Renegades

There were five of us.

Renegades. Insurgents. Rebels. Troublemakers. We were called many names.

But there was one name which really set the whole thing off: Criminals.

All of us were smart, very smart. We were in honors classes and should have gone on to excellent colleges and outstanding careers, despite our secretly dark pasts. We were to be the jewels of our school's academic prowess, to be bragged upon for years to come.

It was my fault, really. The five of us fell together by chance, but I was the one who really got Los Banditos Estupidos onto us. Then they found my connections to a certain target of theirs, and our security was in jeopardy. Los Banditos had us in juvie for sure, even if we weren't tried as adults. So we did the only thing we could: banded together and ran. We had connections, resources, and street smarts. We thought we could make it out of the country and build a new life together.

Then the law caught up with us.

So I did what I had to do.
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When Aria moves to Chicago, she has a lot of baggage hiding behind a stunning smile. Through a series of events, she meets Ben, Melissa, Wyatt, and Ian, each as excellent at hiding their troubles as she is, and each of the five takes comfort in the friendships as they band together against the world. But Aria and Melissa unintentionally set off a gang who frames the five of commiting several crimes, so the friends take to the road to avoid a fate which would tear them apart. They get along well until all of their pasts catch up to the friends, and each one of them realizes they must weigh the worth of their new family of renegades.