Math IA

B ackpacking and B ents Bonnie had an early night last night. I’m telling you this because she’s the protagonist, and that’s the kind of thing protagonists do in stories. It had been a long day, chopping and hammering and digging, building houses for families like she had been doing since she was young. It was a tough gig, being a construction worker. At least, that’s what Bonnie thought. I wouldn’t know. But regardless, she slept soundly. Except not for long, because that would be a very boring story. Nobody in good stories gets a solid night’s sleep, probably because the writers of said stories don’t either. The point is that Bonnie slept, albeit momentarily. Her caravan was small, but cozy. The trailer park in which it sat was small, but cozy. The people she nodded and avoided eye contact with on her way to buy groceries every Tuesday were… small, but cozy. Everything in her small but cozy world was quiet and uneventful, but Bonnie did not mind. Most of the time. She liked the routine, the kind of stillness that surrounded her existence. Except not really, because main characters are never actually happy with their lives in the beginning. Of course, deep down, she wished for an adventure. Something exciting to break the silence and the solitude. Because if Bonnie was already truly fulfilled, we would have a very boring story, wouldn’t we? So Bonnie slept, soundly, momentarily. And while she slept, our other main character was making his way to the caravan park. Of course, you need at least two main characters in a story, because that’s how stories go, isn’t it? So let’s call this guy Byron. Byron the Backpacker. His name alliterates as all quirky, eccentric characters’ names do. So Byron the Backpacker had just travelled all around the world after graduation, as backpackers do, and was conveniently looking for somewhere to rest, at a caravan park. The same caravan park that Bonnie conveniently lived at, who would have thought? How convenient. And of course, Byron was really really tired from travelling all around the world, and all he wanted to do was fall asleep in a small, cozy caravan. Byron had been trekking from Newcastle, via Angourie and -­ you guessed it -­ Byron Bay, through everything from thick, prickly bushes to crowded town squares, to get to this rather run-­ down corner of the world which, coincidentally, bears a striking resemblance to a less government-­protected version of Fraser Island, minus the sunburnt tourists and the rather devastating marine pollution. And so he had been trekking, for days at a time. He was tired but happy;; for, unlike Bonnie, he loved disorder. He had no permanent house, but he didn’t mind. Byron travelled from town to town making friends, creating homes for himself wherever he went. His world was as big and boundless as Bonnie’s was small and restricted. They have to be different, because the main characters must possess opposing traits to allow for conflict later in the story (you didn’t hear that from me). So Byron crept soundlessly towards the ajar screen door of a certain small, cozy caravan, hoping for a space to rest his head for a few hours before moving to the next town. It was growing harder to keep his eyes open, and he nearly fell flat inching up the rickety caravan steps. Stumbling through the doorway, he opened the door with a conspicuous creak, slowly but unlucky enough to cause the keys resting halfway in the keyhole to fall onto ground in a

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