1st 5 Pages July Workshop- Parrott

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

It always started with a particular look.

The first time a stranger approached her, Wilder was as confused as they were. She was out with her mother, who was—at that moment—distracted by the contents of a glowing case at the New York department store.

“You seem so familiar,” the woman said to six-year-old Wilder, her eyes narrowed. She was middle-aged, Midwestern, with kind, crinkly eyes and a soft twangy drawl you could curl up and take a nap in.

Bored by her mother’s shopping, Wilder’s eyes lit up. She sensed a game afoot. “Are you from New York, too?” She asked.

The woman shook her head.

“Have you ever been to Disneyland?”

Her mother had spotted Wilder then, the confusion on her face giving way to alarm.

“Hello,” she said, approaching. “I’m Tessa.”

They shook hands and exchanged some generic pleasantries, Tessa already half-dragging Wilder away. The mystery was left unsolved, the game unfinished—interrupted by a heated lecture about stranger-danger. That night, there was a thinly veiled attempt to cover up a yelling match in the kitchen after the lights went out.

But it kept happening. Each time thereafter sparked a crescendoing panic in Tessa, terror wearing down new lines on her face. She hardly let Wilder out of her sight anymore, but still, the strangers found Wilder in the cracks of time when she wasn’t there. “Do I know you?” They asked. “Have we met?”

The first person who figured it out recoiled from Wilder like she’d bitten them.

“It’s not possible,” the man said, his liver-spotted hand resting on his plastic cane.

“What’s not possible?” she called after him as he beat as hasty a retreat as he could muster. She felt the deep, sediment layer of guilt that collects in your gut when you don’t know what you’ve done wrong.

After dozens of similar incidents over the years, it was the little boy who finally told her. 

He’d run to Wilder, beaming at her. Wilder, in her now lanky teenage body, wasn’t sure whether to hide or hug him.

“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.

“I followed you,” he said, and then—when she still looked at him blankly, “out of the dark place.”

A feeling passed over Wilder like someone raking nails on her skin. After this long, she was so close to the answer to her riddle. She crouched next to the boy. Humid sweat plastered his wispy hair to his forehead. “What was in the dark place?”

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

“It’s okay.” Wilder reached out a hand but left it hovering in the space between them. “Where is the bone house?” She asked finally, when he said nothing more.

He stopped shaking, which was somehow even more unnerving, and tapped his temple.

“In your head?”

“In my dream.”

“I was… in your dream?” Wilder felt a heat building in her gut, bile rising in her throat. Her own recurring nightmare was spilling into her mind. “You’re sure it wasn’t someone who looked like me?”

The boy moved his head in a slow, solemn shake. He reached out his small hand to Wilder, who fought every instinct to flinch as he touched the scar running along her temple towards her ear, still a puckered, faded purple.

She jerked away, and ran.

Wilder hid from them after that, burying her face in the hood of a sweatshirt and fleeing whenever someone gave her that side-eyed look.

Then—as quickly as it began—it stopped.

***

“Your locker’s going to be here.”

Wilder assessed her tour guide, whose name she’d already forgotten. She plumbed the depths of her brain for the very recent introduction. What had the vice-principal said? 

When he spoke, it looked like it took a supreme effort to force the words past his little front teeth, capped in braces. Wilder stared at them, neon green bands stretched tight over the metal grids. She wondered how much deliberation had gone into the choice of that particular color. 

“Here, I’ll show you the combo.” His eyes darted between Wilder and the lock’s dial, his flitting hands rattling the metal with a low hum.

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

“New girl?” one of them said.

Wilder sighed. Small towns.

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

“You look, um…” he gulped audibly.

Wilder’s fingers jumped on the dial, overshooting their mark. Her face was a careful blank, but her heartbeat echoed in her throat. Not here. Not again.

“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 with barbs on them. Why had Wilder thought Astoria was any different? If anything, it would be worse here.

“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.

“How about I show you the cafeteria before the morning bell goes,” the nameless guide said, kindly ignoring Wilder’s fruitless efforts to extract her breakfast from her teeth.

The hallways were still sparse with students trickling in, but the cafeteria was already jam-packed.

“A lot of people eat breakfast here,” he said. “It’s kind of a thing.”

They stood to the side of the entrance, and a ripple of attention started at one side of the room, moving to the other in bursts of too-loud whispers.

“Who’s your new girlfriend, Jonathan?” A petite girl detached herself from where she’d been sitting atop a long cafeteria table amongst the masses, hips swaying and platforms 5 inches high. She grinned at Wilder, the slightest bit of orange-red lipstick showing on her right canine tooth—the only chink in otherwise impeccable armor.

Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan, Wilder repeated to herself, trying to commit her guide’s name to memory.

“Oh, not… uh, this is Wilder,” Jonathan said.

A flicker of recognition in the girl’s eyes. “Jasmine,” she said. “Charmed.”

She did not look charmed.

“Nice to meet you,” Wilder muttered.

Two other girls approached, with the languid movement of lions in a pride moving in on a sure kill. One was north of 6 feet tall and clearly aware of it, the other had dark brown skin and a very expensive-looking purse looped through the crook of her elbow. These girls looked like they were walking down Fifth Avenue in New York, not going to class.

“You must be Wilder Bowen.” She spit out Wilder’s last name as if it tasted sour. “You’ve got quite the reputation. Well,” she gave a short, barking laugh. “Your family does, anyways.”

Wilder was determined not to give them anything. “That’s what I hear.”