There is always a reason to why people abuse. Whether they drink a little too much some times, numbs them selves with various medicines or shoots up hard every single day, there is always a reason. In Anna Hope’s short story ”A Gap of Sky” from 2008 we meet a young girl, who without a doubt has a reason to want to get away from everything.
The story starts in medias res with “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark.” (l. 1) letting us know from the beginning, 19-year old Ellie’s state of mind. The dark is wrong, because it isn’t just a physical dark, but a dark within her as well.
It’s told in 3. Person, even though we are more than bound to Ellie, more like trapped insight her head. The text is a constant stream of her feelings and thoughts only, giving us an idea of how she must feel herself; being trapped in her own head unable to get out and think of anything else or anyone else.
Ellie’s thoughts are flighty, so even though she, throughout the story, thinks a lot of different things, it all happens in hours.
Ellie goes to the University College London, she lives in a crappy place, and she abuses. She does hard, dangerous drugs, so that she wakes up after a night of “fun” unable to remember what she did, or even what she took.
She has to write an essay, in order not to get kicked out of school, or having to repeat the year, which she really doesn’t want to do. She hates school, and therefore her parents for making her do the course. That’s how it seems at first, though. At some point, walking around the city, Ellie ends up in a store, where she finds a red jasper stone, which reminds her of a stone her mother once gave her for protection. We get a feeling that what Ellie really wants is to be closer to her parents, her mother especially. Like in the poem “Mother, any distance greater than a single span” by Simon Armitage, she feels