Collateral Damage

Chapter 1
Whole Story

We all make wishes. Sometimes they’re silent, sometimes they are spoken aloud. Sometimes they are wishes for realistic things, other times they are audacious, ridiculous hopes for that which we can never have. Except sometimes one of those audacious wishes comes true. Who makes the wish and who grants it are irrelevant. What matters, when a wish reshapes the entirety of reality, is what happens to us. Usually, on those fantastic occasions when a wish is granted we don’t even know, because reality shifting changes our perceptions, our memories as well. But not always.

When reality shifts it isn’t always uniform. It takes an immense amount of power to change the universe so completely, so instantly. And so as a result there are sometimes glitches in the armour, wrinkles in the design. Poor William, a man who was in every other aspect simply a normal man, was a victim of one such wrinkle. For in this case as the world changed around him it failed to alter his awareness, his memories.

**

William had thought this was going to be a good day when he first woke up. He had no way of knowing that thousands of kilometres away in another time zone, in a distant town he’d never heard of, a foolish teen boy was making a wish that would alter his very existence. It was supposed to be the first day of his career, something he had spent his whole life working for. Having finished and Honours Degree and a Masters in urban planning, today he was supposed to take up an entry-level role at the city council’s transport office. It was a humble start, but the sky was the limit for how far he could rise from there. His new boss, Mr Henry Turner, the head of the agency, was absolutely cler about that and about his eagerness for someone with William’s training and clear professional attitude to join their team.

He got dressed in his relatively small bedroom in the flat he shared with three other young professionals. He liked it in part because the rent was right, but also because it allowed him to live the lifestyle he wanted to spread through the city. Living in a centre-city high-rise with all the shops and work within walking or biking distance and having public transport easily available meant he didn’t need a car. That was how people were meant to live, walking around their communities, interacting with their neighbours, not barrelling around their car-oriented sprawling suburbs surrounded by a tonne of metal.

William pulled on his finely pressed black dress pants, his perfectly shined new shoes, worth every one of the $400 they cost, then tucked in his shirt and carefully did his tie, fitting it snuggly against the top button. Sure it choked a bit, but discomfort was the price of looking good, looking professional. He checked his smartphone for any last minute e-mails from his new boss. Just a reminder that staff briefing was at eight-thirty, plenty of time to walk the fifteen minutes to the office. He could even stop for a flat white on the way, savour his success.

The transformation was sudden and deeply disturbing. In fact it was so shocking and disorienting William thought he was surely dying, that the stress of starting a new job had been more than he’d realised and he was having a stroke.

But when the world stopped swirling around him William knew it was worse than that. He was having a mental breakdown, a complete psychotic break. That was the only way to explain what he was seeing. He was no longer standing in his apartment, ten storeys up in the centre of the city. He was most definitely back in a very familiar place, his childhood bedroom, back in suburbia. Except it was not exactly his bedroom. At least not like he’d left it seven years ago when he left for uni.

His movie posters weren’t on the walls, the stop sign he’d snatched from a construction site and hung on his door was similarly missing. The décor was all wrong. No, this was his room all right, but it was his room as it had been fifteen or more years ago, when he was a primary schooler. The sheets on his bed had Spiderman all over them. An Ironman onesie abandoned on the messy sheets, looking big enough for him to wear in fact. There was no technology in the room, no TV or Playstation, no laptop on the desk, nothing to indicate a teen or adult lived here. Instead there was a toy box in the corner, little green Army Men scattered about the carpet, a pile of Legos pushed half under the bed, even a Mr Potato Head and his assorted accessories lying there as if just recently played with.

But the most disconcerting thing by far was the second bed on the opposite wall, covered in a Bob the Builder duvet and rocket ship motif sheets, a fuzzy brown teddy bear onesie lying on it, also very oversized looking. William blinked in disbelief. He’d shared a room with his little brother Matt from the age of six until he started high school and raged about his need for privacy until his dad gave in and converted his barely used old study into a room for Matt. But now even his baby brother was twenty-one, finishing his last year at university and sharing a flat with other students. He rarely visited, living on the other side of the country and all. So what was this bed doing here?

William was certain he was going insane and it scared the hell out of him. Didn’t people who went nuts usually think their delusions were real? How could this be happening to him? He reached in his pocket, feeling for his phone. But what he felt wasn’t right at all. The material was all wrong, the depth of the pocket far too little, like it wasn’t even made to hold a wallet. And at the bottom, ugh, what felt like well-chewed, sticky bubble gum.

William looked down in horror at his outfit. The starched shirt and tie, the pressed dress pants and shiny shoes were all gone. He had on a light blue polo shirt instead, a soft colour he despised. He could see the collar was navy with a golden stripe and on the left side of his chest, his stomach dropped at seeing it, a logo reading “Seaview Primary.” And it got worse.

The pants had been replaced by shorts. They were navy, matching the collar of the polo, and quite baggy, falling below his knees. There was a cargo pocket on one leg, a little patch announcing “Seaview Primary” found there as well. His shoes had not been replaced by anything, he was standing barefoot now and only then registered the sensation of carpet under his bare soles. It felt so real, so physically real in every way. How could his mind create such a vivid delusion?

“What the actual fuck!?” he muttered to himself, afraid even to move left his real physical body bump into a wall that he couldn’t see in this deluded state.

What could he do? His phone wasn’t in his right pocket, where he’d left it. How did he call someone to help, to take him to a hospital so they could drug him up and get him back to reality? The thought of being shot up with anti-psychotics or locked in a padded room terrified him, but not as much as this delusion and how real it felt. He tried his left pocket next and was happy to feel something that felt like his wallet.

It wasn’t his wallet, but it was a wallet, sort of. It was a childish Velcro wallet, bright red with black lining and, yep, Spiderman emblazoned on the back of course. Nevertheless he ripped the Velcro open and had a look. No money of course, but also no eftpos card or credit cards. The first card he saw was a library card. He took it out and flipped it over. Two things stood out to him. The very childish scribbling of WILLIAM in all capitals with poor spacing and barely recognisable M actually did look like something he could have written as a five year old. But the second thing he noticed was the issue date, it was from a year and a half ago. So he wasn’t in a time traveling delusion, it was weirder than that.

There were more cards in the wallet. One was for a free game of mini-golf at “The Playland” and another was for a free fifth haircut at a hair salon whose logo was a smiling clown. Finally he hit the jackpot, real id. Except it wasn’t a driver’s licence. It was a school ID, clearly marked Seaview Primary School with the crest and all and with his name, his correct date of birth even and in clear black lettering, “Room 7B. Year 2.”

Year 2? What the hell was his mind doing to him? He looked at the photo. It was him, there was no doubt about it. It certainly looked recent too, but there he was, wearing the same uniform polo shirt as now, and smiling, actually fucking smiling, at the camera. He looked goofy, he looked mentally challenged, smiling like an idiot in that outfit.

“This can’t be real,” he muttered to himself, shoving the ID back in the little wallet, doing up the Velcro and stuffing it in his pocket.

William paced around the room, wondering if this could actually be happening now. It just felt too real, far too detailed for his mind alone to construct. As he paced his eyes fell on the dresser, the collection of awards atop it. He moved closer and examined the closest. A little bronze statuette with a plaque reading “For Participation in Under-25 Touch Rugby.” Ugh, he hated stupid participation medals. But he also hated rugby, and since when was under-25 a division? But behind the little trophies was a photo, left lying there to gather dust.

Looking closer revealed it was of a rugby team, posing in two lines on the pitch in their shiny red uniform shirts and white shorts, all in bare feet, the way little kids played. And sure enough a sign held by one man read “Under-25 C Team.” William had to squint, but he spotted himself, second from the left, grinning broadly like the rest.

Footsteps broke William from his reverie. He could hear them pounding quickly down the corridor. It was the first sign he wasn’t alone in their weird world. Who was coming? Was it a real person or a figment of his imagination?

The door swung open with ferocity and William instantly recognised Matt, his little brother. He was just as he recalled from their last visit a couple months ago. Matt was twenty-one years old, well-built as befitted a club soccer player, nearly six feet tall with short brown hair. But he certainly wasn’t dressed as William had ever expected. The young man wore a short t-shirt that advertised SpongeBob prominently. But that was the only thing he wore. From the belly-button down his adult brother was completely nude, his penis just swinging free between his legs.

For what felt like an eternity William just stared at his brother’s get-up, his junk just hanging there on display, too horrified to speak. But must have only been a second. Matt didn’t seem put-off by his brother seeing him this way at all. He didn’t flinch, didn’t quickly race back out of the room, didn’t even attempt to cover up or make a joke or excuse about his nudity. He just said, “C’mon Biwwy! Bweakfast weady!”

William stuttered, “oh… ahh…” as he tried to come to terms with what was happening. His brother sounded like a pre-schooler, he was totally unconcerned with his nudity and had called William Billy, a name he hadn’t gone by since he was about nine or ten.

“Mummy said come now Biwwy!” the younger man insisted, frowning.

William shook his head. “Matt, where are your clothes?” he finally asked, hoping to jolt his brother back to reality, though he was less and less certain of what that meant himself.

Matt looked down at his nudity. “Took ‘em off,” he said simply.

“I can see that mate. I see your, um, doodle, and everything. I meant why?”

Matt smiled at the mention of his doodle. Far from being more embarrassed he gripped it instead. “Use my doodle for tinkles in da potty now cuz I’m big,” he asserted brightly.

William shook his head in disgust this time. “Matt you’re twenty-one years old. Do you realise that?”

To his surprise his brother nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh. I gettin’ real big now. Soon I gonna go to big school wid you Biwwy.”

This was very clearly not and act and not a joke. Sure Matt had enjoyed playing a few pranks on him in the past, but nothing with this much commitment to the bit necessary. And it was Matt coming off worst in it, acting like a toddler with an exhibitionist streak. No, it was obvious Matt’s mind was off in la-la land and there would be no answers coming from him.

“Okay, let’s go see mum,” he agreed.

Matt nodded and hurried back out, his feet pounding heavily as he ran, penis just jiggling wildly about. William followed him downstairs, finding the rest of the house unchanged from his last visit to his parents a couple weeks ago. There was a tablet lying on the couch, his dad’s smartphone abandoned on the coffee table, Breakfast was playing on the TV and everything seemed quite normal. That is except for the photos over the fireplace.

Their Christmas photo was in the centre, Mum and Dad sitting posed in front of the tree. He and Matt down on the floor, wearing matching stupid little vests and bow-ties over their dress shirts. Both young man in dress shorts rather than pants, two pairs of bare feet pointing towards the camera, their position on the floor, their outfits clearly showing their status as children while their dad stood wearing nice pressed pants and shiny shoes.

Other photos were worse. William sliding down a slip n’ slide, jumping on a trampoline, hanging upside down of monkey bars in some playground, wearing only a simple pair of board shorts in all three. Though not as bad as poor Matt, whose doodle was visible in at least two of the photos, not that he seemed to care.

“Let’s go Billy, you’ll be late for school,” Mum interrupted, poking her head through from the kitchen.

William shook his head. “Well don’t worry about that mum, I’m not going to any school today,” he replied.

She frowned, hurrying over and immediately feeling his forehead. “Are you feeling sick sweetie?” she asked, kissing his forehead after feeling it revealed nothing.

William pulled away. “No, it isn’t that mum,” he complained.

“Well what’s wrong honey, usually you can’t wait to get to school and play with your friends. Are you having trouble with some other kids? Is someone bullying you?”

“No mum, you don’t understand. I shouldn’t be in some primary school. I’m twenty-five for goodness sake!”

Mum looked pretty confused by his outburst. “I know you’re twenty-five honey and sometimes school can be boring. But you need to go and learn things so you can grow up big and smart.”

“Ugh, mum I am grown up. I have a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning, I have a job with the council. I live on my own in a flat in the CBD. Don’t you understand that?” he demanded.

Mum furrowed her brow for a moment and William wondered if he’d gotten through. Maybe she could see how utterly ridiculous this all was. Treating grown men like little children? It had to set of alarm bells for her.

Finally she gave him an odd little smile and said, “That’s quite an elaborate fantasy to think up sweetie.”

She could see how serious he was though and it clearly made her uncomfortable. He couldn’t just leave it there. “No mum, this is not a fantasy! Look at me, I’m a grown man.”

“Yes sweetie, your body is all grown, mummy knows that. But it takes the mind a bit longer. That’s why you need to go to school.”

This was so frustrating! “Mum, I don’t need school because I am grown up here,” he said, pointing to his head. “I finished uni, I finished grad school for goodness sake.”

She looked worried, but also like she still wasn’t sure if he was joking. “So, Mr grad student, in that case you can tell me what two times two is,” she challenged.

“Mum,” he groaned. “I’m not some stupid little kid.”

“Then it will be very easy to answer,” she replied confidently.

So she was going to be that way. Fine, he thought, once she saw how much he knew she’d have to admit something was amiss.

“Two times two is…” he began haughtily. But then he stopped. Something was wrong, the equation was familiar, ludicrously simple, and yet he drew a total blank. What did times mean again? There were times tables, he’d memorised them long ago. But now they were gone, totally missing from his mind. “I… something is wrong. I knew them mum, I knew my times tables!”

“Honey, honey, calm down,” she urged. “You won’t be learning those until next year, or maybe the year after that.”

He shook his head. “I learned them when I was eight!”

“Eight?!” she chuckled. “You could barely sit up at that age.”

William took a quick mental inventory. What are the main styles of urban planning? Nothing. Who invented the motorway? A total blank. He recalled growing up and going to school, but all the book learning was gone from his mind. He really was like a seven year old in that way. He could add and subtract small numbers but found he instinctually needed to use his fingers to do it.

“Let’s get something in your tummy. You’ll feel better,” Mum insisted, leading him into the kitchen.

She was wrong of course but he was no longer in the mood to argue. Instead he sat at the table while his half-naked little brother squatted on his chair across from him, pushing cheerios around the table, his pee-pee occasionally brushing across the edge of the table top and making William wince. He ate his own cereal slowly, still trying to understand what had happened.

“Oh my, look at the time. We need to get you on your way,” Mum suddenly interrupted him.

He looked up to see her slipping a packed lunch into what had to be his school bag. It was bright green with Ben Ten designs, a show he’d heard of but never actually seen. He couldn’t even protest before mum had him standing up, slipping his arms through the straps of the painfully childish backpack. At least it was very light, since he needed little more than his lunch for Year 2. There were probably some crayons, a couple thick pencils for clumsy fingers, paper to draw on and a pack of stickers. What else could he need?

“Are you going to drive me?” he asked hopefully.

Mum chuckled, “Since when have your legs stopped working?” she asked.

His heart-rate increased as she led him towards the front door. “Please mum,” he begged. He didn’t want to be seen in this awful uniform, looking like an idiot with that backpack on. The whole neighbourhood would see! But mum was reaching into the closet and pulling out a razor scooter with neon blue handles. “Don’t you want to scooter?” she asked. “I thought you were learning new tricks everyday?”

He took the scooter, the most juvenile of transport options by a mile, feeling like he might vomit right there. Mum was looking out the front door though, oblivious to his disgust. “Here they come!” she said, pointing out to the footpath.

William followed her finger and saw a little line of men and women in their twenties, walking along the footpath, all wearing matching uniforms to his. At the head of the line was an older woman in a reflective vest. He recognised the walking school bus, a mode of school transport he’d been a leading proponent of when he was in uni. Now though, he’d give anything to be transported quietly and privately in his mum’s car.

“Let’s go slow poke, Andy is waiting,” mum said, pointing to a skinny white man riding slowly on a similar razor scooter to his. Apparently this was meant to be a friend of his.

He didn’t want to go anywhere, but there seemed to be no choice. And maybe, just maybe, going to a school full of people like him he could find someone else who realised this was all wrong. Though this line didn’t look too promising. All the young men and women he could see looked quite smiley and content in their silly little uniforms and under adult supervision.

“Okay,” he agreed, looking down for his shoes. There was a pile of them by the door. His dad’s work boots and two pairs of older dress shoes, his mum’s heels, jandals, sandals, sneakers. He was looking for what he was certain would be terribly juvenile things with light-up heals, or wheelies or bright yellow SpongeBob jandals. But no such shoes jumped out.

“Well let’s go buddy,” Mum urged. “They won’t wait up for you long.”

“Where’s my shoes?” he asked, confused.

Mum looked confused. “Honey you remember, after you lost your second pair of jandals at school we agreed if you couldn’t keep them on or keep track of them you shouldn’t wear them to school.”

William shook his head, unable to believe this was still getting worse. “I won’t lose them this time, I promise!”

Mum frowned and looked sympathetic. “Sweetie we haven’t bought you a new pair yet remember? We decided it wasn’t worth it since you never want them on. You were very happy about it.”

William shook his head, looking down at his feet and only noticing now how tanned they were, the total lack of tan lines from socks or even jandals or sandals. And the dirt under the nails, too imbedded to be cleaned out in a bath. He grabbed his right foot, balancing on the other and looked at the bottom of it. It was thick and callused, impervious to bits of glass or hot pavement. Even his body had changed to suit this new reality.

“We’ll get you some nice new shoes when the weather turns a bit colder honey. And you can wear them all you want if you can show us you are responsible enough to keep track of them or even better, keep them on your feet. But until then, just enjoy your barefoot days honey. You only get to be a little boy once.”

William gave her a look of horror, if she only knew. Only once, what a joke! But there was nothing for it. He headed out the door, feeling the sun-warmed pavement under his feet right away. He felt naked without any shoes on. It was a little silly of course. It wasn’t like jandals or sandals would give him any more cover. It was just the status his bare feet represented, even more so than the school uniform or silly bag.

“Bye-bye Biwwy!”

He twisted around to see Matt standing on the front steps waving frantically, a huge grin on his face, penis on display to the whole street. Matt didn’t reply, he blushed from head to toe and walked faster, his feet audibly slapping the driveway pavement. He looked at the short line of a dozen young people, all about his age. A very tall, very muscular Maori man wearing a vest over his polo was also in bare feet, as was the boy who was apparently his mate, Andy. But the rest all wore some kind of footwear. He was now among the more juvenile even amongst this group.

“Your brother is so silly,” Andy commented as William set down his scooter and tentatively placed one bare foot on it.

“Yeah, um, he likes being naked I guess,” he replied quietly.

Andy giggled. “Well yeah. He’s always nekkid when I come over isn’t he? But I mean he always wants to say goodbye to you. Isn’t it annoying?”

“Oh… yeah, sure.”

Andy seemed pleased with this agreement and set off on his scooter. William followed suit, going slowly enough to keep his place behind Andy in the line. With every push of his bare foot on the pavement he was reminded of what a spectacle he was, even if no one else seemed to think so. He was sure every passing car was staring, smirking, pointing to his uniform, his Ben Ten backpack, the razor scooter and of course, those dirty tough-soled bare feet.

It was actually a relief to arrive at the school, where the rest of the world couldn’t see him. Now there was a sea of young men and women swarming about the playing fields and the basketball and handball courts between the classroom blocks. The adventure playground was taller and more scary looking than anything he’d seen at a school before. He wanted nothing to do with it and luckily neither did Andy. After dumping their scooters and backpacks at the front of a classroom William guessed to be theirs Andy led him over to a small tree, which he proceeded to climb.

Following after the skinny man William was at least pleased to see his tough soles now managed the rough bark with as much ease as Andy’s. He followed him up and rested against one of the branches. It wasn’t so bad being here actually. Upon arrival many ‘kids’ ditched their shoes or sandals along with their bags so he no longer felt self-conscious about his lack of footwear amongst the barefooted hoards. His bag and scooter were hidden away and in this tree he had cover from the world.

“My dad said we gonna go to the beach this weekend,” Andy said, picking leaves off the tree and watching them flutter to the ground.

“That’s cool I guess,” he answered. Then he asked, “Say Andy, how old are you?”

“Twenty-five, same as you. You were at my birthday last month stupid!” he replied, laughing.

“Yeah, right. I just thought, shouldn’t that like make us grown-ups?”

Andy looked at him like he was an idiot. “Nah, silly, we’re big kids now. Next year when I’m twenty-six mum says I can ride my scooter to your house all by myself,” he bragged.

“That’s so cool,” he said with his best fake enthusiasm. “But, then, when will we be grown-ups?”

Andy shrugged. “Well, I guess when we go to high school when we’re thirty-three that’ll be pretty much like being grown-up. But then we gotta do homework and take showers everyday and even wear shoes like all the time. And there’ll be girls who wanna get kissed ‘nd stuff,” he mused, looking completely disgusted by it all.

William could see there was no hope from Andy and he also realised he’d have a long time to wait to be grown again unless he did something about it. The rest of the day he kept an eye out for anyone acting odd. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He found the enthusiasm of the masses of young adults as they sang and danced en masse on the paved ball courts to happy music very odd. He found twenty-something women skipping around hand in hand, barefoot with their hair in pig-tails more than a bit odd. No, what he was looking for was somebody acting different, somebody not in la-la land, somebody like him.

Unfortunately as the day passed it grew less and less likely. He could see that now, could see that he was in deep trouble. By the end of the day he was growing resigned to the fact that this was his future now. But there was an upside at least. People had been talking to him today as though he was quite an immature little kid, the kind of silly mucky little boy who came barefoot to school every day because he always threw his shoes away and lost them otherwise. But that at least could change.

He’d sit down with his parents and explain to them his new commitment to maturity. He still had all his verbal talents. He could convince them to take him shoe shopping after school today, maybe tomorrow at the latest. He’d get a plain, normal bag, ditch the scooter for a bike and at least he’d feel a bit better. More importantly he knew what he wanted to do when he did grow up again and he could focus on that entirely, make sure he fixed all his old mistakes.

The bell rang finally marking the end of the day. Streams of twenty and thirty somethings, right up to thirty-two, poured out of the school gates. Few bothered to put their discarded shoes back on so William didn’t stick out as much as in the morning as he rode his stupid scooter back down the footpath after Andy. He gave his poor silly friend a wave good-bye as he pulled into the driveway of his house. It was time to set things right, well at least a little bit.

The thing about wishes though, is that in the end they need to be complete. The shimmers, the flickers in the design get fixed bit by bit until all is right. Someone remembering the real world before the wish, that’s something that cannot be left broken, a far too big chink in the armour. It can take time, but eventually it gets set right.

As William stepped off his scooter he felt it happen. The thought patterns of a rambunctious, messy, silly little seven year old boy settling over his mind. It wasn’t frightening, it was swift but gentle, like a soft fuzzy blanket cuddling his brain. It was actually quite a relief when William became Billy. All his fears and worries were just swept away. His anger abated, his heart rate came down, facial features relaxing.

The first thing he became aware of was how comfy the warm pavement was under his feet. And then he felt a surge of affection for Mum, who must be getting an after school treat ready for him. And he could show her a trick on his scooter! Billy rushed up the driveway and into his house, feeling refreshed and happy as a clam.

**

Three months later

There was a bit of a chill in the air as autumn was fully underway. Henry Turner was wearing his newest wool jumper over his shirt and tie as he oversaw the exhibition that was his brainchild. It was a walk-through exhibit of the future of public transport in the city. Little model trams chugged their way along scale lines. Maps of the city were laid out with buttons pushed to show where tram and train routes would soon go. It was a lovely way to show citizens the future and get the next generation out of the suburbs, out of mum and dad’s car and walking around the downtown city streets where they rarely ventured.

Today a school group had come from Seaview Primary. A couple classes of little Year 2s and 3s skittered about the city footpath in the shadow of the glass office towers, far from the leafy suburban streets they were used to. Twenty-five and twenty-six year olds in uniform navy wool jumpers over their cute polo shirts, boys mainly still in shorts and girls in skorts despite the chill. Their only concession to the near winter weather was the change from sandals to sneakers or shoes for most, though not all. A handful of the boys still seemed to be shunning shoes. Henry only shook his head at the silliness of little children.

One young boy, a black-haired child in the Year 2 group, had wandered off from the main group. He looked a bit mischievous with his hair messy as could be and standing on the cold pavement in the dirtiest of bare feet, soles as black as tar shown off as he stood on tippy toes, leaning over the display.

“You okay there buddy,” Henry asked the boy, who was actually about an inch taller than him.

The raven-haired child gaped back at him and nodded. “I like trains,” he told Henry.

The man smiled and walked over next to the kid, looking at the model tram display he was gazing at with wonder. “Ah, I see. Well, actually those particular trains are called trams,” he explained.

The barefoot youth nodded with awe. “Trams are cool,” he said.

“They are indeed. What’s your name buddy?”

“I’m Billy,” the boy answered, looking at the man with awe.

“Nice to meet you Billy, I’m Mr Turner, I build train lines, all over the city.”

Billy was clearly impressed. “My Mum took me on the train once!” he announced.

“Wow! I bet that was fun. A real special occasion.”

Billy nodded. “It went so fast! And I got to give the ticket to the conductor.”

Henry chuckled at the excitement in the boy’s face. “You’re a lucky boy Billy. Maybe one day when you’re all grown up you can come help me build more tram and train lines like these.”

Billy nodded exuberantly. “When I grow up I wanna drive them trains.”

“That’s a great ambition buddy,” he said.

Billy frowned. “What’s ambition?” he asked.

“Just means, that’s a good dream to have.”

The boy smiled again. “Uh-huh. Mummy says I gotta good imagination.”

“I bet you do. One day you’ll be a fine train engineer. You’ll have a lovely uniform and everything. But I think you will have to wear shoes,” he whispered in a mock serious tone.

Billy glanced down at his bare feet, smiling as he got the joke. “Mummy got me new shoes cuz it’s almost winter but I only gotta wear ‘em if it gets real cold ‘nd I don’t get cold never,” he bragged.

Henry chuckled. “Well that’s fine Billy. You’ve got a fair few more years till you’re all grown up. You enjoy it while you can mate.”

Billy nodded. “I will!” he assured.

“C’mon Billy!” Andy called, waving to his friend as the group headed down the footpath back to their bus.

“Kay, bye!” Billy chirped, sprinting down the footpath effortlessly in his primary school uniform and bare feet, oblivious as he passed what would have been his office. He didn’t know and he no longer cared. He was just happy to catch up to his friends, looking forward to a fun bus trip.

 

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