firecracker // rodrick heffley

CHAPTER THREE

"Victoria, let's go!" Sylvia's thick Doc Martens slammed against the kitchen floor as she ran to get herself and her best friend out of Rodrick's party, which was quickly escalating into a situation to which they didn't want to be attached. 

"Via, where the hell did you go for fift-" 

Out of breath, Sylvia heaved, "Explain later. Leave now."

The two girls ran across the lawn and down the street, which had become packed with dozens of beat-up cars belonging to the teenage partygoers. Sylvia held her arm up high over her head with her fingers gripping her keys - from a bystander's point of view, she looked almost triumphant, but the sound of car locks being released would disprove any misinterpretation of the gesture. Victoria slid effortlessly into the passenger seat as Sylvia ran around the front of the car to the driver's side. 

Giggling uncontrollably and trying desperately to catch her breath, Sylvia started the car and peeled out of her spot on the side of the street.

"Say what you will about this town, but the street width is dreamy for parallel parking," Victoria commented. "So, the question remains."

Sylvia blushed.

"What did you do and where did you go?"

"That's two questions," Sylvia deflected.

"Shut up. I'm dying! I just talked to Löded Diper's bassist for almost an hour! Those three words don't feel right when I say them all together like that, but you did that to me! I deserve answers."

Sylvia sighed, feigning resignation. "We came here. In my car."

"Eww! Oh my gosh, tell me you didn't h-"

"Victoria! Let me finish," Sylvia shook her head, smiling in spite of the discomfort she felt regarding the implications of Victoria's assumption. "We talked about music in there, and I said that Suck It and See was the best album of this year so far-"

"True."

"-and he said he hadn't heard it, so we came here and listened to it all the way through."

"Via! That is so disgustingly cheesy, it makes me want to vomit!!" Victoria's words were, in contrast to their meaning, were infused with pure joy and excitement on Sylvia's behalf. "It's a nice meet-cute, Via."

Sylvia chewed her bottom lip.

"So obviously you're going to talk to him at school, right?"

"What, like, soon?" Sylvia's eyes widened.

"Yes, like, soon." Victoria mimicked her friend's tone. "You can't do something cutesy like that with someone you had never talked to and then go back to pretending he doesn't exist again."

"He intimidates me."

"He's just quiet."

"And, like, brooding." A sharp eye could see a near-undetectable swoon from Sylvia as she spoke. "I don't know that side of him."

ONE HOUR EARLIER

Sylvia held her trembling hand against the bottom of the steering wheel as she pushed the CD into the drive. She watched Rodrick immediately become hypnotized by the sound of the music. She had listened to the album countless times, but something besides music appreciation sparked inside her as her gaze fixed on the scruffy boy in the passenger seat of her car.

He didn't notice her staring.

---

"But you're basically married now."