Waking Up

• Madeline Hughson, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2020

Sometimes waking up in the morning is hard. Your alarm blares in your ears until you finally muster the strength to silence it. You drag yourself out of your warm cosy bed, onto the cold wooden floor.

I feel like this often and I hate it. If waking up is a vase, tall and elegant, I’d smash it to the ground and jump on all the pieces, for good measure. But it’s not. It’s more like a duty to show you’re a good human being and you care about school. Deep inside, I feel the desolate hole that waking up has created.

So, you pull yourself out of your comfortable, safe home, onto the barren stone streets outside. Your bus seems to take forever, always getting further away the more you check. Loud, irritating sounds threaten to overwhelm you, and you wonder is all this trouble worth it?

I don’t think so. Because if school was a running tap, with clean, pure, water pouring out, I’d turn it off and put a lock on it, for good measure. But it’s more like a tree, a big, useless pole in your path, stopping you from going where you want.

At school everyone is laughing, happy and cheerful. You trudge into your library class, the disgusting smell of books, creativity and bright young minds touches your nose. You wonder, is coming to school worth it?

I don’t think so. Because if seeing happy people and joyful classrooms was a bee, I’d chop the flowers in the meadow and swat the bee out of the air, for good measure. But classrooms are more like little birds that sing and frustrate you all day, because you’re an ugly egg that can’t fly and you are forced to sit in the nest all day watching them play. And you hate being a egg because you’re so fragile and easy to crack that you’re scared someone will step on you.

It’s lunchtime. You sit alone in a playground of laughing children, eating your sandwich in pure envy. Suddenly a young girl about your age approaches you. “You look lonely,” she says, voice kind and gentle. “Want to come play with us?” A group of girls and boys behind her, all smiling, wave at you.

And you wonder if it’s worth being with these children? Because if they were a plant, blossoming the most beautiful pink flowers, I’d… I’d water it. I’d water it until it grows into the tallest, most perfect plant in the school. I’d even fertilise it, for good measure. In fact, I’d admire the vase, and put these special flowers in it. I’d let the school tap run so it could water my plant and I’d share my flowers amongst the bees, so they could all come and play. And I’d crack through my egg, spread my wings and fly with the birds.

Suddenly waking up, getting to school and going into class all seems worth it.

“Yes,” I respond. “I’d like that."