Happy Birthday, Ben

‘Did you want a drink, Charlie?’

The boy grabbed the bottle of cherryade from the middle of the table and poured, watching the bubbles build until a pink foam rose just above the the rim of the little plastic tumbler, then waiting for it to retreat before topping it off.

His mum watched from across the room. ‘Careful you don’t spill any of that on the tablecloth, Ben,’ she said. ‘It’ll stain.’

‘I won’t,’ he said, and passed the cup carefully down the table with a smile. He filled his own tumbler the same way and took a sip, smelling sweet cherry and feeling the bubbles tickle the tip of his nose.

Wiping his mouth with the back of a hand, he looked down the table towards the front window. It was sunny outside, and letters spelling out ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ hung above the glass, cut with care from coloured paper. A few balloons had been pinned to the ceiling, and bobbed this way and that in the light breeze from outside.

‘Why don’t we open your presents?’ said his mum, getting to her feet.

‘But Mum, what about the others?’ Ben protested. He glanced at Charlie and the other empty seats around the table. Each one had an empty paper plate in front of it.

‘You can open their presents when they get here,’ said Mum, and she went to fetch the gifts.

Ben sat, staring at the empty plates and biting his lip. He looked out of the window, and rocked his chair back and forth, and dipped his finger in his cherryade, then he turned to Charlie and smiled.

‘You’re quiet today.’

Mum came back into the room, a small stack of carefully wrapped gifts in her hands. She put them down on the table and fussed with Ben’s collar.

‘You won’t make friends looking like that,’ she said. Ben pulled away and reached across for the first gift. His arm knocked against his tumbler, splashing red cherryade onto the table.

‘Oh!’ cried Mum, and rushed out of the room. Ben stared after her anxiously, afraid to move, as the drink soaked into the tablecloth. She came back wielding a roll of kitchen paper and tore several sheets off, dabbing frantically at the spreading stain.

‘Sorry Mum,’ said Ben.

She gathered up the soaked paper towels and sighed. Then she saw Ben looking dismally at the mess, and she took him and pressed him to her.

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you open your presents?’

She passed him a gift and his anxious expression disappeared in an instant. The present was wrapped in glossy, brightly-coloured paper, with little cartoon birthday cakes and confetti all over. He grasped it and turned it over in his hands.

‘There’s no label on this one,’ he said. ‘Is it from Charlie?’

Mum looked over at Charlie’s place at the table. ‘Yes, I think it is,’ she said, and watched as Ben slipped his fingers under the paper flap at one end and tugged the wrapping open.

‘Careful - try not to tear it,’ said Mum.

‘I know ...’

Inside was a tatty cardboard box, the colours faded and the corners bent. Out of a little plastic window gazed an Action Man figurine, his chiselled features fixed in a dispassionate stare. Ben pulled the figure out of the box, grinning.

‘Cool!’

He carefully examined the battered soldier as if it was a fragile work of art, and he imagined a story for every flaw. Where the paint was worn away, the man had been bravely wounded in battle; faded marks from a felt-tip pen on his chest became a mysterious tattoo; a chip in the plastic was from torture at the hands of a cruel regime. It was the coolest toy he’d ever seen.

His mum gathered up the wrapping paper, folding it neatly so that it could be used again.

‘I’ll go and get the cake ready. Will Charlie have any?’

Ben looked up. ‘I think he’s still full, but I’ll have some.’

‘Alright then,’ she said, and left Ben sitting on his own at the table.

In the kitchen, she opened the fridge and took out a small chocolate cake. ‘BEN’ had been piped in little white letters onto the icing. She opened a drawer and rummaged inside, moving a heap of rejected party invitations aside. She picked out a few colourful little candles, and she arranged them on top of the cake, and she tried desperately not to cry.

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Awarded first place in the weekly short story competition on the 'Writer's Block' Discord server.