The Last Day of the Holiday, Chapter One

“Hi!” sang out a little voice. Mini-Flash Juniper halted her early morning jog.

A beaming boy of about half her height was gazing up at her. He was wearing sports clothes of vibrant hue, but not even they could compare for brightness with his eyes.

“Hi,” returned Juniper, not knowing quite what to make of him, especially since he seemed to be doing his best to twine himself up in the kit aforesaid.

“Um, just wondered,” he managed at last, “if your friend was feeling better?”

The question wasn’t calculated to make Mini-Flash Juniper any less perplexed.

“Boy who wears a sort of orange inflatable miniskirt?” the fitful one faltered on.

Finally Juniper twigged. “Oh! Yes, he’s fine,” she declared at once. “Because it was only a practical joke, you see, with the candy-sticks, and…”

Mini-Flash Juniper usually outdid boys, but this was the first time she’d competed with one for awkwardness.

“And those things aren’t to be fooled around with,” she told her new friend firmly. “If I’d known you were watching, I’d have set a better example.”

Juniper vowed to never again let another ten pence near that love-tester machine.

“It was irresponsible,” she finished, with feeling. “Really irresponsible. And it wasn’t me.”

The little boy had heard other big girls use that figure of speech, so nodded sagely. “Um, yesterday was the first time I’ve seen you,” he continued, straightening his singlet then giving it another vigorous wring. “So please say you’re Wednesday to Wednesday, like me!”

The glittering hope in his eyes embarrassed Mini-Flash Juniper terribly, for although the words he’d used were obscure, their meaning was less so.

“Going home tomorrow,” was the gentlest way she knew to let him down.

He looked so crestfallen that Juniper couldn’t bear it. She bent to talk to him.

“I’ll tell you what, C.R.,” said she, reading the monogram just above his thigh. “You were kind to ask after Flashsatsumas, and to be honest, most of what I expected from this holiday hasn’t happened. It’s left me with my last day free. Now, I’d love to know all about what someone your age gets up to here, so why don’t you show me around? It can be our first date,” she added with a confidential smile.

From C.R.’s reaction, Juniper concluded she was starting to understand Earth-boys.

First on the agenda was something called BMX biking. Mini-Flash Juniper swung by the chalet to collect Flashsatsumas and Miss Ugly, whereupon the three of them trooped off together.

It had rained again in the night and the morning was grey and overcast. The going underfoot was muddy, even when you stayed on the footpaths, and nowhere more so than the destination to which C.R. had directed Mini-Flash Juniper. Some way off from the camp’s main plaza, it was a rambling outdoor track whose surface seemed made of thick churned earth gouged and criss-crossed with chunky ruts which bore the imprint of rubber tyres. Speeding around and around the expansive enclosure were helmeted figures mounted astride slim two-wheeled conveyances, seemingly seldom in contact with the ground, and half the time flying from inclined or perpendicular planes at velocities that made Flashsatsumas feel faint.

“Oh!” exclaimed Mini-Flash Juniper, by contrast. “Bicycles!”

“Whatever will they think of next?” asked Miss Ugly, shaking her ringleted head.

The man at the entry-gate looked at Mini-Flash Juniper extremely guardedly. At first she wondered whether he might have been talking to workmates affiliated with the roller-rink or swimming pool or passenger train or food-court or all four, but then finally noticed she’d been as forgetful as ever, and hadn’t changed out of her sleeveless powder-grey membrane with tiny skintight shorts after her jog.

“I can remember when this place used to have standards,” the man sniffed at length, but grudgingly let Mini-Flash Juniper through and showed her where to get ready.

Whether the spectral holidaymakers populating this nonexistent camp were capable of either dying or going to Heaven would have been a tricky enough matter for even the most seasoned metaphysicist. Nevertheless, one such phantom on beholding Mini-Flash Juniper in membrane and cycling helmet and elbow-and-knee pads might have summarily ended the academic debate, since a mere look at him would have been enough to tell he’d just done both.

“You came!” sang C.R., fairly dancing over to her.

Mini-Flash Juniper grinned. “Flashsatsumas and my other friend are just going to watch,” she added, indicating the hoardings on whose opposite side were the pair. This arrangement had suited both just fine, and the man had looked at the containment-suit of one and the pink nineteenth-century tutu of the other as to say that that was just as well.

Juniper and C.R. went over to where the bikes were. “Now you’ll have to go easy on me, because I’ve only ever ridden one of these things once before,” she told him.

The boy laughed as though every moment he spent in Mini-Flash Juniper’s presence worked in him some new delight.

“Do you ever stop teasing?” he exclaimed. “I’ve already seen how you keep us boys on our toes. If it was National Pentathletes, I bet I’d be the one asking you to go easy!”

“You’re very sporty, C.R.,” Mini-Flash Juniper commented. “That must be why I like you.”

The little boy beamed back.

“Calvin,” he introduced himself, feeling more grown-up than he’d ever done.

END OF CHAPTER ONE