The Balloon

• Shelley Mortimer, Grade 12, Craigmore High School
• Short Story
• 2011

Finalist in the 'Timeless Tales 2011' competition

The car slowly trundles along, stopping, moving an inch, stopping. My nose presses up against the window, breath clouds forming on the hard glass. Looking out I see the banners flapping in the breeze, hugging the trees’ waists like brightly coloured skirts. The car pulls into the car park and rolls over soft grass, and then it is silent. We’re here.

I leap out of the car and impatiently hop from foot to foot as Mother and Father unload the trunk. The boot slams shut and I am off, weaving in and out between the other silent cars, Mother yelling my name. I start to hear the festive music and it gets louder as I get closer. I run faster. Looming up ahead is a barrier between me and it, a dark wrought iron fence with a towering brick archway covered in creeping vines. I slow to a stop and through the heavy bars I see the fair. The rides zip round and round and fall from heights, and the booths with walls of toys collect crowds of eager gamers. I smell fried food and fairy floss, and I hear screams of excited children and loud carnival music. My eyes bulge and a smile breaks from my face, I know that this will be an amazing day.

I push through the turn style and it clicks into place behind me, we are inside. Mother’s steady hand around mine keeps me from being swallowed by the crowd as we walk through. I’m itching to get loose, to jump up and down, to dance to wild music, to play games and to touch anything I can get my hands on. But we can do all that later says Mother as we slowly make our way to the other side of the moving throng. As we go I catch glimpses of rides flashing past between the people, the amount of movement hurts my eyes. I turn my head up and I see an enormous bunch of balloons in every colour of the rainbow floating in the sky. A fire truck-red balloon is floating higher than the others, tugging on the string that holds in to the ground, trying to get free. I point them out to Mother and we shuffle our way over to the balloon stand. Father passes a man some money and the red balloon is tied to my wrist. The wind catches it and tugs my arm up above my head, the balloons movements matching my own and we dip and sway in the breeze together.

The day passes and the red balloon and I hold on to each other as we bustle around the grounds. Mother and Father do not stop for long as they are trying to make sure we see everything in the one day. I do not mind as I can’t see anything anyway, there are so many people and I am so small. I have my balloon to look at instead, it is always there above me, bobbing along.

Mother stops us for lunch and we cram around a small plastic table. I tie my balloon to the leg of the chair. We eat hotdogs with not enough tomato sauce, and burn-your-tongue hot chips and it’s so delicious. My hair whips around my eyes and face as the wind starts to blow strongly. The string holding my balloon down goes rigid and then suddenly, it snaps. For a second it hovers there and then a gust of wind takes it away. I jump up yelling. My chair clatters to the ground. I shout for help, gesturing wildly at Mother and Father. Catch it, catch it! But the wind is too strong and in a few seconds my red balloon is only a speck in the sky. A tear falls down my face. Mother’s comforting arms around me only make me cry more. Father says he can buy another one but it’s not the same. His sad smile tells me he knows this, too.

Walking around the grounds is far less fun without my balloon. Looking around I only see legs and tiny snippets of the fair attractions. Mother and Father make it only worse as they cocoon me between them to stop me from running away or getting lost.

Without my balloon I can only see blue sky above. The clouds have been pushed by the wind and are hovering together. I look harder at the clouds and I see a tiny green speck, near it is another speck which is yellow. I tug on Mothers arm and ask her if she sees them too. She does and points out a few more specks, purple, orange and blue. I wonder what they are when I see another speck, this one is fire truck-red. It’s my balloon. Looking down from the sky my balloon would see everything, the flashing rides, the colourful stalls, the thousands of people moving around like ants on the ground. It wouldn’t be so bad being a balloon floating in the sky, bobbing along seeing everything there is to see. I think that’s what my balloon would have liked best. It wanted to be free as it tugged so tightly on its string, and now it is. My fire truck-red balloon has the best view of the whole fair.