Sophie and the Unwanted Hug

There were twenty-two people in Nana's house, which was about eighteen more than usual. Sophie had counted them from the stairs, which is the best place to count people from.

It was her cousin's birthday. There was a cake shaped like a football, three different kinds of crisps, and a long table with a paper cloth that somebody had already spilled orange squash on.

Sophie liked most of it. She liked the cake and the noise and the game of hide and seek that had started in the hallway. She was, in general, having a good day.

Great-Uncle Ray came every Christmas and every birthday, and in between those he was mostly a voice on the phone.

He was loud and cheerful and he called everybody "champ". And he liked hugs. Big ones. The kind where your feet leave the carpet.

"There she is!" he said, coming across the room with his arms already open. "Come on then, Sophie. Big hug for your old uncle."

Sophie's body did something before her brain did. It went stiff. Her shoulders came up. Her feet stayed exactly where they were, as if the carpet had grown around them.

She did not know why. He was not being unkind. He was not a stranger. She just did not want a hug — not right then, not with everyone watching, not from someone she saw twice a year.

And she thought, in a small worried voice inside her head: but I have to, don't I? It would be rude.

Sophie took one step back.

"I don't want a hug right now," she said.

The room did not go silent. Nobody gasped. That is worth knowing, because in Sophie's head it had felt like the sort of sentence that would stop a party.

Mum was there almost at once, not cross, just easy about it. "That's okay, Sophie," she said. "Your body, your choice."

Then she turned to Great-Uncle Ray, still smiling. "She's not a big hugger at the moment, Ray. High five?"

"Fair enough!" said Great-Uncle Ray, and he put his hand out flat, and Sophie smacked it as hard as she could, which made him say "Ow!" in a very theatrical way and everyone laughed, including Sophie.

Later, on the sofa, with the football cake mostly gone, Mum sat down next to Sophie.

"I want to tell you something," she said. "You are never in trouble for saying no to a hug or a kiss or a tickle. Not from Uncle Ray, not from Nana, not from me. If you don't want it, you can say so."

"Even if they feel sad?" said Sophie. That had been the worrying part.

"Even then. And here's the thing — a grown-up who cares about you will be fine about it. That's their job, not yours. Uncle Ray was fine about it in about half a second, wasn't he?"

He had been. He was currently teaching the little cousins how to whistle through a blade of grass, and he had already called Sophie "champ" twice since.

"You can always offer something else, too," said Mum. "A wave. A high five. Sitting next to them. Those all count as being friendly."

Sophie thought about that. It made the no feel smaller and easier, like a door you could open a little way instead of a wall.

When they left, Great-Uncle Ray stood at the door and held his hand out flat, and Sophie high-fived it on the way past without even slowing down.

That, it turned out, was a perfectly good goodbye.