Suzy is a dreamer, an inventor, and a believer. Sleeping is where she feels most at peace with herself and the crazy world she lives in. When she is floating from dream to dream is the only time that she finds the courage to speak her mind and take risks. She feels the soft cotton of her blue plaid pajama pants and her plain green t-shirt against her skin. Her bare toes are cooled by the fresh silk sheets that cover her. The faint lavender walls of her room and the deep plum blankets soothe her worries and bring a relaxing atmosphere. Little does she know just how at peace she will be in her sleep on this impending night.
To the side of her bed lies a simple, wooden dresser, just big enough to fit all of her clothing in. Suzy does not own many clothes because she is not overly concerned with the world of fashion but rather is concerned with the world of literature. Adjacent to her dresser is an immense set of book shelves, looming over the sparse dresser. The shelves are embellished with a rainbow display of all the varied colors of book spines they are stacked with. All seven shelves are crammed with knowledge and mythical adventure so that there is not even space left for a single magazine. The new books with the crisper, shiny covers are stored on the upper shelves, while the books that she has already delved into page by page are stored on the lower shelves. The covers of her favorites are worn down and frayed at the edges; they tell a story of their kinship in revealing new adventures and exciting plots. The favorites are unaware that the most unanticipated of plots is not one that they have told, nor one that they hold.
These books, Suzy only pays visits to during the daytime hours. When the sun sets and darkness rolls into the sky, dimming the lights of outer exploration, she uses this time for the inner exploration of her own imagination and wandering vision. Suzy always seeks an escape from the outside world to the world she has invented within her own dreaming mind. One would assume a 10-year-old to be chatty, animated, and goofy with her friends. However, Suzy has been the paradox to this presumption for the past five years. 
This all happened when the first word she learned as a baby abandoned her, “dada”. She still vividly remembers the angry tones rattling through the thin walls of their tiny house, the faint musty smell of the rocking chair she hugged close behind, and the earsplitting slap that determined her fate. It was after this one slap that everything had been silent. That was the last sound that Suzy ever heard produced by her father, the sound of his rough palm connecting with her mother’s smooth, flushed cheek. After passing out in a nervous breakdown, she looked for him the next morning but found no sign of him or his belongings, it was as if he had been erased from existence. It wasn’t until the next night that his memory was resurfaced in Suzy’s 5-year-old mind.
While cleaning her room, Suzy’s small, sweaty hand made contact with the corner of an object under her bed. When she pulled it out, she found that it was her favorite book that she would make her father read every night. He had been a short-tempered man with her mother, but with Suzy he showed a unique gentleness and an abundance of patience. Suzy was not clueless and noticed the constant tension that stretched taught between her mother and father. Their relationship was a rubber band that could snap at any second, and that it did. The story he read to her was about mermaids and pirates joining forces to uncover a hidden treasure filled with riches beyond their wildest, greediest dreams. She used to watch his thin mouth, encircled by a scruffy beard, form all the different sounds of the words.  Now that her father wasn’t there to read it to her, Suzy decided she had to learn to read on her own. Thus sparked the consecutive days that would be spent locked in her bedroom, staring and mumbling intensely into multiple books for the next 5 years.
Suzy’s mother Sharon was proud of her daughter’s intelligence and passion, continuing to supply her with new stories to attempt to dissect. That was the only thing that Sharon was proud of her for, so there was no other way to interact with her daughter. Ever since the piercing slap, it was like Suzy’s vocal chords had been pierced in the aftershock. She was so studious and caught up in her studies that she hardly spoke to her mother, classmates, or anyone at all. It’s not that Suzy didn’t love her; she just never knew what to say to break the silence. The rope of relationship that tied her to her mother had been progressively fraying since the split. They had come to a common agreement in the solemn system they worked out. Suzy did all the chores she was told to, ate her food, got good grades, and always made her bedtime curfews. In return, Sharon provided her space and helpful studying tools to continue in her pursuit of knowledge.
With her intimidating, lean, tall stature, one could easily assume that Sharon had been an athlete in her time. She was initially disappointed in Suzy’s lack of concern for sports, but eventually comes to accept the fact that Suzy was more like her father. Suzy and her mother have nothing in common, either physically or within their personalities. They share the same house, but do not share the same thoughts. They love each other, as far as toleration can be defined. Sharon is a strict mother, but a compassionate mother. She wears a stern frown but within her eyes dwells a kindness as seemingly genuine as the gold flakes that speckle her mocha irises. This is the most beautiful trait that Suzy admires in her mother’s appearance, and it is the last image that she will see tonight before she falls asleep.
As Suzy sees her mother entering her bedroom, she quickly stuffs the book she has been reading under the sheets. Tonight is the 5th year anniversary of the day her father left her. Five years later and she still has not heard a single word from him. As her mother draws nearer, Suzy notices the bags under her eyes and the faint streak of sweat above her brow. Suzy is especially anxious tonight but plasters a thin smile on her narrow, delicate face for Sharon’s reassurance. Her mother leans down over the bed, pulls Suzy’s stray stands of thin, blonde hair back behind her ears and kisses her forehead, “I know there’s a book you’re hiding, just try to get some sleep eventually. Sweet dreams I love you.” With that, Suzy realizes that she is extremely fatigued. Her eyelids gradually droop as her mother slowly pulls the door shut behind her, until there is only a narrow crack of light in her line of vision, then nothing.
In a splash of blue, ocean currents run across her vision. Suzy realizes that she is underwater. Air, I need air, she thinks. Panic seizes her as she feels her lungs tighten with a lack of oxygen. She quickly becomes light-headed and dots of black accumulate before her eyes until it occurs to her that she can actually breathe just fine. A flash of gold flickers hundreds of feet below in the murky depths of the midnight-blue water. In an effort to unveil this alluring beauty, Suzy begins to kick her feet to realize that there is no such thing as the plural feet. Instead, a single green, scaly tailfin trails down the length of her lower half, curling up to the waves of the water. Then it hits her, she’s a mermaid. Then it really hits her… a shark slams against her side sending her spinning. While in mid-spin, for a brief second she makes eye contact with a dark, expressionless pupil that reflects her frightened face. Suzy quickly learns how to swim and frantically dashes down toward the sparkling light. She swims past a huge, cracked wooden chest overflowing with pounds upon pounds of pure gold. Next to it rests a sunken ship, massive wooden shards smashed into the ground. The large shark is closing in, snapping its menacing jaws. Spotting a narrow gap in the panels, Suzy slips through in the nick of time as the shark crashes into the ship.
Splinters fly before her eyes as she crashes through floor board upon floor board until she is lying flat on her back against a wooden deck. The sky straight above is a light, vibrant blue with thin wisps of clouds trailing though it. As she weakly coughs up water, she notices that one of the clouds looks like a smile, just a thin trail of white curving up at the ends. The smile dissipates as the floor begins to rock, swaying from left to right, and a patch of black materializes over her left eye. Suzy’s knees wobble as she rises to her feet and she hears a metal clang to find the sword from her belt has dropped to the ground. The pirates running around the deck shout orders to one another, grunting commands to lower the anchor and land the ship. The ship undulates as it collides with a sandy beach. The crew unloads and makes its way to a section in the sand marked with a red “X”. Suzy quickly finds herself digging among the other pirates, the secondhand sand ricocheting off her face. In a fit of panic, she notices that the sand doesn’t stop, continuing to accumulate and weigh down heavier and heavier. The sand has nearly enclosed her, except for her face. She watches as grimy hands layer over a wooden chest and heave it up. The lock is snapped off and the lid is flung open in haste. Her pale blue eyes widen with the golden glow of riches upon riches of discovered loot, and then more sand.
The golden coins dissolve and morph into luminescent, glimmering gates. These gates are intricately sculpted and tower hundreds of feet high. Enchanting hymns echo from behind the beautiful barriers. Suzy can no longer feel the sand beneath her feet and is instantly alarmed, but yet she doesn’t fall. There is a firm, thick cloud of white beneath her, floating toward the golden gates. As Suzy nears the gates, the joyful noise grows in both volume and intensity. Suzy has not even the slightest clue where she is but all she knows is that she wants to find the source of the music. The cloud has reached the foot of the gates and the girl feels so small and meek, not certain if she would be welcomed inside. Suzy places a tiny, tentative hand against the handle and the voices rise louder. Applying a gentle pressure, the gates slowly swing open until Suzy finds herself enveloped in a blinding flash of yellow light.
Sitting in the high branches of a tree, Suzy peeks past the reddening autumn leaves into a sea of black and tears. There is a congregation of nearly one hundred people bathed in the one sorrowful hue that black comes in. Suzy hears a man dressed in robes reading from the Bible. Curious to see what the ordeal is over, she dismounts from the tree and gracefully hops to the ground. Fallen leaves fail to crunch beneath her feet as she carefully trudges toward the crowd. As she nears the scene, Suzy notices multiple gray headstones aligned in neat formations across the ground. She respectfully walks around these headstones, cautious not to step on the graves of the deceased. Suzy reaches the gathering of grim dresses and suits and takes her place near the back of the mass.
Once the man with the Bible has stopped talking, a woman steps up to the casket. She introduces herself as Sharon and her tall, lean body convulses between sobs as she gives a few reassuring words to her audience. Her gaze is frozen into the permanent crease of a frown. As Suzy peers in closer, she recognizes this woman. The only difference is that her irises are now a dark coffee stain without a trace of a single golden fleck. Suzy runs up to comfort her, hands outstretched, but stops as she reaches the wooden casket. Inside this expanded treasure chest does not lay either gold or loot, but rather a small girl with blonde hair and pale blue eyes that will never open again. Suzy is gazing at her cold, still self, the lost treasure of her mother, who leans forward, kissing this strange girl’s forehead saying, “Sweet dreams, I love you.” Whispers ripple through the crowd of mourners, “what a shame… such promise… at a young age… died in her sleep… at least it was a peaceful death.”
Lastly, she places a familiar object over her deflated lungs, the same book she had been reading the night she left this world. It was a tale of mermaids, pirates, and adventure. A crinkled slip of paper protrudes from between the pages signed “love always, dada”. That note was not in my book before, I would have known, I would have known… Suzy’s heart catches in her throat. The world spins around her and lands on a man hidden in the crowd. He stands with hands in his pockets, head tilted down, tears rolling from his wrinkled baby blue eyes, catching in his scruffy beard. She wants to go to him, but realizes she is paralyzed and cannot move. Suzy is frozen in shock and stands rigid by her oblivious mother’s side. Shooting a desperate glance at her mother, she notices a patch of sand on her dress and her trembling, dirty hands. Slowly, her mother begins to close the lid to the wooden casket until Suzy can only see a narrow crack of light in her line of vision, and then nothing.