“Dad called,” Mum said as I came through the door. “I think he was a bit upset that you just disappeared last night and never came back.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“Sorry!” I said, louder this time. In fact, a little too loud. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…”
“Mousie! What’s the matter with you?” She appeared in the doorway to her study. “There’s no call for that.”
But I couldn’t handle disappointing any more people right now. Shanaia was upset. Mum was upset. Dad was upset. I’d fallen out with Oscar. And it seemed it was all my fault. Because they all wanted me to be someone else, someone bigger or smaller than I really was. Shanaia and Oscar wanted me to be bigger and more like Aunt Isa, and Mum and Dad would rather that I stopped acting weird and wildwitchy, and went back to being their little Mousie.
I could do neither.
I looked at Mum still standing in the doorway, expecting some sort of response.
“I’m not feeling too good,” I said, which was the truth. “I think I have a fever…”
Oh no. That was clearly the wrong thing to say. I could practically see the fear grow in her eyes. It was less than six months ago that I had been seriously ill with Cat Scratch Disease, so ill that Mum had driven me to Aunt Isa’s, despite having kept me away from her wildwitch big sister for all the twelve years of my life until then.
“Let me see.” She placed her hand on my forehead for a moment. “You don’t feel hot,” she said, looking relieved. “Does it hurt anywhere?”
Only on the inside. But I didn’t say that.
“I just don’t feel too good,” I said again. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”
It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, but all she did was nod.
“All right then, you didn’t get much sleep last night,” she said. “Perhaps that’s all it is.”
I crawled into my bed, fully clothed, and pulled the duvet right up to my ears. The grey winter light coming from the window was so faint that my things, my teddies and books, my computer, the Mickey Mouse alarm clock and the Anglepoise lamp on my desk were reduced to black outlines. I closed my eyes.
I don’t know if I fell asleep properly, but I started dreaming straight away. At first I had a really weird dream where Mum, Dad, Shanaia and Oscar were making gingerbread men with different-sized biscuit cutters, while arguing over how big they should be. And then a more realistic, but far more terrifying dream.
I dreamt that Oscar had taken Woofer for a walk in Jupiter Park, across the road from Jupiter Street. His seagull-scratched face was so glum that he looked almost sad, or as sad as it’s possible to look when you’ve been born with what my mum once called “the cheeriest face on the planet”. Suddenly Woofer started barking like mad. Woof, woof, woof; loud, angry, go-away barking. Oscar looked about him, but could see nothing worth barking at. Dense snow had started falling, and he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and hushed Woofer. Then, without warning, Woofer fell silent. He stood rigid and very still for a moment. Then he set off with such determination that Oscar struggled to keep up. I watched Oscar say something to him, but the sound had suddenly disappeared, as if I were watching the telly on mute. Oscar tried to get Woofer to stop. He yanked the leash and dug in his heels, but Woofer simply carried on, and the leash slipped out of Oscar’s hands.
“Woofer! Woofer!!” A tiny, tinny cry. The sound hadn’t disappeared altogether, it was merely very weak.
Woofer accelerated to a doggy gallop. There was something odd and stiff about his movements, very different from his normal, happy labrador clumsiness. The snow whirled up around him and condensed into a pale grey hoary fog, and suddenly, mid-gallop, I lost sight of him.
Oscar stopped in his tracks. He stared at the whirl of snow and fog that had swallowed up his dog. He took a few steps and then he hesitated again.
Don’t go in there, I tried calling out, but of course I wasn’t there, I wasn’t in the dream. I was just the one dreaming it.
Woof. Woof.
A barely audible barking was coming from inside the fog. Oscar started running and after only a few paces vanished into the glittering, snow-dotted wildways fog. There was nothing I could do to stop him.
“Woofer!” he called out. And then he was gone.
My room was almost completely dark when I woke up or came round or whatever it was I did. The luminous hands on the Mickey Mouse clock both pointed in the general direction of the number six, one hand slightly ahead of the other.
I could hear Mum talking on the phone. Perhaps that had woken me up.
“… no, she’s here,” she said. “She’s been here ever since she came home from school. She’s a little under the weather, I think.” There was a pause while she listened to what the caller was saying. “I’ll ask,” she then said. “I’ll ring you back.”
Soon afterwards she knocked lightly on the door to my room and opened it.
“Mousie,” she said. “Oscar’s mum is asking if you know where Oscar is.”