by H G Lynch
“Okay, so if it isn’t post-coital afterglow,” Alistair said thoughtfully, pressing a dirty fingertip to his chin, “then what has you grinning like a lunatic?”
While he pondered my good mood, I got up and wandered to the bin by the sink to pretend to sharpen my pencil. With my back turned to the class, I slid my fingers into the inner pocket of my blazer and pulled out one of the homemade rockets I’d stashed there. I shook it hard and hid it between a couple of paint bottles on the counter.
I’d made the rockets out of cylindrical plastic cases, the kind you kept photo reels in when you sent them to be developed, and I’d filled them with malt vinegar, baking soda, and as much glitter as I could pack into it without ruining the necessary ratios for the chemical reaction. Using the same method as applied to glow-sticks, I’d placed thin glass panels between the vinegar and baking soda so that they wouldn’t react until I shook them and the single plastic bead I’d put in inside smashed the glass.
It was actually a pretty simple idea, just messy and tricky to make. When I’d been making them, the glass walls slipped sometimes and I ended up with mini volcanoes spilling glittery foam onto my bedroom floor. I even had one rocket accidentally go off and hit my ceiling light, and it had taken me nearly half an hour to clean the glitter off every surface of my room. I was pretty sure there were still sparkles in my hair from it. Soon, though, everyone would have sparkles in their hair, too, so it didn’t matter.
Alistair was still talking when I brushed past him, moving to the glue-gun station on the other side of the class. I pulled out another rocket, shook it, and slipped it behind the propped-up glue-gun. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the only person watching me was Alistair, and there was a slowly dawning realisation blossoming on his face.
I slid past our table to put another rocket amidst the wreckage of Mr Gabe’s desk, dropped one in the corner behind the cans of paintbrushes and finally slipped one into the hood of Alistair’s hoodie under the guise of patting his back as I walked past. Really, he should have known I’d put one on him, but he didn’t appear to notice. Instead, he just shook his head, chuckling, as I sat down again. I flashed a grin back, knowing he’d figured out what I was doing by now.
“This is your end-of-school ritual thing, isn’t it? That’s what’s got you grinning,” Alistair concluded, drumming his fingers on the table.
My eyes were on the clock over the sink, watching the red hand ticking away the seconds and waiting. I flicked Alistair a conspiratorial look from under my lashes, just before the first rocket exploded with the sound of the plastic lid popping off, followed by the fizzing of the chemical reaction as glitter-laden foam sprayed out of the bin and over the countertop. Everyone in the class, including Alistair, jumped half a foot into the air, and I bit down on my lip to keep from laughing.
The next rocket went off, throwing a cloud of glitter over the glue-guns and the poor kid trying to glue parts of a wooden model of a ship together. The guy dropped the glue-gun and stumbled backwards into the girl waiting behind him before falling to the floor. I snorted and clamped my hands over my mouth, my shoulders shaking with laughter.
The third rocket popped and splashed a spray of glitter over Mr Gabe’s desk. Mr Gabe jerked back in his wheelie desk chair, throwing his hands up as the glitter fell over him like sparkling mist. My sides ached with the force of my laughter, and Alistair was clutching his ribs, too. Other people in the class were laughing now, mostly at the stunned expression on Mr Gabe’s glitter-painted face.
Rocket number four knocked over a can of paintbrushes, and I watched Alistair with expectant eyes. The anticipation was killing me. He opened his mouth to say something to me when he noticed me watching him, but right on cue, the final rocket burst from the pressure build-up of the chemical reaction. Alistair yelled in surprise, falling off his stool as the plastic projectile flew out of his hood and glitter rained down on him.
I bent double over the table, gasping, choking on laughter gone silent because I couldn’t get air into my lungs to make any noise. Tears rolled down my face, and I pressed my forehead onto the table surface, shuddering with the hysterical laughter. It was possibly the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life. The look on Alistair’s face! Priceless!
The classroom was filled with the laughter and shrieking of glitter-coated students, and Mr Gabe caught my gaze as I lifted my head to wipe the tears off my face. Slowly, he lifted a hand and curled one finger in a beckoning gesture. My sides stopped spasming quite so hard, and I managed to breathe again, getting to my feet. Alistair’s eyes were wide as he watched me walk across the room. Sitting on the floor in a dishevelled heap, with glitter dripping off him, he was shaking with the same kind of silent laughter I’d been choking on. I thought his gothic guy-liner looked smudged, too.
Standing in front of Mr Gabe’s desk, I had to bite my lip to keep my chuckles quiet. There was glitter in his floppy black hair and all over his fancy pinstripe suit. There were even tiny blue sparkles caught in the stubble on his chin. When he raised a hand to rub it over his jaw, he shed flakes of shiny colour and scowled at the mess of his desk. His mouth made a funny shape as he tried not to laugh, though, and laugh lines framed his narrow brown eyes.
He folded his hands together on the desk and looked up at me, lines wrinkling his forehead as he raised his brows. I smiled blandly and folded my hands behind my back, curious to what he’d say.
“Anson,” he said mildly, “I take it this is your work?” The way he said it was almost sarcastic, but not quite. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the glittery state of the classroom and my classmates.
Casually, I pursed my lips and turned to cast my gaze leisurely over the room as if admiring a fine painting. Turning back to the sparkly Art teacher, I shrugged. Mr Gabe sighed and shook his head, causing more glitter to flutter free of his hair. My mouth twitched, wanting to make me grin, but I maintained my politely blank expression with some effort.
Mr Gabe gave me a knowing look. “Anson, you know I have to send you to the headmaster’s office, right? I’m pretty sure this stunt violates your deal with Mr Fraser.” Mr Gabe always knew about my deals with the headmaster. Mr Fraser informed him whenever we made a new deal and told him what the parameters were because it was a well-known fact that I pulled my grandest stunts in Mr Gabe’s Art class.
I tilted my head thoughtfully. “It would only violate our deal if you give me a detention. And seeing as it’s the last day of school, it’s hardly worth it. I’ll be suspended two hours before the end of school and get to go home early.” I shrugged. “But if you feel I deserve an early release for my creative genius…” Flashing a grin, I spread my hand toward the pad of pink, now-glitter-stained detention notes sitting in the shambles of his desk in a go ahead gesture.
“Okay, so how about, instead of being sent to Mr Fraser, you spend your lunch hour in here, cleaning up? I know you also have a free period right after lunch, so you’ll stay here after to clean, and you’ll do a poster explaining the design of your little glitter rockets,” Mr Gabe suggested.
I arched a brow at him and gave him a lopsided smirk. “Admit it. You just want to know how I made them.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he admitted with a sigh. “Yes, they were very clever. I’m keen to know how you delayed the starting of the reaction until you got them all into class and placed around the room.” He pressed his fingertips together, steepling his fingers, and gave me an inquisitive look. This was why Mr Gabe was so awesome.
Where any other teacher would have yelled at me until they were blue in the face, slapped me with a detention slip, and sent me off to the headmaster’s office, Mr Gabe was curiously asking me how I’d pulled off my stunt. Normally, I wouldn’t tell. A good magician never reveals his tricks, but seeing as I was going to have to do a poster on it anyway, I figured I might as well explain my genius idea. I doubted Mr Gabe was going to steal it, put a patent on it, and sell exploding glitter rockets as pranking supp
lies to future teens, but that was a nice idea. Maybe I should do just that?
“I used the glow-stick technique,” I said, and when he gave me a look with a question mark painted on his face, I explained. “I put thin glass slides between the chemicals, and popped in a bead to smash the wall when I shook the rocket. Like when you crack a glow-stick and the chemicals mix to create a glow.” Another idea sparked inside my brilliant mind just then, and I swore to discover precisely which chemicals were in glow-sticks when I got home to my computer. Just imagining what I could do with a bucketful of glowing green liquid made my CCD itch.
Mr Gabe looked impressed. “Very creative. Be sure to explain all that in your poster,” he said. I sighed, nodded, and returned just as the bell rang for lunch. While everyone else filed out, giggling and throwing handfuls of glitter at each other, I stayed back to clean.
I was surprised, though, when Alistair hung back and started wiping down tabletops with wet paper towels. When I told him he didn’t need to help me, he said I deserved it for pulling such an epic stunt. So, we cleaned the glitter-caked classroom alongside one another, joking and blowing glittery kisses to each other mockingly and toying with the feather boas and hats from the fashion section until we both dissolved into laughter. Cleaning had never been so funny, and it was the perfect way to spend the final day of school.
Chapter Eight
** Anson **
By the time I reached the school on Sunday evening, bang on nine o’clock, it was darkening outside, and I was metaphorically sweating bullets despite the shivers claiming my muscles from the chilling wind. The sun was slowly sinking behind the spiked treetops, staining the sky in watercolours of pink and purple. Handfuls of green leaves rolled across the grey field of the school parking lot in a faint breeze, but the night was surprisingly warm.
I had my hoodie tied around my hips, and my hair kept tickling my cheekbones. My palms were damp and my mouth was dry. I was nervous as hell about why Poppy had asked to meet me there. The smell of car exhaust, soil, and the musk of the forest wrapped around me like a soothing cloak the closer I got to the treeline, a breath of calming fragrance to my frazzled nerves. I stood in the shadow cast by the looming school building, impatiently pacing back and forth between the tree line and the edge of the parking lot.
I paused under the leafy boughs of an oak tree to check the time on my phone. It was eleven minutes past nine. Heaving a sigh, I closed my eyes and slumped against the nearest tree, tipping my head back against the rough bark of the trunk. The breeze touched my face with light fingers, tugging at my scarf to get at the skin of my neck.
I was so busy trying to relax that it caught it completely by surprise when the breeze changed direction for a moment and I caught a familiar scent on the breath of the wind. My eyes sprang open and my head jerked down, looking for the source of the sweet perfume.
For a second, I was confused by how dark the parking lot had become, and then I realised the streetlamp that had been casting light across the grey lot had gone out, throwing me and the school building into darkness. The sky had turned from a watery pink to a blissful shade of blue. My gaze scanned the parking lot, and up and down the tree line, but I couldn’t see Poppy anywhere.
But I smelled her perfume, I thought, scowling across the sea of tar and gravel before me. Squinting, I thought I saw a small shadow under the burnt out streetlamp, but when I blinked, it disappeared like mist burned off in the sun. I checked the time again— twenty-three minutes past nine. My heart sank like a stone, crashing into my stomach and deflating my lungs. She wasn’t coming.
A rustle in the tree behind me made me whirl, but the darkness under the umbrella of branches and leaves was too thick for me to see more than the silhouettes of trees like dark pillars with reaching arms. I bit my lip, wondering, hoping for a moment that it was Poppy messing with me, trying to scare me. But the rustle didn’t come again and the hope shrivelled inside me.
I turned to leave with my tail between my legs and nearly walked right into the pale little figure that had been standing behind me. I gasped and jerked back in surprise, and Poppy giggled, one of those impossibly cute smiles of hers lighting up her face. Yellow light turned her hair to a buttery pink colour, and I noticed the dead streetlamp had come back to life.
Poppy was standing close enough that her perfume tickled my nose, and I could see how wide her pupils were as she lifted her blue eyes to mine. Suddenly, I forgot all my worries, every little thing I’d been stressing about all day long and every doubt flew out of my head. My gut relaxed, and it felt as if I could breathe again when I hadn’t realised I’d been suffocating.
She lowered her gaze to my hands and gently linked her fingers through mine, sending a rush of sweet coldness through my veins and raising the usual delicious goosebumps on my skin. I swallowed. Her fingers fit perfectly in the dips between my knuckles, as if our hands were two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Softly, she said, “Sorry I’m late. Lyle was being…stubborn. I was worried you wouldn’t have waited for me.”
I smiled at her and said, “Of course I waited. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.”
A blush tinted her pale cheeks to the rosy colour of apple blossoms. “Come on,” she said, tugging my hand. “I want to show you something.” Her eyes were bright as she dragged me into the slithering darkness between the trees.
Trampling through the woods at half past nine on a Sunday night with Poppy was so not how I’d imagined my summer holidays beginning. But there I was, and Poppy was a graceful ghost floating through the blackness ahead of me.
My eyes were so fixed on Poppy, on the way the light filtering through the leafy canopy danced on her hair and the way her hips swayed as she walked, that I barely noticed when we emerged from the thickets into a small clearing. Poppy came to a halt and whirled to see my face as I took in the setting before me. I could feel her eyes, expectant, on me when my mouth fell open in utter shock. Whatever I’d been expecting for tonight, it hadn’t been this.
A red woven blanket was spread over the lush grass, held down in the centre by a glass decanter full of enticing burgundy liquid. I wasn’t sure what it was, possibly wine or possibly cranberry juice, but it looked very classy and dramatic anyway. The clearing was ringed in tall, fat white candles resting on plates of clean, grey rock that couldn’t have come from the forest. The candles shone halos of golden light onto the grass and lit the whole clearing with a warm glow. The trees were standing guard like shadow-clad sentries, and the sky above was laid out with a covering of glittering stars.
Poppy released my hand and wandered over to the blanket. “What do you think?” she asked.
My mouth worked uselessly as I tried to find the right words. What did I think? I thought I was dreaming. I thought she was beautiful. What I knew? I knew I was in love with her.
I crossed the clearing to stand in front of her and took her hands in mine. “I think you look very beautiful tonight. You’re upstaging your candles.”
She smiled, blushing, and my heart fluttered.
We sat down on the woven red blanket. We drank the wine, ate the food, and for a long time, we just talked. Talked about the fact that it was the summer holidays, how strange Alistair was, and about the constellations in the stars.
She lay on her back and pointed them out to me because I didn’t know most of them, except the obvious ones like Orion’s Belt and The Big Dipper. I lay next to her and propped my head in one hand, holding her hand with the other. Every so often, she slid her fingertips over my knuckles, or I circled her palm with my thumb soothingly.
“That one,” Poppy said quietly, pointing to the sky, “is my star sign. Capricorn.”
I couldn’t see the constellation she was pointing out, it just looked like a jumble of random stars to me, but I nodded anyway and looked down at her face. The sparkling dark sky reflected in her eyes.
“I didn’t know you were a Capricorn. When’s your birthday?” I asked, intrigued by
this new piece of information. The temperature had dropped since earlier. I’d had to shrug on my hoodie, but I was still feeling the nip in the night-time air. She had taken off her jacket to lay it under her head like a pillow, and she was just wearing a thin t-shirt underneath. Yet, she didn’t look cold, she wasn’t shivering, and she didn’t even have goosebumps.
She nodded. “My birthday’s the twenty-first of December,” she said.
I felt my eyebrows go up, and she glanced at me as I stopped rubbing circles in her palm. The twenty-first of December. The winter solstice. It was a bizarre coincidence that her birthday should be exactly six months after mine.
“That’s weird. Mine’s the twenty-first of June.” Sure, it wasn’t that unusual. I tried to tell myself that. There was nothing weird about it, just a coincidence. But my gut didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t know what it meant, or whether it was a good or a bad thing.
Poppy’s eyes went wide, and she sat up quickly, staring at me as if I’d grown a second head. Her hand curled into a fist in mine, and I frowned, confused. I was about to ask if I had said something wrong, but I didn’t get the chance. She spoke first, her voice quiet and nervous.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
Puzzled, I shook my head. She bit her lip so hard I thought she might draw blood, and then she leaned forward, unlacing her fingers from mine and flipping my hand over. She stroked her fingertips so, so lightly across my palm. I was amazed at how good it felt, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
I took a deep breath before talking. “What are you doing?” My voice still shook a bit, and I hoped she hadn’t noticed.
The look in her eyes when she flicked her gaze to mine told me she had. One side of her mouth quirked up, and it made me want to kiss her. Then again, I always wanted to kiss her.
“I’m reading your palm,” she said. There was a dangerous sparkle in her eyes.