Chapter One

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Chapter 1

"TIME TO GO!" my dad hollered.

"COMING!" I heard my twin little brothers, Cason and Graham, yell at the same time get annoying, but I still love them...most of the time.

We're leaving and I literally just finished packing; I was lugging my two huge suitcases down the stairs. Yes, I know I'm procrastinator. I always have been, and sadly, I think I always will be. If it wasn't for my parents, I don't think I would ever do my laundry. I have lots of clothes, but what can I say, I'm an 18-year-old girl. Oh by the way, I'm Elliott Frances O'Brien. I have really long, curly, dark brown hair and greenish brown eyes. I'm 5'5, which is pretty short compared to my brothers who are already 5'11 even though their only 15. Anyways, were going on a family vacation to Greece for a week and I can't wait. We're on our way to the airport right now!

******

"Oh my goodness! This place is beautiful. Look at all the details!" my mom said, looking around at all of the old architecture.

“Yeah we know Mom, you’ve said that about every single place we’ve visited for the last six days. I think we understand by now,” Graham said to her, causing her to turn around a give him one of her ‘looks’ before continuing to gaze at the beautiful monuments.

I have to admit, Greece is really beautiful. Every day the things I’ve seen continue to get prettier and prettier. I wasn’t looking forward to going back home. This trip has been amazing. We’ve gone to the beach almost every day and the ocean is absolutely gorgeous. I went shopping with my mom one day, and I went fishing with my dad another day. Yesterday, my parents let me take Graham and Cason to this bonfire party down on the beach and we had a blast. All night Cason was with different local girls dancing and having a good time, what a little player.

Cason and Graham aren’t identical, but you can definitely tell the two of them are related. They both have greenish brown eyes, just like me. Our dad has brown eyes and our mom has green, so we have a combination of theirs. Graham has light brown, curly hair, and Cason has dirty blonde hair. All of us have naturally tanned skin and dimples. They are starting their sophomore year of high school at the end of the summer; I just graduated from high school, but I decided to take a gap year before college. (A/N: yes I know the setting is England, but I’m from America and I don’t really understand the English school system, so we’re just going to pretend it’s the same)

“Okay,” my dad said, looking at his watch, “We have time to go to one more place before we have to head to the airport to catch our plane. Where should we go?”

“Let’s go to that fallen tree by the beach and take a family photo. We haven’t gotten one from this trip and we need to have a way of remembering this place,” my mom suggested.

This proposition earned a groan from the three of us. My mom is crazy about documenting our family adventures. We have stacks upon stacks of photos and albums at home from all of the vacations we’ve gone on over last 18 years. She claims that when we’re older we will want to look back on our childhood and the photo albums will allow us to remember all of the good times we’ve had. It’s a good idea but we get tired of taking all the pictures.

“C’mon kids, you know you’ll be happy later on that we did this,” my dad said as we started walking towards the beach. It was only a five-minute walk from where we were so after getting to the fallen tree my mom asked a random passerby to take the photo. He happily agreed and snapped a few photos for us.

******

“Hurry up guys. We’re going to miss our flight if we don’t move faster,” my dad said to Graham and me. Cason and my mom were walking ahead of us and had already arrived at the terminal. We’re flying to London and then there’s only a short 30-minute car ride until we’re back home.

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