Write, Wrote, Written discussion

Wake (Fan Made Ending)
Book one in The Dream Catchers Series
By Lisa Mcmann

Janie walks into Carrie’s house without knocking, like she always does. It’s been a long day of school, work at the nursing home, and meditating the way the books she borrowed from the library instructed. She had been trying all sorts of techniques to stop herself from getting sucked into other people’s dreams. She made some progress but she still couldn’t stop herself from getting into the worst kinds of dreams. She hates seeing people’s worst fears. She hates seeing their nightmares.
The most inconvenient part is those are the kind of dreams that are hardest to resist. Something about scary dreams seems to jump longer distances. In a normal dream, she can stand and walk a far enough distance to break the connection. In a nightmare, she goes into full blast, can’t move, seizure mode. Fortunately, her best friend Carrie is unlikely to produce these kinds of thoughts. Carrie is the most pumped up, peppy person Janie knows, and that’s why she loves her. Whenever she feels down about the amount of sleeping students sucking her in and out of dreams during school, Carrie pours her a drink and cheers her up.
Janie walks up to Carrie’s bedroom door and the minute she opens it….
She is walking in a forest beside Carrie. At first, she doesn’t understand the point of the dream, but then she hears it.
The Scream.
The most ear piercing, blood curdling, scream Janie had ever heard in real life, much less a dream, came from the mouth of a young boy traveling quickly down a river. Carrie screams “Carson”! And reaches out for him. Tears roll down her cheeks as she bends as far as she can without falling in. The sight of Carrie crying instantly brings tears to Janie’s eyes. They both cry and yell for the little boy, feeling helpless.
And then comes the hardest part of the dream. The hardest part in every dream Janie has to face. The part where she changes it.

As Janie had learned from an old lady at the nursing home (a fellow dream catcher), her purpose in life is to peacefully change the bad dreams of others into beautiful ones. She had been working on it, but she had never fully completed one. She wanted so badly to help Carrie. Wanted so badly to save the Carson she shouted out for helplessly.

The little boy cried tears of exhaustion. His poor little arms flailed up and down as he tried to fight the current. Then suddenly Janie remembered one of the key points of her lessons. In order for her to help Carrie, she must ask for Janie’s help.
Carrie jumps into the lake, but instead of having to fight the current like Carson she makes it safely to the other side. This isn’t helping Carson at all. He inhales water and chokes on it.
Janie yells as loud as she can over the sound of the wind and water “Carrie! Ask me to help you!” Carrie wipes her tears away and screams “What did you say?”
“I said ask me to help you” Janie screams impatiently. Carrie finally gets the hint. Without understanding why, she wails as loud as she can “Janie! Help me!”

So she does. She turns the dream around just as the boy is about to take his last breath.
The dream starts over.
Janie and Carrie stand side by side and they both hear the scream. Carrie runs as fast as she can toward the sound and she sees him. Carson gulps nervously as he tries to fight the current. “Carrie!” He cries helplessly. Carrie reaches in the lake, and to Janie’s surprise, pulls him out safely.
The dream changes and suddenly Carrie is helping Carson dry his wet, sleek black hair that Janie notices matches the color of Carrie’s. “Carrie, can we go on the monkey bars when I’m dried off?” Carson asks with his puppy dog face. Carrie sits on her legs so she’s at eye level with him, smiles, and replies “Sure.”
Janie, realizing that she has succeeded, pulls herself out of the dream with ease.

She opens her eyes and sees the carpet of Carrie’s bedroom floor. She must have fallen on the floor during the nightmare. She stands up and gets a good look at Carrie.
Carrie is lying on her side and tightly hugging her pillow as if it were a person. Maybe in her dream right now she is hugging Carson. She takes a peek at Carries face just as a smile spreads across it, and tears of relief and happiness run down it. She turns around, closes the door quietly so as not to wake Carrie, and leaves.
As soon as she is out the door she smiles and laughs uncontrollably. She did it! She changed a dream for the first time since she discovered she had powers. And, she realized gleefully, this would not be the last time she helped someone. The rest of her life was gonna be full of these dreams. She couldn’t believe she once thought of her powers as a curse. As she walked down the street her mind raced with thoughts.
One thing was for sure.
She was gonna help more people.
Because that’s what dream catchers do.
And she is a dream catcher

This is my fan made ending to Wake. I read this book and I thought it could use some changes. I felt that if I were the writer of this book I would have expanded on what it means to be a dream catcher. This is just how I would have done it. I'm still reading the series and it might turn out better than I expected. Comment on what you thought of my story and/or read the book yourself. Enjoy!