The Confetti Cannon

The rain was a freezing, torrential deluge. Harper sprinted across the dark campus, her boots splashing through deep puddles, the cold wind whipping her wet hair across her face. Her lungs burned with every breath, but she didn't slow down.

She saw the Administration Atrium looming in the distance. It was a sterile, imposing building made entirely of glass and steel, the glowing lights of the Dean's top-floor office illuminating the rainy night.

Harper burst through the heavy glass double doors of the atrium lobby.

The lobby was a massive, three-story open space with a marble floor and a sweeping central staircase.

Rowan was standing at the base of the stairs, drenched in rain, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Standing at the top of the stairs, looking down with a severe, furious scowl, was Dean Carson.

"Mr. Hayes," Dean Carson barked, his voice echoing off the glass walls. "It is nearly two in the morning. Why did you insist on calling me down here? What is this urgent confession?"

Rowan looked up at the Dean. He took a deep breath, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Dean Carson, I am here to formally confess to the vandalism of the Silas Sterling statue, the library rotunda, and the—"

"ROWAN, STOP!" Harper screamed, sprinting across the marble floor.

Rowan whipped his head around, his amber eyes widening in absolute shock as Harper came skidding to a halt beside him. She was soaking wet, gasping for air, her chest heaving.

"Harper?" Rowan breathed, utterly bewildered. "What are you doing here?"

"Ms. Lin?" Dean Carson frowned, marching halfway down the stairs. "What is the meaning of this interruption?"

Harper looked at Rowan. She looked at the devastation in his eyes that was slowly being replaced by a terrifying, fragile hope.

She had to stop the confession. She needed a diversion. She needed to do something so spectacularly irrational, so completely illogical, that it would prove to Rowan she was finally ready to break her own rules.

Harper reached into the deep pocket of her oversized denim jacket.

Last week, she had confiscated a massive, heavy-duty, compressed-air confetti cannon from a fraternity president who had tried to set it off in the library. She had carried it in her jacket pocket intending to turn it over to security, but had forgotten about it.

Until now.

Harper pulled the massive cardboard tube out.

"Ms. Lin, what is that?" Dean Carson demanded.

Harper looked at Rowan, a fierce, brilliant, entirely un-cynical smile breaking across her face.

"I'm taking a leap of faith," Harper said.

She aimed the heavy tube straight up at the ceiling, directly toward the highly sensitive, heat-activated indoor sprinkler system sensor hovering above the atrium.

She twisted the base of the cannon.

With a deafening *BOOM*, a massive, high-velocity cloud of glittering, multicolored mylar confetti exploded upward. The compressed air and the impact of the dense confetti slammed into the delicate glass bulb of the sprinkler sensor, shattering it instantly.

The building’s alarm system shrieked to life, a deafening, piercing wail.

A second later, the emergency sprinklers engaged.

A torrential downpour of freezing water erupted from the ceiling, flooding the entire glass atrium.

Dean Carson shrieked as the water soaked his expensive suit, scrambling blindly up the stairs to escape the deluge. "What have you done?! Security! Security!"

The lobby was absolute chaos. The alarms were blaring, the water was pouring down, and thousands of pieces of glittering confetti were swirling through the air like a psychedelic snowstorm.

Harper stood in the middle of the deluge, drenched to the bone, laughing. A loud, genuine, joyful laugh that she hadn't let out in years.

Rowan stared at her, the water flattening his dark hair against his forehead. He looked at the screaming Dean, the flooding atrium, and then back at the fierce, brilliant girl who had just committed a massive act of vandalism to save him.

"You..." Rowan gasped, a massive, disbelieving smile breaking across his face. "You just pulled a prank."

"I learned from the best," Harper shouted over the blaring alarms. She reached out, grabbing him by the collar of his wet jacket. "Now run, Architect!"

Rowan didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers tightly through hers. They bolted across the slippery marble floor, shoving through the glass doors and sprinting out into the rainy, chaotic campus night, leaving the shrieking Dean and the flooded atrium behind them.