Alex Can't Sleep

• Madison Warren, Grade 9, Lowood State High School
• Short Story
• 2011

Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition

Alex lay in bed adding more detail to his painting of a sunset over the ocean. The more he worked on it the better it seemed to be. The water became more detailed and it showed the waves a lot better. It took a lot of talking and warming up to his mum, so he could go to the beach and paint it. Figuring out how to paint the sun was the toughest though, for Alex has never painted a sunset before. When Alex was painting the sunset he felt like a Pegasus flying over a rainbow.
Although he was finished the painting for the night, Alex was still not tired, so he just lay in bed silent, still, and staring at the roof, thinking over the day’s events. He had started the day by jumping the fence into his neighbor’s yard so he wouldn’t miss the bus for school. Later on (around lunch), Alex did some more of his painting, while everyone else was eating lunch. Slowly but surely his mind went off track and he started to think about the story his teacher, Mrs. Cook told the class, about when a girl was attacked by a bear on a camping trip.
Listening to Mrs. Cook tell the story was interesting; it was like she didn’t even realize that there were other people in the room. It was intriguing to listen to Mrs. Cook; her voice was so soft; Alex was hypnotized. By the time Mrs. Cook had finished telling the story Alex swore his eyes were twirling and swirling in the back of his head.
Alex had finished thinking over today’s event and yet he still wasn’t tired. He didn’t know if it was because he was nervous about showing his painting to school or the fact that after school he would get to see his cousins. Either way Alex couldn’t sleep, so he thought he would learn more about the history on the girl who got attacked by the bear. The only thing Alex knew about the girl is that the she was camping, and her name was Jessica. After scrolling through over 50 reported bear attacks on the internet Alex finally found the right bear attack. He clicked on the report and roughly 20 pages of information popped up on the screen. Reading the information page by page he learnt that Jessica’s last name was Cook and she was 17 at the time; she was sitting in front of her tent at night with a heap of food when the bear came out of the woods and attacked her. Nobody knows why she was in the woods by herself, some say she had run away from home and others say she was left there. Now that Alex knew this, he thought he understood why his teacher told the story so well.
Alex gave out a loud and disrupting sigh for Jessica’s family.