“Arrogant son of a bitch,” my dad mumbled, shaking his head. Then he smiled. “I like him.”

I shrieked loudly and marched into the house, slamming the door.

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( I just felt like highlighting the whole few paragraphs. )

I wasn’t even paying attention to Mrs. Adams. Instead, I was staring at David, who was chewing one of the pieces of gum that she had placed in front of us, but he seemed to be having trouble.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Are you all right?” I asked him.

“Fine,” he grunted, making a screw-face.

“Haven’t you ever chewed gum before?”

“I have but Hubba Bubba is just really difficult to chew,” he replied.

“David,” Mrs. Adams scolded, narrowing her eyes at him and crossing her arms over her chest. “I didn’t tell you to chew the gum yet. That wasn’t even your first experiment.”

David’s face became very flushed from being put on the spot while a couple of people chuckled. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Mrs. Adams pointed to the garbage and David stood up, sauntered over to it, and spat out his gum. Mrs. Adams nodded her approval and I bit my lip, holding in my laugh.

As for the other students, they didn’t succeed because it was just too amusing to see David acting like a very obedient and well-trained dog.

When he sat back down, he smirked and shook his head. Mrs. Adams tossed me a pack of Hubba Bubba again and I caught it, placing it down in front of me.

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( it's quite weird; stop eating all the gum! gum as in, the one that's above your teeth or what? LOL. I'm crazy =.- )

“David!” I exclaimed. “Stop eating all the gum!”

“I’m not,” he objected, taking it out of his mouth again and stretching it a little bit between his fingers. “There’s no way it would be able to stretch without being chewed a little bit first. Here.”

He held out one side of the gum and I scowled in disgust. Ryan chuckled.

“What makes you think I want to touch it now that it’s been in your mouth?” I snapped, shaking my head. David sighed and rolled his eyes. I reached behind him onto the teacher’s desk, grabbing two pairs of plastic gloves. I handed him a pair and he slipped them onto his hands. Then I slowly and hesitantly reaching toward his hand and took one side of the gum. I cringed and squeezed my eyes closed.

“Oh God. This is so gross,” I mumbled, pulling it outwards. David rolled his eyes.

“Okay, walk back,” he said, nodding behind me. I did as I was told and began to slowly walk in the opposite direction of David, making sure to not pull too hard on the gum and make it break. Ryan grabbed the measuring tape and placed one end on the floor by David’s foot and followed me until the gum snapped back and hit David in the chest.

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( a few paragraphs later ... )

“Yeah, that,” he said. Doing the experiments with David was . . . interesting, to say the least. We had to borrow even more gum from Mrs. Adams, who warned us that she’d put gum in our ears if we didn’t stop wasting it; at which point David gave up being silly and just concentrated on passing this lab. The last experiment we had to do was to count how many chews of one piece of gum we could get in thirty seconds. I was the chewer, Ryan was the counter, and David was the timer.

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( right after the above. )

Nick had just discovered yesterday that his locker was down the hall from mine so when class ended; we walked out together and headed toward our lockers. That was until someone jumped on my back, nearly knocking me off my feet. Their legs were wrapped around my waist and their arms around my shoulders like they were expecting a piggy-back or something.

Nick smirked.

“Christabelle!”

Ugh, David.

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( it's weird. Nathan = Blade, but then how does he chat with her on the internet when he's in her house? o.o )

“I didn’t scare him off. I don’t even know him. How can I scare off a guy who’s on the other side of an internet conversation?”

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I shrugged. “Whenever you leave.”

“And when am I leaving?”

“After I kick Aiden’s ass since he’s been hiding around the corner ever since you came out of the bathroom,” I said. Blade furrowed his eyebrows and stood up, peering around the corner.

“Hey man,” he said, nodding at Aiden, who stepped away and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re lucky you’re one of the few guys who keep to their word. Otherwise, you’d have a television antenna shoved up your ass right about now,” he snapped, walking back downstairs. My jaw dropped. Blade looked over at me with wide eyes and a mocking shocked expression on his face.

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One of the bad points in this prank was that we were going to be screwed when they woke up, screaming profanities at us, and when it was two older college boys against two eleventh grade girls, there wasn’t really going to be a contest. Another bad point was that it was pitch black in Jared’s room—not even a shred of light was visible so we had to keep the door opened slightly—and either Jared or Ian, or Marcy’s dog Spike was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. If it was Spike and we stepped on his tail, or just him in general, he was bound to yelp and wake up Jared and Ian before we had time to initiate the prank fully—so we had to be ultra careful.

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The moment Marcy’s foot made contact with the dog toy, she leaped nearly five feet away with wide eyes, hissing “shhh!” at it, as if that would help. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders dramatically, asking her through my actions what the hell she was expecting to happen from shushing the toy. She just shook her head and breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that her brother and Ian hadn’t woken up. They either just grunted in their sleep or rolled over, changing positions. When Marcy snapped back into her state that didn’t make her look like a total and complete idiot who freaks out over dog toys and tells them to shut up, I approached Jared at the side of his bed, knowing I was so dead after this.

Jared could take me down in a matter of seconds and I wouldn’t be able to put up a fight even if I tried. Marcy hovered over Ian’s practically drooling figure. His tongue was hanging out the side of his mouth, resembling Spike’s sleeping form almost identically. I looked down at Jared, hoping that I’d have enough time to run really quickly if I was lucky but he was still extremely fast.

And then he smirked, and I knew we had been screwed over. My whole body tensed and my eyes widened again, because right when Marcy was a mere centimeter from dumping the water on Ian’s face, they both jumped up, screaming obscenities at us. Marcy screamed first, accidentally losing her grip on her bowl and flinging it up in the air. Water went everywhere—including on her, because when the bowl landed, it landed on her head.

“I can’t see!” she screeched, waving her hands in the air, when the problem was easily avoidable. She could have just lifted it off her head but instead, she decided to stagger around, bashing into walls until she fell to the floor.

Jared and I hadn’t even began arguing or chasing each other, and I hadn’t attempted to throw the water at him since we were too absorbed with watching Marcy’s dramatic take-down. Ian was laughing his ass off, while Jared and I just stood there, staring blankly at Marcy’s form on the carpet, scowling and rubbing her head in pain. Jared turned back to me suddenly with a mischievous smile, and I knew that my fate was about to be the same if I didn’t do something quickly.

Without another thought, I threw the water on him and he coughed, rubbing his eyes before looking back up at me with determination written all over his face.

I was dead.

I chucked the plastic bowl at his face and raced out of the room, booking it down the hall and hid in the bathroom, locking the door. I heard Jared’s approaching footsteps before he pounded his fist on the door, laughing.

“Come on, Chris. Don’t be such a chickenshit,” he called.

I froze and raised my eyebrows at the door. “Did you seriously just call me chickenshit?”

“I seriously just called you chickenshit,” he repeated, chuckling. “Come on. You can’t expect me to let you go after you pour water on my head and chuck a bowl at my face. My nose is busted now, thanks to you.”

I opened the door a very tiny bit and stuck my foot on the side, making sure he wouldn’t be able to pull it opened and, most likely, shove my head in the toilet bowl. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“I did not bust your nose,” I objected, closing the door again.

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Then I heard the lock of the door being fiddled with and I flung my other leg out the window, stepping onto the roof. Marcy’s house was one of those types that had the bathroom over the garage but only partially so there was a roof that we could stand on if we wanted to. It could only be accessed through the bathroom window though. I quickly closed the window again and started to—very quietly and carefully—make my way over the roof to the side of the house so I could jump down.

This was easily one of the stupidest things I’d ever done in my life. It was near the end of February and I was walking over my best friend’s house roof in the middle of the night, with nothing but my pajamas to keep me warm. I climbed down the side of the house where a wicker fence was pressed against the side. I used this to my advantage and climbed down it like it was a ladder. When my feet touched the cold grass, a cold shiver shot itself up my spine and I whimpered, rubbing my arms and racing around the side of the house. I knocked on the front door quietly, bouncing up and down on my heels to try and distract myself so that I wouldn’t be concentrating on the immense freezing cold I was feeling. Marcy opened the door with a towel draped over her head to dry her hair. She frowned when she saw me, but most likely out of confusion instead of just not wanting to see me there.

“What the hell?” she asked. “What are you doing outside?”

“Escaping your brother and his deranged, psychopathic best friend,” I replied, walking around her and into the kitchen. I held a finger to my lips, signaling for her to be quiet and she nodded, shutting the door as silently as possible, before following me into the kitchen and leaning against the counter.

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( I have no idea why but I am laughing over this like a lunatic. )

“Oh God. I’m dead,” I said quickly, panicked. “I’m dead. He’s going to kill me. They didn’t have to kick your ass since you did it by yourself and you also managed to amuse them while doing it but I actually went through with your prank. Your stupid, reckless, harebrained prank.”

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“You do know you have a fourteen year old sister upstairs, right?” I asked him. “I’m pretty sure dad wouldn’t be too happy if he came home one day and she asked him ‘dad, what does shit mean?’.”

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- announcement. just now a car passed by with my block, and I, in my bedroom, with the windows securely closed, can hear the effin' music blasting out from the car. I wonder why the driver's not deaf yet. anyway, back to laughing. -

Marcy nodded and opened up her sandwich, taking off a pickle and tossing it over her shoulder, not really caring where it landed—which just happened to be in the middle of a table where the really artsy students sat. They all exclaimed their shock and looked up at the roof, thinking more pickles were about to fall on their heads.

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( eh, how can a guy be so hot until she faint? psh. )

During second when I got there and waved at Blade and Nick, I sat next to David at the side of the room. He was now my official science experiment partner, and Nick constantly teased me about it because he lucked out and got to partner up with Ryan. As for Blade, his fate was the same as mine—if not worse—because he got stuck with a girl that actually fainted when she found out that she was paired with him for the rest of the year.

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( mental retard. glare and smile at table. )

Kayti chuckled beside me, as Preston took a seat and leaned back on his chair, crossing his arms on his chest. I sat down next to David and looked over at him with raised eyebrows. He was glaring at the table, and yet smiling at the same time so really I had no idea what the hell was going on in his brain. I nudged him with my elbow and he looked over at me.

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( she was talking about stealing a test. )

Marcy obviously wasn’t aware of how her voice had risen exponentially, and the four tables around ours were all staring at us, either thinking we were insane, or just completely brainless. Preston stared up at her in amazement. He must have thought I hung out with mentally troubled people, judging by how David had given him the cold, hard stare as soon as he got to the table, and Marcy was talking about stealing tests. Marcy paused and looked down at him, cocking an eyebrow. Of course the person out of her sight was more important to pay attention to, rather than the fact that she’d screamed out her problems in math and made the entire cafeteria aware of them.

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nodded and slipped my running shoes on, before following him outside. I took a couple steps until I spotted something and right when I was about to step on it, I looked down and noticed it was a frog. I shrieked and took a quick step back, covering my mouth with my hands. Blade jumped and turned to me with raised eyebrows and an amused smirk on his face.

“It’s a frog. It’s not a dragon,” he said with a laugh.

“No, but I almost stepped on it,” I explained, squirming uncomfortably.

“Ooh,” Blade said slowly, nodding. “You were afraid you’d kill it and make all the stuff inside get on the bottom of your shoe and them squish it and—“

“Blade! Shut up!” I yelled, causing him to laugh harder. I bent down and picked up the frog.

“Maybe you should kiss it,” he joked, winking at me. “Just give him a big fat one. Right on the lips.” He puckered out his, leaning forward. I glared at him and put the frog in the garden, away from my feet. I shoved Blade to the side and walked around him.

“Life’s not a fairytale, Blade,” I said with a shake of my head.

“You never know,” he said, following behind me and increasing the speed of his pace to keep up. “Why don’t you give him a kiss and find out?”

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“Are you going to Trix’s party on Friday?” Blade asked me when I sat down on one of the swings at the park. He sat beside me, a little ways down because instead of being mature and using one of the “big kid” swings, he sat on the baby ones with the feet holes and everything. Blade was squirming around in it for about two minutes, trying to get comfortable but in the end, he just got stuck with his legs sticking up in the air. He huffed and shook some hair out of his eyes, grabbing onto the chains.

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“Bring Marcy and Kayti,” he suggested. “You three are like The Three Musketeers. You could sure wreck havoc at a party if you tried.”

“One of the reasons why I’m not bringing them,” I pointed out with a laugh and a shake of my head. “They’d probably end up starting a fight or setting something on fire.”

“No, that would be Andrew,” Blade said. “You haven’t seen that kid at parties or drunk. It’s crazy.”

“Does he actually talk?”

“Are you kidding? He doesn’t shut up! He’s like one of those kiddy rides in the mall. You give him something to get him started up and he just goes.”

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