Chapter Text
1952
Ginny Danburry liked being alone.
Adults always seemed concerned about it.
"Why don't you go and play with the others, Virginia?"
"Wouldn't you rather join in?"
"You'll make more friends if you don't hide yourself away with your books."
She never knew quite how to explain that she wasn't hiding. She simply liked quiet. Quiet meant she could hear herself think.
Lunchtime was Ginny’s favourite part of the school day.
Not because of the food—although her mother's biscuits were very good—but because nobody expected anything from her.
She carried her lunch beneath the oak tree at the edge of the playground, settled herself against its trunk, and unpacked everything in the same order every day.
Sandwich first.
Apple second.
Biscuit tin last.
Notebook on top.
The notebook was much more important than the lunch.
Its blue cover was bent at the corners from being carried everywhere. Inside were dozens of stories in various stages of completion, some only a title and a few scribbled lines, others stretching over pages and pages in neat handwriting.
Today's page wasn't a story.
Today she was drawing costumes.
A queen with sleeves so wide they swept the floor behind her.
A dragon wearing a waistcoat because she thought dragons probably got cold if they lived in caves.
A prince whose crown kept falling over one eye.
She paused, frowned at the dragon, then added spectacles.
Better.
Dragons who wore waistcoats probably needed spectacles.
She could smell the fresh-cut grass after Mr Collins mowed the sports field that morning and observed the ants marching determinedly across one of the roots beside her shoe. Satisfied, she reached for her apple. There was a bruise on the side of it that she carefully turned away from herself before taking the first bite.
A roar of laughter echoed across the field.
Ginny looked up automatically.
There was only one person at school capable of making that much noise.
Ginny had never actually spoken to Chris Noel.
She knew of her. Everyone did.
Chris was the sort of person teachers sighed about in the staff room.
Bright, but distractible.
Lovely girl. Talkative though.
Always asking questions.
Last Tuesday she'd somehow convinced Mrs Hayes to spend twenty minutes explaining whether mermaids counted as mammals or fish.
On Monday she'd started an argument over whether tomato soup counted as a drink.
Chris seemed to move through the world with the absolute certainty that everyone wanted to hear whatever she was about to say. Strangely enough… most people did.
Another wave of sound made its way towards her. Chris had somehow gathered what seemed like every child in 4th Grade into another game. She darted between them, blonde hair flying behind her, laughing so hard she nearly tripped over her own feet.
"You're cheating!" one of the boys shouted.
"I am not!"
"You are!"
"If I was cheating, I'd be winning!"
"You are winning!"
Chris threw her head back and laughed.
Ginny smiled despite herself.
She looked exhausting.
One of the boys kicked the rubber playground ball with considerably more enthusiasm than accuracy. It sailed clean over everyone's heads, straight toward the oak tree.
Ginny barely had time to blink before—
Thunk.
The ball landed squarely in the middle of her lunch.
Her apple, which had been set down, rolled across the grass. The biscuit tin flipped upside down. Most tragically, her sandwich escaped its wrapping and landed butter-side down.
Ginny stared at the disaster for a long moment.
"...Oh."
There was a chorus of horrified gasps from across the field.
Then someone came sprinting toward her.
Chris skidded to a stop so quickly she nearly fell over.
"Oh no."
She looked from the flattened sandwich to the upside-down biscuits, then back to Ginny.
"Oh no!"
Ginny blinked.
"It's alright."
"It isn't alright!"
Chris crouched immediately, scrambling to pick everything up.
"I'm so, so sorry. Tommy kicked it too hard and I tried to catch it but then—"
She mimed a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at catching an invisible ball before sighing dramatically.
"Well."
Ginny reached for her apple, brushing a few blades of grass from its polished skin.
"It still looks edible."
Chris looked genuinely stricken.
"It landed in the dirt."
"I've eaten worse."
Chris frowned.
"...Really?"
"My brother once dared me to eat a worm."
Chris's eyes widened. "Did you?"
"No."
There was a pause.
"I thought about it though."
Chris laughed, the sound bubbling up uncontrollably. Ginny couldn't help but smile.
"You’re funny."
"I wasn't trying to be."
"I know."
Chris finally noticed the notebook lying open beside Ginny's knee. The page showed a girl wearing an elaborate crown beside something that looked suspiciously like a dragon in a coat.
"What's that?"
Ginny's smile disappeared. Almost instinctively, she snapped the notebook shut.
"...Nothing."
Chris tilted her head.
"If it's nothing..."
She pointed at it.
"...why'd you hide it?"
Ginny hesitated.
Children didn't usually ask about her notebook. Sometimes they laughed at it or asked why she didn't draw horses like everyone else.
"It's just stories," she mumbled.
"What sort of stories?"
"Made-up ones."
Chris's face lit up.
"You write stories?"
"A little."
"Can I read them?"
Ginny clutched the notebook a little closer.
"Sorry, no."
"Oh."
Chris looked disappointed for exactly half a second.
"Can I know what they're about?"
Ginny studied her carefully. She had expected Chris to lose interest. To shrug and run back to the game.
Instead, she waited patiently like the answer actually mattered.
"...Mostly plays," Ginny admitted quietly.
"Plays?"
"For the theatre."
"There isn't a theatre."
"I know."
"So where do you do them?"
"My backyard."
Chris looked delighted.
"Really?"
Ginny nodded.
Before Chris could ask another question, the school bell rang across the playground. Children groaned in unison.
From somewhere in the distance, Mrs Hayes called, "Inside, everyone!"
Chris stood, brushing grass from her skirt.
"I have to go."
Ginny nodded.
"So do I."
Chris picked up the rubber ball, then hesitated.
"I'm really sorry about your lunch."
"It's alright."
"No," Chris said, surprisingly firm. "It isn't."
For a second it looked as though she wanted to say something else. Instead, she smiled—a quick, bright one that reached her eyes.
"I'll make it up to you."
Before Ginny could ask how, Chris was already running back across the playground, calling after the other children as if nothing had happened.
Ginny watched her disappear into the crowd before making her way back to the school buildings.
──────────────────
The final bell echoed through the school corridors at three o'clock sharp.
Children spilled through the front gates in noisy clusters, already talking over one another about homework they hadn't done and games they planned to play before dinner.
The walk home wasn't long—twelve minutes if she dawdled, nine if Chet decided he was in a hurry.
Today, apparently, he was in a hurry.
"Hurry up, Ginny."
"I'm walking."
"You're walking like you've got bricks in your shoes."
“I am walking at a perfectly normal speed.”
Chet groaned dramatically.
"I swear, one day you'll make me late to my own funeral."
"I don't think punctuality will be your biggest concern then."
He barked out a laugh.
Chet had always been like this.
Where Ginny was quiet, he filled the silence. Where she hesitated, he leapt first and worried later.
People liked Chet immediately.
Teachers remembered his name before the register. Parents called him "such a polite young man." The boys wanted him on their football team. The girls always seemed to laugh a little louder when he was nearby.
Sometimes Ginny wondered what it must feel like to move through the world so effortlessly.
Then again...
She watched him trip over an uneven paving stone. Perhaps "effortlessly" wasn't quite the word.
When they arrived home, Chet pushed open the front door first.
“We're home!”
“You don't need to announce it,” Ginny said.
“I think people like knowing when important people arrive.”
“You mean you.”
“Exactly.”
Ginny rolled her eyes and followed him inside.
Their mother was standing at the kitchen counter, her sleeves rolled up and flour dusted across her apron. She looked up when they entered, smiling in the way she always did when she saw them come home safely.
“There you two are.”
Chet immediately headed toward the counter.
“Is that pineapple cake?”
“It’s for after dinner.”
“I didn't ask when it was for.”
“Chet.”
“I was only looking.”
“You are never only looking. Anyways, could you take these potatoes through to your father?"
Chet saluted dramatically. "Yes, ma'am."
"You are not in the army."
"No, ma'am."
He scooped up the bowl anyway, disappearing into the dining room with an exaggerated march.
Mrs Danburry shook her head fondly before turning back to Ginny.
"Oh, darling."
She looked back.
“Yes, Mom?”
"I had a telephone call this afternoon."
Ginny blinked. "...You did?"
"Mrs Noel."
Something in her mother's expression was amused.
"Apparently her daughter has been beside herself all afternoon."
Ginny frowned. "...Why?"
Mrs Danburry looked surprised.
"Your lunch."
Ginny stared.
"My lunch?"
"Chris accidentally knocked it over, didn't she?"
"Oh, right. Yeah."
"Chris feels simply dreadful."
Ginny looked down at the kitchen floor.
"She does?"
"According to her mother, she burst through the front door announcing she'd committed a terrible crime."
Chet reappeared.
"What'd she do? Burn the school down?"
Mrs Danburry chuckled.
"No."
"Flood the classrooms?"
"No."
"Start another frog incident?"
"I don't know what the frog incident was, and I don't think I want to."
Chet grinned. "Fair."
Mrs Danburry looked back at Ginny. "She was very worried she'd upset you."
Ginny thought back to the playground. The way Chris had insisted, It isn't alright.
"It was only a sandwich."
"I know." Mrs Danburry reached over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Ginny's ear. "But sometimes it's not really about the sandwich."
Ginny wasn't entirely sure what that meant.
Most people would have said sorry and forgotten about it.
Chris had apparently gone home and continued thinking about it.
“She really felt bad?” Ginny asked.
Her mother smiled.
“Yes, darling.”
Ginny looked away, pretending to be interested in the pattern on the kitchen tiles.
She wasn't sure why that mattered. It was a small thing. A very small thing. But there was something strange about knowing that someone had thought about her after they had left.
──────────────────
The doorbell rang barely an hour later.
Chet, who was closest to the hallway, immediately called, “I'll get it!”
Ginny followed more slowly, curiosity pulling her along.
They found Chris standing on the front step.
For once, she wasn't moving. She wasn't running across the playground or talking quickly enough that everyone else had to keep up. She was standing perfectly still, holding a round tin decorated with little painted flowers.
Beside her stood a smiling woman Ginny assumed must be Mrs Noel.
"Afternoon," Mrs Noel said warmly. "I hope we're not interrupting."
"Not at all," Mrs Danburry replied, appearing behind Ginny.
Chris held the tin out with both hands.
"My mom made cookies. I helped."
"You sampled the chocolate chips, love."
"I was quality control."
Mrs Noel smiled apologetically. "Chris insisted on coming over."
Chris' cheeks flushed pink.
"I wanted to say sorry."
Ginny blinked.
"You didn't have to."
"I know, but I wanted to."
She looked genuinely miserable.
"I ruined your lunch."
"It wasn't that bad."
Chris stared at her. "It was."
"It really wasn't."
"Your sandwich got dirt on it."
"...A little."
"And your apple rolled away."
"I found it."
"And your biscuits fell upside down."
"They were in a tin."
Chris opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"...That's not the point."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Chet snorted.
"I think she's been rehearsing this apology."
"I have not."
"You definitely have."
Chris shot him an icy glare.
"I was trying to be sincere."
"You sounded rehearsed."
"I did not."
"You kind of did," Ginny admitted quietly.
Chris looked scandalised. "I've apologised myself into sounding insincere?"
Mrs Danburry laughed.
"I think the cookies have done more than enough to make up for it."
Mrs Noel nodded.
"I told her as much."
"But what if Ginny was still sad?" Chris asked.
Ginny looked at her and something warm settled quietly in Ginny's chest.
"I'm not sad," she said.
Chris searched her face for another second before finally smiling. "...Good."
Mrs Danburry stepped forward. “Please come in for some cake. I’m Helen, by the way.”
“That would be lovely. I’m Catherine,” Mrs Noel replied.
Chet interjected, “You said the cake was for after dinner!”
“Hush, Chet.” Mrs Danburry swatted his shoulder lightly.
The adults disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the two girls standing awkwardly in the doorframe. Ginny decided that a more suitable place to accommodate Chris would be the backyard.
They made their way through the house and stood facing the garden. Ginny shifted awkwardly on the back step. Chris stood beside her, hands tucked behind her back.
Neither of them seemed quite sure what happened next
Ginny wasn't used to having visitors her age who weren't Chet's friends. They wanted to play football or Little League or just follow him around the neighbourhood.
Chris, however, seemed to have forgotten Chet existed.
She looked around the backyard instead.
There were chalk marks all over the concrete path. Long white lines, boxes, arrows, words written in careful block letters.
She crouched down.
"What are these?"
Ginny glanced at the drawings.
"Oh."
She rubbed the back of her neck.
"They're stage markings."
Chris looked up.
"...Stage?"
The backyard theatre was not, strictly speaking, a theatre, and Ginny was perfectly aware of that fact.
There was no proper stage with polished wooden boards or a velvet curtain that swept dramatically across the floor, no rows of red seats where an audience could sit and clap when the actors took their final bow, and certainly no ticket booth where people paid money to watch the performances.
It was simply a patch of grass behind the Danburry house, a wooden platform her father had helped her build from old pieces of timber, and a clothesline stretched between two trees where she hung faded blankets whenever she decided the scene required curtains.
Ginny had always believed that things became what you decided they were.
A stick found at the edge of the garden could become a sword if you held it correctly. A cardboard box could become a castle if you painted enough windows onto it. A garden chair placed beneath the shade of the apple tree could become a throne belonging to a queen who had ruled a kingdom for a hundred years.
The world was much more interesting when you allowed things to become something else.
So, naturally, a backyard could become a theatre.
Chris followed her across the grass, her eyes moving constantly as though she was afraid she might miss something.
Ginny expected laughter. More than anything, she expected Chris to look around and say something perfectly reasonable, like That’s not a real theatre or Where are all the actors?
Ginny was prepared for that.
She had heard versions of it before.
It was strange, Ginny thought, to see someone else looking at something she had created.
Usually, her theatre existed only when she was standing in it. Without her, it was just cardboard, but Chris was looking at it like it was something important.
“What is all this?” Chris asked finally.
Ginny shrugged, suddenly aware of every imperfect detail she had stopped noticing months ago. The cardboard castle had a crooked tower because she had run out of patience while painting it. The blanket curtains were slightly uneven because one side of the clothesline sat lower than the other. The wooden platform creaked if you stepped too heavily on the left side.
“My theatre,” she said.
Chris turned toward her.
“Your theatre?”
Ginny nodded, though her confidence faltered slightly beneath the weight of Chris’ attention.
“Well... yes.”
Chris stepped closer, studying the little stage.
The castle was painted onto a large piece of cardboard, though Ginny had mixed too much water into the paint and the blue towers had begun to blur at the edges. Beside it stood a forest made from paper leaves carefully glued onto brown cardboard trees, and above everything hung a silver moon that Ginny’s father had helped her cut out after she had asked to borrow his tools.
Chris reached out and touched the edge of one of the cardboard pieces gently.
“You made all of this?”
“Most of it.”
Chris looked amused.
“Most?”
“My dad helped me build the platform.”
“You have a whole stage.”
Ginny felt herself getting embarrassed.
“It isn't very big.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“You were thinking it.”
Chris smiled.
“I was thinking it was amazing.”
Ginny didn't know what to do with that.
People said lots of things about her.
They said she was clever when she answered questions correctly in class. They said she was imaginative when they discovered she spent her afternoons writing stories. Once, Mrs Hayes had told her she had a “very active mind,” which Ginny suspected was the sort of phrase adults used when they weren't quite sure whether they meant something as praise or concern.
But amazing was different. Amazing sounded like someone had noticed and genuinely liked her ideas.
Chris walked around the theatre slowly, as though she was afraid that if she moved too quickly she might somehow disturb it.
Ginny had never thought of anyone needing to be careful around her theatre before. To her, it had always been something practical. Chris treated everything with a strange sort of respect.
“What’s that?”
Ginny followed Chris's gaze toward the Tupperware container beside the stage. She walked over and opened it.
Several sheets of ripped-out notebook paper were stacked neatly on top of one another, their edges slightly curled from being carried outside and back inside countless times.
“My scripts.”
Chris carefully picked one up. She unfolded the first page, holding it carefully by the corners.
The handwriting was small and neat, with notes squeezed into the margins whenever Ginny had thought of something later. There were arrows showing where characters entered and crossed-out lines where she had decided the dialogue sounded wrong.
Chris looked impressed.
“You wrote all of this?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it take?”
Ginny thought about it.
“A few weeks.”
Chris looked up.
“A few weeks?”
Ginny shrugged.
“I work on them after school.”
Chris looked from the pages in her hands to the stage in front of her, then back to Ginny.
“Who acts in them?”
The question was simple.
Chris didn't mean anything by it. She was only asking because she was curious.
Ginny still hesitated.
“No one.”
Chris frowned slightly. “No one?”
“I do.”
Chris tilted her head.
“You mean you pretend to be everyone?”
Ginny nodded.
“Usually.”
She looked down at the grass, suddenly finding the blades beneath her shoes much more interesting than Chris’ expression.
“It’s easier that way.”
Chris was quiet for a moment.
“Why?”
Ginny shrugged, trying to make it sound like it wasn't important.
“Because nobody else really wants to.”
The words came out casually, almost automatically, because Ginny had said them to herself so many times that they no longer felt like something sad.
They were simply a fact.
The theatre was hers, the stories were hers, and the characters belonged to her.
That was enough.
At least, it had always been enough.
But Chris noticed.
Ginny would not understand until much later that this was one of the first things that made Chris different from everyone else.
Chris noticed the things people tried to make invisible.
She didn't immediately rush to reassure Ginny or tell her she was wrong. She didn't say that of course people would want to be in her plays, because she didn't know that.
Instead, she simply looked at the stage and then back at Ginny.
“Can I?”
Ginny blinked.
“What?”
Chris smiled slightly, almost as if she couldn't understand why Ginny was confused.
“Can I be in it?”
For a moment, Ginny genuinely wondered whether she had heard correctly.
“You want to?”
“Yes.”
“But you don't know the story.”
“I can learn it.”
Ginny stared at her.
“You don't know the characters.”
“I can learn those too.”
It was such a simple answer.
Chris said it like it was obvious, like learning a story Ginny had written was not a favour or something she was doing to be kind. It was something she wanted.
“You really want to?”
Chris smiled.
“Ginny, you built an entire theatre in your backyard.” She gestured around them. “Of course I want to be in it.”
──────────────────
The first play Chris appeared in was called The Princess of Willowmere.
Ginny knew it wasn't her greatest work.
The princess had three different names because Ginny had changed her mind halfway through writing the first draft. The villain's entire motivation was that he was “rather unpleasant,” which Ginny now admitted was not the most detailed character development. The ending involved a dragon becoming friends with everyone in the kingdom, despite the fact that Ginny had never quite figured out why the dragon had been frightening everyone in the first place.
It didn’t matter to Chris. She stood behind the blanket curtain while Ginny explained everything.
“You enter from the left side.”
Chris looked around the stage.
“Which left?”
Ginny pointed.
“That one.”
Chris looked at the opposite side.
“So my other left.”
Ginny sighed.
“Chris.”
“What?”
“I mean the left side.”
“I have two lefts.”
“You have one left.”
“Everyone has two.”
“Only if they’re facing the wrong direction.”
Chris considered this.
“That seems unnecessarily complicated.”
“It’s really not.”
“It is when you explain it.”
The rehearsal lasted much longer than Ginny had originally planned.
Mostly because Chris could not remember her lines.
Ginny stood in front of the stage holding the script while Chris stood dramatically in front of the cardboard castle, one hand placed over her heart.
“Princess,” Ginny said, “you have to say, ‘I shall never surrender the kingdom to someone who would use power for selfish means.’”
Chris nodded seriously.
“Got it.”
Ginny lowered the script.
“Ready?”
Chris lifted her chin.
“I shall never surrender my kingdom to someone who is rather rude.”
Ginny stared.
“No.”
Chris looked offended. “What?”
“That is not the line.”
“It has the same meaning.”
“It absolutely does not.”
“It does.”
“The princess is supposed to be brave and noble.”
Chris folded her arms.
“I think she would call him rude.”
Ginny put her hands on her hips.
“No. That’s not what the princess says.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wrote her.”
Chris looked thoughtful.
“That seems unfair.”
Ginny frowned.
“What does?”
“That the characters don't get a say.”
Ginny opened her mouth, then stopped. Because, unfortunately, she had never thought about that.
Chris smiled when she realised she had made Ginny think.
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And yet you invited me.”
“I did not know you would be like this. And technically, you invited yourself over”
──────────────────
By the time Mrs Danburry called them in for dinner, Ginny had almost forgotten that Chris was not supposed to still be there.
The afternoon had passed in a way that felt unusual, as though the hours had quietly slipped away while she and Chris had been standing in the backyard theatre. Ginny was normally very aware of time; she knew how long she had until dinner, how long she could spend writing before her mother called her inside, how much daylight remained before she had to pack away her papers and bring the blankets back into the house.
But with Chris there, the afternoon had seemed to stretch and disappear at the same time.
“Ginny, darling?”
She looked up from where she was gathering the scripts.
Her mother stood at the back door, one hand resting against the frame, a fond smile on her face.
“Dinner’s ready.”
Ginny glanced toward Chris.
“Oh.”
Chris immediately straightened.
“I should probably go home.”
Mrs Danburry shook her head.
“Chris, dear, you’re welcome to stay. Your mother said she’s happy for you to play with Ginny.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t. I don’t want to take up space.”
“Nonsense. There’s plenty of food.”
“I don’t want to trouble you.”
“You aren’t troubling anyone.”
Chris looked uncertain, and Ginny recognised the expression immediately. It was the same hesitation she sometimes felt when someone offered her something she wanted but wasn’t sure she was allowed to accept.
“I’d like it if you stayed,” Ginny said.
Chris smiled. “Alright.”
Dinner was louder than usual. The Danburry household was never quiet—Chet alone made that impossible—but Chris brought a kind of energy that filled every corner of the room. She told stories with such enthusiasm that even when the story itself was ordinary, it somehow became interesting.
She explained a disagreement from school that morning about whether a frog could be considered a pet if it lived outside.
“It was clearly a pet,” Chris insisted, reaching for the bread.
“It was a frog in a pond,” Chet said.
“That does not mean it wasn’t a pet.”
“How does that work?”
“It had a name.”
“What was its name?”
Chris paused.
“Frederick.”
Chet stared. “You named a frog you didn’t own?”
“I gave him an identity.”
Ginny laughed before she could stop herself.
After the frog debate eventually ended, Chris turned back toward Ginny.
“So,” she said, “what books do you like?”
Ginny looked up.
The question shouldn’t have surprised her. People asked her about books often enough.
Her teachers asked what she was reading. Her parents asked whether she enjoyed something she had borrowed from the library. Even Chet occasionally asked if she had finished a book because he wanted to borrow it when he was bored.
“I like a lot of books.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I asked you what your favourite colour was and you said ‘lots of colours,’ I would still not know the answer.”
Ginny considered this.
“That’s true.”
“So?”
Ginny thought carefully.
There were many books she loved for different reasons, but there was one she returned to more often than any other.
“Anne of Green Gables.”
Chris tilted her head. “I’ve heard of that.”
“You haven’t read it?”
“No.”
Ginny looked genuinely shocked.
“You should.”
Chris laughed.
“Is it that serious?”
“Yes.”
“Sure. Why?”
Ginny paused. She knew exactly why she loved it, but explaining something out loud that felt so obvious was harder.
“Anne notices things. She makes ordinary things feel important. She gives names to places and imagines stories about people. Like when she first arrives at Green Gables, she’s incredibly lonely. So she names the big cherry tree outside her bedroom window Snow Queen and treats it just like a human friend.”
“That sounds a little like you.”
Ginny immediately looked down.
“It does not.”
Chris smiled.
“It does.”
“I am not like Anne Shirley. She’s more outspoken”
“I’m just saying.”
“I like that Anne isn’t embarrassed about imagining things,” Ginny admitted after a moment. “People think she’s too dramatic, or that she thinks too much, but she doesn’t stop.”
Chris nodded slowly. “I think that’s good.”
“What?”
“Having something that belongs only to you.”
Ginny looked at her.
Chris shrugged. “I think everyone should have something like that.”
By the time dinner ended, Chet looked exhausted. He had spent the entire evening listening to two girls talk about books and plays and characters as though they were discussing something incredibly important.
He leaned against the doorway while Ginny and Chris continued their conversation in the living room.
“I have a question.”
Neither girl looked up.
Chet sighed.
“That’s hurtful.”
Ginny glanced over.
“What?”
“Have you two stopped talking at any point tonight?”
“Yes,” Ginny said.
“When?”
“I don’t know. It must have happened at some point.”
Chet looked at Chris.
“See?”
Chris laughed.
Chet shook his head.
“You’ve talked more tonight than you have all week.”
Ginny immediately felt embarrassed.
“I have not.”
“You have.”
“I talk.”
“You do.”
“Then what’s your point?”
“My point is that I didn’t realise you had this many opinions.”
Ginny frowned.
“Of course I have opinions.”
“I know that now.”
Chris smiled. “I think she just needed someone interesting to talk to.” She gave Chet a joking once-over.
Ginny looked at her. The words were simple.
Chris didn’t say them dramatically or like she was trying to make Ginny feel better. She said them like they were obvious, like Ginny had never been quiet because she had nothing to say.
She had only been waiting for someone who wanted to listen. And Chris Noel, Ginny realised, wanted to listen to everything.
──────────────────
“I should probably go,” Chris said, though she didn’t sound particularly eager to leave.
Ginny looked toward the street.
“Probably.”
Ginny had always liked this time of day.
There was something comforting about the way everything became quieter. The children who spent their afternoons racing through the streets and playing beside the creek slowly disappeared back into their houses, bicycles were left leaning against fences until morning,
Tonight, Ginny found herself wishing the evening would last a little longer. She still couldn’t quite understand how that had happened.
Usually, she knew exactly how her days went.
School. Homework. Her theatre. Dinner. Writing. Reading.
Everything had its place.
For a moment, the girls simply stood there.
Ginny wondered if Chris noticed the same thing she did, that neither of them actually wanted the day to end.
Then Ginny remembered something.
“Wait.”
Before Chris could ask what she meant, Ginny turned and hurried back inside.
She returned a minute later holding a book.
It was not new.
The emerald green cover was slightly faded, the corners were worn, and the pages had softened from being turned countless times.
Chris looked at it curiously.
“What’s that?”
Ginny held it out.
“Anne of Green Gables. I think you’d like it.”
Chris looked surprised.
“You’re lending it to me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Ginny frowned slightly.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Chris looked down at the book in her hands.
“I don’t know.”
Ginny thought about that for a moment.
She knew Chris had only been there for one day. One afternoon, really. For some reason, she just felt that Chris would return it in the same condition she had received it.
“I just think you should read it,” Ginny said.
Chris smiled.
“I will.”
“You don’t have to finish it quickly.”
“I know.”
“You might not like it.”
Chris looked almost offended.
“Why wouldn’t I like it?”
Ginny shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
Chris held the book a little closer.
“I think I will.”
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Chris’ house was much closer than Ginny had expected.
She had always known the Noel family lived somewhere in the neighbourhood, of course. Their names appeared on school lists and community notices, and Ginny had seen Chris walking home from school more than once, usually surrounded by a group of friends who seemed to move around her like she was the centre of everything.
Now, as the two of them walked down the familiar street together, Ginny found herself looking at everything differently.
The distance between their houses was not far at all.
Around the corner of the street and four houses down.
“That’s it?” Ginny asked when they turned onto Chris’s street.
Chris looked at her.
“What?”
“Your house.”
Chris glanced ahead.
“Yes?”
Ginny looked back toward the direction they had come from.
“You live here?”
Chris laughed.
“I have for all ten years of my life.”
“I thought it was farther away.”
“Why?”
Ginny shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
It seemed strange to her. All this time, Chris had been nearby. Close enough that they could have walked to each other’s houses whenever they wanted, close enough that the distance between them had never been the reason they hadn’t been friends before.
Chris smiled.
“I guess we were almost neighbours.”
After they had said their goodbyes and Chris stepped onto her porch, Ginny lingered at the end of the path for a moment longer than she needed to.
The porch light above Chris’s front door cast a warm glow over the steps, and Ginny watched as Chris turned around, waving once before disappearing inside.
Ginny smiled to herself and began walking home. She had only made it halfway down the street when she heard her name.
“Ginny!”
She turned.
Chris was standing on the porch again, one hand resting against the railing, her hair slightly messy and the smile on her face making it clear that she had run back outside because she had something important to say.
Ginny jogged back a few steps.
“What?”
“My mom says we’re coming over next Saturday.”
Ginny tried very hard not to look too pleased.
“Okay!”
Chris immediately smiled.
“You sound excited.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“I was just saying okay.”
Chris laughed.
“You’re bad at pretending for someone who acts.”
Ginny ignored that comment.
“So your mother is coming too?”
“Yes.”
Chris paused.
“And me.”
Ginny smiled.
“Well, obviously.”
Chris tilted her head.
“So you’ll be there?”
Ginny looked confused.
“I live there.”
Chris laughed.
“You know what I mean.”
And Ginny did.
She understood that Chris wasn’t asking whether she would physically be at the house.
She was asking something else.
Will you want me there?
“Yes,” Ginny said simply.
Chris smiled again.
“Good.”
Then, after a moment, she lifted the book slightly.
“I’m bringing a notebook next time.”
Ginny frowned.
“Why?”
“So I can write my own plays too.”
Ginny immediately shook her head.
“No.”
Chris looked offended.
“What?”
“You’ll help me write ours.”
Chris’ face brightened. “Ours?”
Ginny nodded.
“Ours.”
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That night, Ginny sat cross-legged on her bed with her notebook open in front of her.
Usually, this was where she created things, where she built entire worlds that existed only because she had imagined them.
Usually, the first page of a new story belonged entirely to her.
This time, she didn’t write a new story. She turned to a blank page and wrote one word.
Cast:
Then, beneath it:
Princess 1: Ginny Danburry
Princess 2: Chris Noel
Ginny stared at the names for a long moment.
It was strange.
For years, she had filled every role herself.
Every hero. Every villain.
Every person who stepped onto the stage.
Now there was someone else.
Someone who had looked at her little cardboard theatre and hadn’t seen something silly or strange.
Someone who had asked: Can I be in it?
Ginny smiled softly, closed the notebook, and placed it beside her bed.
When she imagined her theatre, she didn’t picture herself standing alone beneath the blanket curtains.
She pictured Chris beside her. Somehow, that made the whole thing feel more real.