VIGNETTES (Taylor's Version) by Calista, Maya, Kaleb, Lucas

Vignettes (Taylor’s Version)

Photo by Eugenia Porechenskaya

Table of Contents

Lucas Vignette 1………………………………………pg.3

Lucas Vignette 2………………………………………pg.4

Artist Statement………………………………………pg.5

Calista Vignette 1………………………………………pg.6

Calista Vignette 2………………………………………pg.7

Artist Statement………………………………………pg.8

Maya Vignette 1………………………………………pg.9

Maya Vignette 2………………………………………pg.10

Artist Statement………………………………………pg.11

Kaleb Vignette 1………………………………………pg.12

Kaleb Vignette 2………………………………………pg.13

Artist Statement………………………………………pg.14

Photo by Marianna Lupina

Me gusta hablar español. That means 'I like to speak Spanish.' A new language is tough, but fun too. My mom tried to teach me Spanish when I was younger, but I could only remember a few words. It never really stuck with me when I was little, even through the constant push that my mom used to get me to pick up on it. Agua means water. I think I remember Spanish as a chore back then. Something I had to do but pleaded not to. Not like a starving child wanting food, more so, pleading to not eat the three baby carrots on my plate.

"I'm full," I would say, when all I really wanted was to not eat them. The words taste much better in my mouth now, but I still have some trouble with a couple pronunciations.

My mother majored in the best language and taught it to high schoolers too. She is the reason I'm taking it now. She would sing "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" to me as I fell asleep. I recall having more difficulty remembering the words to the English version. The lyrics just sound better in Spanish. Like how Coca-cola always tastes better in a glass bottle. Bien is good in Spanish. I walk into my class at 9:00 on BDF days. Señora Murillo is usually playing a music video in Spanish. She is a really good teacher. Upbeat and enthusiastic, but happens to get her stuff stolen a lot. "¿Cómo estan chicos?" she asks. "Estoy cansado," I will reply. I am always tired en la clase de español, but I manage. She asks what is 'go for a walk' in Spanish. I think to myself; I know this, I hope she calls on me. She doesn't however. Later, I am out of it, half listening to what she says, she calls on me. "Make a sentence using 'our family is making our beds.'" "¿Que? Whats the question again?" I have to ask. I make my sentence, regardless if I had to ask what 'dirty' is twice. (It's sucio if you're wondering). I can't complain, I love Spanish. The language just feels so good in my mouth. Like I was meant to speak it. It’s just so fun.

I blocked Duolingo's notifications. Never again shall I get a reminder to keep up my streak, or that Duo will kidnap my family if I don't practice. Still fun though, it's nice to use if I'm bored or using the bathroom. I learn a lot too. We were learning about la familia in class, and I took a lesson maybe a day before. Señora asks the class, "What is brother en español?" "Hermano." I reply. I learned about family at a perfect time. My dad also took a little Spanish in high school too. However, his pronunciation is wack. He enjoys bothering my mom and making her laugh with his sentences. I had an assignment for Spanish where I had to go to rooms in my house and say what my family or I does there. He goes into the bathroom and says "este es mi baño, yo como caca here." That makes me laugh.

Most of my friends take Spanish too. Jayden, one of my best friends, is really good at school (in general), and Señora Murillo likes him a lot as a student. We were in the same class last semester too. We worked together to do projects in class too. Once we had an interpersonal assignment where we had to have a conversation about our school. Jayden and I went on a call before the day it was due to practice. We had a good time. Very productive, and also a little goofy. Spanish has helped me bond with people.

Manzana means apple, and that was the first word my mom ever taught me. I have remembered it till today. I still use it. Me gusta hablar español mucho.

By l Perry Photo credit: cYokooji

Lucas v2

Splash. I think someone put glue in my wetsuit. It’s sticking to my back in the hot sun, and the pool water was looking more appealing every second. Nice and cold like an ice cold lemonade on a hot summer day. It was summer after all, but I probably shouldn’t drink the chlorine. My friend and his sisters, one older and one younger, are with me. All of us here to get our diving cards. Even in the sun, the pool was still very cold. The wetsuits did little to keep us warm, but that was fine. The regulator was wonderful. Being able to breathe underwater, I was practically a fish.

One week before. "Ugh. I have to complete this entire course by the end of the week?”

"Or else you can't go diving with the Deweys, that's right.”

The entire course consisted of chapters of readings and videos per each topic, and a test to take at the end of each one. You had to make it through each topic of each section to get to the final test, and if you didn't pass you couldn't go out with an instructor and complete skills to get your card. A long and demanding process of studying that I had to complete during the school week was ahead of me. My legs bounced with anticipation.

The first chapters were easy enough. Just the introduction and quick reminders and facts that helped build your diving knowledge. When descending down under the water, you hold onto a line attached from seafloor to buoy to keep you steady as you go down. Every 5 feet descending or so you need to relieve the pressure in your mask, ears, and nose. Do so by popping your ears. You'll have to pop your ears every so often down there cuz pressure, and you don't want to feel like your ears are about to blow off. Or actually have them do. Like when you

On top of the 6 hours of school a day and PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) diving Elearning course, I still had homework. If you have ever done ReadingPlus, then I share your pain. They are not fun. ReadingPlus is the physical and spiritual embodiment of all things evil. You have to read a various amount of articles a week (I only have heard of having 3 and 4), then answer questions based on what you read. If you got 75% or less then you failed, and need to do another one to get credit. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Wrong. The articles are so boring, and they hurt my mental, physical, and spiritual body.

I've been talking too much. I'm running out of time. Too much work, too many Youtube videos. I have a whole section left to do, and only a day before I go out to the dive shop. My palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, (vomit on my sweater already (mom’s spaghetti) but I'm moving through it. The screen glows a ghostly white. It singes my eyes and I have to keep turning down the brightness. So much for adaptive brightness.

It's a longer section, with more chapters. But I start skipping the videos, as they only seem to be recaps of what was already in the chapter. Redundant is what that is called. The entire section is finished. I’m on the final test. A butt-ton of multiple choice questions. I can't fail. Oh no... The first question, I forgot the answer. I'll have to guess (and cross my fingers). One out of fifty. If I score lower than 75%, I'll have to retake EVERYTHING, and start again. No going to the pool with the instructor. No taking the diving course with my friend. I would completely miss him and maybe not even get my dive card. My heart lurches. But my mind refocuses back onto that sickly screen of words and the PADI blue and red logo.

Next question. I know this one, easy. The next few are a breeze. I'm speeding through them. Maybe a couple hard ones here and there. Fifty questions is nothing. Finally, I reach the last one. Nothing special, no need to write a 3 page essay on how to put your mask on underwater. I answer and hit submit... I got, 74%..... Just kidding! I got 90 something, with only a few questions wrong!

My arms shoot up into the air. I had won, and I could finally breathe. The air tastes like victory and sweat. It's past my bedtime, but I'm pleased. Tomorrow I’ll get to hop in the pool and do some scuba stuff. I hope I don't forget everything I studied!

Artist Statement - Lucas Perry

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It’s been four years since I transferred here. Much of my time here can be summarized in four words: A semi living hell. The toughest part of school to me was never the academics but more the social aspect. It was never really hard for me to make friends if I tried. It was mostly just hard to keep them. Seventh grade was by far the worst of these years: a pandemic, online learning, and hoards of prepubescent kids in arrested development definitely didn’t help the already predestined horrors of middle school. Throughout the years my greatest vice and perhaps solace could be found in music. It could first be seen in comfortingly pleasant tunes of TXT, then the eerily astute lyrics of Marina, the raw, enchanting sound of Mitski soon after, the engrossing sound waves of the Psychedelic Furs, and most recently the sounds of 80s rock and metal. Despite the variety, it's the exact same each time. I pop in those headphones, start the music, and I just sit quietly, watching.

I currently have about three different groups of friends I visit from time to time. Though recently I’ve anchored myself at the largest of them. This group has the most variety of characters. Some may find them peculiar at first glance but soon enough they tend to find themselves enthralled in them. This group is split into around four quadrants. I say this as an estimate as I find I can never really tell where each group ends and the other begins. There are an array of faces I see every day but there are some that I just can’t seem to shake.

At twelve we congregate at an oak tree with barely enough room for us all. I usually sit on the floor as there’s no seating by the time I get there. I don’t really care though. By the time lunch rolls around my main focus is pretty much just eating my baked potato. The first person I talk to is usually my depressed artist friend. We have most of the same breaks usually spent looking at photos of tiny frogs on Pinterest. Her dream is to be reincarnated as a crow in her next life. You notice after a while though that she’s not as depressed as she is just generally apathetic. She’ll often wryly crack a joke at your other friend, the sensitive academic. Her main goal in life is to one-up everyone in their Japanese class. She’ll usually respond to these jokes stirring a lunch-long debate about some inane subject.

By this time I usually drift away to some other subgroup. As I search for someone to talk to, my twin sneaks up upon me. His general greeting is usually a pinch to the back. I think it’s important to clarify we’re not actually twins, we just generally look alike and have the same distaste for certain people and things. Either way, he’s there asking me how my day was or if he could borrow my P.E. uniform for the hundredth time. His presence is somewhat brief as he ventures on to find something else. We’re similar in that way, we can’t easily be tethered. At this point my mind seems as if it’s about to implode from my irritant rapid fire thoughts. It is at this moment I am approached by a kid. He’s a strange kid with an even stranger sense of humor. The only way I can think to describe him is if a bisexual hermit crab with a constantly blushing face and the slightest semblance of a mustache was a teen boy. “I’m bored” he says, “Entertain me.” For some reason he always talks to me when he’s bored. I usually chalk it up to the fact that he loves to make fun of my dancing and compare me to the character Jess from New Girl.

This is when my other friend comes to rescue me from this endless comparison. She can be described as a chatty, stylish theater kid with a seemingly appropriate level of drama for one. She often talks of her budding new romance and her nemesis, though she’s too proud to admit they’re really enemies. I talk her out of her overthinking tendencies with the hopes that she’ll finally manage to pull a girl. The next friend in this sequence is a social butterfly with the music taste of a main character in an indie film. He stokes most of the conversations, somehow managing to talk to everyone by the time lunch ends. When you’re near him you can’t help but notice the girl who seems to follow. She has the style of a coquette grandma with the personality of a yassified Michael Myers. She leads the group commanding everyone’s attention to her paragraphs of imagined grandeur. One can often find a short gamer boy resting his head on her shoulder like a leech. This is all I will say about leech boy as I feel this sentence sums up the importance of his presence in this account. To the right of this group, contains the person that perhaps people find the most outrageous. A metalhead with the most peculiar sense of humor. He’s perhaps the funniest of the group always managing a laugh from most everyone in the group.

At this point, the minutes left of lunch are slowly dwindling down. I sit at the corner of the tree with perhaps the most reserved of the bunch. I sit down next to one of my friends from last semester. Today he is taking photos of the ground on his silver digital camera. He’s never without some form of camera at his side. I ask him what he’s taking a picture of. He claims it's an ant with an oddly shaped head. He zooms the camera in to show me what he means. He’s often talking about some new astronomy news or some random Elon Musk meme. He then grabs his sleek, black satchel that he’s used since his normal backpack broke, and trudges along to class. Then I wander upon a boy with curly hair similar to that of Victiorian dolls that are always possessing people in movies. He has a very unnerving stare which is soon negated by the fact that he insists on insulting my height. After this he’ll return to his phone watching some random gaming videos. At this point I’m leaving for whatever class I have next and slowly count down the hours till I can go home.

Cy vignette 2

My room is often in disarray with clothes on the floor and splayed out stationary on my desk. The one thing that seems to remain in the same place is my school I.D. card. It hangs delicately from a hook on the wall. Each morning I find my hands grasping the frame of the card and sliding it off the wall. I then hop in the car to school slowly waking up to the world. The first thing I do when I get to school is walk to the snack bar for a drink. This is the only time where I feel that the card holds any weight to me. The card is currency in a school where even admission is a signifier of wealth. The next time I’ll use the card will be lunch. Besides that I’ll use it to print whatever essay I have to turn in for my next class. I don’t really utilize the card in my everyday life yet everytime I look at it I feel the exact same.

This hollow feeling fills my senses when I gaze down at my card. I look at my face thinly smiling on the card and sense a disconnect. The person on the card seems so far from who I am. This person with shoulder length hair, bright eyes, and a genuine smile seems so foreign. The picture-perfect Punahou student is not what I see myself as. Sometimes I feel like I genuinely forget that I earned my place here; that someone saw me and thought that I exemplify what a Punahou student should be. I’m now a person with slightly longer than shoulder length hair, dulled eyes, with a line with slightly curled up edges for a smile. I am happy I suppose but it feels so toned down at this institution.

Over the years my I.D. has wildly transformed. In sixth grade my hair was long and my eyes were blinking, my smile still wide with a child-like sense of happiness. My approach on how to find my place in this school, this community was all over the place. I tried to find people with the same interests, but when I did my brain would tell me I should try to befriend those with more social currency. The one event this year that really made me feel like I was a part of the school culture was camp. Camp was a four day trip where we learned outdoor survival skills and made connections with people. It was the first time I truly felt like I wasn’t just the outsider looking in but one of the insiders. I was no longer the fish out of water. This also coincided with when I discovered the movie musical Grease which is one of my favorite movie musical adaptations.

My first carnival as a student followed shortly after. It was the last carnival that was presented to the public in its full glory. I have vivid memories of riding the Swings and sharing candy apples with people. In retrospect it’s kind of horrifying how my world went from sharing candy apples with my friends to the ushering in of the Covid-19 pandemic. The seventh grade school year was unique for many reasons, the most striking being the establishment of virtual learning. Due to this factor I never received an I.D. card for this year. God, it really put a dent in the collection I was hoping to establish. Much like the absence of an I.D. card I didn’t really have much of an outward personality. I kept to myself a lot, not having many friends. So, seventh grade was a pretty hard year which was only exacerbated by the fact that I had to learn how to do algebra online.

Eighth grade was actually a pretty spectacular year for me. While it wasn’t perfect it was most definitely my best year at Punahou by that point. Though the transition between seventh to eighth grade was uncharted territory. I feel that nothing demonstrates my point more than my I.D. card for this year. When I was taking the photo I thought that I was about to take the best goddamn I.D. photo in the history of the world. I remember thinking that I had the biggest grin printed on my face. Needless to say when I got my photo back I was thoroughly disappointed by the very tiny smile and somewhat disheveled hair in it. In due time I merged out of that photo.

I didn’t take an I.D. photo at the beginning of the ninth grade school year which is odd because I felt like l was on top of the world at this point. Even though I was on crutches, I severely overestimated my skateboarding skills, I was making connections with so many old friends and new people. When I finally got my picture taken on fall activity day I felt like it solidified who I had become since I came to this school. I was an extroverted, happy, secure student for the first time in a bit.

Now I am about to enter sophomore year and I am eagerly awaiting what my I.D. card will display. Will I be a confident, cool high schooler? Or will I be sent back to square one? Either way I think that I am ready for what comes next.

Artist Statement - Calista Yokooji

I used the authorial strategies of motifs and structure and the literary device of imagery in my vignettes. In my second vignette I use my I.D. photo as a motif for my school experience. This can be seen in this line of my vignette : “When I finally got my picture taken on fall activity day I felt like it solidified who I had become since I came to this school. I was an extroverted, happy, secure student for the first time in a bit”. In both my second and first vignette I structure my stories into a continuous narrative. This transition through narratives can be seen in the following lines: “The next friend in this sequence is a social butterfly with the music taste of a main character in an indie film. He stokes most of the conversations, somehow managing to talk to everyone by the time lunch ends. When you’re near him you can’t help but notice the girl who seems to follow. She has the style of a coquette grandma with the personality of a yassified Michael Myers”. I also use imagery in my first vignette to immerse the reader in my lifestyle. “The first person I talk to is usually my depressed artist friend. We have most of the same breaks usually spent looking at photos of tiny frogs on Pinterest. Her dream is to be reincarnated as a crow in her next life. You notice after a while though that she’s not as depressed as she is just generally apathetic. She’ll often wryly crack a joke at your other friend, the sensitive academic. ” This previous line is a demonstration of my use of imagery. Overall, I used two authorial strategies and a literary device in my vignettes.

The first art piece I made was for Lucas’ first vignette. It displays a bowl of pasta residing on a napkin. A strand of the pasta is being eaten by the face in the image. The pasta is composed of the lyrics to the Spanish version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. I included this as Lucas mentioned in his story that he remembers the Spanish version of the song better than the English ones. The face in the image also has a star nose piercing due to the song. The napkin under the plate has the word ‘Manzana’s’ printed on it with an apple to the right of it. Manzana is the Spanish word for apple. I included this as Lucas mentioned that this was the first word his mother taught him in Spanish. I also decided to use food references in this photo, as the first paragraph of his vignette uses food as a metaphor for learning Spanish. For my second art piece I had to draw Kaleb’s second vignette. I drew the somewhat tense conversation he had with his remaining friends in the story. I drew his friends Kate and Lance opposite of him to demonstrate how he felt uncomfortable in the story. I decided to play the try of French fries from the story on a green tray so it stood out. The French fries are situated in the center untouched to symbolize the unspoken tension demonstrated in the moment. On the back of the booth where Kaleb is seated, I wrote “we’re okay, right?”. I wanted this scene to represent the presence of the elephant in the room his friends did not discuss.

I lived in one house for almost my entire life up until I went to high-school when we moved. Our house's location is in the center of Seattle in between Capital hill and Madrona my neighborhood, Madison valley. The valley is barely a valley though it’s all paved, dipping a bit down to a small park with a big drawing for when the rain that poured almost every day couldn’t go anywhere else. There were a bunch of steps leading up to our house with shrubs in-front of our house and peony bushes on the sides, my mom's favorite flower. Our house made it look like we were big time Seahawks fans which don't get me wrong I love the Seahawks, but it wasn't intentional. My mom didn't even want those colors, but we never got around to changing it. It was always gray outside contrasting our vibrant colored house. I didn’t particularly dislike it though growing up in such a dreary weather place. It was my home. Almost every room was painted a different vibrant color.

When you walk in there is a makeshift curtain we made of blankets. We always wanted to get actual curtains but again never found time. The blankets were to keep in the heat from our weird fireplace that for some odd reason had two ways to turn it on. We always take our shoes off and we would put them in this closet with an enormous door I grew up marking how tall I was as I grew up. My all time goal for many years has been to reach 5’ 7. I'd like to say that I reached it but I’m unfortunately 5' 5 as my friends remind me every day.

The biggest room on the main floor was the blue room. Others would call it a living room since our fireplace and furniture is in there, but we called it the blue room because the color of the room was like IKB 79. I learned about what that color was on our trip to Paris when we visited the museum of modern art. Our tour guide took us straight to the painting when we reached a room of beautiful intricate paintings. The only one that wasn’t intricate was the IDB 79 or so I thought. The tour guide said that it was made of crushed diamonds and that although all of the other paintings in this room were great; almost everyone who walked into that room would go to the IDB 79 because the color drew people in. The house had three levels. The kitchen was painted citrus orange. I’ve always loved oranges, specifically the dried and candied ones dipped in chocolate.

The biggest room on the main floor was the blue room. Others would call it a living room since our fireplace and furniture is in there, but we called it the blue room because the color of the room was like IKB 79. I learned about what that color was on our trip to Paris when we visited the museum of modern art. Our tour guide took us straight to the painting when we reached a room of beautiful intricate paintings. The only one that wasn’t intricate was the IDB 79 or so I thought. The tour guide said that it was made of crushed diamonds and that although all of the other paintings in this room were great; almost everyone who walked into that room would go to the IDB 79 because the color drew people in. The house had three levels. The kitchen was painted citrus orange. I’ve always loved oranges, specifically the dried and candied ones dipped in chocolate.

The back door opened to the patio and down to the large-ish back yard with our garden and gigantic pine tree that I forever worried would fall and crush our house. My parents used to rent out the top level when they were younger and just moved to Seattle. They eventually bought the entire house. The top used to have a kitchen but it was changed to a living room space that was mostly used by my mom for painting and meditation. Mine and my mom’s room were on the top floor as well. I had the biggest bedroom in the house with a long-ish walk-in closet painted dark purple. One of the four walls of my room was also painted purple with magnetic paint that made it so I could fill the wall with pictures and magnets. The walls were also filled with bookshelves and the best manga collection you could ever imagine. Now I have only the best ones in boxes in the living room of our new place. The walls here are all white while the outside is booming with color.

We live in Manoa valley and the valley is surrounded by looming green mountains. Our old house once full of colors and memories was emptied and painted white as well but it’s different from the white of our new place. The colors that made our old house so warm made it cold and almost unrecognizable when we moved. It wasn't really my house anymore; it was the shell, the blank canvas with nothing in or on it in a gray gloomy city. Now we live in a place with white walls but it’s not a blank, it's warm, and outside it’s just as warm and colorful.

Maya House Vignette

Story by Maya Sue

Photo Credit: Lucas Perry

Maya v2

I've never been good at swimming. Even when I was little I had to go to a place called “safe and sound” where the water was warm because normal water was too cold for me and normal lessons made me cry. I found a teacher named Katinka. She was strict but it worked and I learned to swim… at least for Seattle standards. Which isn’t very high due to the fact that it’s always cold, rainy, and gray almost all year round. Minus the summer where I always would travel with my family or go to camp.

When I moved to Hawaii I had to take a physical education class with Punahou, and although I knew a lot of kids were sporty I didn’t know they were this sporty. In Seattle physical education class would entail dodgeball, kickball, handball, games that were fun and relatively chill. I was pretty good at the types of games played in P.E. so I wasn’t too worried for P.E. here. I didn’t however realize that P.E. This entailed long distance running, weight lifting, swimming, and a biathlon.

Keep in mind that I had Ms. Mori as my teacher, and she is so kind and enthusiastic. I was excited for P.E. at the start of the year. A fun class that I (thought) I was good at. When the swimming unit came along I realized that I wasn’t very athletic. Due to the fact everyone was more athletic than me. I do still think that Ms. Mori is a kind teacher though. She was very supportive throughout the units which was especially helpful in the swimming unit. Because of her I got lessons from Coach Jayson in swimming which helped a lot as well. However I still was the worst in my class.

Every class I had butterflies in my stomach, was worried I would throw up, worried I’d faint, and most of all worried I’d drown. It made it worse that every class started at 8AM. Every class day I would wake up with a sense of dread. When I got to school I’d grudgingly go to the locker rooms that had a strong smell of chlorine to it, dawdling as much as possible. I am still surprised that I didn’t get a foot fungus from the incredibly slippery floors that were grainy with a hint of mold. Every single class my friends and I would have the same conversation.

I would say, “Will you save me if I drown?”

Lucia would reply, “Yes”

Then I would look at Hanalei and say “do you think it’ll be alright?” And she would say, “Yeah don't worry about it.”

We would then get in the water and have our lesson. After I would lie on the bench in the locker room after swallowing a gallon of water and contemplate my life. This was our routine for quite a while until Ms. Mori announced we had a tread water test.

I dreaded it for weeks. I never did well when we practiced. I always would go to the wall before the time was out and hang on for dear life. Ms. Mori knew I wasn’t good at swimming with my background and it would be fine minus the part that I could only tread water for a minute at most. The night before the tread water test I watched an insane amount of videos on how to tread water on TikTok and Youtube. Anyone when I told them that I couldn’t tread water would say but it’s so easy. The tutorials said it’s so easy too so going into the test I was nervous but I thought I could tread water if I just really tried.

I was wrong. I tried really hard. It didn’t work. Lucia and Hanalei held me up and we had this conversation.

I said, “Lucia I don’t know if i can make it”

Lucia said, “Yes you can. Hold onto my arm.”

I held on to her arm for a while and tried my best to stay afloat.

After a while I said, “I think I'll go to the wall.”

I was desperate. I needed to stop. I couldn’t do it anymore. Hanalei however came over and said, “Do you need any help?” to Lucia (she was referring to me).

And Lucia said, “Sure.”

I didn’t mention this but Hanalei is on the water polo team and Lucia surfs so both of them are extremely athletic and good at swimming. Ms. Mori came over, saw what was happening and said to me, “You have good friends.”

I replied, “Yes I do”

Good friends are great. That is the moral of the story… and to be good at swimming.

Artist Statement - Maya Sue

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The yearbook classroom never had adequate air conditioning, the type where the freon wasn't installed correctly so the fans would blow really hot air. The room was cluttered and the air stung with freshly cut glossy parchment and rusty staplers. The door was an obnoxious orange color with stiff hinges that moved with a squeak making it more like an airlock than entrance. As my heavy soled asics slapped the grainy yellowed white tiling, I peered towards the teachers gray plasma board desk and saw the dense stack of yellow and purple field trip slips. With the thin warped door knob attracting my hand, I felt the eyes from the short gelled haired man peirce my shoulder blades and linger in my ribcage.

As the door’s reedy creek resonated throughout the room, I was hit with a wall of cold stiff cold air. The class was an after school program, which meant leaving the class would be to enter a pasteled softer yet thicker environment compared to the harsh midday sun. The beige concrete with bits of plant matter strewn about from the garden took a soft skarlet and lavender hue softly coating the little cracks in the pavement. The little section by the terrace had a spectacular floor to ceiling window littered with bird excrement tainting the viscous swamp green tint. Everyday my classmates and I made it a point to collectively glimpse at our reflections in the window, now a brown with a crimson aura from the evening sky.

Tomorrow’s the day where the slips for the banquet are due, all I need is teacher and parent signatures. The mere prospect of persuading my teachers to approve a trip that not only is time consuming but is also purely recreational made my stomach turn.

The idea itself made waking up a mental chore, as I stared into the pristine porcelain slowly being stained by the blueish green toothpaste falling into the bowl, I turned to my parents begging for a signature. “Dad c’mon,” I uttered with colgate leaking from the side of my mouth, “ my grades are good enough for me to take one day off”

“Do you have to go?” he spoke with a touch of canned concern exiting the corner of his already pursed lips, “It’s a yearbook banquet, you seriously wanna go to that?”

“Dad this is my last year here,” I said with undetectable passive aggressiveness concealed with inflection and mint. “You said to make the most of it.”

“Fine.” he said, his breath reeking of coffee and shame from just being verbally bested.

The iridescent ball in the sky had reached its apex in the sky which glazed the back field an unbearable bright white. The sprinklers placed droplets of faux dew onto the dainty blades of grass, the perfect droplets lingering on the tips of the grass haulms and warped the sun’s rays, sort of disco balling the field creating a thin white haze that only climbed to our shins. At that point I had already had 2 out of 3 signatures, I can get the last signature in her math class. As the door opened, the threshold became a wall of sweaty napes and poorly done at home haircuts. The class had never gone so slowly, the usually swift motions completed with the teacher's dry erase marker had gone dull as if she had run out of oil in their wrist, all the while the white clock with blotchy black ticks running along the walls of the inner circle. As the hands slowly moved with satisfying clicks each movement, the fake bell over the intercom rang and the tsunami of restless middle schoolers started towards the door. Stuck in the crowd of bald spots and dandruff, we had shuffled out of the classroom out to the hallways.

As I wait for the yearbook program to begin, I watch the sky as it bleeds its clean blue hue out and is injected with a harsh monochromatic yellow color burning away all the clouds. As the loud orange door is slowly pushed open, the sun's reflection on the door scans the students like barcodes standing near the entrance.

As I walk in, I am immediately met with the yearbook teacher holding a stack of papers. As I gaze at the stack of yellow permission slips, my heart sinks remembering the last signature I missed. As the rest of the class sits down I flee the class room in an attempt to get the last signature.

As I sprint through the school, I tunnel vision on the messy asphalt that splashed onto the curbs with the rest of the world going out of focus leaving circular bokeh waste of the surrounding scenery. The path to the teachers room grew longer, I clutched the paper with a pen in my pocket desperately trying not to lose balance.

As the doorknob to their room grew larger and larger in my field of vision, I slowed my pace and eventually came to a screeching halt. Barging in the door, I looked around and the teacher was nowhere to be found. Brimming with disappointment I started my walk back, until through the trees I saw the teacher placing their bag into the car in the parking lot closest to the street.

I started to the field separating the school and the parking lot, and flagging her down. I handed her the paper and reached for the pen in my pocket. As I shuffled around in my rough denim jean pockets, she had given the paper back to me, with a signature in royal blue pen.

Kaleb V2

The dog park across the street was always full with the overflow of students from the cherry juul soaked middle school, concealed with an array of waxy picnic tables and brittle plasma board desks. The park was always home to our waxy eyed group, always too busy exploring the purple haze. Past the dog park was a quaint mini mall occupied by the crackpots and skaters from the upper school. We retreated to the small complex of stores to escape the post-school aggression which seemed to always manifest itself in primitive physical altercations at the Laulani villas sector of the park. We did this so often we became regulars to the McDonalds and Walgreens workers. We began a routine, we got slushies from McDonalds, partly because it was close and also cheaper than the nom nom just down the way. Then we all splurged on a large french fry to share, with the person holding the lowest test score paying for the majority of the total cost. When we returned to the park, we sat in the shade of a large tree and played with the homeless woman's old shopping cart.

In December of eighth grade we had a bit of a social hiccup, we had issues with some of our group members and at some point we found the star nosed critters they secretly planted in the mole hill they insisted we were forming. The group had fractured and we were blindsided. With just a trio of a lanky yet wideset charismatic boy with a bowl cut named Lance, and a small short haired, stoic girl named Kate.

In a desperate attempt to cling onto what I had lost, we kept with that routine we had established. After our last period we had met in front of the administration office in preparation to cling onto whatever social structure we had left. With wounds still fresh, we started to the cross walk in the sea of sweaty blobs of green, blue, and black uniforms, we looked around in the horrid, seemingly artificial sunlight avoiding eye contact so as not to lose sight of the event.

Once we had reached the fast food joint, past the smokers, past the obnoxious skating kids, we got in line and it immediately brought us back. In the eatery we finally struck up a conversation, cracking shallow lighthearted jokes, till we had finally addressed the elephant in our room “We are ok right?” Kate uttered hesitantly “like we made the right decision guys?”

“Maybe?” I interjected “I mean are all still here I guess”

“It just wasn’t worth it to stay.” Lance said as the thinly cut potatoes were dropped into the fryer oil, “I couldn’t put up with it,” said Kate “I don’t know, we were so tight knit it's like the end of an era”

“That’s not inherently bad?” I mentioned “it's gonna be ok, it just might take a while.” We left the restaurant with a better sense of what was to come and the large french fries. During the walk back, the bright white barren sky had become fluffy with round plump clouds, backlit with pastel scarlets and peach with a monochromatic lavender undertone to it all. We all looked at each other spotlit by the cars red behinds, swapping stories talking about how much we needed each other. It wasn’t nice, it wasn’t fulfilling, it didn’t inflate us, it just felt normal, and that semblance of normalcy is what we all needed.

We were so busy conversing, reaffirming our care for one another that we barely touched the food. When we got to the park we leaned up against the tree with an array of different shoes resting on the lower compartment of the shopping cart. We sat there still, content, sustaining ourselves in each other's quiet company as we slowly picked at the stale potatoes. We had spent the day with each other, as the scarlet tone slowly bled out of the sky, we pulled on the yellowed grass while glaring towards the street lights. It felt so long but so short, and we knew as the tree's shadows began to fracture that our day was ending. We said our farewells and walked home.

Walking away was quite hard, but knowing that it was so hard was the first confirmation that I did something right.

Artist Statement - Kaleb Holm

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