A/N: I originally intended to write this in a sort of chronological order, even if a few of the dates got mixed up, but that idea is being thrown out the window as I speak. I’ll begin writing a memory, then all of a sudden I’ll remember one that came earlier, or later, and it all gets very confusing. So now I ask you not only to join me in looking at unfinished, unfocused snapshots of my life, but also to travel haphazardly through time. Ready? Let's go.

This memory took place when I was around fifteen years of age. By this time I was in my not-quite-a-child-not-quite-a-man body, and I had fallen in with the bad kids, the outcasts as I used to think of us. You probably had a group of kids like us in your school, from what I can tell, groups of people in different schools around the globe all have the same types. Possibly because we were too young to know who we were going to be, so we conformed to the standards set before us (this goes for the non-conformist kids, too. Almost doubly so).

As I said, I called us the outcasts because we were the different ones. There were your class clowns, the popular girls, the smart people, the tough guys, and us. We were too different from any of the stereotypes to fit in with them, so as different as we were, we became friends. There was the big guy who liked talking about cars and motorbikes, the skinny kid who liked his alternative and underground music, and me; the bad boy with his long blonde hair and penchant for mischief. There were others we were friends with and hung out with on weekends, the pretty boy, the psycho, ect, but we were the main three.

We used to get into all kinds of trouble ranging from the light-hearted to the semi-serious. I won’t give too much away as some of our adventures will inevitably find their way into this series. For now, all you need to know is that we were bad, but not horrible. If we’d stayed friends as we got older, I imagine we’d have earned a few criminal records together, but we grew apart, thankfully.

One night, four of us were riding around on our bikes (bikes being the number one mode of transportation back then, and much pride was put into our chariots) at around midnight, and we found ourselves out front of a petrol station (international readers probably know them as gas stations, I suppose), and behind it in an old block of land was a roaring fire. We stopped and pulled up closer to take a look just as the fire truck arrived and put out the fire.

I remember being quite shocked by the whole thing. Who’d light a fire so close to a petrol station? Well, apparently the fireman on the scene thought we looked like the kind. I still remember his hard face, the unflinching questions. “Did you boys have anything to do with this?” “What are you doing out so late?” We answered honestly, and I hoped the honesty showed, because we’d usually have to work so hard looking innocent. This time, it was no act.

Nothing serious came of it. The fireman must have believed us in the end, though I still remember that accusatory look as we rode away. I’m fairly certain we rode straight home that night, and probably ate cold pizza, talking excitedly about what we’d just seen.