Not Telling Anyone

Best Friends, and Fireworks

Ariel and I were sitting in my room talking. Well she was talking about Kyle.
             "You will never believe what Kyle got me for Christmas!" She exclaimed.
            "Three carrots and a chocolate bar!" I exclaimed with the same amount of enthusiasm except mine was fake.
             "Carrots? No! Now I want chocolate! Gee thanks!" She giggled, and shoved my shoulder. "Anyways, he got me this!" She shoved her wrist in my face. On said wrist was a shiny golden charm bracelet including a heart charm, a panda charm (they adopted a panda together for two months), an Eiffel Tower charm (he promised he'd take her to Paris someday), and oh good grief is that a charm of him?!
          They're the most couplely couple I know. And you're going to sit there and say 'look at you and Isaac!' to, which I say Isaac and I don't give each other charms of our faces or do the whole 'no you hang up' thing. We're close because we were friends for two years and then started dating. Ariel met Kyle this year, and she's been bragging about having hickeys since November, which was less than one month of being friends and one day into dating. Now you decide who's more sappy.
         "Ooh it's shiny! And look at these charms they describe every aspect of your relationship! How nice of him," I responded spinning her wrist to look at it, giving her the reaction I know she wanted, but in reality I I was mentally rolling my eyes.
            "I know right! I absolutely love it! He said that he's going to add a charm every time something special happens in our relationship," she replied, retrieving her wrist and staring at it.
          "Can't wait," I said.
          "Oh hush no need to be salty!" She said smiling.
          "I'm not salty. I just don't know what to say to that," I shrugged.
          "Oh well then. What'd you get?" She asked.
          "Well this onesie for one," I struck a dramatic pose.
          "The 5SOS poster you gave me, the new Magnus Chase book from mom, and that guitar right there," I pointed to my new guitar, which sat on my old guitar stand.
          "Ooooh nice! I love the onesie especially. Now we're onesie buddies!" She struck a pose showing off her cupcake pattern onesie.
          "Yes!" I struck my pose again, and we laughed,
          "So what are you going to name you guitar?" She asked when we stopped.
          I have this thing where I name my instruments, even the ones I borrow from school. The tenor sax I use is Goldeen ('cause it's golden, and I love Pokémon), the clarinet is Clary (named after Squidward's clarinet), my old guitar was Strang (string instrument), my piccolo is Pickles (obvious reasons), and my prize possession is Silvester, my flute (it's silver, I was 14 at the time, and it stuck). Regarding my new guitar Isaac suggested I name it after something from Greek mythology since I'm so obsessed with it.
    "I'm debating whether it's a boy or girl. If it's a girl Demeter or Persephone. If it's a boy then Apollo. What do you think?" I asked.
"What the hell kind of names are those?" she said, bewildered.
"They're Greek gods. Demeter, goddess of agriculture. Persephone, goddess of spring. Apollo, god of music," I explained.
"Oh yeah! That's right those guys. Who was your favourite? Started with Arte-something?" she asked.
"Artemis, goddess of the moon, hunt, forest, and many other things that I won't bore you with," I replied.
      "Name it that. Who cares if it's closely related to music or flowers. I mean she is the goddess of the forest, so there."
       "Well alright Artemis it is. Plus she is Apollo's older sister."
       "There ya go."

                .          .           .

New Year's Eve. I should be out having fun right? Nope I'm here, in my room, playing guitar and sitting on my bed.
              Ariel's at her deadbeat dad's house, Isaac doesn't get back until the 2nd, Ash is with his friends, my dad's with Linda, and my friends are all on vacation some place warm.
              So I'm a lone lonely loner bored out of my mind. I've exhausted all my other options of fun. I glanced at my clock, 8:30. Oh you've got to be kidding me!
           I put my guitar on its stand and sat at my desk. I turned on my laptop and went to Skype. Isaac wasn't on, dammit. He wasn't answering my texts so I figured he was busy, but it never hurts to dream.
            I turned off my computer and picked up my phone and right when I unlocked it it began to ring. I saw the weird picture of Scott, that I set as his contact photo, pop up. I clicked answer. "Yes?"
"Hey Kat!" Scott shouted through the phone.
            "Hey! What's up?" I asked.
            "Whatcha up to tonight? Jared, Jack, and I were going to go up to Pinecone Ridge to watch the fireworks at the hardware store and we were wondering if you'd like to go," he said.
            "Why?"
             "We kinda figured you wouldn't be doing anything."
             "Oh come on I'm not always like that!"
             "What are you doing right now?"
             "Nothing," I said with a small tone.
            "That's what we thought. So wanna come?" He asked.
            "Yeah totally," I shrugged.
"Alright, we're currently outside your house," he said.
            My eyes widened. "What?" I got up and looked out my window that faces the street. Sure enough there they were all piled in Scott's jeep. I opened the window. "Creeps!"
            "Oh come on! Grab your jacket and let's go!" He yelled back.
            "Alright I'm coming!" I yelled and shut the window.
            Lucky for me I was wearing a decent outfit, leggings and a t shirt. I clicked off my lights and ran downstairs. I grabbed my jacket of the door hook and pulled it on while stepping into my boots. Once my jacket was on I tied up my boots, and checked my pockets for my hat and gloves. I pulled my hair out of its bun and put my hat on, zipped up my jacket and put my fingerless gloves on. Yelling bye to the dogs I locked the door, grabbed my key off the hook and exited the house.
          I jogged to the jeep and almost got hit by the front door that swung open suddenly.
          "Whoa there," I exclaimed.
          "Well come on in!" Jared yelled.
"What gentlemen," I muttered and rolled my eyes. I climbed in and we sped off.
"Geez, how'd you even get your license?" I laughed, while holding on for dear life.
"He must've bribed the person who gave him his test," Jared voiced in.
"Oh shut up! I can drive nicely, but that's no fun," Scott defended.
"Maybe for you," Jack mumbled. "We're getting tossed round back here!"
"Well then put your seatbelt on stupid!" Scott shot back. Jack opened his mouth to retort something, but Scott beat him to it. "And don't even say 'you sped off before I even had a chance!' because to that I say we had plenty of time for you to put it on while we were outside of Kat's house." Jack closed his mouth and sat back.
"How long were you outside my house for?" I asked.
"A good 15 minutes," Jared answered.
"Creeps!" I exclaimed trying not to laugh.
"We wanted to make sure that you were free," Scott defended.
"Nah, Scott just wanted to spy on you," Jack teased.
"Oh please," Scott scoffed. "We all decided to see if you were game."
I laughed, "Well thanks for the concern. I was dying of boredom."
The rest of the ride was full of bad jokes, Scott's bad driving, and us nearly falling off the edge of the ridge. After backing away from the edge we piled out of the car and climbed onto the roof.
"You know I miss these kinds of things," Scott said nostalgically.
"Yeah when it  was the four of us," Jared said.
"Those were the days," Jack piped up.
"Yeah they really were. Sorry guys," I looked down. We were all the best of friends, but when high school happened, and my anxiety began to get really bad, and Chris began to hang around, then the thing with my mother, my other friends basically put a leash on me to make sure I wouldn't go off the deep end, and I didn't need daily doses of Chris picking on me. I knew it was my fault we didn't hang out so much anymore.
"Hey, it wasn't you're fault. Things happen, we all kind of didn't push it," Jared assured. "All that matters now is that we're here now and we're still the four musketeers."
We all stuck out our pointer fingers, pressed them together, and held them high, a thing we've done since elementary school. The fireworks began and we all watch the sky light up with colourful explosions.