1st 5 Pages Nov Workshop - Standridge Rev 2

Name: Casey Standridge

Title: Hope’s End

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Pitch

Wren Baker understands tragedy and loss better than the average teenager. What she doesn’t understand is why she’s started hearing voices on the third anniversary of her mother and twin brothers’ deaths. She also doesn’t get why, later that same day, strange people kidnap her, calling her “Gemini.” After being rescued by the mysterious warriors who call themselves the Sol, Wren is led to their secret world to escape her captors. The most bizarre thing about this new world―her brother Nathan is there. Alive.

Wren soon discovers she and her brother are no normal teenagers. They have a great purpose, destined to save the world from a treacherous foe, the Phasmatis. But Wren doesn’t care about saving the world. She just wants her brother back, even if he is distant and hiding something from her. She agrees to the mission in exchange for his promise to return home with her after.

In her training, Wren finds herself in possession of a power she didn’t know existed. Just as she starts learning how to control it, the Phasmatis begin terrorizing her town, demanding the Sol hand her over. Suddenly going home may not ever be an option.

Revision

You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Wren Baker thought that was a ridiculous statement.

In her sixteen years of living, she had crossed many “oceans” without any courage or even desire to do so, yet life took her on its unfortunate path anyway.

She pondered these words from André Gide, her favorite philosopher, as she gazed out at the Atlantic, wishing the seconds would tick by a bit faster. She fidgeted with the uncomfortable red straps of her lifeguard suit, then shifted impatiently on the hard wood of the guard stand. Finally, her phone vibrated, signaling the end of her shift.

About time, Wren thought. Now she just had to wait on Mason to come replace her, a task that took most of her fellow lifeguards only a few seconds. Mason, on the other hand, preferred to stroll agonizingly slow down the beach first. Surveying, he called it. More like wasting everyone’s time.

Wren fished in the pocket of her shorts for the little vial, assuring herself it was still there. She brushed her fingers against the smooth glass as Mason completed his survey and approached her stand.

“All clear,” he squeaked up at her.

“Great,” Wren replied unenthusiastically.

Of course it was all clear. The beach was deserted, crashing waves and harsh winds driving off the Miami beachgoers as a thunderstorm loomed on the horizon.

She clambered down the wooden ladder of the stand and shoved the rescue tube into Mason’s waiting arms. 

“Enjoy the rain,” she called up to him as he took his spot on the stand.

He ignored her, gazing intently out at the water so as not to miss any invisible swimmers.

Wren rolled her eyes and headed towards a more private strip of the shore with determined steps. She needed to be home soon, she’d have to hurry. But this couldn’t wait. The vial clicked against her keys in her pocket as she trotted over the uneven sand, reminding her it was there. As if she could forget.

She pulled it out and sprinkled some of her mother’s ashes in the water, as she had done each year before.

She thought of Nathan, her twin, and wished she could do the same for him. But it had been three years of searching the ocean, and they still hadn’t found his body.

Not yet, she reminded herself, clinging stubbornly to her last shreds of hope.

Three years today. It felt like both a lifetime ago and just yesterday. She had to strain to remember the exact shade of her mom’s eyes. The sound of her brother’s laugh. 

The sound of crying pulled Wren from her dark thoughts. She glanced behind her and saw a girl, no more than eight, red-face and shrieking in the sand. A woman, presumably the girl’s mom, stood over her, scolding her about something. She held a baby in one arm, pointing with the other down to the water where Wren stood.

Wren turned away, but the girl had already started walking towards her.

“S’cuse me, I…Can you…,” she stammered. “I lost my mommy’s keys trying to catch a fish, can you find them for me? I-I don’t wanna be in troub—” her voice cut out as she burst into more tears.

Wren pushed aside her frustration at being interrupted as she looked down at the distressed little girl. She felt for her. She’d had her fair share of lectures over her mother’s things being lost or broken due to the schemes she and Nathan used to pull. She smiled down at the girl.

“Hey now, don’t cry. I bet we’ll find them in no time, I’m an expert treasure hunter,” she said with a wink.

The girl relaxed a bit and gave her the smallest of smiles. She shuffled off in the sand, leading Wren to where she thought she’d dropped them.

Wren waded out into the warm water until it reached just above her waist, toes sinking into the thick, coarse sand. Her eyes scoured the murky floor of the ocean, searching for a glint of metal. After only a few minutes, she caught a glimpse of something shiny through the rolling waters. She kicked at it in the sand but was disappointed.

It wasn’t a set of keys. Just a flat shell, rough and scaly on one side and slick and shiny like a pearl on the other.

Shrugging in defeat, she bent to retrieve it anyway. Her grandmother would love to add it to her bathroom decor.

As her fingers closed around it, her skin prickled with goosebumps.

A man’s sharp voice cut through the whistling wind.

“Wren Baker―”

She whirled around to see who’d yelled for her, but the waters were empty. The shore was as well besides the little girl and her mother, who didn’t appear to have heard anything.

“―there are things you must know. Your brother—”

A rough wave crashed into Wren’s side. The voice instantly cut out as the impact knocked the shell from her hand. She searched frantically for it in the water, but the waves were only getting stronger, making the ocean floor beneath her a chaotic mess. Sand and thick globs of seaweed swirled around her feet, but the strange shell was nowhere to be found.

Hope and fear warred within her. Had someone found Nathan, discovered his body?

She plucked random shells from the sand with shaking hands. None responded to her touch.

Startled, Wren took a deep breath to compose herself. It was just a shell. She’d imagined it, that was all. And shells didn’t speak to people. Couldn’t speak to people. Even so…

Things you must know.

The words haunted her as she struggled to convince herself they hadn’t been real.

She turned back towards the shore and spotted the little girl. She was ankles deep in the water, victoriously waving a sparkling mass of keys in air.

Wren smiled lightly as the girl skipped off in the sand towards her mom, her meltdown completely forgotten. She waded back to the shore as well, the relentless waves pushing her away as if for her own good.

Things you must know.

 

In her short bike ride home, the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She wiped off the sweat coating her forehead and pedaled faster, hoping to beat the rain. She thought longingly for a moment of her friend Selena’s car, dry and air conditioned, before remembering why she didn’t have her own. Shattered glass and screeching tires flashed before her eyes, but she shook them away quickly.

She rounded the final corner onto her grandparents’ street and saw their old sheepdog, Pooka, galloping across the perfectly trimmed yard. Wren’s grandmother chased him half-heartedly away from her freshly planted flowers.

Wren smiled at them, a welcome distraction from her distressing thoughts, as she pulled into the driveway. Her grandmother gave up her fruitless chase and came to greet her.

“Oh, my dear, you’re back so late. I don’t know how things are done in France, but here you should really get home earlier,” she said sweetly, then led the way into the garage.

Wren followed, paying no mind to her grandmother’s greeting. Grandma Ginger had had dementia for over two years now, doctors blaming the family tragedy for its early onset. For the past few months, she had thought Wren to be a French foreign exchange student.