Worth It

Step One

Ava up top in fancy clothes!! Luv her!

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I never wanted a diary. I couldn't imagine myself as one of those cute little girls with pigtails and a girly notebook and pen. Well, imagine my surprise on my thirteenth birthday when I opened my only present to see a fluffy, pink, notebook.

At first, I yelled. Then I tore it to pieces and threw it on the ground. Then I woke up.

The diary was still intact, sitting on my desk like it owned the place, when, in fact, it didn't. But it wasn't an option to throw it out, seeing as how I couldn't hurt my mother's feelings.

My mother lives for planning and organizing. She is the one and only definition if a perfectionist. Not to mention the fact that she is very persuasive. She's a party planner. Her job requires her to stay organized, but she went as far as planning her life, and mine, down to the last minute. (The last time I checked, her best guess was that I would get my first kiss at thirty-five on a beach under the stars... *sarcasm* how romantic.)

Her next plan, and the whole reason for this story, was the Teenage Improvement Plan (or TIP).

The first step was simple. #1: Express your feelings.

Trust me, after she first proposed the idea of the plan, I had plenty of feelings to express. The simplest way to do that was to write them down in what my mom called a creative 'journal.' The more appropriate name for it was a fluffy, pink, notebook. Had it at least had a better cover, I wouldn't have resisted so much.

After that long week, the last day of school finally came and I was free and ready for summer. Long days spent reading books and enjoying the fact that I didn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn. Occasional beach trips used to relax in the warm water or getting a tan on the warm sandy shore. And not to mention, the looming fact of the next school year to come. As if it wasn't enough to suffer through the torture caused by my mother, school had to test my patience as well.

I hadn't put much thought into who the grade eight teachers were, at least not as much as I usually did. I used to pray for the teacher I want, but I must have been slacking off that year because I ended up with Miss. Maddox.

Miss. Maddox was exactly the kind of person you would expect her to be with a name like that. She was plain terrifying. They say if you weren't afraid of her, you weren't afraid of anything. She wasn't the kind of person that you would pin as the type to yell, considering her age. She was quite old and could have passed as one of the old folks sipping tea at Tim Hortons on a Sunday morning. But she did have one killer set of pipes. Also, her size made her intimidating. She was the size of a small armchair plus some. That didn't make her a bad person, but one look from her and my legs turned to jello. Miss. Maddox was the kind of strong, independent woman that the world needed more of, I just thought that she would be better suited for the military, not elementary school.

As bad as it may have seemed, I still had something to dwell on to cheer me up. I could always reminisce all the good memories I made in grade seven.

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We all started filing into our new classroom. There were some familiar faces, like Anthony vaan Santen, one of my friends from the year before. I started up a conversation with him as he took his seat to the right of me, across the aisle.

"How was your summer?" I asked. It was the usual first day of school question.

"Great, and yours?" He looked all prepared for the first day of school with his notebooks stacked in front of him.