Year 8 English - creative writing piece

Yesterday it rained

We’d been friends, me and Eria, from the first day we’d met in grade 1 through to grade 8. She grew a fig tree in my backyard. It was because my name is Fig. Yesterday the figs were ready for harvest. Our annual fig picking day, where we’d dance around it like in Totoro before picking as many as we could. I looked forward to that day. The day of the harvest came, and I was so excited to dig into those dangling figs that hung, barely, on thin branches outside my window.

It rained that day. I grabbed my phone to text Eria. 

Hey, want to come over and watch a movie anyway? 

I still wanted to hang out with her.

Sorry, I can't hangout, I want to go shopping with another friend. I’ll come over another day.

She texted me that.

Maybe it was the rain, or the fact that I went the extra mile by preparing picnic baskets and chopping boards for the figs, or the way she just brushed off the suggestion of hanging out. I stared at my phone. We had never missed a harvest before, and she didn’t want to hang out because she wanted to go shopping with her new friend.

It was such a small thing. It made me think, how many other times had she declined my invites for another person? It made me remember how we used to run around in my clover garden, how we created small charms and tied them all over the fig tree. I remember sitting with her that sunny day, threading string through a small boat shaped bead. They got drenched in the rain yesterday. As I dug into this memory, I recovered another one. The day after she ran away from me and played with her other friends. She said sorry, and I forgave her.

In our friendship, I forgave her, over and over, after she betrayed my trust, after she left me for her other friends, after she yelled at me for making new friends.

Why did I forgive?

I didn’t want to accept it. I stared at my phone. My eyes stung, I blinked, and I let my tears go. I forgave her thinking she would change, and so our friendship would stay. I latched onto our childish pinky promises, our 'cross my heart and hope to die' that we’d be best friends forever.

I let go of Eria yesterday, realising that friendships couldn’t last infinitely. Our friendship was like a boat, on which I’d been the only one trying to keep it afloat. Now that it’s gone, it feels as though I’m being swept through cold, fresh waves.

Chengcheng Z 

Year 8