KA1 {On Hold- EDITING}

Introduction

Today I decided to put the large stacks of polaroid photos on my desk, into a photo album.

I didn't realise how long it would take, but it's felt like hours since I started. I had two empty photo albums that I was going to use and have already filled one.

I pick up another photo and look at it for a while.

It's of Dane, Chess and I at the beach. We're all wearing wet suits and you can see three multicoloured surfboards stacked on the sand in the background. Dane's face is all red, I remember him getting really badly sunburnt and we're all squinting, so I'm pretty sure it was really sunny that day.

I turn the picture over and read the back:

Dane Gregor, Francesca Thomas (Chess) and Kelly Aveltson (Elk). Beach Day, they're all crap at surfing.

I'm positive Ethel wrote on the back of this one. My Godmother, Ethel, has the messiest handwriting I've ever seen. So it's always easy to tell that she wrote something.

I slide the photo into the album as carefully as I can. Before, I was forcing them into the album and nearly tore a photo of me as a toddler into pieces.

I pick up the next picture, It's me and Chess holding up letters. I don't even remember it being taken, so I flip to the back:

Chess and Elk are accepted to Williams' Sports Academy.

That's right! I forgot about that one. We were both so excited about it. We were even more excited when we were in the same class.

It made it slightly less exciting when I moved up two year levels.

They said I was incredible at sports and that I was also really smart. I don't think I was that good, but they sure thought so.

Anyway, I'm still acing all my sports classes, but it's the school work side of things -like maths and English and everything- I'm sort of struggling with.

It's okay though. I'll live. I have Dane to help me. Dane had to move up a grade. So he sort of knew what it was like. He's seventeen, a year older than me, but it was so much better to be friends with him than with people two years older than me.

That's kind of how we all became friends. I met Dane, Dane met Chess. Then somehow we just became so close, like siblings.

I think it also had something to do with our backgrounds. I know I bonded well with Chess because we were both orphans, our parents were killed in similar car accidents.

Dane wasn't orphaned, but abandoned, he lived with a foster parent like Chess did.

I was just lucky enough to have a godparent.

I slide the last few photos into the album and set it down on my desk.

It looks a lot neater now.

Then I walk down to the kitchen to get some more food before Ethel comes back with tea.