Chapter 7 continues (For the first 6 chapters click here 🙂 )

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Twenty two minutes later he suffered a bitter disappointment. In truth Dad hadn’t been surprised to learn that the blue bike Luke had set his heart on a year ago wasn’t there anymore, but he’d assumed Luke would happily choose a different one from the same shop.  But Luke wouldn’t even look at a different one.  He wanted the blue one.  It was perfect.  He could describe every detail of it and why it was perfect in every detail.  For this reason the bike shop man knew which make and model he was talking about and looked it up on his computer.  He said he could order another one, especially for Luke. It would take two weeks to get there.  Luke smiled with relief.

“Yes please,” he said.

He’d waited a whole year, what was another two weeks?

By the time they got back home he was feeling much better and cheerfully returned his money to the safety of his money box.  Just two weeks – then he’d have it for sure.  It was ordered.  The order was in his name.  Just two weeks more.

Luke sat in his room and drew a grid of fourteen squares.  In each square he wrote a day of the week.  At the end of every day he put a big red cross through one of the squares.  When there were fourteen red crosses it would be time to go and get his bike.  He could think of nothing else.  He could talk of nothing else.  To tell the truth, even his devoted friend Joe was getting a little tired of it.

It was the thirteenth day, Friday afternoon.  The boys were sitting at either end of their desk, doing their sums.  At least they were supposed to be doing their sums.  In actual fact Joe was drawing dinosaurs and Luke was daydreaming about how much faster than Butler’s bike his new bike would be.

“He won’t even be able to keep up with me,” he chuckled, “I’ll be so fast that when I pass ‘im he won’t even know it was me.  I’ll jus’ be a blur to ‘im!”

“Mm,” Joe nodded.

He’d stopped listening half an hour earlier but it was easier to nod along than admit that he’d lost interest.  Joe was a ‘path of least resistance’ sort of boy.  However, by the end of the afternoon, when they were walking home from school, he couldn’t help expressing his wish to change the subject.  Luke was more than a little affronted.

“Oh I’m sorry, ‘ave I bin borin’ you?” he said in mock apology, “I wun’t want to bore you with somethin’ as borin’ ‘n’ unint’restin’ as a new bike!  I’m sorry to bother you with the unint’restin’ information that it took me a whole year to save up for it!  I’m sorry I got so excited ’bout somethin’ so borin’!”

An awkward silence followed during which the friends walked at opposite edges of the country lane.  They had been given permission to walk home without adult accompaniment as long as they stayed together.  They therefore kept pace with each other whilst keeping as far apart as the width of the narrow road allowed.  Joe looked at his shoes.  Luke looked straight ahead.

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Continues tomorrow 😉

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vegan children’s story, children’s book, books, children