Boo woke up early on Sunday morning, today was the day of Emma’s party, today was the day that she would be able to show off her moves on the ice that would rival those of Jayne Torvill, today was going to be fun.
Her dragon, unusually, was not on the floor by her bed. The floor was cold too, so he had probably been gone for a while. Boo rolled her eyes, ‘he is probably out looking for plump sheep’ she thought to herself.
Boo made her way to the kitchen where her mother was drinking tea, eating rich tea biscuits and reading the morning paper.
‘Morning Mommy’, Boo smiled and hugged her mother, ‘can we make cupcakes for the party today please ?’
‘Of course we can sweetie, what color should we make, pink, blue, green, tartan ?’.
‘Silly mommy, we can’t make tartan cupcakes, that would be funny, lets make pink ones with green icing.’
Over the next couple of hours, Boo and her mother made green cupcakes with pink icing and pink cupcakes with green icing, they tested them out, obviously, two each with a bug mug of tea. Then after one last review of the ice-skating video on youtube they walked to the rink, carrying the bag of cupcakes.
Boo was a little concerned about her dragon, normally he turned up when there is food around, but he had been gone for hours. Even the cupcake cooking had not attracted him. ‘Where is he’, she thought to herself, frowning a little.
They got to the rink slightly early, Boo rented some skates, pulled on her extra-thick socks and got her mommy to pull the laces as tight as she could without making her too cross-eyed. The ice had returned to the rink and the skaters were all chattering about the probability of another fireball turning the rink into a jacuzzi again.
‘They say that lightning never strikes twice’ said one.
‘Well my son has a degree in higher mathematics and he says that is rubbish’ said another.
Boo giggled to herself, her teacher had gone to great lengths to explain that the chances of something random happening was not influenced by previous events, so the chances of lightning striking in the same place a second time is exactly the same as it was for striking a first time.
Boo stepped out onto the ice and pushed away, gliding on one leg, then the other, skating with confidence around the ring, her mommy, who was once more on hot chocolate and photography duty looked on in awe. ‘Bravo, Boo, Bravo’, she shouted each time she passed, watching in amazement at the little tricks she was performing.
One by one the party guests arrived and joined Boo on the ice. One or two of the guests could skate reasonably well, but there was a awful lot of falling over and laughter. Boo helped those that were struggling with backward tows or simply pushed people along. At one time she led a six girl conga around the ice at great speed.
Emma, whose party is was, looked rather annoyed. She had deliberately invited Boo because she knew full well that she could not skate and everyone would laugh at her. Now Boo of all people was actually teaching James how to skate backwards. Boo was actually holding his hands.
Despite her wearing her cutest dress and despite her having her hair curled for the party, it was Boo that James was holding hands with.
Boo and her stupid pigtails.
Boo and her silly bobblehat.
Boo and her ridiculous blue pleated skirt and wooly tights.
Boo and her horrible pink backpack.
Boo and James holding hands.
James, the cleverest boy in the school.
James, the captain of the football team.
James, the best swimmer, the best skater, the best…
James holding stupid Boo’s, stupid, stupid hand.
‘Something has to be done’ she muttered.
Emma’s mommy blew a whistle and signaled that the pizza had arrived and that the children should come and get it.
Boo and James, still holding hands skated gracefully to the edge of the rink, Boo did a clever little pirouette to show off a little then they tottered on their skates to the pizza.
Handing out the pizza was a clown, Boo shuddered, Boo really, truly disliked clowns.
James was trying to drag her closer to the pizza but Boo was mortified and utterly rooted to the spot. There was nothing that was going to get her any closer short of a fireball exploding in the rink, but as we know the chances of that are tiny and not at all influenced by it happening previously just a few hours ago.
‘No, you go ahead, I’m not hungry’, she lied, just as her stomach rumbled giving the game away somewhat.
James let go of her hand and helped himself to three large slices of pizza and a big glass of cola. He sat next to Emma, who seemed to have noticed that Boo would not go anywhere near the clown and was grinning mischievously.
Boo wandered away from the table and headed back to the ice, she zoomed around the rink at top speed to try to find her mother, but she could not see her, presumably she was handing over the cupcakes or something. However, she did spot a very familiar pair of legs.
The legs, of course, belonged to her dragon, he was, as usual hiding. Dragons are terrible at hiding though and although his head was hidden really nicely behind a large drape, almost all of his body was easily visible, if you actually wanted to see him that is.
Boo hopped off the ice and tottered up to him on her skates. As she made her way over she grabbed a couple of dragon snacks from her pink backpack and held them out for him to inhale.
‘Yummy, strawberry granola, my favorite, thank you.’ The dragon, despite having many, many teeth did not chew the bars, he did not even remove them from the wrappers, they just disappeared. Boo wondered how he could tell what they tasted like, but decided that this question could wait for another day.
‘You look sad Boo, whats up ?’
Boo explained that she was afraid of clowns and that she had been holding hands with James and that now, she looked over her shoulder, ‘he is holding hands with Emma and Sammie too’.
‘Clowns taste funny, I do not like clowns either, ever since that jester in King Arthur’s court surprised me I’ve not liked them either.’
Boo looked at her dragon, ‘Can I ask you a question please’.
‘You just did, but you can ask me another as I am sure that you did not mean to waste a question like that’.
Boo smiled again, ‘Dragon, how old are you?’
‘Well I am not really sure, let me think about it’. The dragon started counting his claws, then crossing and uncrossing his eyes and then finally balancing on one foot and humming a very odd tune.
‘About twenty six’, in dragon years. ‘I’m not sure what that is in human years, but it might be a few more’
‘How many human years are in a dragon year ‘
‘One hundred and nineteen years, fifty nine days, thirty seven minutes and sixteen and a bit short of eleven seconds’.
Boo boggled, ‘you are over three thousand years old ?’
‘Well, yes, I am three thousand and…’
’98 years old’, finished Boo
It was the dragons’ turn to boggle, ‘Well done, that is some complicated maths and you did it all without standing on one leg and humming, I’m impressed.
Boo smiled to herself.
‘Ok we need to sort out that clown and also that James character needs to learn about loyalty.’
Before Boo could stop him, the dragon scroooomshed into the air and headed straight for the clown. Boo dived back onto the ice and positively sprinted in the same direction, hoping that the dragon was not going to actually eat the clown, but a little scared of what he might do.
The dragon got to the other side first, snatching up the clown so fast that nobody even saw it happen, with a swoop and a flick the clown was tossed like a rag doll into the middle of the ice rink where he slid gracelessly in a rather odd looking arc.
Emma and James, still holding hands stood up and raced to the ice to save the poor clown.
Boo meanwhile had jumped off the ice and was trying to stop her dragon before he did any real damage. The dragon however had been distracted, dragons love pizza and this dragon had just spotted an extra large, double pepperoni pizza with olives and extra cheese. If there is one thing that dragons love it is extra cheese. So luckily the dragon was way too busy inhaling pizza to worry about eating party guests.
Meanwhile on the ice Emma and James had reached the poor clown, he was rather dazed and confused and squirted James with water from his plastic flower on his lapel and tried to whack Emma around the head with a rubber chicken.
The dragon, having finished the pizza, including the box, the napkins and all of the plastic cutlery, turned his attention to the bottles of cola. He grabbed an open one and simply poured it straight down his throat.
‘Oh-oh’ thought Boo, not really sure if dragons could actually burp without belching fire. ‘Dragon are you OK ?’
The dragon seemed to be changing color rapidly and Boo recognised that things were about to get rather warm.
With a really, really, extremely loud ‘BUUUUUUUUURP’ the dragon doused the ice-rink in flames with predictable results. For the second time in less than 24 hours, the ice simply melted in the blink of an eye, the ice-rink once more turning into an over-size jacuzzi.
Emma and James, still holding hands, and the helpless clown simply ker-splooshed into the warm water.
Emma’s lovely curls disappeared, James squealed like a girl and the bemused clown’s makeup washed away which made him look rather sad.
All around the rink, on-lookers laughed at the hapless trio, Boo’s mommy, who it turned out had been drinking hot chocolate and exchanging cupcake recipes with the mother of another party attendee, had captured the ‘fireball strike’ on the rink on video, along with the resultant squealing from James and Emma’s straight hair.
Later that evening Boo and her mommy where sitting on the sofa, cuddling and watching the news.
‘And finally, it seems that lightning, or at least inexplicable fireballs, can strike twice. As seen on this YouTube video, which has racked up over three million views in the last two hours, the local ice-rink was hit by the second fireball in two days earlier today’.
They watched as James squealed and Emma, with a ruined party dress and dead straight pulled her hand from his on the national news. Boo and her mommy smiled to each other.
‘I never really liked James’ they said together….