Sophia and the Corner Park Clubhouse

by Bell Davina

  Maisie blushes and I know she’d be hating this. I look out and spot her parents. They are grinning proudly.

  Mayor Magnus is pouting now, like a giant baby. ‘What about – what about – what about setting up for all the events? Events need chairs. LOTS of chairs. How’s a bunch of little girls going to do that?’

  ‘The band boys and I can help,’ says Rishi, and they all nod enthusiastically. ‘But these girls are actually pretty strong.’

  ‘We won’t be paying you,’ spits Bart Strabonsky.

  ‘Dude, not everything’s about money,’ says Rishi, and I get the tummy love feeling even stronger than before.

  ‘I’ll be around the place,’ calls Mikie. ‘With my cart. Keeping an eye on it.’

  ‘And I’ll be keeping an eye on him,’ calls Judy.

  Everyone laughs, but not in a mean way. Everyone knows how clumsy Mikie is. It’s one of the things we all love about him.

  ‘Speaking of money,’ says Belle. Her eyes are still red but at least she has her voice back. ‘This will generate quite a bit of money for the town – people hiring out the clubhouse and all. Do you gentlemen have any objections to that?’ She closes her notebook with a satisfied snap.

  Mayor Magnus is glaring so hard, I think his eyebrows are crossing over one another. He looks like a kid who just lost at Monopoly. Bart Strabonsky is prancing from foot to foot and punching the bottom of his cowboy hat. Is this it? Have we won?!

  From the crowd, I hear a voice ring out – one I’ve known so well for so long. It’s Patrick. ‘Cor-ner PARK, Cor-ner PARK.’

  Judy joins him, and Rishi and RexRoy, and I do too. I don’t know if I’ve ever yelled so hard – not even for Maisie when she finished her Level 9 floor routine by doing jazz hands and won a silver medal.

  ‘COR-NER PARK! COR-NER PARK!’ The crowd is so loud, I can feel it like a buzz through my body – like we’re standing on a verandah made of bees. I can see Matilda and Pete screaming it too, and then I see her – my mum. Tears are streaming down her face as she chants with the crowd. She’s here – she’s actually here, and not at some emergency work meeting. Not showing people around a house on Tea Cake Crescent. And wait … Is that –?

  But I can’t be sure, because right then Lola grabs my hand, and I grab Maisie’s, and she grabs Belle’s. We turn and look at each other, our faces shining. Then we raise our hands together, and the whole crowd roars.

  The guys with the hard hats drop arms and turn to look at Mayor Magnus, as if to say, ‘Well?’ And suddenly everyone’s quiet again, waiting for what he’s going to say.

  ‘FINE!’ yells Mayor Magnus, ripping off his cape and throwing it onto the ground. ‘I didn’t even want to pull down the stupid clubhouse anyway.’

  Pony Soprano trots over and snaps the cape up in his mouth and starts chewing. Everyone starts laughing, and Bart Strabonsky tries to yank Mayor Magnus offstage to stop him embarrassing himself. (Might be a bit too late for that, buddy.) They’re about to get into an actual fistfight when Mikie pushes through the crowd and climbs the steps so he’s standing next to Lola, who is beaming, by the way. She grabs the microphone from me and taps it to get people’s attention. Then she passes it to Mikie.

  ‘Mayor Magnus, does the clubhouse do weddings?’ Mikie asks.

  Those doofuses stop scuffling for a second. ‘There’s a fee,’ Mayor Magnus pants, tired from wrestling. ‘A HUGE fee.’

  Belle glares at him so hard her eyebrows definitely cross. She crosses her arms too. ‘Sunnystream Council Regulations state that the fee for weddings in Corner Park is eighty dollars,’ she says. ‘It’s on your website. The clubhouse is in this park and is not listed separately.’ She turns back to Mikie. ‘So yes, we do weddings. Eighty bucks and it’s yours.’

  Mikie wipes his hands on his pants. And then he actually gets down on one knee and faces out into the crowd. Everyone gasps. I told you this was better than TV.

  ‘Judy,’ he says. ‘Will you do me the honour of being my wife?’

  And if you think that was crazy, you will literally not believe what happens next. As Judy flies up onto the verandah to kiss him and everyone is going crazy – whooping and throwing things in the air – someone else jumps up the stairs. Someone with curls that spring out from his head, grey ones, and the kindest blue eyes in the world.

  ‘Dad!’ I breathe.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind if I copy your idea,’ Dad says to Mikie, and the whole town laughs. He tries to get down on one knee, but he’s kind of old, and maybe not as bendy as Mikie nowadays. It takes him ages and the crowd laughs again. OMG, what is happening here?! I’m sort of embarrassed and sort of out of my mind with happiness to see him again. I guess I’m conflicted, or at least that’s what Belle would say.

  I think of him and Mum sitting on the steps in bare feet on a warm breezy night before I was even here. How much Gracie loved that story on long car rides home.

  ‘Julie,’ Dad says to my mum when the crowd hushes down. ‘Will you marry me … again?’

  As everyone pours into the clubhouse to see what we’ve done, Dad wraps me in a hug that goes on forever. To Tuesday and back, as Gracie would say. We might as well be in space, on a tiny Swedish island, in a crystal-filled cave – even though we’re in the middle of the crowd, it’s like we’re the only two people in the world. I can feel his tears dripping down, cool on my hair. ‘Oh, Pickle,’ he whispers.

  When we let each other go, Mum comes up and grabs me tight. You can tell she does bootcamp by those arm muscles. ‘Grace would be so proud of you,’ she whispers. ‘I’m proud.’

  She smells so familiar, like laundry and almond hand cream. As she lets me go, I look up into her face. She seems so much older than I remember and it gives me a little shock. She’s not a robot, I want to tell Gracie. She’s just a human. For real.

  ‘I know I’ve been working too much these last few months,’ she says as we go down the steps, Dad’s arm around her shoulder, her arm around mine. ‘It’s just that … When I’m working … when I’m working …’ She looks down at her rings, twisting one of them with her thumb, like she’s nervous.

  ‘When you’re working, you don’t have to remember all the time,’ I say to them both. ‘I get it.’

  Mum nods. ‘It’s not real. Not yet. It doesn’t seem unlikely to me that she could still walk through a doorway. Appear from behind a bush. If I just keep working, that’s still a possibility.’

  But it’s not a real possibility. She knows that, and I know that, and Dad knows that.

  ‘It was wrong of me to run away,’ he says. ‘And I’m sorry. I was just …’

  His voice trails off. But I know what he is trying to say. ‘You were just lost,’ I finish, ‘because it was always Gracie who showed us the way.’ We look at each other, sort of half gobsmacked, because, though no-one’s ever said that before, it’s suddenly so obvious.

  ‘But, Dad?’ I say eventually. ‘She’s not here, but she’s not gone. Not really.’

  Mum grips Dad’s hand, and he strokes her thumb with his big thumb. I must have seen him do that a million times in my life. A squillion.

  ‘You’re together,’ I say in wonder.

  ‘We were never apart,’ says Mum. ‘Not … not really. I’ve been trying to tell you. But you didn’t seem to want to listen.’

  I think of all the times when I blocked my ears and said LA LA LA. I wonder what else I missed because I wasn’t ready to hear. But I am now.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Maisie and Lola and Belle by the stegosaurus slide, waving at me to come over.

  ‘Go on, sweetheart,’ Mum says. ‘See you at home.’

  I start to run, but then I turn back to my parents. ‘Wait – you guys should go and look at the red Japanese maple. There’s something on the trunk you might like to see.’

  And then I sprint over to my friends. It’s only twenty steps away, but I can’t get there fast enough.

  I don’t know if I can actually describe how intense
our group hug is, so I’ll leave it to your imagination, but make sure you add in the part where we’re jumping up and down so much that we topple over into the woodchips at the bottom of the slide and end up picking them out of each other’s hair like baboons do. While we’re doing that, we debrief on everything that just happened. Belle’s dad being Mayor Magnus. My dad coming back to Sunnystream. And of course, saving the clubhouse, AKA VICTORY!

  ‘We saved you, Corner Park Clubhouse,’ Lola yells at the pretty white building – our own tiny Hogwarts. And I swear, it’s like the building winks a thank-you back.

  ‘I don’t mean to be a killjoy,’ says Maisie later on, when we’re sitting at our favourite picnic table, drinking hot chocolates. Turns out they’re not too babyish after all. ‘But if we’re all in different places during term time, how are we actually going to make this work? How are we going to keep the clubhouse going, I mean.’

  I think Belle’s going to say ‘organisation’ or ‘planning’ or ‘scheduling’ or ‘a shared electronic calendar’. But she doesn’t.

  ‘This is what’s going to make it work,’ she says simply. ‘Us. We love each other too much to let it slip away.’

  ‘Gracie …’ I say. I clear my throat and try again. ‘Gracie always used to say there was nothing the four of us couldn’t do.’ The others are looking at me and smiling – sort of sad smiles, but still smiles. I guess I haven’t said her name to them since she died.

  Gracie didn’t hang out with us heaps but she really liked these guys. She thought Belle was so funny in her crazy, nerdy, genius way. She thought Lola was cool, of course (who doesn’t?), but she wondered what would happen as we grew up – if she’d become one of those popular girls who you couldn’t quite trust with your secrets. She liked how Maisie doesn’t care what anyone thinks, she just is who she is.

  You might think it’s weird that Gracie wasn’t in our group, because we were twins and all, but it wasn’t. It’s just that she had Patrick, and they did everything together. Suddenly, so much about Gracie is pouring into my mind. She and Patrick in their baseball uniforms, throwing the ball back and forth as they walked up our street. Gracie up on Dad’s back at a Father’s Day picnic race, wearing his sunglasses over her real glasses. Gracie on the flying fox before she was sick, kicking her legs as she flew through the purple summer sky.

  ‘Gracie wasn’t a jealous person,’ I say to the others. ‘But she was jealous of our friendship. She never said that out loud. But after she died, I read her diary. Do you think that’s bad?’ I’ve worried about this heaps, to be honest.

  ‘No,’ they all say together, and they look like they mean it.

  ‘I would have, for sure,’ says Maisie.

  ‘That is perfectly natural human behaviour,’ says Belle.

  ‘I would have tried to read it the second I found out about it,’ says Lola.

  I laugh. I’m super relieved. It feels so good to talk about Gracie. Like she’s real, and not this weird mix between that ghost from Harry Potter that haunts the bathrooms and a cement bag on my back. ‘You want to know something else? I’m sort of mad at her for dying. But at the same time … At the same time …’ I stop, because it’s almost too big to say. I wipe my eyes with my palms. Maybe it’s too big not to say. Maybe I’ll have to say it one day, someday, and this is that day, and these are the people to hear it.

  I close my eyes. I think about the bruises on Gracie’s arms from all the needles and drips. How even when she wanted to wrestle on the TV-room sofa, I would be thinking about not touching them too hard. I think about how she knew that’s what I was thinking, and it made her wrestle harder.

  I think about the last day of Gracie’s life, when she pushed Lemon Tart right off the bed, a big angry push. When I picked Lemon Tart up from the carpet, she was trembling. She wouldn’t stop – not for hours. I held her and held her but she just kept shaking. Maisie came over and took her that day because I couldn’t hold her anymore. She’s kept her ever since. But I think now I might be ready to take her back.

  I take a deep breath and look down at my hands. ‘At the same time I’m glad Gracie’s not sick anymore. I’m glad that it’s over. And I’m worried that makes me a terrible person. But it’s just how I feel. Sort of relieved. Because it was hard to watch her be so brave. And also, when she was sick I sort of … disappeared.’

  I look up and see that Lola is crying. Twice in one week – this is an actual record. ‘You’re not a terrible person,’ she says. ‘You’re so sweet and kind. I don’t know why, of all the people in the world, this had to happen to you.’

  Maisie nods. ‘It’s not fair. That’s what I just keep thinking. It’s so not fair.’

  ‘I know you find it hard to talk about it. But I just want you to know that we’re here for you,’ says Belle. ‘A pain shared is half the pain. A pleasure shared is twice the pleasure.’

  ‘Is that Shakespeare again?’ Maisie asks.

  ‘A Swedish proverb,’ says Belle.

  ‘I’m so putting that on my Instagram,’ says Lola, wiping her tears and standing up. ‘But not right now.’ She nods to the others and holds out her hand to me. I link arms and she squeezes mine in tight next to her body. ‘I want to show you something. Close your eyes.’

  Luckily we don’t have to go far because it’s tricky, walking through the darkness. Twice I almost trip, but Lola catches me. I don’t think the others are with us. It feels as if we’re somewhere a bit quieter when she says, ‘Now open them.’

  We are round the side of the clubhouse with the eucalyptus trees – at the back, where there’s a little clearing. In the crisp sunlight, the white wall is glowing golden. And there’s something painted on the side of the building. Like a giant black-and-white photograph. Lola’s arm is still in mine, but I can feel her whole body tense up, waiting.

  I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything.

  I just look and look.

  ‘Is it OK?’ she whispers.

  I shake my arm free and sit down on the ground, hugging my knees.

  ‘I never want to leave here,’ I say eventually. ‘I’m never going to.’

  ‘Really?’ she says. ‘Oh phew.’ She sounds so relieved.

  ‘Lola,’ I say. ‘It’s perfect. When did you – how?’

  She looks down and proud-smiles. ‘Come back when you’re ready,’ she says, and starts walking back to the others.

  There, on the wall, is Gracie – the top half of her, anyway. There’s her face, round with the dimple I always wished was mine. There are the ringlets that jumped from her head, like coils of electricity. Her glasses with their flecked frames, the colour of Coke when you hold it to the sun in a glass. And there are her eyes, happy in a cheeky way. ‘Come on,’ they are saying. ‘Let’s go!’

  ‘Gracie,’ I whisper with wonder. ‘Gracie, I miss you.’

  As I gaze up at her, I can hear her voice, husky like it was when she’d stayed up late reading and dragged herself out of bed for Saturday-morning waffles.

  ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry I’m gone. I’m sorry I left you.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘It’s getting better.’

  And for the first time, I think I really mean it.

  When it’s too cold to sit there any longer, I stand up. As I brush grass off my legs, something on the clubhouse wall catches my eye. I go closer so I can see it properly.

  On Gracie’s shirt, right in the middle, there’s a heart. Running through it are little cracks of gold, like tiny rivers. They flash as they catch the last glow of sunset. And there’s something else in the bottom right corner. It’s a gold plaque, new and shiny.

  The Grace Hargraves Memorial Clubhouse, it says.

  I turn around and they’re behind me, waiting – Belle Brodie, Lola Powell and Maisie Zhang. And maybe Grace Hargraves is too. I get the Full Heart feeling again.

  And this time the words don’t catch in my throat. They just tumble right on out in a string, and I say, ‘Guys! Best friends foreve
r?’

  ‘Literally,’ says Lola.

  ‘Obviously,’ says Belle.

  Through the twilight, I can see Maisie smile. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Forever.’

  and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

  – e.e. cummings

  Seven Questions

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  About the author

  Davina Bell is an award-winning writer for young readers of many ages. She writes picture books (including All the Ways to be Smart and Under the Love Umbrella), junior fiction (Lemonade Jones) and middle-grade fiction (the Corner Park Clubhouse series and the Alice books in the Our Australian Girl series). Davina wishes she were a Lola but is probably more of a Soph with a splash of Belle. Originally from Western Australia, she now lives in Melbourne, where she works as a children’s book editor.

  Sophia and the Corner Park Clubhouse

  first published in 2019 by

  Hardie Grant Egmont

  Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street

  Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia

  www.hardiegrantegmont.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  eISBN 9781743586280

  Text copyright © 2019 Davina Bell

  Design copyright © 2019 Hardie Grant Egmont

  Cover illustration by Samantha Woo

  Cover design by Jess Cruickshank

  Typeset by Cannon Typesetting

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