The Freshmen at Marana High

Prologue

The sun is scorching hot, blazing across the hard, dry desert sand. Mesquite trees sway in the warm breeze and my dark hair follows their direction. Rocky mountains tower in the distance, looming over the land with their jagged peaks and steep slopes. I swear I've climbed every single one of them. My palomino horse walks alongside two other horses and their riders. None of us speak- we're on a manhunt. A manhunt for the infamous train robber and his posse, Rodrigo.

My black hair sticks to my face with sweat. My eyes are watery and my cheeks are burned, despite the broad Stetson hat that shades my face. Maybe my cheeks aren't burnt, just flushed from lack of water...I can tell my amigos are in the same state as I. My eyes flick over to a trembling bush. It stops. My eyes narrow and I look to my friends. "They're over there," I mouth and they nod. We pull our pistols from our holsters and aim.

"Get yer hands up where I can see them!" Justin calls. The bush shakes again and two boys exit.

"Well you got us, Sheriff Justin," a boy with brown hair says, nodding to Justin. "Deputy Tyler. Miss Anita."

"That's Ann to you, prisoner." I snarl. I hate it when people call me Anita. And he should know better anyway. He's my neighbour.

"Yeah, yeah whatever. Can we go to Circle K now?" His partner in crime whines.

"Do you have money?" Justin asks.

"My mom gave me a five. That should be enough."

"Sweet," Justin grins. The three of us dismount our 'horses' and now we're back in reality. Looking at the cracked street and the vast cotton fields across it. The roar of the cars on the interstate. The stark boundary between our houses and large, clean cut, matching houses. The couch that someone dumped a month ago. We walk onto the street from the empty lot we play on and head to the run down Circle K. These were my summers, and weekends, and school breaks, and the hour from when I finished my homework to twilight. My friends and I would disappear into another world. It didn't matter where. Sometimes we were pirates on the ship (the abandoned couch) searching for the Fountain of Youth (The soda fountain and Circle K), or we were knights of England on a crusade (riding our bikes through the rich kid neighbourhood). We would be astronauts exploring a new world. Our minds had no limits.

It was fun, and simple. My parents never knew who I'd come home as. Maybe I was Deputy Ann, or Sir Ann of Marana, sometimes Captain Ann or Sergeant Ann. Oh, how I missed those days...

*.*.*.*.

If you've ever been on a road trip through Arizona or southern California or New Mexico, you'll understand where I live. Every once in a while, while you're driving on the interstate, you'll drive past a little growing settlement of homes. All you'll see is a McDonalds, a gas station, and maybe a Motel 6. Maybe. However, if you keep driving on those little roads you'll get to a bunch of really run down homes and mobile homes, and trailers. If you keep on driving, you'll get to the really nice homes. Homes with pools in the backyard, and they're all the same colour, and the houses are absolutely massive and new and fresh. I've only been to one of those homes, and that was to explore the new models with my friends.

I live in a mobile home. It's not that much at all, and not many would want to live in it, but it's my home. There's one bathroom and two bedrooms. The linoleum is starting to get torn up, and it creaks. The blinds are broken and the screens are torn. We don't have a shower, only a bathtub, and the TV has a built in VHS player. We even have a furnace. An actual furnace.

Maybe I should have stated who 'we' are. I live with my mother and my younger brother, Jaime. Jaime's father left when Jaime was 4 years old, and I'm a bastard. Not exactly something I want to put on a tee-shirt but this entire story is to tell you all, my friends, the truth. The truth of what, exactly? I don't know, just my life as a poor kid struggling through life and being a bastard has a big role in that, believe it or not. My name is Anita, but as you've seen before, I go by Ann.

Like I did as a kid when I was younger, I still live in my fantasy worlds. All I do is read. I read Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, Harry Potter, The Great Tree of Avalon, Star Trek, Star Wars, Warriors, the Mists of Avalon, American Girl, Narnia, anything. My family never had any money to buy books, but my elementary school librarian would buy them for me. As I think back on it now, I realise how much trouble she could have gotten in, but at the time I hadn't though anything of it. How could I? I needed to start reading that book. To go along with reading, I like, and still do, writing, Granted I would never finish the stories, they were a chance for me to play pretend once more.

My group of friends include (but are not limited to):

Tyler Cardenas, the princess of our strange little breakfast club. He was always popular at our school, and a bit of a player I might add. The girls always swooned over him (except for me of course, um gross) and not because of his muscles or smarts, or his bad boy demeanour. Simply because he was attractive. I don't get it. They liked him because he was cute? How shallow. I mean, we were in third grade, but still...Tyler would always primp and groom himself, worrying about his appearance. Like the rest of us cared (sarcasm).

Rodrigo Morelos was the badass of all of us. If someone told him no, he would say go. Yeah, it got pretty annoying, and half of his shenanigans scared us to death, but I have to say he did save us a couple of times. Even though he always had his bad boy barrier up, we were there on the few occasions when his walls were crumbling down, or when his insecurities had gotten the best of him. We were there to keep him from fighting every living thing.

Christopher Oritz was the jock. I swear, I was going to punch him in his 'area' if he said "ball is life" one more time. Man, was he tall. He could probably beat any one of us at any sport ever, but I was still faster than him. His parents were both athletes, and it was so obvious that they couldn't be more proud of him. Sometimes I wished I was him just for that confirmation. He had a secure household too. His father was a physician and his mother was a schoolteacher. They had always offered the rest of us money, but my mom's pride got in the way, and I don't blame her.

Henry Cordona was a total nerd. Yeah, we were smart, but Henry was something else and everyone knew it. Everyone. Henry was quick witted, but his temper was just as quick, to be honest with you. You would think that the teachers loved him, but they actually were pretty annoyed. Henry isn't a smart ass, he's just a smart person. We had an English teacher who would always find a way to make us all look incredibly stupid while pointing out some ridiculously deep point in a lesson. However, Henry would always get to the point first, making him the Robin Hood of education.

Justin Sharma stood out like a sore thumb in our group of friends. He's Indian. Like, really Indian. Never ask him why his family is in America, or how they ended up so poor. Even I don't know that. Justin's my best friend though. He'll always be by my side and he never changes. I feel guilty about saying that because he's the weird one in our group. No, scratch that. He's the weird one at our school, and there's really not that much room for him to change, so he stays the same. If that makes sense to you. Oh well.