iSSUE I : Coming of Age

i S S U E I C O M I N G • O F • A G E

March 2023 | Not An iSSUE Literary Magazine

A WORD iSSUE I: Coming of Age is Not An iSSUE’s official debut in the literary magazine world. Just last year, the concept of Skyline High School’s first ever literary magazine was just a small summer make-believe in the rooms of our two co-founders; however, with the help of our wonderful contributors, editors, and advisor Ms. Bede, we have made that two-man dream into something real.

The theme of this first issue, Coming of Age, was carefully chosen by our staff members to offer artists a flexible theme to work with, as well as an opportunity to express the toggle between youth and maturity in their own ways. We are incredibly proud of everyone who submitted, and we hope to see more of your work in our 2nd semester issue!

Catherine Xue Coeditor in Chief

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CONTENT Slasher

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Ensorcellment at the Train

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Adomania

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Tides of Friendship

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Leaving the Nest

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Dreams of Childhood

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Biking Through Fulfillment

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Confidante I and II

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The Age of Chaos

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Dreamin'

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Mungo

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Impending Future

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Steampunk-esque Robot

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Agoge

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To Be Loved

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Don't Worry, You're Doing Fine

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Credits

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SLASHER

Slasher by Charlotte Park

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"Inspired by personal experience, this piece captures a teenage group’s reaction to an onscreen jumpscare. The scene is a snapshot of an iconic coming-of-age practice: watching horror movies at a sleepover surrounded by friends. The viewer is placed through the perspective of the TV screen, flipping the roles of audience and subject as the girls are now the 'entertainment'. Through the varied exaggerated expressions, the viewer is able to catch a glimpse of the group’s dynamic. "

Charlotte Park is a junior at Skyline. Follow her Instagram @m1sckt.

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Ensorcellment at the Train by Evan Wang

"A desolate station, the only sign of people is an abandoned suitcase, carrying the belongings of an owner that does not seem to be present. The track goes off and out of sight, not forward but diving down to the side. A sunrise or a sunset is uncertain, but the station remains bright."

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ADOMANIA

by Anonymous the train never stops.

I'm seated, hands on my lap, staring out of the window at the buildings, meadows, barren land. day turns to night. night turns to day. yesterday was September. tomorrow is June. and all at once i'm scared. the train never stops.

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Friends are not constant, like waves of the raging sea.

I stand pondering— A tranquil feeling we share when with the people who remain.

"Coming [of] Age, is simply understanding what you have and what it does to you. The idea of friends is inconstant, and relationships form and break. But that is what makes life interesting. There is always movement..."

TIDES OF FRIENDSHIP

by Shubham Garg

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by Charlotte Park

LEAVING THE NEST

9 Dreams of Childhood by Erika Lee

BIKING THROUGH FULFILLMENT

by Nate Iyer

James was ecstatic. The last day of school before spring break had finally drawn to a close and he and his friends had formed a congregation outside of the school, talking about their plans for the time off. As it turned out, all of them were going somewhere for the week—one to Idaho (for some reason), one to Florida, one to Cancun, many to California and New York, and even one to Israel. All, it turned out, except for him. And his old pal Jack.

James, somewhat jealous of the fun trips that the others were to go on, turned to Jack with a proposition: “Let’s make an adventure of our own.”

“Of what nature?” asked Jack.

“Into nature? That’s a great idea!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Of course it is. Let’s go biking through some trails in the woods.”

Jack came to terms with the idea and, as he accepted it, came to realize that it wasn’t that bad. It was certainly a better plan than the one for their great endeavor the summer before, which had consisted of camping in the woods for a week before running out of food and hitchhiking back home. “Deal.”

And so it was. The two went to their respective houses and hopped on their bikes, meeting up again at the school. “Why are we back here?” James complained. “I thought we

just got out of school.”

“This is the spot equidistant between our houses,” Jack replied. “It’s only fair that we meet up here.”

“Fine. Anyways, apparently there’s a place fifteen miles northeast of here that supposedly has some incredible trails.”

“Doesn’t that seem a bit far?”

“I’m sure we’ll be alright. We’re pros.”

“If you say so.”

From there, they embarked on their journey.

Jack biked ahead while James, blasting country music from his phone, trailed close behind.

Once they had made it most of the way there, they stopped at a local pub for dinner, ordering chicken wings. As Jack finished up his wings, he noticed a group of burly old men at the bar getting increasingly rowdy. Suddenly, they heard glass shatter as one of the drunken men threw his beer bottle at another. Jack jumped into action, quickly pulling James towards the door, telling him they had to leave. James in turn grabbed his last chicken wing to take on the go.

As they unlocked their bikes and started riding away, they could hear a cacophony of shouting and more glass breaking from the scene at the bar.

Soon, they reached the trailhead. “I think it might be getting a bit late,” Jack noted, his voice showing signs of worry. This was for good

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reason, as at this point the sun was close to grazing the treetops.

“Nonsense,” said James. “The show must go on.” He proceeded to speed down one of the trails, without checking the map first.

Jack followed him down but didn’t get very far until he found that James had fallen off his bike. “What happened?” he asked.

“I skidded out just a tad.”

“I’d say so.”

James had been ill-prepared for the gravel path he had found himself on. This was because he had brought a road bike (one better for asphalt and pavement) rather than a mountain bike (one designed for all sorts of terrains, namely trails). The solution to this, one he would follow for the most part during the rest of their ride, was simply to travel a bit slower and less recklessly. Though even then it would still be a bumpy ride.

As they traveled deeper into the wilderness, light began to fade—at first slowly but then rapidly after the sun had set. Soon, it was completely dark. This, paired with the fact that they had neglected to read the map of the trails beforehand, rendered the guys utterly lost.

James, being an expert way finder, had sworn to never use his phone for directions.

However, desperation forced him to abandon this principle and he turned to the device for help. Unfortunately, this was to no avail as all that music had drained his battery and his phone was now dead. Meanwhile, when Jack got out his phone to look at a map or call for help, he found this useless too as he had no cellular data.

“What are we going to do?” Jack asked,

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helpless.

“I guess we’ll just have to sleep among the trees,” James replied. “Just like our ancestors did.”

“Didn’t they sleep in caves?”

“That, my friend, was a luxury coveted by a select few. The rest slept among the trees.

We now find ourselves in the same situation as they did, so many years ago.”

After delivering that poetic masterpiece, James began gathering leaves to construct their beds. Jack was tasked with creating pillows out of moss and putting up sticks in the ground around them in aim of deterring predators.

They soon fell asleep in their makeshift cots.

At three in the morning, Jack awoke to a ruffling sound around him. Immediately, his mind jumped to the worst—a bear. This revived trauma from their camping trip the summer before, in which they had once seen a bear and its cubs whilst out on a walk and had precariously backed away before (quite foolishly) running in fear. He now heard this one stomp its paws on the ground and use its claws to effortlessly knock down the protective sticks he had put up. Yeah, those were never going to do very much, he thought to himself.

When he turned to his right, he was shocked to see that James was missing from his bed. At that very moment, he felt two claws clasp his shoulder blades and saw his life flash before his eyes. The action, however, was accompanied by an unconvincing roar followed by laughter. Jack turned around to find it was James himself who

had grabbed him, and who had been pretending to be the bear all along. “Oh, come on!” he exclaimed, shoving James away.

“Did I scare you?” he asked.

“Quite so.” Jack quickly rolled back to bed.

James did so as well, delighted that his trick had worked.

The two woke up late the following morning, having been exhausted from the bike ride and following events of the night before.

Now, it was time for them to figure out breakfast before the bike ride back home. “Did you bring anything to eat?” James questioned.

“No,” Jack responded. “To be fair I didn’t think we’d be spending the night.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

So, the guys biked around until they found a patch of huckleberry bushes and subsequently ate the whole bunch. “You know, I’m pretty sure there’s a species of plant around here that looks like huckleberries but is highly poisonous,” Jack pointed out.

“Well, I sure hope this isn’t it.”

“Agreed.”

After their unusual breakfast, the guys biked around for a while until finally finding their way out of the woods and back onto the road.

They stopped by the pub they had eaten at the night before and saw a worker there sweeping up glass from the fight, looking exhausted.

They offered to help and he gladly accepted, relaxing in one of the booths as they finished the job. Once they were done, he got them another set of chicken wings on the house for

their kindness.

From there, the guys biked back to the school before splitting up and going back home.

When each opened the front door, however, it became clear that their parents were not happy about their unexplained absences. James was to spend the rest of his break trapped within the confines of his bedroom, only allowed to have his phone as a form of torture—as he was to see the photos his friends were sending back from their destinations around the world. Although he didn’t let this on, James didn’t actually regret his biking endeavor, as at least he had gotten in his adventure.

Jack meanwhile was able to shorten his sentence by explaining to his parents why he had gotten back a day later without notice, doing his best not to implicate James in the process. After three long days, he was released on probation (a 9:00pm curfew).

One day, James received a text from Jack which simply read: look outside. He opened his window to see Jack out on the sidewalk with a frisbee in his hand. They went on to spend hours talking and throwing the frisbee back and forth, thankfully never missing and hitting another part of the house. The next day, Jack returned, and the next and the next until the end of break.

On the following Monday, the whole group was sitting around the lunch table, talking about their breaks and the fun trips they went on. James and Jack however didn’t feel too left out. Despite some setbacks along the way, they had managed to create their own fun.

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Confidante I by Charlotte Park

Confidante II by Charlotte Park

CONFIDANTE I 13

CONFIDANTE II "I wanted to capture the intimacy and comfort found in adolescent friendships, specifically between young girls."

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THE AGE OF CHAOS

by Cailin Surtihadi

"If you could reverse the world and change the past, what would be the aftermath? May the Chaos begin."

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The Age of Chaos by Cailin Surtihadi

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Dreamin' by Stefanie Lvovsky

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DREAMIN'

by Stefanie Lvovsky

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MUNGO

by Catherine Xue Somebody put him in charge of his flesh. Asked him nothing of what he thought and wrapped his little accordion rib cage up in this new skin, all red and gleaming. It hung off him in a weird way, flaccid and sad like a dog wrapped in Christmas paper. But he made it a rare sort of handsome. Like a Polo Ralph Lauren ad in the paper, or the fine threading of a mohair sweater.

He was always close to his father, worn by him like a little Russian bear rug and treaded over like so. He was careless and only touched when it was time for cleaning, his father's scrubber peeling back old skin to new, angry-red epidermis. He lied to himself that he was his parents' mantle prize—the little gold trophy on the brick, who’s head had gotten snapped off in the hurry of the years; the one that had gotten smashed on the floor when his mother found out about his father’s fake-blonde paramour.

Now that he was in this beautiful new skin, he danced in nothing but it around the house.

He shimmied down the hallways, goth-danced through the rooms like he was rockstar, caught sight of himself with his lips two inches apart from each other—he and himself in the mirror like startled lovers, and frisked all the way to the laundry room where he let himself die down in the hamper of nylons. He rubbed his body all over, letting the silk give him the warm illusion of a blazing fireplace and not of one filled with blackened butts of wood.

Then he ran back up to his room, red like a cherry pie, and dove into his purple anorak that hung like a kangaroo pouch all the way to his knees. His mother had cut out his pockets in fear he’d hide bad things in them and so now his hands poked uselessly through the holes in the fabric. They hung like dead doornails. Oh come on you [redacted]! he screamed at the low ceiling and laughed like a wolf. Haaaaa-ha, and not like normal people haha’s.

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He roared for hours until his face turned a shiny, grape-y purple. He looked like his mother's prize bottle of wine—the one she touched so tenderly to her chest when Saturday night drunkenness slicked her down like an addition to the leathery brown couch.

When he remembered this, he was done being a wolf.

He sat back on his mattress with its little blue quilt. He stared at his dirty body through the frayed holes of the anorak. The soft brown hairs on his flesh. The ugly chicken plumes. He tapped his foot like a proper English businessman. He shook his head like he was fifty-five with hairline issues, like he was fifteen and dumped by his girlfriend, like he was five months old in a high chair after his spoon had fallen a world away onto the floor. He shook his head, deeply unsatisfied, deeply troubled.

Then he marched to the bathroom, stepping over his parents' discarded underclothes, and turned on the water. Once the tub brimmed, he sat down in it and scrubbed his body with his fingernails until it was all red and gleaming again.

"‘Mungo’, being one of my weirder and worser nonsense stories, is a great capture of a misfit boy who’s having a hard time growing into his new skin."

Catherine thinks tomatoes are the pinnacle of human crime.

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Impending Future by Sunny Cong

Steampunk-esque Robot by Andrew Lu

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AGOGE

by O.W.

Here, cometh the Paides—Hath thou yet held blades?

Mere pens—by Hades! Writs on hides, obtaineth no accolades.

There at Thermopylae, whence parades we held, past by now ages; Were it pens—frayeth blades in the hands of Leonidas, Where wouldst thou then hideth?

Yes, t’was Simonides who wrote—though not on papyrus: “Tell the Spartans, passer-by That here, obedient to their word, we lie.”

Yet without the miracle play—yes, that of blades and Leonidas, And Aides grace: the lack of glades—none of thee Paides, Could see past a few ages.

Look there—the ladies with their babes and the Hēbōntes with their blades, Nowadays in their ways be no haze, nor any dispraise. In their days— Yes, they amaze; sailing for the Cyclades, while thee sit stargaze.

But thee too—yes, you—shall one day come of age, And cry out with Pride: “Whence we came, is in our hearts—we, the Spartans!”

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Regarding the meter, I chose the dactylic hexameter—a rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek poetry—simply to challenge my skills.

This meter is very uncommon in English, and essentially impossible to perfectly recreate due to the pronunciation difference. So, while there were times I had to switch to other meters, this was the general pattern.

The word choice is of great help in ensuring the continuation of the meter —especially the rhyme. Some words have multiple pronunciations, and so, depending on the pronunciation of the last word of the former line, the pronunciation of the word can easily be chosen when speaking it out loud to continue the rhyme.

Now, the plot and narration. One can interpret the speaker to be an ""erastes"" or really just any older Spartan, advising the young Paides on the future of their journey through the agoge. This takes place a few generations past the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), and is in

essence, a piece of advice for the young to neither lose their wills nor let their minds be clouded. The contrast of the blades and pens is also present for this reason—that is to say, to underline the difference between action and words. The lines, ""Were it pens—frayeth blades in the hands of Leonidas, / Where wouldst thou then hideth?"" is a reference to ""the pen is mightier than the sword"" being reversed in our current day, where logical arguments are commonly forsaken and actions taken in support of a goal—right or wrong—have considerable impact. Yet, it can also be interpreted as a call to action, really, for those coming of age to take control of their futures, and to not be swayed by the words of others.

The quote by Simonides (c. 556–468 BC) is there to remind people why promises exist, and that trust should not be so hastily broken and tarnished —as it is done so easily nowadays. The final verse starts with a note of respect to older generations—for they may have had their faults, but they nevertheless are the reason we stand here today. The word ""stargaze"" brings the point back to action; it is about dreaming too much without doing anything in order to achieve them. The final lines close it with a resolution: to act now with determination, to persevere, to remember one's origins, and finally, to age old with dignity and pride in what one has achieved and from where they have come."

AGOGE ARTIST'S STATEMENT

"The theme, coming of age, was one I'd never before considered writing about in any type of literature. Being a fan of antiquity, I realized I could use Sparta's coming of age tradition —the agoge, a rigorous education system combining literacy and military strategy—as the main subject of this poem. Considering our school's mascot, I find this to be quite a fitting choice.

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The first time I saw you my eyes could not look away It wasn't your appearance, nor your face I looked at you and felt a peace You slowly became apart of me But you will never know who I am And that is okay I would rather spend my life time admiring you, than to ever look away Because of you I have found myself I owe you the world All my love with no doubt Never fade away Never lose your spark But if you ever do there will always be a place for you in my heart

TO BE LOVED

By Anjali Alwar

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Don't Worry, You're Doing Fine by Charlotte Park

"In spite of her worries, deep down, she knows everything will be alright."

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CONTRIBUTERS Charlotte Park

Evan Wang

Shubham Garg

Erika Lee

Nate Iyer

Cailin Surtihadi

Stephanie Lvovsky

Catherine Xue

Sunny Cong

Andrew Lu

O.W.

Anjali Anwar

EDITORS Catherine Xue

Emma Lu

Nitya Masina

Erika Lee

Claire Yang

Nina Shetty

Sneha Moudgalya

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