Keeping Up With Me

The Start

To Joey,

Hey, it's me. Arbor. Remember me? The girl who grabbed your heart out of your chest and threw it away. Yeah I know that's dramatic, but that's how it seems. Before I continue writing this letter, I should start by saying sorry. I know I've hurt you a lot and you probably want nothing to do with me, but I want to fix it. When I first met you, I instantly crushed on you. Then your beautiful smile and harmless wit made me fall for you, hard. You make the world make sense, like it would blow up or completely combust if you weren't here. Hear me out though, you will understand once I'm done. You will understand why I did what I did. Why I hurt you so much. So I'm writing you this letter, it's a long one but it has everything. Everything I kept from you, every lie, every fault, every truth. I hope this helps you see why I had to keep things from you, why I had to hurt you and I hope you can forgive me. So if you do, forgive me, I will be waiting. At our place, our special place. The place where a seed was planted and our love sprouted and grew. Where I hope we can pick up from where we left off. I will be there on Friday, at sunset. Please be there.

I'm going to go over a few basic things that you know about me and some that you don't. You know my name is Arbor. We've established that it is a weird name, I know, but it is the name of the tree my parents fell in love under and as I am the first born, that's the name I got. They were in America at the time, on a school trip. High school sweethearts. Yeah, they got divorced, but as the result of them was me, 18 year-old Arbor, and my amazing little sister, Abby, who is 12 and starting high school soon. She didn't get stuck with a tree as a name, but that's okay because she's my everything. Abby and I live with our adoptive parents in a small town house on a busy street in Sydney. Our dad lives over in America, making millions every year. The only way I communicate with him is by my bank account going up a few hundred every month. He never calls and never shows up when he says he will, like for Christmases or birthdays. And our mum, she passed away. You know this, but we'll talk about that more later. Our parents had me when they were 17, luckily they were able to finish school before I came along. They tried to make it work for as long as they could which led them to have Abby, 6 years later. Soon after that mum was gone and dad dropped us off at an orphanage. Where only after a week, we were adopted by Tyler and Jane, who were unable to have children of their own. We call them mother and father, not to get confused with our real mum and dad. So I guess this is where the real story begins.

I've sat looking out this window almost every day this year for history. Overlooking a small woodland, which, almost every tree in the woodland has a treehouse from neighbourhood children. You can hear kids screaming and having fun through the window of classroom, which is where I'm stuck, with Mrs Harper, who is droning on about how we need to 'exercise our brains' over the holidays, before we go on to university or to work. She is 60 years-old and is probably never going to retire. I know her children live on the other side of Australia and she lives alone with 13 cats. And I'm not even joking. I know this because she always starts class with how her cats are doing, it wasn't until someone asked where her family is that I realised how lonely she is, but I couldn't help that. I liked history. I like learning about things that you don't really know if they are a story or if they really happened. It was mysterious and I like that. Anyway, Mrs Harper did a good job at making me hate it. After she was done reciting all of her cats names and giving us quick updates on them, she was a boring as a log. And I'm putting that lightly. This is our last lesson before we finish high school and Christmas break officially starts. You may be thinking why am I in class on my last day of high school? That's because my school doesn't do, formals or graduation ceremonies. I was a bit sad about that at first, but I wouldn't have anyone to take to the formal anyway and no one in my grade cared if I was even alive. And you know this, you know that I had no friends here.

I remember the day that I started acting classes here, in Sydney. I wanted to start acting after I saw a production from Pat's Theatre School, and knew I wanted to be a theatre actor myself. When I started classes, everyone welcomed me, and was actually nice to me. It was such an unfamiliar feeling. I finally felt like I belonged and from that point on, it was my dream to go to a theatre school. I've been doing acting classes from age 11 up until last week. I had to quit because I am leaving. You also know that, that I'm leaving Sydney to go live in London and actually attend my dream school. Go figure, it's Pat's Theatre School. My teacher Mr Allo, threw a going away party for me and everyone was there to say goodbye. I got many lead roles here. When you start classes you'd be lucky to get one line in a production. So you stay and show them how good you are and eventually get bigger roles. That's what I did, but it didn't take me long to get big roles. I've done, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Annie in Annie, Wendy in Peter Pan and so much more. It was easy to get good parts here, that is why I didn't want to leave. I'm going to have to climb up the theatre hierarchy all over again at Pat's. But I was willing to put in the effort and do it. Besides if the fact that I had to start at the bottom and work my way up again stopped me, I wouldn't of met you. I've had many bumps in my life but for some reason I have always been able to go to class and I was fine. No matter what was happening with my family, what was happening at school or what was happening with me. It was my safe place. Hopefully this new school in London can provide me with the same safety.