Chapter Text
“Charlie? Is that you?” Mummy’s voice calls out from the kitchen.
“Yeah!”
“Come into the kitchen, please?”
The first thing to fill Charlie’s mind is panic. After all, Mummy only ever says that when she needs to talk to him. Did Tori tattle on him for pulling her hair yesterday? It was her fault! She stole Kitty and that just won’t do. Kitty is Charlie’s best friend, after all, and only bad people steal people’s best friends. Regardless, Charlie squares his little shoulders and walks his death march to the kitchen because, from experience, running away only gets him into more trouble later.
Mummy is standing by the kitchen counter, mug of tea in hand. Charlie’s always wanted to try tea, but Daddy says it’s only for grown ups. Apparently he’s not big enough for tea yet which is silly because Charlie can reach the third shelf in Tesco. “Morning, Charlie,” says Mummy, before taking a long sip. “I’ve set some clothes out for you to get ready. Can you dress yourself?”
Charlie blinks. Are they going to Grandma’s today? “Yes.”
“Okay. Be quick, please. The four of us are going to meet the new neighbours. Tori’s already getting ready.”
This is news to him. The house next door has been vacant forever and ever, since ancient times! Honestly, Charlie had been certain that the house next door was just a cover for a superhero lair.
Not a supervillain one, though, because that’s scary and Mummy and Daddy would never let bad guys live next door.
Still, Charlie gets dressed in record time. He’s old enough to dress himself, but Tori’s allowed to pick out her own outfits now. When Charlie gets to pick out his own outfits, he’ll wear his pyjamas every day.
When he comes downstairs, Daddy is helping Tori tie up her shoe laces. Daddy peaks up at the sound of Charlie’s thudding on the stairs before turning his eyes back to Tori’s laces. “You’ll like these neighbours, I think,” he reassures them. “They have two boys around your age.”
“Really?” Tori asks with disbelief.
“Really. The youngest is your age and the older boy is… About 10 years old?”
“That’s double digits,” Tori points out.
Charlie doesn’t know many kids in their double digits. He sees them at school, and in assembly they get to sit on the benches at the back of the assembly hall, but he hasn’t spoken to many that aren’t cousins.
“When I’m double digits, I’ll be 10 feet tall!” Charlie announces, jumping off of the bottom step to sit down and pull on his velcro shoes.
Daddy chuckles. “Will you?”
“Yep!” he chirrups. “I’ll be even taller than Tori!”
“That’s dumb. You can’t grow that tall,” Tori quips with a scowl.
“Can!”
“Not!”
“Can-”
“Alright!” Mummy says loudly, clapping her hands together. “Let's head off now. And no arguing! You might scare the neighbours’ kids off from playing with you.”
The sound of seagulls fill Charlie’s ears as his parents lead them out of the house, but they’re hard to focus on because there’s four voices chattering nearby. It seems to be the neighbours, because Mummy and Daddy lead the two of them right over to where two grownups and two boys are carrying stuff out of a big white van.
An older woman with bobbed hair places a box on the garden path with a huff and, when she straightens back up, puts her hands on her hips as she overlooks the operation. Mummy calls out to her, calling her ‘Sarah’, and ‘Sarah’ turns with a quizzical look until her eyes land on the family of four.
“Jane, Julio! It’s nice to see you again. Are these your little ones?”
“This is Charlie and Tori,” Mummy says, placing a hand on his and Tori’s heads. “Charlie, my youngest, is 6 and Tori is 7.”
“Aw, brilliant!” Sarah coos, before turning to the van and calling, “Nick! David!”
Two boys, almost identical in every way but their height and eye colour, peak out from behind the van. The shorter one grins widely and runs over, whilst the taller strolls behind him.
Shorter boy seems to have his goal locked on Charlie and the curly haired boy is taken aback when he nearly knocks into him.
“Hi!” shorter boy says when he skids to a halt. “I’m Nick!”
“Charlie.” He looks up to his parents to look for some guidance, but they’re talking to a blond man with a stubbly beard. Tori’s of no help, either, because she’s having a much less enthusiastic conversation with the taller boy who must be David. “Um… Do you like your new house?”
“It’s big. And new. I don’t really like new things, but Mummy says that change is good and that I’ll make lots and lots and lots of new friends here! I really like friends, you know?” Nick doesn’t seem to breathe in his ramblings. “Hey, do you want to be friends? We can be best friends! I have lots of cool toys. Do you like Marvel?”
Nick is a ball of energy, stopped only by the blond man with the stubbly beard calling out to him in an accent Charlie’s never heard before. “Nicholas, why don’t you and your new friend pick out a bedroom?”
The blond takes Charlie’s hand into his. “Let’s go!”
“Don’t take the one at the front, Nicky!” Sarah calls into the house.
Charlie lets himself be led up the stairs of the echoey house and into the first bedroom. It’s very big, but Nick wanders up to the window and frowns. “Not this one. This is the one at the front.”
“It’s huge, though!” Charlie exclaims, giggling at how weird his voice sounds in the empty room.
The blond boy turns back to him. “Mummy and Papa have to have the biggest room because they’re grown ups.”
“Wow. I can’t wait until I’m an adult. Adults get all sorts of cool stuff.”
“Like big bedrooms!” Nick exclaims in agreement, arms raised high. He drops them a second later to take Charlie’s hand again. “Oh well, let's look at the other ones.”
The third bedroom is smaller than the other rooms, but…
Charlie gasps. “Hey! You can see the beach from this room!”
The older boy rushes up to join him at the window, gasping similarly at the sight of golden sand and the endless water. “Wow! Do you like the beach?”
“Yeah,” admitted Charlie. “I go there all of the time! It’s my favourite place ever.”
Nick nods with a sense of finality before pulling away from the window. “Then I’ll have this room! That way I know whenever you’re playing out.”
Nodding enthusiastically, Charlie bounces on the heels of his feet. Then, when the excitement wears off a little, he asks Nick, “What was the beach like at your old house?”
Weirdly, Nick looks confused. “I didn’t have a beach at my old house.”
No beach? But Charlie thought every town had a beach! It’s weird to think of home without the beach there, after all. Like, how does that even happen?
His thoughts are cut off when they’re called back downstairs, though, and Nick leads him downstairs with their hands clasped tightly together.
“Pick a good room, Nicky?” Sarah asks with a kind smile.
“Yup! I picked the one where you can see the beach.”
Mummy’s head pokes into the front door. “It’s time to go now, Charlie, so that the Nelsons can unpack.”
Charlie frowns. He wants to talk to Nick more!
“Don’t look so down, sweetheart! You and Tori can come over and play another day,” Nick’s mummy says.
The man, who Charlie supposes is Nick’s ‘Papa’, walks out from another room with Tori and David in tow. “Yes. Tori and David here seem to be getting on well enough!”
“Not as well as me and Charlie!” Nick puffs out his chest as he says this, lifting their combined hands as if they’re a trophy. “We’re best friends!”
“That’s dumb,” David snarks. “It isn’t a competition.”
“You’re just jealous,” insists Nick.
The older brother huffs and folds his arms, but the grown ups seem to find this funny for some reason because they laugh at the conversation. Adults find weird stuff funny.
Sarah pinches David’s cheek. “It’s only natural that Nick and Charlie get along better, David. They’re closer in age. You’re much older than them.”
This seems to cheer David up. “I’m double digits!” He turns to Charlie with a big grin. “Soon I’ll be in high school. I won’t have to do carpet time and I will wear the cool uniform that teenagers wear.”
That’s pretty cool, Charlie thinks, but the adults seem to find it funny because they break into another round of chuckles. Then Daddy comes in from nowhere and announces they have to go now which makes Charlie frown again.
Just as Charlie gets to the front door, Nick pulls him back by the sleeve. “We are best friends, right?” he asks, looking shy for the first time that day.
This show of nervousness puts a smile back on Charlie’s face and he pulls Nick in for a big hug. “We’re the bestest of friends!” he promises. “See you tomorrow?”
Nick pulls away from the hug, brown eyes big and shiny like a puppy’s. “Yeah. See you tomorrow!”