My name is Adriel Atwood. I am 14 years old. I love to dance. At this stage in my life I regard these as the most important facts of my life. Those of lesser importance are that I am gay and that my mother died two months ago. Don't get me wrong, they are tremendously important but at this stage I am scared to think about them at all. I start high school tomorrow and I want to be on my game on the first day. I cannot let my insecurities get in the way of making my life a success.
I started doing ballet when I was four years old. My mother was a supreme ballerina and danced for the Cape Town ballet company. That was after she gave birth to me. In her unmarried and childless days she travelled the world, gracing dance companies and the world's most beloved stages with her dominant presence. I picked it up from watching her teach other aspiring dancers, from watching her dance around the house and from the way the world reacted to her movement. By the time I was 13 years old I accompanied her when she gave lessons at the University of Cape Town. I could do everything the older students could apart from the heavy lifting. I was my mother's shadow.
My father is an ex-rugby player turned teacher turned high school principal. Rugby was his passion but after a serious injury he was not allowed on the field again. Instead he put his heart into something else: music and education. This led him to his current job as Principle Atwood of the Kramer School for the Performing and Fine Arts. It was a high school for students who wanted a career in the arts. It is where I will be going this year.
I have no brothers or sisters. I wish I had siblings. Life gets quiet in a house of two people despite the fact that my dad and I get on very well. He doesn't know that I'm gay though, I don't think he would mind much. I think he opened himself up to me being gay ever since I started dancing, stereotypically too.
My first name is Jewish because my mother was Jewish, but my father isn't. He doesn't have a religion anymore. He was a Christian when he was still a kid but now he says he is spiritual. I think I know what he means because I feel that way too. I like to believe that life has a meaning, a purpose but I don't like believing that there is a God that would take away one woman's purpose for no reason at all. It doesn't make sense to me.
Tomorrow is my first day at Kramer. I am excited to do well. Hopefully I will find my purpose there.
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My name is Tristan Teegan. I am 14 years old. I am rich, very rich. My father is a shipping billionaire and plays a major role in the management of all of South Africa's harbours. It's widely known, even in the everyday household, that my family controls most of what enters and what leaves this country's shores. I guess that's why we live in Durban.
I don't know much about my father. We live in the same house but I don't see him often. We haven't shared much of our lives with one another. He stopped caring after my mother died, which was during giving birth to me. I can't say I've made being a good dad easy for him either. I'm slightly rebellious. I even got kicked out of school for it. I guess slightly is an understatement then. It wasn't even my fault really, I did it for Jake. Nobody was supposed to find out. Now, my father insists on me being home schooled. It sucks, but I think I can find a way of making it work for me. High school would have sucked anyway.
My brothers were never home schooled. They went to a private school just outside of the city. They all work for my father now, all thee of them. They are much older than. The eldest, John, is 16 years older than me. Tony is 15 years older than me and Michael is 13 years older than me. I don't like them very much either. They think I'm a spoilt brat because of what I did. They don't understand me, none of them do. I always feel completely alone in this huge mansion I'm supposed to call home. Jake's home always felt like home. But I didn't see him at school during the last few weeks of term and I haven't been able to contact him all holiday. Maybe he doesn't want to be my friend anymore and left. Maybe he left because of what I did, because I loved him.
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My name is Tyler Sutherland. I am 14 years old. I am half Irish and half Spanish. My father was born in Ireland and during a working stint as an architect in Barcelona, met my mother who was an up and coming artist. They had met at a design expo and immediately fell head over heals in love. I was actually born in Spain as were my two older brothers and one older sister. We moved to Johannesburg, South Africa when my father received some incredible job opportunities by the South African government and a few private companies. He opened up his own architectural firm a few years later.
Everyone says I look like my mother's side of the family. I agree with them. I have her hazel eyes, dark brown hair and tanned skin. My father is blond, blue-eyed and pale as a sheet. Luckily none of us kids inherited his skin tone. We are all a mixture of our parents although to varying degrees. My sister Isobel is the oldest, seven years older than I while by brothers Derek and Mark are four and three years older than me respectively. We've always gotten along very well. They were great older siblings, always involving me in their schemes against my sister while my sister always used me as an innocent pawn in plots against my brothers. It was fun, being the go between. I was able to experience the best of both relationships.
Apart from my siblings, I had a lot of friends at primary school. It was sad that I wouldn't be attending high school with them. I was going to a private school in Cape Town. It was called Kramer School for the Performing and Fine Arts. I wasn't very good at the performing part, I mean I could play guitar relatively well, but I was more of a design junkie. I loved designing and building things and seemed to take after my father in this regard. I wanted t o study architecture too one day and we thought that Kramer would give me an excellent foundation for that. I was scared to leave my parents, brothers and friends behind in Joburg but was simultaneously excited to be on my own and independent in the heart of Cape Town city. Not to mention the beaches where I could finally surf and swim to my heart's content. Of course, I'm not completely alone in Cape Town. Isobel works here and stays in an apartment in one of the nicer suburbs. I'm sure she'll want to baby me on the weekends. I saw her today. She fetched me from the airport and dropped me off at Kramer late this afternoon for the welcoming and dormitory allocation. The next few years are going to be interesting, I can tell. People here are talented and ambitious, much like me. I look forward to school tomorrow.
ANDREW | 20 Feb 2011
juan | 18 Feb 2011
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