Summer Romances, Chapter One

Pat hit the brakes and Mini-Flash Juniper disembarked, in perhaps a little more of a flurry than was typical for her. This she quickly put down to never having clambered from the pillion of a supercharged quad-bike before. Behind her the tyres had etched the course of her breathless ride in a die-straight double-line stretching back to its vanishing-point, and Juniper as she composed herself felt the engine’s reverberations still sounding from the wide lonely landscape. There was damp sand under the toecaps of her school shoes, and white clouds raced above the sea.

She’d never met a boy who could handle motor transport as Pat did.

This she was sure of now, having just had her arms wrapped tight about him with the wind in her hair and the saddle of his steed throbbing underneath her.

Juniper’s lower lip wasn’t remote from her teeth as Pat himself jumped down.

“No sign, Jen,” he announced.

Mini-Flash Juniper nodded, still pensive. “I’m not comfortable with our having left a giant dangerous robotic snake free to roam around,” said she. “You took care of its van disguise and the town’s safer for that, but I won’t feel right until we’ve served out to it once and for all.”

“Must be hiding somewhere in the dunes,” Pat reckoned. “Don’t you worry, Jen. Could be we scared it off last time, but if there’s any more bother, we’ll sort it.”

It might have made Mini-Flash Juniper want to smile. Ask Pat to put a garter on you and you’d likely be there for the day, but when it came to trouble he was in his element.

He was nothing at all like a male Mini-Flash.

That was why instead of smiling, Juniper was wracked.

It had been on this very same stretch of coast. What sort of girl was she turning into?

The underlip was back where it had been, and Pat wasn’t oblivious. It would have been hard not to notice something which made him care for his Jenny twenty times the more.

Might as well admit it, mate, he said to himself.

“Pat,” began Mini-Flash Juniper tinily. “When you told me you and Maureen were staying for a fortnight like me…”

It had merely confirmed what she’d already known about where she was. The realm would rework and rewrite any detail if there was a chance it might keep her there.

“Well, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked you before,” was what she settled on instead. “But I’m so glad. I wouldn’t have wanted yesterday to be goodbye.”

Then at last she did smile, the quickening breeze raising brightness to her cheeks, while white clouds raced ever on above the sea.

Juniper was new to this, but she had a feeling it could only have happened on holiday.

Two ducklings as big as a boy and a girl waddled along the camp’s main plaza, frequently stopping for delighted children to pose with them for photos. Parents deploying polaroids and instamatics commented on how realistic the costumes seemed to be this year, while Maureen in her headband with the red and green lights enthusiastically drummed up a steady influx of attention. Watching were Flashsatsumas and another Mini-Flash Juniper, identical to the real one down to her blue school stockings.

“I’m probably to blame for introducing you to truth or dare,” Flashsatsumas said, “but I’m pretty sure Mini-Flash Juniper doesn’t spend her Saturday mornings playing it.”

“I’d like to be more convincing in these impostures, Flashsatsumas, only I don’t think my knickers go quite far enough up my bumcrack,” replied the counter-Juniper solemnly. “And as I’m let out so seldom in the first place, I’d just as soon not waste my freedom chucking a stupid netball around or getting up to her kind of Beavers’ Club – ”

“She doesn’t use that word either,” interjected Flashsatsumas.

“And she doesn’t easily forgive or forget,” concurred the counter-Juniper, in a rather different voice. “Which is why I suspect that after the last time, someone must have put in a word for me.”

Flashsatsumas grinned in acknowledgment of her small smile, which was the closest thing to gratitude he’d ever seen on that particular version of the face.

The ducklings meanwhile were still drawing crowds. “So how do you like your new look, Calvin?” quacked the fuzzy yellow female one.

“It’s…different,” quacked the male, his feathers both yellow and brown. “But in so many words, I can’t see it making National Pentathletes any easier.”

The procession had pulled up outside an open-fronted arcade. “We’re there, anyway,” called the counter-Juniper. “You two lovebirds get changed. It’s Flashsatsumas’s turn!”

Miss Ugly reverted to a fattish girl wearing ringlets and a tutu, so that Calvin became a little boy in singlet and shorts once more, and together with Maureen they went over.

“I guess I took your turn the last time we played,” conceded Flashsatsumas.

Even so, he hadn’t expected the counter-Juniper to dare him to hold her hand. Maureen blew a loud wolf-whistle, and Miss Ugly asked her to teach her how to do that.

Since the alternative for Flashsatsumas was a truth, he rolled his eyes and accepted.

“I’ll decide when you can let go,” continued the counter-Juniper smoothly. They were by the same love-tester machine where she might have been said to reside. Pushing her free hand down behind her she plucked a ten-pence piece, dropped it into the slot, then slapped her palm on the girls’ button.

“Hey, hang on a minute!” cried Flashsatsumas. The counter-Juniper was herself proof of the strange and sometimes hazardous powers contained in that hunk of old Earth-tech.

Flickery lights danced one by one over the nineteen female character-types still available.

Flashsatsumas wriggled in vain against the counter-Juniper’s second gender strength. He had a bad feeling about this.

What finally pinged was “DESIRABLE,” and Flashsatsumas even through his panic and foreboding thought it odd he’d never noticed that the girl for that particular cartoon didn’t have blonde hair like the others. None of the drawings were especially good, but there was something in the lips and the artist’s attempt at almond-shaped eyes which almost made him think of…

You could never quite catch the moment when those little pictures peregrinated to and from the frontage whence they glowed. Yet now there was only a one-word description.

The girl the cartoon had reminded Flashsatsumas of was standing right beside him.

END OF CHAPTER ONE