FicWad

I’m four years old and in the sandbox in your garden. It’s a big blue plastic one that your parents bought for you and your brother at the children’s toy store. The sand in the box was bought at the garden centre.
It was big enough for the both of us and we’re next to each other. I’m on my hands and knees with my hands buried deep into the cool sand, digging to the bottom of the plastic box. You’re holding your bucket and spade, spooning the sand into the plastic container before tipping it upside down and creating a sandcastle.

You grin at me when it sticks and I smile back, squealing lightly. You clap your hands before creating a new one and before we know it, you’re large dog, Max, has come bounding out of the house, into the garden, and into the sandbox. He knocks us and your sandcastles over, trampling around in the sand. You shout at him angrily, throwing your hands up in a spastic way and pushing him.

“Max!” you yell. “You stoopid dog,” you say in your child voice.

Your mum comes out of the house when she hears our commotion and just laughs when she sees Max rolling around in the sand, not paying any attention to your shouts and cries.

“Mikey, he’s just having fun,” she tells you. She has a soft and caring smile on her face and she walks over to the sandbox. She grabs onto Max’s collar and drags him out of the sand so that we’re alone again and able to build our kingdom back up.

The dog is instantly forgotten and you’re back to making sandcastles. I’m still digging the sand and my hands touch the bottom of the blue box. The plastic is cold and slightly damp from the sand and I squeal when I reach it.

“Mikey! Mikey,” I yell. “I can touch the bottom,” I giggle and you nod your head at me.

“I do that all the time,” you brag to me, blowing off my achievement.

I huff slightly. I wanted you to be happy for me, to hug me and smile. To tell me ‘well done, Frankie’ like my mummy would have done.

I’m staying for tea at your house and then I’m sleeping the night. I love sleepovers at your house. You share your bedroom with your older brother, Gerard, and you have a bunk bed. I wish I had a bunk bed. Gerard has the top bed because he’s older and is therefore allowed to be on the top. You have the bottom bed, but in my mind the bottom is better. It’s bigger and so there’s more space for the two of us. It’s a double size whilst the top is only a single.

“Boys!” your mum calls after time has passed. I have no idea how much time. “Food!” she adds and you spring up from your position on your knees and rush into the house, me trailing along behind you. Sand is covering us, all in our hair and on our clothes. Your mum tells us to go back outside so that she can brush us off and she bats at our clothes and ruffles our hair, laughing at us and telling us how we’re ‘mucky puppies’. I just grin and giggle at her as you do the same.

She’s finished wiping us down and we enter the house. Gerard is already seated at the table with his knife and fork in hand, waiting impatiently for his meal. I sit down opposite him and you sit next to me.

You pick up your knife and fork and begin to bang them against the table and I do the same, smiling and giggling as we pick up a random and sporadic rhythm that doesn’t have any consistency.

“Boys, boys, calm down,” your mum says as she brings us our chicken nuggets and fries on plastic plates. Mine’s blue. I always have the blue one when I’m here because it’s my favourite colour. You get the green one because that’s yours.

We eat quickly, shovelling the food into our mouths and swallowing it next-to-whole. Your mum has already pre-cut up our nuggets to make it easier for us. She sits at the end of the table, watching us eat with a smile on her face. She occasionally talks to us, asking us questions about of adventures in the sandbox and we answer them as best we can.

I finish my food first and wait for you to finish shortly after.

“Can I get down?” you ask your mum and she shakes her head.

“Wait for Gerard to finish,” she replies and you grumble under your breath. You hate having to wait for your brother to finish eating. He’s a slow eater and always seems to take longer after you’ve asked to get down.

He snickers under his breath and brings his fork up to his mouth slowly, chewing at a slow pace before over exaggerating his swallow.

“Gerard, don’t be mean,” your mum scolds and he stops eating slowly and resumes a normal pace.

He’s finished now and we all get down from the table, leaving your mum to clean up our plastic plates that are now smeared in ketchup.

We run out of the eating room and up to your bedroom. You have lots of toys that we play with all the time. I like the cars the most. I like to push them around and make ‘brumm brumm’ noises as I crawl around your bedroom on my hands and knees. You like the cars, too, so that’s what we play.

You grab your favourite one. It’s green in colour and I grab a blue one, to match our plates. We push them around your room and crash them into each other sometimes, making loud ‘smash’ noises when they hit. I throw my hand that holds the car up into the air and shout ‘crash!’ when we collide our cars. You giggle and go back to driving your car around the room.

“Bed time, boys,” your mum calls and enters your bedroom. She has her nice smile on her face and you moan.

“Don’t want sleep,” you mumble and I just watch you put up a fuss. I don’t want to go to bed either, I’d much rather continue playing with the cars. But she’s not my mum so I don’t say anything. I let you do the negotiating.

“Mikey, don’t start. You know how grumpy you are if you don’t get sleep.”

You just grumble again but let her take us into the bathroom so that we can brush our teeth. She hands us our toothbrushes and we squirt a pea sized amount of the bubblegum flavoured toothpaste onto our brushes before rubbing our teeth haphazardly. We spit into the sink at the same time, our heads nearly bumping and our toothpaste-y spit mixing. Your mum washes it down the drain with water from the sink and fills up a plastic cup. You use the water first to rinse your mouth out and then pass the pink cup to me so I can do the same. I spit into the sink again and jump down from the stool we’re standing on.

Back in your room your mum hands us our pyjamas. Yours are black batman ones and mine are green teenage mutant ninja turtles ones. We pull our clothes off and put on our pyjamas, your mum helping us when we get our t-shirts stuck around our necks and we can’t see.

“Ah!” you yelp as you try and pull your t-shirt off from around your neck and I laugh at you. You look so funny without a head.

Gerard comes into the room already dressed in his superman pyjamas and he climbs the metal steps up to the top bunk.

We climb into your bottom bunk and pull the covers up to our necks and snuggle close together. Your mum tucks us in, patting the duvet, and places a kiss to each of our foreheads.

“Good night, boys,” she says and then she climbs onto the edge of your bed so she can see Gerard. I hear her place a kiss to somewhere on his face and she says the same to him.

“Night mum,” you and Gerard say.

“G’night,” I say.

She turns the light out and you turn so that you’re facing me.

“Nigh’ nigh’, Fwankie,” you say and place a sloppy kiss to my cheek.

I smile at you in the dark and return the kiss and mumble “good night, Mikey.”