I take the cereal box out of the shipping container. Frigid Flakes. It’s a dark blue box with a person wearing a light blue parka pulled over their head, covering all of their features. Their skin is pale and their beady, black eyes stare out from the hood opening. The person holds a fishing rod in one hand and a spoon in the other. A box of the cereal hangs from the person’s hook. These are supposed to be dusted in white sugar, but every time I’ve opened a box of them, they are more than gently dusted with something not right. Coated is more accurate and the coating doesn’t smell sweet. It’s not sugar, but at least it’s not arsenic. Not bitter enough. Maybe it’s a little bit of dirt mixed with something else. Coal dust cut with sugar and flour because the factory that makes them ran out of the proper ingredients and couldn’t order more?
It doesn’t matter. The dust comes off when the flakes are drenched in milk or water, but that’s when you notice the little black specks floating in the mix. The flakes retain their crunch regardless of how long they’ve been sitting in the milk. I still don’t know what the black stuff is, but I’ve found it in every box I’ve ever had. I turn the box over.
The off-shelf date was four months ago.
This is one of the freshest boxes I’ve seen in my store.
I pull the other boxes off the shelf and stick this one in the back, then re-stack the boxes on the shelf. When I’m done, it still looks half empty, but that’s normal.
“Scarcity creates desire,” Boris says. “Desire creates sales.”
I’m not sure if that’s true, but Boris is my boss and when I’m on the clock, I’m at work. And when I’m at work, I’m doing what he says. That was the agreement I made.
I flip the empty cardboard box over. A quick slit with my pocketknife and the box collapses flat. I tuck it under my arm, exit the aisle, and walk through the store.
My steps are quiet. There’s no sound in the shop. No one else is in the store. My right ear rings softly, but after a couple of seconds, it gets louder until I wince, and then it sinks back to a soft buzz. I tuck my thumbnail into my teeth, looking for debris from last night. There’s only a little bit of gunpowder, but it’s enough to be soothing.
I hum softly to tame the buzzing in my ear. My head bobs off-beat to the sound. I stop next to an end cap, peeking down the aisle to find an empty spot. My voice cracks, interrupting the tune. I clear my throat, then start humming again.
There’s never any music playing during the night. Boris turns it off before even the last customer leaves because “They won’t notice there’s no music when they’re talking to the cashier. If they notice there’s no music, someone’s not doing their job.” He says it’s better to turn off the music a couple of minutes before closing anyway. You don’t want people coming in when you’re getting ready to close and music makes people feel welcome. At five til seven, customers aren’t welcome anymore. Then he says, “Since I know music makes people comfortable, you can’t have it at night. Music doesn’t stock shelves; it puts you to sleep in the back room. Scarcity makes desire, yes, but scant makes desperation, and satisfaction makes you lazy.”
Only half of the store lights are on to save on power and even the heater is allowed to go cold. My fingers are ice when they touch my lips. I hold them there for a moment longer just to breathe on them, then I keep walking. While scarcity is normal in the store, it’s still hard to tell where the right empty spots are in the dark.
Finally, I spot a hole in the aisle four soup cans. I return to the backroom to grab another box from shipping.
The loading room smells of smoke and bits of it catch in the light. I toss the compressed box I have into the stack of broken-down boxes by the back wall. The storage room is even colder than the storefront and has even fewer lights on. Two. One over the trash and one over the small shipping area to read box labels. Outside the windows, the world is nothing more than a void eaten by the night.
There are no lights outside the back of the store.
Well… None that work. There had been one right outside the door, but the light bulb died six months ago, and Boris isn’t interested in changing it. “No one uses the back door at night anyway and by the time you leave, you’re going out the front when morning shift gets in. We’re not wasting the labor costs on something that won’t change the work,” Boris says. He’s very practical like that. If it is not something that will affect the store’s income in a positive manner or the productivity of the staff, he doesn’t want to spend money on it.
Papa is also very practical and so is Aleks. Calculating possibilities, the future, investments, harm. It’s why Aleks is in Sumy right now and I’m still in Nide. There is no extraordinary future for me in Nide; it’s nowhere, but I like this sort of quiet. Thinking about tomorrow or next week or next month is pointless when there is so much going on in front of me all the time. It might not seem like a lot when I’m standing in a grocery store at two in the morning stocking shelves, but there is a lot to consider in what you can do with nothing.
I look over the stack of boxes, reading over the marker messages on the side to discover their contents. I turn around to assess the room. I know I will not find any other boxes. Everything we have is stacked in this corner, but I still survey, thinking maybe the box I’m looking for got lost somewhere. Symon squats in the darkest corner of the back room. His cellphone screen lights up his face while the red end of a cigarette ignites when he inhales.
“Symon, have you seen the soup?” I say.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even pretend to see me.
“The cans are looking scant, Symon.” I look over the boxes again, getting closer this time. I take out my cellphone and flick on the light. It’s not until the fourth time that I go over the same box on the right that it registers in my head that’s what I’m looking for. “Found it!” I say. “Thanks!”
I slip my phone away and grab the box.
The end of Symon’s cigarette lights up again.
“Be careful with that,” I say, “could blow up any moment. That’s what hot stuff tends to do, you know? Like me.” I pause in front of the door that leads back to the storefront to see if Symon’s going to say anything, but the pause isn’t long when I know he won’t. I could go on for hours about fire and explosions and which element combinations will lead to the quickest heat build-up leading to the biggest explosion—but he wouldn’t say anything. I could tell him about the minute scent of petrol that if you pay close attention to, you’ll smell it in the backroom, something like dirt and lots of water and even the mild scent of vegetable like in vegetable oil. If you smell that, there’s a little bit of spilled gas, but not enough to be a gas leak yet and you should be careful putting out your cigarette on the floor. I’ve tried sharing my hobby with him before, but he’s never paid me much mind. Even when I was mixing nitromethane with erythritol or a little bit of gunpowder, he wasn’t interested in the outcome.
I know the camera never really captures the explosions well, but on that one, you can still see the green ring if you look really close at the smoke before it goes boom.
That’s the worst part about what I do: everything is a one-shot. If you want to see what you’ve made, you have to pay attention, be in the moment and if you’re not, you’ll miss everything beautiful.
I return to the storefront and walk down the aisles until I’ve reached the soup. There are only ten cans. The box I’m holding has gotten much heavier by the time I put it down, the cans rattle against each other from how the box slips out of my grip. I look around to see if anyone’s there, but it’s just me.
Working at night will do that, sometimes. Every small sound in the shop could be a stray cat or a rat or a ghost. I’m sure that there are ghosts in this store for how long it has been standing. In fact, I’m most certain one of the previous employees haunts this place.
Thinking about it, I touch the back of my neck. Chilly air sneaks under the metal loading gate. The cold moves across the cement and comes up through the bottom of my boots and wool socks, chilling my toes next. Cold air can be a vicious beast, you know? Pulling at your ears until they sting, deepening the color of your face without pause, and nipping at every bit of skin, regardless of whether you’re wearing a jacket or not. Actually, sometimes the cold is meaner if you’re wearing a jacket and it plucks through the cotton-like tiny needles, digging for your bones.
I empty the box, crush it, and bring it to the pile by the door. I forgot to look at the shelves before coming back in, so I’m not sure what I need to grab next. I stop at the exit with my foot in the door. Symon’s phone still lights his face in the corner. The red dot at the end of his finger seems brighter. “Did you see—” I say, but stop.
Symon flicks his finger over the screen and the colors of the video he’s watching reflect in his eyes. I smile toothily. My tongue runs over the bottom of my lip, then I bring my fingers to my mouth, checking under my fingernail with the edge of my tooth again, looking for anything left behind. When I’m done with that finger, I move on to the next one.
I hope he’s watching my latest video. It capped at twenty-nine views the last time I checked it. That’s the best one of my videos has ever done. Soon enough, everyone in Nide will have seen my work. I’m waiting for the day when Symon admits to watching them and then he will say, “This is impressive. How did you do it?” and I will say, “You think so? This is one of my favorites, honestly.” And Symon might be a little starstruck, as people tend to be in front of celebrities, so he will not be sure if he can even say yes, but after a moment, he will say, “Let me buy you a drink, friend, then you can tell me all the details.” With a smack to my back, Symon will laugh. I will laugh. Then I’ll say, “I will do you better than that: I will show you!”
That day will be the same day everyone in town cannot stop talking about me. I will find a never-ending stream of people proud to say my name.
“That is my neighbor, Jan.”
“I went to school with him.”
“I thought about dating him once. I think I will think about it a second and third time.”
My name will just feel so good in their mouths. The best part of it will be when I come home and Papa finally sees me, he will wrap his arms around me and pull me in tight and say, “I heard that Symon spoke with you about one of your videos. I watched it too. I’m so proud; I cannot believe you are my son. Let me take you to work and show you off!”
I stay in the doorway, waiting for Symon to look up from his screen, but he still hasn’t. I clear my throat. He still doesn’t look up. I say, “what are you watching, Symon?” and lean forward. Symon still says nothing. “Must be something good,” I say.
Symon mashes his cigarette’s butt into the cement floor, then leaves it there. He slips his phone into his pocket and steps out of the dark corner. His feet drag, making a sound as they move across the floor. He walks past me and into the single toilet bathroom beside Boris’s office. He leaves the door open and the light off. Seconds later, he’s pissing. He comes back out while the toilet’s still flushing, then squats back in the corner. He takes his phone out and picks up his cigarette. The end lights up weakly as he sucks in.
“You know, Symon… I’m going to blow up someday.”
“I know,” Symon finally says without looking up at me. “Make it sooner rather than later, yeah?”
I laugh and rub the back of my neck as I return to the floor.
I know my shift is ending when the sky gains some color again. The sun isn’t up yet, but it’s peeking over the horizon. It won’t be long before the sky is bright, so I have only a limited amount of time to shoot my next video. As the clock winds down, I’m antsy, pacing aimlessly down the store aisles as I wait for Boris to get here to unlock the door and dismiss us.
The key jingles the lock. The door pushes open. “Good morning, Boris,” I say.
“What did Symon do tonight?” Boris says.
“He watched me well,” I say.
Boris grumbles, then says, “good night.”
Symon says nothing.
I put on my parka and leave the store. Polina, my Vespa, waits for me in the parking lot. I sit on her. Phone in hand, I check the stats on my newest video. It is up to thirty-three views! I trade my phone for my Vespa key. “Did you see that, Polina?” I ask. “We’re nearly going viral!” She growls meekly as I press my foot to the gas. We speed off; she knows we have work to do.
It’s a thirty-minute drive from the grocery store to my usual spot and I have to walk another ten minutes off a trail to get to the clearing in the trees where I like to shoot. I park Polina off the side of the road, tucked behind a couple of bushes. I pull my bag over my shoulders and pick up the collapsible tripod from under my seat. Most of the snow around my blasting spot is gone and all that’s left underneath is the dirty ground, darkened by more than a couple rounds of explosives. There are no trees left very close to the blasting site. I chopped a couple down to avoid lighting them on fire. That happened once.
I set my backpack down in the blasting spot. It acts as a dummy while I walk around with the tripod. I usually place it in the same spot, looking to make the shot symmetrical with trees in the background framing where I’ll sit. I know the trees don’t move, but still, sometimes they look like they’re in a different place. I extend the tripod legs as much as I can, then clip my phone to the mount. I access my phone’s camera and use that to find the correct frame.
Orange lights up behind the trees like its own small explosion. Through the camera lens, the warm colored lines streak through the purples, pinks, and blues of twilight. I like the trees on the east side behind the back of the camera better. I don’t dislike the summer for the shorter nights because it is much harder to create explosives in complete darkness, but the added daylight makes it harder to make a video that stands out like it should.
My ear’s ringing again. I dip my head to the side and shake it a little in an attempt to get rid of the sound. The ringing causes me to wince. I take extra steps to make the snow crunch under my boot, letting the sound be the extra lullaby to put the ringing to sleep again, at least for a little while.
The ringing subsides. I return to my bag and sit on the ground beside it. I shuffle through a couple of bottles marked with numbers, instructions, and shorthand names for what’s inside. As much as I would like to just sit and experiment on the spot, I don’t have the time. The sun is my clock and when time is this short, I cannot play around and shoot. If it weren’t for the thirty-three views on my newest video, maybe I could’ve played around tonight, but with momentum like that, I know I need new content. If someone left a comment on one of my videos, it would be the greatest thing ever. Even my best friend has never left a comment on my channel. Honestly, I do not think he even watches at all. The last time we spoke of it, he said, “Jan… It’s dangerous. What is the purpose, even? Come to Sumy. There are many jobs here you could have,” and when I asked him if there was room for this sort of thing in Sumy, he said, “You probably do not want to set off bombs in Sumy.”
“Then why would I want to go there?” I said.
“To get out of Nowhere.”
My chest is tight and my heart pounding as I place each jar of ingredients on the ground. I flop onto my butt. With the first jar in hand, I unscrew the lid. I don’t have to bring it to my nose to catch the strong smell. It burns the outside of my nose. The dryness of the air doesn’t help. I lid the jar again.
Did you know that the smell of something can tell you how big the explosion will be? Sometimes, it can even tell you what color it will be. Though chemicals don’t actually talk to you, if you close your eyes and smell the compound, the colors will light up behind your eyelids and you can almost see a small cloud like you’re playing an explosion before it happens. If it’s hard to see from the smell, then if you dip your finger in and press that little bit to your tongue, you should definitely see something. You just have to be careful with the compounds. Too much of some of them and you’ll burn your tongue. The last time I did that was a couple of years ago. I don’t remember the name of the compound, but I could tell you immediately from the smell of it if you put it in front of me. Back then, I got too much on my finger, I wiped it on my tongue, I couldn’t taste anything on that side of my mouth for thirteen months.
The contents of my bag are laid out on the blasting spot. Three jars with compounds, a box of matches, and a roll of twine. I pick up my bag and take it over to the tripod. I check the clock on my phone. Then the battery. Only 30% left. That should be enough. From the front pocket of my bag, I withdraw a pair of thick, round goggles. The lenses look copper on the outside and dim the light from the inside. Explosions may not be as true through them, but they also protect me from blindness at least. I put in a couple of earplugs. My goggles slide over my short, wavy hair, flattening it to my crown. I then trade my winter gloves for a protective glove. Before I put it on one hand, I tap the ‘record’ button on my phone. Once the light confirms I’m rolling, I step back and wave.
“Hello, Boomers!” I keep stepping back, glancing over my shoulder a moment to check for my blasting site. My attention doesn’t stray too long from the camera though. “How are you feeling this morning? I’m good, thank you. Do you know why? It is because I have been thinking of that last blast we did together. Number thirty-seven, yeah? I did like the green that came in the smoke. Watch the video again in slow motion. There’s a green tint to the smoke and along the outer edge of the blast, like it’s radioactive. Though, I wish there had been a little more glow. I think if I’d put a little bit more of ingredient two in, there might’ve been more.” I stop walking when there’s dirt under my feet instead of snow. “I know you’re wondering about the ingredients, but I can’t tell you. Sorry. Even if I say this is for ‘educational purposes only,’ I do not think that is seen as a ‘good enough reason’ to share for certain people. Then…” I lean in, pressing my fingers to the side of my lips. “People might come looking for me, talking to me, asking how I got certain things. The less certain people know about me, the better.” I wink, turn to my gear on the ground. Pause. Turn back to the camera. “Not you, though.”
I look up at the sky. The orange and yellow are spreading further into the purple and pink, devouring the night sky too eagerly. “Sorry. Today’s show might be a little harder to see. I took a little longer getting here this morning. My legs are stiff.” I laugh. “I’m tired, but I have been waiting all day to do this with you! I just wish it was a little darker, you know? But… let’s get started anyway before it gets worse.”
I pull my goggles over my eyes, sit down on the ground, and open each jar. The smell of the chemicals is easy to pick up immediately. It’s almost overwhelming, just being so close. Every bit of mild aroma fills my nose before I can even pick a jar up. The base jar has clear liquid in it, maybe one-third of the way full. I pick it up and move it to the front and center of me.
The next jar I hold is tin and has a dark powder in it. Without much light, the powder might look black, but it’s really a kind of purple-blue thing when in direct light. I sniff it first. Then I lick the tip of my finger and stick it in the dust. Gently, I rub the crystals off on my tongue. I wait as saliva mixes with the powder. My throat constricts a little. I swish my tongue around. It glides along my lower lip, leaving a slight tingle in its wake. My eyes flutter closed and as the burn soaks in, I gently rock back and forth. I pinch some of the purple dust with my gloved hand and sprinkle it into the clear liquid jar.
At first touch, each purple crystal causes the clear liquid to bubble and heat. Fumes raise from the jar as it gets warmer. I slowly sprinkle in another pinch full, then swirl the jar around. The liquid turns darker and opaque, but not totally so. I put the lid on the purple dust, reach for the next jar. Should be a bottle. Pause.
A laugh comes out. “Sorry.” I knock myself in the head with my palm. “Forgot the palate cleanser.” I go back to my bag with the purple dust jar in hand. I trade it for a bottle of homemade Spotykach: vodka, spice, and rowanberries. I take the cap off and take a swig while walking back to my blast sight. My lips are pressed to the bottle before I’m even sitting again. My mouth comes away with a loud, POP.
“It’s a good break.” I sigh. “You know, if you don’t clean the palate between ingredients, it can be harder to tell what you’re looking at exactly.” I take a quick shot. The blueberry silences the soft tingle that had still been on my tongue. I put my finger up, just so the audience will know to give me a moment. I wipe my mouth with the back of my arm. “It’s not impossible, but it can be harder. More surprising when you light up, you know? And that’s not always a good thing when you’re dealing with chemicals. It’s like going to make bread, but instead of using flour, you use lots of baking soda. You don’t know what’s going to come out of your oven. All you know is that you don’t want to eat it. Granted, I would be surprised if the oven didn’t blow up when you put a loaf of baking soda in it.” I laugh again. The bottle comes to my lips to silence me. I’m a little light-headed, a little warm, a little snappy. It’s not the alcohol. It’s the morning vibrations of the coming boom.
I set the bottle down and exchange it for a new jar. The lid’s on the ground. There’s a kind of yellow goo inside. I tip the jar to show off its thickness. “You want to know what this is?” I look through the jar at the camera. I lower it. My lips pull into a wider smile. I shake my head. “Can’t tell you. Sorry. I could get in… eh, moderate trouble… if a certain person found out I had this and where I got it from. But I will tell you I found it a couple of days ago and the second I had it, I wondered what it would look like if I put it into this solution. It has a very nice burn to it, even just putting my fingers in it.” I slide my fingers into the jar. My nails barely touch the top of the liquid, but the heat pulses all the way to my palm. Blood rushes through my left arm, quick to the elbow like tickling under the skin, then to my head. My chest is tight, but my heart races. “You know that feeling you get when something is strong and big and threatening? It’s like someone walking into the bar, tapping you hard on the shoulder, and saying, ‘let’s go outside and fight’ right before they punch you. That’s what this feels like.”
I dip my fingers into the goo. It doesn’t stick as easily as the crystal powder, but a little bit slicks the tips of my fingers. I bend my fingers to scoop it. Still, it falls off, leaving a minor amount of residue behind. I stick my fingers in my mouth. My tongue is quickly covered by a fuzzy, soft burn. I close my eyes, reaching for my bottle of vodka as the heat escalates. My lips smack and my throat is drier than before, getting a little tight. “Yeah.” The word comes out more like a cough. “The two of them… together…” I bring the bottle to my lips. A fast drink, I swish it around before swallowing. “It’s going to be something nice. This blue and yellow… What we want is something unique, yeah?”
I withdraw a small, metal spoon out of my pocket and dip it into the yellow goo. The edge carves out some of the element and holds onto it. I set the yellow goo jar down and bring my attention to the main solution jar. Slowly, I lower the spoon into the liquid mixture, letting it taste the yellow goo bit by bit. “I know, I know I’m going a little slow, but you need to know—if you get too excited, too impatient, and move too fast, things get tricky. You overfeed a combustible solution, its heat gets hot fast and when it gets hot fast, it explodes too fast and no one likes getting hot and exploding too fast in any situation that I know. It’s definitely not a good time here. Maybe I’ll show you what I mean some time.”
I have remnants of that memory as blotchy, red scars down my left arm and thigh. It’s a good thing I like to wear sweaters because I never want my Mama to worry and I think if she saw some of those blotches, she would very much worry. She thinks I’m going to get hurt doing this. Everyone does, but I know what I’m doing.
The more I feed the spoon into the purple liquid, the thicker the goo becomes until there’s nothing left to give.
I withdraw the spoon from the jar and wipe it on my pants. I slip the spoon back into my pocket, grab my vodka, and take a swig. My eyes land on the camera. My bottle’s in the air. I smile into it.
The best companion for an explosion is a kiss.
Our lips part with a loud pop. “Are you ready for this? It’s going to come fast. Don’t blink.”
I take out my pocket knife and use it to cut a hole in the jar lid. I return all the remaining ingredients to my bag so they can’t catch on what’s coming. My tongue smacks against my lips again. It’s still burning from that little bit of yellow goo I tasted. I take another sip of vodka. I turn on my toes. It’s definitely the snow under the ice that’s making me walk a little less straight than I mean to.
Back at the jar, I sit on my legs and tuck a line of twine through the hole in the lid. “Now, you don’t want to close the jar too early. You might not feel it where you are, but the jar is warm in my hands and it’s making a lot of fumes already. If you cover the opening for too long, the heat will build faster, the air thicker and fuller, and it will blast, probably while you’re still holding it. Then you could lose your hands and it becomes a bloody mess and we don’t really want that… But we’re ready now.”
Once standing, I twist the jar lid on. I grab the box of matches from the ground next and pull one out. “On the count of three. Odyn, va… try!” I drag the match across the emery and toss the lit match down on the twine.
The jar’s fuse lights. I’m running fast and take cover behind the nearby rock. My hand grips the vodka bottle’s neck, hard. I lean out from behind my tree to watch the flame eat the wick. It climbs into the bottle and warms the darkened liquid. The fuse disappears into the purple mixture and goes darker, deeper.
Instantly, the jar fills with black fumes. A spark of orange cracks through the darkness like a bolt of lightning, and in the next second, boom! The glass jar explodes into a cloud. First, it’s black, then purple, then it combusts into a bright orange-red flash that releases more purple clouds into the sky rapidly. The clouds have a glow around them. Maybe it’s just the sun. Maybe they’re catching and reflecting the sun’s beams, but the rising purple clouds glow against the sky and the snow. My ears ring. The right ear is still worse than the left.
A roar from the initial explosion rolls through the trees, echoes through the sky, and comes back at me like a cloud of rolling thunder. The energy of it builds inside of me, much like the fumes in a closed jar, I can’t contain myself. The heat is under my skin, it makes me bounce where I stand, it fills me with energy even when I have worked all night. I pump my fist into the air with a high-pitched, woo!
A small patch of weed roots by the blasting spot burn in a fresh fire beside where the bomb had laid, but without anything to feed it, the fire dies quickly.
I’m laughing. I lift my goggles to my head and approach the blast site. A few stray pieces of glass lay at the bottom of the tree I was behind. Some might have flown past me, but they’re lost somewhere in the snow and I’m not sure I care too much about finding them right then. The tripod lays tipped over. “When did that happen? Hopefully, you saw that.” I turn it upright again. “It was beautiful, yeah? Purple. You mix it with the yellow goo and you get a purple glow. If you have any guesses for what I put together, tell me in the comments below! You could blindfold me and give me this stuff and I would know what it is. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to get, you know?” I pick up the camera tripod and carry it over to the blasting spot. My heart’s still racing, throbbing in my ears, adding to the continual, gentle ring. I turn so I’m in front of the camera and the blasting spot is behind me. “I think we could actually get something pretty big… That is… I’m planning to show you guys something pretty huge if I can make it happen, okay? So, get ready for that. Until next time though.” I press my forefinger and middle finger to my head and bounce it forward in a straight line. “Boom, boom, boom, salute!”
I switch the camera off and dismount it from the tripod. Still holding it, I take a couple of pictures of the blasting spot, now with a little more spillage from the sun peeking over the trees. I play the video back to myself. I zoom in on the jar just as I drop the match in the video. The fuse lights. I slow the video down and watch the fire devour the fuse, sink into the jar, and change the composition of its contents. Thick, thick, thick. The clouds grow instantly. The slow-motion shows the glass stretching just before it snaps, elongating the moment of purple lightning as the dark clouds are replaced with hot, orange bursts of energy… and then it goes, “boom.” I take a screenshot and send it to Aleks in a text message.
Even with the sound muted from slow-motion, I still hear the roar deep in my ears, like the vibrations are stuck inside of me. Like the growl of a mystical creature, it's deep. I lick my lips again. I wipe them with my softly burning fingers. My hands are trembling; everything’s trembling and I can’t hold it in as I yell into the sky.
My phone nearly flies out of my hand. I grip it hard to compensate for my loose fingers.
Smiling, I turn back to where my bag is. The cold seeps in around. I remove my earplugs and pick up my tripod. The morning becomes quiet, all but for the reminder of the explosion. Still, my heart races with excitement, energy, power. Something I hope will infect everyone in Nide to have a better day. With my things collected again, I make my way back to my Vespa. My skin’s warm and sweaty by the time I reach the road. My shirt sticks to my skin. My face is hot, but my smile never fades. I start Polina and we go home.
