I Am Afraid

• Elen Grant, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2017

“Come on! Pick up!” Jessie yelled hopelessly into her phone. She was left all alone at an incredibly scary train station. It was 9 o’clock on a Friday night in Queensland, so no one would be there until Monday. Jessie was only 11 years old and quite irresponsible; her mother had left when she was young and never understood why. Jessie had just came back from a camping trip with her cousin and she had left hours before because her mum had actually remembered! Her step-mother, Vivian was over 2 hours late. Jessie tried calling Vivian dozens of times and finally on the 15th try, she actually picked up.
“Hello! This is Vivian Robertson speaking.” Vivian answered through the phone. To which Jessie, who was incredibly infuriated replied “Do you seriously still don’t have my number put down on your phone! And where on earth are you?!”
“I’m in our beach house in. Didn’t I tell you?” Vivian replied cheerfully, she did not even bother to care.
“No! you didn’t tell me that you were going to our beach house that is an hour away! How did you forget to pick me up from the train station, I’ve been waiting for over 2 hours now?!” Jessie had taken her phone off of her ear and shouted at it and looked totally stupid. Steam was coming out of her ears. She was furious, but it wasn’t surprising that she would do something like that. Her step-mother did this a lot. She was forced to have to walk home by herself. She was checking every side of the road in case there was a nutcase there ready to take her.

It had been half an hour of walking. For several minutes, there had been an incredibly enigmatic man wearing a black hoody and grey sweatpants as if he was ready to flee the place. He kept on eyeing Jessie the entire time but didn’t say anything or physically do anything, yet something about him gave Jessie chills down her back. She had an extraordinarily gut feeling that he would be dangerous. Jessie tried to subtly run away without the man noticing. She ran forward and tried to turn so he wouldn’t follow but the problem was it felt like a maze and she had completely forgotten how she got there and was lost. She didn’t recognize anything. By the time she actually saw civilisation, it was 2am in the morning. She thought that it would be best to get some rest. She found a local library and it was open. She slipped in quietly and found a quiet little corner, she laid down on her backpack and the minute her head touched her soft backpack she almost immediately fell asleep. That morning, she awoke from a dog bark. It was only 6 in the morning but she needed an early head start. She started towards the door when she peeked out the window and saw the mysterious man outside the door waiting.