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The Eds and I were in a gang and we all played on the baseball team together; I was the pitcher, Eddy was the shortstop, and Ed was the catcher. We played dirty, if that weren’t obvious.

We hung out in an abandoned subway tunnel downtown where we would smoke and bullshit around late into the night until someone inevitably called the cops on us.

Kev was a football jock and we had an amicable back-and-forth rivalry. It might have seemed like we really hated each other, but it was like a game for both of us. I was openly gay and he was a closeted bisexual, something I found out about on accident and used to tease him on occasion with backhanded "flirting", if one could call it that. Despite all that, we actually got along rather well, especially after the incident involving Eddy's poor excuse of a brother. It took a long time for me to forgive myself after our horribly malfunctioned stunt, but the other cul-de-sac kids had resolved to let it go after witnessing that humiliating fiasco.

I still had a vested interest in bugs and small animals. I also had a morbid fascination with bones. I kept several display pieces of preserved skeletons and insects.

Some events vaguely followed canon up to a point (obviously without the extreme exaggeration). I was very much a kid who had way too many expectations placed on me that developed into excessive OCD and anxiety disorders and I overworked myself constantly until I was literally too physically and mentally exhausted to continue. I became visibly malnourished and ill near the end of middle school and had a near-death experience getting run over by a car while I was walking home late one night after studying at the library after school. This experience made me realize that I was wasting my life and that I wanted to do so much more with myself than be an obedient little book nerd.

The shift happened the summer before freshman year of high school, something the Eds fully supported me in. They were with me all through my rehabilitation and therapy. It was a sobering time for all three of us and ultimately changed us in the long run. My entire mentality had gone to a much darker place and that seemed to spread to the Eds.

The Kankers were not nearly as toxic and overbearing as they were in canon. They were still the “upperclassman bullies”, but they were less obsessed with me and the Eds and more concerned with keeping the cul-de-sac kids out of the trailer park (lest we faced the consequences). Marie, however, showed a different side of herself after my injury, coming to visit me in the hospital and admitting that she never really enjoyed being so mean like her sisters. That was what led to us actually getting to know each other and becoming very close friends.

Kev was something of a mechanic on the side. He fixed up old motorbikes and made customs from whatever he could salvage from the junkyard. That was actually one of the first things Kev and I bonded over when I decided to take an interest in motorcycles myself. At some point I just kind of started helping him, even going so far as to fix up his own bike when he wrecked it and didn't have the time to fix it himself. I used the excuse that it was just something to keep me busy, but the truth was that I quite enjoyed it, both for the creative stimuli and that it gave us the opportunity to spend time together.

I hated finger-food. I could not stand eating with my bare hands; I always had to use a utensil of some kind, or at the very least a napkin. This may seem insignificant, but considering how much I had to emphasize it back then, I figured it's worth mentioning.

Even before the accident, I struggled with depression. Middle school life was already a hell to endure in and of itself, so add to that the constant torment that resulted from each of Eddy's failed attempts to scam the whole neighbourhood and it didn't turn out so well for my mental state. Of course, I would never blame Eddy for it, or anyone for that matter, since as I grew older I came to accept that kids tended to be horrible as a general rule of thumb, but it nonetheless played a large role in my deteriorating mental health alongside my nigh absentee parents. It was something that I eventually talked about with the Eds, which, while a difficult conversation to navigate, ultimately brought us closer together. Hell, it even convinced Eddy to get an actual job in high school.

The abandoned Gag Factory was another of our regular haunts apart from the subway tunnels. At one point we started up the rumours that it was haunted by ghosts, which led to a number of people stopping by to spend the night on a dare or some other equally trivial attempt at proving their bravery. It should go without saying that we didn't miss a single opportunity to perpetuate those rumours by scaring the living bejesus out of those suckers.

Eddy's brother was none too impressed with the result of our little impromptu visit to him, especially not after getting dragged off by the sadistic Kanker Sisters (who had only followed along to watch us get pummeled rather than stop it from happening). He developed something of a vendetta against us after that and frequently chose me to be the object of his harassment since I was evidently the easiest to pick on out of the three of us. I would often get calls at home that were frankly as unsettling as they were irritating, which later became unsolicited text messages once we'd entered high school. I'd had enough by that point and, in the middle of the night, I took a taxi down to the amusement park along with Kev, who had insisted on coming along after finding out about what had been going on. Between the two of us, we gave that bastard a beating he would never forget. Hell, we probably beat him within an inch of his life by the time we were done with him. I'd never experienced such violent impulses before, but I can say with certainty that it was one of the major turning points in what had become my darker mentality.

Of course, I didn't manage to avoid the repercussions of pulling such a stunt. The guy had the nerve to call the cops on me and they showed up at my house the next day, my parents nowhere to be found as per the norm. I spent the rest of that school year serving my time in juvie, though I'd refused to implicate Kev to suffer alongside me. He never did let me live that down.