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Bear The Dog | Shook Chapter 6 Part 3
Dyan was invited to join the Blues on their family trip! Everyone is busy getting ready for bed, but Dyan has other plans...
Soon the table was cleared, and it was the boys’ turn to do dishes. So the girls showered and got ready for bed.
Dyan only remembered what bed she had because of her trusty old bookbag! She pulled it off the bunk onto the floor to fish out the only pair of pajamas she had. As soon as she changed into them she climbed up the stairs to her bed. Soon all four girls were in their bunks and all their bedside lamps were turned off.
True, who was wearing a little lavender onesie, slipped into her bed across from Dyan. “Though the family trip is going to be fun, I can’t wait for New Year’s Eve even more!”
“I heard Azure say that at the table. Why are you guys so excited about New Year's Eve?” asked Dyan.
“In our family, that’s like, the biggest celebration of the year!” answered Royal from her bunk below True.
“Yeah! We watch movies, play games, and then, at 12:00 o’clock on New Year's Day, we give each other presents. It’s a family tradition we made up.” Maya explained.
“So you guys basically have two christmases?” Dyan said, surprised.
“No. We don’t celebrate christmas. So New year’s basically is our christmas!” Maya yelled happily.
“That sounds really cool!” Dyan said.
“It is!” Maya yelled.
Dyan could barely lay down to sleep. She kept thinking about everything that had happened today since she’d ran away. The ride in a truck, petting a dog that looked like a bear, the news of her joining the Blues on their family trip to a surprise place. She was too excited, more excited than she’s ever been in her life!
“You all are a really awesome family. I’ve gotten so many ideas for my book!” Dyan said.
“You’re writing a book?” asked Royal.
“Yeah!”
“What’s it about?” True asked excitedly.
Dyan almost said 'I think it’s about you all!' But held her tongue. Instead she said, “It’s about this girl named Spirit who’s abducted by a family of aliens and she goes on an adventure with them. The aliens are also on the run from mean people who are trying to capture them. Lately, I’ve been having trouble with ideas for it, but for some reason, I got a flood of ideas today! That’s why I was asking you all those weird questions earlier, sorry Maya.”
“It’s okay, I'm quite proud I got to be an inspiration for a book. Sounds cool!” Maya said from below Dyan.
“Goodnight y’all!” Yelled Mr. Blue from the top steps.
An echo of good night came in synchrony from the Blue children, so Dyan decided to say goodnight after them, then she turned over and tried to sleep.
Dyan’s eyes popped right open. She was too excited to sleep. She decided some late night writing wouldn’t be too disobedient, as long as she did so quietly enough as to wake nobody else up in the house. She tip-toed down the bunk-bed steps and started over to her book bag, quickly looking at Maya’s bunk to see if she was asleep. Dyan did a double take. Maya wasn’t in her bed. Her covers were wrinkly and peeled at one side, as if she had got up and left. That’s when Dyan noticed the whispering she heard from down the hall. She turned, and saw Mr. and Mrs. Blue talking to Maya in the middle of the hall. Dyan quickly took her book bag and slipped out of view into the closet.
“Maya, you can’t just bring someone home uninvited. The house wasn’t even clean enough for a guest.” Mrs. Blue’s soft voice whispered.
“I know, Mom, but Dyan just seemed so upset and lost and like she needed a place to stay. She would have been out on the streets!” Maya said in response.
Then came Mr. Blue’s louder, firm voice. “I know, but Maya, you need to be more mindful of the things you do. You knew we were going on a trip soon, so this wouldn’t have been the best time to bring someone home, telling them they could stay.”
Dyan stared down at the carpet as she listened. It was a lot of trouble for them to let her stay, wasn’t it? But they wouldn’t tell her that to her face. Was it out of… kindness?
Mr. Blue huffed. “Anyway, I’m glad she’s off the streets and safe now. Despite the spontaneousness, you did help a kid in need today, which is nice. Goodnight Maya.”
“Goodnight!”
Dyan could hear Maya skipping down the hall to the girls’ room. Her heart beat fast. She had to hide! But where!? The closet wasn't too big and-
Maya slipped right into her bed without looking in Dyan’s direction at all. Phew.
Dyan waited a while, until she heard snores coming from Maya’s bed.
She was about to move when she still heard talking from the hall.
“I don’t know what has gotten into them lately. If it’s not one of them getting into trouble, it’s another.” said Mr. Blue.
“I know. Maybe they’re at those ages where trouble comes almost naturally to them. The older ones want to be rebellious and the younger ones have too much energy.” Mrs. Blue reasoned.
It was a moment before Mr. Blue talked again. “I don’t know. All I know is that the kids have had a lot of behavior issues lately, and that’s got to stop.”
“I know,” Mrs. Blue replied, and then Dyan could hear them walk farther down the hall, their voices fading.
Bad behavior? Dyan wondered. Maya and her siblings seemed impossibly awesome. She couldn’t imagine them being awful.
Then again, she wasn’t sneaking around to wonder about them. She slipped her notebook out of her bookbag, and then climbed back up on her bunk and turned on the bedside lamp attached to the wall.
Dyan was going to be doing some experimenting tonight. If Maya was Spirit in her novel, were the Blue’s… the aliens!? Was she controlling their life by what she wrote? Tonight she’d find out.
“Azure the little alien had a billion watts of electrical energy in his body, so he was always ready to play. One day got lost on planet Earth, and before they went on their big vacation, they had to find him.” Dyan whispered to herself.
She wrote about Spirit and the other aliens looking all over the world for Azure, and when her eyelids started to feel heavy, she closed her notebook. She could finish the story tomorrow, but she had written enough. Enough to see if things in real life would play out the same way they did in the story. If they did, Dyan would know for sure that the Blue family had been created by her imagination, and their lives were swayed by pencil and paper.
Find out what happens next in the next part!
New to Shook? You can find the chapter archive in this post.
Hey there! I’m Shila! I’ve loved books since I could read, and decided I would write books I wanted to see written for others! Check my children’s book Imagination on Amazon!
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Picture is from Unsplash.
I edited it from my phone.