It was a Saturday and I was going to my best friend Jonas’s house to hang out. We had been friends since second grade when we were in the same class. I smiled as I remembered some of the moments we had. It was probably our teacher’s most disastrous year. My dad was driving the car, and the streets were surprisingly empty. Trees flashed by and houses passed in a blur of color as the meter on the speedometer slowly increased. I leaned back in my seat as my dad turned onto Greenwood, the street Jonas lived on. We passed the other houses and I gazed at the trees. It was autumn and the leaves were a breathtaking orange. As we parked in his yard, I looked around but didn’t see him. “He must be in the house.” I thought. Then I remembered: “This is Jonas.”

Squinting my eyes, I gazed up into the tree that stood in Jonas’s yard. There was a sort of swing that you could climb into hanging from one of the tree’s main branches. There he was, way up top in the tree’s uppermost branches. I could barely see him because of the abundant number of intersecting branches obscuring my vision.

“Hey dude!!” I shouted up to Jonas.

“Took you a while to find me,” he said, obviously proud.

“Yeah I know,” I replied in defeat.

My dad, seeing that we were fine, revved the car, then drove away. Jonas climbed down into view from behind the “branch cave” that he had been hiding inside. The sun glinted off his blonde hair and green eyes. Once he had descended to a main branch of the tree, he leaped off and landed in a crouch, probably something he had learned from taekwondo, and pushed his blond hair out of his eyes, giving me a mischievous smile. Wearing a simple t-shirt, dark pants, and a pair of crocks, he stood up, about as tall as I was,“Yo,” He motioned for me to follow him.

I nodded to him and we walked down the brick path and into his house.

Opening the front door, we entered and took off our shoes.

“Hey, Liam!” Jonas’s mom had spotted me.

“Hi,” I replied.

She made her way into the kitchen and disappeared from view.

“Okay, what do you want to do?” Jonas asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I said, gazing around his living room. There were a couple sofas placed around a TV. Straight ahead of us was the kitchen that led to the garage and to our right was a family room that ended in stairs leading to the bedrooms. After a moment of decision, we entered the room on the right and Jonas picked up a beach ball that lay on a table and threw it at my head.            “Woah!” I cried, alarmed, as I just managed to bat the blue, red, and yellow mass away from my face.

“Watch out, man!”

“Sorry,” he said, trying not to smile but failing.

We then started batting and slapping the ball around the room with glee, closely missing antique photographs and fragile vases. After many close calls, I finally pointed out this wasn’t the best place to play “volleyball” and we climbed the steps into Jonas’s room As we entered, I could see his desk and a glass lamp hanging from the middle of the ceiling. A beanbag chair slumped lazily in the corner. Catching me off guard, Jonas procured the beach ball out of nowhere and quickly smacked it at my face. Instinctively, I deflected it back in his direction. We proceeded to resume the game of volleyball and it turned into a competition as we began whacking the ball harder and harder, each of us encouraging the other. One hit of the ball brought it inches away from his shelves of trophies and another one almost collided with a picture on his wall. I glanced at the glass lamp above us, the most fragile thing in the room.

“I don’t think this a good idea-” I was cut off by the ringing sound of the beachball against glass lamp.

The lamp froze for a second as if deciding where to fall, and then fall it did, twirling in mid-air. Jonas plugged his ears and I took a step back instinctively. “SMMAAASSH” The lamp exploded on impact and shards of glass shot across where I had just been a second before and ricocheted off the walls. Immediately, we heard chairs shuffling and footsteps downstairs. Two pairs of feet were racing up the steps. I looked around the glass covered floor, “It was a miracle that neither of us were hit,” I thought. Glancing at Jonas, I saw that his green eyes were still wide open with excitement and shock. The door flew open. Jonas’s mom and dad came in, panting.  “W-what happened?” Jonas’s mom asked.

“Well,” I couldn’t really explain. “We were hitting the ball and then…”

“Are you two okay?” She asked, clearly concerned,

“Yeah,” we both managed.

She quickly left the room to fetch a broom as we inched our way out of the room past stray glass shards. Jonas’s dad, who hadn’t said anything yet, spoke, “Don’t ever do that again, boys.”

“We won’t,” we replied in unison, still taken aback at what had just happened. Jonas’s dad, satisfied, moved so we could go down the stairs. His mom came back up, now equipped with a broom. She just gave us a stern look.

“Well, I guess no more volleyball,” I concluded later, after the whole mess had been cleaned up.  Jonas was sitting on the stairs, restlessly swinging his leg.“We can play roof-bouncing now,” He answered, undeterred.

“We can play roof-bouncing now,” He answered, undeterred.

I started at him in confusion.

“You know, when you jump off the roof onto the trampoline.” He explained, misinterpreting my expression as a need for more information.

“Are you crazy,” I asked in disbelief.

“C’mon, it’s really fun.” He pleaded.

“No.”

“Okay… how about indoor frisbee?”

I gave up and chased after him to begin the game.