Mickey’s POV:

My fingers grazed the cold bottom ledge of my window. I looked behind myself once more, my eyes skimming over the door that was locked and the pillows underneath my duvet making it look like there was a body softly sleeping. Checking my surroundings one last time by listening without making a sound, I deemed it safe to escape. Carefully, I pushed up the window, trying to make minimal noise. One wrong move and it was game over.

Once the outside air hit my body and the window was open wide enough for me to fit through, I picked up my black backpack and threw it out. It hit the grass in the front yard with a soft thump. I looked around the outside area once again and once I saw that nobody was around, I decided to climb out myself. First, I raised my right foot up and onto the roof, then came my left foot, and I slithered out of the window so that I was facing the house. Once I knew my footing was steady, I tried my best to quietly close the window, making sure to keep it open an inch so I could open it again later.

“Hey, Mickey!” A male voice shouted from the road, causing me to jump a little and nearly slip.

I snapped my head towards the sound and saw the one and only Jack and Alex just coming out of Rian’s house. It wasn’t all too late in the evening, but I still decided to sneak out rather than use the front door. This was all just a safety precaution.

I let go of the window sill and used my arms to keep my balance. Slowly but surely, I shuffled to the end of the small roof that covered an extended part of the living room. Once I was at the part where there was still outside wall, but no roof, I grabbed onto the pipe leading from the gutter to the floor and climbed down while making sure my grip was strong. It wasn’t that I was afraid of falling, I just didn’t want to risk making a loud noise and waking my mom up.

When I was down on the ground, I picked up my backpack and slung it onto my shoulder. I decided to ignore Jack and Alex, not being able to risk being in plain sight for longer than needed. Something told me that if Rian’s parents saw me, they weren’t going to hesitate to tell mine. I wasn’t sure how my parents were going to punish me, but I didn’t want to know. They were going to have to take drastic measures since grounding me obviously didn’t work and taking my phone away from me wasn’t an option anymore. But just because that was my plan, didn’t mean that Jack and Alex had the same one in mind.

“Hey, Mickey!” Jack repeated as they walked in my direction, only this time in a whisper-shout. “What are you doing?”

“Going out,” I blatantly told them as I unlocked my piece-of-shit car. This conversation was going to have to be cut short if I wanted to get out of this alive.

“Where?” Alex asked next, a smirk already playing at his lips as he looked at me.

“A bonfire,” I answered and got in my car, cringing as I had to slam my door shut because it wouldn’t close properly otherwise.

After turning on the engine, I looked out my window and still saw the two boys standing there and watching me. I frowned and stared back for a little while, wondering what they were doing. When the tension had increased enough for me, I rolled down my window and shook my head at them.

“Are you guys coming or what?” I gave them a quick nod to gesture them to come inside and join me.

Alex immediately called shotgun and rushed to the other side of the car before Jack could even register what was going on. After a couple of tugs on the handle, the door finally creaked open for him and he hopped in. As he closed it behind him while seated, Jack realized what was going on and got in in the back. He shuffled over to the middle seat so he wouldn’t miss a thing and looked around for a seatbelt.

“The seatbelts are broken except for the one on the right, but that seat is messed up.” I looked over my shoulder to tell him. “Don’t ask me what happened to it, but you get the choice.”

“I don’t think I even want to know what you have done back here before.” Jack let out an involuntary shiver, which caused Alex to let out a laugh as he happily put on the seatbelt that did work in the front.

“Now, let’s leave before Rian rats us out.” I put the car in reverse and backed up quickly, not really paying attention if there was anybody already out on the road. Lucky for me, cars rarely came on our road and it was still empty when I just drove out on it. It would have been the most hilarious thing ever to get in a car crash right outside my house while trying to sneak out.

The radio played quietly as I drove to the destination. At first, Jack kept asking questions about what he was actually getting himself into, but I refused to reply. He should have started doubting coming with me before he stepped anywhere near my car. It wasn’t my problem now. Eventually, Alex told him to shut up, which got us a nice quiet drive. When I had asked--it was more like told-- them to come with me, I wasn’t counting on having somebody annoy the shit out of me.

Slowly but surely we left my neighborhood and entered the next. It was a higher class one with larger houses, and it was quite obvious that I wasn’t supposed to be there. No way would I ever fit in a place like this. The bonfire was actually in the next neighborhood where Michael lived, but to get there I needed to drive straight through this one.

You’d expect it to be completely empty after the sun had gone down, all the rich people inside their houses. But, of course, the one street I was driving through had to have the one crazy guy. He decided to suddenly cross and run at a stop light right while I was approaching. I saw the green collar shirt that was illuminated by my headlights flash right in front of me, making me slam on my breaks so I wouldn’t hit him. He looked right back at me, his eyes wide with shock.

I rolled my window down and patiently waited to let out my rage. “Are you fucking trying to get killed?!”

But the guy didn’t say anything back. Instead, he squinted his eyes and started to walk towards the car, his eyes on me the entire time. Once he was finally right next to me, he decided to open his mouth. “Monica? What are you doing here?”

And that when I recognized his face. It had been really long, but there was no way I could act like I didn’t know him. I quickly rolled up the window again and tried to drive off as fast as possible, but my car wouldn’t start up. Every single time I suddenly braked and waited for a while, it always took ages to start again. I was muttering profanities under my breath until it finally started working again. Before I could drive off, though, the guy was banging on my window and repeating my name a couple of times more in question form. Once I could, though, I was out of there.

“Wait, who was that?” Alex asked, turning around in his seat as if looking back would allow him to see the guy again.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Somebody wearing a stupidass short-sleeved green collar shirt.”

“But he knew you.”

“I mean, he did say my name a couple of times… It would only make sense, right?” I said sarcastically, happy I didn’t have to stay there any longer than needed.

Jack decided to give his input, grinning like a fool as he did so. “It’s probably a guy she fucked once and he is now hung up on her.”

“Ew, gross.” I scrunched up my nose and shook my head, still keeping my eyes on the dark road. “No way.”

I wasn’t going to tell them who he was, it was way too embarrassing for that. I’ll paint the picture. This wasn’t the first time I lived in Baltimore, obviously. I used to live with Michael when he still had full custody of me. It’s easy to say we did not live in this neighborhood, we lived in the one I was going to. Not a great life, honestly. But our house happened to still be in the school district that all these preppy kids, unfortunately, went to as well. I used to fit in perfectly other than not having the same designer clothes. What it did include, however, was a cheesy preppy boyfriend at the age of twelve. Spoiler alert, green-collar-shirt guy was said boyfriend for me. I was never going to stoop so low again. Monica was out of the picture and Mickey was out for everybody to see.

Once we were at the sketchy-looking park that was on the outskirts of the bad neighborhood, I parked my car amongst all the other beat down vehicles and took my keys out of the ignition. Other than the cars and motorcycles and some noise, there wasn’t much more evidence of a bonfire going on. But I knew that just past the trees and bushes, things were going down.

“Just a fair warning: don’t mess with the wrong people, because I won’t be there to save your asses.” I made clear to both Jack and Alex as I stepped out of the car. All my friends were here, I wasn’t going to look out for two high school kids the entire time I was there.

Alex jumped out as well and quickly hurried to catch up with me. “Who are the wrong people? I would rather not fuck myself up tonight.”

“You’ll find out.” I winked and walked up to the small path at a bush that led to nowhere. Or so it seemed. You just had to push away a few branches, and you’d get through in no time.

Moving the last branch out of the way, Jack freaking out whenever he nearly got hit in the face by one, I saw around twenty people gathered around a large-ish fire. There were a few lawn chairs scattered around in circles and empty bottles of beer strewn all over the patchy grass. It may have looked a bit sketchy to outsiders, but these were my friends. This was the same to me as it was to some kids seeing their friends at school again. Only we had fire and alcohol here.

“Mickey!” Somebody shouted out from one of the groups of chairs. I looked around to see some guy we all called ‘Johnny’, but nobody knew his real name. Somebody once decided to call him that, and it stuck with everyone. He was your stereotypical bad boy, aka Devon’s best friend. They wore the same similar black leather jackets and supported the same black swoopy hair. Only Johnny’s was a bit more on the browner side.

“Hey!” I hollered back and stepped over to him.

He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. Not only did his actions tell me he was wasted and far gone, but his breath smelled just as bad. I just laughed at him and wrapped my arm around his waist, bringing him even closer to me. He reached into the pocket inside his jacket and pulled out a baggie. Holding it up in front of my face, I had no choice but to look at the white substance in it.

“Oh, no,” I shook my head at him but smirked nonetheless, “I’m not going down that road again. Been there, done that.”

“Come on, just one!” He wiggled both his eyebrows and what he was holding in his hand.

“That’s what I always said, but it always turned to more than one.” I continued to refuse. Yes, I took drugs, but I was smarter than that.

“You’ve done coke before?” Alex voice piped up from behind me.

I turned a little, as far as Johnny’s grip would allow me, and glared a little at Alex, Jack stood a couple of steps behind him. “Are you going to follow me around the entire time?”

“We don’t exactly know anybody here, so…”

“Make new friends!” I waved my loose arm around to gesture how many people were here. “Don’t tell me you don’t talk to other people at your parties either.”

Johnny slapped my arm away and held out his own for Alex and Jack to shake. “Everybody here calls me Johnny, you can do so too. You guys want some?”

“I’m fine.” Alex narrowed his eyes a little, inspecting Johnny from afar to see if he was included in the ‘wrong people’ group I had mentioned. Little did he know that everybody here could be the wrong person if he did the wrong thing.

Johnny sighed and put the baggie with cocaine back in his pocket and instead held out a joint to me. “I owe you this. You better share it, though.”

“Yeah, right. There’s a reason why you owe it to me in the first place.” I took out my lighter and lit the joint before bringing it to my lips.

“Fine.” He raised his hands up in defense and pulled me down to sit in one of the lawn chairs with him. His hands went around my waist as I was sat on his lap, his fingers drawing shapes. I leaned into him, not giving a fuck that everybody around us could see. Honestly, nobody else probably gave a fuck either except for maybe Alex and Jack.

Speaking of the two, they managed to quickly sit down in the two empty chairs right beside me. It was like they were two small lost puppies. At school and in the familiar they acted all confident, knowing that everybody already thought they were cool, but now they were the ones out of place. Nobody really minded their presence either. As long as nobody called the cops or said the wrong thing, it was all cool.

Johnny and I shamelessly filtered with each other the entire time we were sat there. Luckily Jack was the one sitting directly next to us, because he was busy staring at a blonde girl in the distance instead of us, while Alex looked infuriated. It only made me want to flirt more with Johnny than before. Alex couldn't control what I did, even if I technically had a boyfriend and what I was doing was technically wrong.

“Hey, bro, get off my girlfriend.” Devon threatened with a nod at his best friend as he came towards us out of nowhere.

Johnny grinned up at him, now also high as a kite. “She’s the one sitting on me.”

“Mhm, yeah.” Devon was still waiting, his stare still fully on the guy who was holding my weight in his lap.

“Come on, man. Take one for the team!”

“You wanna go? Huh?!” Devon took a step closer, initiating a fight.

I saw Alex’s eyes go wide as Johnny took me off his lap and put me back in the chair. He took the last few steps towards Devon so that their chests were nearly touching. My reaction was probably the opposite to Alex’s. I couldn’t care less about what was occurring. What happened next only confirmed my attitude. Devon hooked his arm around Johnny’s neck and ruffled his hair, both of them letting out a low chuckle. The best friends had gotten into fist fights before, but often it didn’t go further than this.

“Let’s go do some lines,” Devon suggested, giving Johnny a supportive slap on the chest to push him in the right direction. “You go set it up.”

“You see,” Johnny pointed at him as he started in the direction where a small table was set up, “this is why you’re my dude, bro. You’re the real man.”

“He’s so out of it.” Devon snorted and leaned down to connect his lips with mine in a very deep and sexual kiss. “I’ll be coming back for you.”

“I know, you always do!” I shouted after him as he went to go to where Johnny now already was.

With those two no longer being there to distract me, I could only direct my attention towards Jack and Alex again. Jack was still staring at the same girl from before, only occasionally looking away when he sipped on the beer he had in his hands. I nearly started laughing. It was so funny to see him so infatuated by one single girl. Nobody here ever watched somebody else from a distance, it was unspoken of. Not because we didn’t like it, we were all just too confident and would have already been fucking in someone’s backseat by now.

“Her name’s Theo and if you don’t go up to talk to her now, I will. She’s great in bed,” I told Jack, nudging his side a little. It was too pathetic to leave it be.

Jack forced out a laugh. “No way, she’s out of my league.”

“Everybody is always out of your league, but that mentality didn’t get me where I am now.”

He sighed. “Mickey…”

“This isn’t some high school party with scandalous crushes. If anything, people will judge you for not doing anything.”

"I don't know..."

“Ok, we’re going.” I stood up and grabbed his hand, forcing him to come along with me. He tried to fight it at first, but once we got close to her, he tried to act all cool and relaxed. Just to be sure, I started the conversation. “Yo, Theo!”

She turned to me and smiled, ignoring Jack completely. “Mickey! What’s up?”

“This is my friend, Jack,” I started and pointed at him, “and he’s a virgin.”

Jack stiffened up. “I’m not--“

“It’s ok.” I silenced him. “He’s a virgin, but he can do quite some things with those fingers and that mouth of his.”

Theo smirked, showing interest in what I was saying now. “Is that so?”

“I was thinking, maybe you could show him a little bit more than just that. What do you think?” I hinted, full out lying to her, I had no idea what Jack could and couldn't do, but sometimes you had to play a little to get what you wanted.

“Jack, huh?” She turned to him and looked him up and down. The invisibility she first gave him was completely gone now. “How about you come with me?”

He gulped visibly as she took his hand that I was holding before and led him away back to where the cars were. I grinned and clapped my hands together as if I was shaking dirt off them. Once I was sure they were gone, I went back to where Alex was sitting all by himself. He looked so out of place, I actually felt a little bad for him.

“Ok, now we need to find somebody for you to hook up with.” I knocked out feet together as I fell back into the chair Jack had been occupying before.

“No, thanks, I’m good.” He stared at the fire and brought his bottle of beer to his lips.

I gasped. “Don’t be a buzzkill, now!”

“I’m just not interested.”

“Where’s the Alex I met at the beginning of the school year! The one who could get any girl he wanted in his bed!”

“Like I said, I’m not interested.”

“Bullshit!”

“I’m pretty sure everybody here is ridden with STDs, I don’t need that.”

“You had sex with me, and I’m here. What’s the difference?”

“I just don’t feel like hooking up with somebody today. Is that so bad?” He glared at me, his lips pursed and no further emotion shown.

“No, of course. It’s cool. Whatever.” I shrugged and leaned back in the chair. “How about we go back to my car instead? Ignore any of the other girls here?”

“What? No way. What about Devon?”

“He’ll be busy snorting coke for at least another twenty minutes. It won’t be the first time Johnny sneezes and blows everything way just to have to set it all up again. What do you say?”

Alex once again shook his head no. “Last time I checked you said I was terrible, so what’s the point.”

“It’s still sex. We’ve done it before. I’ll get you turned on in no time. You can try and do better and you might rank higher this time.”

He stayed silent for a little while, looking at the ground as if it was going to give him an answer. After looking up towards where Devon and Johnny were, he breathed out. “Why the fuck not? Let’s do this.”

Notes

This was super short at first so I added a few things, now it's super long. A+ for letting my ideas go on for too long again.

What do you guys think? This wasn't in my plan, but the new album gave me a few more new ideas.