Dear Diary [ON HOLD]

1

September, Tuesday 16

Dear diary,

My life totally sucks.

I don't know what else to write in this stupid book. Today was supposed to be a good day. I went outside to fly kites with Dad in the backyard, which was really fun, and then we came home and had some of Mom's homemade ice cream. The Terrible Twins (Robby and Rhea to you) were out hanging out with their troglodyte friends, and Mom was having a little lie-in upstairs. Everything would have been fine if I hadn't caught Kenny in my room later that afternoon, scribbling all over my books with a black Sharpie. Even my collector's edition of Romeo and Juliet, which I absolutely adored (I'm not a huge Shakespeare fan but I loved the 1996 movie with Leonardo Dicaprio and that got me hooked). Anyway, the book is ruined now and it's all Kenny's fault.

Now I'm grounded for 'bullying' him, which is just crazy. I barely even touched him. Okay, maybe I did smack him a little, and maybe I shouldn't have ripped up his favourite colouring book in retaliation. But in my defense, Kenny had it coming. Mom babies him way too much even though he's already three, and if anyone so much as lays a finger on him she goes absolutely ballistic.

Once she'd calmed down a little, Mom came into my room with this grungy-looking leatherbound thing, which turned out to be a diary her dad had gotten her when she was about my age that she'd never really gotten around to writing in. This diary. She'd found it in the attic in one of the dusty cardboard boxes that still has some of her old stuff from when she was a kid, on account of this house being her childhood home. At first I was a little touched, then I remembered that she'd grounded me for a whole week even though I'd technically done nothing wrong. She said the book was supposed to help me get things off my chest, because I was growing up and there would be times when I'd get emotional, and if I didn't want to talk to anyone I could just write them down here.

So here I am. Writing.

It's not so bad, I guess. I can write anything down here if I wanted to, like how I think Rhea's new jeans make her butt look big and how I've noticed that Dad's hair is starting to get a little thinner on top.

Gosh, my fingers are as so stiff from all this writing. I think I'll write more later.