Waiting For You

• Gloria Rivadeneira Pino, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2020

Memories brimming with nostalgia and anxiety kept a young girl awake long past her bedtime. After a long hour of tossing and turning under the covers and squeezing eyes shut with no luck of falling asleep, she suddenly sat upright on her bed, submitting to her mind's tenacious urge to stay awake. The overflowing thoughts and images in her head were too loud and vibrant to ignore - they would only return as stubborn as ever to keep the girl from getting a good night's rest. This insomnia had been deteriorating gradually for the previous weeks but that particular night she felt it reach its peak. She finally decided that would not tolerate another second of her own restless mind, so she left the safety of her bed.

Midnight was nearing when the girl's father heard barefoot steps approaching the dining room table. Startled, he carefully closed the laptop in front of him, took a deep breath and rubbed his tired eyes. He let out a sigh when he realised that it was only his daughter.
"Marie? Is that you?" he asked the timid figure half-hiding behind the open doorway.
Wearily, Marie peeped her head out of the darkness and into the dim light of the dining room.
"Is everything alright dear?"
"Papa, it's hard to sleep,"
"Oh," With a painful pang of pity, the father believed he knew why.
There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence.
"I miss her, Papa. When is she coming back?" Marie looked up at her father with hopeful eyes.
This question hit the girl's father with the intensity of a bullet to the chest, despite the fact that he had expected a question like this to come about. But his daughter's optimistic expression weakened him, and he knew it would've injured both of them terribly to tell the truth.
"Marie, I... sh-she...I d-don't know..." he whispered shakily, fighting to hold back the tears that would've worsened the situation.
The girl stared at her feet, the last embers of hope within her had died away. She retreated to her bed with a quieter, less active mind.

Marie finally slept and had a dream for the first time in many weeks. Marie was standing in the middle of a clearing in a picturesque forest and a woman was walking out of it. She ran towards the woman but she just became further away from sight. She screamed over and over again in her nightmarish dream, desperate to call the attention of the familiar woman who was walking away from her. As reached out for her hand, she found that she was no longer dreaming.
"MAMA!" she shrieked, bolting upright, watching her outstretched arm fall into her lap. Petrified and confused, she scanned her room with tear-blurred vision and found that her father was sitting by her bed, tears also flowing freely from his eyes.
"Its ok darling," the father embraced her daughter tightly, "Mama never left. She's watching you from above. She's waiting for you."