Momo, despite her young age, knew a handful of definitive things.

  She knew that when she woke up in the morning, she would see her mother and her father and she would eat her breakfast and go to school. She knew that when she scored a goal with the ball her favourite auntie got her for her sixth birthday, it felt a little bit more special than scoring with just a regular old ball. She knew that her parents loved her a lot, and that the little old lady three doors away made the best cookies she’d ever had in the entire seven years of her life, and that strawberry milkshake was her absolute favourite drink in the world.

  She also knew, that when she kicked her favourite ball into the next door neighbour’s back garden, it was probably lost forever.

  She held back her tears because her mum said that she was a big girl now and according to the girls in her class only babies cry, so she wiped her eyes and thought about her next course of action. Eyeing the six foot fence separating her from her neighbours garden, she stomped her feet to light up her barbie sneakers (something she only did in super serious situations) and set off at a dead sprint.

  Launching her gangly frame at the fence, she flailed frantically  with half an arm over the top, feet scrambling desperately for purchase halfway up the fence. She found a groove and her foot settled, and she used all her strength to pull the rest of her body up and over to finally see the mysterious land beyond her garden fence.

  She wasn’t expecting to see a curious face staring back at her, little fingers clasped tightly onto her ball against her chest. The girl was pretty, and she looked nothing like the boys Momo played football with at school (she looked almost like a princess, Momo thought) but her face didn’t show disgust like the other girls in her class. They looked at Momo like she was some weird alien covered in dirt and grime just because she preferred to spend her recess running around with the boys kicking a ball over playing mums and dads in the teahouse. (Admittedly, Momo was always covered in dirt and grime but she definitely wasn’t an alien. Her parents assured her that she was definitely born on Earth and not from some distant galaxy, even though that would have been suuuuuper cool.)

  “Is this your ball?” Her voice was soft and high, trilling like the bell on Momo’s bicycle.

   Woah, she even sounded like a princess, Momo thought.

  “Yeah! That’s my ball right there!” She huffed back, starting to struggle with holding her weight up all this time. Maybe she should listen to her dad and actually eat all of her vegetables. “Can you kick it back to me?”

  The curious gaze dropped to the floor, dainty foot dragging sheepishly in the grass.

  “I’ve never kicked a ball before.” She mumbled at the floor.

  “That’s okay!” Momo scrambled, almost losing her footing in her haste to comfort this stranger. “It’s really easy. You just hold it out, and drop it, and BAM! like that!”

  She tried to demonstrate as best as she could whilst clinging to the top of the fence, but it seems the girl got the gist because she looked at Momo (who was grinning wildly at her) and nodded once.

  “Okay.”

  She took a step back and held the ball out, tongue sticking out to the side of in determined concentration. She swung her leg back a few times, practicing a little before taking a deep breath and letting the ball drop. It fell, and her leg swung forward rapidly and connected, sending the ball towards the fence - and Momo’s face.

  Momo saw stars which was strange because it was only the afternoon, but she was staring up at the blue sky on her back in her own garden with a smarting pain blooming across her face. She’d been hit by footballs plenty of times before, but never by someone as deceptively strong as the little girl over the fence.

  “Oh my goodness are you okay? I’m so so sorry!”

  Momo looked away from the sky and back towards the fence, looking at the skinny limbs holding a delicate body just enough to let her see over the fence. The girl’s face was painted with worry, babbling apologies and she almost looked close to tears over this stranger she hardly knew.

  Momo let out a laugh, ignoring the pain in her face and rolled over clutching her belly. The apologies tumbling over the girls’ lips halted, the girl probably caught off guard by Momo’s reaction.

(Her face really hurt, but she didn’t like to see anyone cry. Especially princesses.)

  “That’s okay. That was a really good kick.”

  Her smile grew. Momo could see her gums when she smiled like this.

  “Hey, do you wanna come over and play with me?”

  Three hours later, Momo had learned that this girl was called Mina, and she was surprisingly good at football. She also went to the same school as her but in a different class, she was learning how to play the guitar and she promised Momo that she would come over again to play tomorrow.

  Mina came over a lot after that. She came over straight after she had finished her homework (because Mina was a good student like that. Momo eyed her half-done homework with a little bit of guilt) and played with Momo until her mother called her home for dinner. Momo went over to Mina’s house a few times to play too, but Mina said she preferred playing at Momo’s house because it was cooler and they had more things to play with there.

  Mina also really liked sitting in Momo’s tree-house for hours on end.

  Playing in the tree-house was Momo’s second favourite thing to do, just behind playing football, but going into the tree-house was Mina’s number one favourite thing to do - and Momo really liked seeing Mina’s smile so she could wait another day if it meant making Mina happy.

  They would clamber up the sturdy wooden ladder Momo’s mother had put together out of spare wood, taking careful steps because they were both super sensible and knew that nothing was fun if you had a broken leg, and spend the afternoon drawing scenes from their favourite shows or showing each other their favourite books. Sometimes they would play pirates with the slightly wonky hook Momo made from the ornaments in her father’s display case, and other days they would lay on their backs and gaze at the cut out stars they had placed on the ceiling.

  Every single day Mina would leave when her mother’s voice rang out from across the fence, huffing softly as she climbed down the ladder with careful, sullen steps and a soft “see you tomorrow Momo”. And every single day, Momo would mope around the house waiting for tomorrow to come so she could see Mina again.

  So one day, when that tell tale voice came from across the fence and a familiar, begrudging expression stole