The Pond That Wasn't There

Chapter Three

Bailey stayed in his room the rest of the day. He didn’t want to tell anybody what had happened. His mother, his father, especially not his father, but his mother, no, he couldn’t. They were all adults. Adults didn’t understand these things. They were the ones dreaming.

            No, it seemed best to keep it a secret. Yes. That was the safest.

            In the morning, the next morning, Bailey was hungry. He hadn’t gone down for supper, just stayed up in his room, reading a book he had already read. It was a book about children, four children, going to a magical land. It was one of his favorites. There was nothing else to do, though. It had been raining, so he couldn’t go outside. Worse still, he didn’t want to see his parents, didn’t want to look them in the eyes. Was it fear? Fright? No, it was something deeper. Something far more troubling.
            His hunger finally broke that. He had held off just long enough until he heard his father storm off down the lane in their small black car. His mother wasn’t in the kitchen when he came down and poured himself a cup of apple-juice and a bowl of cereal with milk. He sat down at the round, mahogany table and ate, and ate quickly, scarfing his food down like a ravenous wolf would. Then he looked out the window.

            Luckily today, Bailey thought, it wasn’t raining. He’d be able to go outside. Explore. He hadn’t done anything of the sort since they’d arrived. But most of all, he wanted to find the pond and the girl. He needed to.

            When he was finished, he cleaned out the bowl and put it in the small metal sink, carefully placing it overtop two more, as though sculpting something out of common dining utensils. The water was running over his hands when the doorbell rang. It was ten o'clock in the morning. Who would be outside? The mail came later, he found, near dinner.

            Bailey waited for his mother to come down, wherever she was, and answer the door, but she didn’t. The doorbell rung again, chiming away, and then a third time, which followed closely behind, as if excited.

            Bailey unlocked the door after he slowly deduced that one: this person wasn’t going away, and two: nobody else was going to get the door. The bolts fell and slid aside and he turned the nob to see a boy, his age it looked like, small, with a wide, goofy smile, and wild sandy blond hair. He had a large brown birthmark just above his lip.

            “Hullo!” the boy said, waving his hand around as though it were falling off or his wrist was broken. Either one sounded an apt description to Bailey. “I’m Welsey. I live just down the lane. You’re new, right?”

            Bailey nodded. “Hello Welsey.” Then he stopped and his brows knitted. “That’s an odd name.”

            “Really?” he asked. “Mum always said it reflected my true character. Whatever that means. What’s your name?”

            “Bailey,” said Bailey.

            Welsey frowned. “I thought that was a girl’s name.”

            “Well,” said Bailey looking at himself. “I’m no girl.”

            “Bless you then,” said Welsey in a sigh of relief. “I hate girls. They never want to have fun. And if they do they always ruin it.”

            “Sorry about that,” said Bailey.

            “Thanks,” said Welsey, and stood there quietly for a minute, pursing his lips and twiddling his fingers. Then he broke out into another one of his weird, goofy smiles. “You wanna come out and play? Here, I’ll show you around. I’ve lived here all my life.”