1st 5 Pages Nov Workshop - Standridge

Name: Casey Standridge

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Title: Hope's End

Andre Gide once said 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 one of her favorite books as she gazed out at the ocean. Though it was a warm summer day, the Miami sun was lost behind angry gray clouds. A harsh wind stripped the heat right off her skin. Not the most pleasant day.

Wren’s watch beeped, signaling the end of her shift. She clambered down the guard stand and headed towards a less crowded strip of the shore.

Three years today, she thought. 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.  

She pulled the vial of her mother’s ashes from her pocket and sprinkled some 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, and they still hadn’t found his body.

Wren was pulled from her dark thoughts by the sound of crying. She looked down the surf and saw a girl, no more than eight, red-face and shrieking. A woman, presumably the girl’s mom, stood over her, scolding her about something. She pointed harshly over to where Wren stood.

Startled, Wren looked 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 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. Her eyes scoured the sandy 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 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, and an unfamiliar man’s voice shouted her name. Wren flinched away from the thing, dropping it back into the water. The sharp voice cut out. She glanced around for the man who’d called her. The waters were empty. The shore was as well except the little girl’s mother, who didn’t appear to have heard anything. She trudged away from the shell with a sense of unease. 

She was about to continue her search, but as she walked towards the shore, she saw the girl, ankles deep in the water, waving a sparkling mass of keys at her.

Wren smiled as the girl skipped off towards her mom, her meltdown completely forgotten. It wasn’t the worst way to end a shift. She waded back to the shore, all thoughts of that eerie voice drifting away with the tide.

In her short bike ride home, the sun began its slow descent toward the horizon. Sunset was only a few hours away. She wiped off the sweat coating her forehead and pedaled faster, hoping to make this pit stop as quick and painless as possible.

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

Wren smiled at them as she pulled into the driveway, and 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 unusual greeting. Grandma Ginger had had dementia for over two years now, doctors blaming the family tragedy for the early onset of the disease. For the past few months, she had thought Wren to be a foreign exchange student from France. How she came to this conclusion, Wren had no idea. She didn’t speak the language and had never even visited the place.

Wren parked her bike in the garage, careful to avoid her grandfather’s ancient but prized Ford pickup, and continued on into the house. She made it to her bedroom and changed quickly out of her lifeguard suit, swapping it for a simple t-shirt and shorts. Her only unique accessory was the golden locket she secured around her neck, the only valuable thing she’d inherited from her mother. She deftly braided her long pale hair and made her way back outside.

Halfway to the kitchen, Wren heard her grandfather before she saw him.

“Fore!” he yelled, a heavy thud echoing from his golf ball missing its target and smacking into the back door.

Wren grinned as he slowly made his way up the hilly backyard toward her. A dusty ball cap was thrown haphazardly onto his balding head. He wasn’t the most athletic—his bulging belly and heavy breathing from the twenty foot hike across the yard were evidence to that—but his love of golf kept him moving.

“Save some lives today?” He asked jokingly, pulling her into a bear hug and squeezing until it hurt.

“The usual,” Wren replied, shrugging like her job of a glorified beach babysitter was really that exciting. “Anyways, Grandpa, I can’t talk long. Selena will be here any second to pick me up for the movies, remember?”

“Right, right,” he said, nodding as if he did remember, though Wren saw the confusion in his eyes. She doubted he even recognized the name of her best friend right off hand. 

Lately he’d been forgetting lots of things, and Wren knew it wasn’t long until she had no family members left who knew she wasn’t French.

He stuffed his golf club back into its battered bag. “You kids be careful, no texting and driving. And no boys,” he winked, opening the back door for her as they heard a car horn honk.

“Gotta go,” she said, kissing her grandpa’s cheek and ran out the front door. 

Her grandmother’s shouts of “Au revoir!” followed her all the way to the car.