This little piece was written in 2015 off a prompt of “dialogue about fireworks.”

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“Three left,” said Carl, weighing them in his hand. “Three nice little sticks of imitation dynamite. I’m just trying to decide where to put them so they’ll count.”

“Count for what?” said Donna, sitting down on the top step above him.

“Lots of noise,” said Carl. “More noise than just three little pops. I want to start a good honest ruckus…if I can make one that won’t mean too much cleaning up afterwards.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked to his left at the long irregular line of saddle-horses switching their tails at the hitching-racks along the near side of the street. “If there was a way of landing them under just one particular person’s horse, and sending it kiting out of town alone…” He juggled the firecrackers in his hand vindictively. “I’d almost like to stir up the whole bunch of them.”

Donna shook her head. “The punishment wouldn’t be worth the crime. Not unless you prefer a tarring-and-feathering for the finale tonight instead of the bonfire.”

“Or that crowd over there,” said Carl, continuing to juggle. A sea of buggies and buckboards were hitched all around the schoolhouse across the bridge. Lights were just beginning to show in the schoolhouse windows as the sun approached its setting, and the sounds that drifted over to them were the tap of dancing feet and the high hum of Uncle George Hornby’s fiddle blundering around like a good-natured blue-fly. “Now that’d make a commotion. With the right aim…there’s a perfect spot to land them, right between the wheels of the minister’s buggy.”

“The minister’s buggy,” said Donna, “is the most expensive thing he owns, and it wouldn’t be fair to make him get it repaired when he has a hard enough time making ends meet. Besides, it wasn’t his fault.”

“What wasn’t his fault?” demanded Carl.

“Oh, I don’t blame you. It’s only natural to want to bust up something like that dance because you got left out of it.”

She spoke quite calmly. When one is just-barely-sixteen and still wears one’s hair in a long schoolgirl braid with a ribbon on it, one is privileged to speak candidly to sulky good-looking boys several years older.

“I was not left out,” said Carl. “I was deliberately snubbed. I’m sitting here planning riot and insurrection because Susan Winters practically—practically—promised I could take her to the Founder’s Day dance, and then today she walked by without looking at me and went with that long-legged Sonny MacDonald instead.”

“I never saw anything wrong with his legs,” said Donna.

“The ideal place for these infant explosives,” Carl went on, looking across at the schoolhouse as if he hadn’t heard her, “would be right through one of those windows—if I could only be sure of their lighting on the right person’s nose.”

“Whose nose—his, or hers?” said Donna. “You could always ask Sonny out back afterwards and punch his—but I wouldn’t; he’d make mincemeat out of you. And if you ask me, I don’t think Susan’s nose would be much of a loss to anybody.”

Carl turned his head and stared at her.

“But like you said,” Donna went on hastily, “you haven’t got much chance of hitting either with a firecracker. And you’d have to pay for the window, and the burns on the floor, and somebody’d probably upset the table with all the pies on it, and Grandma Weatherby would have a spell—”

Carl gave a combined choke and snort which was a laugh that had taken him unawares. “From the way you’ve got it all pictured, you sound like you appreciate a good ruckus yourself!”

“Sure I do,” said Donna, “but at the right place and time.”

Carl grumbled something unintelligible, and continued to look moodily across the bridge, shuffling the three firecrackers like a deck of cards. Donna gave a little sigh. Sometimes one gets tired of being just-barely-sixteen and wearing a ribbon in one’s hair…

One might as well take advantage of it. She said tartly, “Were you really jealous of Sonny, or are you just mad because you’ve got no one to go to the dance with?”

Carl dropped one of the firecrackers in the dirt, and turned to look up at her in astonishment before even picking it up.

“I don’t like being made a fool of,” he blurted angrily. “Everybody knew Susan was supposed to be going with me, and now they know she threw me over at the last minute.”

“So you’re sitting over here thinking about spooking people’s horses because you hate looking ridiculous.”

He glared at her for a minute, and then got up. “Just for that,” he said, “I’d be willing to go over to that dance right now.”

Donna’s eyes drifted to his hand. “And the firecrackers?”

Carl grinned suddenly. “If you’ll walk over with me, you can tell me where to plant ’em.”

Donna sprang up. “And I know, too,” she said. “The place for those is right in the bonfire, at the exact minute the mayor finishes making his speech.”

“That’s not bad,” Carl admitted, his eyebrows going up. “But I’ll bet a whole lot of people have already had the same idea.”

Donna laughed, and her eyes danced. “Sure they have. It’ll be great, won’t it?”