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July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. More notes at the end of the story.

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It was the summer of Titanic. 

I wasn’t allowed to watch the movie (PG-13 rating), but everyone knew about Jack and Rose. We cut out pictures of Leonard DiCaprio from magazines and found pictures of Titanic in the encyclopedia. Some of us even read the articles. 

We played Titanic, like we were playing Barbies or House. Abby, my best friend, and I would stand on her pool deck, clinging to each other. We called each other Rose and Jack, and repeated lines we knew from the movie. We said that we would rather die together than live apart, and jumped into the pool together, giggling. We did the dead man’s float until one of us had to come up for air, then we’d run back up to the deck and do it all again. 

Summer meant staying up until ten o’clock, playing street hockey in the morning and swimming at Abby’s in the afternoon. Or it meant pooling change with the other kids to buy candy at 7/11, buying a sugary smorgasbord with quarters and times. It meant riding bikes down by the river, coming back with muddy tires and muddier shoes. 

In summer, the world was ours, and I never wanted it to end. 

But somehow, August came. 

I called Abby to ask if I could come over. “I can’t,” she said in an annoyed voice. “My mom’s making me try on uniforms.” 

My heart sank. It wasn’t just an unwelcome reminder that summer was coming to an end. If Abby was getting uniforms, then the worst thing was really happening. She was going to a different school. We had both pretended like it wasn’t happening, but we couldn’t ignore the evidence anymore: a plaid skirt and white polo shirt. 

“Awww,” I whined. “That stinks. Can you come over tonight?”

“Um…maybe. I’ll ask my mom. MOOOOOOOM! Vanessa asked if I can come over later.”

Abby came over for dinner. We had pizza and soda and I showed her what movie my mom had finally let me rent. 

“No way!” She squealed. We ran to the living room without even cleaning up our dishes and popped the first VHS tape into our VCR. I turned off the lights, and we shrieked with excitement while the opening credits rolled over sepia footage and slow, melancholy music. 

We were captivated. We sighed at Jack and Rose’s kiss on the bow, gasped when we saw Rose’s hand against the foggy car window (they weren’t married!) and cried when we saw Leo sink beneath the icy waters. 

The credits rolled, and Celine Dion’s voice soared over us. “Do you think it was a dream, or do you think she died at the end?” Abby asked.

“I think it was a dream,” I said. I didn’t want Rose to be dead, even if she was old. 

“I think she died.”

I wiped my eyes. “Maybe.” Abby’s eyes were equally wet. When I looked at her, I knew that we would never play Titanic again.

“But then she could be with Jack forever,” Abby said, and smiled through her tears. 

“Yeah.” I paused. “We’re always going to be friends, right?”

“Yeah. Best friends.” She hugged me, and then we belted together:

You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on

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It’s my favorite challenge of FFM, the David Bowie challenge! At first I wasn’t sure what to do…then I remembered what might be the most 90s song ever, “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion. Then nostalgia did the rest of the work for me.

Element 1: Choose one of the decades of David Bowie’s career. Your story must be set in your chosen decade. It must be made clear in your story, in some way, that it is set in this decade. (You aren’t allowed to switch up the century; no 1860’s here, sorry.)

Element 2: You must include a song from the decade that you chose in your story. It does not have to be a David Bowie song, but we’ve included some examples for you below. The song must appear in the story as an actual song (i.e.; played or sung), not just referenced or used as a prompt.

HARDCORE MODE: Use the name of the example Bowie song for your decade in your story, word for word, or as the title of your story. I almost went with “Changes” but that seemed too easy.

You can take Bowie’s glitter, but you can never take his sparkle.