Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9780748129041

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 Matthew Dicks

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  For Clara

  CHAPTER 1

  Here is what I know:

  My name is Budo.

  I have been alive for five years.

  Five years is a very long time for someone like me to be alive.

  Max gave me my name.

  Max is the only human person who can see me.

  Max’s parents call me an imaginary friend.

  I love Max’s teacher, Mrs Gosk.

  I do not like Max’s other teacher, Mrs Patterson.

  I am not imaginary.

  CHAPTER 2

  I am lucky as imaginary friends go. I have been alive for a lot longer than most. I once knew an imaginary friend named Philippe. He was the imaginary friend of one of Max’s classmates in preschool. He lasted less than a week. One day he popped into the world, looking pretty human except for his lack of ears (lots of imaginary friends lack ears), and then a few days later, he was gone.

  I’m also lucky that Max has a great imagination. I once knew an imaginary friend named Chomp who was just a spot on the wall. Just a fuzzy, black blob without any real shape at all. Chomp could talk and sort of slide up and down the wall, but he was two-dimensional like a piece of paper, so he could never pry himself off. He didn’t have arms and legs like me. He didn’t even have a face.

  Imaginary friends get their appearance from their human friend’s imagination. Max is a very creative boy, and so I have two arms, two legs, and a face. I’m not missing a single body part and that makes me a rarity in the world of imaginary friends. Most imaginary friends are missing something or other and some don’t even look human at all. Like Chomp.

  Too much imagination can be bad, though. I once met an imaginary friend named Pterodactyl whose eyes were stuck on the ends of these two gangly, green antennas. His human friend probably thought they looked cool, but poor Ptero dactyl couldn’t focus on anything to save his life. He told me that he constantly felt sick to his stomach and was always tripping over his own feet, which were just fuzzy shadows attached to his legs. His human friend was so obsessed with Pterodactyl’s head and those eyes that he had never bothered to think about anything below Pterodactyl’s waist.

  This is not unusual.

  I’m also lucky because I’m mobile. Lots of imaginary friends are stuck to their human friends. Some have leashes around their necks. Some are three inches tall and get stuffed into coat pockets. And some are nothing more than a spot on the wall, like Chomp. But thanks to Max, I can get around on my own. I can even leave Max behind if I want.

  But doing so too often might be hazardous to my health.

  As long as Max believes in me, I exist. People like Max’s mother and my friend, Graham, say that this is what makes me imaginary. But it’s not true. I might need Max’s imagination to exist, but I have my own thoughts, my own ideas and my own life outside of him. I am tied to Max the same way that an astronaut is tied to his spaceship by hoses and wires. If the spaceship blows up and the astronaut dies, that doesn’t mean that the astronaut was imaginary. It just means that his life support was cut off.

  Same for me and Max.

  I need Max in order to survive, but I’m still my own person. I can say and do as I please. Sometimes me and Max even get into arguments, but nothing ever serious. Just stuff about which TV show to watch or which game to play. But it behooves me (that’s a word that Mrs Gosk taught the class last week) to stick around Max whenever possible, because I need Max to keep thinking about me. Keep believing in me. I don’t want to end up out of sight, out of mind, which is something Max’s mom sometimes says when Max’s dad forgets to call home when he is going to be late. If I am gone too long, Max might stop believing in me, and if that happens, then poof.

  CHAPTER 3

  Max’s first-grade teacher once said that houseflies live for about three days. I wonder what the lifespan of an imaginary friend is? Probably not much longer. I guess that makes me practically ancient in the imaginary friend world.

  Max imagined me when he was four years old and, just like that, I popped into existence. When I was born, I knew only what Max knew. I knew my colors and some of my numbers and the names for lots of things like tables and microwave ovens and aircraft carriers. My head was filled with the things that a four-year-old boy would know. But Max also imagined me much older than him. Probably a teenager. Maybe even a little older. Or maybe I was just a boy with a grown-up’s brain. It’s hard to tell. I’m not much taller than Max, but I’m definitely different. I was more together than Max when I was born. I could make sense of things that still confused him. I could see the answers to problems that Max could not. Maybe this is how all imaginary friends are born. I don’t know.

  Max doesn’t remember the day that I was born, so he can’t remember what he was thinking at the time. But since he imagined me as older and more together, I have been able to learn much faster than Max. I was able to concentrate and focus better on the day I was born than Max is able to even today. On that first day I remember Max’s mother was trying to teach him to count by even numbers, and he just couldn’t get it. But I learned it right away. It made sense to me because my brain was ready to learn even numbers. Max’s brain wasn’t.

  At least, that’s what I think.

  Also, I don�€
™t sleep, because Max didn’t imagine that I needed sleep. So I have more time to learn. And I don’t spend all my time with Max, so I’ve learned lots of things that Max has never seen or heard before. After he goes to bed, I sit in the living room or the kitchen with Max’s parents. We watch television or I just listen to them talk. Sometimes I go places. I go to the gas station that never closes, because my favorite people in the world, except for Max and his parents and Mrs Gosk, are there. Or I go to Doogies hot-dog restaurant a little ways down the road or to the police station or to the hospital (except I don’t go to the hospital anymore because Oswald is there and he scares me). And when we are in school, I sometimes go to the teachers’ lounge or another classroom, and sometimes I even go to the principal’s office, just to listen to what’s going on. I am not smarter than Max, but I know a lot more than him just because I am awake more and go places that Max can’t. This is good. Sometimes I can help Max when he doesn’t understand something so well.

  Like last week Max couldn’t open a jar of jelly to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. ‘Budo!’ he said. ‘I can’t open it.’

  ‘Sure you can,’ I said. ‘Turn it the other way. Lefty loosy. Righty tighty.’

  That is something I hear Max’s mom say to herself sometimes before she opens a jar. It worked. Max opened the jar. But he was so excited that he dropped it on the tile floor, smashing it into a million pieces.

  The world can be so complicated for Max. Even when he gets something right, it can still go wrong.

  I live in a strange place in the world. I live in the space in between people. I spend most of my time in the kid world with Max, but I also spend a lot of time with adults like Max’s parents and teachers and my friends at the gas station, except they can’t see me. Max’s mom would call this straddling the fence. She says this to Max when he can’t make up his mind about something, which happens a lot.

  ‘Do you want the blue popsicle or the yellow popsicle?’ she asks, and Max just freezes. Freezes like a popsicle. There are just too many things for Max to think about when choosing.

  Is red better than yellow?

  Is green better than blue?

  Which one is colder?

  Which one will melt fastest?

  What does green taste like?

  What does red taste like?

  Do different colors taste different?

  I wish that Max’s mom would just make the choice for Max. She knows how hard it is for him. But when she makes him choose and he can’t, I sometimes choose for him. I whisper, ‘Pick blue,’ and then he says, ‘I’ll take blue.’ Then it’s done. No more straddling the fence.

  That’s kind of how I live. I straddle the fence. I live in the yellow world and in the blue world. I live with kids and I live with adults. I’m not exactly a kid, but I’m not exactly an adult either.

  I’m yellow and blue.

  I’m green.

  I know my color combinations, too.

  CHAPTER 4

  Max’s teacher is Mrs Gosk. I like Mrs Gosk a lot. Mrs Gosk walks around with a meter stick that she calls her meter-beater and threatens students in a fake British accent, but the kids know she’s just trying to make them laugh. Mrs Gosk is very strict and insists that her students work hard, but she would never hit a student. Still, she is a tough lady. She makes them sit up straight and work on their assignments in silence, and when a child misbehaves, she says, ‘Shame! Shame! Let all the boys and girls know your name!’ and ‘You will get away with that nonsense when pigs fly, young man!’ The other teachers say Mrs Gosk is old-fashioned, but the kids know that she is tough because she loves them.

  Max doesn’t like many people, but he likes Mrs Gosk.

  Last year Max’s teacher was Mrs Silbor. She was strict, too. She made the kids work hard like Mrs Gosk does. But you could tell that she didn’t love the kids like Mrs Gosk, so no one in the class worked as hard as they do this year. It’s strange how teachers can go off to college for all those years to learn to become teachers, but some of them never learn the easy stuff. Like making kids laugh. And making sure they know that you love them.

  I do not like Mrs Patterson. She’s not a real teacher. She’s a paraprofessional. This is someone who helps Mrs Gosk take care of Max. Max is different than other kids so he doesn’t spend the whole day with Mrs Gosk. Sometimes he works with Mrs McGinn in the Learning Center with other kids who need extra help, and sometimes he works on his speech with Mrs Riner, and sometimes he plays games with other kids in Mrs Hume’s office. And sometimes he reads and does homework with Mrs Patterson.

  As far as I can tell, no one knows why Max is different from the rest of the kids. Max’s father says that Max is just a late bloomer, but when he says that, Max’s mom gets so angry that she stops talking to him for at least a day.

  I don’t know why everyone thinks Max is so complicated. Max just doesn’t like people in the same way other kids do. He likes people, but it’s a different kind of liking. He likes people from far away. The farther you stay away from Max, the more he will like you.

  And Max doesn’t like to be touched. When someone touches Max, the whole world gets bright and shivery. That’s how he described it to me once.

  I can’t touch Max, and Max can’t touch me. Maybe that’s why we get along so well.

  Also, Max doesn’t understand when people say one thing but mean another. Like last week Max was reading a book at recess and a fourth grader came over and said, ‘Look at the little genius.’

  Max didn’t say anything to the boy, because he knew if he said something, the fourth grader would stay there longer and keep bothering him. But I know that Max was confused, because it sounded like the boy was saying that Max was smart even though the boy was actually being mean. He was being sarcastic, but Max doesn’t understand sarcasm. Max knew the boy was being mean, but only because that boy is always mean to Max. But he couldn’t understand why the boy would call him a genius, since being called a genius is usually a good thing.

  People are confusing to Max, so it’s hard for him to be around them. That’s why Max has to play games in Mrs Hume’s office with kids from the other classes. He thinks it’s a big waste of time. He hates having to sit on the floor around the Monopoly board, because sitting on the floor is not as comfortable as sitting in a chair. But Mrs Hume is trying to teach Max to play with other kids, to understand what they mean when they sarcasm or joke around. Max just doesn’t understand. When Max’s mom and dad are fighting, Max’s mom says that his dad can’t see the forest for the trees. That’s like Max except with the whole world. He can’t see the big things because of all the little things that get in his way.

  Today Mrs Patterson is absent. When a teacher is absent, it usually means that the teacher is sick or her child is sick or someone in her family has died. Mrs Patterson had someone in her family die once. I know this because sometimes the other teachers will say nice things to her like, ‘How are you holding up, dear?’ and sometimes they whisper to each other after she has left the room. But that was a long time ago. When Mrs Patterson is absent, it usually means that it is Friday.

  There’s no substitute for Mrs Patterson today so Max and I get to stay with Mrs Gosk all day, which makes me happy. I don’t like Mrs Patterson. Max doesn’t like her either, but he doesn’t like her in the same way he doesn’t like most of his teachers. He doesn’t see what I see because he’s too busy looking at the trees. But Mrs Patterson is different than Mrs Gosk and Mrs Riner and Mrs McGinn. She never smiles for real. She’s always thinking something different in her head than what is on her face. I don’t think she likes Max, but she pretends that she does, which is even scarier than just not liking him.

  ‘Hello, Max, my boy!’ Mrs Gosk says as we walk into the classroom.

  Max doesn’t like when Mrs Gosk calls him my boy because he is not her boy. He has a mother already. But he won’t ask Mrs Gosk to stop calling him my boy because asking her to stop would be harder than listening to Mrs Gosk say my boy
every day.

  Max would rather say nothing to everyone than something to one person.

  But even though Max doesn’t understand why Mrs Gosk calls him my boy, he knows that she loves him. He knows that Mrs Gosk is not being mean. Just confusing.

  I wish I could tell Mrs Gosk not to call Max my boy, but Mrs Gosk can’t see or hear me and there’s nothing I can do to make her see or hear me. Imaginary friends can’t touch or move things in the human world. So I can’t open a jelly jar or pick up a pencil or type on a keyboard. Otherwise I would write a note asking Mrs Gosk not to call Max my boy.

  I can bump up against the real world, but I can’t actually touch it.

  Even so, I am lucky because when Max first imagined me, he imagined that I could pass through things like doors and windows even when they are closed. I think it’s because he was afraid that if his parents closed his bedroom door at night, I might get stuck outside the room, and Max doesn’t like to fall asleep unless I’m sitting in the chair next to his bed. This means that I can go anywhere by walking through the doors and windows, but never through walls or floors. I can’t pass through walls and floors because Max didn’t imagine me that way. That would’ve been too strange for even Max to think about.

  There are imaginary friends who can walk through doors and windows like me, and some who can even walk through walls, but most can’t walk through anything and get stuck in places for a long time. That’s what happened to Puppy, a talking dog who got stuck in the janitor’s closet overnight a couple of weeks ago. It was a scary night for his human friend, a kindergartener named Piper, because she had no idea where Puppy was.

  But it was even scarier for Puppy, because getting locked in a closet is how imaginary friends sometimes disappear for ever. A boy or girl accidentally (or sometimes accidentally on purpose) locks an imaginary friend in a closet or a cabinet or basement and then Poof! Out of sight, out of mind. The end of the imaginary friend.

  Being able to pass through doors can be a life-saver.