Chapter One (Larissa)

"Okay, who's next?" Jace asked.
"Me," said Randy. He stood up from the floor and thought for a minute. We were playing, "Guess That Movie". His eyes lit up and he twisted his face into disgust. When he spoke, his voice was a little higher. "I am not a prize to be won!" he declared.
Ayla clapped her hands. "Oooh! Aladdin!" she shouted.
Randy grinned. "Yup."
"Aye! Now that's not fair. You can't use cartoon movies in this game," Jalil argued.
Randy nodded, "Sure ya can."
Jalil, being Jalil, wasn't going to lose this battle. "No, you can't."
I giggled. We were over Randy's house. Naturally, since his house was the biggest, which made since because his parents were quite wealthy. His mother was a small town actress and his father a playwright. They let Randy do pretty much anything he wanted. Most kids would have liked to have freedom from their parents. Not Randy, but then again, he wasn't like most kids.
He was one of the most popular kids in our Junior Class. It made a lot of since. Randy was just born to be that way. First off he had a gorgeous body that was completed with spiky brown hair, thin lips and dark green eyes. He was also smart, and excelled at all sports. Plus he was charming. Made everyone feel important. He never ditched us though. By us, I mean our group. We had been hanging together since grade school. We were best friends.
Jalil was the complete opposite of Randy, except that he was pretty good looking too. He was black, or as he called himself, "milk chocolate". He sort of had curly hair on the top of his head and he was very confident at everything he did. He was sort of a troublemaker, but he didn't mean any serious harm. He looked out for the rest of us, getting on anybody who tried to mess with us. Jalil's weakness in his "hard" act was his photography. He was actually pretty good, and was very serious about it. He was the most comical of the group. He was sort of like the father of our group.
Next was the baby of the group, Nykell, Jalil's sister. That girl was so smart, too smart if you asked me. She was a year younger than the rest of us since she skipped the fourth grade. She had her brother's instinct for protection, just toned down a notch. She had no intention of becoming what her parents' wished of her. She had the clearest skin, and was a little lighter than her brother and golden brown eyes. She wanted to be a singer. This was seen as uncanny to most people, but they stopped their assumptions once they heard the girl sing. She had a voice to kill for. I knew she would accomplish her dream-she didn't know how to fail.
"Why don't you just do it over again, Randy?" Jace suggested, and Randy nodded. That's the way Jace was, the first to look for a solution. He was the problem solver of the group. He was a quiet kid, not as quiet as me of course. We had a couple of things in common. While we both had the same shade of blond hair, our blue eyes did not match because while mine were dark blue, his were a freaky light blue. My theory for Jace being quiet was because he was always trying to make up his mind, and decide what he wanted because his mother always made it up for him. His mother was a serious Baptist, and wrapped it around her son like a blanket. Not only did he go to church every Sunday, along with Sunday school, but he went to services on the weekdays as well. "That's too much church," Nykell had said one day. "You get too much church and you get confused." I guess she was right. I even remember when we were younger when Jace couldn't go trick or treating with us because his mother didn't want him too. Jace didn't even curse.
He did like to paint though. He painted extraordinarily well, and in different styles, which was amazing. Whenever Jace showed me a picture, I never knew if I was looking at something of his or something he had brought, since he could paint in many ways. He did water colors, scenery, people, . He wanted to be a painter, and I knew he was going to succeed.
"Okay um." Randy thought again. Then he whispered, "Into paradise, may the angles lead you."
"Simon Birch!" Ayla and Nykell shouted at the same time. They looked at each other to see who would claim the points.
"You can have that one," Ayla said and Nykell smiled in a thank you.
The hardest person to describe would be Ayla. She was an anomaly, but the best kind ever imaginable. I guess you could say that she was the center of all of us. We all knew she was special. She was the favorite for all of us.
Most people think she is the youngest of our group, not just by her personality, but her appearance is small, but also fragile, and that she was. She wasn't that popular in school, half because she was unique and the other half because her mother was black and her father was white. She looked mostly white. More like a white person with a really dark tan and she had dark brown hair. At first, I used to think that Ayla acted like much of a child, which made her a great babysitter. She knew most Disney movies by heart, she had the voice to impersonate miscellaneous animals, and she hummed a lot and seemed to always have candy. She smelt of candy. Her beauty is striking although not noticeable at first glance. Her beauty snuck up on you. I think it was her carefree attitude. She had a nice body frame but she kept it hidden under her huge shirts and baggy pants. You could only see it when she wore her nice overalls, which were decorated with paint or bleach. She liked to draw, and like Jace, she didn't have a specific style. She could draw a room, or people, or cartoon looking things. She was really good at it although she did it in her spare time.
I sometimes sit on my own and wonder how a person that young learns so much wisdom. I sometimes try to think how exactly her mind works. As for me. my name is Larissa And there's not much more I need to add.