BH

Burning Hearts: Ten

"You never learn." Tyson stated, slyly smiling.

Tash

“They’re coming, they’re coming!” I signaled Libby and we jumped behind the bush in front of my house.

Raie and Tyson walked up the steps if the front porch, coming back from Café Café, arm in arm. They exchanged some words, gave each other a quick hug, then Raie went in and Tyson started to leave. We jumped out of the bushes, grabbed his arm, and dragged him into the garden, to my playhouse from when Libby and I were little, which was now decked out with beanbags and a mini music system.

He gave a little yelp of surprise but let us guide him when he realized who we were, and we pushed him down onto a beanbag when we were inside, shut the door and turned our portable radiator on to keep us warm in the playhouse which was almost buried in snow.

Tyson looked at us questioningly but let us talk.

“You know about the little speed bump in Raie and Sapphire’s friendship, right?” Libby interrogated him.

“I believe it’s a little more than a speed bump, more like a mountain, but yes?” he said calmly.

“Well, we want to heal that crack in their friendship and you’re going to help.” I stated.

“Oh am I? What makes you think that?” 

“We see the way you look at Raie buddy, and this is going to help you get the key to her heart.” Libby said knowingly.

Tyson blushed slightly but nodded, his teeth shattering together.

“We have a plan but not everything is sorted yet, so we’ll keep you posted, but you have to swear you won’t breathe a word of it to Raie, okay?”

“Okay, I swear, now may I please leave?” He asked politely.

We nodded and opened the door for him, and I saw Libby and him exchanging a look, with her giving him her ‘You better not disobey me’ face, and him an agreeing face. Libby and I smiled at each other, then went inside as well, finding Raie studying in her and Libby’s room, and Sapphire practicing dialogue’s in hers’.

We then went to bed, agreeing to come up with any ideas we could, which I knew would be very little in my case, with my very ‘inside the box’ thinking, but lots in Libby’s case, since she was probably the most creative and imaginative person I knew.

Sapphire

I hadn’t meant to bump into Raie in hallway, nor did I know it was her. I was just in bad mood and whoever it was would have gotten some snide words from me. I wished the whole thing never happened- although it did allow me to release some anger- because Raie’s little confession had shaken my world.

I had been living in a sort of fantasy after Eric and I started to go out, with him as my Prince Charming and Raie as the evil witch, and when she told me Eric didn't particularly like me, he had just asked me out due to Raie’s instructions, it killed me.

 I ran to the girls bathrooms, determined not to let anyone see me cry; I was the one that never cried, until then. I cried and cried, hardly hearing everyone come and go, or the bell ringing, over my sobs. I did hear one person come in and ask me if I was all right, although I didn't really know the voice, but I just ignored it. All my emotion I had held in for the previous few months I let out, allowing the tears to cascade down my face. I had never been a crier, that was Raie’s position, and the very few times I allowed my emotions to take control was in my performances.

One thing was for sure, it had never been Raie who had made me cry before, and when I thought about it, she had been there to comfort me almost every time before then. It was actually a good feeling to just let everything go, and I felt a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders, although everything had just gotten worse.

I needed to talk to Eric, but that could wait. I had already missed half my class, so I decided to miss the rest of it, and I went to possibly my favourite place in the world, or at least in Dartley. I went to the Dartley Fairgrounds.

The Dartley Fairgrounds was the location where the Dartley fair and circuses had once been, decades before. It was deserted, and for some reason couldn't be developed into a housing estate. The reason I loved it so much was probably because it held so many memories, and was open like the pages of a book. Everywhere you went in the giant area there were little snippets of the past, engraved in. The spot I headed for was where the magic shows were always held.

It was probably the most beautiful part of the whole place, because it had been a permanent stand, made of bricks, which had now eroded and was covered in vines, and had huge hulking trees surrounding it. It was built in the early 1900’s and on the inside of the building- if it could be called that- was a wall which had the initials of all the performers to ever go there, carved in. When Raie and I were little, after coming for years to that spot, we decided our names deserved to go in, so we found a tiny bare spot, which was rare in the crowed wall, and carved a little ‘R.D’ and ‘S.G’ in.

As I went in to the building, which had somehow never been graffitied, but in a way preserved, my eyes went straight to the spot where Raie and I had sat nine years before, digging our parent’s keys into the wall, sitting on our backsides for hours on end.

“Done! I win!” Raie proudly said, putting her hand out for my new bracelet, which I had stupidly put up for the bet.

Regretfully, I slid it off and handed it to Raie. She put it on but seeing my face fall, she took it of and handed it back.

“It looks better on you anyway.” She said, making me smile.

I went back to work, finishing the G for Griffin, which was taking a ridiculously long time, and soon enough, I had a slightly wonky, S.G on the wall, full of initials of some of the greatest performers ever. I smiled and fell back, lying on Raie’s tummy. It felt so good to know that some part of me would always be there, be remembered, and that even when I was gone, would still be looked at one day by the next generation of adventurers.

We sat there for the rest of the day, satisfied with ourselves, and as it went dark, we shone our torches on the wall, as many people had done before us, and when the light hit all the carvings, they were reflected back onto the half-dirt half-concrete floor, somehow. We had learnt the trick from Billy, who we had discovered the place with on a hot summers’ day with when we were five and he was seven.

It was a memory I would treasure forever.