My Cardboard Balcony

On Bastille Day by Belinda Roddie On Bastille Day, we danced under the French flag, listened to the fireworks, and drank greedily as we collapsed on a bench beside the bay. All seven of us stank of cigarettes. None of us really had ancestry from France, save for Pierre, who was from Paris, and he was simply clad in a T-shirt and jeans, while Sam and Drew wore berets and drew mustaches across their upper lips that covered their peach fuzz. I felt exhaustion grow on me like moss drooping from a tree. Pierre sighed. "So does your group of friends always celebrate this day?" This was not our story. This was his.

"Good heavens!" cried Sebastian. "What on Earth is all that horrid racket?" The noise that he was complaining about happened to be his twin daughter, Thelma and Velma, practicing playing their musical instruments for the first time. While Thelma twanged the strings of her guitar, Velma was huffing and puffing into an old silver flute that her mother had bought her, her face changing between red and purple as she attempted to make a sound.