The words that changed my life:
"Bonnie, I'm moving. In six months. To Australia."
I was in the process of eating a huge portion of smelly stew that the dinner ladies had dumped on my plate. Or, to be more accurate, was NOT in the process of eating the smelly stew that the dinner ladies had dumped onto my plate. I was eating the two extra bread rolls I had bought, fearing that the stew would be worse than it smelled and I would go hungry if I had nothing.
So this was why I wasn't looking up at Oliver.
"You tried to tell me that in year four, I'm not falling for it again." I said, feeling slightly sick from the fumes wafting at me from the entire canteen at York Grammar School.
"Really." he said.
There was something in his voice that made me look up, so I did. That was when I saw his eyes. They were truthful and full of sadness.
"No." I mumbled, and began to cry.
He hit me on the head with an unused spork.
"Six months. Six months do do sixteen things together. Sixteen things we can do in the UK."
"Sixteen things?"
"I made a list." Oliver reached into his bag and pulled out a green leather notebook. I recognised it as the one I bought him for his fourteenth birthday. He opened it, and flicked to a page covered in his distinctive cursive handwriting. I took it off him, and had a look.
Oliver's list.
I guess this is sort of like a bucket list, only it's not one for before I die. It's for the six months I have until I head off to Sydney, where I can't do all these things.
1) Ride every rollercoaster at Alton Towers.
2) Go up the Shard.
3) Have a party in the rain.
4) Go to Glastonbury.
5) Eat fish and chips on Brighton pier.
6) Win something in a claw machine at Skegness.
7) Watch every Harry Potter with no breaks.
8) Walk across Abbey Road.
9) Sit on a lion in Trafalgar Square.
10) Go to Stonehenge.
11) See a play at the Globe.
12) Fall asleep in an IKEA showroom.
13) Make a call in a telephone box.
14) Talk in stereotypical accents, 'spiffing!'
15) Decorate a room.
16) Write to JK Rowling.
"Ok," I say, wiping a tear away, "I'll help you. We'll get that list done."
YOU ARE READING
Sixteen Things ~ON HOLD~
Teen Fiction'At first I thought he was joking. Then I saw his eyes.' Bonnie and Oliver have always been friends. But now, in year eleven, Oliver reveals that he is moving. To Australia, on the other side of the world. In his remaining six months in Yorkshire, O...
