“Welcome to Reverie” is a series of short stories that happen in the worlds of Trystin Bailey’s YA Fantasy, book series, Reverie. You don’t need to read Reverie Book 1 to enjoy the story, but it definitely adds to the fun.
The Boy Who Roars
He watched as the other children giggled, shrieked, and played on the jungle gym, wondering why he wasn’t as happy as they were.
Andy Liu was seven years old. He had thick, black hair cropped short and eyes that shone a warm chocolate brown when the sunlight hit them just right. His mother Amy had always said his eyes were his most beautiful feature. “Baby,” she’d say in Chinese, “I can see it in your eyes that you’re an old soul. There’s peace and goodness in those eyes. The others will see what I do soon enough. They just have some growing up to do.” She’d say things like this when Andy was feeling particularly outcast. That is to say, she’d say this sort of thing daily.
Andy’s father, Thomas Liu, was something else entirely. The youngest of five and son of two stern, serious owners of a Chinese restaurant outside of San Francisco, in his youth he defined himself wholly by his ability to rebel against everything his parents stood for. Thomas refused to learn Chinese, rejected the expectation that he’d join in the family business, and ran away from home at the age of seventeen, paying his way through sculpting school. A darling of the San Francisco art scene, Thomas decided to keep his creative fire alive by uprooting his little family and moving to a small town in middle America where he would have the space and freedom to work on his large scale masterpiece: a series of life-sized dinosaurs constructed with the remains of demolished mom and pop shops. The series was called Shop Cretaceous.
That’s how Andy ended up at Addley Elementary.
Andy hopped off of the bus, glad to come home. His mother greeted him with a hug and a kiss and asked him about his day. “It was fine” tended to be the usual answer. Andy tore through his homework with ease as his mom prepared dinner. With her work done and the food in the oven, Andy entered his favorite time of the day. He plopped on the couch beside his mother and the two watched episodes of old British comedies. He loved the old shows which, in his mind, exemplified his ideal world: sensible and smart, dry with even the most chaotic bits neatly tied up with a clarity. Oftentimes the wit was of a level his seven-year old mind could not quite grasp, but his mom did her best to offer contextual commentary.
“Guys!” Thomas’ muffled voice echoed from the back door. “You gotta see this!”
Andy sighed as his mother reached for the remote and pressed the blue-gray pause button. She countered his frown with a great big warm smile. “Come on,” she said, “Your father must have finished it!”
Amy and Andy Liu opened the screen door into their spacious back yard. The flat grassy terrain was littered with a stegosaurus, triceratops, pterodactyl, and more made of old wood and brick and wires and discarded antiques. The neighbors, all with more conventional careers, had conflicting feelings as to how this display effected their property values. Those feelings would only become more polarized as the newest addition to the menagerie, the very reason Thomas had called his beloved wife and son outside, appeared to be complete.
Standing over twenty-feet tall, this monstrous sculpture seemed the most alive of the lot. Rusted pipes made up the most of its skeletal structure. Its mighty torso was coated with sheet metal, floor tiles, and ceiling fan blades. The tail was thick and long; a thing of roof shingles and heavy cables and ropes bound tight. Its head appeared to be a curious amalgamation of an aquarium, an air conditioner, and a mix of the parts that comprised the rest of its body, including the broken cinder blocks at its feet. Its mouth was open wide, as if frozen in roar, foot-long chair leg teeth bared. Its wiry arms, though small, ended in silverware claws prepared for battle. There was no mistaking the majesty, the craftsmanship, the power of the final piece of the Shop Cretaceous series: the tyrannosaurus rex.
“So…what do you think?”
Andy took in his father’s expression of pure and boundless joy; one that mirrored the one so easily achieved by his classmates.
“It’s incredible,” Amy exclaimed. She turned to her son, filling him with dread. “Isn’t it incredible, Andy?”
Andy hated this part the most. Even at this young age he could sense his father’s longing for his acceptance; his pride in his father’s work. The two loved each other for sure, but the chasm between them insofar as how they experienced the world was one neither had the tools to overcome. And to be perfectly honest, Andy hated his father’s work. He hated how it made the neighborhood kids want to come and play. And most of all he hated dinosaurs. Nothing about those wild, unruly monsters making a racket and tearing each other limb from limb appealed to him. “I like it,” said Andy to his father unconvincingly. “It’s really nice.” Then came the moment where Thomas tried to hide his disappointment and Andy pretended not to notice the charade.
Dinner was a magnified version of the usual. Thomas would engage in lively conversations with Amy about his sculpting and her teaching (she taught Mandarin online). Amy would engage in sensible conversations with Andy about British shows and their lackluster American counterparts. Amy would attempt to spark more than small talk between father and son. Usually it was successful enough, but this time Thomas’ energy was high and something just…snapped…
Thomas landed his fist hard on the table. “What is wrong with you?” He didn’t yell, but his voice was sharp, hard nonetheless. “I have given you every opportunity to live and- and thrive, to enjoy life and you just mope around and… Sometimes I feel like this is some cosmic joke my parents are playing on me for disappointing them.”
The empty chair crashed to the floor as Andy ran down the hall and into his bedroom. With one hand he slapped his door, the other wiped his eyes. He could hear the muffled arguing as he turned off the lights and slipped under the covers.
He could hear his door whisper open. A soft click and the lights were on.
“Andy.” It was Thomas.
Andy didn’t respond. He was too busy rubbing the sheet against his bloodshot eyes. His body jerked to the side as his father sat down on his bed.
“Come out, Andy,” his father said. “Please.”
Andy sniffled and pulled the muted green comforter from over his head. There was his father, wearing an expression uncharacteristic of him. A deep frown pulled the youth, the joy, from his face. His gaze was intense as ever though. But the tears. Those were new.
“I’m sorry,” said his father. “At the table…the things I said. In that moment I became everything I swore I never would.” He placed his hand gently on Andy’s shoulder. “Parents have these ideas of what their kids are gonna be. Right or wrong, they do. And in my mind you and I were gonna be in the shop picking out junk and turning it into art. But that’s not you, you know? And that’s okay. It’s perfect. And then as I sit here I realize that I have no idea what you’re passionate about. And that’s on me. It’s all on me. You’re this amazing, unique human being that I made and I don’t know a thing.”
Thomas had more to say- lots more. And it was honest and raw and apologetic and hopeful. He kissed Andy on the cheek and promised to be better. Andy didn’t say much, but as he drifted to sleep that night, he felt quite content.
…………
Andy found himself in a dense jungle. Leaves as big as he was were dripping wet from a rain that had freshly passed. A mist permeated all things as did a cacophony of shrieks and growls and other unsavory sounds. This was not ideal.
Andy was so utterly dissatisfied by the scenario that he hadn’t the slightest idea of what his first move should be. Then came a rustling in a large leafy shrub nearby. His first move was, as it turned out, to run as fast as he could away from the sound.
From the shrub leaped three cavemen, hairy and dressed sparsely in tiger fur. They held mighty clubs which they held above their heads as they took off after Andy, howling through crooked yellow teeth.
Andy’s heart was pounding. His head was spinning. He swatted his way through swarms of giant flies, hoisted himself over an algae-covered root, and splashed across a swiftly flowing stream. He could hear the cavemen drawing closer and closer, their grunts seeming to say, “You will make for a worthwhile meal tonight, little boy.”
Andy tripped on a turtle and crashed against the muddy earth. In an instant he was surrounded by the filthy, awful cavemen. Hunger in their crazed eyes, all three raised their clubs in unison. This was it. Andy closed his eyes and hoped it would be over quick.
Then, from the jungle depths rung a mighty ROARRRRRRRRRRR!
Andy’s eyes snapped open just in time to see an enormous green tail whack one of the cavemen into the air and out of sight. A pair of scaly fingers grasped another caveman by the shoulder and pulled him into a dense bush. The earth trembled heralding the arrival of a horned creature the size of an SUV barreling into the final caveman, sending him deep into the mist.
Andy could not believe what he was seeing. Where once stood three primitive cavepeople were now three very curious dinosaurs. The first was not much bigger than he was. A brown scaly velociraptor with large, friendly eyes wearing a bowtie smartly around its neck. The second was an enormous triceratops, thick skin a light violet. Its three great horns were adorned with rings of gold and diamond. Red lipstick was expertly applied to its beak. Finally, towering above the rest was a great, green tyrannosaurus rex wearing a monocle and a top hat.
“A fine and pleasant afternoon to you,” said the tyrannosaurus in a booming voice with an accent that sounded entirely…British. “Quite the scrape you’d found yourself in, eh?” Andy was at a complete loss for words. “Oh! Where are my manners? Introductions are paramount in moments like these, aren’t they? I,” he puffed out his chest proudly, growing his already gargantuan form, “am Reginald Von Roar, lord of this jungle. This,” he gestured to the triceratops with his tiny hand, “is the substantial Lady Wilhelmina Thrice, of the Talonbrook Thrices. A stalwart friend and fierce protector of the less fortunate, yes.”
Lady Wilhelmina batted her eyelashes. “Charmed.”
“And over here,” Reginald continued, gesturing to the velociraptor, “is young Miles Hooktoe, servant boy to our Wilhelmina and as good and loyal a soul as you can find.”
Miles bowed his head. “A pleasure to meet ya, it is!”
Reginald lowered his huge head, cocking it to the side so his monocled eye was level with Andy. “Dear boy, I am utterly brimming with curiosity as to how you found yourself in such a predicament as this. But might I suggest you regale us with your tale in a more appropriate setting? One that involves tea and biscuits, perhaps?” Reginald grinned. “What do you say to that?”
…………
“And then we went to this fancy mansion and had tea and biscuits! Lady Wilhelmina prefers three lumps of sugar, but Reginald likes it black. Miles pretends to love Wilhelmina’s biscuits, but he’s just doing it because she’s sensitive about that sort of thing!” Andy had hardly touched his cereal he was so excited.
His mother giggled, “Sounds like quite the dream you had!”
“Mmhm,” Andy tried his best to recall every detail, every word of it.
“You know,” Thomas began. “I may have enough extra junk in the back to make a top hat. Maybe you and I can watch some of those shows you like so much to make sure I get the dimensions right.”
Andy smiled.
At school that day Andy watched from a distance as his classmates giggled and shrieked and played on the jungle gym.
A jungle gym. Ha. Andy had been to an actual jungle. And survived a caveman attack and…
Andy whispered something into the ear of the nearest teacher, a short, pudgy red-faced man. The teacher smirked and walked him back into the school, to the classroom, to a chest full of toys reserved for those rainy recess days.
Three kids were positioned at the top of the dome-shaped jungle gym arguing about who would win in a fight: Batman or Spider-Man. Below them were a dozen other kids climbing and falling and trying to impress one another by hanging in new and interesting ways.
“My brother Max says that Spider-Man could lift a whole truck if-” A boy with freckles and a mop of red hair stopped talking. He noticed a boy with black hair cropped short holding a plastic tyrannosaurus rex high above his head and a triceratops and velociraptor tucked under his other arm. His eyes glistened a warm chocolate brown.
“My name is Reginald Von Roar,” said Andy in his best British accent. “I fancy my tea black, my biscuits plentiful and the occasional scrape with cavemen when they try to hurt my friends.”
In a single perfect moment, everyone on the jungle gym went quiet. A few giggles and whispers came and went. The boy with the freckles swiped the hair from in front of his eyes and grinned, showing off a few missing teeth. “You’re weird,” he said. He then pointed to the triceratops and velociraptor. “If that’s Reginald, then who are they? And do ya think they could beat Spider-Man?”
Andy smiled and offered his reply. And it was sensible and smart, dry with even the most chaotic bits neatly tied up with a clarity.
The kid with the red hair patted a piece of rubber-coated pipe beside him. “Come on up, weird kid. I bet Reginald couldn’t beat my brother Max…”
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