Green Money is Rad

“Because you felt like it? What the-"

“Ronnie! Be nice,” I scolded, cutting him off before he started cursing at the new girl. “So… Uhm Sophie, right?”

“Yeah,”

“May I steal you away, considering we are the only females here and you look like you are dying for some human interaction? The males can chat away, and you and I can do the same on our own terms,” I offered, smiling at her. She seemed really awesome. Anyone who could stand up to a guy 11 inches taller than her (and win, for that matter) is a friend o’ mine. Besides that, I was working really hard not to look at her brother, I knew my eyes would betray me. If we were away from him, I wouldn’t have to worry.

“Sure, why not? As long as I can get away from that creature,” she said, glaring at Ronnie as she said ‘creature’. He was still staring in shock at the bite mark she left on his arm. Bryan gave me a knowing, “brother” look, and turned to Sophie’s brother. I shook my head at him and he only smiled smugly. Darn him.

“So, who are you? My sister over here is dying to know,” he said. The blush gracing my cheeks was only more betrayal to the butterflies in my stomach.

“Bryan Money, you are so dead when we get home,” I whispered harshly in his direction before turning to the boy who was smiling and possibly smirking a little. I almost let myself get lost in his emerald green eyes, but had to cough and keep a good focus on the wall behind him in order to avoid doing so.

“My brother over here is a little bit messed up in the head, he really likes to exaggerate things… What he meant was-" I started to say, but I inhaled and swallowed the wrong way, and instantly started choking. Bryan started to pat my back worriedly and I bent over trying to stop choking, Sophie ran over and held my shoulders to steady me. Ronnie was still examining the fresh tooth marks, and the boy that had caused my blush earlier was looking weirdly at me, but worried all the same.

“Are you alright!?” Sophie asked, looking at me.

“Ye- I ju- st cho- -choked on m- my own sp- it,” I said, coughing as I spoke. After a moment, I had steadied my breathing and they were backing off, all looking at me weird. Talk about humiliating. I started to try and laugh it off, and they eventually joined me.

“Sooo… after that big scene… Uhm anyways, what my brother over here meant to say was welcome to Vegas and what’s your name,” I said, glad that my little near-death experience was over. The boy smiled and nodded. He was even more gorgeous when he smiled. His lip ring is very interesting…

“Bri? Bri are you alive?” Ronnie asked.
“huh? What? Oh… yeah…”

“He said his name is Max,” Ronnie said, speaking slowly as if I had just recovered from amnesia and was relearning the alphabet. I nodded as if I had already heard that and reached my hand out like I had with Sophie.

“Well, I’m Brianna,” I smiled. He grinned again and Bryan and Ronnie shook his hand as well. See? I’m teaching the boys etiquette. How nice of me. Of course, I’m not sure if choking on one’s spit is considered etiquette…

“Okay, off we go!” I exclaimed, linking arms with Sophie and steering her in the direction of the nearby park. She seemed very comfortable linking arms. Excellent sign.

“So… let’s start with facts. I’m Brianna Money, I’m 15, a sophomore at Mojave High, my brother Bryan and I practically live on our own, blah blah blah. Okay now you,” I said, getting right to the point.

“Okay, I’m Sophie Green, I’m also 15, I am supposedly also going to be a sophomore at Mojave High, so look out, and my mom and my brother and I are super close, although now it might have changed since the freaking drive we just finished. I will never be in a car with just my brother and mom for that long EVER AGAIN,” she said. I laughed and nodded in agreement. I tried not to say anything about the fact that I’d guessed her to be a ninth-grader when she was, in reality, a tenth.

“It happens, no worries. Okay. I have four favorite colors; blue, purple, green, and black,”

“Really? I have four too! It’s creepy cuz they’re almost the same… red, black, blue and purple,” she said. We stopped walking for a minute and looked at each other in amazement, then high-fived.

“Woo! You are so my new bestie!” I exclaimed. We kept walking and I almost started skipping, but that would’ve been way too weird.

“Well then you’re mine, too!” she laughed. “Hmm… How about movie? I love Requiem For A Dream, and I love pretty much any scary movie,”

“You do? Meh, scary movies… scare me. My favorite would have to be… Legally Blonde. That movie is frikin awesome!” I said, smiling as we approached the park. There was a guy and a little girl there, he was pushing her on the swings. I smiled at that. I really hoped I would find a guy like that one day. She laughed at me, probably at the fact that Legally Blonde is the polar opposite of a scary movie. “So my favorite food ever is mac and cheese, although I lovelovelove any form of sweets, especially cupcakes… they make me drool,”

“Ooohh! Cake for sure! Cake is my favorite food EVER,”

“Cake is awesomesauce. How about… place?” I asked as I sat down on the slide. She sat on the rubber-plastic ground that they now made playgrounds out of, this being a brand new park, and tapped her chin in thought.

“Definitely California. I love the sun and the beach, so that’d work,”

“Mine is probably… any suburbia kinda place. You know, the small town, but not too small, with the white picket fenced-house and the two-acre backyard, and the big tree in the front with the perfect green grass lawn. Maybe a little puppy and a normal car that isn’t expensive or anything, just totally normal. Normal, normal, normal. That’s all on the outside, though. You walk in and BOOM it’s rocker chick heaven!” I described my dream place to her. She smiled at me, and for a second she almost looked sad.

“That sounds just like our house back in Ohio. Me and Max were so attached to the that place…” she trailed off. She perked right back up, however, and reached up to fix her hair a little. “So… what are we going to do for the rest of the day? We gonna just sit here til our brothers come scoop us up?”

“Speakin of our brothers…” I said as I noticed three boys walking in our direction. I realized that Max was wearing the same basic ensemble as Ronnie and Bryan; skinny jeans, band tee, long-ish hair, piercings. Thank god these two aren’t like Mikey or our parents. Bryan looked over at me and grinned, seeing me getting along so well with the new girl. You could say I don’t have too many friends back at school besides the guys. They finished walking over and Ronnie ran to the swings, successfully tripping over a miniscule pebble and crashing to the ground.

“Way to go, Radke!” Bryan yelled, all of us laughing. He turned back and scowled, but for some reason it landed mostly on Sophie, who was quite enjoying his momentary misery. He got up, dusted himself off, and jumped onto the structure that held the swings up. The boy was like a monkey, I swear. Max sat down next to his sister and used a large piece of tree bark to stab the rubber they were sitting on.

“You okay over there? Slight anger issues?” I joked, watching him dig the piece of wood in further. Bryan gave a slight maniacal cackle before landing himself right on me. That’s right. My 16-year-old brother just sat on my lap.

“Nah, I just enjoy stabbing things,” Max said, turning to smile at me. I laughed and raised any eyebrow.

“Any other explanation?”

“Well… I’m going to fill the hole with red paint and then write my initials on it when it’s dry. I leave my mark everywhere I go,” he said, driving the stake down farther. I nodded, acting like I understood.

“You mean like a dog?” I asked, trying hard not to laugh. His eyes grew slightly, but then he composed himself and shook his head no.

“Absolutely not. Just something I do. I do it when we go on vacations, or to new places of any kind, but they have to be fairly far from where I last left a mark. Like Ohio to Vegas? Pretty far,” he said, nodding to emphasize his point.

“Okay then. Now you, my brother of fifteen years, please get your chunky butt off of me!”

“What makes you think I will get up when you call me chunky!?”

“You’re a guy. You’re not supposed to care!” I laughed. I just shrugged and hugged him from behind. His back was actually kinda comfy. I proceeded to try and shove him off. But like I said before, I was too weak.

“Nice try, kiddo. Not gonna happen,” Ronnie said, coming over and seeing my plight. I sighed.

“Please, Bry?”

“Ugh, fine. When you say it that way…” he said, getting up. I gave him a bright smile and stood up, walking over to the nearest old tree and reaching up. The four of them walked over and stood there, watching me. I got up the first branch, then the second, but the next one was literally just a centimeter too high for me.

“Stupid branch! I wanna climb up!” I said frustrated. I lifted one foot to try and reach higher, my fingertip was just barely touching the branch… “Ah!” I cried as I nearly fell, but was quickly caught by Max, who had been following me up. His hand was wrapped around my wrist and his foot was stepping on mine, while his other arm as hanging by a chest-height branch. Bryan was just below us, and Sophie was following just to get away from Ronnie. I laughed, trying not to blush, and thanked Max. Nodding, he offered his laced fingers as a step-up. I shrugged and silently agreed, holding onto the same branch as I placed my foot in his tightly laced fingers. Bryan was holding Max’s shoulders to keep him steady and Sophie was holding onto her branch for dear life as Ronnie ‘accidentally’ pulled on the end of one of her flip-flops.

“Whoops, sorry,” he said, sarcasm lolling off his tongue. I would’ve glared at him, but my focus was onMax holding me up climbing the stupid tree. I finally got through the third, fourth, and fifth branches, before I was at the top of the tree, on the thickest branch. Max sat next to me, then Bryan came on my other side. Sophie climbed onto the branch next to us, and Ronnie played like he was going to push her over. I took this opportunity to glare at him, then looked out over our neighborhood in Pahrump, Nevada, the little town just outside of Vegas. It was actually really beautiful.

“Hey, Soph?”

“Yeah?”

“I changed my mind. This is my favorite place,”