I ordered my proof copy of Your Dream Home today, which means that very soon I'll be hitting the Publish button and it will be available on Amazon worldwide.
"But I can't wait that long," I hear you wail. (I do, I have sharp little ears.)
Fret not. I present for you here the very first chapter of Your Dream Home, to whet your appetite.
Of course, for the full effect you'll have to read it in the book, where it comes right after a highly informative map and a reproduction of the ad Jem put on the local supermarket's noticeboard, and where it has different fonts for different parts. But you can get the general idea here.
YOUR DREAM HOME
Jem’s notebook
Tomorrow I turn fourteen. It will be time to begin my journey. I’m pretty scared, but I’m excited too. I’ve been preparing all my life for this. You might say I’m following my dream, but that’s too obvious. That’s the point. Everyone sets out when they turn fourteen, to find the home of their dreams. Not metaphorically, like somewhere they think sounds good, but literally. You know the way you might have a recurring dream where you’re walking down a familiar street, but it’s one you only know from your dreams? Or how when you dream you’re flying you always swoop over the same landscape, with that tall mountain on the right and the river valley below you with the twinkling dusk-time lights of a small city just there? That’s where your heart lives, and you won’t be at peace until your dreams and your waking are in harmony. Once I’m there, I’ll be truly Home, and I can start my real life, fulfilled and authentic. The people I meet there, those who are also truly Home, will be the family of my heart. I might have to travel all my days to find it, but it’s a worthy goal. Those who find their Dream Homes are revered in our society, they have stopped searching and they can bloom where they truly belong. Until I find mine, I”ll have to keep moving. Sleeping, waking, searching. So tonight I’ll go to bed here in the Growing House for the last time. The few things that are really mine are already packed in my graduation backpack, along with three changes of clothes and a space for this notebook. Gordon from C class is setting out tomorrow too, but he’s heading in a different direction, so I’ll be alone at first. I’ve advertised for a travel companion, someone who dreams of similar destinations, but so far nobody has responded. I won’t come back, not even to visit. Sentimental visits are a waste of good questing resources. And this isn’t my Home, so it’s not important. One day, after I’ve searched well, my dreams and my reality will link up, I’ll get a cat, and I’ll know that I’m truly Home.
1. The Growing House
“Will you miss us, Jem?” Rose asked me that evening, when we were clearing up after dinner. “I’ll miss you.”
“I suppose I will, a bit,” I said. Rose was as lovely as her name, inside and out, and only eleven, and she was always talking about feelings. I didn’t think about feelings much, I was more of a doer.
“You will, though,” she persisted. “I know you will. You have to, because here is all you know.”
“I know my dreams,” I told her. “You can’t miss a place that’s not your true Home.”
“When I went to the hospital that time,” she said, “I missed here.”
Rose fell down the stairs and broke her leg when she was eight. I didn’t sleep the whole night after they took her away in the ambulance. She came back a few days later with a big plaster cast we could all sign. Now I stopped sweeping the tiled floor and looked at her, lost in memories.
“I remember that too,” I said. I remembered shouting, a tussle, a scream, all of us watching Rose thump like a ragdoll to the bottom of the stairs, the moments while we waited to see what would happen next, fear like nails in my stomach. I shut a door on that memory and shook my head to let it sink it back to the bottom.
“Jem, I meant to ask you,” she said, changing the subject. “Did you hear something odd last night?”
“What sort of something odd? Was Micah yodeling again? He told me he’s been practicing for a contest.”
“No, definitely not that. It sounded . . .” she hesitated “like a baby crying.”
“Huh. No, I didn’t hear anything like that. It can’t have been an actual baby, obviously. Maybe it was a fox.”
“No, it was inside the house.” She shook her head. “I know, it’s ridiculous.” There wouldn’t be a baby in the Growing House. Nobody came here until they were old enough to walk and talk and understand about questing. I shrugged, baffled.
“It’ll be so different here without you or Gordon,” Rose went on. I’ll be nearly one of the oldest when you’re both gone. I hope . . .” I always knew what Rose was thinking, even when she didn’t say anything. She was nervous, not ready yet to be closer to the time of leaving on her own quest.
“It’ll be fine,” I reassured her. “You’ll still have Sasha and Katya for ages, and the twins after that. You won’t be at the top yet.”
“I know. It just all seems nearer for me, with you leaving. I somehow never thought we’d get to now. I know, that’s silly.” She laughed, so I wouldn’t feel bad for going.
I looked at her, standing there dreamily with a plate in one hand and a sudsy dishcloth in the other, dripping all over the floor, and repressed a sigh. There was no point being dreamy in real life. Dreams were for sleeping, and then they weren’t fantasy, they were the truest of signposts. That other sort of dreaming was just time-wasting.
Most kids lived in Growing Houses, because most adults were on the move. I’d heard some were pretty bad places, but ours was basically fine. Rose didn’t like it much, but that was just Rose being feelingsy. She always said she wished she had a family, with two parents and maybe a baby brother or sister as well, all together in one little house, like in fairytales. But if that happened in real life it would probably be terrible, because how likely would it be that your father and mother had both already found their Dream Homes in the same place? So one of them would be lying about it. And that was just wrong. They’d never be satisfied. They’d have terrible karma.
Most of the kids at school were from our Growing House: the school was actually attached to the House. But there were also kids who came from around the neighborhood—some of them lived with grandparents or other relations who were already Home. Some of them even lived with a parent who had settled, though that was a shameful thing to do, so we didn’t speak of it. Settling was when someone pretended they were Home, but they weren’t. Only weak people would settle. If you were strong and you’d paid attention in school and remembered your dreams and done your research, you’d find your Home.
I wrote a page in my search notebook, a sort of diary entry and a sort of invocation, writing down what I’ve learned to believe, hoping that writing it would make it be true. When I read it over, it sounded confident, if a bit clunky. Writing isn’t my thing. I shoved the notebook into the space I’d left for it and was just kneeling on my backpack to make it close when there was a knock at my door. I told whoever it was to come on in, and Douglas appeared, ducking his head under the low lintel and looking annoyed and awkward in my tiny space.
“Oh, Douglas, come in!” I repeated, a bit nervous because Douglas could be unpredictable at times. He was a good person, he wanted the best for us all. But there were times when his strong personality would scare the younger kids. Rose always said he was too shouty, and sometimes he’d make her cry, because he didn’t really understand someone like Rose.
“Jem. I’ve come to give you the talk. I have an early meeting in the morning, so it has to be now.” He seemed more twitchy than usual, as if he’d had too many coffees or something.
I’d heard all about the talk that Douglas gave people right before they left the Growing House. “Oh, right! Come on in. Do you want to sit . . . on the bed?” I used to have a chair but Annika next door had nabbed it the day before. There was always a bit of a rush to grab things a leaver didn’t need.
“I’ll stand.”
Douglas was very tall. It’s not as if he needed to stand up to impress me, but I couldn’t imagine him sitting on my bed like a teenage girl. I sat on my bed myself, since the floor would have been even worse. I pushed my hair behind my ear, where it wouldn’t stay, and crossed my legs in front of me.
“Jem,” he began, looking at the wall above my head because he wasn’t so good with one-on-ones, “you came here as a small child and this has been your home ever since.”
I nodded, but interrupted. “Douglas, there’s no baby in the building, right? Rose said she heard a baby crying.”
He looked at me, offended that I’d cut him off when he was about to get into the flow of his speech. “Of course not. She probably heard a fox.”
“That’s what I thought.” I nodded in agreement. “Sorry, please go on.”
“This has been your home every since,” he muttered, trying to get back to where he’d left off. “But not your True Home, of course. Your True Home is out there somewhere, waiting for you, holding your Heart . . . ”
I’d heard all this before, because this was Douglas’s job. He taught us, he inspired us, he prepared us for our quests. We knew he spoke the absolute truth, because Douglas was Home. You could tell just by looking at him, how content he was with his whole life there at the Growing House.
He ran the school. You had to be Home to be allowed to run a Growing House, because children need permanence and continuity as they learn, and because it was the best example. I didn’t know a lot of other people who were Home, actually. One of the cooks, definitely—she’d lived here as far back as I could remember, and she was far too kind and cheerful to be just a settler. I knew I must never allow myself to give up my quest and settle. I’d be letting Douglas down and turning my back on all I’ve learned, and besides that, I’d be doomed to be miserable and pathetic for the rest of my life. There was no way to be happy if you just settled. It would be nothing short of shameful, honestly.
My mind had wandered off, but I looked back at Douglas in time to be sure I hadn’t missed anything. He was gazing, as well as he could, through my small and misted-up window, looking at the world, telling me I’d be out there tomorrow and how he was sure I’d prepared well for this moment.
“You’ve been diligent in your information collection and your research. You have a well-thought-out plan. You have the resources within yourself to find your Dream Home. You won’t give up. You won’t settle. You’ll succeed, Jem, I’m sure of it.”
I could tell by the tone of his voice that this was the high point he’d been building up to and that I was allowed to answer now.
“Thank you, Douglas,” I said. I really felt quite proud. He’s right, I thought. I’ve worked hard and I can do this. Maybe I’d even find my Dream Home soon, before my next birthday. It was certainly something to aim for.
I pushed down hard on the ripple of nervousness that was bubbling up inside me, as if it was the backpack I’d kneeled on earlier, sealing the edges to make sure nothing could squeeze out and betray me.
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