Free A Thousand Water Bombs by T. M. Alexander

They were laughing about me behind my back. Cowards.
    Coward is a horrible word. I decided not to be one. They’d obviously ganged up together and I was the one they were having a go at. Well, they could say it to my face. I barged in. But no
one noticed me. They were too busy studying something on the kitchen table. Copper Pie’s parents were nowhere to be seen. I coughed.
    ‘Keener, just in time. Look at this one.’
    Fifty made a space so I could see. Oh great! That was all I needed. A photo of me in Reception, with my hands in two giant yellow rubber gloves. Ha ha. So I didn’t like glue. Who
cares?
    The table was covered in old photos. I saw a flash of orange and green: Copper Pie in a Tyrannosaurus Rex costume. Classic. I could feel a grin starting. I remembered that birthday party. I was
sick on the way home.
    ‘Who’s that?’ said Jonno, pointing at a picture of a little boy dressed up as a ladybird.
    A guffaw exploded from somewhere deep inside. I managed to squeeze out, ‘It’s Fifty.’ Fifty’s hair was like a ginormous black woolly hat and his cheeks were all rosy.
    ‘You should have been a girl,’ said Bee, grabbing it.
    ‘So cute,’ said Jonno.
    ‘Wait till you see Bee. She was a giraffe. She must be in one of them.’ Fifty started shuffling all the photos. ‘Here she is.’
    ‘Too much,’ said Jonno, holding his middle. Bee’s face was poking out of the middle of some spotty brown fur. She didn’t have any hair because it was all tucked up into
the giraffe head.
    ‘What’s so funny?’ said Copper Pie, to our backs.
    I held up the dinosaur pic.
    ‘That was my animal birthday party,’ he said. ‘Let’s see.’ He took it. The table was like a diary of our lives. There was every party, every Christmas play (Bee as
an angel!), the time we went sledging in bobble hats and mittens using trays and bin bags, Charlie’s christening (with me holding him and Bee feeding him a bottle). We had to explain
everything to Jonno, the only Triber who wasn’t around to see it all. I don’t know how long we sat there but eventually, when we’d been through the lot, someone said they were
hungry and we remembered the cakes at the Tribehouse. Bee packed the photos away in the shoebox and put it back on the top of one of the cupboards.
    ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘To the Tribehouse!’
    ‘Come on, Copper Pie,’ said Fifty.
    He looked at the Tribers, one at a time.
    ‘Am I still in? Still a Triber?’
    ‘Looks like it,’ said Bee. ‘I can’t see any pictures of Callum in your mum’s box so I reckon you must be one of us.’
    ‘I didn’t want to do it. Dad made me.’
    ‘We know,’ said Fifty. He paused then added, ‘Now.’
    ‘You could try talking to us next time,’ said Jonno.
    ‘There won’t be no next time,’ said Copper Pie.
    I chose a cake with a Flake on top. It was absolutely delicious. Helped by the fact the Tribers were in the Tribehouse, all together again.
    ‘She’s clever, your mum,’ said Jonno.
    ‘That’s not what most people say,’ said Copper Pie. ‘Most people say she shouts.’
    ‘But she got out that box, didn’t she? And everyone remembered how long you’ve been friends and all the stuff you’ve done together. She helped sort it out.’
    ‘I s’pose.’
    ‘I wish I had old friends.’
    We all looked at Jonno. Who was as much a part of Tribe as all of us, even though we’d only known him a few weeks. Fifty put it into words.
    ‘Once you join, you can’t leave. Even if you disappear for a while with our number one enemy, like Copper Pie here, you’re still a Triber. So you’ll have old friends,
Jonno. You’ll have us, till you die.’
    ‘Unless we go first,’ said Bee.
    ‘Can we not talk about dying?’ I said. ‘Can we just eat the rest of the cakes?’
    Copper Pie flopped his hand down. We all followed. The Tribe handshake said it all.

Show and Tell

Bee’s mum is sad
    We were on our way home from school.
    ‘I love Tuesdays,’