I Was Sixteen.

• Bonnie Collis, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2011

We moved to Avoca the summer I turned sixteen. I was an only child and an insecure girl, and the combination made me less than agreeable about the lifestyle change.
Mum and Dad told me they were doing what was best for me. They were biased though. They hated Parramatta. Hated the dirt, hated the air. They hated the graffiti and they hated the pollution. Mostly, they hated the gangs. And I’d bet my tinted eyebrows that they had moved in fear that I would become yet another jail-headed parra-martian.
Avoca was everything they insisted they loved. Sand, ocean, neighbours. They had a barbeque on night two and that’s when I knew that the whole idea was absurd. My family didn’t do barbeques. We did dinner in front of the TV and bedtimes whenever. We weren’t neighbours and we certainly didn’t talk to the couple living across the road while we munched on chicken kebabs, as Dad was doing now.
I woke to a filtered sunlight and a box filled room. I shoved them to the side, despite knowing that my life’s belongings were in possession of the cardboard, slumped out to the breakfast table, sat down, grabbed some cereal, and began whining.
Ten minutes later, Mum reprimanded me and Dad insisted I unpack. I was aggravated at them and I yelled harshly in their direction. After all; they’d ruined my life and they deserved to know it.
“Ryley, you keep your thoughts to yourself!”
Dad had never before shouted at me and I hated him for doing it now.
“I can’t!”
And with that childish wail, I retreated to my room. Before my door slammed closed, I heard Dad’s reply.
“We know.”
Thirty minutes later, I had climbed out my window, fallen through some scrub, climbed a fence, trespassed (realized why my parents were worried I would make my way to a Parramatta gang), crossed a road, ran the length of the beach and reached the rocks.
Pitiful child I was, I hid under a ledge and watched the angry waves argue. I cried for a bit – wimp – and then it ironically rained. I muttered bad things about my parents under my breath.
He was walking alone, I think, when he found me. He was my age and attractive in the beach-way that shallow girls fall for. He sat without introducing himself and asked what I was thinking about.
I told him and he smiled genuinely. “Maybe you’re too busy looking at the bad things to see the good stuff.”
I didn’t even know him then. But I believed him. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad.
And it wasn’t.
I fell in love that summer. His name was Daniel and he was perfect. He understood me and laughed when I was mad. He helped me understand my parents and he adored me for who I was.
I didn’t tell him I loved him though. I kept that thought to myself.

For a year or two, anyway.