"Aaron!" I yelled as I felt my body lurch forward and crash land into the pool. I spluttered once my head bobbed above the surface and flipped my hair away from my face, glaring up at my hysterical best friend.
"You should've seen you're face!" He laughed, pointing at me. Hopping out of the pool, in my now soaked clothes, I looked up into the rather pale face of Aaron Thomas. His blonde hair stood on end as usual, and his blue eyes had tears of laughter leaking from them. Just then, Mrs. Kilne's head popped out the window as she began yelling at her son. His parents and my parents sometimes called eachother their old detentional camp facilty names. At 15, I had heard all of the stories from the detentional facility our parents had been at together. Or any I wanted to hear that didn't make me gag.
"Aaron Ricky Kline, appologize!" She screamed. I laughed as Aaron stuttered an appology.
"Yeah yeah it's fine. Now I'm going to get my bag upstairs and put on something else." Yeah, I slept over my best friends house. And no, there was no hanky panky going on. And that, and the fact that I had known the kid since I was born, were the only reason we actually had sleepovers.
"No! Don't leave me, Dani! The aliens will come back!" And he was completely serious. You see, his dad and him had acute paranoia. After reasuring him that there weren't any brain-eating aliens out to get him, though he did seem a little nervous, I went upstairs and put on another pair of jeans, flip flops, and a tee shirt.
We hopped on our bikes and pedaled down the street. We popped over the curb and drove through the grass, approaching a small alcove in a secluded area. Jumping off our bikes, we raced through the trees. My eyes landed on what we did for fun. Our pride, our joy, our beautiful explosives: fireworks.
"Perfect whether for experimenting, isn't it?" He questioned with a small smirk. We'd been coming here since we were 10. Back then we hid less dangerous things. Like piggybanks, and toys. But then when we turned 13, we discovered fireworks. They were pefect! The bright colors, the smoke, the ash. I loved it.
"Hey! Aaron, Dani!" I turned to the left to see my other best friend, Monica. She had tanned skin, brown hair with colored streaks in the front, and brown eyes. She was just like us; people were afraid of her.
"Aw hey Moni!" I said, doing our high-five hand shake thing. Aaron looked around nervously, having heard something that set off his paranoia. I shook my head and leaned against a tree, and looked up, noticing black haired Matt in the branches above. He finished our little group of four. Matt, Monica, Dani, and Aaron. Bad kids with bad parents. Or used-to-be bad parents, whose bad genes had penetrated their children. Matt's parents, or rather his mom (his dad had died when he was eight), was a bad ass ex-convict, at an all girls detentional facility. Monica's parents met in a foster care home designed for "special cases". Aaron's parents and my parent's met in the same place, and they were proud of their experience. For the most part, anyway.
"So... you guys wanna blow some random shit up or what?" Matt climbed down from his perch on the tree and landed with a thud right next to me. The three of us nodded enthusiastically. Taking out his lighter, Matt took a firework in his hand. Going to the hollowed out area of our secret area, he lit it. The wick burned quickly, and he laughed a it exploded into a bright glitter in the light faded sky.
"That never gets old." I say. Moni looks at me, her signiture smirk painted on her face.
"Damn straight." Oh no, I started it!
"No debate."I added. It was our little poem thing that anytime someone says 'that never gets old' we have to say.
"I ain't late, just saying..."
"That it never gets old."
"Mhm, damn straight!"
"Word." We both ended with our hands in gangster positions. Oh yes, my friendship with these people was an odd one, but we were rumored in school to be the four dangerous sophmores. And that was right. Well, partially, anyway.
We really weren't that bad. Hell, we just screwed around a bit with the wrong types of things. None of us were on drugs, we hardly drank, though I stayed away from it more than the rest, and we never got arrested... more the four or five time. And people stayed away from us. Because we were bad ass I'll-steal-your-lunch-money-and-beat-you-up-too kind of teenagers. Some kids, the brave ones, would ask us if we had really done some of the things people rumored about us. And the truth was simple: depends on what it was. Yes, we did blow up a truck. Yes, we did high jack a car from the compound and sent it whizzing off of a cliff. No, we didn't brutally murder an old lady at all, let alone for the fun of it. No, we didn't kidnap the mayor. He was weird anyway and looked like he'd smell of rank socks or something.
But anyway, we didn't do any of those things. And though it did feel sort of good to be noticed, we didn't exactly have a ton of friends besides your three fellow delinquints.
"You guys are freakin' retarded.I hope you know that." I gasped and put my hand up to my chest in feign shock, Moni doing a mirrored impression beside us. Aaron was good at not cracking up at our stupidity, I'd give him that.