Dear Dad...

Arian sucked on the end of his black biro as he stared at the two words on the page, contemplated them for a few moments and then crossed them out.

Dear Father,
I hope you are well

He hesitated slowly as he thought on what to write next, before adding and the weather is nice before striking out the words and replacing them with both Saffron and myself are well instead. Arian went on to add

I got my GCSE results over the Summer

and then he paused, thinking back to the day that Saffy had brought up the brown envelope with a UK post-stamp and the Exam Board logo. He had felt so nervous when his cousin had handed over the envelope and stared at him expectantly torn between wanting to found out how he’d done and not wanting to know if he’d done badly. Picking up the pen again he continued on with the sentence

I passed all my GCSEs. I got 2 As, 2Bs, 4Cs, 1 D and 1 E. I’ve enclosed a photocopy of my results slip from the exams board.

The grade E had been in Maths – no real surprise there – Arian had always been pretty lousy at Maths. The grade As had come from Art and Design and Technology – again no real surprise considering that Design and Technology had always been one of his best subjects.

I’ve started my new school now. It’s called Meadowview

Another pause and then Arian crossed out the whole line – his father already knew the name of the school – he was sending money to Saffy to cover his schooling stuff along with other things. Instead he replaced it with.

I’ve started my new school now and they were able to work out a grade point average for me based on my summer classes and my GCSE grades.

Apparently Arian had a GPA of 3.2, not that Arian really understood how the school had come to that result. It had seemed an okay thing though, not top of the class, but not down the very bottom either. He sucked on his biro some more, not really sure what else to add. Summer camp? Maybe not such a good idea, not since that’s where the whole senshi business had started. Talking about his latest jewellery pieces was out too – despite personally feeling pretty proud off the two wire-wrapped pendants that he’d spent hours working – Arian doubted that his father would really care.

Actually to be honest Arian doubted that his father was even going to read the letter, it wasn’t as if his dad ever referred to anything that he’d written in past letters in the few equally stilted letters that he bothered to send to his son.

More sucking on the end of the pen and then Arian added.

Again I hope you are well.
Your son

Arian

After writing down the last word Arian pushed the piece of paper to one side – he’d have to copy the words neatly onto another piece of paper later. Right now however he was going to bake some cookies – writing to his father always made him feel like baking cookies.


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