The Jungle Ride, Chapter One

“Hey, look! The jungle ride!” sang out Maureen.

They’d just rounded the dodgems in the funfair’s roofed-under section, and it came as some surprise to Maureen’s seniors that she should have opted not for these. Her choice by comparison looked the sort of thing she’d have immediately dismissed as kids’ stuff.

“Give me a break,” grumbled the counter-Juniper.

“You’ve not been on it,” Maureen returned, as she waited in anticipation for the chain of little cars to arrive. “I have, every day. It’s ace!”

Even in the shade of a corrugated iron awning, the heat lent a verisimilitude to the jungle which its fibreglass rocks and paper creepers were still straining after. It was such a sudden leap of the thermometer from the previous day’s blustery brightness that Mini-Flash Juniper wondered whether the dimensional disturbance might have had something to do with it. At any rate, she and her other self had finally let Maureen talk them into ditching their stockings and sweaters and ties, which the younger girl regarded a hard-won triumph after a week of working at it. The very first thing she’d said to that Jenny had been about how daft she looked walking round in school uniform on holiday.

The cars were clunking to a halt and Maureen had scrambled into an empty one before they were still. Beside her the counter-Juniper squeezed, having been persuaded to give it a go. Pat meanwhile was frowning.

“Our Maureen?” he muttered confidentially to Mini-Flash Juniper. “And that’s her favourite ride? She’s up to summat. Come on, Jen. Better get to the bottom of this.”

Thus the pair of them took their seats behind the other two. “Nice to see you dropping the cavalier attitude, anyhow,” Mini-Flash Juniper remarked to her alter-ego.

The car gave a lurch and began to trundle off.

“I don’t like this,” added Juniper at once.

Flashsatsumas, Calvin and Miss Ugly were outside by the helter-skelter and big dipper, holding ice-cream cones that were trickling in little white streams to their fingers as quickly as they could consume them. What rainwater lingered on the tarmac was evaporating fast, contributing its moisture to the day’s pervasive humidity, but these climatic considerations didn’t seem to be responsible for Calvin’s case of the frets. At length Miss Ugly found a vacant bench and tactfully suggested they sit, he between Flashsatsumas and herself.

“It’s just,” sighed Calvin, as there was no need for either one to ask if anything was the matter. “Today, they’re not wearing their…”

Apparently it was too mortifying for him to speak the word aloud. Through feverish gestures at his legs he communicated the meaning to Flashsatsumas, who swiftly proceeded to be no help at all, because they didn’t have them in his galaxy and he could never remember what they were called.

“Their stockings?” ventured patient Miss Ugly.

Turning crimson all over was Calvin’s version of an affirmative.

“Well,” he struggled on. “That means today might be the day I find out. Those things make it impossible to tell whether she wears white ones or light blue, and I didn’t get a look when we played squash. It’s already been three days of not knowing! No wonder I’m in agony. I might never have another chance, and what if I don’t get to see? I don’t think I could live with that!”

“You just remember what happened to Flashpower,” issued didactically from Flashsatsumas.

“I’ve no idea who that is,” said Miss Ugly.

“No, well, we boys don’t pay any attention when grown Flashes say it to us,” Flashsatsumas admitted. “We just carry on exactly like Calvin’s doing.”

“Listen, Calvin,” Miss Ugly resumed. “I’ve seen one of them in her undergarments.”

“Both,” appended Flashsatsumas.

From Calvin’s reaction this was apparently something less than what a boy in agony most wished to hear.

“So, would it help if we told you which it is?” continued Miss Ugly.

Both boys spluttered at this preposterous suggestion. “Sorry, Miss Ugly, but it’s obvious you don’t understand,” Flashsatsumas declared.

“Quite right, it’s beyond me,” Miss Ugly freely agreed, then stood and sorted out her tutu. “That may be why I can’t take another minute of Calvin lamenting about it. Maureen told me where they were going next. With a bit of luck it’ll be something he can hang the Junipers from by their ankles.”

On arrival at the jungle ride they found the counter-Piloshiki loitering by the entrance. This girl with masses of red hair and a pouty pink face wasn’t one for secrecy regarding the colour of her own knickers, since she walked around in these and her vest and nothing else.

“Oh, hi,” said Flashsatsumas, unsure whether what had happened between them yesterday was the sort of thing you talked about afterwards.

The counter-Piloshiki’s response, which was very much in character, hinted it wasn’t.

“Our friends were supposed to be around here somewhere,” Miss Ugly pressed on. “You could always tell us if you’d seen them, if you wanted to make yourself useful for a change.”

A murmurous reply came back that they’d gone on the jungle ride and never returned.

Flashsatsumas fleetingly pictured the neophyte him, thinking what a dream come true it must be to go on holiday with lots of girls. “And you wouldn’t have had anything to do with this, I suppose?” he demanded of the counter-Piloshiki.

There was no point his even asking. Flashsatsumas knew a full-body Piloshiki-blush might indicate either culpability or good intentions, and it was impossible to tell which.

“I know how you feel, Calvin,” he concluded, hands on hips. “Well, not much else for it.”

In agreement the three set off to take a turn of their own on the ride, but the counter-Piloshiki tugged at Flashsatsumas’s pneumatic hemline.

Turning back, he met the intimate gaze of two deep dark almond-shaped eyes.

“I went on it too, Flashsatsumas,” she confessed to him huskily.

“And here you are,” was all he could think of to say in reply, before hurrying off to climb into a car with Calvin and Miss Ugly. As they jolted off for the jungle Flashsatsumas took one look back, but the counter-Piloshiki had vanished as though she’d never been there.

END OF CHAPTER ONE