’ve kept a secret too. It’s about my dad.’
Leo lay on the next-door slide and waited.
Gus huffed a breath. ‘I said I haven’t seen him for ages and, well …’ His voice wavered. ‘I won’t ever see him again.’
Leo’s body was pinned down by the sky, but he turned to face Gus. ‘You mean …?’
He couldn’t say it. He didn’t need to.
‘It’s been nearly two years,’ said Gus. ‘I keep thinking he’s gonna be there when I get home from school, but he never is.’
The night was silent. Even the birds and cicadas held their voices. Leo was quiet too, but he edged one sentence into the dark. ‘That ball’s pretty special, hey.’
‘Yeah.’
That’s all they said for a while. Leo didn’t mind. It was Gus’s story to tell and maybe that was all he wanted to say.
Gus rested his hands on his chest. ‘What was that thing you said about the moon, when you can’t see it in the sky?’
Leo remembered. It was the same thing his dad had said about the universe, years ago. ‘Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.’
‘That’s it.’ Gus laughed. For such a big kid, it came out like a soft breath. ‘I think about that all the time. I can’t see Dad anymore, but I think he’s still here, or up there.’ He pointed at the almost-full moon.
At last, the light gave way to dark, and another clear night sky stretched over the town. Car headlights rounded the corner and families started to drift through the gate. Gus’s mum and grandma arrived, and the boys carried the telescope to the centre of the oval. More people stepped out of cars, parents and grandparents and kids in pyjamas. The covered area was full of excited voices. One of the kids started some music that pumped out of a big speaker.
Leo’s family turned up and Mum gave him a hug.
‘There are so many people!’ said Peg.
Dad squeezed Leo’s shoulder. ‘Great job, buddy.’
Families chatted to each other. Teachers were mingling too. After a while, the music stopped and everyone turned to Ms Pengari, standing on a bench seat and holding a microphone. She wore a puffy orange astronaut suit, with a space helmet under her arm.
‘Welcome to Dundle After Dark!’
The crowd cheered. Leo’s body tingled and Ralph gripped his finger.
‘Thank you, everyone. It’s going to be a very special night.’
Ralph held on a bit tighter.
‘We are hoping to raise lots of money to reopen the town pool. I’m not going to say much more because I’ll hand you over to Leo and Gus.’
Everyone clapped as the boys made their way to the front.
Gus took the microphone from Ms Pengari but handed it straight to Leo. ‘It’s your idea,’ he said.
Leo trembled as he started to talk. ‘Um, thank you for, ah, coming.’ His words hobbled out of his mouth. He lowered the microphone and whispered to Gus. ‘I can’t do it. Can you talk instead?’
Gus bounced the ball in his hands. ‘Okay.’ He took the microphone. ‘Tonight is all about space. There are games to play, over there.’ He pointed to a space near the office, where Moon Walk was set up. ‘There’s a big raffle, with lots of prizes. And later on, there’ll be sausages and soft drinks for sale. But the best thing we have is the telescope on the oval. For a small donation, I’ll show you how to use it, and Leo will tell you about all the things in the sky. The moon is out, and Leo said we’ll see Jupiter and Venus. There are lots of constellations too.’
He leant close to Leo. ‘Anything else? Do you want to say something?’
Leo looked from Gus to the crowd and back.
‘You can do it,’ said Gus. ‘Like my dad said – you can always do more than you think.’
Leo took the microphone. He scanned the crowd for the faces he knew. Mum, Dad and Peg, all of them beaming. Ralph, halfway up a post, giving a small wave. And Gus beside him, his real-life friend, telling him he could do it.
He puffed out his chest. ‘Thanks for coming, everyone. It’s gonna be fun. And who knows – we might even see a UFO.’
The crowd laughed and then clapped again, as loud as a rocket taking off. Leo had never talked in front of so many people. He and Gus led everyone along the candlelit path, all the way to the telescope. Gus had been practising at home, so he looked like an expert as he twisted knobs and angled the tube. Then he invited people to look through the eyepiece, showing them how to focus the lens. As they did, Leo pointed out the wonders of the world above. The craters on the moon. The nearest planets. The shape of constellations, those dot-to-dot pictures made of stars.
The buddies from his first week at school were there, and Nicola, the girl with the horse, kept asking questions.
‘What’s that? Just above the trees?’
‘Venus,’ said Leo.
‘What about those stars?’ She pointed higher in the sky.
‘That’s Scorpius. Looks a bit like a scorpion.’
‘Is there—’ She rocked back and stared. ‘Is there a horse up there?’
Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open, like she had never seen a night sky before. As Leo started to answer, Ralph grabbed his finger, but he shook him off so he could finish talking. ‘Sort of. There’s a constellation called Pegasus. But we can’t see it, not till later in the year.’
‘Really? Wow.’
As he shared his love of the sky with more people, an old feeling rose up inside. That big balloon feeling, like his chest was filled with air – but now he’d given it to others too. Kids and parents were gazing up, whispering and pointing at the patterns above. On that dusty oval under the dark Dundle sky, he felt like he was a part of a constellation himself – a cluster of people, marvelling at space, and joined together with invisible lines.
The Earth turned slowly, the moon rose higher and after a while, everyone had peered through the telescope at the star-filled sky. The smell of sausages wafted across the oval and families flocked to the barbecue.
‘Come on, Leo.’ Gus was waiting for him to follow the crowd to the food. Nicola was waiting too, and a few other kids.
Ralph tugged his finger again. Without looking down, he whispered to his friend. ‘Later, Ralph. I’m hungry.’
He caught up to Gus and the others and they ran to the covered area. Everyone was chatting, kids were playing Moon Walk, and Leo grabbed a sausage from Dad.
‘Well done, bud. Look at all these faces. Listen to the noise!’
It was a strange sound. There must have been a hundred people talking at once. Leo couldn’t make out what anyone was saying, but their voices swam together to make one big instrument, happy and loud.
When he had finished eating, he followed the tealights back to the telescope and stood on the oval by himself. Quiet there in the middle, away from all the chatter and music. He rested his hand on the scope, then peeked through the eyepiece. Spent some time with the almost-full moon, named in his head all the lunar seas, then he panned across to find a constellation. But along the way he spotted something strange. A small bright dot but bigger than a star. He kept the scope still, watching the dot – it was moving, travelling slowly across the sky, growing as it went. He followed its path, keeping it in sight. It wasn’t just flying, it seemed to be rolling. A big round shape, spinning through the night.
‘Oh no.’
He took his eye from the telescope and looked up. He could see it, moving among the stars. He knew what it was, where it had come from and why it was getting bigger.
He sprinted across the oval, straight to the bike racks. He jumped on his bike, hit the pedals and skidded out the gate. As he sped along the road, he kept his eyes on the sky. There was a soccer ball spaceship heading towards Dundle and he didn’t have much time.
There weren’t many streetlights in Dundle. The wide empty streets were dark, the houses and trees still. Leo pushed the pedals and tracked the ball in the sky as he rode. The only sounds were the tyres whirring along and his breathing, heavy and hard.
He rode past his house, over the train tracks and down the main street. There were streetlights here and light falling from the pubs, but no one would have noticed him streaking past or the spaceship high above. It was still a distant ball but getting closer, whirling through the dark. He reached the lagoon and kept going, over a bumpy wooden bridge to the other side. Then he stopped. The black shape of the tower loomed over him. In the dark, it looked like an enormous upturned rocket that had nosedived towards the ground, but got caught by the tangle of timber legs. He traced with his eyes the steps that zigzagged through the heart of the wooden frame. It was a long way up.
He scrabbled over the fence and landed heavily. He caught his breath and pressed his hand on one of the giant wooden legs. It was hard and rough. He scooted up the steps, his shoes thudding on the timber. When he reached the top, he was puffed again. He bent over with his hands on his knees. Waited for his head to stop spinning.
‘Leo?’
A warm growly voice came from the other side of the tower.
‘Ralph!’ He staggered around and hugged his friend. ‘You didn’t say goodbye.’
Ralph patted his back. ‘I’m still here. And I knew you’d come.’ He pulled out of the hug and swept his paw towards the view. ‘Look at this planet of yours.’
From that height, above the tops of the trees, the world was beautiful. In every direction, the land unrolled like thick rumpled carpet in the dark. A cluster of warm lights glinted from the town: bedroom lamps and TV screens, keeping people company. Up above, the navy sky was dusted with stars and the soccer ball spaceship was bigger again, about the size of the moon.
‘Is it really coming for you?’
Ralph nodded.
‘So that means—’
He couldn’t finish, so Ralph spoke for him.
‘It’s time to say goodbye.’ The words caught in his throat and the sparkly light of the moon gleamed in his eyes.
Leo sat on the balcony, holding his knees. ‘You’re supposed to stay as long as I need you.’
Ralph kept facing the sky. ‘I know.’
‘But—’
‘Listen.’ Ralph rested his paws on Leo’s shoulders. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. He sounded tired. ‘I came from Ralphora because you needed a friend. And you’ve been the best friend in the universe. But you don’t need me anymore.’
‘I do!’
‘No.’ Ralph slowed his voice down. ‘You don’t. Not anymore. You needed a friend and you’ve got one. But it’s not me. It’s Gus.’
Leo wanted to scream at Ralph and tell him he was wrong. But he knew, deep down, everything his friend had said was true. All Ralph’s thoughts and all his words, tonight and last week and all the days before, had come from the same place. They had come from Leo.
When Ralph pestered Leo to say hi to Gus, it was Leo who wanted him to stop and sit down. When Ralph had told him to kick the ball, it was really Leo’s wish. When Ralph had gazed at the strange tower, it was Leo who decided that one night they would climb it, the night they would say goodbye. In the deepest pocket of his heart, Leo knew all along that this moment would come, because he had designed it himself. They had played their old games, imagined their planets and, the night before, said their final Grimble farewells.
Now here they were, on top of the tower, watching the spaceship descend. There wasn’t much time and Leo wanted to imagine Ralph longer, to hear his voice in his head a bit more.
