He put it to the side and made some more. There was a cube-shaped creature with one eye, a lumpy yellow thing covered in pink spots, tiny round critters, long wobbly beasts, and one that looked human, only with two heads and an extra pair of arms.

  He stood and admired his creations. Each alien was different, but they all looked friendly. Big smiles, wide eyes – he couldn’t imagine any of them butting in or walking away.

  ‘Are you going to keep them?’ said Peg. ‘I need more playdough.’

  Leo ran into his room and found the polaroid camera he shared with her. He came back to the table, lined his aliens up in a row and took photos of them, one at a time. When the camera had printed the last picture, he squashed each doughy alien in his fists and gave the lot to Peg. Then he found a square notepad and stuck the photos on the pages. Underneath each picture, he wrote its alien name. Gronk. Fump. Wozzle. Meeb. Spelling didn’t matter because it was all made up.

  Peg was still prodding and poking the dough. She made blobby shapes and arranged them next to each other.

  ‘What are they?’ he said.

  She placed a lumpy figure beside the others. ‘Friends.’

  He flipped through the pages of his alien album and smiled. ‘Mine too.’ Then he scrawled Frends on the front cover.

  Peg was a year and a half younger than Leo. They looked alike with their pointy chins and sandy hair, but not much else was the same. She often rushed to the centre of the playground, spoke without a pause and, from the first day, had made friends at kindy. She wasn’t loud, bossy or overly talkative – she was just a girl who other kids liked. But he didn’t expect her – his just-turned-four sister – to give him advice over dinner that night.

  Mum started it. As she dished fried rice into their bowls, she asked Leo about some of the kids in his class.

  ‘What’s little George like?’

  He didn’t know anything about George except that he wasn’t little.

  ‘What about Hunter – what does he do at playtime?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s think of some others. How about—’ She stopped. ‘Sorry. I sound like I’m teaching at school. It’s just … I thought that—’

  Peg interrupted. ‘Why don’t you join in a game?’

  He held a spoonful of rice and looked at her. ‘What?’

  She shrugged. ‘When I’ve got no one to play with, I just join in someone’s game.’

  ‘What sort of game?’ said Mum.

  ‘Tiggy. Hide-and-seek.’ She looked deep into her bowl, as if more games were hiding there. ‘My favourite one’s Horsey.’

  Dad gave her a serious look. ‘Tell us about Horsey.’

  She returned the expression. ‘We pretend we’re horses. That’s all.’ Then she burst out laughing.

  Leo didn’t laugh. He kept his head down. Gripped the spoon and scooped too much rice into his mouth. He tried to imagine himself joining in at playtime. He wouldn’t know what to do. He wouldn’t keep up. And there was no way he was going to play Horsey. The whole thing was a terrible idea.

  ‘Well, I think it’s a good idea,’ said Mum.

  ‘Me too.’ Dad lifted his glass in a kind of salute. ‘It’s worth a try.’

  Leo wasn’t sure where to start. He looked around for a game to join in and heard a thumping sound behind the Prep room. A group of kids were kicking a ball to each other on the small circle of grass. Leo stood to the side, watching. They yelled to each other in between kicks, but he couldn’t work out any pattern or rules. Then the ball rolled towards him. He waited for it without moving and it bounced off his shin.

  ‘Kick it!’ someone yelled.

  He had seen the others kick, so he stepped up to the ball and swung his leg. His foot missed, then landed on top of the ball. He wobbled over and fell to the ground. The others laughed as he lay there, wishing the sky would swallow him up. Someone else kicked the ball, the game carried on and he stumbled back to the classroom.

  Next lunchtime, Leo stood in the playground in the shade of his big bucket hat. He looked like a tiny beach umbrella. The other kids swarmed past, under bridges, through tunnels, up and over climbing frames. They moved smoothly around him, like water rushing past an obstacle, and he wondered if they could see him. He didn’t know their game, or how many games were taking place. Couldn’t grasp the phrases they shouted at each other as they hung from bars and slid down poles.

  He looked up. The sun was trapped behind a wall of cloud and the sky was whitish grey. He imagined the endless blanket of space beyond, the unknown planets and the aliens he wanted to meet.

  ‘Oof!’

  A tall boy bulldozed into him and Leo hit the ground. He wheezed a few raspy breaths and held his belly.

  ‘Sorry!’ The tall boy pulled him up by the wrist. ‘Didn’t see you.’ He started to run off.

  ‘Hey!’ Leo yelled, still clutching his guts. ‘How do you, you know, play …’ But the boy was gone.

  Leo brushed dirt off his palms and got his breath back. Then he stuck out a hand to stop a pigtailed girl who was sprinting past.

  ‘What game are you pl—’

  He couldn’t finish because a red-haired boy on the climbing fort shouted, ‘VOLCANO!’ It must have been part of the game because a wave of squeals rang out across the playground and everyone bolted in different directions, including the pigtailed girl. Leo followed but couldn’t keep up. He spun around, lost balance and was bumped over again. Kids thundered past like a herd of bulls. He ducked his head, crawled through the stampede and sat on a log, away from the crowd. His knees were scratched. His hands shook. The playground was a battlefield he didn’t want to join.

  At the end of the day, he lay on the colourful mat. Closed his eyes and imagined an alien ship hovering above the playground. He pictured a friendly Gronk jumping from the ship and landing beside him. They’d play a game that no one else knew, a game without volcanoes.

  A sudden wave of applause startled him. He rubbed his eyes, sat up and remembered he was in the classroom. Kids all around him were cheering and clapping because Mrs Lloyd had awarded her Star of the Day: the red-haired boy from the climbing fort, the kid who’d yelled, ‘VOLCANO!’

  Leo still didn’t know what it meant.

  Things got worse when Mum, Dad and Peg came to school for Family Day. It was an afternoon for the Preps to show off their schoolwork, but Leo dragged his feet like they were made of moon rock. He still hadn’t made a friend. Mum’s wish hadn’t come true. And now they were at school, watching all the kids pretend he didn’t exist.

  Family Day started in the courtyard in the middle of the school. The class stood in line and sang a song about vegetables. Then everyone moved inside and looked at all the stories and paintings and cardboard buildings the students had made. Mum fussed over a picture Leo had drawn of an alien family, two big ones and two small.

  ‘Which one’s me? Ooh, that has to be Dad with three eyes.’

  Finally, afternoon tea was set up in the courtyard and everyone was allowed free time on the playground. Leo stood next to one of the food tables, piling cream onto a pikelet. He waited for Mum and Dad to tell him to hurry up, to finish eating and go play. But they were already watching the action.

  ‘Look at Peg on the monkey bars,’ said Mum, licking cake icing off her fingers.

  ‘How did she get up there by herself?’ Dad sipped tea from a paper cup. ‘Is she talking to someone?’

  It was true. Peg was on the playground, swinging from bars, whizzing down slides and chatting to the other kids. All the things Leo was supposed to do.

  Mum gave Dad a playful hit on the arm. ‘We won’t have to worry about her next year.’

  Leo felt his eyes burn. Mum must have noticed because she bent down and held his hand. ‘Oh, love. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

  He pulled away and ran from the crowd to a spot under the office stairs. It was on the other side of the courtyard and hard to find, but with a good view of the sky. He looked up and saw the almost-full moon, hanging like a white balloon. He blinked until his eyes felt dry. Then he heard something that made his whole body – not just his feet – feel like a pile of moon rock.

  ‘VOLCANO!’

  It was Peg’s voice. She wasn’t just playing the game. She was in charge. Mrs Lloyd would probably name her the Star of the Day.

  It was at that moment, under the office stairs, that Leo made an important decision.

  He’d had enough of school. He wasn’t coming back.

  When Leo refused to put on his uniform, Mum and Dad didn’t say much. Mum hugged him tight before she took Peg to kindy and went to work. Dad cancelled his mowing for the day and stayed home.

  Leo changed out of his pyjamas sometime between breakfast and lunch – it didn’t matter when things happened, without school bells and teachers around. He and Dad watched a television show about Jupiter. He already knew it was the biggest planet, but he didn’t know it had over ninety moons. There must have been something living on them. They couldn’t all be empty balls of rock.

  Later, he joined Dad at the dining table with the bucket of playdough and the polaroid camera. The sun threw warm light on Leo’s face. A plinky piano sounded from somewhere down the street. Inside his belly, a thick lump of worry washed away like a fistful of sand in the ocean. This was how life was supposed to be.

  ‘I could do this all day.’ Dad was drawing. He flicked neat pencil lines across a page, building them into a picture of a pug. Or was he drawing a cat? ‘This would be great. Just stay home and draw. No more lawns. Of course, we’d have no money and we’d have to live in that tent Mum keeps talking about.’

  Leo let out a soft laugh. He smooshed green and blue playdough together to make a wonky three-eyed alien. Then reached for the camera.

  ‘So I’m going back to work tomorrow,’ said Dad. He drew a bunch of sprouting whiskers – definitely a cat. ‘And you have to go to school.’

  The camera fell out of Leo’s hands and hit the table. The sun hid behind a cloud and the lump of worry reformed in his gut. He gave up on his alien and went to his room.

  The next morning, Leo sat hunched between Mum and Dad as they talked with Mrs Lloyd. He tried to shrivel up so he was hardly there. The grown-ups talked about him as if he really was somewhere else.

  ‘Leo’s a bright boy,’ said Mrs Lloyd with a lipsticky smile. ‘He can read full sentences and can already count past a hundred. But I suppose you’re here because …’ She held her smile and sucked a breath through her teeth. ‘Well, Leo doesn’t join in with the other kids.’

  He stopped listening. He caught grabs of sentences and worried looks, but he had his eyes fixed on a pile of fluffy toys in the corner. There were teddy bears, a few dinosaurs and some farm animals. One of the toys was mostly buried under the others and all that poked out was a pair of stubby horns. For a moment, he imagined they belonged to an alien and he started to dream up a story. Maybe the alien had crash-landed on the school oval last night, sneaked into the Prep classroom and was now hiding among the toys, hoping no one would find it.

  ‘What do you think, Leo?’

  He blinked at Mrs Lloyd, who was waiting for an answer. He didn’t know what to say, so he looked from Mum to Dad until one of them helped him out.

  Mum pointed to a chart on the desk. There were pictures of coloured animals: a red bull, a white mouse, a blue penguin. ‘Mrs Lloyd was just talking about these animals and how they show different feelings. There’s an angry bull, a quiet mouse, and a sad penguin. Look over here, there’s a brave lion and a cheeky puppy.’

  Leo looked at the pictures. He didn’t know what this had to do with anything.

  ‘When you’re at school,’ said Dad, ‘how do you feel? Which animal do you think you are?’

  This was silly. He wasn’t an animal and he didn’t feel brave or cheeky or nervous or angry.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mrs Lloyd. ‘Would you like to draw something?’ She bustled across the room and came back with a tub of felt pens and a sheet of thick paper. ‘Why don’t you draw how you feel when you’re at school.’

  Leo uncapped a pen and drew a crowd of wobbly stick figures.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Mum.

  ‘Other kids.’

  Then he drew a blobby shape on the other side of the page. He gave it six eyes and four arms.

  ‘And what’s that?’ said Dad.

  Leo smiled. ‘That’s me.’

  He dropped the pen in the tub. The grown-ups stared at the drawing. He pushed his chair back and went over to the fluffy toys. He plunged his hand into the pile and pulled out the toy with the stubby horns. It wasn’t an alien. Just a cow.

  Leo stayed at school that day and it was the same as always. He sat off the mat in class and hid under the stairs at lunch. When Dad picked him up, a few kids waved to Peg, who was sitting in the back seat. Dad must have seen it because he started filling the car with questions. They weren’t big questions like Leo’s, just ordinary ones.

  ‘So, buddy. Have a good day? Anything exciting happen? Learn anything new? Anyone say anything funny?’

  Leo yawned. He only wanted to answer one of the questions. ‘We read a book about chameleons.’ His words crawled out. ‘They turn dark when they’re cold and pale when they’re sick.’

  ‘Yeah, wow.’ Dad nodded a lot. ‘Wow.’

  But Leo didn’t want to think about chameleons. They reminded him of the coloured animals on the chart. He wanted to think about something else, so he looked out the window, up at the sky. It was the colour of dirty concrete. He could smell rain.

  ‘Cute!’ Peg pointed out the window at a dog sniffing around a letterbox. ‘What sort is it?’

  ‘Golden retriever.’ Dad knew a lot about dogs from his drawings. ‘Pretty young too.’

  Leo stared at the dog as it snuffled its nose in the grass. Its fur really was golden, like the sun when it first peeped over the trees. He imagined running his fingers along its back and scruffing the hair around its ears. Before he’d lost himself in space, he had lots of wonders about dogs. How did they know the time of day? How many human words did they know?

  They left the retriever behind and rolled through the suburb under the grey sky. Clouds bubbled and brewed. As Dad parked in the driveway, the sky cracked open and rain rushed down. Heavy drops hit Leo’s head as he ran to the house. Mum arrived soon after. She shook off her jacket and towelled her hair dry. Then she and Dad stirred cups of hot cocoa for everyone. Leo watched the steam swirl out of his cup but, before he realised what was happening, his parents were talking about the coloured animals again. Which animal had he felt like today? Did he see other kids being red bulls or white mice? What could they do to help him feel like a happy yellow songbird?

  A hundred questions later, Mum sighed. She held his hand. It was warm from the cup. ‘Sorry, love. You probably just want to be left alone. It’s just … you have all those big thoughts in your head. If you keep them to yourself, the world misses out and you do too. Don’t you think it’d be great to share it all with a friend?’

  Leo slurped his cocoa. ‘Yeah. I guess.’ He wasn’t sure if it was true or if he wanted the talking to stop.

  Dad joined in. ‘Good on you, bud. We can help. And Mrs Lloyd is there too. Just keep at it. You’ll find someone in your own way.’

  Leo nodded. He was tired of this. He had to find a way to make Mum’s wish come true. If he just had someone to play with, everything would be okay and he wouldn’t have to worry about Mrs Lloyd’s coloured animals, or everyone liking Peg, or Mum and Dad whispering about him in the lounge room at night. But how would it happen? Talking to other kids didn’t work, and neither did joining in their games. If he was going to make a friend, there had to be another way.

  When Leo woke the next morning, the rain had stopped. He opened his curtains and it was beautiful outside. The grass glistened. A bird sang on the fence. The sky had shaken off its grey coat and was bright blue again. Something caught his eye through the branches of their backyard tree. It was small, round and white, and moving too fast to be the daytime moon.

  ‘The white balloon,’ he whispered.

  As soon as he spoke, it disappeared. Lost behind the canopy of the tree. He waited and watched and it soon came back, glimpsed through a loose patchwork of leaves. Something hung from its ribbon, a strange shape, some sort of animal.

  It vanished again.

  He waited and waited but it didn’t come back. It must have blown to the other side of the city, the other side of the world. He sat on his bed and tried to forget about it. It was Saturday, so he didn’t have to get ready for school. He could sit in his room all day and make more aliens for the album. Maybe he could watch another show about—

  THUMP!

  Something hit the house, right outside his room. He ran to the window, stuck his head out and looked down. There was nothing on the ground. Then he lifted his head. The white balloon was stuck in the tree, caught neatly in a forked branch. Its shiny ribbon dangled in the breeze.

  He sprinted outside in his pyjama shorts, ran over to the tree and started to climb. The branches were wet from the rain. His feet slipped and he scratched his knee. A line of blood trickled down his leg, but he kept going, heaving himself up through the branches until he reached the balloon. He stretched out, tapped it free and snatched at the ribbon. But it slipped through his fingers and the balloon bobbed away, clear of the tree and the roof of the house. It sailed higher, found an unseen current in the air and, in a flash, it flew away.

  He crept back down the tree, careful not to slip, and went inside. No one else was awake. They must have slept through the whole thing, even the thump on the house. He wandered down the hallway, thought about falling back into bed, but stopped outside his door.

 

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