1st 5 Pages March Workshop - Saunders Rev 1

Name: Merriam Saunders

Genre: MG, Light Fantasy

Title: What Westin Scott Hopper Found





SUNDAY



The basement in Grandma’s house is calling to me.



But I’m not supposed to go in it.



So I sit on Grandma’s sofa and cut out the Sunday comics instead. I usually like to cut out the ones that give me ideas for drawing. Grandma sets the warm blue sheets she’s just pulled out of the dryer next to me and starts folding. I dig a tunnel into the toasty pile, thinking about how I can sneak into the basement. I’ll have to wait till Dad leaves. The sheets feel soft on my skin. I wonder what it feels like to cut sheets, instead of newspaper.



“West! What’d you do that for?” Dad leaps out of the brown lounger chair.



I look down at my hands. Uh-oh. “I didn’t mean to!”



“Westin Scott Hopper!” Grandma closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I just bought these. Why would you cut a hole in perfectly good sheets?”



“Sorry Gram.” I have no idea why I did that.



Dad takes a swig from a silver can and sets it on the glass coffee table. “You can’t do stuff like that, West. You’re eleven, not seven. Use your brain.”



Ha! Lot of good that’d do. Someone else’s Brain might have been like “Dude. Bad idea to cut a hole in your Grandma’s sheets.” That Brain’s kid would’ve been like, “Thanks, Brain. I’ll cut the comics instead. Good thing I have you to stop me from doing stupid stuff.”



But my Brain’s different. The part that stops you from screwing up—the same part that makes you pay attention even when it’s super terrifically boring (like math class)—that part of my Brain is on vacation in Hawaii most days. Or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. Or canoeing the Amazon. Wherever it is, it’s not in my head doing its job.



“You’ll have to pay Grandma out of your allowance.” Dad glances at his watch.



And I know what’s coming. Actually, what’s leaving.



Him.



“Your mom will pick you up later. You’re her problem now, buddy. Don’t forget anything at Grandma’s.” He leans over and messes my hair. “See you next Sunday night. Be good.”



I usually hate when he leaves. Makes my stomach feel hollow. I follow him to the kitchen. He’s so tall he has to duck through the doorway. And so strong when he slams the back door, sometimes the walls shake. Like now. I watch through the side window as he peals out of the drive-way in the bright red Evidence. That’s what Mom calls his new Porsche—she says it shows he can pay more child support.



But today, I’m glad he left early. Today I just have this feeling. There’s something calling me to the basement.



I pull a soda from Grandma’s fridge. Mom doesn’t let me drink soda, but Gram doesn’t mind. When I shut the fridge, a picture I drew—a flying blue dragon—falls from its magnet and floats to the floor. Dad’s knocked this drawing off three times today getting a drink out, and Grandma puts it back up every time. She loves my drawings. They’re okay, I guess. [ILLUSTRATION]



I finish my soda and look down the hall to the basement door. Sometimes they fall asleep watching TV and that’s the best time to sneak down.



“Don’t you even think of going in that basement!” Pops comes out of his TV coma to yell. “Every time you go down there you break something.”



“Okay.” Darn. Still awake. I throw a tennis ball against the basement door, eyeing the knob. Catch. Ba-dump. Catch.



“No ball throwing in the house!” His screechy voice makes the hair on my neck stand.



“Okay.” I’m going anyway. I look both ways down the hall and take a step toward the old basement door. It’s all scratched under the knob where Jessup used to claw at it before he died. Which was sad because he was a fun dog. I twist the loose knob and quietly open the door. The stair creaks errrt under my foot and I hope they don’t hear.



The basement smells weird. Like wet fur, stale barf and old cardboard. Most kids would be scared down here. It’s dark. Midnight under-the-ground dark. There’s one dim bulb hanging from the center of the room and you turn it on by pulling a long string. But only after you’re all the way downstairs, through Spider City in the floor boards above your head. Once, after I walked into a web, thrashing around to get the sticky wisps off, a giant spider crawled down my cheek and into my sweater. Mega gross.



My heart pumps fast till I tug the string and the light clicks on, dim and yellow. The room is filled to the rafters. There’s a cool record player on a dusty table that works by cranking the handle. The singer sounds like she’s in a tin can. Next to it, is a pink accordion. But I accidentally poked a hole in the middle, so it doesn’t work anymore. There are more books than in my school library, in heaps, on shelves, and in boxes. But nothing I’d read. They have weird titles like “The Edible Northwest” or “Weaving for Dummies”.



I tap my thighs and spy around. Nothing new since last time I snuck down except a blue hard-sided suitcase and next to it, a creepy painting of a swamp in a gold-painted frame. I snort out dust and disappointment.



I kneel on the red square of carpet and pull the suitcase over. Maybe there’s something awesome inside. Gold coins. Or Pokémon EX cards. Maybe an intergalactic treasure map with specs to build a space ship.



Empty. Worse than empty. Just a stupid silky bag. Red with scratchy marks like a dog ran its claws over it. Boring, girly thing. I pick it up and look inside. Nothing. Totally not worth the scolding I’ll get when Pops catches me in the basement.



I sigh. Still holding the bag, I lean over to look at the oil painting of the swamp propped against the wall. Why would Grandma spend money on that? So ugly. The crocodile has huge bug-eyes and the turtle on the shore is a strange purple color. Everyone knows turtles aren’t purple. Duh.



I drop the bag back into the suitcase and scratch behind my ears. I’m about to close the lid, when it bangs against my knees.



“What the—?”



Toddling along the inside of the suitcase is a purple turtle. Like the one from the painting. No bigger than a tootsie roll. I reach my hand in to touch it and snap! The bug-eyed crocodile in mini-size leaps out of the red silk bag.



“Look out!” I yell to the turtle. Quicker than the flick of an elastic, the crocodile clamps down and gobbles him up. He looks up with his bug-eye, winks, and crawls back into the bag. I slam the the suitcase down hard.



No freaking way. I did not just see that. I raise the lid, ready to leap away if a mini crocodile attacks my face. I hold my breath. Nothing. Just the red silk bag, flat and empty. How did that happen? I reach in slowly, heart thumping like a basketball and pick it up. I turn it inside out. Empty.



But I know what I saw.

Brain knows it too.

A tiny crocodile ate a purple turtle.

And vanished.



This is beyond awesome.