12 December
This is my 7th year in the Riften orphanage, I still haven’t been adopted. I want to live a life of my own, but the matron, Brenda, wouldn’t let us. There are ten of us kids, with three friend-groups. Sylvari, Tristan, Perth and Flynn are in one, Pax, Zac and Winton are in another, and Lydia, Muiri and me, Erith are in the last. Muiri and Lydia are my best friends here. Muiri is the crazy seven year old and Lydia is a mature nine year old, while I’m eight. Muiri always likes adventures and she’s always energetic and she only likes fictional novels. While Lydia loves reading books, especially non-fictional facts and books.
I’m somewhere in the middle, I don’t actually care whether things are real or not. I just like it all. “Erith!” My ear twitches and I see Lydia and Muiri running towards me. “It’s snowing! Look outside the window!” I stand up and look through the window. It really is snowing! “Wow! That’s so cool! I wanna touch it!” I cheer filled of excite. I run towards my chest and put my hat on, along with my gloves, winter jersey and scarf. I walk towards the front door and find my boots lying down on the mat. I slip them on and turn to face Lydia and Muiri, which are, too, dressed up ready for the snow. “Let’s go!” Lydia runs towards the door, twisting the door handle, but Muiri grabs her shoulder. “Wait! We can’t go without Brenda’s permission!” “But Brenda is a nasty witch! How about Helena?” Lydia points to Helena, the second matron in charge. The three of us run up to her and poke her on the arm while she’s knitting a wooly hat. “Who’s that for?” Muiri quers. “This? This is for me.” Helena boasted. “It looks nice.” Lydia smiles. “Stop bothering me, what do want?” Helena places the knits and the unfinished wooly hat on the table in front of her. “We want to go outside. It’s snowing.” I point to the window on our right, and Helena looks at it in wonder. “I’m afraid it’s not up to me. Go ask Brenda.” “No! We’re too scared to speak to Brenda!” Muiri gulped. “I’ll go talk to her and we’ll see what she says, ok?” The three of us nod, and Helena stands up to walk into Brenda’s office. I find the office scary, in fact, I bet all the children here do. There are half a dozen animals’ heads’ on the wall, and scary books on the scary bookshelf. And what tops it off is Brenda herself, her wrinkles, her grey hair, her long fingernails tapping on the desk! We hear a mumble through the oak door to the office, then Helena comes out. “Only for 5 minutes.” “Better than nothing!” Muiri charges at the door, Lydia and I follow. The snow crunches under my feet, and Muiri is ahead of us, grabbing a bunch of snow and throwing it up high. I run over to her and she shapes the snow into a ball. Then rapidly throws it at my face. “Hey!” I throw a snowball at her in the face too, and Lydia comes along, throwing snowballs at the both of us. We start a snow-war, and the three of us fall on the ground laughing. We smoothen down, and Muiri stands up. “Let’s make a snowman!” “We don’t have a carrot!” Lydia complains. Muiri looks down at her shoes, looking curious. “Then we can use something else… like a… rock!” She runs over to the pathway with all sorts of different sized stones. She picks up one big one, thirteen medium sized ones and two sticks . “What are we waiting for?” Lydia and I jump up and start rolling a huge ball of snow, while Muiri rolls up a slightly smaller one. We pile the smaller snowball on the larger one, and we start rolling an even smaller one. Then when the three snowballs are piled, we push two stones into the top part as the eyes, the rock as the mouth, five stones as the smile, two sticks for the hands and the rest as the buttons down its body. I lend the snowman my beanie and Muiri gives it her scarf. We stand back and look at our snowman. “He’s so cute!” Lydia goes up to hug him, but his top snowball falls off and when it hits the ground it just falls apart. “Lydia!” Muiri runs up to the broken snowman and takes her scarf. She wraps it around herself while I take my beanie, and put mine on. Then suddenly the door to the orphanage creaks open and Helena comes out. “Girls! Come back inside before Brenda comes!” We come inside and take our ‘outside’ clothes off.
Muiri goes writing in her diary, Lydia starts reading her book and I sit by the warm, cosy fire. Pax comes and sits down next to me. “How are you?” “I’m doing well, I hope. How are you doing?” “I’m feeling really sad. I thought somebody was going to adopt me, but clearly I’m not worth it.” “Pax, don’t say that, I’m sure someone out there wants you. Maybe the time hasn’t come, you just need to wait.” He looks back at the fire. “You know what? You’re right. I just need to wait.” Then Brenda comes into the room with her usual face, which is a mad face. She grabs our shoulders and yells. “Stop the chatter and clean those dishes!” She pulls our shirts, forcing us to stand. Then she pushes us into the kitchen. “Wow…” Pax grabs a dish and hands it to me, then we wash the plates, stacked up on a pile beside the sink. I grab the soap, and rub it against the plate. We wash all the dishes, including cutlery. We dry our hands and I run up to Lydia and Muiri. “I’m starving.” Lydia rubs her stomach. “Same.” Muiri rubs hers too, and I sit down on Muiri’s bed. “What do you want to do?” I pat the duvet cover and look at Lydia. “I want to eat.” “Other than that?” “Uh… Play a game?” Muiri looks at the clock. 6:27. “Dinner’s soon, but in the meantime we could play-” Muiri gets interrupted by Brenda. “Sylvari and Winton! Get those plates on the table! Perth and Flynn, Cutlery! Muiri and Zac go put all the food on the table! Erith and Tristan go get the chairs! And Lydia and Pax, go get the cups and drinks! Hurry up with it!” I look at Lydia and Muiri, they’re both blushing. Lydia likes Pax and Muiri likes Zac for all their lives, well, actually more than like. We all get going and I see Tristan by the chairs. “Hi.” Tristan looks at me. “Hello. Let’s get on before Brenda yells again.” I point to the stacked chairs. We both pick one up, and he says, “what have you been doing today?” “I played in the snow.” I look outside the window to see if it’s still snowing, but now it’s too dark to tell. “I didn’t do anything. How do you feel about Brenda?” “I don’t like her. She’s mean and scary, but Helena is really nice. Brenda just doesn't seem like she’s… you know?” Tristan nods, “yes, I know what you mean.” We start carrying chairs to the main table until they’re all there. Then I meet Lydia and Muiri standing in the corner, whispering to each other. I start towards them, but Sylvari bumps right into me. “Oh sorry, I didn’t see you there.” I try push past her but she pulls my arm. “Stop!” I shout. “Don’t think your part of the cool-group.” “What…? I don’t even-” “Stop pretending like you have no clue what I’m talking about! Just warning, you won't be a part of us. How do I know that you're trying to be like us? Your actions towards Tristan! Your persuading him to be with us! Erith, your not cool, just get over it and be in your dorky group. ” “What are you even on about?” “Just stay away from all of us, and I’ll stop annoying you.” She let’s go of my arm vigorously, and I walk towards Lyd and Muiri again, rubbing my arm. Sylvari is part of the cool friend-group of four, with Tristan, Perth and Flynn. Then there’s our little friend-group, and also Pax, Zac and Winton. I join Lyd and Muiri. “I can’t believe it!” I lean against the wall. “Can’t believe what?” Muiri questions. “Didn’t you just see that whole Sylvari thing?” They look at each other and back at me, shaking their heads. “Ok, so here’s what happened. Tristan and I had to take the chairs-” Then Brenda interrupts, “everyone take a seat for dinner!” We sit down and I find Tristan sitting next to me. Sylvari glares at me wide-eyed from across the table. She slides her finger across her throat. I gulp, and put the food I want onto my plate. I take the pickles, noodles, carrots, pumpkin, nuts and mince. Great dinner!
We finish eating with a full stomach, and we go sit back down, waiting for our turn to wash. Three people get called up at once, because there are three different showers. “What were you saying, Erith?” Asks Lydia, sitting down on my bed. “We had to take the chairs, and we started talking because, well, why not? Then when we finished I went to talk to you guys but Sylvari stopped me and said this: ‘Tristan is mine.’ I had no clue what she was on about, but and I said so. Then she said: ‘Stop pretending you don’t know! He. Is. Mine!’ I still had no clue, but I just played along.” I finish talking there is an awkward silence between us. “Nasty Beast.” Muiri looks at the floor. “Who’s worse? Brenda or Sylvari?” Lydia smirks at the both of us. “They’re both as nasty as a Wasp, but in different ways. I don’t know which one.” Lydia looks at Sylvari, then at Brenda. “I agree.” I lie-down on the bed, and stare at the ceiling. When the three of us get called up, we wash in the showers, brush our teeth and fall asleep.
Dawn- 13 December
I can’t wait until Christmas arrives. There are twelve more days, I’m even counting down the days on my calendar hanging on the end of my bed. I suddenly wake up, thinking of my dream that night. Every dream I’ve ever had is pointless. But at least they’re not real, they’re just inside my head, playing mind-games on me. I sit up and look around the room to see if anyone else is awake, but all heads are down, and all eyes are closed. Usually if anyone wakes up in the night, it would be because of Winton. He snores and sleep-talks. Once he woke up Brenda really loud and she marched to him and yelled at him, but he still slept. And he even started snoring even louder, and said inside his dream, “Shut up!” -Really loud, so that just made Brenda even more mad, and she slapped him, then he woke up. I saw it all with my own eyes, because I was already woken by his loud snorty snores.
I check if it’s snowing outside, but it isn’t. This is going to be another pointless day. So I’ll just wait here until somebody else wakes up.
Dawn 13 December
I finally hear the sound of someone's breathing get louder, and they wake up and stretch, I don’t need to see that, because I can hear it well. No head rises, but I wait for it anyway. And finally, someone sits-up. But I’m unlucky. It’s Sylvari. I flop back down and stare at the ceiling again. I’m so bored.
Morning 13 December
After lying down in bed for another three hours, a few people wake up. Luckily, some of those people are Lydia and Muiri. I dress into my day clothes and slip my slippers on. Just as I finish Brenda walks out of her room and yells. “Everyone wake up!” She clashes two pot lids together. The rest of the kids start waking up, and Brenda tells us to make breakfast. “Pax and Winton you're making pancakes. Zac and Flynn you're preparing the toppings for the pancakes. Sylvari and Perth you make the drinks. Muiri and Lydia you fry the bacon and lastly, Erith and Tristan you make the scrambled eggs.” Sylvari squeaks and hugs Perth, but turns to me with her evil-eye, glares at me and turns back to Perth. We all go to the kitchen and do our jobs. “Looks like it's you and me again then.” Says Tristan rubbing his eyes. “Yeah, I guess it is.” I say, looking for the eggs in the fridge. “You get the frying-pan and melt the butter on it. Also get a big bowl.” Tristan nods, then opens the cupboard and takes out the frying-pan and bowl while I wait with the eggs. He puts the frying-pan on the stove and cuts some butter off the butter-block, then places it on the frying-pan on the stove which I already turned on. “Also get the wooden spoon please.” He takes it out of the top shelf and passes it to me. I wait for the butter to melt so I can mix it around. When the butter’s melted, without a signal, Tristan gives me an egg. I smile at him and crack the egg on the edge of the pan, then open it and tip the eggshell so the yolk and egg-white fall out and start frying on the frying-pan. But before the egg becomes a fried-egg, I mix it up and wait. Then I started mixing more, and adding eggs more. When the scrambled eggs cook, Tristan tips it into the bowl, then I start making more. We make about seven frying-pans of scrambled eggs, and by the time we’re done, everyone is too. Brenda yells again, telling us to set up the table for breakfast. But again, Sylvari stops me. “I saw you flirting with him! You have one more chance, Erith! If I see you with those googly-eyes with him, you are dead meat! I swear!” I open my mouth to speak but I don't have the guts to abuse her. Instead I keep it simple and say, “whatever.” I turn around, walk away, and do my job. For breakfast I sat down on the long side of the the table. As usual, I sit next to Muiri and Lydia, but I’m on the right, Lydia’s on the left and Muiri's in the middle, so it means that Lydia and I have to sit next to someone else. And just like every Drama-Situation, Lydia’s next to Pax and I’m next to Tristan. Sylvari will not like this.
