"Hey Kid!" I whipped my head around over my slouched shoulders to see a tall, bulky, dark skinned boy with neatly styled hair shouting at me. "Tell you're buddy that I'm going to kill him for slashing my tires!" He shouted.
I nodded and turned back around to continue walking home from school. I wasn't all that afraid of Jackson Pierce. He was a senior in high school, but the dude was all talk. Besides, his beef was with Pete, not me. Those two were always going at it ever since they both went after the same girl back in fifth grade. I'm surprised one of them hasn't killed the other. They were as big of rivals as any. I didn't care however, it was Friday and I wanted to get home and play the Xbox that my brother had bought me for my birthday last year. We were as poor as dirt and it had taken nearly six months of savings from odd jobs all over town; my brother was always bending over backwards to provide for me even before it was just the two of us. I am currently saving for Grand Theft Auto iii which came out last month. It was the whole reason I wanted an Xbox. I had an entire summer of mowing lawns and babysitting worth of cash stowed away in my room. I just about have enough, and maybe if my friend Sally is willing to go in on it with me I can pick it up this week. Sally and I were both gamers and like to hangout a lot. Her parents were a little more well off so she had some better games then me.
We didn't have a lot growing up, but we had a our friends and that's all that mattered to us. My best friend was Erik, who had moved to the neighborhood a few years ago.
Erik was fourteen years old when his family moved into the house next to the vacant lot.
Rumor has it that no one builds there because that lot is haunted or something like that. Supposedly some kids saw like some kind of spirit and disappeared. I don't know. Personally, I don't really believe in any of that crap. However, it made a nice hangout spot and nobody else ever tried to claim it away from us.
When we were kids, we used to play there. We would use the lot to play football games well after dark, but we're too old for that stuff now. Mostly we just sit around smokin' cigarettes and listenin' to punk rock music.
I ain't gonna lie, sometimes it gets a little boring, but no one sure ain't gonna say nothin though. As far as any of us were concerned, we all were ready to be adults and be done with all that kid stuff. We couldn't wait 'till we were old enough to drink, well legally, get in bar fights, and go to parties. The truth is we were all pretty decent kids. The worst thing that any of us had really done was sneaking candy in our pockets from the CVS store just down the street before going to the movies. Sometimes, I guess we'd also make fake copies of the movie tickets, but honestly that's about it, mostly.
Erik's house was right next to that abandoned lot and no offense to him and his family, but they could do much better.
Jason, my big brother, used to tell me stories about all the crazy parties that he attended at that old house. Before Erik, no one had actually lived there in years. We all figured that old rats nest was too much of a crap hole to be a fixer upper. I can't believe that someone is actually living there now, but they really don't have a lot of money, nobody in our neighborhood does.
It's been a few months now since they moved in, and still, they seem to keep to themselves quite a bit. The only one I knew was Erik, and that was initially only because we went to school together. After he finally started hanging out with the neighborhood gang we became very close. He was quiet, like a shy, wide eyed innocent puppy.
He was a tall, skinny looking dude, with a wide set jaw, and bright, but timid eyes. He had short dark hair that he slicked back with a toxic amount of gell.
Erik was probably my best friend. We didn't really hangout much at first, but he had taken the fall for me once when I tried pulling a prank on the teacher. I had put a thumb tack in the teacher's pair of slippers which he keeps under his desk. Our teacher is a real prick sometimes. Ha! Get it? I don't usually hate teachers, in fact I get along with most grown ups, but this teacher wasn't nice at all. Otherwise, I actually did pretty well in school, when I wanted to. Most of the time I was off in my own head space daydreaming about whatever.
I don't know why Erik took the fall for me that day. I hadn't even said two words to him yet. Then again, no one ever knows why Erik does the things he does. He's a good kid, but he is one crazy SOB. Not wild and charismatic like you might think, rather, more of genius kind of crazy. He was always taking things apart and learning how they work. He over thought everything and would plot schemes on how to get around obstacles in pretty much every facet of life. He always knew from the beginning what his end goal was, and nothing would ever get in his way to stop him. He was a little bit of a know-it-all, the worst part was he knew it. He did things just to get on peoples nerves and prove that he was smarter than them. He probably took the fall for me just to prove something to the teacher. He was always trying to prove himself to someone.
I figured that he probably wanted to make an impression on the teacher as being a bad boy type of kid, ya know, just for kicks. The thing is, Erik would do stuff just like that as a joke, for absolutely no reason.
Aside from being a freaking genius, Erick was always working on building things too. He had a very mechanically inclined mind. You know those people who can even just look at an object and know off the top of their head how the thing works, how to take it apart, and how to fix it. That was the definition of Erik's brain.
He was obsessed with his pick-up truck, well his dad's old truck. An old, rusty Ford Bronco. Honestly, it was a piece of crap, didn't even run, and belonged in a junkyard. None of us dared tell him that though; he was convinced that he could fix it. Nobody ever questioned anything that Erik did. Everyone just assumed that he knew what he was doing, and the thing was, he usually did. Even the teachers avoided calling on him in class, because they were afraid of being outsmarted by a fourteen year old teenager. Every day after school, before hanging out with the gang doing whatever we were doing, which was usually smoking a pack of cancer sticks and listening to punk music, Erik went straight home to work on his truck. He would spend all afternoon fixing something, especially his truck. He absolutely loved that thing to death. Oh, and did I mention he loved his truck. He had made a deal with his father that if he took the whole entire engine apart, put it back together, and got the thing running again, for more than a half second, it would be his own. I had no doubt in my mind that he would some day accomplish this task. He was one crazy and determined kid.
The wild crazy, but not so smart, one of our neighborhood group was Pete. When I say, "not so smart," I don't just mean compared to Erik who was a genius for his age. I mean that Pete was quite literally as smart or less smart than a fifth grader. If he was on the show nowadays, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader," he, well he, wouldn't even qualify as the fifth grader. Not to be mean of course. Pete wasn't retarded or nothin'. He was just a complete dumbass. However, the only exception was when he was around girls and tryin' to be cool. I didn't know anyone else who could smooth talk his way in and out of any situation, especially with a chick. That dude had a different chick on his arms practically every other week. Most of the girls in our school eventually started to hate him for it, but as usual they fell right back into his arms when he opened his mouth to speak. Pete could hold a conversation with anyone. I don't mean that he was annoying like the kind of people who drone on and on so much that you could put the phone down, go make a sandwich and come right back answering with a simple, "ah huh." He could talk to people with a sort of charisma that always held their attention. Well, they would pay attention as long as they didn't get lossed in his dreamy eyes. Perhaps that's why women took to him so much. You looked into his eyes, and he could sway your attention any which way. He had a sense about him that made you believe in him as if he was a movie star who never got shot down. Pete even managed once to win over some older chick with his smooth talk and charming persuasion. She wasn't no stripper MILF or anything, but she was older, maybe in her mid to late thirties I suppose and I'm Pretty sure she had a kiddo of her own. Her name was Brianna and she was a complete psycho, but kinda hot honestly. We all were convinced that she was on drugs or something, not that we cared or anything. She was just annoying as hell. Thank God, he only had her for about a week or so. A good way to describe her was like a bee with an itch. If you catch my drift. He was always going after women like that though. They were always either older, rich, or way out of his league, but he could almost always win them over with his sweet talking and dreamy eyes. Not to mention his thick, curly, dark brown hair too. It didn't even really matter that he wore glasses either. He wore them with style and they were a part of his look. I can only recall one time that Pete failed miserably attempting to pick up some chick that we met at a party. Like I said earlier, he was a wild, party animal kind of guy. We were at his half brother's place drinkin' and havin' a good time, when Pete brought over a couple of chicks that I guess he had met at the supermarket buying booze and a pack of smokes. That was another thing, despite being grossly underaged, Pete always managed to win over the cashier who would get lost in his eyes and not even ask to see an ID before ringing up alcohol and tobacco. Anyway, these chicks were gorgeous. Apparently, they were from the next town over, which was a very richy area and had a high end, all girls prep school. He managed to get them to the house for the party, obviously. One of them he took upstairs to, evidently, just make out for a while, or so he assumed. Supposedly, she tried to get him to go further though and he completely, well, to put it bluntly, failed. He was so nervous that he just froze. Pete's deep dark secret that only we knew was that he was still a virgin. The gal came downstairs in a rage and accused us all of being a bunch of fags. She grabbed her friend by the arm, who I had been chatting up and stormed out the door. Aside from that horribly embarrassing night, I've never seen Pete fail to pick up just about any gal he chooses. Pete lived three doors down the street from me in a horribly trashy house. Not run down and needing fixed like Erik's house, just plain trashy. His parents worked all the time, and when they didn't they were at the bar. After his older half brother moved out, Pete basically raised himself, and boy did he teach himself to be a slob, but it was part of his charm. He didn't give two cents about nothin'. He was always looking for a good time and would constantly leave a mess of trouble wherever he went. The girl he currently was going out with last I heard, Claire, was the same way. She was a year older than him, fifteen, and none of us really liked her, but we tolerate her. She was a nice gal, we just learned to not like any of Pete's girls, cause they came and went so frequently. Pete's recklessness was somehow, in a way charming. Claire on the other hand was one of those people that left a mess everywhere, made an enemy out of everyone, and always laid blame on someone else. Not to mention that she bitched about literally everything and everyone. She always somehow managed to rub you the wrong way when she spoke to you. I don't want to sound mean, but we all couldn't stand her. However, we put up with it I guess cause we all figured she'd be gone and replaced sooner or later.
As for me, My name is Jonah, I live with my older brother Jason in his tiny apartment on the edge of the neighborhood. Our complex was old, outdated, and dingy. The apartment was just on the other side of the vacant lot. Our neighborhood was deemed by the majority of the rest of the town, as the junkyard. It really was a craphole. Anyone who grew up there was nicknamed by default a junkyard kid. Not just other kids in school called us that, but even most adults didn't like us and always assumed that we were up to no good.
I guess that living with my big brother wasn't terrible, although sometimes it was annoying. He often acted like he was my father. However, he was really the only thing I had to a father-figure.
I don't really remember my father all too well. He left the family when I was four years old. According to Jason, who was ten years old at the time and remembers him very well, my old man was a real butthead and he was becoming quite the budding alcoholic. He didn't even leave, our mom kicked him out of the house after he had come home one night completely smashed. He never has returned since. Mom found out that he had actually been sneaking drinks at work via a brown, plastic tea bottle and that was the last straw for her. She knew that he used that bottle to drink sometimes in public, but when she found out that he had been fired after having it at work she kicked his butt to the curb.
Working at the gas station on the other side of town, our mother made ends meet the best that she could, and raised us actually pretty damn well under the circumstances, that is until she got diagnosed with breast cancer and passed. At her funeral was the first and only time that I have ever seen Jason cry. He always told me that a real man don't cry, but once in a lifetime everyone deserves to be upset about something. Our father made a surprised and uninvited appearance completely wasted. My poor brother had to escort him outside of the building. He got up and tackled the man to the ground. I had never seen someone move so dang fast. After he landed him on the ground, he punched him once in the gut and one time in the face. I think he broke dad's nose, at least I hope that he did. No one at the funeral was going to say anything about it though because they knew that Jason had been through a lot. Dad, who already had a bad reputation with the law after having several altercations with the cops, certainly wasn't going to turn Jason in for assault or nothin'. My brother was nineteen at the time and somehow he was able to just barely get custody of me. Probably 'cause he actually did pretty well for himself. He started working construction right out of highschool, worked his way up to the position of a job foreman and he made a decent living. Don't get me wrong though, we are still poor as dirt, but we at least always had food on the table.
The last member of our group is a girl. However, she acted more like a guy then any of us. As I mentioned earlier Sally and I were pretty close. She was like the sister that I never had. We liked to game and listen to music together. Sally was tall, and had dark, coarse red hair that was always in a ponytail. She had a small round nose and a face full freckles. She was a tomboy if there ever was one, and she was one hell of a punk, and kinda nerd, but don't tell her I said that. She knew it though. She always wore red high top sneakers, a green camouflage jacket tied around her waist, and huge clunky headphones around her neck which were always blaring her favorite punk records like Fugazi, Good Charlotte, or Blink-182.
Each in our own way we're all a bunch a punks I guess. Our neighborhood was kind of rundown, but it was our home. Like I said before, just about the whole town called this place the junkyard. Oftentimes, people would throw their trash in our vacant lot like it was the city dump or something. No one really cared, but I wasn't really a fan of the way other people treated our territory. At school most of the other kids had nicknamed us the Junkyard kids. I suppose it's fitting, and what did we care anyways, we were a bunch of rebels without a cause. We wandered around the neighborhood doing stupid things like trying to look tuff and cool while scrounging for old cigarette butts off of the ground to light up and smoke.
The neighborhood was the town's junkyard, but it was our home and everyone who lived there was part of our family.