“I think it would be best if he just stays home for the day”
Those words were like water to my mouth not only because gave me a sense of relief but it also meant that I was in no more trouble.

It all started when I was about ten years old and we were new to the neighborhood that we lived in. My parents decided to move because my aunt told my parents it would be better if we moved closer to where the family lived. The neighborhood where we lived in was ok and the only down side that I didn’t like was that we had to walk to school everyday, even in the pouring rain. The school was pretty good too but what I really liked was the location that we lived in. I really liked it because our house was near everything there was a store in front and beside it there was a whole boat load of restaurants.

A couple of houses down there was a forest that many homeless people went to sleep in. This forest was littered with bags, cans and even a old foam mattress. In the afternoon the forest was a whole different place. Kids would go there to hang out, climb trees and be kids. But out of all those kids there was always some that went to mess around and do bad things. The worst part of this is that I was one of them. School for me was hard in 5th grade I had a lot of trouble concentrating and I was also one of those kids that that would do anything for a little attention. So as you know those two really don’t mix especially when you have people that are willing to do the same thing as you.

It was around the month of June when I started to hang out with these people, to me they were just friends and nothing more. It wasn’t until about two weeks later that I started noticing that these people were not good at all and that the only way to be there friends was to do something that would impress them or make them think that you were trouble. I apparently did that because all of them started hanging out with me. I knew deep down that these were people that were not good for me at all but I just didn’t listen until I learned my lesson.

It was a bright and hot Friday after school when me and my so called friends got together at the nearby forest. One of the kids there had an idea to burn little pieces of foam on the mattress so we could start a little camp fire even though it was around three in the afternoon. As we started lighting the pieces of the mattress we noticed that the pieces of the mattress burned really fast and they were really flammable. A couple of minutes later we started noticing that the pieces didn’t last and that they didn’t really catch anything else on fire. So one of us decided to grab a big piece of the mattress and burn it. When we did this we did it over the mattress which really wasn’t a good idea because the piece burned like gas it was almost about to catch the kid on fire, one of us told the kid to drop the piece and he did right on the mattress.

As soon as we saw the piece fall we knew right away that we were in a whole lot of trouble. The mattress burned as if we poured millions of gas tanks on it, it spread like a wildfire. We all ran out like if we were running for our lives which we technically were. As soon as we got out of the forest one of the kid’s sister was right there outside of the forest and I knew right then and there that he was going to tell her to call 911 and he did. As soon as the police and firefighters got there they closed off the whole street nearby but I was long gone out of there.

When I got home my sister was the only one home and she didn’t even notice that I was scared out of my mind. About five minutes later I cooled down and went outside and right there in front of me was a police officer standing next to my friend. The very first thing he asked me was “where’s the lighter?”

I didn’t reply at first because I was so shocked but I finally got the nerve to talk. I told him that I threw it away and he made me go get so I did. A couple hours later my parents got home and I told them about the incident or else my sister was going to they were more worried about me though.