1st 5 Pages November Workshop- Sorensen Rev 1

Steph Sorensen

Young Adult Contemporary, with some magical realism

Shook

Colt

The day Colt died started off the same as the rest. Mom said she was just running out for a refill cartridge of her raspberry vape drops. But he knew she’d be gone an hour at least, doing whatever she was actually doing and not saying. He was left in charge of his little brother, as usual. Being six years older basically made him the fallback parent.

“Can we swim?” JoJo pleaded, giving Colt the sad little boy eyes, although at nearly ten he was just about too old for them to work anymore.

“You heard Mom,” Colt answered blandly, picking bald spots in the Astroturf flooring of the sunroom and waiting for a breeze to blow through, but it didn’t come. “We’re not supposed to be staying here, so we can’t let anybody see us hanging around.”

JoJo stuck out his lower lip. He’d thrown his swim trunks on as soon as Mom had left, and his round kneecaps jutted like lollipops on his skinny stick legs. “They won’t know we’re staying here just because we’re swimming. We could sneak over to the beach through the trees down the road a little.”

Colt knew the answer was supposed to be no. Summer just had that pull though. Or the lake did, anyway. Colt guessed it was the combination of the two. He could just see the flicker of the sun off the lake through all the trees like it was sending signals. Come on boys, it would whisper in its watery voice made of light. Come swim.

They’d been at the little lake cottage more than a month without swimming once, and that was just wrong. Scuttling inside when the rare car went by, heading for the turnaround that would take it back down the long road to the mansions overlooking the water. Once would be okay, if they made it quick. Colt had outgrown his swimsuit last year and Mom hadn’t gotten him a new one. But his cutoffs would do fine.

The first splash in was a shock and Colt made a sound, like oh! Like his body was remembering cold after so much heat. And then under, and the muffled crunching that splashes make in underwater ears. The chill was a shock that made his whole body clench up, but the release that came after was worth it. Colt was never one to wade in. The lake was fed by underwater springs so it stayed cold all summer. Except the surface, black water heated by the sun.

Colt had only just broken back through the warmed skin of the water when he felt it coming on, and tried to head back toward the shoreline. He wasn’t too far out, his toes could just touch the muck on the bottom of the lake. He made it a few strides closer before his muscles tensed up and his eyes rolled back and he was gone. Before he blinked out he searched for JoJo. In that last second he could accomplish a lot, even if he couldn’t really do much of anything about it. Colt curled his tongue back behind his teeth, that was habit by then. And he tried to spot JoJo while his eyeballs slid up inside his skull. He couldn’t catch sight of his brother, but he saw some splashing off the side, and that would have to do. The last thing he felt was the coolness of water on the back of his neck as he slipped under. Not even enough time to be afraid.

It always started with a feeling of falling. A lot of the time he was actually falling, although if he got the feeling early enough he had time to lie down, and that saved some bruises later on. After that he just wasn’t there. He knew what happened. His whole body tensed up, his back arched sickly, he shook and drooled and sometimes moaned a little.

At least, up until that day that’s how it was. But he’d never seized up in the water before. He’d never died during one before. Colt’s best guess was that the dying’s what did it, switched something on inside him that he wasn’t supposed to be able to see.

It was like watching a slide show in school. Murky, dirty images flickering past, some holding, others just a flash and then gone. A field of brown and yellow grass. A falling-down wooden barn. Mom reclined on a sofa and a man leaning over her, hands reaching for her throat. And then a girl. She was blurry and yellow-green and came with a feeling like a pulling from his chest in her direction.

And that was it. When he came back around it was with a screeching headache in a hospital bed.

Peach

Another August, another wedding. Peach was supposed to be with her sisters helping Celia ready herself mind body spirit but found she was more distracted by concerns of the flesh. Those concerns being in this instance the scratchy yellowing lace of her dress and the flesh referring uncouthly to her armpits. She had blossomed quite a bit since last summer’s wedding, and all that blossoming was causing her dress to pull uncomfortably across her chest and under her arms. Not to mention it was just too hot for a wedding day.

“Peach! Come away from there and help with this braid,” her sister Ella called, making little effort to hide her annoyance.

Peach sighed and forced herself to leave the window. The breeze was hot too but at least the air was moving over there. As she approached the tall, swiveling chair where Celia was being made ready, Peach made an attempt to smile at her new sister. Celia looked so young and small amid the lacy poofs at her shoulders and hips. Or where the hips would be in a few years.

Ella shoved an unraveling braid into Peach’s hands, eliciting a small yelp of pain from Celia. “It’s an in-between year for you, Peach. You should be helping the ceremonial girls get ready, not daydreaming in the corner. Why am I always stuck making sure nothing’s missed?”

Peach understood Ella’s irritation. It was her receiving year, after all. And Ella’s own hair was still tied messily atop her head. But she was only stuck managing the other sisters because she chose to. There was no real hierarchy between them, beyond helping meet the needs of the pregnant girls, and minding the small children.

Ella huffed off to sort out her hair situation, and Peach unwound Celia’s locks slowly, tugging on the small knots that had formed. She caught Celia’s dark eyes in the cloudy mirror. The girl looked frightened. Likely just overwhelmed. Peach remembered her own wedding day, just two summers earlier. She’d been so nervous she had thrown up. She looked down at the small brown stain on the bottom hem of her dress. That day it had been dragging on the floor, tripping her. Today it fell above her ankles.

“It’s easy to become overwhelmed,” Peach spoke softly above Celia’s ear while her hands worked on arranging the girl’s long waves. “Better to focus on the smaller things. Won’t it be nice to cut all this hair off tonight?”

Celia frowned. “I love my hair,” she said, not meeting Peach’s eyes.

“That’s pridefulness,” Peach said, hearing her elder sisters’ words through her own voice. “Take pride instead in being chosen. Short hair is an honor.”