“Fires and Sparks:” a flash fiction story
When she sees him, it’ll be just like in the video…
Inez kicked her homework aside and turned on MTV. Ooh, Pat Benatar. Awesome. Was love really a battlefield? Hopefully she’ll never find out.
Roberto would be home soon from his Suncoast Video job. Big brothers made her wanna smash her Easy-Bake Oven, but for the past month, she left his GI Joe action figures alone, she didn’t argue with him over which radio station to play, and she let him win whenever they played Defender on the Atari 2600.
Today, it would all pay off. He was buying tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert at the Meadowlands, and he was gonna take her!
Every time Inez heard “Dancing in the Dark,” she dreamed of dancing with The Boss on stage like the girl in the video. What would Inez have to do to make him pick her from the crowd? The girl didn’t seem to do anything special, but she must’ve done something! If only Inez could figure it out. MTV better play the video again soon so she could study it.
Ugh, Billy Idol was gross. If they couldn’t play Bruce, why couldn’t they play a video by somebody cute, like Duran Duran? She could watch Simon all day…
The front door unlocked. Roberto entered.
Inez pestered him about the tickets. He got them. When were they leaving?
“I never said I was taking you,” he said. “These are for me and Gina.”
Shoot. His stupid girlfriend.
“No fair! You can go with Gina anytime. I want Bruce to pull me on stage so I can dance with him.”
Roberto laughed.
“What, you think I can afford front row seats? Besides, that’s just a video, dummy. He doesn’t really do stuff like that.”
“He’d do it for me!”
“Sure, because out of a hundred thousand people, he’d spot you, with your braces and pigtails, and swoon. Grow up.”
Inez growled.
“I hate you!”
She stormed into her room and slammed the door. Big brothers sucked!