Nature Nick

• Valentina Velasco, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2019

Nature Nick. A name that I am called, by everyone. They say I’m a mystery, a curious man, but they don’t know me at all. Some say that I am a famous founder of a famous charity. Some say that I just washed up on the sea one day and went on with my life. Some even say that I am a lonely wanderer with a broken heart, never to find love again. These rumours are not entirely wrong. I am going to tell my story. It may not interest you, you may get bored, you may hate me, but it’s my story nevertheless.

I always was a strange kid, but you couldn’t really blame me. My mother was in jail for attempted murder. She tried to kill my dad. My father took his own life two weeks later. I was sent to an orphanage at age eleven, where no one wanted to be my friend, and I was avoided for seven full years, alive, but not really alive. No one wanted to adopt me.

When I was old enough to live by myself, I found an old apartment. It wasn’t much, but it was better than what I ever had. One night, I went to my local pizza place. I was eating, when a young lady entered the restaurant. She was beautiful; ocean blue eyes, beach tanned skin, dark, golden, curly hair reaching her lower back, and so many freckles, dotting her nose like stars in a constellation. A cute button nose, and black, long eyelashes. She looked at me, and smiled. Her name was Abigail. Fast forward a few years, and we are happily married. Ah, it was young love, but true love.

We both had a particular interest in the economy, and we hated seeing dying animals in the sea, being suffocated by our rubbish. So, I decided to make a charity out of our passion. Turns out people just needed a cause to support, and it came to be very successful.

One day, we were at the beach, on our little canoe, looking for injured sea life. Suddenly, we realised that something had taken a bite out of the canoe. Abigail looked at me with her big, blue eyes, wide as saucers, because she knew that our life was over. We were hours from shore, with nothing but each other. This was the end.

I woke up, I don’t know how much later, on an island. Happy to be alive, I cheered and searched for Abigail. She was nowhere to be seen. I spent hours roaming the little island. I was so angry at myself for living, and Abigail not. The love of my life, dead.

AFTERMATH

I smiled, proud of myself, hoping that Abigail and my parents were too. It had been one year since Abigail’s death. I stood, looking over the plaque dedicated to Abigail, on behalf of my charity, and I smiled. I smiled wider than I ever had. Everything would be ok.