Maia’s Bedtime Story

• Aneeqa Khan, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2017

Crumpled paper. Messy thoughts. A broken girl.

No ideas generated in her mind. Ink spilled across lined notebook pages. In her hands she held a broken pen, a perfect metaphor for her life.
She wished for the sweet scent of her mother. For the proud smile of her father. But they had both left her alone in this world.
She looked at the clock and sighed heavily. Her thoughts clung onto the last drops of inspiration. She needed more. Finally, she washed her hands and decided on a spontaneous visit to the library.

Wisps of brown hair escaped her bun as she walked to the library. Her green eyes portrayed exhaustion. Her whole face appeared to be crumpling and she felt tired. Tired of spending hours pouring her imagination into a story only to have it rejected by a publishing company.
Strolling in the library, she waited impatiently for inspiration. When none came, she sat and listened to a lady read a book to several toddlers in the children's section.
She listened and recognition settled over her. That book, the lady read, meant so much to her. As she listened, memories began to conjure themselves from the pain in her heart.
Her mother had read her that book before the car accident. Her mother had mimicked character voices and at the end whispered Goodnight Maia. The next morning her mother wasn’t there anymore.
Maia had heard the urgency in her fathers voice when he told her to get in the car. She had nagged her father for answers. The nurses and doctors had braced themselves for a screaming, red-faced 5 year-old, but Maia hadn’t cried. She’d frozen. A tear had leaked from her eyes. Only one tear. That one tear was it. Her father had crumpled to the floor and cried. Cried till his voice was hoarse and his eyes were red. All that time Maia had reassured him.
Maia and her father had started over after that. They had erased grief from their lives and Maia had occupied herself with books. Books had helped her through everything. When she had come home crying, bruised from the bullies. Books had been there. Over time, she realised that imagination could aid anyone and that she was destined to write books for those in need. But the grief of her father’s death was a clear reminder that people weren’t always repairable.
As she listened to the lady, hope ignited a determined flame in Maia. Suddenly, her thoughts were on fire.
She’d write about a girl. A boy. About their world of imagination.

Months passed. No words came from the publishing company.
Then on a warm afternoon in May, a published version of her book arrived along with a picture. A picture of a little girl and a man, reading her book. A note accompanied the picture, ‘You have given hope to the little ones’, it said.
As she read it, she weeped. For her mother. For her father. For herself.