Chapter 35 - I am seventeen, going on eighteen…

I am seventeen, going on eighteen…



On sunny morning Kaede woke up at her usual hour and got changed into her jogging clothes. She left her note to say she'd gone jogging and set of on her usual route. She watched the sun rise and felt her spirit rise with it. Today was the start of her new life. Today she would no longer be a child.

She jogged back home and when she arrived she found everybody still asleep. She showers as quickly as she could and changed into some clean clothes, then went downstairs to make breakfast for her family.

She was just setting the plate of toast of the table when her grandmother came in, all set to do the breakfast. She was quite shocked to find it all laid out on the table, including a steaming teapot and some ready made coffee.

`You did this?' her grandmother smiled, looking at Kaede as if to make sure it was all believable.

`Yep, sure did,' Kaede beamed at her grandmother.

`Is it edible?' her grandmother laughed. `I'm joking, I'm joking. But you didn't have to do this, today of all days. It is your special day, remember.'

Kaede waved her hand to dismiss that remark. `It doesn't matter.'

`Well, go and wake up your grandfather,' her grandmother smiled. `He needs to wake up or he'll miss you opening your presents.'

Kaede smiled and ran up to her room to wake up her grandfather. She knocked on the door and entered. He was asleep still, so she quietly crept across the room and sat down on the bed.

`Granddad,' Kaede whispered. `Granddad, wake up.'

`Is that my little birthday girl?' her grandfather smiled as he opened his eyes. `Oh my, you're not so little anymore, are you?'

Kaede smiled at him. `Not particularly. Come on, get up.'

She stood up and left her grandfather to get dressed, going back downstairs. Her grandmother had found the post and had set the post for Kaede in front of her plate. Kaede sat down to open it but the doorbell rang.

`Who could that be, so early in the morning?' Kaede said, half to herself, half to her grandmother, as she got up to open the door. Had she looked at her grandmother, she would have seen a little smile in the corner of the old woman's mouth.

Kaede opened the front door and blinked as the sunlight streamed through the door. Temporarily blinded, she didn't see the three people standing on the doorstep.

`SURPRISE!' they shouted as soon as the door opened. Kaede held her hand over her eyes to shield them and saw Marik and his brother, Odion, and sister, Ishizu.

`HAPPY BIRTHDAY!' they yelled. All three held presents in their hands, but Marik handed his to Ishizu in order to launch himself on Kaede.

`Ouch, Marik, get off me!' Kaede said, pushing him off. `What are you guys doing here?'

`We came to see you on your birthday, and we're staying until your wedding!' Marik said, absolutely ecstatic.

Before Kaede could say anything else, all three had barged past her into the house and then into the kitchen. When Kaede followed, still fairly confused, she saw that her grandmother had lain out three more chairs for the Ishtars and her grandfather had joined them. Not only that, there was a large pile of presents lying on the floor, waiting to be opened.

Kaede sat down in her seat and began unwrapping her presents. From the Ishtars she received a book on deciphering hieroglyphics (from Odion), and Egyptian necklace with an ankh with a ruby set in the centre as the pendant (Ishizu) and a little statue of a sphinx (Marik). Kaede hugged each of them in turn and thanked them all for their gifts, before setting aside their gifts and opening the ones from her grandparents.

Her grandparents gave her a new sound system that she could connect to her MP3 player, a new surfboard to which they had tied a piece of string and made Kaede follow the string around the house until she found the surfboard behind the sofa. It had a blue mosaic background with a white strip down the middle. Where Kaede's feet were supposed to go there was a four petal white hibiscus flower outlined with blue. They also gave her a brown shoulder bag with two handles connected by four gold rings. Inside it was a red scarf to tie to one of the straps.

`Woah, thank you so much!' Kaede hugged both her grandparents. `Thank you, thank you!'

`That's alright,' her grandfather laughed. `It's not everyday your favourite granddaughter turns seventeen.'

Kaede frowned. `I'm your only granddaughter.'

`Well, if I had anymore, you'd still be my favourite!' her grandfather laughed.

They ate breakfast and at ten thirty Marik and Kaede tied Kaede's new surfboard to the top of her van and put on their swimming stuff underneath their actual clothes. Kaede wore an orange, brown and white bikini with a halter neck top. She wore black board shorts with a white hibiscus flower design up the side of the leg and a yellow top with a single strap over her left shoulder. She tied her hair up in a messy ponytail and grabbed a basket full of a picnic her grandmother made.

She and Marik climbed into the van and Kaede forced Marik to have the picnic basket on his lap and she turned the key and started up the van.

`Have a nice time at the beach!' her grandmother called as she, Kaede's grandfather, Odion and Ishizu waved front the front step.

`See you in a couple of hours!' Marik called back and the two of them pulled out of the driveway and turned towards the main city.

As they drove, Kaede pulled out her cell phone and rang each of her friends to tell them she was coming to put them up. They arrived first at Tea's house and tea come out in a pink floaty sundress with a shocking pink bikini underneath. The next stop was Yami's house and he and Joey came out both in shorts and t-shirts, being typical boys. Sakura, Yumiko and Duke were the next to be picked up. Yumiko was wearing really dark blue surf shorts and a green bikini and Sakura was wearing a white bikini with brown hibiscus flowers over it. She had her surfboard with her which she tied to the surfboard rack along with Kaede's before she climbed into the van.

They arrived at Seto's house and Yuula, Ryou, Takumi, Seto, Mokuba and Tenshi piled into the van, making everyone extremely squashed. They arrived at the beach and when Kaede and Marik leaped out and opened the door for them. They had to grab hold of Yuula's arms and pulled her out and then do the same to Joey and once that was done everyone could get out.

Everyone lay their towels out and then sat in a circle. Then Sakura, Yumiko, Yuula and Tea began laughing and pulled from Yumiko's bag a largish present and past it to Kaede. She looked at the present and saw there was a tag. She looked at it and read,



Dear Kaede,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Just a little something from everyone to remember our time together before you got hitched. Ha ha, well, yeah, happy birthday, and um, whatever.

YUULA! You weren't supposed to write the word um! Heya Kaede, it's Sakura, Yumiko, Tea and Yuula here. We and the others made this for you, hope you enjoy it.

Loads of love,

Sakura,

Yuula,

Yumiko,

Tea,

Joey,

Duke,

Yami

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand

Ryou

P.S. Ana and Honda have also contributed to the book, and have sent us loads of stuff from Frogland. Anyways, yeah, I hate writing these things ><

IF YOU HATE WRITING THEM THEN DON'T WRITE THEM YUULA!

You asked me too!

No, you said, “I wanna write it”.

Humph. Well, sorry, we're arguing on your card. Happy birthday.



Kaede laughed and opened the present. Inside was a fairly large book and Kaede opened it to find written on the first page, The REAL year book, brought to you by Ms. Sakura, Ms. Yuula, Ms. Yumiko and Ms. Tea.

The book was an A4 hardback, and as Kaede flicked through it see in her friends' names in a contents page, in alphabetical order, starting with Ana. Kaede flicked to where her section began and found an entire A4 page devoted to the word `Ana' written in huge golden swirly letters. The next ten pages were pictures of Ana and a happy birthday note from Ana to Kaede. Every section for each of her friends was like this and at the end there were pictures of all of them together and then some songs they thought summed up Kaede. Yumiko had painted a picture of all eleven of them and right at the back was a photo that took up a double page of every single one of them lined up on the side of Kaede's van last time they went to the beach. Marik was there as well, as was Marc, Seto, Mokuba and Tenshi, and everyone was in their swimming stuff. Kaede beamed at the book and then looked up at all of her friends.

`Thank you so much!' she beamed at them. `It's great!'

`Isn't it! We got a copy for everyone, although you're the first one to get it, and you get it for free. Everyone else had to pay for theirs!' Tea laughed.

Everyone else pulled out their presents for Kaede. Kaede opened each of them and hugged everyone before putting all her gifts into the back of the van and then unpacked the picnic with Marik.

Kaede's grandmother had made them a proper birthday lunch. There were little triangle sandwiches full of loads of different fillings, sausages on sticks, pineapple and cheese on sticks, carrots sticks and a large pot of hummus, bread sticks, three different flavours of crisps, salsa, chocolate fingers, party rings, cherry tomatoes, celery sticks and cucumber sticks, sweets in little bowls, jelly, popcorn, a large and very sticky chocolate cake and a couple of large jars of melted chocolate to dip stuff in. There were also bottles of fizzy drinks and fruit juices as well as a bottle of bailey chocolate cocktail that Kaede poured out for everybody.

Everyone dived on the food and, as there was loads (it was a huge basket), everybody got enough of what they wanted to eat. The plates provided were huge enough for a lot of stuff to fit on them at once and they had large glasses for their drink.

After an hour of solid eating everyone was stuffed and lay back on their towels for half an hour to let their food settle. As soon as they were sure they'd be able to go into the sea without getting cramps, everyone got up and ran straight towards the sea, Kaede and Sakura only stopping to pick up their surfboards as they ran. Tenshi and Mokuba, who were staying on the beach to get a suntan (Tenshi was forcing Mokie to do this), had the good sense to grab Kaede's camera out of her bag and take a photo of all of them running into the water.

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