WARNING: Bullying themes

(Not too bad but still could be upsetting)


A week after school let out, he moved in down the street. In the whole time I had lived in the neighbourhood-which would be my whole life-maybe two new neighbours had moved in total. It wasn't exceptionally big either. About fifty some houses, some were old and painted dully, but most were newer with families and children with bright coloured siding.

Needless to say, Mom was excited. Two days after the moving van pulled into the driveway across the street and four houses down, Mom made down to their front door and introduced herself. She came back probably an hour or so later going on, and on about how interesting the family was. They had moved here from England with five boys. The oldest was seventeen, then there was the three in the middle who were fifteen, fourteen and twelve and the youngest was about five. Mom said several times how she couldn't think of how they managed a household like that and that the two of us were messy enough.

A day later, I was walking down the street with a small box full of cookies. Mom decided to send me down there to make friends with the twelve year-old because apparently "he would make me behave better." In my defence, I hadn't gotten in trouble with any of the neighbours since about mid-May.

Sighing, I jabbed my thumb into their doorbell and stepped back so I wouldn't get hit by the door. From somewhere inside the house, a voice with an Irish accent called out, "Arthur get the door!" I could hear a muffled reply and someone run down a flight of stairs. The door flew open quickly and I stood there facing a boy about my age.

He looked like he had just rolled out of bed or something by how messy his blond hair was. His grass green orbs held an irritation, and his bushy brows beetled. He had khakis and a long sleeve shirt on even though it was the middle of June.

In that moment, I suddenly realized exactly how I felt about him.

I hated him.

"Come to welcome us to the neighbourhood?" He asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

"Uh, yeah. My mom came by yesterday and...uh...she baked you cookies." I held the box out in front of me. Gently, he took it from me then glanced back and forth between the red box and me.

After a moment or so, he sat the box down on something behind the door and held his hand out to me. "I'm Arthur Kirkland. You?"

Looking at his hand, then at him, I took it, squeezing it much too tightly and said, "I'm Alfred F. Jones!" As soon as I let go, he yanked his hand back and stepped away from me a little. He looked me over a couple times and asked, "Do you play football?"

"Of course I do! Who doesn't?"

"Do you want to play with me?" In all honesty, I really didn't. I wanted to just walk away right then and there and go home, but Mom would have been upset with me.

"Sure," I lied. He gave a me a quick half smile before looking over his shoulder and yelling behind him, "One of the neighbour boys is here and we're going to go play football, Mum!"

A happy sounding voice called back, "Alright! Don't get yourself hurt now!" With that, he stepped out onto the porch and lead me to the backyard.

They had a little shed in the backyard. Apparently they had brought most of the smaller stuff over earlier so there was already stuff sitting neatly inside. Arthur walked to somewhere in the back to dig out a ball. I waited in the doorway getting more annoyed with him by the second.

"Here it is!" he said after what felt like forever. About time, I thought, unfolding my arms. As he walked back towards me, I couldn't help but notice that he was carrying a soccer ball.

"I thought you said we could play football," I stated, already annoyed with him.

"I did."

"Then why do you have a soccer ball?"

"This is a football."

"No, it's a soccer ball."

The argument when on like that until I said, "Fine whatever. I'm just going to go home."

"Why?"

I paused for a moment. Should I tell him? It doesn't really matter anyways. Sighing, I rolled my eyes and said, "Because my mom forced me over here because she thought you would improve my behaviour or some crap like that."

His face seemed to sink a bit. "Oh, I see." Why did he sound so defeated? "Fine then! I don't need you as a friend anyways!" The soccer ball made contact with my face. Not really thinking, and kind of stunned by the fact that he threw it at me, I picked it up and chucked it at him. It made contact with his stomach and I bolted home.

It was about three days after I first met him that I basically decided to start a "war."

Gilbert, Francis, and Antonio, three boys who lived down the street, came over and the four of us and Matthew sat in the backyard, bored. "We need something to do!" Gilbert whined, flopping on his back into the grass. He was going on fourteen and one of the oldest in his grade, so most people expected him to be more mature, but no, he could fit right in with eight year-olds and no one would probably question it.

"Well, we could go get back at that one British kid," Francis suggested, knowing about the soccer ball incident. At least I wasn't the only one who hated him from the get go.

"But wouldn't that be mean?" Matthew inquired, though none of us listened to him.

"Ja!" Gilbert sprung to his feet suddenly. His parents were from Germany, though he'd never been, so he spoke German quite often and for some reason he kept claiming to be Prussian, whatever that was.

An idea creeped into my head and smiling a bit to myself, I suggested, "We could throw water balloons at him."

The trio grinned at me. Everyone knew how much they loved water balloon fights. Matthew gave me a scared, nervous look, knowing better than anyone how this was going to end.

Snickering to ourselves, the four of us made our way down to Antonio's with Matthew trailing behind us, not wanting to be alone. Antonio quickly sprinted into his room and came back out with three large bags of the balloons. A smile was plastered to his face as he laid them down in the grass at our feet. The second the bags hit the ground, Gilbert snatched one up and raced to a tap at the side of the house.

"Gil, mon ami!" Francis called out, running after him. "Calm down! Wait for us!" Antonio and I followed after them taking the last two bags with us. Matt stayed in the same spot for several minutes before he slowly made his way over to us. By then we had more than a dozen balloons already tied and ready.

Gilbert managed to fill his entire bag in about five minutes. A little over thirty balloons sat in a messy pile on the grass. Looking down at them, the four of us smiled at each other. There was a little pit in my stomach that made me doubt how good this plan actually was, but looking at how excited the other three were, I decided to ignore it.

Gathering up about eight balloons each, we made our way back down the long street with Matt still cautiously at our heels. Unfortunately, Antonio lived in the absolute last house on the street at a dead end. Arthur's house was about a half mile away towards the middle of the line of houses.

We had made the same walk millions of times before, but with the summer sun beating down on us it became more torturous by the minute. After what felt like an eternity of walking, the beige two story house finally came into view. Sneaking into the shrubbery that lined the back yards from several houses down, we tried to be as quiet as possible as we snuck up on our victim.

Arthur sat in the middle of a single acre back yard. The green grass clashed against his red shorts. He had his nose in a book and mostly had his back to us. Francis snickered next to me as we crouched behind the bushes. Arthur must have heard because he looked back at our general location for a second. He made a move to get up and come closer, but suddenly a call came from inside for him.

Glancing over his shoulder once, he brought his book inside and left us there in the bushes.

"Well, crap," Gilbert said, probably trying to think of some stupid way to lure him back outside. I heard Francis sigh and Antonio muttered, "We could always just throw them at each other." Matthew looked mostly relieved, though part of him seemed actually disappointed.

"So what now?" I asked looking over that them. Antonio shrugged, Francis made a face, and Gilbert mumbled something incoherent. We stayed in our little hiding spot for a while before we made a silent agreement that it wasn't going to work out.

Just as Antonio started to get up, the back door opened again. Antonio nearly fell down with how fast he moved to conceal himself again. "He's back out!" Antonio whisper yelled in excitement. Moving myself slightly, I managed to get a clearer view of Arthur through the leaves. He had come back outside without his book and he was looking suspiciously towards the shrubbery. I smiled to myself at the thought of what was to come next.

After several stilly silent moments, Arthur started making his way in our direction, eyeing it suspiciously as though he secretly knew we were there. He probably did. We weren't exactly church mice.

I held my breath a bit as he got closer. Just a few more feet and we wouldn't have to worry about missing him. Why did he have to walk so slow? Was it really necessary to take such steady, careful steps? He was almost close enough to the bushes when he randomly asked, "Is anyone there?" If they weren't before, the others were definitely holding their breath now.

The world seemed to go completely still and an entire infinity passed. Just when I felt as though my brain might exploded from the overwhelming summer quiet, Arthur chuckled to himself. "Arthur, if there is someone hiding in there, they're not just going to come right out and say it." He had a point there, we weren't and we all knew that far too well. He then muttered something like, "Might as well check anyway." Before we knew it, he was two feet away from us and our muscles reacted before we could even think about it.

I think Gilbert got the first hit on him, being so enthusiastic about water balloon fights. Francis and Antonio had bounced up the same time he did and were already throwing. Antonio doubled over laughing after two balloons because he found Arthur's face so funny. Francis was mostly aiming for his face. I was just trying to make sure my balloons hit. He sure did move around a lot.

I somehow ran out of balloons first, so I stooped down and stole two from Antonio. Chucking one, I watched at it exploded against Arthur's side, bits of plastic sticking to his Union Jack shirt. Just as I let the second one go, he got hit directly in the face, moving his body slightly and making it miss. Are you serious? I thought, mildly disappointed that I hadn't got to hit him again.

Finally we decided to let him go. The second we did, he made a beeline for the house, soaked to the bone and pieces of plastic sticking to him in random spots. Antonio looked like he was about to suffocate with how hard he was laughing, while Francis and Gilbert looked quite satisfied with themselves. I'm not sure if the others heard, but Matthew quietly said, "That was really mean." For some reason, I decided on ignoring him and went for stealing one of the last three water balloons from Antonio.

"That was awesome," I said, grinning. The look on Arthur's face when we came out from behind the shrubbery was priceless and I wished that I had had a camera with me. We helped Antonio up after a couple moments, he was chuckling and wiping at the corners of his eyes. "Okay, mis amigos, we should probably get heading back before someone-" The back door flew open suddenly, quickly gaining the attention of all five of us. Crap, I thought, panicked as I watched three guys step outside.

The oldest looked about seventeen with broad shoulders and pretty long red hair. He had cold graphite irises and thick eyebrows as well, which seemed to run in the family by the looks of the other two. The next was probably somewhere around fifteen. He had light brown hair, large dark circles under his chartreuse eyes and a heavily freckled face. The youngest of the three wasn't probably any older than Gilbert, Francis or Antonio. He had blond hair like Arthur's but his was combed neatly to the side, though it seemed to fall in his face a lot. There wasn't anything frightening about him, he was short and lean, but it was his muscular giants of brothers that made us worry.

"Run," I heard Gilbert get out, as we stood staring wide eyed at them. Grabbing Matthew's wrist, we made a break for it through the underbrush. Thankfully we-meaning Francis, Gilbert, Antonio, and I-had done this several times before and knew where we were going and Matthew could easily keep up. After running through the absolute back of about five or six backyards, we cut through one of the front yards out onto the street where it was easier to run.

"Where are we going?" Matthew called out, trying his best to keep up with me.

"To the Fort! It's the closest!" Gilbert said looking back at us for half a second. We passed about two more houses before we made a detour into Gil's backyard. He basically jumped on the ladder, climbing like a spider monkey. He flung the hatch door open and we quickly followed him inside. Just a half second after Matthew pulled his feet up into the fort, Gilbert somehow yanked the six foot tall ladder up in with him and flung the little square door back into place.

"Everyone here?" Antonio asked several seconds later. We glanced around looking each other over and each taking a personal roll call. All five of us stayed silent for several long drawn out moments before Gilbert asked, "Antonio, do you still have the extra water balloons?"

"Yeah, I have them right..." he trailed off, his panicked grassy irises darted around the space, his eyebrows high. He dug through his short's pockets a couple times before just pulling them out completely. "I dropped them." he said, looking somewhere between embarrassed and panicked. Antonio had ran behind us all because he was the steadiest and fastest on his feet. He could easily look over his shoulder while running and could even run fairly quickly backwards as well. If anyone was chasing after us, he'd be the guy to warn the rest so we could all split up and meet back up somewhere else.

We all looked at each other, anxious and panicked. "I-it shouldn't matter too much. Right?" Matthew asked nervously, fidgeting a bit with the hem of his t-shirt. The trio exchanged a silent conversation between themselves. Francis shrugged and looked over at Matthew. "If they happened to be following us, the balloons may be pointing them in the right direction to finding us."

"But we should be fine," Gilbert interjected. "No one can find the Awesome Fort! We're practically invisible!" We really weren't.

The Awesome Fort was extremely visible from the tree where it had been built. It was all white with a crudely painted, black eagle on one side. The whole thing was just a eight by eight square sitting on two large branches of an oak tree. Posters were plastered to almost every inch of the inside walls and patches of old carpet were sitting in different spots.

There was a soccer ball sitting in one corner, along with a pile of card and a bag of balloons. A small table was pushed up against a wall and candy wrappers littered the floor. For some odd reason, there was a bicycle up there as well. When I asked about it, I got the simple response of, "It's complicated." There also happened to be several changes of clothes in there.

After sitting in there for a good ten minutes without anything happening, we decided that maybe we really had lost them and that we had basically gotten away with murder.

Boy, were we wrong.


So guess who finally was able to update! Sorry if that was a horribly long wait. School's been chaotic lately so I might not be able to write much more until closer to Memorial Day (around May 25th)...maybe. But I will try and get may one more chapter (or two) out before then, don't worry.

But here are notes on the actual story:

We all know that the Trio would totally just have something completely random in their tree fort.

Also Gilbert right now is based off me a little. When I was younger I found out my family was Dutch so I tried to teach myself Dutch.

Most of the foreign language in here will be pretty basic, but I'll translate phrases if they do pop up.

Any suggestions leave a review. Just want to chat, talk to me!

Have a lovely day!