There’s noise – lots of it – and my ears strain to hear the excited shrieks. I roll over, groaning as the sheets knot against my body. An illuminated 7 AM greets me and I turn around, as if refusing to acknowledge the passage of time.

‘It’s Sunday.’ The words vibrate against the walls. My heart thumps. I can feel a patch of my skin warming from the sunlight screaming through my window.
‘Sunday, Sunday.’ His little feet patter down the hallway and I can hear his fingertips grazing the wall as he goes.
‘Sara.’
‘Yes?’ I lift my head to see his eyes level with mine. He’s jumping with excitement, his hair fuzzy, tufts of brown spiking everywhere.  Christopher’s hair has always reminded me of a mane, as a baby he’d had the softest hair and now, at the age of six, it was still vibrant.  
‘Sara. Sara. Sara. Guess what day it is!’
‘Sara!’ He whines, raising his voice an octave higher. My pillow is raised above my head, when I realise sleep has already slipped away.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
He stands with his hands on his hips, knowledge just waiting to spill from his mouth.  
‘It’s Sunday. Sunday comes after Monday and…’
‘That’s not right,’ I interrupt.
‘What?’ His hands drop from his sides and his lips immediately zip down.
‘Sunday comes after Saturday and is before Monday.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I said.’ He bounds from my room.
Sleep is not an option on Sundays.  

Breakfast on Sundays is always interesting. Christopher has poured me a bowl of cereal, there’s a halo of milk on the table, but no-one seems to care or notice. Nobody’s here to slap our wrists. Mum’s at work and Dad’s out the back busying himself. Talking tools, he calls it.
‘We’ve run out of orange juice.’
‘Just have water,’ I mumble, my mind still stupefied with sleep.
‘But I don’t want water!’ There’s that high-pitched whining again. I ignore him and start on my cereal, it’s soggy by the time I spoon it to my mouth.
Christopher vacuums his milk and cereal into the tunnel of his mouth. On the chair, he swings his feet, they don’t even reach the floor, but mine do. He’s got a trail of milk down his chin and I point it out, giggling until milk comes out of my nose. We laugh harder.

Dad comes in through the back door and the air dies as he crosses the threshold. He doesn’t care about the mess but we do notice his blackened hands and the sticky stripe against his cheek. He doesn’t smile.
‘Daddy,’ Christopher slides from the chair. ‘Daddy, there’s no orange juice.’
‘Hmmmph, is that so? It’s not the end of the world.’
‘Chris,’ I warn and he stumbles, hurrying back to the table, hoping his complaint hadn’t been heard. Dad exits again and like always, we don’t hear of him until dinner time.
I make Christopher shower and set his clothes out on the bed. I can hear him warbling a tune that doesn’t even make sense. He steps into the living room and dances away as I take the bathroom.

February 8th was my birthday. That makes me ten years and three months old. For my birthday, I got a globe of the world. Lines strung and sewn across the ocean – names peppered the plastic. The writing so small we have to squint. The sea is blue and Australia is orange. Today we sit in the middle of the living room and I let Christopher spin it.
‘Round and round and round.’ He laughs at his own jokes as my eyes trace the blur of countries.   
‘Ready?’
He nods firmly and closes his eyes, placing one finger on the spinning world. I watch his face crinkled like paper, but with more expression. He whispers, round and round.
‘Stop,’ I command.
He lets the globe slow and opens his eyes. Ecstatic, he announces, ‘The Labrador Sea.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you reckon there was some big monster in there and it has ears like a Labrador? Do you think it was black with black eyes and a big waggy tail? And green spikes?’
‘Yeah,’ I mutter but my imagination only stretches so far. I imagine waves lapping against each other and no land in sight. ‘Yeah, that could be it.’

We spin the afternoon away. Mum comes home, eyes drawn. She sets Chinese takeaway on the kitchen table and we sit down to eat. Dad wanders in ten minutes later; it’s as if he can smell the food. Mum talks about clean corridors and cat-bummed patients. Dad listens and shovels in food: rice and beef curry.
‘Did you know the Labrador Sea is in the Arctic Circle?’ I interrupt. I’m sick of Mum talking about work – about the people there – the noisy people.  
‘Yeah and there’s a puppy monster in the sea and that’s why it’s called that.’
‘Oh, lovely – so anyway she said…’ and the conversation drowns.

We watch telly from beneath our quilt till nine. The sound is intercepted by the occasional cough and spark in our parent’s conversation. We can hear them from the living room – the rustle of Dad’s newspaper and the chink of cups to saucers. Whatever had started out as words has ended in withheld air, caught in their throats. Mum goes to bed and leaves Dad seated at the dining room table. His brow creases and he sips tea till it’s nothing but dregs; clumped and brown. He crushes the newspaper in one palm, his mind unable to read anymore, it feels as if he’s doing the text an injustice. Kicking off his slippers, he sighs.  

Christopher is curled up against me, his eyes fluttering, trying to stay awake.
‘Come on, bed, now.’
‘But I wanna…’ he stifles a yawn.
We brush our teeth and when Christopher’s in bed, I pull the covers up over his ears, the way he likes it.
‘Sleep lightly, dream heavily.’ It’s something dad used to say to us, before he went all weird. I crawl into my own bed but I don’t sleep, I listen to the hum the house makes. I can hear mum switching off her bedside lamp and dad battering around in the kitchen. Toast and a cup of coffee, he says it’s good for sleeping but mum waffles how it keeps her awake.

Morning comes quickly, I have a dream but I can’t remember it. There’s a crash and I yawn. My mind slowly allows noise to filter through. There’s lots of it, unusual for a Monday morning.
‘The world has broken!’ Christopher’s cries resonate.
‘Christ, stop yelling,’ I hear dad growl.

I tippy-toe out into the corridor to listen but I gasp as my eyes trace the scene. I see the plastic bent in; a size eleven slipper. Dad looks at it and then glowers at Christopher. ‘Shuddup, I’ll buy a new one.