The Goodbye Year by Emily Gale

Author:Emily Gale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2022-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Harper couldn’t tell if Cleo was annoyed with her. They were playing dodgeball in PE, which always had a strange effect on Cleo: she had no fear and never held back. She may even have aimed at Harper a few times, though it was hard to tell if there was anything behind it, like how rude Harper had been when Cleo had knocked on the library window.

While Harper stood on the side in the out row, she remembered something. When they were little, Cleo had an imaginary friend called Bumble. Liz advised Harper to go along with whatever Cleo said about Bumble so she didn’t get upset. This had included giving Bumble her seat and, once, her biscuit—which Cleo had eaten after it had sat in front of Bumble for a few minutes. Strange, Harper couldn’t think of when or how Cleo had stopped referring to Bumble.

Straight after dodgeball, Harper went up to her, said ‘Hey!’ to check that Cleo wasn’t angry with her. Cleo was all pink in the cheeks after beating everyone in dodgeball, and there was no sign that she was upset. Though she did ask what Harper had been doing in the library. All Harper had to do was shuffle the truth from the other day—Mr Glass had let her in to do some tidying.

Harper wanted to tell Cleo the real truth. But the consequences were too unpredictable. Cleo might go along with it to save Harper’s feelings, or she might see her differently in way that Harper would never be able to change. She might take her word for it, get too excited and tell other people. That was a Cleo sort of thing to do.

They’d been apart so long this year. She didn’t know if Cleo was still hers in the way she’d always been, or if lockdown had flattened their friendship into something less special.

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