ALPHABET SOUP - The Fine Print Issue #1

Caroline Zhang

Nina Krejci

An assortment, a conglomeration. A mixture of shapes that don’t seem to belong.

You test them out first. Let the letters flow and stain.

Will they dissolve? Will they sizzle? What words will you form? What stories will you tell?

LAST DANCE

Evie Wang, 11

Braden Greenberger, 12

gBathe cold cut Dimitri close to the core. The old, gray sweatshirt he had chosen to wear that day had turned out to be a bad idea. It was much colder than he had initially expected when he got dressed that morning. Thankfully, his jeans were pulling more than their weight in insulation quality. That they had been haphazardly purchased at a thrift

CONTRABASSI

Evie Wang, 11

store 3 years ago, after Dimitri had realized that he had absolutely no jeans in his wardrobe.

He stood at the bus stop, staring down at the pale gray sidewalk beneath him. The color and texture reminded him of the elephants he and his little brother Artyom had been watching on the television earlier that morning as they ate breakfast together. Breakfast felt so far away now, even though it had only been 3 hours. Dimitri chalked it up to the fact that his breakfast, a small bowl of brightly colored breakfast cereal, probably wasn’t the best nutritional choice. As Dimitri boarded the bus, his stomach began enlightening him of his hunger.

However, hunger didn’t matter right now. What did matter was the businessman standing right next to Dimitri on the crowded bus. Dimitri had spotted him as he made his way into the bus, and had precisely positioned himself slightly behind the man. The man looked to be in his late fifties. Wrinkles had chiseled themselves into the man’s strongly-built face, like how the elements slowly erode a great stone statue through the centuries. His salt-and-pepper hair had begun to thin, but was obviously well cared for with a plethora of different products, the concoction of which must have been the reason for its glossy sheen.

The man obviously had money. The stench of expensive cologne flooded the area around the man, as if to physically demonstrate that he had never understood the idea of having too much of a good thing. He wore dark leather shoes and a navy-blue fitted suit that simply screamed “I’m rich,” with a chunky gold watch to tie the entire look together. The watch was what had originally caught Dimitri’s eye. It shone to him like a great beacon of opportunity. Dimitri had stolen enough watches by this point to know that what he was looking at was special, and VERY expensive.

The man was carrying some sort of white plastic grocery bag. It appeared heavy, stretching the plastic down considerably under its weight and creating a semi-cylindrical imprint at the bottom. The man had been talking on the phone since Dimitri had boarded the bus. He seemed distracted by some sort of campaign from the few words Dimitri could overhear and comprehend. Hearing much of anything was already a challenge on the bus, but trying to understand the details of a conversation of someone facing away from you was almost impossible.

Dimitri occasionally glanced out the window as the bus ride went on, calculating just how long he had to make his move. Dimitri noticed a considerably large wallet poking out of the back pocket of the man’s pants. His options were all very appetizing: the man’s wallet and watch were both incredibly juicy targets, but Dimitri was far more interested in what was in the grocery bag. What object did it contain? Dimitri’s curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he was determined to find out what was in that bag.

The bus had begun to slow now, but Dimitri already knew this would be his stop. Sure, there were stops closer to home, but he was willing to walk the rest of the way if it meant that he got his big score. In a keen move, Dimitri used the sudden jerking of the stopping bus to throw himself into the businessman, allowing him to quickly nab the contents of the bag while the man was distracted by Drimitri’s meager body weight being thrown against him. Without taking the time to even glance at his loot, Dimitri bolted for the doors of the bus as they opened. He glanced over his shoulder. He was safe, the man hadn’t followed him. Peering through the glass of the bus, Dimitri noticed that the man hadn’t even noticed that his bag was now empty. Assured that he had gotten away clean, Dimitri looked down at the contents of his hands. He was holding a whole package of bologna. Surprised, but with his curiosity satisfied, Dimitri began the hike home.

Caroline Zhang, 11

“The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted fatal radiation poisoning from painting radium dials in the 1900s. Often, their deaths were incorrectly attributed to syphilis. Today, nearly a century later, the Radium Girls are still glowing where they are buried.”

-- Britannica, Radium Girls

Tomorrow, she will work, but tonight, she will dance. Her hair slicked with ringlets, fingers tousled in rayon, her shoes used to be her mother’s, but they click with the floor like they were made for her feet alone. A girl from the factory had tried to bandage them this morning and nothing could really ease the rub of chafed leather on

GHOST GHOST GIRLS

her skin, but tonight, she is free and so are her feet in her shoes.

The man next to her is young, staunch, with a warm suit and a wrinkled smile. He holds her by the arm as she moves in tandem with the crinkling jazz of the night. He doesn’t know it, but she waits for him and his heart, for the years ahead where she will open her eyes to his face in a crowd, searching for her. Only her.

But tonight, she waits for him to speak. It’s their second dance together. She first met him a week ago in the same dance hall, sketching the wooden splinters of the counter under his twiddling fingers. She notices his eyes, the way they glint amongst the clinking of glasses and hearty men.

The song ends, her feet click to a stop. He turns to face her then, his grip loosens on her arm. She blinks at the space on her skin, feeling sheer, empty.

Finally, he speaks. “Will I see you again tomorrow?”

Her heart smolders as she replies, “Yes, of course. Thank you for tonight.”

“Do I know your name?” he says, and it’s exactly what she was hoping for.

“Margaret,” she tells him, “Margaret”, and she swears to him that she’s something special, even though her name barely matches her face and her hands are quietly sweaty under his gaze.

“Margaret,” he says, “I will see you tomorrow,” and as he whisks away into the crowd, her mind brims with the thought. Tomorrow, she will see him. Tomorrow, he will dance with her, and perhaps, this time, he will finally yearn for her beyond the misty nights in the dance hall.

But tonight, the hinges creak open as she enters her home, brushing towards a bedroom at the end of the hall. She nudges open the door. “Albert,” she calls. “Albert?” A shift under a lump of sheets, a rustle in the night, and Albert’s head pops out in the darkness, shaken with dimly lit grogginess. “Margaret? That you?”

“Yes,” she folds on the side of his bed and clasps her hands next to the wavering lump under the sheets. Albert is eight, Albert is young, and it’s past his bedtime. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I was waiting for you to come back,” he says, and he tucks his hands onto the edge of the sheets. “Where were you?”

She smiles dimly. “You know, I met this man at the town hall tonight. He asked me to see him again tomorrow.”

Albert perks up, rapport with attention and mirth. “Are you gonna marry him?”

She laughs at his deftness, but in her head, she thinks back to the man, to the stories of girls who got married and never had to worry again. A husband for her, an older brother for Albert. She could quit painting watch dials and hang up her mother’s old dancing shoes. They would eat meals beyond bread and butter, his pockets would jingle with coins, and at night they would lay there and she would positively glow.

“We will see,” she murmurs, and she shifts on the bed, hopeful. “Tomorrow.”

Sometimes, before work, she would turn a pebble-soaked road two blocks from her house, trudge her way up a winding hill, and stop at the second grave on the left. This morning, she breathes with the rest of the cemetery, as if the rows of graves are just sleeping in on a Sunday afternoon. She presses her finger to cold stone,

etched with the name of a woman she’d only ever known as Mother.

She misses her sometimes, the quiet chortling and the sly grins, her mother’s nimble fingers twined with thin white paint at their shared workbench. Syphilis, the doctor had called it, as she had watched her mother’s jaw crumble from her skull in a slow, grinding ache. She had tried to tell him that their father had died years ago, that her mother had never gone out dancing since, much less with another man, but the doctor had waved her off with the scratch of a pen and a disgruntled huff. “She’s in shock,” she heard him saying to another doctor. “And it’s not like she would understand.”

After the funeral, she had sat in her living room for weeks on end, waiting for the moonlight to hit another face, a stained lip and a smile. No one came through the door. The moon crept through her blinds onto the slatted floor.

She stands up now, glances at the empty space next to her mother’s headstone. The first grave is vacant, waiting for a body to grow under its roots. She’s not sure where her father is, or where he was buried, or if her mother had laid him to rest at all, with the paint from the factory thieving her time, her hands, her heart.

Today, she decides, I will not sit in the living room, as she turns away and begins to step down the hill. Tonight, she will dance with a man, and tonight, he will ask her to love him. Tonight, she will allure all the patrons of the dance hall, they will open their hearts to her and she will shine.

The rows of benches are brittle, and so are the bones in her fingertips. She sits with a paintbrush in her hand, scanning the daft room as other women shuffle in, their cloaks drafted over their heads. Her eyes fall on the empty desk in front of her. Every day since she can remember, Mollie has occupied that desk. Mollie, only twenty-one, painted faster than anyone in the room, her tongue flicking her paintbrush in perfect tandem with the clinking of the metal dials.

“Where’s Mollie?” she asks another girl, Catherine, who occupies the bench next to her.

Catherine looks at her quietly, “I don’t know. But I overheard her husband talking earlier today at the bank. She’s got a terrible toothache.”

Mollie, who has never missed a day of work in her life, is lovely, married, and today, she is sick. Well, it was bound to happen at some point. She turns back to the paintbrush etched in her hand.

In the afternoon, half an hour before she’s due to leave, a woman across the room, Liza, is spinning. Liza’s skirt flares up around the edges and her shoes scuff the floor as she holds out her hands, flourishing her nails. They’re sheer with shimmer, aflame. Luminescent. They remind her of fireflies, the ones she saw in the meadows beside her house as a child.

She makes her way over to Liza’s table, as Catherine trails behind her. Liza’s smile is as loose as her voice. “You know what this stuff is? The stuff they make us paint on those dials all the time?”

“Radium,” she replies, and by now half the women in the room have caught attention like moths to a flame, their eyes hovering near Liza’s table. The air is thick and so is Liza’s joy when she responds, “Right, it’s radium. It glows. We can put it on, like lipstick, and we’ll look so beautiful when we go out dancing tonight. Isn’t there

someone you’d like to impress?”

She studies Liza for a minute, watches her dab the paint onto her eyebrows, her lips, flick it in droplets against her skirt. She makes her way back through the sea of workbenches to find her own paintbrush still sitting on the little plastic tray. She thinks of herself, ordinary, yearning for the pockets of a man to keep her afloat. She thinks of Albert, home alone, of his voice when she creaks open his door. She thinks of her mother, sleeping in an eternal blanket next to an empty grave.

She picks up the brush.

When she steps into the dance hall that night, she is lambent.

“You’re glowing,” the wrinkled smile twitches when he sees her from where she enters the room. “You’re beautiful.” And he is nothing but a man, but to her, he is everything, and she smiles as she wraps her arm around his waist and his shirt flickers aglow with lucency.

Later, she pulls him out into the breeze, under a blank, starry moon. He pulls her mouth into his own. They hassle there, swaying, for a moment. She hadn’t painted her lips, not like Liza, but he feels his mouth glowing all the same as she drops back onto the soles of her shoes.

“Margaret,” he says. “Will you be back here in three months?”

“Three months,” she laughs, and the scuffs of her shoes are fuzzy under the astral glaze of the moon. “Three months?”

“I’m out of town for business,” he says. “It would be nice to have something to come home to.”

He doesn’t need the dimly lit moon to see her glistening smile, he doesn’t need to hear the skip in her step as she walks down the street home. But she does, and so does Albert, when his face perks as she enters his room.

“Are you married yet?” he asks, and her laugh is atinkle as she strips off her shoes. The fraying gauze on her heels almost doesn’t matter as she replies, “We will see.”

As Albert pulls the covers up to his neck, he watches her flicker out of the room.

It’s not two weeks after her last dance when she feels the ache. It throbs around her chin as she sizzles bacon on the stove in the morning, it pulsates as she makes her way to the factory. It’s red as she grits her teeth on her workbench. Her paintbrush is flattening at the edges. She brings it to her mouth, instinctively, to reshape. She stops it in front of her lips. She sets it down.

The other women in the factory notice, it’s in their nature to care. They pool together their savings and she goes to the dentist a day later, her shawl limp in her arms in the waiting room. The dentist looks into her mouth and she shakes as he prods at a tooth. Her tooth is pulled that day. A week later, she returns to the office with a burning twist in her jaw, and he pulls another, and another.

She sits down for dinner with Albert one night, and he sticks his fork in his mouth as he tells her about his day. She rolls her corn behind her teeth as she listens to him talk. As she bites down, her tongue pushes her teeth into her gums, tracing puffed

cement through the slit of her lips. They’re sinking in on themselves, she thinks, and promptly shakes the thought from her memory. That’s not even possible. Not physically.

She runs her tongue down the fleshy tracks of her cheeks. She feels herself sink.

She approaches the factory manager’s office with a tap on the door. The room quakes with pasty silence as she enters. Her hands are cupped, paralyzed. They creaked when she tried to straighten them yesterday, a surging sting up her wrists.

“Sir,” she begins. “The radium that we use to paint. I’m concerned that it-”

“Margaret,” her manager chides. “Margaret. I’ve heard this many times before.”

“But sir, Mollie has been out sick for almost a month now, my fingers have been stiffer than ever-” he’s turning around to look at her, he’s sloppy and she’s forlorn, and she pleads, “Surely this can’t be normal?”

‘Margaret,” he sighs again, and she doesn’t like where this is going at all, “You are very pretty.”

She blanches.

“And you don’t need to understand, not with a face like yours.’

He casts a crystalized stare at her, and she closes her eyes.

“Radium is completely safe. We’ve used it for years. All the girls. Every one of them.”

She turns to leave.

“Lip, dip, paint.”

Her fingers wince as she shuts the door behind her.

She visits the dentist for the fifth time the next day. In the chair, he hovers above another tooth. With a twist and a shudder, he pulls.

Fleshy, gluttonous marrow cascades into her vision. She’s screaming, but something is missing. Her cries are hollow as the dentist sets a chunk of bone on the table. “Your jaw,” a doctor later confirms, “It’s almost as if it’s falling apart.”

She resigns from the factory a week later. She lies in her bed now, her body folded in joints against paper sheets. Albert creaks the door open, clasps his knees on the bed.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs, and she blinks at him, cleanly, as he scoots closer to her.

She tightens her throat, trying to push a word off her tongue. Her chin squelches, caves, rolls under. Her voice fizzles. In exasperation, she whiffs, trying to take a sharp, shaky breath.

Something’s blocking it. Her voice flails. Her lungs squeeze.

“Margaret?” Albert’s calling for her, but in the light of the day there is fog, and through the fog she can no longer squint. Someone’s saying her name. There’s something on her chest, something warm is spreading there, like an ache-tainted rupture, a burst of smoke.

It’s lax. Unfettered, as mist floods the world. Under her eyelids, a dim glow. As quickly as it forms, the world goes slack.

Hours later, the doctors call it syphilis.

Months later, a man with a wrinkled grin stands in a clouded dance hall. His eyes dart amongst the wooden floor, his smile thins with the din of the clacking shoes and bottles. He searches for a glimpse of a glow, of ringlets and rayon-laced fingers, of a pulsing green dress spinning across a slicked floor. He searches for a glowing woman, he searches for a ghost.

Years later, Catherine and the other woman in the factory win a settlement against the watch company. Catherine speaks to a worn-torn journalist from her bed as her insides smear into an ashy ache. She tells him about the factory, about the benches, about the crust of paintbrush hairs against her tongue. She tells him about Mollie’s smile, Margaret’s patience, Liza’s laugh. She lies down on a pillow as her hand unravels around a newspaper. The headline blares. RADIUM DIAL ATTORNEYS FILE APPEAL AFTER PAYING DAMAGES TO WOMEN.

Decades later, every time Albert turns the pebble-soaked road, trudges his way up the winding hill, and breathes with the first grave on the left, the sky rumbles and his ears fill with static and the wind pushes into his throat like a siphon. But sometimes, when he squints his head just right and his gaze falls on the hellish ground of the earth, he catches a darkness seeping through the cracks of the tombstones, dust that had etched its way through the grime.

And in the darkness, there is a glow.

FLUTE

Sophia Soo, 10

I hear ‘him’ in a familiar love song and think of You. I smile in a bathroom mirror and see You. I hug a cool pillow and wish it were You. You, You, You.

Why is it always You?

Why are You the one I want behind me when I walk into a crowded room

Why are You the one I want beside me when I watch a scary movie

Why are You the one I want in front of me when I can stand well enough on my own?

To be unselfish, to be unashamed, to be uncharacteristically untrue, unreal, unmade

You see me for who I could become what I could achieve where I could go why I could be yours

You see an incomplete set, a half-painted portrait, a virgin wine When, really, all I need is someone to see Me.

you WHY

Maia Nguyen, 11

BA

Evie Wang, 11

Matt Spaulding

OF THE NILE Curse

Idman Loyan, 11

There are gasps. A struggle to move. Heavy breaths.

“You wouldn’t dare. You were supposed to be my only ally. You were the only one who cared.”

“I have to, I just have to. They promised me great things…I’m so sorry.”

“I never thought you would be so shallow to stoop so low.”

He starts to cry. Tears sprang down from his cheeks onto the gold of the body underneath him. She begins to sob. She speaks slowly but with fire in her words.

“Mark my words. I call upon the great Sekhmet, and I ask her to curse you. I ask her to ensure you die in the same manner as I. I ask her to grant me power that I may use against you if we are resurrected. I ask her that you and your kind will never know rest until I am slain from the waters of the Nile. I ask her for her cruelty to be placed into my own body, and that you will suffer like I have suffered!”

The dagger drives deep into her chest. There is no wail, but a loud sob. It quickly dies out. Slowly, he rises to pick up her body. Tears violently streaming down his face, he walks out of the palace.

CAT

Sophia Soo, 10

SPINE

Nina Krejci, 11

less

I can find almost one million reasons to quit, but that doesn’t matter because i’ve always been able to find excuses, just like how you’ve always been able to see right through my bullshit.

I wish I could shrug it all off just like how you do, how you seem to do how you don’t give into the loud, droning, buzzing sound that plays over and over again, closer and closer into your ear because you’ll laugh and say “well, what can you do?” and move on

so I try, i try to take a page from your book but after ripping and ripping out all your pages for myself they just float to the ground and encircle my feet like unswept sawdust because i really am just as spineless as they say

spineless, i ran away… again spineless, i cried to my friends… again spineless, i couldn’t do the one thing i promised you again and again that i’d do. and I always end up numb and alone, or something to be sorry for.

in those moments, it hard to not come to the natural conclusions, how i should just end it before you get hurt even more, as it seems you’re destined to do whenever i’m around.

What’s worse: begging for forgiveness or begging for finality?

i can find a million and a half reasons why we should quit, but we both know they’re bullshit.

Braden Greenberger, 12

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, But words can never hurt me”

At least, that’s how the saying goes. If only it was as simple as they made it out to be.

In reality, words have a way of changing us.

A simple sentence can turn your world upside down. The news that she’s gone, the classic “I’m sorry for your loss” You can probably figure out the rest.

It starts rough. And it stays rough.

How could someone I barely knew do this?

Once a mere visitor, now she’s the only thing I know.

In all the time I knew her, Did I ever really know her?

I was always thankful for her role in my life, Despite not understanding that role until now. Then one day, it happened: nothing. I went through my day like normal, But one factor had changed: I hadn’t remembered to miss her.

I picked myself up from the grief years ago, But it stayed latched onto me Like a nasty shiner after a fight. But now it had healed.

Requiapathy Requiapathy

Over time, the emotions had slowly dissolved away; The grief, the anger, the late nights, the self-hatred that it could’ve been different. I realized that it was finally gone.

The feelings that had once consumed me, Are just hades of blue locked in my memory. The days I spent missing her, Are replaced with a sense of requiapathy.

There is a weight lifted from me now, As I realize my feelings of longing and grief are gone.

A tinge of guilt creeps in, as I realize I no longer miss her.

For better or worse… She’s gone.

Requiapathy

Matt Spaulding

GIRL

Sophia Soo, 10

Staring Staring

Idman Loyan, 11

You can only look at a frozen sidewalk for so long until your mind starts cluttering with doubts.

Am I really meant to be here? in the cold, and unfeeling world? Where I’m tied down and fettered?

My skin does not yearn for the ice splitting into me. It yearns for the warm nights, the waves of the Indian Ocean smattering past me in the gusts. It does not yearn to be bundled up with layers and layers. It yearns to lie in a baati and googarad, nibbling away at a sambuus.

I miss the wide, dusty streets. I miss the clear sky, shining with stars I thought I’d never see. I miss riding in a tuk-tuk and looking at new diracs. I miss feeding the stray cats that would yowl for a piece of chicken. I yearn for what those before me were forced to shut away. To leave. To abandon, for the sake of their livelihood.

I continue walking along the frozen sidewalk

DIRECTIONS

Duajong Chang, 12

Exit on 260, you’ll go down a hill and find yourself driving past a Deltaco and Walmart on the right. I often went to Walmart for fun when there was nothing better to do. Continue driving, you’ll go over another hill and find yourself driving past a Smiths. I went there every Saturday in the summer to buy ice for the Provo Farmers Market where my family had a stand. Keep driving, you’ll see my sister’s apartment complex where we watched Purple Hearts. We went over often. But she doesn’t live there anymore. You’ll drive over another hill, drive past a little cemetery and stop at a light. Continue driving on E 400 S, you’ll drive past the famous Art City Museum on the right. Me and my siblings went there often when we first moved into town. Keep driving, you’re halfway there. You’ll drive past Jake’s Brookside and Sinclair, I went there with my friends during lunch in August and September. I miss them.

I’ve also been to the shaved ice shack parked outside of Sinclair with my mom and brother in the summer, only two times though. Keep driving and you’ll pass Reams on the left. When I didn’t go out with my friends during lunch, I’d go to Reams. Often in October and November, I’d go buy potato wedges or sushi for lunch. And occasionally overpriced Gummy Nerd Clusters for $6. Keep driving, you’ll go over a hill and hit a roundabout. If you took the first exit, you’d eventually drive past my church building, the infamous reservoir, and drive into Hobble Creek where I once took an electric bike ride with my father. But taking the second exit, you’ll pass the turn to go to the junior high, that’s where I practiced lacrosse every day after school. You’ll see a church building on your left but keep going until you see a neighborhood of newly developed homes. Keep going on the street, it’ll curve and you’ll turn to the right. At the stop sign, take a left, drive a little further and then you’re there. The big white home with a 2 car garage with a black roof, the one with a tall black door and 2 pots of mums on the side, the one with the window above the garage and lights on inside, that’s my home. I’m home.

Evie Wang, 11

REVERIE

Evie Wang, 11

poetry, Bella Lasker, 12

verb the act of undoing or reversing incorrect work, in crochet and other fiber crafts

I had an idea for a poem about love, and then I forgot about it

So I watered my plants instead. Better read academics teared at her leaves, the stem,

“This is life,” they said, and I said “No, this is a fern.”

And they all fell silent. You told me to write about love but my metre was off and I couldn’t spell the words write,

So I knit you a scarf instead.

In the sunlight, commas hang off the sides Pulling at the thread like drawling sentences And one-star reviews

Because I don’t know how to knit, and I didn’t do it well.

I wrote a poem about love

And it was perfect, It was perfect, It was perfect, But when I draped it over your shoulders, you shivered and the snow came up to our elbows

And I couldn’t feel your hand anymore.

GLOW

Sophia Soo, 10

MYSELF AND I

Evie Wang, 11

Nina Krejci, 11

TheOF MY ANCESTORS

t is twisting, and violent, and tense; it’s the noose that hangs my condemned hairbrush, splintering, subjected to the same fate as its predecessors. Its roots slither all the way to the ends like a knot of boomslang serpents, hanging and blending with the vines that fall in their constantly indecisive pattern. Oh, how those lithe and heavy strands rest in the most ferocious and pathetic of curls.

It is a vast jungle, deemed the wild of my ancestors, and it will be conquered like them too.

The years had begun to pass by, and it became more and more of an insurmountable task each morning to make myself presentable. As I begged my mother to confine my chaos into neat, simple braids, she would sigh, and soon, she would tell me it was time.

It was my ritual, just like the ritual of every single woman in my family who was cursed with their own jungle, for as many generations back as I can fathom. It took place at the peak of a pyramid right at the center of Tenochtitlan, the crowds were packed and their shouts, and praise, and prayers were bestowed upon me. I held my breath and met my fate with melancholy eyes and a smile.

My mother had finally taken me to get my hair relaxed, or chemically straightened, at the salon she used to work at. I was in the third grade, and from then on it was all I knew. Two times a year, for the next five years of my life.

The blades began to discover the jungle, but of course, they did more than just explore. They razed, and pillaged, and burned my jungle to the ground.

CROWN

Evie Wang, 11

They aligned the crooked like they aligned their rows of bayonets aimed towards the priming. They didn’t hesitate to shoot.

But a soul is not so easily killed, and ancestors are not so easily silenced. I remember the day I took a pair of scissors to my head, and cut close to the root. And I remember the first time I looked at the mirror, with my curls freshly regrown, and I smiled once more.

And once again, I was back. Alive once more. But it is different this time. There is more. More feeling and thought. What was this? I could feel, but not with hands. I could see, but not with eyes. I could hear, but not with ears. I felt more alive, and yet more dead than ever. The clear dread of my situation loomed over as I felt the mist on my leaves. Cool and wet, dripping down my stem into my roots.

This time, however, I wasn’t just getting water. I felt the water all around me, in every corner of my pot. I could even see glimpses of the shadow walking away from me as the mist stopped. It was all too much. These new thoughts and feelings are filling me up so that I am bursting with emotion, none of it good. I felt the pain of the air as my leaves rustle in the wind. They shimmy and shake, and I can feel every movement. Every change. Every pinch and pull of every leaf along me. I wanted to go back to when I just existed, without these new feelings. Or at least to be gone, wilted, as I was before. All these new thoughts and feelings. Pain, fear, dread. All flooding me. But why? I could still feel myself slowly growing, just as before, so there was no obvious reason to me for these new senses. It is painful, both the experience of these new feelings and not knowing why I was forced to bear them.

Then everything went black again. It was so sudden. I couldn’t think or feel. It was bliss in comparison. I no longer had these new senses. I had gone once again. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel it. I was happy again. Everything came crashing down so fast. Instartly, after an eternity of nothing, I was back. All thought and feeling came rushing back like a wave on a wall, slowly eroding as the constant hits continued. My bliss is gone. My feelings were back. I existed once again. For days, I stood. In constant pain and desperation to be freed. After what felt like forever, a new voice came to me. I couldn’t see it or identify it. It was terrifying.

Unseen

Matt Spaulding, 11

I feel the cold chill in the thing’s voice as it speaks, reading off numbers and saying “Yes” or “No”. When it was closest to me, I heard one word. “No”. All in one second, everything went black again. I could feel the life drain down from my leaves to my stem to my roots. In an instant, everything was gone. I was gone. There was nothing, and I finally was happy. In this eternity of nothing, I was happy.

Bella Lasker, 12

BLUE COLLAR CRASH

2:39 AM on a misty Saturday, you’ve been working all day, and you will work again Tomorrow.

The dashboard thrums with the sound of Nationalist comfort,

Your cracked, sore hands clutching the worn-in leather of the truck you’ve been driving for fifteen years. There is cold coffee in your cup-holder, courtesy of an early morning union meeting

After the fifth man in two weeks called out sick, complaining of longer hours and worse conditions.

Concerns shoved aside amongst men with no other choice, you took your food and left.

Your child is asleep, but in the morning, they will wake up

And be able to eat eggs and cereal, instead of their words. And above the particles in your lungs, That will be enough.

A blur of life crashes into your car, a deer—

The loud thump of impact reminds you of the time when your father hit you for talking back.

The car stops, and for a gifted second, the only feeling you have is of weightlessness.

Cool summer air hangs like a strange solution of sorrow: The buck weeps under your futuristic machine. It asks for mercy, and it asks for water.

Drowning eyes meet dead.

The door slams like a fist,

And your frayed nerves run against your skin, Turning back was never your choice.

The guilt hangs like your arms from your limp body.

A gentle hum of the engine, and you’re home for supper.

2:45 AM on a misty Saturday, You’ve been working all day, and you will work again Tommorow.

Matt Spaulding

LAKESIDE

Evie Wang, 11

JELLYFISH

Evie Wang, 11

NEXT STOP

Evie Wang, 11

Drums THE

Maia Nguyen, 11

“Gavin, when we die tonight, I hope you meet your ex in hell for taking us over that godforsaken bridge.” I smack away another fern bush, grateful for my long sweatpants despite the Costa Rican heat. Getting lost in a foreign country on a schoolsponsored trip is not my ideal way of dying, but Gavin must have been thinking otherwise when he saw the ‘CLOSED: NO TRESPASSING’ signs and still decided to hop the green gate, scan the 2-mile hiking trail, and assure us he could read a map. Two weeks ago, while ruminating over his past lover, he asked his cousin, Wendy, to bleach and buzz his hair; I wouldn’t be surprised if she had shaved his cerebral cortex too.

“Listen, listen, listen.” He turns around, waving his phone’s flashlight at Wendy and me. “Just because she cheated on me with some supposedly attractive Korean swimmer does not mean she’s going to hell.”

A coy smile appears on Wendy’s face. “He probably sounds better in bed than you do.”

I snort. We’ve known each

other for years, but Wendy never fails to surprise me, whether she’s laughing during a funeral or deciding to move to Quebec in two months. She says she will try to come back during the summer, but knowing her French skills and way with words, she could easily pick up a traveling Frenchman and seduce him all the way back into his villa in the city of love. Her mushroom cap of brown hair would fit right in with the Parisian populace.

“Guys, you know how Paris is known as the city of love but has a bunch of trash around the streets? Costa Rica is known for its renewable energy and clean air, but I keep seeing smoke trails over there.”

We draw our eyes to where my finger is pointing. Against the dim moonlight and Gavin’s dinky phone light, the smoke is faint but definitely, definitely visible. We all stand there for a few moments, wondering why we didn’t notice earlier, when Gavin starts bolting towards the rising columns, taking our only somewhat reliable light source with him.

Suddenly, we are all running frantically through branches and across upturned roots, and I have to stare at the ground to keep myself safe and upright. Thump, thump, thump, we run. Thump, thump, thump, we hop. Thump, thump, thump, “Wait, guys, stop!” I say.

Wendy and I end up tumbling into Gavin, but not before I confirm that the thump, thump, thump continues to sound even after we get off of the poor guy and catch our breath.

“It’s salsa music,” Wendy says, panting. “We listened to this kind of stuff during class on Music Fridays.”

“So let’s head over there and ask if anyone knows how to get back to the bridge,” Gavin says, already excited to run again. He has had an energetic touch since middle school, when we first met while I was over at Wendy’s house to play videogames. He fit well into our dynamic, and the three of us kept in touch online while his family moved to Japan. They decided to return to the States for his senior year so he could graduate in the U.S., but I have always wondered if there were times where conservative Japan ever dampened his eccentricity.

I sigh, hoping that Gavin doesn’t take my hesitance the wrong way. “Think about this, Gavin. It’s a group full of strangers; even if we know how to speak Spanish, what’s the chance they’ll want to help us?”

Wendy points out that Costa Rica is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Latin America, and that the locals are likely used to random Americans crashing their fiestas.

I look between Wendy and Gavin and realize how tired we are after hours of walking. Wendy’s favorite green dress has visible dirt stains and invisible grass stains, and Gavin’s toned arms and muscular legs have scratches all over them. Even if we came in here with the intention of having fun, what we need most right now is a steaming hot shower and a cold hotel bed, and that party may be the only feasible option for miles. I nod. “Okay, let’s go.” With lunch being well over half a day ago, the smell of food hits me first. Freshly picked papaya and plantains, cooked sea snails and vegetables, and fried pork and seafood

all mixed together into stews or eaten raw off the stem. Past the trees and onto the coastline, we realize the smoke pillars came from a massive, undulating fire, where people of all ages are dancing and laughing, combined with smaller campfires where the young adults are cooking and drinking. One particular fire in the middle houses a band of elders, where the now familiar thump, thump, thump continues to resonate. The sight is utterly enticing. Everyone is so carefree, the only matter on their mind being to enjoy themselves while surrounded by family.

“It makes sense now why Costa Rica is one of the happiest countries in the world,” Wendy says. “The feeling of sand in your toes and wind in your face is sure to make anyone smile.” She kneels down and runs the beach through her fingers.

I look over to see Gavin entranced by the music. He has played the guitar for a few years, so he knows how difficult it is, but judging by their quick strums and loose hands, the band has been playing for decades. The harmonies just flow out of them, like time in an hourglass.

We stay on the edge between grass and sand for a while until one of the dancing children notices us. The little girl jumps out of her reverie and starts towards us with a wide grin. From across the shore, she waves. “¡Hola! ¿Quieren bailar?”

Evie Wang, 11

BIRD

Sophia Soo, 10

STARGIRL

Conquers

Evie Wang, 11

LOVE Conquers Conquers

Duajong Chang, 12 all?

To my love, my dopamine, my ego. To my hate, my regret, and my heartbreak. For all my head and heart have to bear, will they come out of my soul and onto my page? Poet Virgil said “omnia vincit amor’’ translating to love conquers all. In 1 Corinthians 13:7 it says “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Was I made to prove them wrong? I glimpsed at your phone and saw her name. But I only held your hand tighter (am I too soft?). You told me you’d end it soon but you haven’t (are you too soft?). You thought it was an accident that I hadn’t said good night. But if I had texted any more, you’d see right through me. You’d know that you make me weak and I like you (too much). We’ve seen each other a handful of times but you’ve made me laugh more than I can count. You’re my jester and a prince in disguise (but are you still entertaining anyone else?). Our first date (was it even a date?), we got so many stares like we were being showcased. It’s because you’re a beautiful boy. I love you so much, I hate it. And if your ego keeps progressing on a positive slope, I don’t want to be part of the reason (you’re talking to me and to her at the same time and all your buddies know). You kissed me (but we’re only best friends, right?) and had your arms around me. I’m waiting in line with one girl in front of me (you won’t let her go because you’ve known her longer than me) and an endless line of pretty chicks behind me. You hold me close but she’s still in your messages. Please tell me, would my love be enough to endure it all? Would it be enough to conquer all?

CLOUD

Evie Wang, 11

GLASSES

Sophia Soo, 10