{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK V} The Journey Across Water

Fireworks

15: Fireworks

I carried on being a Bad Girl for a couple of months. It was great fun.

Eventually, I decided my bedroom at Care Home Number Four wasn't big enough, so I took a sharpie and wrote all over the office walls in it, which was enough to send me on to Care Home Number Five.

At Care Home Number Five, I went through the same procedure as arriving at Care Home Number Four, and it worked just as well. You know, the whole, 'Hi! Nice to meet you! Let's prank the care workers!' type thing. The only difference was that I decided to go by the name Smoke this time. Not Embers. I dunno why. For a bit of variety, I guess. I like variety. Makes life more... uh... varied.

It was coming up to my tenth birthday, which, when you're nine, is pretty awesome. To think. Ten whole years. I'd almost been alive for ten whole years. Nobody expected you to like princesses, or even pink, when you're ten. Ten seems so much bigger than nine. You're leaving behind all the single digits, all the silly little girl stuff and going on to being ten. 10. One - zero. 1 - 0. Ten. People always think you're so much more important when you're ten. Even if, say, someone's one minute away from being ten, and someone's one minute older than ten, the person who's just ten will seem more important and more special and more grown up and more respected and I very much liked being respected than the person who's one minute off turning ten.

Turning ten is like that quote thingy... what is it again? Something about doing something tiny which is actually something big. Space? Astronauts? The moon?

What d'you say again? Thanks, Olivia. Yeah, 'One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind'. Turning ten is like that. It happens in a second, and you don't even have to move. But, when you're nine, it means so much.

I decided I had to do something incredible for my tenth birthday. Something awesome. Something that everyone would remember and respect, for years to come. They'd say, 'Remember what that girl Smoke did on her tenth birthday? It was real wicked' forever and ever and ever.

Hmm. Sounded good.

What was memorable? What was awe-inspiring? What just happens, then everyone simply looks up at thinks 'wow' whoever or how old they are?

I ran down to the homework room at Care Home Number Five, dragged over a chair (which made a horrible screeching noise on the floor as it went) then logged onto a computer. It wasn't my computer slot, but so what? I'd got there first. I typed in 'famous things'. But then it came up with a bunch of iPhones and X Factor judges and bananas, which wasn't really helpful.

So, I tried a different approach.

Faymeous thins in histoiree

I clicked in the first thing that came up - a list of important historical dates from some boring history magazine thing. Scrolling down the page, a bunch of even more boring dates shot up. Stuff like: The Anniversary of the Battle of Blah Blah Blah; Birthday of Emperor Imperial Snotface; Anniversary of the Signing of the Act of Acne... you know, all them really important dates.

Half way down, one caught my eye - 5th November, Bonfire Night.

Ooh! Ooh!

I'd learnt about that in school. A bunch of bad people tried to blow up a row of houses (they meant to do it in Parli, but got the wrong number) by hiding lots of gunpowder in the wine cellar, but then an eagle on a mount heard about it on Facebook, caught them, and set off some fireworks to celebrate. But then, one of the fireworks set a random guy called Guy on fire and today we still celebrate the Burning of the Guy.