By Pearl Bannister
I read a book once; it was a book about a man, he was lonesome and lost. I read half the book before turning the light off at a quarter to one. I never read it again. I don’t really know why, I suppose it was because it brought an empty feeling to my bones, or maybe because it felt like the man had watched me in my dreams, I don’t know.
My name is Jasper Wilson, I’m 14 years old and I live out of Kempsey. We moved to Kempsey two years ago, my mum never told me why. But as tears streamed down my face as we turned away from the tin-roofed house, I knew one thing. I could never forget it.
My dad works in the war, not as a soldier but as a coder, he sends Morse code to the soldiers in battle. I love looking at his badges and pins from all the years, every time he catches me, he says: ‘I was a boy once travelling through my empty mind and searching through pins and badges looking for answers.’
I’m not sure what it means but he says it with a smile, a proud smile.
My mother is a chef; she works at her own restaurant called Stonefish. It’s a fancy seafood restaurant where they serve you lobster with sea salt from the Himalayas and I’m expected to care.
Salt’s salt. Every time I hear my mum’s best employee, Santiago tell countless people the salt story I always giggle.
My parents met in New Orleans. My mother was a journalist back then and my father was a man with a dream. If I ever ask them, they will say they met in a book, endless pages of two souls connected forever.
My mother is a quiet but humorous person, she has jet black hair and green eyes, she wears pleated skirts usually dusted with flour and maybe in her past time letters and words of observation.
My dad is a Spanish man, six foot four and broad. He has desert skin and brown eyes, sometimes I think of them as sandy yellow though.
Last night I was hopping into bed, hopefully to dream good dreams. The beige sheets were scattered, and the light illuminated a soft glow. I was happy to go to sleep but the moment I shut my eyes I saw a man, ragged with untamed hair. I jolted upright. This man! I’d seen him before. The book!
My thoughts grasped the man, tearing him away from my eyes. I hadn’t seen the book in months; I scanned the room briefly searching the floor when I saw the book. How was it there?!
I glanced around the room and picked up the book, there was a creased page where I gotten up to, I slowly re-entered the book. I read almost to the end before I heard our father clock strike 12. I better go to sleep I thought before putting the book down. The man didn’t reappear but there was someone there, watching me.
In the morning, I awoke to sweat dripping down my head, dreams under my eyes, fleeing like people from war. I wiped my neck with my sheet and slowly got up. The rest of the day I was in a daydream of the book, like I was caught in the pages.
I got a D in math and an A minus in English even though I was caught in my mind. I occasionally write a poem here and there; stories sometimes cross my mind. My dad thinks they’re amazing and I take after my mum.
When I got home, I looked up the book, there were comments, reviews, secondhand sales, but no author. I was scared, what was this book? Was it haunted? Then I thought – was I being haunted?
The next morning, I woke up, I was tired from scarring dreams, and I knew I had to tell my mum. I walked downstairs; mum had laid out a scrumptious breakfast of eggs like the summer sun, and bacon like heaven had just winked at me. I praised her for breakfast then I realised dad hadn’t come down yet. I asked mum where dad was, she said he had a meeting with someone and had to be out for the day. I took a breath, and said ‘Mum? I read a book a couple of months ago and it was well… haunting…’ Mum replied shocked. She asked me what the book was called. I told her I never really knew and went back to my room to find it. When I read the title, the name pushed me back it was like I’ve been shoved off a cliff, my stomach falling with me.
I went back out to mum and told her it was called THE HITCHHIKER. My mum choked on her coffee, her eyes widening – she asked me where I found it. I said in my room. She said she had some explaining to do. ‘Do you remember how I told you Dad and I met in a book?’ She said, ‘Well he was a hitchhiker’. She told me she met him on a long endless dusty road. At the time I drove a crimson brumby, she told me. She picked him up that day, she also said he had something untamed about him but that was was what she loved about him.
Then she said, ‘Jasper? I wrote that book – that’s why I always tell you we met in the book; two souls connected forever.’ Something inside of me caught the cliff and I wasn’t falling anymore, I asked: ‘Why did you give up writing then?’ She replied, ‘I’d written enough and found enough… I also met the other love of my life.’ ‘Who?’ I said almost shouting.
‘You.’
♦ Pearl Bannister is 12 years old.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
