All of a sudden, Charlie’s world had changed. It was as if his whole body had taken a sickening lurch to one side, leaving him dizzy and sweating.  One minute he was on his way to Tonga on a Jumbo Jet, a dull in-flight magazine on his knee, listening to the hiss beyond the window as the plane sliced through the sky.  The next minute, the supernatural had invaded his cosy world, upsetting everything that he thought was real, scattering his beliefs on the floor like shattered glass.  Charlie felt quite sick.  Is he real? he asked himself.

            “Trev!  Wh…wh…what are you doing here!” 

            “What do you think I’m doing?  I’m trying to talk to you through the spirit of the Jumbo! Whooo!”  Trev grinned nastily and mimed being a ghost, then an elephant. “Whooo! Spirit of the Jumbo!”

            “No…you can’t be here.  You shouldn’t be here!  I mean…er…um…it’s impossible for you to be here!”  Charlie stuttered.  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing!  It was Trev, and he was sitting in the seat next to him, looking rather the worse for wear.  Trev had looked better but in all the time that Charlie had known him, he had seen him look worse too.  A ragged St Edwards Community College blazer, tie and torn school trousers only added to his down and out appearance.

            “What do you mean I can’t be here?  I am here! And it’s really good to see you too!”  Trev said sarcastically.  “You could at least look a little happier to see me.  After all, I’ve only been trying to get through to you for a couple of months now!”

            “No, I mean you…can’t…be…here!  You’re…um…dead!”

            “Of course I’m dead.  I got flattened by a bus!”  Trev smacked his fist into his hand then collapsed back into his seat with his tongue sticking out.  He laughed and sprang up slapping his forehead, “Of course!  I’m dead!  And I just thought it was a cold.  Mind you, I haven’t heard of many colds where the symptoms include a runny bus!”

            Charlie chuckled, despite the shock of having his dead best friend materialise in a seat next to him 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.  Although it was not a normal thing to happen - to say the least - he felt curiously relaxed that his dead friend had reappeared.  He thought he should feel more alarmed but it just seemed so normal to be sitting and chatting with Trev.

            “What are you doing here, Trev?  I mean, why are you here?  Where have you been?  Why aren’t you in…er…heaven or something?”  Charlie gabbled, his questions tumbling over each other.

            “Dunno to all of those, Charles!  One minute I was being chased by that gorilla Darren Holding, the next I was sitting in your bedroom at home looking at you looking at nothing.  I tried to speak to you but you just ignored me.  I thought you were being a right tosser.  I didn’t realise what was going on ‘till you left.  I followed you and your mum.  I even got in the same cab as you and you didn’t say anything.  It was really scary!”

            “I’m not surprised.  I think I’ve worked out where we were going,” said Charlie.

            “Yeah, and I can definitely say that was the worst day of my life!  When we got to the crem I was wondering whose funeral you were going to.  It wasn’t till I saw my name on the order of service that I realised it was mine!  It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you.  O…M…G!” added Trev glumly.

            Charlie didn’t know what to say.  He looked at Trev.  His friend really did look awful, now that he looked closely.  It wasn’t just that he looked pale, he looked wasted.  His face was drawn, thinner, with the sort of dark circles under your eyes that you would only get from days without sleep.  “I’m sorry, Trev.  I don’t know what to say.”

            “Ah, it’s not your fault, Charles my boy!”  Trev said briskly, imitating a pompous father, miming the smoking of a pipe, which he jabbed at Charlie.  “After all, my mother always said to mind out when crossing the road.  I should’ve looked.  Might have seen the bus before Daz kicked my head in!”

            “What have you been doing since?  Why haven’t I seen you till now?”  Charlie asked.

            “Once again, I have not a clue!  It’s a bit weird really.  I don’t ever seem to be away from you but there are long gaps of time when I can’t remember what’s happened.  On that, what’s the date today?”

            “July 1st.”

            “Well, there you go.  The last time I was with you was when you found out about your dad.  That was so cool!  It was like watching something on the telly.”

            “You were there?  That was weeks ago!”

            “Oh yeah!  I had to sit on the counter, mind.  Your kitchen is so poky!” said Trev.  “I don’t know why I can’t remember the bits in between.  It just seems like I’ve gone to sleep then I wake up somewhere else and I’m nearly always with you.”

            “Nearly always?”  asked Charlie.

            “Nearly always.  I was there when you gave Darren that pasting on the playground with your granddad’s truncheon.  You were such a nutter!  You were really psycho!  A proper nut job!”

            “Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk about that,”  Charlie muttered.  “It wasn’t one of my better moments.”

            “I dunno.  You gave Darren something to think about for a change.  Mind you, that reminds me of one of the few times I haven’t been with you.  I was with Darren, and he could see me from the get go.  You should have seen the look on his face – I think he might have even done a poo in his pants!”  Trev cackled, wiping away a tear.  “I was in his bedroom.  If I thought you’d been a bit of a nutter when you hit him, you should have seen him in his room.  All quivery and crying, praying all the time with a ridiculous bandage over his head and some kind of nose brace.  God, he looked funny!  When he spotted me he jumped a mile and tried to get out of the room.  I blocked the door and did the old ‘wooo’ act,” Trev put his arms out in front of him like a zombie and wiggled his fingers.  “I threatened to haunt him for ever if he ever went near you again and made him promise on his knees that he would be a good boy, or I would drag him down to Hell to have his fat, spotty bottom poked with pitchforks by the Devil and all his little demons!”

            “I don’t think you needed to have done that.  Darren was excluded permanently by the new Headteacher,” said Charlie.

            “I don’t care.  It was fun!  And why shouldn’t I have scared him half to death?  It’s me who’s all the way dead!”

            “I’m not sure about that, Trev.  I mean, you’re sitting here in a jumbo jet having a chat with me.  You can’t be all dead,”  Charlie offered.

            “No, Charlie.  I’m all dead.  Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.  I don’t know why I can hang around you.  I don’t know why I’m even here.  I just am.  Maybe I’ve unfinished business,”  Trev said firmly.

            “Are you all right, Mr Buttons?”  An urgent New Zealand accented voice interrupted.  “Mr Buttons?”

            Charlie felt his shoulder being shaken.  He looked up into the worried face of a male member of the cabin crew.  “Yes, I’m fine, I …”

            “Sorry, it just seemed that you were quite restless when you were sleeping.  Do you feel OK?  You don’t feel sick do you?” The steward queried.

            “Asleep, I wasn’t asleep!”  Charlie insisted.  “I was just talking to my friend here.”  He gestured at the seat next to him and glanced across at Trev for his agreement but was stunned to see that there was nobody in the next seat, apart from his book that he had put there for the flight.

            “There’s no-one there Mr Buttons.  I can assure you that you were asleep. Perhaps you dreamed your friend,”  The steward said.

            “No, no, he was really there,” Charlie said starting out of his seat and looking around him at the other seats in the cabin.  Where’s Trev?  How could he disappear now?  Charlie thought despairingly.

            The steward gently eased Charlie back into his seat with his hand on Charlie’s shoulder.  “Look, it’s all right!  Lots of passengers can get a little confused on these long flights.  It’s down to the time differences.  They don’t know whether it’s daytime or night time.  You aren’t the first passenger I’ve had who thinks they’ve been having a chat with someone who wasn’t there.  Why don’t I get you a glass of water and something to eat?”

            “He was really there!”  said Charlie hotly.

            “I know, but he isn’t now.  Have something to eat then maybe try and get some more sleep.  Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you,” The steward reassured Charlie.  He gave him a smile and walked back up the gangway to the galley at the front of the cabin. 

            Charlie mulled things over glumly.  He began to feel slightly embarrassed.  Of course Trev wasn’t there!  Trev was dead, burnt to ashes at the East Brockley Crematorium.  Trevor Blackstock wasn’t coming back; at least he wasn’t coming back in anything other than dreams.  He sighed.  Perhaps he had been asleep after all.  However, although Charlie did feel tired, he certainly did not want to sleep now.

            A few minutes later the steward returned with a bottle of water and a plate of cheese, crackers and grapes. “Call me Malc, all right?  I haven’t got much to do at the moment; most of the other passengers are asleep.  Just let me know if you need anything,” he said kindly.  Before he left, Malc reached up into the overhead lockers and pulled down a pillow and blanket, placing them carefully on the seat where Charlie thought Trev had been.

            Charlie munched tiredly on a dry cracker and rested his head against the window, feeling the thrumming of the jets through the glass.  I probably do need to hit the hay, he thought.  Over the next few hours, try as he might, he could not sleep a wink for the whole of the remaining flight to Auckland.

            On landing, Charlie was caught up in the same cycle of waiting to get off the plane, hurrying with his chaperone to the departure gate for his connection to Tonga                and waiting again for hours before he could board.  By the time he was once again embarked on the two and half hour flight to Tonga on a much smaller jet, Charlie had not slept in over 24 hours.  Deep down, he still did not consider his conversation with Trev to be a dream although his rational mind insisted it must have been.  This alone kept him awake as he puzzled over the experience.  Was Trev dead?  Was he a ghost?  Where was he now?  Or was Trev simply part of his imagination, overwrought through the stress of Trev’s death and the changes in his own life?  He hadn’t slept well since Trev’s death and this, combined with the lack of sleep whilst travelling, had exhausted him.  He was so tired that he had even stopped wondering what to expect when he arrived in Tonga.  Would he get on with his father?  Would he like his father?  What would he say when he met him?   Charlie’s mind was a whirlpool of questions that had no answers.  He was confused and not especially happy.  However, he brightened somewhat at the thought of the interminable journey ending, when the pilot cheerfully announced that they were lining up for final approach at Fua’amotu International Airport in the Friendly Islands.

On landing, Charlie was now used to the bumping and shaking of the aircraft and simply stared out of the window at a much smaller airport than he could have possibly imagined at Fua’amotu.  The Friendly Islands, as Tonga was formally known, looked a little quiet.  Moreover, he did not feel especially friendly – only tired, glum, confused and a bit sick from the travelling.

            That was how he had ended up on the tarmac of the parking ramp, walking towards the terminal building.  The day was wet, drear and surprisingly cold.  It wasn’t at all like the pictures that he had seen on the internet.  The sky was a blank mass of dull clouds with not a shred of blue to be seen, whilst across the exposed airport, a gusty breeze blew.  As one of the cabin crew accompanied Charlie, the rest hurried the passengers off the aircraft to customs in the arrivals part of the terminal

            “Anything to declare?”  asked a large, brown man, who was dressed in an official looking uniform of white shirt and black skirt, around which was tied what appeared to be a mat woven from some sort of leaf.  He smiled at Charlie.

            Charlie shook his head, not fully understanding - his standard response to adults asking awkward questions, especially big men in dresses. Declare what?  Declare war?

            “I’d be surprised if you did, sonny,” the man said, still smiling.  “Just keep going for passport control.”

            Charlie joined the queue.  After a short wait, he was at the immigration desk.  Another large, brown smiling man asked him for his passport.  He compared the photo in it to Charlie then asked, “What’s the purpose of your visit to Tonga, Mr Buttons?”

            Rather nervously Charlie answered, “I’m meeting my Dad here.  I mean, he lives here.  Not at the airport…um…on Tonga…I think.  Sorry, what I mean is I’ve never met him before and I don’t know too much about him but he lives here.  On the island.  You know, Tonga.”

            “Uh, huh,” the man replied, obviously uninterested.  He looked as if he was going to say something else when he simply shrugged and stamped Charlie’s passport officiously.  It appeared that the immigration officer had decided that fourteen year old Charlie Buttons was no threat to national security.  Charlie was just another face passing through. “Enjoy your stay, Mr Buttons,” he said somewhat blankly, handing Charlie’s passport back.

            Charlie stuffed his passport back in his jeans, tipped his bag and wheeled it behind him, as he passed by passport control and walked through an open double door beyond into the arrivals area.  He paused beyond the door and looked around him as fellow passengers passed by.  Some met loved ones; some appeared to be being met by locals carrying handwritten signs saying things like Hotel Palm Sands or Winthrop-Smythe Party.  Either way, everyone passing him seemed to know where they were going except him. 

            Through the fog of weariness, he realised that he had arrived.  His journey was over.  In the next few seconds he would meet someone who he had always dreamed about but who had never been in his life.  A curious sensation almost overcame him.  He felt like turning round and running back through the doors to the jet.  He knew his life was about to change forever, and regardless of what happened, nothing would ever be the same again.  Not his relationship with his mother, his life in London, or even with his mad granddad.  Whatever happened next, he could not ignore that fact that he would have a father in his life, a father who would come equipped with his own cluster of annoying, possibly bonkers, relatives.  A father who would make his own demands on Charlie’s life, another adult who could control what Charlie did.  He sighed.

Suddenly, a loud American voice bellowed excitedly over the murmur of the arrivals area, “Charlie!  Charlie Buttons!”

            Charlie gazed about him stupidly, searching for the source of the voice.  There by the Air New Zealand desk was a middle-aged man of middling height who was going a little thick in the middle.  He was waving madly and smiling his head off.  He ran over to Charlie.

            OMG, Charlie thought, now I know what I’m gonna look like when I’m 40.

            Standing before him was the spitting image of Charlie, only older, greyer and to put it uncharitably, fatter.   The man grinned at Charlie and stuck out his hand.  “Decided yet?” he asked.  Charlie was struck by the deep, mellow tone of his American accent.

            “Decided? Decided what?”  Charlie replied, confused.

            “Decided what to call me, Charlie?” his father said. 

            “Er…I dunno…I haven’t given it a lot of thought.  Dad, I s’pose,” Charlie admitted awkwardly.

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