1st 5 Pages August Workshop - Moss

Name: Michele McCole Moss
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy
Title: The End

When you have one person in the world, you want to keep them. As long as she knew he was safe, she happily orbited around him, but never strayed far. Her father didn’t know that she had imagined policemen coming to their door, telling her he’d been in an accident. He didn’t know that she constantly worried about him leaving and never coming back.

Today she had violated one of his sacred rules—she’d fallen asleep on the back of his motorcycle. Worse than that, she had lied to him. She had just wanted to go with him. She looked at her bed, her favorites surrounding her, a crevice in the middle just big enough for her long boyish body. Her brain reeled trying to think of something that would change his mind.

“There’s nowhere else to put them,” she pleaded.

“I’ll find a place,” he said.

She looked at her father, hope lingering in her eyes. He couldn’t really make her relocate all of them.

“I don’t care if you pile them outside your door, but they can’t be inside your room anymore. The temptation is too much,” he said.

“But all of yours are outside my door lining the hall,” she yelled.

He was actually going to make good on his threat.

“You know, every other parent in the world would be happy with me. You’re being unreasonable,” she said.

“My beautiful bookworm, this is not a punishment, just a safety measure. We’ll find a perfectly reasonable spot. I just need to know you won’t stay up all night with them anymore,” he said.
He pointed to her bed in a gesture that said “get started.”

She stomped out of her room, then pounded her feet into each step leading to the living room. She stood peering at the piles of books and papers that cluttered every surface. An ancient TV, almost waist high, stood in the room’s center, its screen absent, its guts replaced with books. More titles stood three deep on each shelf. Slimmer volumes laid horizontally on vertically arranged titles. No space remained. She threw her hands up in the air, but he wasn’t there to see the gesture.

She climbed the stairs and went to her room. Her favorites were arranged around and on her bed forming a nest of words. She knew if she had nightmares, or couldn’t sleep, that they were all right there, ready to rescue her.

“C’mon, it’s not such a big deal. You can put them on the attic staircase. I pulled it down for you. I never realized it, but it’s like a bookcase waiting to be used,” he prodded.

She didn’t even look at him.

“When you want to read in your room, you can take a book from it and then replace it before it’s time for lights out,” he said.

Brynn answered with an audible sniff. She was too old for ridiculous rules like this.

“I’m going to run out to get us some food. Our supplies are dire,” he said dramatically, trying to make her giggle. When no giggle was forthcoming, he continued, “The only place open is the Stop-N-Shop, so I’ll be awhile. It’ll give you some time to clear out your room.” He stood for a moment watching her, waiting for some sign that she wasn’t as upset as she appeared. But she said nothing and stared at her bed. He closed the door behind him.

“Please!” she yelled after him.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but until you learn that you can’t stay up all night reading, this is the way it has to be,” he said. “I’m just looking out for you.”

Brynn could hear his footsteps as they trailed down, through the living room and out the front door. A moment later his motorcycle started up and she knew she was alone. She looked at her books mournfully. She picked up a beautiful illustrated edition of The Return of the King and clung to it. She searched around for the other two books to complete the set. She might as well put them in order if she had to move them.

She walked to the attic ladder and placed the volumes on the top stair. She went back to her room, deciding to gather her favorite series and put them all together. Her arms barely managed to contain Harry Potter and her copy of His Dark Materials Omnibus. She approached the ladder again and placed her stack on the floor.

She climbed the first few rungs and peeked into the attic. In all the years she and her father had lived in the house, she’d only gone inside it once. Her father had indulged her when she’d wanted to look for a magical wardrobe. When she’d discovered none, the attic quickly lost its appeal. There wasn’t much space in it. There were big wooden beams, piping and vents, electric wiring and sheets of insulation. The attic was not the attic of stories where small treasures held secrets. There was only a handful of boxes and bags stashed into one corner.

Brynn crawled up. The last time she’d been here she could stand up, but now she was bent at the waist. She made her way to the boxes, curious. Maybe there was treasure still to be found. Her dad always had books squirreled away in odd places. Perhaps there were some he’d packed up for lack of room. Maybe she could put a few more titles on her “new” bookshelf. She couldn’t help herself. The idea of uncovering some old volume propelled her forward.

She pushed aside a few boxes of Christmas decorations. She felt the same prickle of excitement she had the first time she’d been in the attic. Reaching out, she opened the lid of an old brown box and inside she discovered the saddest of tales, its chapters folded inside corrugated cardboard.

First, there was the tiniest set of baby girl clothes, straight and neat and, impossibly, smelling both just laundered and dusty with mildew. There was a little stuffed dog, the twin of the same little creature that rested on her bed now. But this one was perfect, whereas hers had been washed many times over and been lovingly, if inexpertly, patched up. An old worn velour nightgown had a zipper that started at the neckline and reached to the floor. The robe’s rich reds and blues had faded with time. Behind the scent of the attic, she could smell something familiar on it, but what, she didn’t know. All the items were an exciting discovery, but not in the way she had hoped.

Her heart began to race. Why hadn’t her father ever shown her these things? He had told her that someday he and Brynn would see them again, but he couldn’t have meant it. Not in a literal way. He’d made up stories about them. Impossible stories that kept her enthralled well into the night when it was so easy to fall into the grips of a story. She knew the stories he told were impossible, but she had believed them when she was little. As she grew older she assumed he told her those stories because he didn’t have anything else to give her. But here was proof to the contrary.

She looked out the small triangular window of the attic. She felt an inexplicable pull to the pond outside.