Being McKenzie Prince ✔

Dear Diary

What is in a name? Does it have some kind of power over you? Can that power somehow be taken away if people stop calling you by that name? Do they somehow strip you of your identity? The children at school and most of the teachers have this way of calling me anything except my real name. Almost as if though I do not even have a name. Sometimes it feels like I was born without one, born without an identity. Like I never existed. I am destined to be invisible for the rest of my life, at least in this town.

Despite the fact that anyone ever rarely uses it, my name, McKenzie, means "comely". It can also mean "child of the wise leader" or "born of fire". I have no reason why my parents gave me this particular name. Maybe they had really high hopes for me or maybe they were giving themselves a compliment.

They have called me weird, freak, outcast and a bunch of other names. With every new name my identity gets stripped away further. My so-called guardians call me a rebel and a delinquent. My usual response to when they tell me that "I am a loser", is that it takes one to know one. That would usually result in a screaming match. The one who yells the loudest usually ends up winning. That is usually either my mother or her boyfriend. I know that it might seem disrespectful, but if you knew them you would say the same. They cannot be considered to be good parents. In order to even call them parents they would have to acknowledge our existence.

I wonder why no one has ever attempted to intervene when the screaming gets out of hand. Everyone is probably scared of Goliath. He can be very intimidating. I once saw him take a beer bottle and bash someone's head in because the guy cut him off in traffic. Anger was his middle name and his default setting was irritated. If his temper was not enough to scare you, his physical appearance definitely will. With his dark hair that had grey stripes in it and his stomach that hung in a big bulge at the front. His thick arms could strangle a buffalo and he has a face set in a permanent frown. The only time I have ever seen his laugh or smile is at some distasteful show on the television or when someone else is in pain.

To the people who actually know me, like my twin brother Skylar and my best friends, Tyler Hawkins and Edith Cyres, I am just "Mac".

Things were not always like this, at least not at school. There was a time when I used to date one of the most popular guys in school, Brian Montgomery, the Captain of the Rugby team. It was an immense mistake in judgement on my part. We are all allowed a few mistakes.

I turned sixteen a few days ago. We celebrated alone in the Red Flag sharing a cupcake.

The name of the town where I live is not really important. It is pretty much a walking cliché of a mixture between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Orange County like in those old TV Shows; The O.C and Gossip Girl. That is where the similarities end though.

The town I live in is close to the beach and it is one of those places where you get four seasons in one day. You can smell the sea in the air when you walk down the street. If you listen close enough you can hear the waves breaking almost anywhere in town. The air is almost always clammy and wet, especially in the mornings.

In all the places we have lived over the years, it has felt the most like home.

Most of the young people are obsessed with surfing, Tennis or Rugby. It would not be a typical South African town if the people in it were not obsessed with Rugby. I never really got it though. To me it has always been a bunch of guys running after a ball. I know that people would disagree and say that it is more complex than that, but I have more important things to worry about; matters of life and death.

We have shallow girls who pretend that they can surf to impress hot guys. I do not need to pretend though. I can actually surf better than anyone else in the school and in the whole province. The only exception might be Harper Brown. According to me he is the second best, but he will most likely disagree with that statement.