That first shot of light into the night sky feels like they’re offering you a promise of magic that you’d forgotten about all year. There’s a single volley with a tail of faint light opening up a crack in the black, then a big bang followed by a shower of sparkles and glitter swirling and falling. You wait maybe ten seconds, then you hear two quick phumps, one by one, and then a big spray of sparks and a bunch of small spider flowers burst against the black sky. Masked by the explosions those two made are a bunch more phumps and then more sparks and glitter light.
Bailey was laughing. He turned to me. Then he spun the other way to peer down at Zaxy next to him. More phumps. I noticed music playing very faintly over the ballpark public address system. As the sky lit up again, brighter than ever, Bailey glanced over his right shoulder and laughed again.
“What?” I called over the fireworks.
I cursed life right there because turned away from the light show as he was, flickering shadows made his face hard to admire.
“The music.” He pointed at a speaker mounted below us on a telephone pole.
It was hard to hear. I bent forward so that my head was closer to him. “What is it?” I asked.
“Not sure. It’s funny, though, because we can barely hear it. It’s almost like insects trying to catch up to us.”
Just then a huge series of cracks and explosions went off in the sky. He glanced past me and his whole face lit up in rainbows and splashes of light. <snip>
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davidbiddle
View More PostsTrying to get beyond what is fake and what is real, cuz there's always something more. Look for my stories and essays here and online.