She didn’t know where else to put them. She’d tried her sock drawer, but a mouse had found its way in and started to nibble them. Then she tried the top shelf of her closet. But the bats had mistaken the box for a home. “I know,” she thought, “I’ll put them under my pillow. If anyone tries to touch them, I’ll wake up.” But you try sleeping with a shoe box under your pillow. She was awake all night and in the morning, the dream box was empty.

Then one morning at breakfast, while Susana watched her cereal turn soggy, she had an idea. She raced up to her bedroom, snatched the box from under her pillow and dropped to the floor. She’d always been afraid of the space beneath her bed. It was dusty and dark, and the mattress case hung down low to the ground. The box would fit under there, but the question was how to protect it from invaders, intruders, dream snatchers (and mice and ants….Could she help it if she hid her sweets in with her dreams?) Okay, she thought, so the cookies will have to stay in the kitchen. She ran downstairs, put the cookies in the cabinet, and grabbed a hammer and four nails from the workshop. Back upstairs she put the nails in the corners of the box, wrapped the sides in chicken wire, and secured the top with a lock. Then she ran outside to play.

It seems extreme, I know. And you’re probably wondering what exactly was so special about those dreams in that box. And really, you’re saying, nobody wants to steal her dreams. Let’s be real now. But that’s just it. That’s exactly what she’s guarding against. All those well-intentioned people who dream dreams FOR her. They are the ones who come in the middle of the night, looking for the box. Prying open the closet and the sock drawer, trying to find a small crack where they can slide their own dreams inside. “It’s such a small dream,” they say, “and it’s for her own good. Why, trust me, I know. I’ve lived long enough to see dreams like hers die, wither, dry up. She’ll be better off with this dream of mine.”

On the first night that the box lived under the bed, an old aunt came to visit. She came in her pale pink slippers and her powder blue robe. Her hair wound tightly around plastic curlers. This particular aunt, Aunt Ruby, had a deep fondness for her niece. When the girl was six, she’d visit Aunt Ruby’s house and they’d sit for hours in the living room, cross-stitching wall hangings of balloons and flowers and horses. They’d work cross-word puzzles and circle words in word searches. Last year they took a trip to the mountains together, just the two of them.

It was on the highway, the sun setting behind them, when the girl told Aunt Ruby one of her dreams. They were passing through Kansas, with its dry grasses and flat fields. The open plains and a few grazing horses. “I want to ride in the rodeo,” the girl said, imagining herself up on a black stallion, a pink cowboy hat on her head, fringe from her plaid shirt, lasso swinging. She hadn’t really planned to say it out loud. It’s one of those dreams that’s vague and fuzzy until provoked into clarity. Seeing those horses out there on the open plains stirred her desire for adventure, for fame. She’d be the youngest rodeo star around. Never mind that she didn’t have a horse of her own, that she’d never ridden a horse at all. Out came this dream from its hiding spot.

“Oh,” her aunt said in reply. “Oh my. But you don’t even have a horse.”

The girl groaned inside and tried to grab the dream and stuff it back in the box. She thought her aunt might be different. She thought her aunt might have enough kid still inside her to say, “Well what color would your horse be? And what would you name it? And which rodeo will be your first. Why I know the best rodeo teacher around and I’ll give him a call when we’re back home.” Why did adults have to be so practical, so literal…precisely the characteristics that kill dreams.

“Never mind,” she said. “I just thought those horses were beautiful.”

“Oh and they are,” said her aunt, her eyes glued to the road.

By Laura Lasuertmer for the Poplar Grove Muse

Inspired by the Young Women Writing summer camp