I Am Home

• Natasha Turner-cohen, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

I am home
I am sitting on my old bed with black and white striped sheets. My bedside table has a messy array of hair ties and old jewellery. Other than the thick layer of dust, it’s almost like I have never left. Like the last 10 years hasn’t passed.
My parents said they could never bring themselves to clean my room. Not even when they thought I was dead.
My sister came to visit me today. I didn’t even recognise her. Her face was not the youthful hapless girl form my memories. She was more mature and had lost the naivety in her eyes. If she had not told me she was my sister I would have thought her a total stranger.
She took me around town to show me what a normal day was. The noises of cars and the heavy polluted air overwhelmed me. I felt like I was choking. I wasn’t so many noises, so many smells and so many faces. I haven’t seen any people for the last decade.
10 years ago my plane crashed. I was the only survivor and I managed to swim to a nearby island. For 10 years I lived there. I adapted to the environment. Built my own cave with moss for curtains and fern leaves for bedding. I had systems there for fetching fresh water from the spring and hunting fish in the stream. I wish I could taste that fresh water one more time.
My feet ached in their shoes and begged to feel sand once again between their toes. My sister took me to her favorite café. She ordered me a wagyu beef burger. She said that this was what I probably missed the most while I was on that island. I took a few mouthfuls but the taste was horrendous. The sickly sweet sauce and the weird mince meat made me want to hurl. I wished I had my usual fish cooked over the fire with coconut on the side.
Afterwards we went to the cinemas to watch a movie. There sound was so loud and the images on the screen made me feel dizzy. I couldn’t sit still for that long. I just couldn’t. So we left the theatre.
I sit here in my room. The windows and walls enclose me and make me want to scream. I am writing in my old diary. My hands fumble to hold the pen and my writing is a messy scrawl. I flicked to the other entries and find myself worrying about friends and guys and homework. Back on my island everything was a lot simpler. Back on the island I knew what to do.
Back on the island…
I was home.