Smaller Things

Chapter 5: Fully-Crescent Moon; pt 2

The next morning I woke up with a start. I had a really weird dream. Jen wanted to break up with me because I said I would be away the whole summer in Australia and she won't be able to come with me... but then again, I broke up with Jenny years ago! Well, it wasn't actually me breaking up and being cool about it. Rather it was her who was snogging Brian in 'Lively Heads', a club in the Town Square, and then dumping me in public, accusing me of driving her head mad with incurable obsessission for her. I reckon she just wanted to break up anyways; she was never much supportive of LGBTQ+ to start off. But that public humiliation still haunts me... tough night it was; bullshit I'd rather say... Now I was all single and happy and all... But that part about being in Australia was totally out of context.

I looked up the wall; it was four in the morning. There was a faint pinkish golden ray of sunlight visible through the gap between the curtains. Mist was obscuring vision. I turned my back on the rising sun but nothing remotely related to sleep came to my eyes. I could not sleep anymore. So I dressed up, brushed my teeth, tied my bushy, untamed hair, and went out of the room. The hallway was unusually cold and my parents were still sleeping. I went downstairs and into the living room to pick up my headphones (I had left them there last evening while playing video game). I tuned into the usual pop songs and wore my sneakers. I had almost reached the door when I remembered; I am to leave a note whenever I was to go out. So I took a sticky note and wrote down that I was going for morning walk and stuck it on the table. And then I noticed something. Something really weird! There was a map of Australia, a big map, showing a thousand cities! It was crammed with too many bright red board pins, pinned to it and beside it, half hanging from the table was a long scroll of paper. Things like 'Snorkelling', 'Deep-sea diving' and etc. were written on it. I gaped at it for a full minute or so and then it struck me! Was it a coincidence that I dreamt of Australia, which is a place where I wanted to go forever, and then I woke up to find my living room table laden with a map of that place, lists, and plans to do something there and so on... Were my parents going on a trip to Australia? Why aren't they telling me? Did they not want me to come with them? They could've said so... I would have informed Katie or Sam and we would spend the summer together?...... no! wait! It couldn't be! My parents are sensible enough and they would never leave me out of something like this! I was stupid to ever doubt them... How thick can I be, I asked myself, awed at my parents' plans for this summer! But then, something terrible dawned upon me! Did my parents have that kind of money to plan a vacation abroad? What if this is nothing but a very silly dream and I would just wake up into a warm and bright morning, watching my mum draw the curtains of my window open, letting the sun rays flood the room? I pinched myself hard on my cheek- OUCH!- I opened my watering eyes and a slightly brighter living room came into view. There was the table in front of me, as empty as it could have been had it not been for the big and complicated map of Australia. I breathed in sharply and heard myself releasing it too. I turned and left the room and then unlocked the front door, went out into the shallow morning, and started jogging down the road, towards the park. It was too early to meet anyone. However, when I reached the park in half an hour's time, I was wrong about not meeting anyone: there were quite a few people but none I knew of. I did some stretching; hoping that what I had just seen in the living room table was not a hallucination. I crossed my fingers and kept on saying to my mind that my parents were, maybe, rich enough for a trip to Australia.

When I got back home, my father was making breakfast. He looked up as I came in, smiling.

'What are you smiling at? Did something good happen at the park, Luna?'

'Hmm... No...It was just Mr. Hooper and his dog playing with the balls and Mrs. Gilbert feeding the swans... What's for breakfast?' I tried to keep my voice as normal as possible. But my father's observational skills never failed; he definitely had sensed a tone of excitement behind my high pitched voice. He looked at me strangely and then went back to his cooking, with a smirk on his face. I went up to freshen up and by the time I reached back downstairs, breakfast was ready.

It was just a normal morning, with three humans having their breakfast on that spindle-legged dinner table just like any other days. The sun's ray reflected on the refrigerator door, just like it did every morning; the sound of Mr. Greg's lawnmower, just like it did every week; and the same old clunk of forks and spoons,  as the three of us finished off our breakfast. Oh, and the same old silence at the table too. But I had an inkling that something unusual was surely going to happen. It was a bright day indeed for something to happen. And now that my parents were occasionally glancing at each other, without uttering a single word, something typical was bound to happen; be it good or bad (or the announcement of a trip to Australia!). I waited... I fiddled with my broccoli, cut my carrots into pieces, ate the egg slowly and carefully so that the yolk did not break, but nothing happened. I was about to get up when I heard Mr. Greg's lawnmower stop with a sputter and his cranky voice swearing at it. My father, too, got up and mumbled something about going to help his neighbor and went off through the kitchen door, into the garden. I was left alone with Mom. I looked at her. She caught my eyes and asked, 'Is there anything you want to say, hon?'

I was taken aback; wasn't she going to say something?

'Mmm... no Mom. I thought you guys wanted to say something to me...'

I could say, from the look on her face, that Mom was taken aback too. She said, 'Oh... I don't know what you're talking about...' and she added a small laugh and then ruffled my wet hair and went to do the dishes. I used this opportunity to sneak back into the drawing-room. But, woah! There was no map of Australia on the table... Okay. This was seriously something. I did not know what was going on and my pea like brain was too small to understand anything if not imagine and dwell on false hope.