CHAPTER TWO

Bet and Dave were never really actual neighbours in the strictest sense of the word. But His parents do own the farm next to theirs in Bonga. The whole family always went there in the summer and it was always Bet’s favorite time of the year. Her brothers would finally get along and keep the screaming matches to just two times a day, maybe even less. They would invite her to play sometimes too, which meant that she would be the goalie or some other sort of non-active part holder. But it was an immense improvement to the city where they wouldn’t even let her out of the house because it apparently wasn’t safe. This was until her brothers were old enough to go to university and boarding school. Then she was left to her own devices. Her parents were rarely home because unlike her they were here to work. Bet was never good at being alone, what with growing up with a house full of loud bickering and all the attention as the youngest sibling.

She was walking on the grass in the garden one boring day, when she got to the end of the lawn. Her brothers would scream at her for going too far if they saw her there, but they were not there and she was no longer little. She was now seven years old and she can do whatever she wants. So she stomped on with indignation and stopped only when she caught a glimpse of the neighbor kid. He sometimes played with them when her brothers were here and spoke with her as little as he could. He never liked her if she was not of specific use to him in the game. He always made her feel like a nuisance. It looked like he was her only option for a companion now.

He noticed her and started coming in her direction. He came up to the fence and said “Bet! I didn’t know you were in town.” He said it with an enthusiasm that made her think that he would finally consider her his friend and she replied, “We got here last week.” with a smile.

“So where are your brothers?” he asked next and her little heart fell with disappointment. Of course he wanted to play with her brothers, who by the way were too old even for him now. But that reinforced their appeal because he looked up to them as a result.

“They didn’t come this year.” She answered a bit more timidly this time, to which his face fell.

“Why not?!” he asked, horrified at the prospect of spending a whole summer with no one but her for company- she assumed.

“Mark is in university so he has to volunteer over the summer and Matt transferred to a boarding school in the city where Mark lives, so they decided to volunteer together over the summer.” she eloquently explained, like a memorized script.

“So they aren’t coming at all?” Dave exclaimed.

“Not anymore.” Bet replied, downcast with her lower lip jutting out from the helplessness of the situation that she has not yet come to terms with.

Dave didn’t spare her a glance back when he left. He didn’t even say goodbye, just turned around in what Bet assumed was frustration and walked right off, leaving Bet standing alone in what might as well have been the middle of nowhere.

He would come back the next day and they would eventually play together, but only the games that he wanted them to play. He always said her ideas for a game were childish and that he was now a grownup and can’t play those games anymore. Even though he was only two and a half years older than her, it was enough for her to believe he was right, so she agreed to whatever he said and followed him around whenever he decided she was welcome. When the other boys in the neighborhood came to play, she was forgotten and since no one wanted a girl in their team, no one invited her to play. Some days she would just sit and watch little drones, faraway airplanes and the occasional hovers pass by, and some days she watched the game.

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One such day, she was sitting in the edge of the field watching the boys play in teams of two each when they decided that they want a referee. She was the obvious choice apparently so they finally let her play- or so she thought. Inevitably crisis happened when somebody kicked the ball outside the field and no one would agree on who did it. They asked her to decide. She was very eager to prove herself so she delivered the truth that she saw. Dave and the other kid-whose name she couldn’t pronounce so she pointed at him- were shoving each other to get the ball and both of them kicked it out of the field in the process.

No one was impressed. Dave got so angry that he kicked her. No one said anything in her defense or did anything to protect her. He kicked her. And just walked way.

Bet burst into tears before she ran back to the house to tell someone of this injustice. Her parents were not home so she told anyone she could find. She told the gardener, the cook the errand boy who had come to deliver packages, all to no avail. All they did was try to console her and tell her to not play with boys too old for her. This did not help in easing her anger. When her parents heard from her, with elaborate detail, the events of the day, they were livid.

The next day, they went to his house- the neighbors’- and informed his parents. The parents were not surprised by his conduct and said to Bet that they will punish him for it. She was happy with that and they left.

Over the next weeks, Dave would find himself compelled to apologize and persuade her to play with him again when the other boys weren’t there to play with him anymore. She had already been looking over to the field they played at longingly through her bedroom window and wishing that she could join them again so that didn’t take much persuading. She would also come to realize that a ten year old doesn’t really mean it when they say I’m sorry because he would bully her again. After she leaves crying and angry he would apologize again and beg her to not tell his parents. This gave her a sense of power over him, albeit for a tiny moment, and she forgave him every time. And when she decides she would never speak to him again, he would turn into the sweetest boy and make her think he would be like that if she talked to him again, which of course was never the case.

She realized one day, when she was particularly angry with him for taking her toy and breaking it to see what’s inside and then failing to put it back together, that none of this would have happened if her brothers were here. She stared down at the broken mess that was left of her toy hover and cried with renewed anguish over how much she missed and needed her brothers. She was sitting alone in the corner of the garden nestled in the bushes crying her heart out when the gardener heard her sobs and came to investigate.

Mary, the gardener, sat next to bet on the ground and asked her what was wrong. After hearing the sobbing and tear-filled response that she could barely make out, she held Bet until her crying subsided and asked her what she wanted. Bet asked if she could call her brothers. When she heard Mark’s voice, she broke into another fit of crying, which was closely followed by the same gibberish of an explanation through her heaving sobs that she had just reported to Mary. They came to the farm the very next day, not to stay but to see that she was fine. She was so happy to see them that she forgot everything about Dave. She would later learn that they had found him and scared him enough that he would never come near her again. But by that point the summer was almost over so it didn’t matter.