These Lights Are Much Too Bright

“You know you can’t start a fire without a spark,” Kayla said and I began laughing a little.

“Did you just quote Bruce Springsteen?” I asked.

“Yeah. I mean he only has the best song ever,” she smiled.

We—Jill, Kayla, Jane, Autumn, Ruby, Emma and I—were siting in a circle with pillows and sleeping bags strewn around in between and underneath us. It was a colorful rainbow that was surrounding us if you had a bird’s eye view of the sleeping bags and pillows. I wasn’t as close to them as I was to Jill, but we hung out every now and then together. We were almost a tightly knit group.

“But anyway,” Kayla continued on. “If there was no spark, there wouldn’t be a fire if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, because the tension is causing one intense fire between the two of you,” Emma took over in her British accent. It was kind of great that she still had it so in tact even after four years of living in the U.S. Most of us were kind of jealous of her British accent, but then again Autumn had a pretty sweet Aussie accent, too. The two of them were going places with those accent, not too mention with how pretty they both were and tall.

“Are you saying there’s a spark?” was all that I could manage trying to make sense of the nonsense that they were speaking of.

“Believe me it’s so obvious that he likes you, he’s just stupid and oblivious to it right now,” Jill said in almost a whisper.

There was a part of me that wanted to believe them and the words that were coming out of their mouths, but this was the problem every girl had in the world. Well, maybe not every girl, but I’m willing to bet. We always analyze things too much and skew it in our favor. There were plenty of times where I’d told my best friend that if she did this or that, that he might finally get the signal she gave me and that he would finally come around. But the truth is the guy either likes you or doesn’t and to me it was kind of obvious that Taylor did not dig me at all, in fact even if I gave him life’s biggest shovel he wouldn’t dig me.

“Thanks girls, but I’m not blind and sometimes the truth hurts,” I gave a weary smile to them.

“Ugh whatever, I’m prank calling him, mate,” Autumn said as she jumped over me to take the phone.

“No, you’re not!” I yelped, stealing the phone away, only to have Emma behind me in a jiffy and take it from my hands.

Autumn pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number she had found for Taylor on my phone. Taylor was obviously not listed in the phone books and such in order to keep his phone number private and away from fans, so all I could think about is how freaked out he would be when he gets a strange number on his caller ID.

“Hello,” I heard a faint answer on Autumn’s phone.

“I heard this was probably the biggest fruit loop of the world,” Autumn said in to the phone with a smile. He might not have known what she meant by fruit loop, but I certainly did. I’d gotten used to Autumn’s Aussie slang; it was basically fool. This was probably one of her least use slangs, but also the one most comprehendable to the English, non Aussie speaker.

“Uhh…sorry to dissappoint, but there are no actual fruit loops here,” Taylor replied, and we all had to contain ourselves from laughing out loud because she put him on speaker.

“What? No fruit loops? Boy we live in a fruity little world, I mean there so many health nuts nowadays…” she said. “I think you need to go check yourself in the mirror and make sure there really are no fruit loops in the house if you get what I mean.”

Then she hung up the phone.

“I think you just failed at prank calling Autumn, you foreigners are just so foreign.” I laughed going over and hugging her.

“Yeah whatever, it sounded a lot better than what you would have done,” she retorted. “I’m pretty sure your conversation would have sound like this.” And then she went silent showing that I wouldn’t have even been able to say a word to him if I had called.

“Burnt!” Emma yelped.

“I think I’ll get her some ice cream to heal the burn,” Ruby suggested.

“I think that might be a double burn because Nat, here has been eating quite a lot of ice cream nowadays,” Jane said.

“Hey, at least I’m not in my fat pants yet, I’ve still got my skinny on! Now what?”

“Fight me!” Jane joked.

“Sorry Jane, you’re just to plain.”

“Okay okay, you got me.”

“You know it!”

“How long do you think we’ll stay up?” asked Jill.

“Considering that it’s five in the morning, I think we might not sleep ‘til tomorrow night.”

“Sounds good to me,” Emma said.