This is the Dream is a novella. While it is here available for purchase separately, This is the Dream is also included as the title novella in a larger work of short fiction of the same name – This is the Dream – by Owen Thomas.

Her parents named her Calico Watts, a name she hates as much as she does the rest of her life. Growing up a child of divorce in Weldon Spring, Missouri has left Cali numb, without identity or purpose, sapped of any ambition for the future and even for the one thing all teenagers crave: freedom.

Only two people have made enough of an impression on Cali to punch through the numbness that is slowing overtaking her existence. The first is Taylor Boss, easily the most attractive, well-liked student of Howell High. Taylor, whose popularity among the student body and the faculty had confined her to wholly unrelatable orbits, never had any relevance or interest to Cali.  At least, not until Taylor was found naked and shot to death in an old duck shack along the banks of the Mississippi. In death, Cali has found a strange and unsettling kinship with Taylor, encountering her night after night in bizarre, portentous dreams.

The second person in Cali’s life who has managed to move the needle is Damien Alvarez, the Howell High safety officer who has a habit of catching Cali’s eye every time they pass each other in the crowded hall. It may or may not be flirting, Damien’s looks are too subtle to tell, but it is certainly attention. Damien sees her. That matters. It also matters that Damien was the last person to see Taylor Boss alive.