Kellyanne opened the car door and crawled into my bedroom. Her face was puffy and pale and fuzzed-over. She just came in and said: "Ashmol, Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead." That's how she said it.
"Good," I said. "Perhaps you'll grow up now and stop being such a fruit loop."
Tears started sliding down her face. But I wasn't feeling any sympathy, and neither would you if you'd grown up with Pobby and Dingan.
"Pobby and Dingan aren't dead," I said, hiding my anger in a swig from my can of Mello Yello. "They never existed. Things that never existed can't be dead. Right?"
Kellyanne glared at me through tears the way she did the time I slammed the door of the ute in Dingan's face or the time I walked over to where Pobby was supposed to be sitting and punched the air and kicked the air in the head to show Kellyanne that Pobby was a figment of her imaginings. I don't know how many times I had sat at the dinner table saying: "Mum, why do you have to set places for Pobby and Dingan? They aren't even real." She put food out for them too. She said they were quieter and better behaved than me and deserved the grub.
"They ain't exactly good conversationists, but," I would say.
And at other times when Kellyanne held out Pobby and Dingan were real I would just sit there saying, "Are not. Are not. Are not," until she got bored of saying, "Are. Are. Are," and went running out screaming with her hands over her ears.
And many times I've wanted to kill Pobby and Dingan, I don't mind saying it.
This is an excerpt from a wonderful little book by Ben Rice, called Pobby and Dingan.
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