A Childhood Memory

• Caitlin Kapolitsas, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2008

Sally was eight years old when she first ventured out of her grandparents paddock and found her secret hideout. Sally’s hideout was an old, green water tank. Although rusted and run-down she called it her special place. Sally kept all of secrets in that disused tank. She had pictures of her friends, family, girly magazines and in one particular corner she kept a box. A box that she had decorated at school the day she meet her best friend Andy.
Andy was Sally’s first childhood friend.
Sally was ten when both her grandparents died. Sally was ten and nine months when her grandparent’s farm was sold. Sally was eleven the last time she saw her special, green, old hideout. Sally was eleven and three months when her parents moved her out of Darwin down to Adelaide.
Now that Sally was eighteen and finished school she wanted to go home. Not home as in where her bed and possessions were but her first home, her water tank. Her mum and her would sit down near the fireplace and talk hours on end about how much she loved to spend days out there. The way she decorated it with pictures of family and Andy and her. How she would let no-one enter unless they had the ‘secret password.’
One plane ride and 16km away was the water tank, the place where her childhood memories were kept. Sally walked across the paddock. Sally was anxious but shaking with excitement. Sally stepped into her water tank. The sound of her favourite red high heels made a slight echo; little drip drops of rain fell down to the concrete slab.
Sally had flashbacks one after another. She sat down on the cold floor, that same floor that kept all her treasured memories. As she laid her head down she hit something…hard. It was her pink box with the yellow and red feather hanging off it. She slowly opened it. A tear drop slid down her face. The water tank came back to life.
That night Sally stayed in that tank. The rain still echoing as it hit the concrete, curled up in the corner, her childhood right in her hands, pulled tight towards her heart, the photos of her and Andy, the drawings she used to draw on her holidays, the magazines, everything right there in the palm of her hands. She cried all night, but not tears of sadness, of joy. For the days spent under the sprinkler, for the first time she showed Andy her home. For everything.
The morning came. The sun was shinning bright, but Sally’s slumber was sadly disturbed by a man standing over her shouting at her,
“Who are you? What are you doing here? What are you doing with my friends things?”
Sally knew who it was. She stood up tall, her box still clutched close to her heart. She spoke softly.
“Andy is that you?”
“Oh my God. Sally? I would never have thought it was you. Wha….what are you doing here?”
“I’ve decided to come back for a while. What are you doing? Do you…do you come out here a lot?”
“Sometimes, to think. I think about you a lot when I’m out here.” Sally blushed at what Andy said. He noticed her blush and moved closer towards her. He’s hands on top of hers, which still clutched the box. She loosened her grip and put the box back down on the floor. She grabbed onto Andy’s hand and then she gave him a hug.
They sat down together. They laughed, they cried, they even recreated things from their childhood, the cold winter and endless summers, the nights they wanted to last forever. That day Sally went ‘home.’ That day Sally found her knight in shinning armour. That day Sally would add to her little box of memories. That day Sally was a little girl again.