Making Out on the Fourth of July
July 3, 2012 § Leave a comment
The mosquitoes showed up before dusk fell, drawn to our sugar drinks and our sweat, and the next-door neighbor’s underground pool. The party lights were turned on: cylinders of red, white, orange, yellow and green set up to dangle from the clothesline. We ate cookies and ice cream and I sipped from another heavy soda. Butchie said the bonfire was definitely going to happen, a friend of his came by and said so. Sometimes you heard rumors about stuff that like happening but the cops would break it up before it ever got off the ground. But this time it was real.
At Fictionaut, my story “A Spark and a Flash,” posted a year ago. A sort of fiction/memoir hybrid that I wrote to try to capture the mythic and dangerous elements of childhood. In real life I don’t have a sister, but I do remember begging my mother to go see the bonfire, and panicking when I saw the flames reflected in the windows of a house nearby.
Neil Serven 
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