Young and Innocent
It was a hot summer. Flowers died of thirst, the ice-cream seller was out of ice-cream and children cooled off in their paddling pools while their parents were inside drinking whole bottles of cold water.
Meredith let the rope slowly glide over the balustrade of the small balcony that belonged to her room on the second floor. She glanced back at the open maths book on her desk, tied the rope around the biggest metal bar and climbed over the balustrade. After making sure her parents weren't working in the garden or talking on the veranda, she gripped the rope firmly and began sliding down, her feet wound around the rope. Her feet touched the ground and she threw the rope onto her balcony, just like she'd done it so many times before, and ran into her mother's beloved shrubbery. She didn't even flinch as the thorns scratched her bare arms and legs, and continued her fighting with the bushes until she found the medium-sized hole in the tall hedge that seperated her family's garden from the Sloanes'. She squeezed herself through the hole and appeared behind a big bush in the Sloanes' garden a second later.
She looked around carefully and let out a sigh of relief when she saw Mark's older brother Jason sitting on one of the swings not far away from the bush she was hiding behind. She let out a sharp and loud whistle, her trademark, and smiled in inner contentment when he winced at the sound.
A few moments later he was standing in front of her and the bush, giving her a fake glare. She smiled sweetly at him. ''Hey Jason. Do you know where Mark is?''
Jason nodded his head. ''I saw him crawl through The Gate a few minutes before you totured my ears with your cruel whistle, Merry-bear.''
Meredith nodded and ran over to the tall brickwall at the end of the garden. The Gate was actually only the lack of a few bricks at the bottom of the brickwall. They had been only six when they had knocked the bricks out of the wall and now the hole was getting rather small for them. She knelt down into the dirt without hesitation and crawled through the hole. After getting up from the ground, she heard laughter and voices. Meredith wasn't quite sure where they came from, either from the Super Secret Place or from the small lake. She whistled loudly and the laughter and voices stopped. The whistled beginning of 'We will rock you' echoed through the woods, making Meredith smile. That whistle was definitley Mark's. And it was coming from their SSP.
The Super Secret Place sounded just like the Gate a tiny bit more breathtaking than it actually was: Three rather short logs which they had (with a little help) rolled so they formed a perfect triangle and three insecure swings that they themselves had built a few months ago. Meredith ran until she could see the two boys sitting lazily on the logs and jumped onto her one (hers had a big carved crown on it with the initials MG; Mark's had a crown with MS; and Derek's had a crown with DS). She smiled at her two best friends.
''Hey Mark, hey Derek. What're you doing here so early? I thought we said tonight.''
The two boys shrugged their shoulders. ''Since when do you do what you're told?'', Derek said and threw a walnut at Mark who caught it with his right hand. ''That's not true'', Meredith protesting, pouting. Mark snorted. ''Then why aren't you at home learning for the maths test that is coming in three weeks. I bet your mom made you start learning again, he?''
Meredith laughed. ''I guess you know me too well. I just climbed down the rope again, they don't notice anyways.''
She paused. ''So, you stole any bras from your mother today, Mark?''