//bikinis and brown eyes//

One//

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Sunday

I gazed out the window, watching trees speed by, humming quietly to the lyrics of Painkiller by Ruel, thinking about the things I hate in life.

1. Chocolate. Obviously I don't hate chocolate I hate when you get excited because you find chocolate you hid a while ago and open it but it's has white patchy spots and goes all chalky.

2. Running out of conditioner right before a hair wash day. I feel this is very self explanatory. It the same as realising you don't have enough or any of the ingredient you need to bake choc chip cookies.

3. My parents. Not like any teenagers who hate their parents for giving them a curfew or grounding them when they're late home, no i genuinely hate my parents. My parents are dirt bags. They would go out just before I leave for school everyday and return back home at ridiculous hours in the morning, swearing loudly at nothing, making excessive noise in the kitchen. My brother would be cuddled up in my bed, too scared to sleep on his own, and I would tell him made up story's that I dreamt of or read him Harry Potter until he fell asleep. My parents, Penny and Heath Brolin were not fit for children, they were physically abusive and maybe worse, verbally abuse and those words they said were things we would never forget. Because of this I honestly believed that my brother Zac and I were unplanned and unwanted.

4. Being a foster child. It's not being a foster child that's necessarily bad. I mean sometimes you get the occasional 'rough around the edges' parents or 'don't want kids but doing foster to say they've done it' parents, but other than that being a foster isn't the worst thing ever. It's the constant moving around that I hate, never settling in school and never holding onto friendships. Sometimes we would barely unpack our bags before, Julie, our foster agent was back at our door and helping us load our bags back into her car. It's not like Zac and I were these super rebellious, troublesome kids but more that I'm currently 17 and no one wants teenagers and that as I requested to be fostered with Zac and two is surprisingly more effort then one.

We were onto our fifth foster family since July. It was the end of November, the longest stay being a mere two months. It was currently two weeks before the start of the long summer break and luckily enough our newest 'parents' lived on the coast, in a small beachside town called Carnation Bay. Finally, after what felt like days we pulled into the driveway of a huge white and grey mansion labeled, The Ridgeway Estate. I looked over at my younger brother, who was gazing out the window at the enormous house.

"Don't be nervous Zac, we will be fine." I assured him making the young boy meet my gaze. He smiled nervously before we both climbed out of the car. Julie walked up to the front door with us but before she could knock, a tall women with light brown curly hair, cut above her shoulders, opened it.

"Julie! Lovely to see you again my dear friend, how are you?" She smiled, I put my arm around Zac and we walked closer to the front door. The tall lady drew her attention from her conversation with Julie to us. "You must be Marnie and Zachary Beckett." She stuck her hand out to shake both of ours, Her gold bracelets clinking together whenever her hand moved. "I'm Kerynn but everyone calls me Kez, I'm a friend of Julie's from university, I have been so excited to meet you both." Kerynn and her husband were a trial set of parents. We had only had trial parents once before but we had two weeks to make them like us enough before the signed a contract to keep up for six months. Six months as a foster and if they still liked us after that, they could adopt us.

"Lovely to meet you." I smiled back.

"Nice to meet you too." Zac smiled timidly as well. "Your house is huge!"