The 4th

The Anti-Everything Ban went into effect about four years ago, since then we don’t do much. School is still a drag, there’s no recess, no talking, no nothing, just sitting in class watching history channel. About how and why we got here, it was boring. At home we don’t play video games anymore, there isn’t much on TV, they said that cartoons and action shows were making people too violent, so they took them away.
Sometimes Rob and I would walk around the neighborhood, you weren’t allowed outside the hood without a proper pass. All the other kids sat out on their steps, or the curb. Some had books, but they were school books, the only things we could read. They didn’t make comics anymore; and all the other books, like novels and stuff, were taking away in big trucks. Most of the cool holidays were cancelled too; we didn’t get a lot of breaks from school, just weekends.
They still had the Fourth of July though, that was still important. But there were no fireworks, no parties or anything. They would just play the new national anthem all day on the radio and every TV station had the history channel on, with new stuff added every year. Only some of it actually happened.
There were no fireworks; they were banned. One year, Rob’s father showed us a skyrocket that he’d kept hidden; he made it with stuff from around the house. He said that he was going to set it off on the 4th, that he didn’t care about the ban, children needed to see the fireworks. That next year my tenth birthday happened and then came the 4th. That night Rob’s father went to the hill and shot the skyrocket. I’d never seen anything like it. Everybody in the neighborhood was staring out their windows, watching as it exploded in a bright orange, everyone cheered. The alarm went off and the police came and took Rob’s father away in a big truck, but he’d left instructions with Rob on how to make a skyrocket.
Rob and I spent a year making skyrockets, we showed them to the other kids, and they made some too.
Three thousand skyrockets went off five minutes ago, the alarm will come soon.
We left instructions.