Saturday evening. Max showed up at the Heeler front door with a duffel bag.
"G'day," he said when Sandy opened the door.
"Hey! Thought you weren't coming till tomorrow."
"Mum said tonight was better."
Sandy looked at the bag. Looked at Max. Max was doing the thing where he smiled but his eyes didn't match.
"Cool. Come in."
Chilli was in the kitchen. "Max! Hello, love. Have you eaten?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Chilli."
"There's leftover lasagna if you change your mind."
"Thanks."
He followed Sandy upstairs. In the spare bedroom, Sandy tossed a sleeping bag onto the floor next to the bottom bunk. "You're down here. Indigo's up top. Don't touch his stuff or he'll know."
"I won't touch anything."
"He'll still know."
This episode of Bluey is called:
Indigo was on the top bunk, reading. He nodded at Max. "Hey."
"Hey, Indigo."
"Don't touch my stuff."
"Sandy told me."
"Good."
From down the hall, a stampede of small feet. Bluey appeared in the doorway.
"Max! You're here! We're playing Castle and you have to be the giant!"
"What?"
"CASTLE! In the living room! Dad's already the drawbridge! Come ON!" She grabbed his hand and pulled. Max was twice her size but let himself be dragged.
The living room had been transformed. The couch was the castle wall. The coffee table was the moat. Bandit was lying across the gap between the couch and the armchair, arms and legs spread, being the drawbridge.
"Evening, Max," Bandit said from his drawbridge position. "Fair warning—I've been lying here for twenty minutes and I can't feel my arms."
Bingo was on top of the couch-wall, holding a paper towel tube. "I'm the queen! And nobody gets in without the password!"
"What's the password?" Max asked.
"It changes every time," Sandy said. "That's the hard part."
"The password is..." Bingo thought very hard. "Spaghetti!"
"Spaghetti!" Max said.
"Wrong! It changed! Now it's... umbrella!"
"Umbrella!"
"Too slow! Now it's... fish fingers!"
"That's two words," Indigo said from the hallway, where he'd followed with his book.
"Two words is allowed!" Bingo said.
"Since when?"
"Since I'm the queen!"
Max was grinning. A real grin. He turned to Sandy. "So how do we get in?"
"You don't get in," Bluey said, appearing from behind the castle wall. She had a wooden spoon. "You're the GIANT. Giants don't get in. Giants attack. And we defend."
"Oh." Max looked at the castle. At Bandit-the-drawbridge. At Bingo-the-queen with her paper towel tube. At Bluey with her spoon. "Right. How do I attack?"
"However you want," Sandy said. "That's the fun part. I'll help."
Sandy and Max became the giants. The assault on the castle began.
"GIANTS APPROACHING!" Bluey yelled from the wall.
"RAISE THE DRAWBRIDGE!" Bingo commanded.
Bandit tried to curl upward. His back cracked. "The drawbridge is experiencing... technical difficulties."
Max grabbed a cushion and lobbed it over the wall. It hit Bingo gently on the head.
"BOULDER!" Bingo shrieked. "The giants are throwing boulders!"
"Return fire!" Bluey threw a cushion back. It sailed past Max and knocked a lamp.
"Oi!" Chilli called from the kitchen. "Not the lamp!"
"FRIENDLY FIRE!" Bluey yelled. "RETREAT THE LAMP!"
Sandy circled the castle, looking for a gap. "Max, go left. I'll distract them."
"Copy that."
Sandy made a big show of attacking from the front, waving his arms and roaring. Bluey and Bingo focused their cushion fire on him. While they were distracted, Max crept around the side of the armchair.
He was almost at the castle when he caught his foot on the edge of the rug and went down hard, crashing into the coffee-table-moat. The table skidded. Bingo's paper towel tube went flying. A glass of water on the side table wobbled and tipped, spilling across the floor.
Everything stopped.
Max sat on the floor in the puddle of water, staring at it.
"I'm sorry," he said. Fast, tight. "I didn't mean to. I wasn't looking. I'm sorry."
He was already on his feet, looking for something to clean it up, his face flushed. "Where are the towels? I'll fix it. Sorry."
Bandit sat up from the drawbridge. He looked at Max—really looked at him. The way Max's hands were shaking. The way he kept saying sorry like he was bracing for something.
"Max," Bandit said. "It's a glass of water, mate."
"I know, but I—"
"It's water. On a floor. In a house with four kids. This floor has seen worse." Bandit grabbed the tea towel from the couch arm and dropped it on the puddle. "There. Gone."
Max stood there, hands at his sides, breathing hard.
Bluey looked at him. She didn't understand why Max was upset about water. They spilled stuff all the time.
"My castle got wrecked once," Bingo said. She wasn't talking about the game. She was arranging her cushions back into position. "I made a really big one in my room and Bluey knocked it over."
"That was an accident!" Bluey said.
"I know. But I was really mad. I cried for ages."
"You did cry for ages," Bluey agreed.
"And then Dad helped me build it again," Bingo said. "And the second one was better because it had a moat."
She looked at the scattered coffee-table-moat. "See? Better with a moat."
Max didn't say anything. But his breathing slowed down.
Sandy appeared next to him. He didn't ask if Max was okay. He just handed him a cushion.
"You're still the giant," Sandy said. "And you haven't got in yet."
Max looked at the cushion. Looked at the castle.
"The password is fish fingers," Bingo whispered loudly.
Max took the cushion. "FISH FINGERS!" he yelled, and charged.
The game exploded back to life. This time louder, messier, with more falling over. Bandit gave up being the drawbridge and became a second giant. Indigo was recruited as the castle's Advisor ("I advise you to surrender," he told the giants, which wasn't helpful but made everyone laugh).
Max threw himself into it. He crashed through walls. He roared. He caught Bingo when she launched herself off the couch at him, spinning her around. He let Bluey defeat him with the wooden spoon no fewer than six times.
At some point during the seventh defeat, as he lay on the rug with Bluey standing triumphant on his chest, he started laughing. Not the polite laughing from dinner. Real laughing. The kind that's hard to stop.
"The giant is laughing!" Bingo reported. "Is that a trick?"
"No," Max managed between breaths. "The giant just... the giant's having a really good time."
Later. Much later. The castle was dismantled. Teeth were brushed. Bluey and Bingo were in bed.
Sandy and Max were in sleeping bags on the spare bedroom floor. Indigo was on the top bunk, light off, already asleep.
They lay in the dark.
"Sandy?"
"Yeah?"
"Bentley built this whole city out of cards in his room. Took him ages. And I knocked it over. And instead of saying sorry I told him it was a dumb baby game."
Sandy was quiet.
"And Mum was tired and said I should come here for the night."
More quiet.
"I was a real grub," Max said.
"Yeah," Sandy said. "Sounds like it."
"I don't know how to fix it."
Sandy thought about the castle. About Bingo saying the second one was better because it had a moat. About how nobody in this house had made a big deal about the water, or the lamp, or the seven times the castle got destroyed. They just rebuilt it.
"You could help him build it again," Sandy said.
"What if he doesn't want me to?"
"Then you sit outside his door till he does."
Max stared at the ceiling.
"That's what Dad makes us do," Sandy added. "It's really annoying."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. But it works."
They lay there for a while longer.
"Sandy?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for letting me come over."
"You don't have to thank me."
"I know. But thanks."
From the top bunk, Indigo's voice came in the dark. "Can you two stop talking? Some of us are trying to sleep."
"Sorry, Indigo."
"You're not sorry."
"We're a bit sorry."
Silence. Then Max snorted. Sandy grinned.
They fell asleep.
In the morning, Chilli drove Max home. She pulled up outside his house. The radio was on low. She didn't turn off the engine.
Max sat in the passenger seat, looking at his front door.
"Thanks, Chilli."
"Anytime, love."
He got out. Walked up the path. Stopped at the door. Turned around and waved.
Chilli waved back.
Max went inside. Chilli sat for a moment, then drove home.
[End Credit]