When Mum came back from the market, the boot of the car was filled with big boxes of shopping that had to be carried into the house. Dad said that me and Frank should help him. So we helped carry the shopping while Dad went and watched rugby on the television.
Eventually, it seemed as if we had finally moved all the shopping. I said to Frank that we should close the boot lid and go and play, but he said that there was still food in the boot. I looked but could not see anything, and he said that there was a bar of chocolate right at the back of the car boot and that I needed to get into the boot to reach it. I always liked to be helpful, so, I was only too happy to help. I climbed into the boot and reached as far back as I could and then Frank closed the boot lid tight, and I was trapped in the dark. Frank had played a trick on me.
Frank was always playing tricks. I wasn’t frightened in the car boot. I thought that the joke was on Frank because I could eat the chocolate bar all to myself instead of sharing it with him. But there wasn’t a chocolate bar at all. It was very dark in the car boot, and even though I shouted and banged on the lid, Frank never opened it. Eventually, he got bored, and after I promised not to be mad, he opened the boot.
I told Frank was mean been mean to play a trick like that. But he said it was just a joke and that no harm was done. I said that it was very dark in the car boot. He asked me if I was afraid of the dark and I said no. Well, there you are then he said, why are you making such a big fuss? I said that there could be spiders in the boot and he said there wasn’t and anyway if it was such a big deal he would get into the boot and show me that there was nothing to be afraid of.
Frank climbed into the boot, and I closed the lid. I asked him if he wanted to come out and he said no that it was fine in there. He bet me he could stay in the boot much longer than I did and not be a cry baby about it. I asked if wouldn’t he rather come out and go and play, and he said no thanks he was quite happy where he was.
Just then Granny came down the path. It was time for lunch, and she had made soup that had to be eaten now before it got cold and none of my nonsense, just come right now she said. But Granny, I said Frank is the boot of the car, and I can’t just go away and leave him. What nonsense she told me; Mum should do something about that overactive imagination of mine and that I shouldn’t go telling lies to my own dear Granny who was not long for this life. I tried to tell her again and moved towards the car and shouted, but Frank just kept silent, so she grabbed me and pulled me into the kitchen and put a plate of hot soup in front of me and told me to eat it all or else.
There were four soup plates on the kitchen table, and the girls were eating two of them, and that left one for Frank. Granny asked where Frank was and once again I told her that he was in the boot of the car. Granny glared at me and told me not to tell lies. But I wasn’t lying because Frank really was in the boot of the car.
Granny and my two sisters who had finished eating their soup went out and looked for Frank. They shouted on him up the hill and in the tool shed. They looked under the laurel hedge and in the garage. But of course, they never found Frank in any of those places because he was in the car boot like I said he was.
When they let me leave the table to look for Frank, I raced straight to the car. Poor Frank had been in the boot for a very long time. He had been crying and had been wiping his eyes with his hands, and they were all dirty. Granny was very cross and said that I was very wicked to have locked Frank in the car boot and that he could have died in there because there was no air, or that it could have gotten very hot and that I was just lucky that it had been raining all morning. She took Frank to the kitchen, and after he ate his soup which Granny heated up for him, she took an apple and peeled and cut it up into little slices and fed them to him dipped in brown sugar while he sat on her knee. Eventually, she said I could eat the apple peel, but that she hoped it choked me.
I told Frank I was sorry, but he only looked at me angrily, even after I told him that it was better to forgive than to receive. When Mum and Dad found out, they were very angry too and blamed me. For at least three days, everyone was angry with me, and when Dad divided up the bar of chocolate that he had bought at the supermarket, the real one not the one that Frank had pretended was in the back of the car, I never got any and he gave mine to Frank which was okay because Frank would have tricked me out of it anyway, and it made me feel a little bit better about what I did to poor Frank.
THE END
THIS VERSION FIRST PUBLISHED IN PURE SLUSH SEVEN PEADLY SINS VOLUME THREE GREED
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