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His voice has gone lower. Deeper.
And my heart is beating even louder now because of it. “I’m not.”
“So fourteen then.”
“Firstyoutellmethat you’ll keep your promise and won’t ruin my birthday party.”
He stares at me a beat. “I won’t.”
I breathe in a sigh of relief, or I would have if he hadn’t done what he does in the next moment.
He brings his arm forward, but not because he has abandoned his plan. But because he has in his grip what he wanted out of his pocket, a black rectangular thing that he turns on with a flick of his thumb.
An orange flame bursts to life, making his summer skin glow for a second or two before he turns around and drops to the ground. In a flash, he sets the string on fire.
I watch it all with a thundering heart, as if in slow motion.
That lone spark of fire racing along the string. Just as it disappears around the corner, I come out of my shock and dash over to where he’s standing, facing away from me.
“What did you…” I breathe out, my chest heaving. “You promised. Youpromisedthat you wouldn’t ruin my party. You —”
It happens then.
This huge explosion. This boom that destroys all my words.
And it keeps happening.
The blasts keep coming until they’re are a continuous, nonstop cacophony of sounds. Mixed in with shocked gasps and screams from people. I’m about to scream too when something lights up.
Up in the sky.
Red and green sparkles.
Hundreds and hundreds of tiny twinkling sparks showering down from the sky.
Like the rain.
So thick and bright that night turns into day.
Fireworks.
He lit up fireworks.
It’s so unexpected after what I’d been just thinking, this magnificent display of light and sound, that I do something unexpected as well.
I let out a lone but loud laugh.
“This is…” I whisper over the crackling sounds of fireworks, and shocked gasps and screams of people. “This is beautiful.”
“Yeah.”
His softly spoken word makes me look at him.
Only to find that he’s already watching me, shadows dancing on his face, his eyes sparkling even more. And I realize two things at once.
First, that he isn’t talking about the fireworks. His quiet ‘yeah’ was meant for something else.
Someoneelse. Someone like me.
