Fiction: Group 3
Diary
Island School, Oliver, Jack - 13, Fiction: Group 3
Dear Diary:
oday I’m going to explain my life to you. Just imagine. You have just met me. I am nothing to you.
I am a collection of cells with unique genes and you judge me as a book by its cover. I have a dirty
appearance. I look poor, unintelligent and sad. Well, you’d be right about some of those
assumptions, and for some of them? You’d be wrong. But that’s not important. What’s important is that I’m
only twelve, but I’ve heard stories about life, and I’ve heard that it’s short. So I think to myself: “Why not
live it as it is?” Because all forms of life are beautiful, no mater appearance or opinion. Everyone’s different.
And that’s what I’ve come to accept.
Acceptance is better than rejection. And Acceptance doesn’t come to someone naturally, like most things
do. It has to be superficial, artificial, even. Man-made! Something has to convince you that life is better
than you think it is. Regardless if that ‘something’ is another human being, or in my case, a river.
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As a worker on a small field in a small unknown area in China, my best trait is that I have a smart eye. Well,
at least that’s what dad calls it. Well, called it. My dad’s dead, but I live with my mum. Saul lives next to me,
who is my best friend. My name’s Chan. Did I mention that? Probably not. I’m forgetful. Oh, what was I
saying? Oh yeah. Every day I wake up at 6:30, or at least I assume at that time, as I don’t have a pocket
watch. And I spend around four to five hours fishing. It’s not technically work, but mum makes me do it
every day, so I consider it work. You know, I could vaguely make attempts to argue with my mum, and
convince her to let me skip work on weekends, but to be honest, we’d starve without fish. Fish is the only
food we’ve eaten for about a year and I can’t just suddenly stop supplying our food!
I only catch about five fish a day, but that’s quite reasonable for four and a half hours. It’s enough for
breakfast, lunch and dinner. But I wish we could eat something different once in a while. Fish gets old, and
I can’t stand the static, bland taste of the salty creature. Someday I have a feeling that the whole river may
become nothing but a puddle of black sludge and boned fish, if factories around here keep up pumping their
leftovers into the river. Mum and dad used to tell me that the river used to be a main source of elegant
pearls. It’d always make me wonder how clean the water must’ve been when they collected pearls.
Dad died two years ago. I was only ten when it happened. I got home and mum was sitting on the opposite
side of the table, where dad usually sat, crying. I was shocked, as I could barely take the bad news in, I
wasn’t crying; just thinking about life, how it would be without a critical family member. Not only
emotionally, for the first time in my life I was thinking smartly; “How will this impact us financially?”. It’s
not like I would know, ha, I was a ten year old! If I ever had a smart thought in my ten year old self, it was
probably “How is it possible that fish are so stupid they eat bait on hooks even though they’ve witnessed
their fish friends die from it, or even they can see the hook?” But I’ve come to accept that dad has passed,
and that he looks down on us every day.
Once I’ve ended my work day I come home with the caught fish. I’ve learned to live with it, but the fish
usually have a green layer of some sort of mould strung around them. They have some blue spots as well,
some clumps of dead skin and scales piled and stuck on their skin, some sort of debris, as I imagine it. I’ve
never thought about it when I eat the fish, but mum always cuts that part out, so we never eat it. The only
way we get money is from the fish we sell. If I ever have any leftover I always make an attempt to sell it.
This is only successful half the time, but it’s worth a try.
My house is small, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing. I’ve never been claustrophobic and I enjoy being in
small spaces, thinking about it now, I’m actually the opposite of claustrophobic! Fancy that! I have chores,
responsibilities and education - well, you could call it that if you’re desperate. I go to a small local school
that considers ‘education’ cramming fifty kids into a single classroom and attempt to explain how two plus
T
