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A Short Story | Teen Contest Awards 2023 | Almost Perfect Getaway

Using the prompt:
Moving to your favorite summer home is a perfect getaway ... except for your neighbor who is hellbent on finding creative ways to annoy you.
                                          
    🏠

Sixteen year old Benji has tons of amazing memories surrounding the fun vacations she and her family take every year at their summer home in the country.

But this year won't be the same without her two older brothers who have both now graduated and joined the Marine Corps in the footsteps of their dad. 

She tries to follow her dad's motto. Keep moving forward, but it's just not the same. She's lonely without them.

Unfortunately, her parents have decided to down-size and the three of them have moved to the summer house permanently, where all Benji's happy childhood memories are stored.

How will she cope with this sudden change as well as a new neighbor who just won't go away and leave her in peace with her lonely memories?

A short coming of age story.

©WendyyWolfe2023

🏅Exclusively for Wattpad and Teen Fiction Awards 2023
📖General Fiction with a slight touch of fantasy, escapism.
🧯No Triggers or Warnings
🎨Cover Art by WendyyWolfe
🗣️And finally, dedicated to @Gauravaaditya for encouraging me to do this.

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All Kinds Of Crazy

BACK when I was a little kid, coming to the summer house was like waiting for Christmas for me. I mean, I know I'm not that much older now but still, my whole family loved it here. We would all cram into my dads jeep and bring everything else we could fit inside with us plus our dog Chappy. We didn't care that we could barely move around in the seat, the summer house was our getaway escape and every year was filled with pure laziness.

Floating on the lake, fishing, hiking with mom and dad; swimming, staying up all night, eating whatever we wanted, barbeques, campfires, s'mores. All the things you never did during the school year, plus, dad always let us camp in the front yard. In a tent.

By ourselves.

Even when my brother Bobo, his real name is Noah but Mom always called him Bobo because she said he was a clown, went to the Marines and it was just me and my second oldest brother Mayne, we still had fun here. We missed Bobo but we dutifully carried on because dad said it was his motto when he was in the Marines and all that stuff.

Then Mayne, who said he'd never go into the military, changed his mind and joined the Marines with Bobo. Which just left me, Mom and Dad. It never seemed to bother them though, but summers here were never the same for me without them.

Then it was decided we would just move here for good. Downsizing they called it. 

I honestly believed this was an all around good thing, for my parents at least but the truth is, it turned out to be all kinds of crazy.

Why, you ask?

I'll tell you in one word. Okay, two words.

Zen Sawyer.

🛸

"You believe in UFOs, don't you."

I jumped out of my skin and sighed. I already knew who it was before I turned around.

Zen. 

I looked at him from over my circle rim glasses and before I could stop myself I sighed again.

"What do you want?" I asked a little too impatiently, because honestly he bugs me.
I just want to be left alone to my sulking for real. I miss my brothers. If they were here, this freak of a boy would have left me alone.
I smile.

Yeah. Zen Sawyer would have stayed far away from me. Instead, day after day he appeared and always with one of his weird questions, I have no desire to answer. Like the current one he just asked.

He peered at me relentlessly. Waiting for me to answer, which I obviously wasn't going to do, and then nodded slowly.

"Ohhh, okay. Big Foot? You believe in Big Foot, huh."

More uncomfortable waiting.

"No? It must be Fairies then. Oh, and Unicorns! That's gotta be it! Fairies and Unicorns!" He smiled a goofy grin. "I knew it!"

"No. No you didn't know it!" I huffed. "Get lost, finally. I don't believe in any of that and even if I did, why would I tell you about it?!"

I pushed my slipping glasses further up my nose hoping to see him turning his back to walk away but no such luck.

"Because," he hinted with a shrug that left me hanging and I found myself now irritatingly wanting to hear his answer.

My, insider joke smile went flat.

"Because?" I ask, giving him a sarcastic glare and my expert head waggle. "Because why?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out," he laughed, totally unaffected by my best rude comeback. Wow.

I looked around the yard desperately hoping to spot my Mom or Dad, hoping to use them as  an excuse to end this dire situation Zen had created again, but to my great annoyance I was still alone in the yard....or was I, because just before what used to be my family summer home was a huge, wrinkling, waving heat wall.

"Is, issss that a, portal?" I whisper to myself. "And, where is my house?"

My heart starts to beat with a dull thud that moves up from my stomach into my throat. "What the actual hell?" I think but must have said out loud, because Zen Sawyer bows before me with, prayer hands?

"Namaste." He says with a ridiculous accent.

My reality fades as I suddenly realize Zen Sawyer is now wearing some kind of Kimono.

I immediately look down to see I am still wearing my ratty blue jean cut offs and t-shirt.

Sweeping his arm around, I find myself following him toward the wavy wall that used to be my house. Full on, heart beating fear now captivates all my senses as I ask myself what is happening.

Zen answers because of course, now he can read my mind.

"Benji, this is called imagination," he states blandly. "We all have one. Except maybe you."

"Wait, I never told you my name."

He smirked curiously. "I have ears Benji, gosh, and you have to agree, your dad doesn't have the quietest voice."

He's right. Dad never uses an inside voice. I wanted that little fact to make me feel better but it doesn't because I don't know where I am anymore, but strangely I can't stop any of this from happening.

I follow Zen as if my life depends on it, wondering as I go, just who he really is, and he stops, turning to me with eyes of delight. "I'm Zen Sawyer. Your guide into a world that exists just beyond your sadness and boredom."

And suddenly it all became clear.

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We're standing in a beautiful garden with flowing streams and little bridges. Walkways of stone appear, curiously wandering like serpentine snakes through the surrounding landscape of strange manicured trees. I see fountains and little fish ponds. I faintly hear the melodic sounds of wind chimes mingling with the singing of birds and the swishing of horses' tails, wait, is that a..., a..., Unicorn?
I am entranced by its beauty.

It isn't white, or pink or purple, as seen in popular pictures, but a beautiful snowy brown, with shiny black highlights on the legs, mane and tail. It bobs its head alluringly tossing the black horn between its ears up and down before trotting off to munch the greenery in a field of pink flowered clover.

I suddenly remember Zen and turn around to find him lounging on a huge blanket a few feet away on a hill overlooking a pond filled with huge bubble-headed multicolored fish. I blink my eyes and look again and the pond is now as big as an ocean, with a beach of black sand littered with millions of strange, smooth little rocks that glow with every color of the universe in them.

I stomped over to Zen in a mad huff.

"Who are you!!" I yelled. "Tell me right now!" The anger I felt was monstrous.

"I am Zen Sawyer, Benji. Your neighbor. But you already knew that."

"Of course I already know that idiot! You've been bothering me all summer, when all I wanted was to--,"

"Bask in your sadness?" he interrupted. "We have lived next door to you here for five whole years and you never even once bothered to say Hi," he shrugged. "You never needed us. You had your parents, your brothers, your tent for yard camping," he chuckled. "Your fun and games. Who needs a neighbor when you have all that?"

I stood there, ruefully accepting his explanation and suddenly the fantasy was gone. Everything I remembered about my summer home was back and it was just him and me, on the side of my yard. I had no words as I actually looked at him for the first time. I felt bad, but he simply took an old quilt he had under his arm and shook it out spreading it on the ground at our feet.

He took off his shoes and reached his hand toward me as he took a spot and sat down.

When I took his hand and sat down beside him he smiled. There was no judgement in his eyes towards my five years of rudeness. Suddenly I identified with his feelings. He must have been lonely too. He laid back and put his arms behind his head, staring at the sky full of puffy clouds.

"You wanna look for shapes in the clouds with me?"

"Yeah," I said a little too eagerly but he didn't seem to notice as I joined him there, staring up at the same sky.

He pointed up. "Look! I see a horse! Can you see it!" He shouted with excitement.

I smiled and shouted back. "Oh my god! I do see it!"

"Hey Benji, how old are you?"

"Sixteen," I answered dreamily.

"Oh, my, GOD, me too!" he squealed with gusto.

Yes, it had all become clear. Thanks Zen.

"You're welcome."

I smile mysteriously.

Wow, Zen.