This competition is long over. Click here to listen to the end result of CBC The Current’s cross-Canada story experiment with PanU and Michael Lista.
Author and Pandemic U instructor Michael Lista recorded the beginning and middle of a beautiful little story about children in the time of COVID-19. Now CBC’s The Current with Matt Galloway wants you to finish it. Send an ending up to a minute long to thecurrent@cbc.ca by Wed., April 29, 2020.
Listen to it here or read the beginning of the story below.
The girl threw the cup, with the string attached, to the neighbour boy. She’d made a telephone that was just for them, and had a cup of her own that she could talk to the boy through. The cup landed on the boy’s bedroom windowsill.
Their parents had grounded them both, but she could still see him in his blue room, with his Mickey Mouse clock on the wall, and she would wave and he would wave back. Sometimes he would dress up as Superman, just for himself, and the girl would see him in his blue suit and his red cape, and thought that he looked sad and brave. They used to play in the willow tree on their street, swinging from its long sweet branches and laughing until the street lights would come on and their moms would call them home. The cup landed with a thump.
The boy opened his window and put the cup to his ear.
The girl pulled the line tight, almost tugging him out onto the laneway. Her voice travelled like a song over the string.
“I want to tell you something,” she said.