Change

Elizabeth

I pushed my shiny new key into the keyhole and turned. Pushing the door open, I discovered where I was going to be living for a while. My well-to-do parents decided long ago to buy an apartment and then rent it out to me when I was of age and ready to move out. You could say I’m pretty lucky; all I need to pay is rent and grocery bills.
The apartment was impeccably clean, and fully furnished. There was a small kitchen with island counters instead of a dining table, which connected to the lounge room. There was a small hall following from the right corner of the lounge room which lead to a bathroom and bedroom. It was a pretty neat apartment.

I opened the first cardboard box, which was one of many, in the middle of my new lounge room floor, and took out the contents. Taking it out and putting away everything in the box took at least ten minutes. Imagine how long it took me to unload the rest. When I was about halfway through, I realised I had forgotten the planks of wood that I was planning to throw away. Oh well, I’ll do it once I’m done here.

I continued to unload the boxes, but when I came to the photo albums, I paused. I slowly opened the first album. The first few pictures depicted my parents and me, after I was born. I looked like an unnaturally large tomato; I really was a hideous baby. I flipped over a few more pages to discover a less fruit look-a-like version of me. I was three at the time and forced to wear an uncomfortable frilly white dress at some boring party my parents were invited to. It was a regular occurrence, me being forced to go to parties, up until now. One of the pictures that stood out to me was one of me and one guy at the party who tried to flirt with me. He had stolen my camera off me and taken a photo of us together. I had a pretty unflattering expression on my face at the time. My parents decided it was sweet so they made me keep it. I never had the heart to throw it out. I slid it out of the sleeve and placed it on the floor. That’s not staying in here anymore…
I went through the rest of the albums removing the terrible photos from each.

I soon finished unpacking and sat down to watch television. Today was a particularly boring day until I remembered; I need to throw away those planks of wood. Off to the dump I go.