Happiness

"Happiness hit her like a train on a track... 

Coming towards her, stuck still no turning back..."

Hello.

Emotions are weird. If you asked me when was the happiest I've ever been it wouldn't say a logical answer like my 9th birthday party when I took a day off school to go to Harry Potter Studios with my best friend. It should have been but it wasn't. It should have been the first time I took a bow on a "real stage" and listened to a beautiful applause when the lights shone on all our faces, transitioning from purple to blue to white. It was an amazing feeling but it wasn't the happiest I've ever been. 

It was a warm day in July and we'd just came back from a school trip to the beach (it's a charity thing my school does every year for cancer- we take a bus from school to the beach and do a seven mile walk in the morning then go back to school and have free periods for the rest of the day). We'd spent most of our free period buying cake and ice cream then eating that and talking to friends. We'd had so much sugar that we (me, Lithium, Iodine and Barium) had collapsed on the school field. The grass was so perfectly green and soft against my head. The sky was a soft shade of blue and streaked with dreamy clouds. The sun shone down. If I was in school uniform then the heat would have been uncomfortable but I was in jeans and a t-shirt so I was fine. 

And in that moment this beautiful feeling creeped into me. It was this wave of happiness and perfection. To quote The Perks of Being a Wallflower I felt infinite. There's no other way to describe it really. Exams were over, I felt like I had no responsibility and not a care in the world. It was brilliant. 

***

Yesterday was the last day of half term- we're into half term holidays now. No one was really concentrating in lessons- our maths teacher gave up eventually and just told us to talk because she couldn't be bothered to teach anymore. Also, someone has found an image of my English teacher smoking pot. It has been circulating around the school. Everyone found it hilarious but we hope she doesn't get in trouble for it. 

I went home with Uranium. At first we sat in her bedroom, glad to be out of the heat, watching YouTube videos. I opened a pack of sweets which Lithium brought back from Zante. We had diner then her dad gave us some money to go and buy ice cream or something. We changed out of our school uniforms- I put on a black t-shit with a NASA logo on, grey leggings and doc martens and she wore a flowy top, skinny jeans and trainers. We left at about at five. 

It was still v. warm but the afternoon's heat had worn off to a comfortable temperature. I was kind of hot in dark colours but my shirt was thin so I didn't mind as much. We took ages walking there. I climbed half way up a tree then realised that there were loads of ants on it then jumped down. Uranium took pictures of everything and told me that photography was the thing she was passionate about but she was worried that people would think she was a basic bitch because of it. I told her about how I wanted to become an actor but don't believe it will happen because one in a million people actually make it. 

We arrived at the shop and took ages deciding what to get- I decided on a cheap mint ice cream and some licorice. She got a pack of chocolate doughnuts and we joked about getting diabetes when we were older (I know it's not really funny but we're teenagers with a bad senses of humour, forgive us).

After that we sat on a wall. It was still warm but slightly darker. We bitched and stalked people's Instagram then spoke about serious things. We saw some people from our school. We saw two boys not from our school- one in light blue, one in red. We left the wall and started walking to the park, swapping life stories while we were at it. It felt was a relief, I've never told someone so much about myself before but I trust her. Honestly, I think I trust her more than anyone. I told her about my past, all the weird bits. I told her about my dad and how horrible stuff got sometimes. She was so understanding- not in the sense that she'd been through the same thing but just sympathetic. I told her about my first school and my first experience on the internet... playing moshi monsters (oh god, how I cringe). I told her about -------------------------. I told her about the weird dreams I've been having lately. She told be about hers. 

Then she told me her life story, when she was born, up until now. We talked about that stuff for almost an hour as the sun lowered further and further behind the buildings. The sky was various shades of blue then faded into yellow as it got closer to the horizon. It was warm and the air smelled like a dream. The air was electric and I felt that feeling that I got on the grass last year wash over me again. Just pure contentedness- there was nowhere else I'd rather be in that moment. It wasn't a powerful feeling but it was a beautiful one and I knew that I was truly happy. It was such a mundane thing but that beautiful, perfect colour hanging above us made it feel slightly surreal. 

Of course, it had to end. We looked at the time- it was past nine pm and Uranium got a text from her dad asking where we were. We made our way back home and sung on the way. Even though we were walking beside a busy road with loads of cars rushing by, I felt like it was just us and no one else. We could do anything. 

We got home, I ate the licorice and we watched more YouTube. Eventually we got tired and stopped talking as much. I fell asleep on the guest bed while watching an obscure youtuber apologise for a racist thing they'd said. 

At around 3am I woke up to loud noises and flashing lights. I looked at the window- there was a figure there. I screamed "What's happening?" I shouted, breathing heavily. The figure turned around- it was Uranium. Everything came flooding back. I laughed at my stupidity. "It's a thunderstorm." she whispered which would explain the constant flashing lights. The lightning wasn't like the gif I put below... it was lightning that filled the entire sky. Lightning that became the sky itself. Within seconds the sky went from night back to day to night again. The thunder sounded like boulders grinding together. It was an empty, hollow sound. I still don't know what causes thunder. When I was younger my mum said that it was just clouds crashing together. When I was around nine we were doing weather at school and I wrote about how I thought thunder was formed. I showed it to my mum. She told me I was wrong, six years later. I still don't know how it's made. I'll google it...

"Thunder is caused by the rapid expansion of the air surrounding the path of a lightning bolt."

We spoke about the storm. We got out our phones. Uranium texted Plutonium asking if she was okay (Plutonium's sacred of thunder). I texted Lithium then Uranium checked twitter to see how widespread the storm was. No one was tweeting about it. The lightning kept me up for a while but I soon fell back asleep.