The Big Kids Club
Felix starts an exclusive club to celebrate his and Alex's big-kid achievements — and has to work out how to undo it once he sees what being left out looks like on his best friends' faces.
Felix had a new badge from swimming, and Alex had just finished a den made entirely of sofa cushions, and between the two of them they had decided — somewhere around midday, without really discussing it — that they were having an extremely big week.
"We should start a club," Felix said. "A Big Kids Club."
Alex looked up from the last cushion. "What's it for?"
"Important things." Felix was already finding a piece of cardboard. "Big kid things. Like — knowing how deep the pool is. And building dens properly." He wrote BIG KIDS CLUB across the cardboard in careful capitals, because even in a hurry Felix's writing had to be readable. "Members only."
"Only who?" said Alex.
Felix considered this the way he considered most important decisions, which was quickly and with total confidence. "Us. And whoever's done a big kid thing."
It felt like a good rule. It felt like a rule that made sense right up until Evy and Theo came through the garden gate ten minutes later, and Felix held the cardboard sign up in front of the cushion den like a wall.
"You can't come in," Felix said. "It's members only."
Evy stopped walking. "Why not?"
"Because you haven't done a big kid thing," said Felix. "Alex got a swimming badge. I built a den. What have you done?"
Evy didn't say anything. Theo did, a beat later, in the flat voice he used when something had actually landed. "I don't know what you mean."
"You'll work it out," Felix said, "when you're bigger," and it came out breezier than he meant it to.
Alex hadn't said anything the whole time. He was looking at Evy's face, which had gone the particular still, closed shape it went when she was trying not to look sad in front of people.
Being in the Big Kids Club, it turned out, was mostly sitting in a den with nobody to talk to.
Felix reorganised the cushions, which didn't need it, until one slid loose and the whole wall came down on top of him with a soft, muffled THUMP that nobody was there to laugh at.
Outside, over the fence, they could hear Evy and Theo not really playing. Just talking, low, the kind of talking that has gaps in it.
"This isn't as good as I thought," Felix admitted, eventually.
Alex was quiet for a bit. Then: "Evy went home."
Felix looked at him. "How do you know?"
"I heard the gate."
They found Theo alone in his garden, dragging a big appliance box across the grass with the serious, unhelped effort of someone doing something that was supposed to be for two people.
"What's that?" Alex asked.
"Our club," Theo said, not looking up. "Since we're not allowed in yours." He'd written something on the side in wobbly marker — Felix could just make out the shape of it. NOT-BIG-KIDS-CLUB. "Evy said she didn't want to help build it."
"Why not?" said Felix, though some part of him already suspected the answer and didn't like it.
"She's inside," Theo said. "She said she wanted to draw something to prove she could do a big kid thing too. She's been at it a while." He finally looked up. "It isn't going very well. I heard her rip one up."
Felix looked at the half-dragged box, and at Theo doing it by himself, and at the gap in the fence where Evy usually came through, and something in his chest went tight and sour, the way it did the time he'd said something mean to Alex by accident and watched it land.
"This is all wrong," Felix said.
Alex nodded. He didn't need more words than that.
They found Evy at her kitchen table with a small pile of paper, most of it crumpled, one sheet still smoothed flat in front of her — a picture of the four of them, except she'd drawn herself standing outside a box with a line around it.
"It's not very good," she said, without looking up, "because I'm not very good at big kid things, I suppose."
"It's not about the drawing," Felix said. He sat down across from her, which took more effort than sitting down usually did. "I'm sorry. We made a club to keep you out, and that was a mean thing to make, and I don't actually know why I did it."
"I think," Alex said slowly, "you wanted the badge to mean something. And it already did. You didn't need the club as well."
Felix thought about that for a second and found it was exactly right, in the annoying way Alex's short sentences sometimes were.
Evy looked up. Her eyes were pink round the edges but her face had unstuck itself a little. "Are you shutting it down, then?"
"Yes," said Felix. "Completely. We're undoing it."
"Good," said Theo, from the doorway, arms crossed, though not for long, because arms crossed at Felix never lasted.
They pulled the BIG KIDS CLUB sign down together and turned it over, and on the blank side, all four of them wrote something new, each in their own handwriting.
EVERYONE'S CLUB. NO ONE LEFT OUT. BADGES DON'T MATTER, BEING KIND DOES.
They moved Theo's box next to the cushion den and pushed the two together until they made one lopsided headquarters that nobody could have built alone, and Evy drew the membership cards properly this time — one for each of them, no lines around anyone.
"Better than the Big Kids Club," Theo said, considering his card.
"Much better," said Evy.
Felix looked at his own badge, still pinned crookedly to his jumper, and realised it hadn't stopped meaning anything. It just didn't need a wall built around it to mean it.
"Next time I do a big kid thing," he said, "I'm just going to tell you about it. Not make a sign."
"Good plan," said Alex, and went back to fixing the cushion wall where it had come loose, because someone had to, and that was always going to be him.
🏰 THE END 🏰
The headquarters lasted three days before a gust of wind took the roof off. Nobody minded much. They rebuilt it in twenty minutes, all four of them, and it was sturdier the second time. Evy kept the drawing with the line around herself. She added more lines to it later — around everyone, holding hands, the box gone completely. It's on her wall now.