We shouldn’t have been there, passenger seat of your commodore, worrying because what if our parents found out, because the clock in our minds, always ticking, and us all limbs and rushing, clumsy with want and hurry, the windows fogged, the car a geode cave of sweat and hope and silver, neither of us even noticing the light, the cast outside, until finally, laughing, still laughing, we sit up and maybe we are nervous then, the way we rub at the windscreen with our fists and see, oh—
Flickers.
Flames. A car, burning at the end of the lot. We whisper then, the teenagers we are. Should we? What if? Hurriedly pulling on our clothes. Hearts too fast. But there is no one out there, no one at all, and when our fear goes quiet, so do we, our fingertips resting on the cold glass. Dancing thing. We can only marvel at it, this strange arrival, this proof: that others were reckless too but the world kept on turning.
Jane O’Sullivan is an Australian writer. Her short fiction has won the joanne burns Microlit Award and Rachel Funari Prize, and been published in Island, Meanjin, Hex, Bull, Passages North, New Flash Fiction Review, and Okay Donkey.