QUOTE: "But where do them Chinese kids dig to?" -HOLES
-POPROCKS AND COKE-
-BY WHENICOMEAROUND-
-CHAPTER SIX-
Kate follows Jack aimlessly, not really knowing where she's going. He leads her down a corridor and turns right. Then Kate spots the pantry.
"Jack," she says with a grin. "I have a dare for you."
He turns around and looks at her. "What?"
She smiles. "Come with me."
She leads him to the pantry and he says, "Oh, my goodness."
Oh yeah, Kate thinks. He hasn't seen this yet.
"Yeah," she says.
Jack walks around the room, staring at everything in it.
"So what's the dare?" he asked.
Kate blushes. Oh. She had been so busy staring at him she'd forgotten what she had said.
"Have you ever had poprocks?" she asks him in a shy voice that does not belong to her.
Jack says, "Yeah. Who hasn't?"
Kate smiles. She produces a package from a nearby shelf. Then she gets a can of coke from a bottom shelf.
"Kate," Jack begins, but Kate interrupts.
"When I was seven, my older brother told me that if you ate poprocks and coke, your stomach would explode. And I wanted to prove that I wasn't scared."
"So you did it." says Jack with a smile. He knew Kate too well to know that she would turn down the opportunity to prove she wasn't afraid of anything.
"Yeah." she says.
"And did your stomach explode?" Jack wants to know.
"No." says Kate. "Almost. But no." she grins at him.
Jack looks from the poprocks in his hand to Kate. He breaks into a smile. "Dare me to?"
"Yes!"
Jack pours the tiny crystallic candies into his hand and opens the can of soda. He smiles at Kate.
"Go on, Jack." says Kate in that same bossy way Casey had said it so many years ago. "Do it."
Jack swallows the poprocks and coke the same way Kate had, all in a rush.
By the look on his face, Kate could tell that he felt the same way she did. A few minutes later, Jack smiles.
"So?" says Kate eagerly. "What does it feel like?"
He grins and says, "Nothing I've never felt before."