Spotty's Day

There was one lantern in the box that was wrong.

All the others were the same as each other: round, glass-sided, wire handle, perfectly nice. This one was six-sided, punched tin, older than the rest, with little holes in it in the shape of stars.

"We can't use that," somebody said. "It'll look odd in the row."

I picked it up.

I know that feeling from the inside and I do not need it explained to me. I have had entire mornings of wishing I were round and glass-sided like everybody else. I say so, out loud, and then I get over it, and then I have another one the week after. That is simply how it goes and I have stopped expecting it to stop.

Blushy came over, because Blushy always comes over when somebody is about to be left out of something, having been left out of things.

"Where's it going?"

"They don't want it in the row."

Blushy looked at it for a while. "It's the best one."

"I know," I said.

So we took it up the path to the turn by the bridge — the bit Shivvy had named that morning as one of the four worst places, where the hedge comes over and you cannot see your own feet — and hung it there on its own, away from the row, where a light was genuinely needed and nothing else was going.

That night, every single fluff walking home knew exactly where they were the moment they came round that corner, because there is only one lantern in all of Candyfloss Land that throws stars on a hedge.

Walking back down I said the thing I say.

"Name one thing that makes you, you. Go on. Different is great — that's the whole game."

Blushy thought about it for most of the lane. Which I did not rush, because that is a question that deserves a proper walk.

"I go red," Blushy said at last, "and I carry on anyway."

"See. Nobody else in this land does that. My spots make me, me. Your red makes you, you."

And then Lovey came the other way up the lane and said, "That thing at the bridge is the best bit of the whole path. Who did that?"

Blushy pointed at me.

Blushy pointed at me, having said it's the best one when the whole yard was about to put it back in the box, and having walked the whole way up there and the whole way back — and pointed at me.

I went pink, which is Blushy's trick and not mine, and did not mind at all.

I wore the tin lantern's reflection all evening, in the sense that four separate fluffs came up to tell me about the stars on the hedge without knowing it was anything to do with me.

I did not correct any of them, which I would like some credit for.

Then Beamy read the envelope out and the bridge corner was on it, and Blushy's name was on it too, for six hours on a ladder — and Blushy went the colour of a strawberry in front of the entire room for the second time that day and stayed exactly where she was.

I watched that happen and thought: there it is. That is the red, and the carrying on anyway. She was not exaggerating in the lane.

Later I found Blushy by the window and said so, and Blushy said "I nearly went home at five o'clock", and I said "you didn't though", and we left it there.