1st 5 Pages July Workshop- Parrott Rev 1

Name: Brooke Parrott
Genre: Young Adult // Sci-fi
Title: The Column

The dreamers knew Wilder from their nightmares. 

They were strangers. They didn’t always recognize her, but those that did either wept at her feet or ran away, terrified. Wherever she went, they found her; their eyes hollow and desperation palpable. “Do I know you?” they asked. “Have we met?” Like bare lightbulbs flickering on in the darkest recesses of their minds, Wilder could see the fuse connect, the realization land. They were meeting the guest star of their worst nightmare. Sometimes, in their dreams, she was the one helping them, other times she was the holy terror haunting them.

The boy was the first one. 

He was about six years old, and Wilder was twelve at the time. He’d run to her, beaming.

“It’s you,” he said. There was a lyrical lilt to his voice, as if he was on the edge of breaking into song.

“Me?” Wilder asked, confused. She was used to people recognizing her mother in public, but not her. She was a nobody. A nobody who was the daughter of a somebody.

“I followed you,” he said, and then—when she still looked at him blankly, “out of the dark place.” Humid sweat plastered his wispy blonde hair to his forehead.

A feeling passed over Wilder like someone raking nails lightly on her skin. “The dark place?” she repeated. “What was in the dark place?”

He started shaking, eyes so wide that his lashes pressed to his lids. “The bone house,” he whispered. “Shadows.”

Wilder crouched down next to him. She reached out a hand but left it hovering in the space between them. She’d never been good with kids, even when she was one. “Where is the bone house?” she asked finally, when he said nothing more.

He stopped shaking and tapped his finger on his forehead.

“In your head?”

“In the dream.”

“I was… in your dream?” Wilder felt a heat building in her gut, bile rising in her throat. A faint memory of a feeling was knocking somewhere on a door in the base of her skull. Hundreds of questions flooded her mind, but only one came out. “Are you sure it was me?”

The boy moved his head in a slow, solemn nod. “It looks the same in real life,” he said, reaching out his small hand towards Wilder, who fought every instinct to flinch. He pressed a finger lightly along the puckered, faded purple scar running from her temple towards her ear.

Wilder ran.

After that, each passing year drew more and more dreamers to her in a terrifying crescendo. She took to hiding in public, covering her scar with concealer, pulling up the hood of her sweatshirt. She felt helpless in the face of their confusion—she had no answers for them. No matter what she did, they still found her. It was like they were drawn to her very being. 

When it stopped, it was all at once. Despite her newfound blissful anonymity, Wilder still looked for them. Felt a hole in her life where the dreamers used to be.

She never found out why the dreamers started, but she knew why they stopped. It coincided too neatly with the moment that Wilder’s mother took her last breath. It was connected somehow. It had to be.

The dreamers became yet another thing that she’d lost, in a period of three years where she felt like she’d lost almost everything. Which was the last thing she wanted to be reminded of, especially by a stupid blank line on a form.

“All done here?” The front desk lady trilled. She was wearing an Astoria High sweatshirt with a stock photo of a fish on a reel printed under the school font. She stuck a manicured hand out for the clipboard Wilder was clutching.

Wilder looked again at the empty line on the form. “Not quite.”

“What are you stuck on?” Mrs. Penn—according to the plaque on the tall counter behind which she was plopped—leaned over to look at her form. “Emergency contact? Oh.” Mrs. Penn’s face colored. Wilder felt a twist in her gut, anger flowing from it. That meant the administration had already had a meeting about Wilder and her situation.

Dead mother. Missing father.

That left the aunt.

“I don’t know my aunt’s cell number off the top of my head,” Wilder said.

“Oh honey, don’t worry about that. We’ll get it later. Oh good—” she gestured towards a skinny boy with a frizzy halo of hair that had appeared. “This is Jonathan, he’ll be showing you around the school today.”

Wilder shook his hand, which was limp and clammy, and followed him into the hallway.

“Junior’s lockers are in the C Hall, so you’ll be… here,” Jonathan said, leading the way.

Wilder sipped her watery coffee, assessing the tour guide. When he spoke, it looked like it took a supreme effort to force the words past his little front teeth, capped in braces, the top and bottom banded together. Wilder stared at them, neon green rubber stretched tight over the metal grids. She wondered how much deliberation had gone into the choice of that particular color. 

“I’d have the same locker for senior year, too?” she asked. If she was even there next year.

Jonathan nodded. “Now, since I’ll be your Fisherman’s Friend for the day—”

“I’m sorry,” Wilder interrupted him. “My what?”

The boy turned. “Your Fisherman’s Friend. You know—” he puckered his lips into a pout and raised both of his fists in a boxer’s stance.

Wilder stared at him so hard she almost went crosseyed.

“The Fighting Fishermen!” he finished. “It’s our school mascot. That’s what we call your orientation guide.”

“Oh, of course,” Wilder said. Jonathan didn’t pick up on the sarcasm.

“Here, I’ll show you the combo for your locker.” His eyes darted between Wilder and the lock’s dial.

A group of students passed in the checkered hallways, eyes on Wilder the whole time. 

“New girl?” one of them said, not even bothering to whisper.

Wilder sighed. Small towns.

Wilder took the lock from her guide, moving the dial towards 32, mimicking his instructions.

“You look, um…” he trailed off, gulping audibly.

Wilder’s fingers jumped on the dial, overshooting their mark. Her face was a careful blank, but her heartbeat echoed in her throat. She’d know it anywhere: it was a variation of the question she had heard countless times.

Not here. Not now. It had been three years since the last stranger told her of their nightmare.

“Um,” he said again. Wilder dragged her eyes up to his face, where he was tapping his index finger against his metal-filled mouth. Had he malfunctioned?

“Just say it.” The words came out harsher than she intended. Why had Wilder thought living in Astoria would be any different? If anything, it would be worse here—after all, this town held all her family history. And secrets.

“Uh, you look… like you have something in your teeth,” he finished.

A violent heat started at Wilder’s neck and raced towards her cheeks. “Um-kay,” she mumbled, turning her head while she tried to dig out whatever was lodged there—an impossible feat with her stubby, bitten nails.