Free In the Bag by Kate Klise Page B

wasn’t my imagination. She was different. Unlike my friends, she sounded alive. Awake. She was funny, which meant she was also smart. And she was polite, which meant she was also nice. Best of all, she seemed to like me. Me! ME! ME!!! Which, I admit, made me like her even more.
    I decided to reread the messages I’d sent her. Hell, I didn’t sound half bad myself. But it was easy to sound good in e-mail, especially if you were operating under the assumption that the person you were writing to liked you.
    Was that how it worked? You just find someone and agree to like each other—and then take it from there? Jesus H. Christ. This was so much more fun than wandering around like a pack of wolves with my dumbass guy friends who lived in the hopes of hooking up with a pack of willing she-wolves—preferably she-wolves with big boobs. It wasn’t even fun. It was boring and depressing.
    This was fun. Coco was fun.
    Thinking about her made me feel strangely energized, so I went for a walk. It was pitch-dark, but the city was still wide awake. Cabs raced past the hotel. A couple kissed on the hotel steps, the girl folded into the guy’s arms.
    How did people learn to do these things? And why weren’t there classes at school for stuff like this—the stuff kids really wanted to learn? Kissing seemed so natural for this couple. I wanted to watch them more closely but, Christ, I didn’t want to stare. So I kept walking.
    I crossed the street to a narrow, tree-lined park that ran the length of Paseo del Prado. A group of sketchy-looking guys had a card table set up with stuff on it. They yelled something to me in Spanish, which I didn’t catch. Probably for the best. Then they were waving something at me. One of the guys had matches. Were they selling drugs? The matches guy was lighting something.
    Oh, sparklers. They were selling sparklers!
    I hadn’t thought about sparklers in forever. My dad used to put sparklers on my birthday cake every year. We also lit them on New Year’s Eve. Dad had home movies of me running around in my Indiana Jones pajamas at midnight, holding sparklers over my head and squealing.
    Matches Guy was saying something to me. “Para tí, cinco euros.” He was waving a handful of five sparklers at me.
    Five sparklers for five euros? That seemed reasonable. I reached in my pocket and pulled out a five-euro bill. Matches Guy took the money and handed me four sparklers.
    “Uno más,” I said, pretty sure that was Spanish for one more .
    They laughed and pretended not to understand me—or the fact that I knew I’d just been rooked one sparkler.
    I should’ve moved on. I should’ve known better than to try to be a tough guy with them. Judging from their business hours and retail space, they were marginal characters with thuggish leanings. But I wanted my fifth sparkler, dammit.
    “Five for five,” I said. “Cinco por cinco.”
    They suddenly stopped laughing.
    “¿Qué dijó?” Matches Guy asked.
    “Cinco por cinco,” I said again.
    The guys looked at one another and took off running, leaving their card table and sparklers behind.
    I helped myself to a sparkler—I had paid for it, after all—and kept walking.
    Sparklers. This was perfect. I’d take them to Paris and give them to Coco when I met her at the train station.
    Or maybe I’d keep them with me and light one after we kissed for the first time. And if there was other stuff to follow, well, I’d light a sparkler to commemorate that. I wouldn’t have to tell her it was my first time. Or maybe I would. She sounded like a girl who’d be cool with that. I’d just have to play it by ear.
    I walked back to the hotel and took the stairs up to our fourth-floor room. I opened the door quietly, careful not to wake Dad. He was out cold. After slipping the sparklers inside my (or, really Coco’s) duffel bag, I lay in bed wide awake until the sun came up. I was equal parts exhausted and excited.
    This is what New Year’s Eve used to feel