BELLA

My story began fifteen years ago when my parents bought an old farm, some land and started their new life with the chubby-cheeked one year old me and my five year old brother Sam. Funny, back then he seemed so grown up so confident so sure of himself I looked up to him so much and he was only five. Anyway we all loved it there, there were always things to do and I've always liked to be busy. Now though I can't help thinking that I should have appreciated it more at the time. Funny thing that isn't it? Human nature dictates that we don't always appreciate the things we have until they're gone. And I will not pretend that I am an acceptation in fact I was the opposite in fact, I never really thought about what I had let alone appreciated it but, I've learnt since then, learnt a lot and now I will never forgot what I had then and what I have now. But this is all long after my losing it; it took me years to remember and then more years to write it down so that I would never forget again. I can't remember all of it though but I have enough to piece together what happened some of it I only half remember and when I asked people about it they told me it never happened, so I guess I made it up that it was all in my head the only thing is, is that I can't have been because I have the scars to prove that it really did happen but only one person believed me and that person is now gone.

So anyway five years after we moved to the farm my father was called away to fight in a war, I was six at the time and didn't really blink an eye I assumed that dad would be back soon enough, he had often gone away to do different jobs all over the country, he would even go overseas to try and find the best cows and sheep and he went miles to compare two horses to see which one I might like better. So I didn't even think it was a big thing let alone that it might be one of the last times that I saw my father. The next time I saw him was two Christmases later when I was eight then again when I was twelve but after that there wasn't even any contact. Well my mum, brother and I went to all the people we could think of who might know where he had gone the head of his unit, his friends and other close family everyone and anyone who he might have contacted if he was in trouble, but not one of them knew anything. By this time I was fourteen and no longer did I think that my dad had just gone on some friendly trip, I was dead worried but the only thing that sometimes made me feel resentful of going to see all these people was that surely we would have been the first people he would call if something had happened to him, not his best friend from high school who he hadn't seen in years even before he disappeared. But there was nothing we could do no one knew where he was and they all kept telling us that this is what happens in the army people get hurt they disappeared although no one said that they die I think they knew that it would be too much. So we heard nothing, did nothing for another two years until I was sixteen and by then we had abandoned all hope of ever seeing him again I still dreamt about him though I couldn't remember all that much the last time I had seen him had been four years ago and it had only been for two days, I had never imaged that it might be the last time I saw him the last time I even heard from him because I knew that people died and went missing in wars but they were only things that you hear about, things that happen to other people, people who you then felt sorry for maybe half an hour but then got on with your life. But trust me if I had known that it was the last time I would see my father there is no way in the world I would have let him go, and if I had I would have burned the memory of that last few days into my head so that they would stay there the same and untouched by time for the rest of my life.

So I was sixteen years old and it was a Wednesday I was just on my way home from school the great thing about my parents having moved to the statues was that I got to drive at sixteen so me and my best friend Emily were in my newly purchased truck well it wasn't exactly new but it was new to me so it was still just as exciting. It was a big old dark red truck that pretty much as far as my car knowledge takes me I'm almost sure that it was a Land-Rover but I won't bet my life on it and even if I was sure I would never bet my life again. We were about five minutes away from the curb where I dropped Emily off and she was talking about the essay we had to write for English- an essay which I never got around to writing- it was about our family history so that being a sensitive subject for me anyway I wasn't looking forward to having to write it. " I don't wanna learn about how my great great great grandfather was a builder or something" Emily said "and anyway it's not like I'm gunna use that piece of information am I like on our job applications its going to say what was your great great great grandfathers career, is it? You know I think that we should go on strike saying that we wouldn't do it because it's taking up precious learning time in which we could be finding out stuff that's really going to help us". I just smiled I knew Emily too well to think that she was serious or that she wouldn't do the homework, she would probably call me up later that evening to say how she couldn't believe that her great grandmother had been a nurse in the war or something along those lines anyway. Emily was the kind of girl who would rather have eaten her own arm than not handed in homework, she always knew what she was doing, was always tidy and always had a plan, mum always said that I needed to take a leaf out for her book, she always told me that it was my dad's English roots and her American ones clashing that made me so messy, but it was just who I am I guess. Mum always used to say that I was much more like my father than I was like her which upset me a little bit because I wanted be like my mother who was beautiful and kind and strong not like that father who I had never really known and I know that that sounds bad because it wasn't like it was his fault but he could have written more maybe in the whole of the six years that we knew he was away fighting we only ever got two visits and four letters. The visits had been two days each and the letters had been uninformative only ever saying that he was fine and that he missed us and would try and write again soon. So that was why I didn't want to be like my father not because I thought he was a bad person or because I didn't think he should have left us but because he never tried as hard as I thought he should, my mother however never had a bad word to say about him and seeing as she had known him the best I would think that maybe I was wrong and that I shouldn't be so hard on him but it would only be me telling myself that, but what annoyed me the most was other people telling me that I was like him I assume is was because I had dark hair like him not fair like mum and because I spoke like I was English which technically I was although I've only ever been there a couple times. But whatever it was that made me so different from Emily was exactly what made me like her so much, she was the best friend that I could have asked for but I think I pretty much ruined her life by being such a cluts, always managing to somehow brake everything I touched, and not remembering anything that was in the slightest bit important which never helped me at school or with school work but she somehow kept me organized and kept me going even when I would have hours of detentions for homework that I didn't even remember being set let alone getting extension on it already.

Yeah that was pretty much how much I thought about homework but running a farm with two people is hard and it takes up a lot of your time even just a small farm, someday I would get home and then go straight out to the fields and not come in till I was dropping then I would fall into bed mostly without even changing and just sleep until morning when I would find out that I had over slept would feel awful that I made Emily take the bus then rush to school and still end up being late. Let's just say that I was nearly always late and that. I had the second highest amount of late's that my school had ever seen and leave it at that I'm not sure the details of every single embracing time that I had to walk in late to a class was like but some of them were pretty bad. But really my school life was pretty normal, average grade average looks I was defiantly the "hot" girl from our year I was never the most popular either but that was all fine apart from the above average amount of late detentions and late homework calls I was completely normal.

Emily however was not like at all she was probably the cleverest person in the whole school forget whole year, she was defiantly considered to be "hot" she had long straight black hair the always looked nice, big brown eyes and perfect skin although I don't think that she cared all that much and she could have asked anyone in the whole year to be her PE partner and they would have dumped whoever they had going to go with just to have the chance to talk to her, but in year one she had asked me- not that I had had anyone to dump- and we had been friends ever since. The only things that I could do better than Emily was ride a horse, all that farm stuff that we do, and drive a car. This was only because Emily was allergic to horses so she had never learnt to ride although maybe if she had she would be better than me anyway, she couldn't work on a farm because she didn't like mud and she didn't want to drive because she was every into protecting the plant from pollution and stuff like that but she still didn't mind being in car so long as someone else was driving it, her family were possibly the richest people from two hundred miles so money was never an issue for her but she didn't like to buy things so we would always go shopping together. Now I don't shop very well at all so she would pick all the stuff that she wanted and what she through suited me so long as I thought it wasn't too outrageous and then she would give me money for her stuff and I would pay for it, it's funny once I asked her why she hated buying things so much that she made me do it and she said " Because you know the till people could be weird phycos right and your much braver than me so if we did get in trouble you would be able to get things right much better than me" I was touched seeing as I had always thought she was the best at pretty much all things. So right now her telling me that she didn't want to do homework was pretty much unbelievable.

When we reached the corner next to Emily huge house I pulled up and sat back in my seat. "You coming in tomorrow"? Emily asked trying to sound casual, she had remembered. For some reason I always hoped she would forget and just assume that I was ill or something, because mum always made us stay home on dad's birthday.

"Ummm yeah I think so I going to I'll call you tonight so you know whether to wait for me or get the bus".

"I'll probably be getting the bus anyway right though?" she grinned at me then showing me her perfect white teeth and I grinned back showing my not so perfect not so white teeth something that I had become very conscious of. Being best friends with Emily had its down sides, even if it was just few silly things.

"Alright" I said "enough jokes at me expense I'll call you this evening about tomorrow".

She climbed out the car and shut the door "See you tomorrow or know the next day or whenever"

"Yeah bye" she turned and ran up the path to her house when she reached to door she fished her keys from her bag opened the door then turned to wave as I drove away. I smiled to myself she may be a bit weird at times and so pretty that sometimes I just wanted to die but she was the sweetest person in the world and I loved her for it.