In a Flash (2 page)

I grabbed a pillow from the bin, turned around and swung it at my attacker—it was a girl. She ducked under my swing, hit me with a second shot and danced away to start swinging at somebody else.

All around me there were dozens and dozens of people engaged in a gigantic free-for-all pillow fight!

“Here, take this,” I yelled at Julia as I tossed a pillow to her.

She looked at me and opened her mouth
to say something, but before the words could come out she was hit in the side of the head. She staggered and toppled over, landing on a bed!

I should have cheered—after all, she was on the other side, the backward hats—but I was worried about how she was going to react.

She jumped back to her feet. Her expression quickly went from shocked to angry. Making Julia angry was never wise. She leaped across the bed and started swinging at the person who had hit her.

I came to the defense of the guy she was attacking—after all, he
was
on my team—and hit Julia on the arm, knocking the pillow out of her grip. Before she could retrieve it, she was hit by two other people.

I ran around a display case and started a battle with two guys, catching one with an upper-cut that knocked the baseball cap off his head. He looked surprised, and then he laughed and put his hat back on his head.

Two girls were jumping on a bed and exchanging hits and giggles. Finally one of
them jumped off, and the second trailed after her. The two of them took glancing blows from other people as they ran across the department and disappeared into women's wear.

There was playful combat everywhere. I didn't have much time to look around, but there had to be close to a hundred people around me, yelling, laughing and swinging their pillows.

On the edges of the battle other people watched. There were grown-ups holding their kids by the hand or loaded down with shopping bags, looking stunned or amused or confused. Some laughed and pointed, and others hurried away like they were scared. There had to be almost as many people watching as there were participating.

One of the pillows burst and a million white feathers shot into the air like a billowing cloud! The crowd—watching and fighting—erupted into gasps and screams and laughter.

There was a loud whistle blast—Oswald, signaling the end.

I dropped my pillow to the floor as did everybody else. I looked around, trying to find Julia in the crowd, as everybody instantly started to run away, going in every direction, out of the bedding section.

I caught sight of her. “Julia! This way!” I yelled.

Julia ran over, and I grabbed her by the hand as we started running. We slipped between the onlookers, breaking free. I grabbed the hat off her head and took mine off as well. I stuffed them into the inside pocket of my coat. With the hats gone we could blend into the background.

We turned a corner into the women's clothing section, leaving the bedding behind. I stopped running, jerking Julia to a walk beside me.

“What are you doing?” she hissed. “We have to get out of here!”

She tried to start running again, but I held her hand tightly, not letting her go.

“People who run get chased because they're running away from something,” I said. “We need to walk. Just walk with me.”

I kept hold of her hand.

“Slow down your breathing,” I said.

She looked anxiously over her shoulder in the direction we'd run from.

“And stop looking guilty,” I said quietly. “Look casual.”

“I don't feel so casual.”

“Maybe that's the wrong word. Try to relax.”

That probably wasn't the right word either.

It felt awkward holding Julia's hand. We'd been friends for a long time, but we'd also gone out on a date—once.

We'd both agreed—halfway through that date—that maybe it was better for us to just stay friends. So, we had become just two friends who'd gone to a movie together once and shared some popcorn. But I still wondered and thought about sharing something else... someday...maybe. There was something about Julia. She was smart and pretty and funny, and in those moments when she wasn't driving me crazy, I'd have thoughts that maybe we could be more than just friends.

“This way,” I said as we walked through a door leading out of the store and onto the street.

I turned right and she turned left, and I dragged her in my direction.

“This way,” I said.

“But isn't Dundas Square the other way?” she asked.

“It is. We're going to circle around and come at it so we can enter from the side away from the store. Just in case.”

“Okay, sure. By the way, I think you can let go of my hand now,” Julia said.

“Oh, yeah...of course. I just wasn't thinking.”

My hand was all sweaty. I wiped it on my pants, trying to be casual about it.

“Boy, did you take some hits,” Julia said.

“
Me
? You were hit so hard you got knocked off your feet!”

“You should have seen the shot I gave him after that,” she said and started chuckling.

“I guess the important thing is that you had fun.”

“I didn't say that,” she said.

“You didn't have fun?”

“Well, it certainly was...what word am I looking for...um...I've got it. The word is
stupid
.”

“Are you telling me you didn't enjoy that?”

“Which part was I supposed to enjoy? Being worried about being arrested, or hanging out with a herd of nerds?”

“You're telling me that you didn't enjoy it at all?” I asked, unable to believe my ears.

She shrugged. “It just didn't have any purpose.”

“That
is
the purpose,” I argued. “A flash mob isn't supposed to have a purpose. It's just something that happens for no apparent reason.”

“Well, then you really succeeded with this one because it had no reason.”

“The reason is just to have—”

“Ian! Julia!”

Oswald ran toward us, waving his arms, a big smile on his face. He looked like
he
thought it was fun.

“That was outstanding!” he yelled as he gave me a big high five.

“Glad
you
liked it,” I said, giving Julia a dirty look.

“I loved it! Wait until you see the video. Let's get something to drink and sit down and watch it.”

We went into a little coffee shop just off the square, waiting in line for three hot chocolates, and then we took a table in the corner.

“So what did you think?” Oswald asked Julia.

“She didn't like it,” I said before she could answer.

“What didn't you like?” Oswald said.

“Come on, I'm a little old for a pillow fight. I can't believe that you two have been running around the city having pillow fights.”

“It's not just pillow fights,” I protested.

“Yeah, last week we were part of a flash mob that met on the Main Street subway platform, and we all started clapping,” Oswald said.

“Clapping for what?”

“For nothing. If we were clapping for something it wouldn't have been a flash mob,” he said.

Julia shook her head sadly. She looked like she pitied us.

“And there was the zombie walk where everybody dressed like a zombie,” he said. “And there was the silent disco and—”

“Yeah, they all sound hilarious,” Julia said sarcastically.

“Here, look,” Oswald said. He turned his camera around so that Julia and I could see the screen.

The camera had a wide-angle lens that showed the whole section of the store from his perch on the second floor.

“How many people do you think were there?” I asked.

“Over a hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty,” he said. “That was, without a doubt, the best flash mob I've ever seen.”

Julia shook her head slowly. “I can't believe how much work had to go into getting that many nerds together in one place.”

“First off, they aren't nerds...well, not all of them,” I said. “And second, there's not much work at all. I sent out one e-mail blast, posted it on Facebook and sent a text message fan-out.”

“A fan-out?”

“Just like with the campaign against Frankie's,” I explained.

Last year I'd used the Internet to create a boycott of the Frankie's restaurant chain. I'd e-mailed forty people, who had e-mailed forty people, who e-mailed forty people, until millions of people saw the e-mail. It had ended up in Frankie's adding healthy choices to their menu. I got on TV, and there were magazine articles written about it—about
me
. For a few weeks I'd been a star.

“This is a lot different than what you did with Frankie's,” she said.

“Not really. I used technology to get a bunch of people to do something,” I explained.

She shook her head. “With Frankie's you got people to do
something
. Today you got people to do nothing.”

“They had a pillow fight,” I argued.

“That's what I said. They did
nothing
. They did nothing that meant anything. With all the bad things going on in the world—racism, poverty, wars, hunger—you organized a pillow fight.”

“It was a pretty good pillow fight,” Oswald argued.

“But it was still a pillow fight.” She got up. “I have to go to the washroom.”

I watched her walk away.

“It was a
great
pillow fight,” Oswald said. “And when I post this online, you'll see that lots of people will be impressed.”

“Thanks.”

I knew he was right. It had been a great flash mob, and we'd get great postings about it. What did I care if Julia wasn't impressed? But somehow I did.

My father was sitting at the dining-room table when I got home. The table was piled with legal papers. He was preparing for a trial. Between him and my mother, who was also a lawyer, there was always a pile of papers lying around somewhere.

He looked up. “So how are you doing?” he asked.

“Great...good...all right, I guess.”

He chuckled. “That pretty well covers all options. You sure you're at least all right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It's just that you look a little guilty.”

“Guilty? What makes you think I'm guilty of anything?”

“If you're a lawyer long enough, you know when somebody's guilty of something. What is it?”

“Nothing. I didn't do anything wrong. Well, I don't think I did.”

“Maybe you should tell me about it,” he suggested.

“It's nothing.”

“Nothing or nothing you want to talk about?”

“Well, maybe a little of both, but I'm really not in trouble. And I don't think I'm doing anything wrong. I don't think.”

“Sounds like you need a legal opinion.”

“I guess I do.”

“I just don't know if you can afford my rates. Good legal advice doesn't come cheap.”

“I could always ask Mom,” I said.

“You could, but you might have to pay a much higher price,” he said.

“Mom won't charge me.”

“She won't charge you
money
,” he said, “but you'll pay a high price in nagging if she doesn't like what you were doing.”

Of course I knew what he meant. Mom was great and everything, but she certainly could hang onto something for a long time. She was like a dog with a bone.

“Well?” my father asked.

“What's your price?”

“A cold Coke, on ice, tall glass.”

“Sure, no prob—”

“Three times,” he said, holding up three fingers.

“How about twice?”

He reached out his hand and we shook on the deal.

“So what's the problem?” he asked.

I tried to think about where to start. “Do you know what a flash mob is?”

“I don't know about the flash part, but anything to do with mobs doesn't sound very good.”

“They're not really mobs. They're just some people,” I tried to explain. “Regular
people. We agree to meet at a specific place, and we all do the same thing.”

“What sort of thing?” he asked, sounding worried.

“It's nothing serious. It's all just fun. It could be that we all clap our hands and cheer for somebody, or we all carry a rose or have on a baseball cap, or maybe carry a musical instrument, or have a pillow fight or everybody dresses like a zombie.”

He looked confused. It did sound strange when I tried to describe it. Maybe Julia had a point.

“And we just meet for a few minutes, and then everybody disappears,” I added.

“Hold on,” he said. “I think I
do
know something about them. I remember reading an article in a magazine. They started in New York, right?”

“Yeah, that's where the first one happened.”

“And you've been taking part in these?” he asked.

“Some. I've even organized one.”

“Okay. So you're wondering if you're breaking any laws.”

“Yeah, that's what I want to know.”

“I only know what you've told me, and the little bit I remember from that article,” he admitted. “But from what you're saying it sounds like they're pretty harmless.”

“That's what I was hoping you'd say. This may sound stupid, but I was afraid we could get charged with something.”

“Well, you
could
get charged.”

“We could?”

“It would depend on the event or the location,” he said. “For example, if you were on private property, you could be charged with trespassing.”

“They usually happen in a public place or a store.”

“A store isn't public. They might not charge you with trespassing, but they might serve you with notice to bar you from ever going to the store.”

“They could do that?”

“Of course they could,” he said. “There
are also issues, of course, if anything got damaged.”