The Quiet Boy, by Nick Antosca
Read it here, in about 30 minutes.
Thinking about why I love it…
I love the use of metafiction: it’s a story with stories in it, and one of those stories sets off the action. The story in question, the grammatically inaccurate The Three Wolfs, written by student Lucas, is, we later discover, a thinly disguised allegory for the child’s wretched life. I assumed, because of the fairy-tale-esque reference to wolves, that this was going to be a werewolf story, so I was pleased that it turned out not to be.
I love the touches of realism within a supernatural horror story, by which I mean the realistic way Lucas responds to teachers trying to find out about his home life (‘Lucas’s face changed. A light went out.’), and the way the protagonist, Julia, tries to do her teacherly duty and help the boy, even though she feels that teaching isn’t for her (‘Miss Grey. It felt like a glove that didn’t fit.’).
I love the ending. The story switches narrative perspective, from third-person limited to Julia, to third-person omniscient (it tells us what the townspeople think, what Bret Goucher experiences, and what Sheriff Eastin sees). I love how gory it is. I love the final sentence, and the gap this leaves for the reader. Also, as a secondary English teacher, I have to say that this ending is very much the kind of thing a teenager would aspire to write – I don’t know how many times students have asked me, ‘Miss, can I change narrator at the end of my story?’, and I’ve responded, ‘Only if you have a compelling reason, such as your narrator dies…’ Students always love writing a good cliffhanger ending, too.
Mina Ma 