•Jenna•

      "First hide-and-seek and MarioKart, now a nerf war?  What kind of teenagers are you?" I joke. 
      "The fun kind," Josh replies in an equally joking voice."You've got to have those nerf guns somewhere," he says to Tyler. 
   "I'll look around in my closet." Tyler strides into the other room to rummage through his belongings.
   Josh turns to me. "I call Tyler as my teammate."
   I stomp my foot like a little kid in a tantrum. "He's my boyfriend!"
   "You guys can share!" Tyler calls from the closet. Josh sticks his tongue out at me.
   "Fine, I'm sure Mark will be a cool teammate." I sling my arm around Mark's shoulder, then quickly withdraw it when Tyler walks back into the room holding four nerf guns and a bucket of bullets.
    "Okay, we need team names," Josh says. "Or just individual people names."
   "I'm Mr. Misty-Eyed," Tyler calls.
   Josh gestures to his chest. "I'm DJ SpookyJim."
   I turn to Mark. "I'm Johnny Boy," he states smirking. 
  "I'm Miss Believer."
  "You guys didn't," Tyler says, a smirk on his face.
  "We did," I say. "You can tickle me later as punishment." Tyler grins and wiggles his eyebrows.
  "So... Are we doing five hits, you're out, or games over when everyone runs out of ammo?" Josh asks.
  "We should take prisoners," Tyler suggests.
  "But only when someone gets shot in like the arm or leg or some kind of wound that disables them but doesn't kill them," Mark adds.
    "Do we get bases or trenches?" I ask.
   Tyler nods. "We can battle in the living room."
  Josh starts listing off rules on one hand. "So five shots per person, prisoners are allowed if they have a disabling wound, the living room is the battlefield with trenches on either side, and each team gets an equal amount of ammo. Sound good?" The rest of us nod. We each grab a gun, then file upstairs to pick out our trenches.
  
   Mark fist-bumps me from our shelter behind the couch. "We got this."
  "One more rule!" Tyler shouts from his and Josh's position behind an upturned coffee table. "Prisoners receive torture through tickling."
   "Crap," I whisper. Mark laughs. 
    "Okay, we need to evenly distribute the ammo," Josh says. The four of us meet in the middle of the living room carpet, where Josh starts dividing the ammo between the teams. Mark and I retreat to the couch after receiving a fair amount of bullets. "Let the battle begin!" Josh shouts. 
  Bullets fly across the room as the four of us shoot, miss, and reload. One of my bullets grazes Mark's elbow. He whips around. "Private! I'm on your side!" 
    "Sorry!" I call back. Using the back of the couch to steady myself, I take aim at Josh, one bullet catching his shoulder. He yells in mock pain and kneels on the ground behind the table. 
   "That counts as prisoner!" I proclaim. "He's ours now!"
   "Git yur own fren!" Tyler yells back. 
   I roll my eyes, then stand up with a couch cushion clamped in one hand as a shield and my nerf gun in the other. "I'll come and get him, then!" I make my way across the battlefield as bullets whiz past me. Leaping behind the table, I hold Tyler at gunpoint while gripping Josh's arm tightly. "Shoot me, and I'll shoot you," I threaten. "Or him. Either one of you." I lead Josh away across the living room floor after disarming him. Shoving him behind the couch, I crouch down to give him his tickling treatment, only to feel a bullet graze my leg.
   Whipping around, I yell,"Tyler!" as he drags me off to his side, tickling me on the way over.
  "That's...not...fair!" I yell in protest. The brown-haired boy pushes me down behind the table as both sides take a time out for tickling.
  "You're on my side, now," Tyler says, laughing wickedly. He stands up and looks toward the couch.
  "It's just you and me, now," he tells Mark, who already has his gun drawn.
   Mark steps out from behind the couch and says, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us" in a crappy western accent.
   Tyler walks around the table to meet Mark in the center of the living room, a gun resting in each of Tyler's hands. Josh makes sound effects from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and we've suddenly stepped into a Clint Eastwood movie. That is, until the front door opens, and Zack steps through the threshold, killing our epic scene.
   All four of us freeze, and Tyler's head whips around to check the clock on the wall. He shoves a gun into his pocket and uses his empty hand to rub the back of his neck. "Uh...Zack! What a surprise to see you here! It's only two-thirty..." He gives a nervous chuckle.
   "Uh...yeah. One of my buddies gave me a ride home early. So...what are you guys doing here?" He gestures to the nerf bullets scattered across the floor, the relocated couch, and the upturned coffee table that I'm using for shelter.
   "Zack! Oh, Zack! Tyler has imprisoned me and is torturing me through his merciless tickling methods! Please save me!" I cry dramatically, pulling the damsel in distress card.
   "How dare you treat my maiden that way!" Zack yells. He grabs a gun from the couch. "I will rescue you, princess!" He then shoots Tyler in the chest, who falls dramatically to the floor.
   "We won!!!!!" Mark cries. He fires his gun in the air a few times.
  "Now we just have to clean up before Mom and the others come home," Zack says, smirking.
  "Crap," Tyler whispers from the floor. Mark and Josh work together to move the couch as I flip the coffee table back over and move it back to it's original place. Tyler rises from the floor and starts to gather the bullets sprinkled across the room.
   "Seriously, what are you guys all doing here?" Zack questions.
   "Tyler wasn't feeling very good, so we checked out early to check on him and cheer him up," Josh says.
   "Oh, okay," Zack says understandably.
   After reorganizing the living room, we head downstairs to put away the supplies. I grab my school bag from its place on Tyler's floor and check the time on my phone. 2:50.
   "Well, we should probably head home, guys," Josh suggests, mirroring my thoughts.
   Tyler nods, then turns to me. "I'll escort you home," he says to me. "Don't want you getting kidnapped." We laugh.
   "Yeah, Josh and I are going to head out, too," Mark says. The four of us walk upstairs and part ways, a pair going through the front door and another pair exiting out the back.
   "Thanks for coming over," Tyler says, swinging our clasped hands back and forth as we stroll through the woods. "It was nice that you cared enough about me to do that."
  "Of course I care!" I exclaim. "Just say the word, and I'm over."
He grins. "Okay."

   I hug Tyler goodbye when we reach my backyard and start reminisce about all the fun we had today with Josh and Mark. I really love those dorks.