AN: I rewrote it, yeah. Basically, I took out a huge chunk of dialogue, then I added two more scenes. It was just to make the story roll along more smoothly.

But part of it was extremely awkward for to write. Mostly Jay, I have no idea how he would act in the situation I set him up in. Please read it, and review telling me if I could've done something better with Jay and how he approaches Eden (wow I'm giving a lot away here).

Chapter 14. Pool-riding

I stare at the Trig textbook. The Trig textbook stares at me.

"What are you doing?" cuts in a voice, sounding very much on the verge of laughter.

Stacy enters my bedroom, raised eyebrows directed at me.

"I'm trying to obliterate this book with the power of my glare," I explain as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "It's not working very well."

"I think you need to get out. All that reading has made your mind fuzzy."

"I can't," I groan, falling onto my bed. "The stupid drought has sucked the water out of the ocean, if you recall."

"Me and my friends found an alternative to surfing," he says distantly, shuffling the pages of my Trig textbook around.

"And that would be?"

There's a pause in Stacy's speech. I instinctively lift up my head, knowing he was keeping something from me. By the way his face read that he was uncertain confirmed these suspicions.

"Stacy. What's the alternative to surfing?" I prod.

"Well, you wouldn't really approve..." he trails off. "So never mind."

He abruptly stands up and begins to exit the bedroom, but I immediately jump into action. Leaping up, I prevent him from leaving by grabbing the back of his shirt and yanking him backward. To my surprise, he collapses onto my bed. I guess I had used more force than I originally intended. Stacy is thinking something similar to this:

"Jeez, Eden," he says breathlessly. "Are you taking steroids or something?"

"Just answer the question, Peralta."

With a grin, he sits up on my bed and faces me. "Fine, fine. I'll tell you but, but you've got to promise not to get mad."

"I make no promises," I say, feigning haughtiness as I stick my nose up into the air.

"No really, you have to make the promise. Pinky swear and everything."

"What are we, in the third grade?" I say with a roll of my eyes. "Look, are you and your friends into hard drugs or something?"

"No, of course not."

"Because if you are, I'll hurt you. Who's your dealer? It had better not be Biniak - that kid is so - "

"Eden, no. But the thing that I did mention, it is illegal, in a way. We're, um, we're pool-riding."

I give him a blank stare before saying, "Stacy, you can't just make up words."

"I didn't make it up, it's a hyponen!"

"You mean hyphen," I correct.

"Whatever. Long story short, we're breaking into people's backwards to skate their empty swimming pools."

Silence. For the moment, I'm too speechless to yell or ask questions. The Z-boys did a lot of bad stuff, but this was completely new for them. But this idea of "pool-riding" admittedly sounded ingenious.

Apparently, I was so busy being speechless that I hadn't noticed that Stacy had been rambling until now.

"... totally Tony's idea, not mind. But the first time we tried it, he used a girl's keys to get into the backyard. Anyway, you're welcome to come along, if you feel like it. But you can't tell anybody or else you'll probably get in trouble. And it's slightly dangerous. You're at risk of people calling the cops on you."

After a few more moments of this, I finally give up on Stacy and stand up, gathering the textbooks into my backpack and slinging it over my shoulder.

"That all sounds fascinating," I interrupt him. "But I think I'll pass for now. I'm going over to Lily's - she's got air-conditioning and a butler."

"Huh," says Stacy, sounding astounded. "You're taking this way better than I thought you would."

"Oh no," I reply. "I totally and completely hate you guys for jeopardizing your futures. But I'm gradually learning to suppress my emotions."

To tell the truth, I'm getting sick of playing the tug-of-war game with the Z-boys.

Stacy smiles. "Well, if you change your mind, we'll probably be in the neighborhood. Most of the pools are in Lily and Sid's neighborhoods anyway."

"Where the fudge is my camera?"

I send Lily a strange look. "Did you really just say 'fudge'? It's alright, Lily, you can say curse words now, you're a big girl." I took the tone of an adult speaking to a child.

Lily sighs at me. "I can't, it makes me feel dirty."

"Then you have issues. And your camera is on your night-stand."

"Eureka!" Lily grabs the camera off her night-sand and heads toward the closet. "Do you want to see how I develop film?"

"No, not particularly."

She decides to contradict me anyway. "Well, I think you do!" her voices drifts in from the closet. "You see, I've got some very interesting stills on my film reel. You'll want to see them."

Sighing, I get up to follow Lily into the closet.

Lily Bruinn has to be the only teenager on the planet to make a darkroom out of her walk-in closet. A red safelight filled the dimness of the closet, and a couple of treys filled with clear liquids were stacked on top of a shelf.

Using a pair of tongs, Lily grabs a piece of photo paper out of the developer trey and clips it onto the string hanging from the ceiling. Then she grabs another, dryer, photo paper off the string and takes me back outside again.

"Here it is," she points out the developed photo.

I see a picture of a gym track with some boys lounging the area. I quickly recognize two of them, Stacy and Jay. But more to the point, they were in PE uniforms: a gray t-shirt and ugly, short shorts. Lily and I simultaneously burst out into a fit of giggles.

"Almighty Lord!" I claim aloud, trying to hold back my giggles. "Lily, how in the world did you manage to get this?"

Lily shrugs, taking the flattery into stride.

"I have seventh period off, and I saw them on the track. They didn't realize I was taking their photo; it's why they look so brain-dead. Oh, and check this out."

Lily points out Jay, who was sitting on the track asphalt with his legs spread-eagle and a brooding expression on his face. More specifically, she points at Jay's groin area.

"If you look close enough, from this angle you can see his ball-- "

"LILY!"

I shove the photograph out of my face with a disgusted groan. Lily collapses in a fit of laughter.

"So - worth - it," she says in between shaky breathes. "Your - face!"

"Shut up," I grumble. "It wasn't that funny."

"Yeah it was. Anyway, why do you got to be so squeamish? It's just Jay."

"Is this what you brought me over for? To assault the senses?"

"No, I wanted to hang out, since we haven't done that in awhile. Except there's positively nothing to do," she says miserably.

"I'm sure we can think of something."

"What are the Z-boys doing?"

I snort, blowing a piece of red hair out of my eyes. "The usual crap, probably. Vandalism, law-breaking, etc. Except..." I remember the conversation me and Stacy shared earlier today. "Stacy did mention something, it's stupid though."

"What?"

"He said that they are starting to break into pools and skateboard in them."

Lily's face breaks into an expression of extreme surprise. "No way!"

"Yep, they're that nuts."

"And they're doing it right now?"

"Stacy said so. He even invited me, though I don't know why. It's not like I'd find anything useful out of watching them skateboard a pool back and forth."

"I dunno..." mumbles Lily. "It sounds kind of... fun."

I pause in order to give Lily a cross look. In the tone a mother would scold her child, I say, "Lily, no. We aren't - we're definitely not going."

"What?" says Lily, acting innocent-like. "I was just asking a question." After a moment of glaring on my part, she finally gives up her facade. "Come on, Eden, it should be fun!"

"No."

"Don't you want to know how they do it? How they 'skate pools'" she mimes air quotes. "I mean, I don't know about you, but I've never heard of anyone doing that kind of thing before."

"Like I care! I'm not going to risk my perfectly clean record just to watch a bunch of shirtless, pubescent bodies skidding against asphalt."

Lily sighs. "Do you even hear yourself? The shirtless, pubescent bodies skidding against asphalt is just the kind of fun we need! And what are the odds that we'll be busted by the cops? Everyone in the Valley have jobs to go to, none of them will even know the Z-boys broke into their backyards. Please, please, please?"

She gave me some puppy-dog-eyes, topped with a staged quivering lip. It was one-hundred percent fake, but somehow her efforts to sway me won me over.

"Fine," I sigh. Her face lights up. "We'll just look around the neighborhood, and if they're nowhere to be seen, then that's that."

"Thankyou!" Lily gives me a brief peck of the cheek before bouncing off her bed to put on a new set of clothes from her dresser.

A few minutes later, me and Lily emerge from her house, arm-in-arm. We stroll down the block, with the scorching sun heating up our black and red heads. Lily, knowing each house that had a pool, checked those backyards by peeking over the fences. After the first block, we moved onto the second, and here is where I got unlucky.

A brick house had loud, obnoxious voices emitting from its back. Lily walks up to the fence, tiptoeing to get a better view. Then she looks back at me with a smirk, and beckons like the devil.

We open the back door and walk in, slowly trudging toward the direction the voices are coming from. The backyard has a spacious blue pool with a white picnic table at the end.

And indeed, the Z-boys are infesting the area. Most sit around the pool, while others surrounded the picnic table. But my attention is immediately drawn toward the two figures which were spiraling inside the pool on boards.

It was an odd sight, and it astounded me: I'd never seen someone skate as high up against the wall as they were. It seemed just like surfing waves, only the waves were made of concrete wall.

"Dudes, look who's here!"

Several heads turn as Lily and me make our way toward the pool. Although Lily doesn't have the same flabbergasted expression as me, she still looks quite intrigued with the situation. She doesn't revere the surfing/skateboarding scene as much as the rest of us.

Lily sits down at the edge of the pool and rabidly watches Shogo and Red Dog circle the pool back and forth. For a minute, my feet are glued to the ground, I'm still processing the scene before me. A voice finally brings me out of my reverie.

"Hey, I didn't think you would come," says Stacy.

"I didn't plan on it," I reply distantly. "Lily persuaded me to."

Sid butts in, pumping out his chest in a comical manner. "So you girls come out her to watch us skate?"

Lily snorts at his antics, very unladylike.

"Jay, show 'em that one move you did!"

Smirking, Jay grabs his board and begins to step forward, but before he even enters the pool, Tony cuts off his path and jumps in with his own skateboard. I'm reminded of dogs eagerly competing for its master's affection.

"Don't you feel weird, just standing in this house?" Lily whispers to me. "I mean, this isn't even our house."

I glance over at the lonely housewife, who had been desperate enough to allow a bunch of teenage delinquents to skateboard her pool. She's smiling blithely as Sid massages her shoulders. I roll my eyes at Lily, she smiles.

The housewife's daughter, Shell, a girl with long brown hair, walks in through the sliding glass door. A sweaty Jay and Tony follow her in.

"Michael!" Shell barks, and her kid brother dashes in. "Make Tony a sandwich."

"I can't believe them," I mutter to Lily, who looks just as disappointed. "Excuse me," I say loudly to the woman, who's name I think was Marie. "Where's your bathroom?"

She gives me a disdainful look. Basically, 'You're only here because you're with them' look. "Down the hall, first door to your left."

When I get there, I have no problem snooping their their bathroom stuff. Marie has eight tubes of lipstick, four mascaras, several shades of eye-shadow, and God knows what else. The only thing I had was a case of chap stick in my pocket.

I pick up the nearest tube of lipstick and carefully smear in on my puckered lips. Not a whole lot, but just enough to make me more appealing.

Someone knocks the bathroom door.

Thinking that it's Lily, I say, "It's open."

I'm surprised when Jay walks in.

"Jay. Do you need to use - ?"

He shakes his head. "No, it's cool. I just came to get a towel."

He slowly reaches the towel rack, which was hanging over the toilet. Meanwhile, I quickly smear the lipstick off my lips, feeling stupid.

"Hey, that kid is making grilled sandwiches," he says. "You want one?"

I shake my head, continuing my perusal through the bathroom drawers. "I'm leaving soon," I tell him. "Lily pointed it out earlier; being in some guy's house is just creepy."

I could feel Jay's green eyes bore into the back of my head, but I didn't dare spare him a glance. Instead I stare into the mirror at myself, the only comfortable place that I could look. Somehow the atmosphere had changed into something more personal, more intense, now that I was alone with Jay. Like a quiet before the storm.

"Then why'd you come?" he breaks the silence.

"I don't know. Lily likes coming. It gives us something to do." I give him those choices to pick from.

"I think you do know," says Jay, leaning against the counter. "I think you like watching us skate."

"It's alright," I shrug, feeling more uneasy by the second. He was acting strange. "Have you been drinking?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a grin flitting across his face. "No."

"Then stop acting weird--"

My mumble is cut short when I felt of pair of fingers start to softly caress my bare shoulder. I watch horrifically as Jay traces his fingers up to my head to tuck a red strand of hair behind my ear.

I let out a strangled whisper, "Jay."

He drops his hand, still staring at me. "What is it now?" he asks, as though some other invisible barrier had walked in on his life.

I begin, slowly, vaguely so that I don't have to outright say anything; I'd only imply it.

"Your friends, they told me some things... And I didn't know whether I should believe them or not, but now I'm starting to think they were telling the truth. Before you try anything, Jay..." I finally muster up enough courage to face him and look in in the eye. "Before you try anything, I'm letting you know now that I just want to stay friends."

He turns a little angry, pursing his lips. "That's some bullshit."

"Excuse me?" I say, sounding accosted.

"Why don't you just come out and say it? You don't want to be with me."

For a moment, I flounder in silence. Jay was being so direct, it scared me.

"What do you expect, Jay?" I finally come up with. "All of the sudden, without notice, you just start acting this way - "

"Without notice?" he raises his voice. "Fuck, Eden!" The impact of his words, the tone he had used them in, caused my mouth to fall open. "I mean, shit, all my friends have probably told you by now about..."

"What, and you expect me to believe the word of your friends?" I defend. "If you wanted me to know something, then you should've told me from the start!"

"Yeah, like I was gonna tell you," he says in a humorless laugh. "If I'd done this half a year ago, you would've acted the same way you are now."

"Fuck you, Jay!" I say, overcome with anger and embarrassment. "I'm not that predictable!" I say while reaching for the door knob.

"Then why don't you prove me wrong," he says quickly, before I can walk out. "If you weren't so predictable, then right now you'd stick around and let me kiss you."

The image of him kissing me briefly seeps into my thoughts. But just as soon as it came, it went away. I shake my head disgustedly at him.

"You're not going to dupe me into that, Jay."

As I say it, a woman's voice drifts down the hallway. "Is everyone okay in there?" Just as Marie appears at the doorway, I move passed her and head for the front door.

A man pulls up to the driveway when I get there. Red-faced, he walks out of the car and gives me a dirty look. "Who the hell are you?"

Too angry to speak, I ignore him, stomping down the street, having a vague direction of where my house was at. The man must have figured I was his daughter's friend: he went inside the house. I know I probably should have warned everyone out back that the husband was home, but a part of me just really wanted to spite them all because of what Jay had said.