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It was the summer of ‘98 after his final year of high school. It felt all too unrealistic and he hadn’t left his room for almost 3 weeks, the endless 3 month summer he had been graced with didn’t feel like much of a blessing. His room was dark and resembled that of a cave, candy wrappers littered all over and a rapidly amounting pile of clothes,,, everywhere. He hadn’t spoken to his friends since his very last exam on June 17th. Everybody was celebrating and drinking, wasting their youths and having fun with the last tase of freedom and no responsibilities. Within this time he had a amassed a large number of missed calls, phone set aside on the windowsill. Grouchily the teenager threw his bed covers off and welcomed the uncomfortably hot summer air. As he navigated the mess that was his room he threw open a draw of casettes and routed through to find his favourite album quickly slotting it into the radio, his sudden burst of energy for the day was new and he wanted to maximise his use of it by cleaning his room. As the radio started playing he threw everything from his bed and began sorting out the ridiculous number of clothes he found in every part possible of his room. After a good 4 hours his room was clean-ish, well at least in his opinion it was 1000x better than prior. It was now only 12 o’clock, he still had the entire day to kill with his new found breath of life. After ignoring his friends for so long he thought it would be best to call them, quickly tapping in their numbers on his phone he called and they decided to meet up by the skate park and maybe head into the main city if he could find any money. He took a quick 2 min shower and dried his recently dyed hair, he couldn’t tell if the burnt orange colour suited him or not be he kept with it anyway, even though his hair was crying for nutrients after so much bleaching. He threw on a clean white tee and navy straight jeans, the yellow socks he wore stood out brightly on his tanned skin. Practically throwing himself down the stairs he shouted a brief good morning to his step-dead who was typing away in the office, and with the speed of light he found his converse (emptying the entire shoe rack as he did) and grabbed his extremely worn out skateboard.Quickly skating down the street he made it to the park in record time arriving at 20 past, he even managed to be the first one there. With his spare time before his friends showed up he jogged round to the ice cream shop which was across the road and ordered a slushy. It wasn’t long before he saw the three others rounding the corner, even with their fast arrival his slushy had almost completely melted by then, it was so hot but he didn’t find the chance to check the temperature in the news. Nonetheless his mom was going to kill him for not wearing sunscreen or a cap. ‘HI! Oh my god I can’t believe it’s been so longgg’ - he was bursting with excitement to see the three people he had missed the most. His friends chuckled and high fived him. ‘Yeah, where have you been loser? You ignored us’ - despite their joking tone he felt a twinge of guilt for ignoring them but that was pushed away as they quickly suggested to compete for who is the best skater amongst them. Obviously it wasn’t him, but maybe he could humour himself for like 5 seconds. In conclusion he is not the best skater and in fact probably the worst in the group after falling over a total of 8 times and adding new bruises to his arms. After being out in the burning sun for so long he was beginning to feel slightly dizzy and his hair felt on fire. He should’ve listened to his mom. His friends grabbed his hands and dragged him to buy a drink, opting for a canned beer (even if it wasn’t technically legal) no one really cared in their small suburban town, hidden away from everywhere and everyone. It was both peaceful and sometimes a burden with how boring it could be. The sun was starting to lower quickly as the warm light shone through swaying trees, perfectly rounded white clouds were floating in the sky and he suddenly craved cotton candy. He was filled with such a light and airy feeling of freedom, it’d been so long since he had genuinely enjoyed a day and laughed with pure joy, booming voice and crying in hysterics over nothing. He waved goodbye to his friends in over exaggerated jestures and ran in a full sprint home, gleefully catching up with his mom who had been out so much recently that take away was part of his daily routine. His dad had exited the office for once and was in the living room reading the Wednesday newspaper (he made a note of what day it was). Heading over to his three younger brothers he flopped dramatically on top of them as no one cleared to make space for him on the couch.‘Ugh get off, your weighting is crushing my poor legs’ his younger brother couldn’t help but be needlessly rude and tormenting every 3 seconds of his existence. He sighed and rolled off of them onto the floor where his dad looked at him disdainfully almost contemplating all of his life choices. It was the summer of ‘98 and life was good.