“Be careful! You might break something!” I hissed as Jake scaled the tree like his hands stuck to the wide, bumpy trunk.
“Oh, give it a rest, April. I’m not going to get hurt,” my best friend called down to me.
I glanced worriedly around, luckily seeing only grasses and plants in the large backyard. “Be quiet, numbskull! Do you want someone to see us?”
“No one’s going to see us,” he scoffed from his perch in the tree. “Besides, I’m already up here. We can’t chicken out now.”
“But why do we have to do this in Hulk’s yard? You can steal all the apples you want from my tree,” I pressed, tugging on my long brown hair anxiously.  Jackson Miller was the biggest boy around- seven feet of pure muscle and about half a brain cell. Kids at school had nicknamed him Hulk, and it stuck. 
“Got it!” Jake yelled triumphantly. “Catch!”
I lunged forward to snatch the shiny red fruit when it dropped from the tree. “I have it, now come down already!”
“Oh, you gotta see this, ‘Pril! I can see the whole town from here!” Jake stuck his blond head out from the top branch and grinned down at me.
I groaned. “I swear, Jake, if you don’t come down right now I’m going to leave you here alone and-”
“HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY YARD?” a voice boomed, cutting me off mid-sentence. The door to the Miller’s house swung open loudly and my heart leapt into my throat.
“It’s him!” I cried, desperation making my voice higher than I wanted it to be. “Jake, come down!”
But he was already scrambling down. Jake landed on the ground with a thump and immediately started running, dragging me with him. “Come on, hurry up!”
My jaw dropped. “Really? You’re telling me to-”
“Shh! Do you want him to hear you?” he interrupted, shoving me toward the tall metal fence that surrounded the Millers’ backyard.
After hesitating for a split second, I clamped my teeth around the apple’s stem and climbed.
Meanwhile, Hulk’s voice got louder and louder. “HEY! I SEE YOU! I’M GONNA BEAT YOU UNTIL YOUR BONES DON’T WORK ANYMORE!”
Jake and I threw ourselves over the side of the fence and took off on the sidewalk, stopping only when we reached my front yard four blocks later.
After we had doubled over to catch our breath, I smacked Jake upside the head. “That was the stupidest idea you’ve had all year, including the chicken incident on vacation a month ago.”
“I just wanted to see the egg! How was I supposed to know that crazy bird would get mad?”
“I told you it would! That thing chased us out of the farm!”
  Jake grinned at me, pearly white teeth flashing in the sunlight. “Lighten up, ‘Pril. Now we can tell people we stole an apple from Hulk’s tree and survived!”
“Yeah, and you think they’ll believe you? That apple could have come from anywhere!” I exclaimed.
Jake inspected the apple and frowned for a moment. Then he shrugged, tossed it over his shoulder, and looked up at me, a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes. “So we’ll just have to steal something more obvious. Hey, I heard Hulk has this baseball cap he never lets out of his sight…”