Cymbals 2015

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cymbals

princeton day school 2 015

2015

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cy m b a l s 2015

“Foundation Construction” by Diego Garcia, IX: architecture

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cy m b a l s 2015

cymbals cymbals is the creative writing and arts magazine of Princeton Day School. It is published annually, typically in late May, and copies are complimentary. All of the artwork and writing is created by students.

This year a volunteer staff of students met numerous afternoons to review the myriad examples of artistic excellence submitted by their peers. All submissions were kept anonymous, using submittable.com, an online submission manager. The defining criteria for inclusion involved artistic vision, sustained and individualized voice, and well crafted form. cymbals seeks to include works from as many genres as possible: poetry, prose poetry, drama, flash fiction, short stories, personal narrative, photography, woodworking, architecture, painting, computer-generated graphics, ceramics, and mixed media.

To submit your writing or artwork, go to cymbals.submittable.com/ submit. Reading periods are November 1st through the end of March.

Please leave your name off your work.

We hope that you enjoy it, The editors

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Table of Contents “Steel and Stilettos” by Peri Feldstein, XII: photograph............................................................. cover “Foundation Construction” by Diego Garcia, IX: architecture......................................................... 2 “The Street” by Minori Parelkar, X: poem........................................................................................ 6 “Bandsaw Box” by Coby Gibson, X: woodworking.......................................................................... 7 “Little Black Dress” by Ritvik Khandelwal, XI: short story............................................................. 8 “Vee-Ay-Kuss” by anonymous: poem.............................................................................................. 10 “Blue Envelopes” by Devika Kumar, XI: flash fiction..................................................................... 11 “Car Love”by Jed Seinfeld, XI: short story..................................................................................... 12 “Rust Never Sleeps” by Jamie Thomas, XII: photograph................................................................ 18 “Racing” by Niki van Manen, XII: personal narrative.................................................................... 19 “Split Personality” by Emma Shainwald, XI: photograph............................................................... 20 “Invisible Girl” by Sara Chopra, IX: poem...................................................................................... 21 “Writing on the Window,” by Lulu Nye, XII: flash fiction.............................................................. 22 “Diamonds” by Alexandra Marshall, XII: photograph.................................................................... 23 “Patrick” by Victoria Lach, XI: flash fiction.................................................................................... 24 “Heels on a Harley” by Devika Kumar, XI: flash fiction................................................................. 25 “Primary and Secondary Colors” by Emily Um, XI: flash fiction................................................... 26 “Negative Space” by Adam Gershen, XII: photograph................................................................... 27 “Never Board” by Nicole Giannotti, XI: personal narrative........................................................... 28 “Sharon Ann Lane: The Universal Nurse” by Tess Gecha, XI: historical fiction........................... 29 “What’s Wrong With Me” by Niki van Manen, XII: personal narrative......................................... 32 “Evolution” by Anna Williams, XII: acrylic paint and collage....................................................... 33 “Construction of Physical Texture” by Shana Levine, X: architecture........................................... 34 “Color War” by Touria Salvati, X: photograph................................................................................ 35 “Out of the Fire and into the Frying Pan” by Jamie Thomas, XII: photograph............................... 36 “Go Juice Gone Crazy” by Jacky Sun, XI: personal narrative........................................................ 37 “Intramural” by Ashley Abrams, XI: photograph........................................................................... 38 “Old Friends” by Spencer Wilkins, X: photograph.......................................................................... 39 “Disembodied” by Sarah Parks, XII: acrylic on canvas..................................................................40 “Red and the Black” by Alexandra Marshall, XII: acrylic on canvas............................................. 41 “Inside Out” by Eris Gee, XI: paint and ink.................................................................................... 42 “Cnidaria” by Catarina Montenegro, XII: photograph.................................................................... 43 “Lost My Heart” by Catarina Montenegro, XII: photograph..........................................................44 “Metropolitan Mess” by Kathleen Crowell, XII: poem................................................................... 45 “Growing Back” by Chloe Berger, XI: poem..................................................................................46

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“Multiple Nudes” by Morgan Mills, XI: acrylic paint, rubber stamp and stencil.............................47 “Construction of a Concept” by Noah Liao, X: architecture............................................................ 48 “Give me an exoskeleton” by Chloe Berger, XI: poem.................................................................... 49 “Reasons why Rome fell” by Chloe Berger, XI: poem.................................................................... 49 “The Rocks We Jump” by Carly King, XII: personal narrative....................................................... 50 “The Stranger” by Becca Biros, X: photograph............................................................................... 51 “CVS” by Victoria Lach, XI: short story..........................................................................................52 “Charger” by Ziad Ahmed, X: 3D printing with solar panels........................................................... 54 “Santa” by David Bialow, XII: flash fiction..................................................................................... 55 “Faucet” by Victoria Lach, XI: poem...............................................................................................56 “Felonies” by Victoria Lach, XI: poem............................................................................................ 56 “Anthro” by Abby Ling, X: charcoal drawing.................................................................................. 57 “This is a Meditation” by Sara Chopra, IX: poem........................................................................... 58 “Mt. Rainier” by Mason Ward, XII: personal narrative.................................................................... 59 “The Sketch” by Sarah Parks, XII: poem.........................................................................................60 “The Clockwork Garden” by Sara Chopra, IX: poem......................................................................60 “Chess Board” by Luke Franzoni, IX: woodworking and 3D printing (mixed media).................... 61 “Memories of Camp (A Pantoum)” by Sarah Parks, XII: poem....................................................... 62 “Picnic” by Jamie Thomas, XII: photograph.................................................................................... 63 “The Typical Unusual” by Chris Chai, XI: personal narrative......................................................... 64 “Hawaiian Fried Rice” by Lulu Nye, XII: flash fiction.................................................................... 65 “Still Something” by Caroline Lippman, XII: personal narrative....................................................66 “My Two Cents” by Caroline Lippman, XII: personal narrative......................................................67 “November First” by Meghan Wilmott, XI: flash fiction.................................................................68 “Pyramid Dreams” by Emma Shainwald, X: charcoal drawing.......................................................69 “If your arms were strong enough” by Chloe Berger, XI: poem......................................................70 “Soliloquy” by Gil Levitan, X: drama..............................................................................................70 “Lies” by Cameron Smith, X: poem.................................................................................................71 “Road Not Taken” by Adam Gershen, XII: photograph...................................................................72 “Here I am,” by Jacquelyn Hart, XI: poem.......................................................................................73 “Stuffy” by Caroline Lippman, XII: flash fiction.............................................................................74 “MLK” by Rebecca Kuzmitz, IX: pencil drawing............................................................................75 “Sand Trapped” by Austin Phares, XI: flash fiction.........................................................................76 “Pretzel Logic” by Helen Healey, XI: photograph..........................................................................77 “Double Vision” by Ashley Abrams, XI: photograph.......................................................................78 “The End” by Victoria Lach, XI: prose poem...................................................................................79 Contributors and Staff.......................................................................................................................80

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The Street Behind the glamour of the dusky city lie shanty towns and quiet neighborhoods.

Clumsy streets wobble along fitting the form of half-finished buildings, looking like they could fall apart at the slightest breath.

Run-down corner stores, where quick exchanges are being made, money, laughter, news, and children tug at their mothers’ saris only to point slyly to the candy draping the tops of the vending tables, like garlands of plastic flowers, with their “Made in China” stickers, still on them.

Walk further down, keeping to the sides, as the too-big, too-bright, too-modern cabs flee this run-down beauty.

You make eye contact with a mother and a daughter in the backseat, sharing a secret with you as they pass by until accidentally, you step in a puddle of rain and piss and the moment is gone.

But when you return your gaze forward, you realize how far in you’ve walked, and what a city of suburbs you’ve discovered.

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The street is brimming with people: children back from school, whose light laughter fills the blank spaces between uncles chattering on their phones, spitfire in their voices, back from the office, ready to relax, as fresh-faced aunties, hands on hips, eagerly await their arrival.

The few rickshaw drivers yelling, in what might be a jarring tone if not for the harmony they create with the echoing voices of fishmongers and greengrocers over the steady banter of bargaining.

But it’s a hidden beauty, a seasonal Miss Universe.

When all is quiet and everyone is inside, the rain comes thickly And floods the street.

Thunder signals the arrival of the monsoon, Rattles the houses down to their feeble bones, as wind whistles through open windows, and curtains fly about.

Ladies in white saris, off to a main event, who’ve just gotten caught in the unexpected shower of clear crystal and pearl, everything but the Kohinoor.

Their pallavs going sheer, falling heavy and low,

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send a light spray of droplets as they are whipped over their shoulders.

It becomes crowded, the street.

Brimming with people: children, running, splashing, shrieking with joy, and uncles at the side wondering how they’re going to get to work the next morning, and aunties, faces full of woe, sigh, “Grocery shopping will be such a hassle tomorrow.”

But the dadis Who’ve been inside all day cooking, cleaning, working, finally letting the setting sun touch their faces.

Water droplets trace their hard-earned ridges from faded beauty mark to faded beauty mark, from Delhi to Agra, the Yamuna flows and leaves a smile on their faces.

As their eyelashes catch the last few rays, mothers usher their children quickly inside, before the night grabs them, and steals them away.

Fathers quickly glance outside, before shutting the windows lighted by the rising half moon. ­

— Minori Parelkar, X

“Bandsaw Box” by Coby Gibson, X: woodworking

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Little Black Dress

Two years ago, my heart was tied to a string and dragged along train tracks from Shanghai to Hong Kong Island. Along the way, it was punctured quite a few times as I would go on Facebook to find pictures of her in bars with other guys. She poured salt onto my damaged heart by wearing a white dress to a date with some random guy. The dress was an anniversary gift from me.

It hurts a lot to think about it all, but last week she called and asked to have dinner with me on Hong Kong Island. Refusing her offer was an opportunity to punch her back, but my desire for love over the past two years got the better of me. Not a day went by where my heart didn’t thump when I heard her name. My friends demanded that I hook up with someone to kiss away the sorrows, but I’d end up saying, “Sorry I’m taken.” My dad even called me a few times and asked, “How’s the sex life son?”

“It’s coming along slow dad, but thanks.”

“Remember son, the difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it. It’s a two-way street, and you can’t have one without the other.” That’s when I put down the phone.

I brought one bag that carried only clothing onto the train. Finding a window seat, I watched skyscrapers loom towards the entrance to the polluted sky, and listened to Asian businessmen bicker on large phones. You wouldn’t think it would be too difficult to understand the technology behind a footrest until you fiddled around with the seats.

The train silently lurched forward as it approached a stop and threw my body forwards. My head banged into a metal lever on the seat in front of me, and a footrest shot out beneath me. I could feel myself becoming light headed and began to drift off into a deep sleep.

I awoke to find myself still sitting in the train, but now next to me, sat a slightly tanned girl in a little black strapless dress. Her facial features were hidden by lengthy dark hair

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that continued past her shoulders. Her legs were smooth and exposed. Her knees were spread apart slightly and she would place a book between her thighs every so often to check her phone. As an automatic response to my shameful thoughts, I said, “Sorry, I’m taken.”

The girl in the black dress turned and a subtle craze appeared in the corners of her eyes. She probably lived a simple day life working at a cash register in a small-owned family store, but had a wild nightlife. Not wild as in drunk, but as in she probably had an irritating number of guys clinging to her simply for her own entertainment purposes.

Her face hid behind no makeup whatsoever, which surprised me living in the 21st century. Realizing how long we’d been observing each other, I rotated my head to look out the window, but all that I found was the void of a tunnel to greet me. The glass presented a reflection where I could see the girl still focusing on me.

She laughed and teased, “Don’t tell me you’re one of those weird people who stare out windows and have deep thoughts like in the movies. Trust me, there’s no answer out there. Especially not in these vandalized tunnels.”

Embarrassed, I turned back to greet the smiling girl and said, “Listen, I have a girlfriend.”

She turned those slightly spread apart knees towards me and casually said, “So what? She’s not here now.”

She paused, raised her middle finger to her lips, and drew outlines around her lips as she continued to inspect me.

“You and I, we’ll never meet again.”

“So do this with a handful of guys?”

“Do what?” she responded sharply.

“Just talk, you know… the teasing and the philosophy included.”

“Sure, I guess. Train rides would be boring if there weren’t strangers to talk to, and I’m no philosopher. I just believe in truth.”

I scoffed, “And what’s truth in your mind?”

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“That’s the question that people should be asking.”

“Go on. Answer it.”

It bothered me how quickly the girl had been able to realize that I was lying. “Quick question, what’s love?”

For the first time since the girl and I had started talking, she didn’t have an answer. Now, I was the one staring her down. She opened her mouth to talk, but words ceased to exit. When her mouth closed, she turned the rest of her body towards me and slumped lower in her seat.

She let her head rest against the bulkhead of the seat and seemed to begin to unwind herself. A pleasant warmness filled me as I sensed multiple barriers between us shatter to the ground. I noticed silvery nail polish half peeling off her fingers, the outlines of bags under her eyes, and her foot tapping nervously at an uneven pace.

“Who said that?”

“You said you had a girlfriend,” the girl whispered.

“Where is she?”

“An extremely boring computer,” she laughed.

“Not that. The answer to love I mean.”

“I did.”

“There.”

“There what?”

“You lied.”

I couldn’t believe the nerve of this girl to get involved in my love life. “Yeah…yeah of course.”

After a pause she asked, “How did you know?”

“You lied. I understand the truth.”

She shot up and poked me on the shoulder. “There.”

She winked. “Sneaky.”

“There what?”

“You lied.”

The train lurched forward again. The station for Hong Kong Island had been left behind.

After a pause I asked, “How did you know?”

“You lied. I understand the truth.”

“Yeah, but I’ve always wanted to visit Kowloon City anyways.”

I winced my eyes as I searched for a reason behind her random tangent. The girl remained poker faced.

“I haven’t seen her in two years because she left for a job on Hong Kong Island.”

“You think she still loves you?”

“No, you tricked me. You used my own emotions against me.”

The girl put her hands up in the air and said, “It’s all just one big game and we’re just surviving as pawns.”

“Who do you suppose is the King?”

“I don’t know, the Chinese president? He’s got some money.

“Are you asking me to write a new edition to the bible?”

“You seem to be pretty on top of the whole life deal, so answer that.”

She tapped her fingers on the seat in front of her, and then said, “I think it’s when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

A robotic voice from above announced, “Welcome to Hong Kong Island, the doors will be opening for three minutes. The next stop is Kowloon City.”

“Hey! That was your stop, wasn’t it?”

She smiled and leaned in close. Her lips were an inch away from my ears. With a cool wondrous breath, she whispered, “Dr. Seuss. That’s who told me what love was.”

— Ritvik Khandelwal, XI

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Vee-Ay-Kuss Puerto Rico’s stunning sight: Vieques nights and latent light.

Kayaks slide into frame.

Glowstick-marked floaters find their way along oar-drawn trails.

The boat stream splits nighttime water.

Paddles trigger lucent algae.

With every pull, a blue swirl, mini whirlpool twirl, Cuddles the fin of my paddle.

Settle in, nestle into the hush of standstill, and unwind.

Worry and stress.

Leave them behind.

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Ten kayaks float to a bowl-shaped gap carved into land, riding ripples to a lull.

We idly rock and tune in to the silence.

Quiet, yet it somehow gets the point across.

Simplicity is articulate.

And in the speckled ocean, think me a wretch unfit for harmony found in flashy paddle-splashed balance.

Vieques, in your dotted night, Baptize me in brilliance, Soak me in your stars.

— anonymous

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Blue Envelopes The little girl treasured those letters. When she saw the blue envelope in the stack of mail her father carried, she pounced. She knew what her father thought, but he was wrong. Her mother did care about her — the blue envelope was proof. Not just that, her mom understood fashion and girl stuff, things her dad didn’t.

She began to write her reply.

Her small fingers gripped the ink-pen into the pocket between her thumb and index finger. Her father gave her only one sheet of parchment a week.

She squirmed for hours, making sure she checked her grammar and used big words — big words would impress her mom, make her seem smart.

What did you do today? and how was school? had to be answered for every day of the week, every day she missed.

I miss you. Are you coming to see me soon?

I’m all grown-up!

Ms. Sutherlin said that I’m the most responsible girl in the 3rd grade!

Love your favorite daughter, Clara

Then she kissed it and folded it and handed it to her dad, who put it in an envelope and walked outside. He never read her letters, but sometimes he said things like mom did. As if they finished each other’s sentences. And he never let Clara walk it to the mailbox. Clara didn’t mind. For the short walk from the porch to the mailbox, it was like her parents were together.

— Devika Kumar, XI

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Car Love

He feels her wide hips, running his finger down her sides. As he goes down, she gets wider before tapering off at the ends. He loves doing this, and it will only be a matter of time before things are perfect: he just needs an ignition, something to spark things up. For now though, she looks stunning. The only problem is she’s got a great engine, but she’s stuck in first gear. He loves her anyway and he wants to hang around with her all night, but he has business to attend to. He opens up the door from the garage and saunters into the kitchen. His briefcase is heavy and he feels liberated just dropping it on the floor by the kitchen island. His wife’s feet come lightly treading down the wooden staircase from their bedroom, every step she takes produces a sweet thud against the old mahogany. On cue, three steps before she reaches the ground floor, her left foot catches the creaky floorboard like it always does. He unbuttons his shirt and loosens his tie. He is finally home and it is dark out; for the most part his day is complete and he is happy to be home with his wife. It is because of this that he cannot comprehend the furrow in his wife’s brow or the rigidness of her movement.

She has to be thinking of something, her mind is weighing her down and she is somehow incapable of gliding across the kitchen floor, stylishly removing the meatloaf out of the oven in her usual grandiose fashion.

On most nights she slides without friction along the wooden floor, and like a ballerina, she strings together the motions of her cooking with grace, a sort of dance quality but seamless and beautiful. Tonight, though, she is rigid, her body tight with anxiety. She cannot seem to move freely. She appears shackled by invisible cuffs and it displeases him greatly to see his wife in such a state.

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It almost equally displeases him to not get to enjoy her usual languid grace, which he is so accustomed to seeing after his long days at work.

She presents the meatloaf to him and sits down without much flair or pizazz. Her actions tonight are far more utilitarian in nature; she grabs a small plate indicating that she will be eating a salad tonight and not joining him in the unity of meatloaf—he always prefers when they eat the same dish—likes the cohesion and he feels both upset and suspicious without it. She sits down.

“What’s wrong honey? Are you not hungry?”

“No, not particularly.”

She pauses and gulps, afraid of going any further.

“It’s just that I think we need to talk.”

Oh boy, here we go again, he thinks. He fidgets in his seat a bit, wishing that he didn’t really know what this talk would be about—but it’s plainly obvious to anyone who knows either him or his wife. Yesterday, for instance, his wife got her hair done, at the same salon, LaMeche, that she has been going to for ages, and as one would imagine she has become quite friendly with the hairdressers. It is a very common scene: she sits in the chair, her hairdresser pushing her fingers though his wife’s hair as she sits there reading a two-month old copy of Vogue or some other tabloid until his name comes up.

“How’s David doing...”

He, on the other hand, is across town at his job in the break room. Thumbing through a copy of Car Craft, brushing up on the perfect technique for applying Bondo to go along with the 500 horsepower Hemi crate motor he’s looking to drop in the car.

“How’s the car coming, Davey?” a coworker asks as he refills his coffee mug.

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“Well, it’s going great. I just gotta fix the AC fluid leak and buff out the left rear quarter panel and the she will be ready for the spring!” It’s with that that a smile begins to crack on either side of his mouth. Every time he thinks about that car, he smiles. Every day on the long drive home he sits behind the wheel of his little Ford, the car he has nicknamed his “daily” and fantasizes about working on his prized possession, the 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda that sits in his garage.

“David!” his wife shouts sternly from across the table.

“Even now you are stuck thinking about that car, even when I am trying to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry dear it’s just...”

“It’s just nothing, Dave. I am really fed up to here. It’s like you married that car. You spend so much time in the garage, Dave, I barely get to see you as is and can’t you imagine how it feels, to be in second place to a damn car!”

“Firstly, I have not been spending much time at all in that garage. If I have been spending even as much time as you suggest, the car would already be good to go for the spring.”

“Yeah Dave. Well, I’ll be right back. You just sit tight, okay.”

She runs upstairs, but this time her feet pound on the old mahogany steps and the sound reverberates through the house in a crescendo of crashing sounds. He sits picking at his meatloaf, wondering where his wife is going.

In maybe half a minute, she reappears across the table with a small composition book.

“Here, read this....” She slides the book across the sanded table and he opens it. It’s a list of dates and times.

“Dave, this is a log I’ve been keeping. Every day for the past week when and how long you spent in the garage.

You spent five hours just on Saturday.”

“See that’s the difference between us! I don’t log how many hours you spend reading those damn tabloids. I know that you always longed for Hollywood, but you were just another “actress” working as a Stewarts car hop when we met.”

“You don’t understand, Dave, it’s...”

”No! You don’t understand,” he says rising from his seat.

“I’m going for a drive.”

“Fine! We can’t have you around here anyway. All you do is ruin this pleasant home.”

“We? What do you mean we, who else is here?”

“The baby, Dave. I’m pregnant.”

Dave swallows the remaining meatloaf whole, chugs a tall glass of water and swiftly heads through the kitchen door into the garage, slamming the door behind him. Dave hits the switch on the garage and the door slowly creeps up. Nearly running into the car, he plops down on the aging leather seat. Fumbling with the keys, he finally manages to twist the ignition and the powerful Hemi engine roars to life. The whole house shakes, and proud of himself and his handy-work, Dave rolls a tentative smile. The car rolls down the driveway and into the street. He shifts into first, releases the clutch and buries the pedal into the floor. The car lurches forwards before taking off like a rocket and sending Dave speedily into the cold night.

He tunes the optional AM/FM radio to his favorite classic-rock station and Steve Miller’s “Keep On Rockin Me Baby” plays. He begins to hum and sway from side to side. There is no one else on the road, no new cars to ruin the continuity of his 70’s dream. The faint dashboard light illuminates his face and his eyes gaze far off into the distance. He thinks of days gone by, when continued on next page

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he and Jennifer were kids hanging around and going to the Drive-In, that time when he shut up Joe Acker who kept bragging about his Camaro being the fastest thing in town and when he took Jenny to the quarry to go skinny dipping for the first time on that summer night so long ago. Now though, his hair is gray and the ‘Cuda’s lime green paint has flaked away revealing the gray primer underneath. The two of them grew old together and he just can’t eliminate the car from his life and his memories. His kid will carry on the tradition. His son will take the car to prom and...

“What if I have a daughter?” he suddenly wonders aloud. He had not considered this as a possibility. He needs to talk to Jenny. He pulls the car over, steering into an old asphalt lot and retrieves his phone. He dials up his wife and waits. One ring, no answer. Two rings, no answer. Three rings, no answer. Then after a fourth, the message comes.

He hangs up and tries again. One ring, no answer. Two, then three, and so on. No answer.

Dejected, he drives home, slowly nudging the accelerator with his big toe. He drives with a mellow sadness and the loud roar of the speeding ‘Cuda has become a deep and steady murmur. Dave looks at himself in the rearview mirror and reaches to turn it around. He can’t face seeing himself and what he’s done.

As he drives, he sees mile-high trees on other side of the road. Oh how they have grown since back in the day.

He sees the clearing where the quarry is, but he just keeps on driving. Had Jenny only picked up the phone, she would have heard his wild youthful offer to take a trip to the quarry that night. He doesn’t know what came over him, and looking back, knows that would have been a ridiculous thing to say. He just keeps driving.

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He clears the forest and approaches the town, passes the Walmart, where the A&P and the ACME Hardware once were. He cruises further into town and past the Stewarts where he and Jenny met. At last he reaches the subdivisions. Sprawling houses with white picket fences, each one a variation of the last. The only thing separating them is the number on the mailbox.

Dave signals at house number 62 and pulls into the garage. He turns the key, silencing the loud engine, and closes the garage door. He sits in the car, in the darkness, looking straight ahead through the windshield at his tool chest and wishes he had never bought it, that he didn’t care about fixing this car, or spending time in the garage. He is not quite sure of himself.

“I do this because I want the memory to live on?” he wonders out loud.

“No, I do this because I love Jenny? No, I do this because I love the car and damn, it that’s sad! I do this because I can’t be ‘half a man with half a van.’”

Dave opens the door and steps out of the car. He quietly tiptoes upstairs so as not to wake his wife and enters his room and quietly changes into his pajamas. He pads ever so slowly from his closet to the bed as Jenny lies sleeping, not sprawled out but curled up on her side of the bed.

“Why couldn’t I be that selfless?” he thinks.

“I would take over the whole mattress if given the chance,” he thinks to himself. He turns away from the bed, not wanting to risk waking her, sneaks away to the guest room, and plops down into bed. He tosses and turns, thinking about the car, the baby, and his wife. The hours tick by. Twelve. One. Two. Three. At best he can muster a half our of sleep at a time. He sleeps in bursts and waits until five o’ clock.

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At five he slowly peels away the covers his sweaty body.

He knows a shower will wake her, and he can’t bring himself to do that. He walks into the bathroom, shaves and towels off the sweat before putting on a suit. Deep down he knows that he won’t be going to work today. He skips breakfast and heads to the garage. He refrains from from touching his tools but runs his index finger down the side of the ‘Cuda. This time it feels colder, more metallic. He reenters the house and exits the kitchen door to avoid any excess noise. The weather outside is gloomy. The winter’s cold is biting, and the sky is deep and dark. He saunters from the kitchen door to the Ford Taurus in the driveway, hunching for cover from the weather.

He turns the key, blasts the heat, and looks at his reflection in the windshield. He undoes his tie, unbuttons his shirt, reverses away from his house, and creeps down the street.

This time the winter sun shines bright on the road and light comes through the trees, beckoning him towards the quarry.

Dave cruises the narrow road lined by the trees, his eyes straight ahead, half in a daze. His right foot hovers gently on the accelerator and the V-6 whirs. Dave looks on and it is not until Rick Derringer comes on the radio that realizes how far he has driven.

“Rock and roll hoochie koo

Lordy mama light my fuse...”

Dave’s spine quickly straightens and he reaches for the dial. He yanks it hard into the off position. Listening to that stuff in the Taurus is always a bummer, but more importantly, it reminds him of his wife. And he doesn’t want to think about her. Not until he arrives at the quarry anyway. Low and behold, there it is. A clearing in the forest and Dave pilots the silver Taurus up the winding dirt road and into the make-shift parking lot.

He steps out of the car and into the cold. The quarry

is deserted. “Man, back in high school, even on the coldest Friday there were at least a few kids playing hookey,” he thinks. He steps out towards the ledge and hangs his legs over it, letting his feet dangle high above the water, frozen by a thick layer of ice. He flops back on the dirt, not caring about his nice expensive coat and he closes his eyes. His brow furrows and his eyes shut tighter.

“Man, I can’t get rid of the car,” he says half in his head and half out loud. “I know I’ve been spending a damn long time in that garage but I can’t get rid of the car. She might get rid of me though. ahh sh--.” He tosses his arms in the air and wriggles on the ground, his eyes still shut.

“I’ll put the car in a storage unit, away from me. I’ll give it to a shop to fix, but I can’t just get rid of it. Geeze, that car should mean as much to her as it does me. I picked her up from prom in that thing, I took her to the quarry in that thing, we did all kinds of stupid stuff in that thing.”

Still lying down, Dave exhales and sees the puff of steam coming from his mouth.

“Those Friday nights driving around town in that thing, knocking over mailboxes and smoking dope, coming to the quarry for drunken blowouts on the last night of school—man, that car and I have been through a lot.”

Dave’s eyes flash open and he sits up sharp and fast.

“My kids can’t be doing that kind of stuff—how can I give them a car so synonymous with drunken debauchery?

What kind of father would I be? What if they wrecked it?

Then there go my memories. But if I sell it off, the good times are gone just the same. Jesus, I need to talk to Jenny.”

Dave picks himself up and brushes the dirt from his coat, and he saunters over to his car. A blue Ford Mustang pulls into the quarry and parks at the bottom, by the frozen water. continued on next page

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“So kids are still having fun out here,” he thinks to himself. Part of him wants to rush down and offer to buy the kids a six-pack of beer, but he knows better than that.

He buckles himself in the Taurus and drives down the dirt road.

When he reaches the bottom, he sees the two kids who just arrived. A boy and a girl. The boy looks to be older, a senior perhaps. The other looks a tad younger, a sophomore maybe. Not quite a freshman, as she looks more maturely built. The two kids stare at Dave and blush. Dave stops the car, rolls down his window, and stares ahead at the road, not making eye contact with either of the kids. He lifts his chin and opens his mouth.

“Sell that car, sell it before it’s too late, man, ‘cause if I know where things are going, I know she’s gonna ride your ass about it years later.” The young couple looks confused and Dave, knowing full well that his words had no impact, drives off.

By the time Dave pulls into the driveway it’s afternoon, 12:17 to be exact, and it has not occurred to him that his wife will wonder why he came home so early. What should he say? His coat has a thin layer of dirt on the back, his tie is off and on his shoulder, his shirt unbuttoned quite far down.

He decides he doesn’t care anymore and unabashedly opens the garage, no longer concerned about the noise. He walks inside, drops his briefcase at the door, takes off his shoes, and bounds upstairs, desperate to reach his wife and make things right. His feet crash against the wooden stairs and he arrives at the double doors to their shared bedroom. He can hear Oprah and a muffled vacuum cleaner coming from the other side of the door. Here goes nothing, he thinks and gently opens the door, falling to his knees inside the room.

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“David!”

“Hello, honey...I’m home.”

He has not quite thought about what he is going to say and his face grows a look of pure terror when his wife lays it on him thick and heavy.

“Why are you home! Dave, did you get fired? What the hell were you thinking last night? You left me all alone, you inconsiderate...”

“Honey, I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot of time to think and I know I’m wrong.”

“Dave, you don’t know sh-t! Don’t do this to me. You say this now, but I’ll give it three days and you’ll be back in the garage feeling up your ‘baby.’”

“No, you don’t understand, honey. I know I’m wrong.

I’ll sell the car, we’ll go down to the dealership together this time and pick you out a nice SUV—ya know, for when the kid comes.”

“Dave, Jesus! I can’t deal with this right now. I’m tired of hearing this crap, not to mention you should be at work. vWhat did you tell the boss?”

“Umm...I uhh didn’t...”

“Damn it, Dave! Now you screwed up. Where the hell were you all morning?”

“Umm...the quarry. I’m sorry, honey, please forgive me.”

“Ugh Dave, get outta here. I’ll talk to you later, go to work.”

“Fine, I’ll see you tonight. Maybe then you can hear me out. Maybe then you can hold a civilized conversation.”

Dave leaves the room and does his best to resist the urge to slam the door.

He heads out of the house, opening the loud garage door to signal to his wife that he’s leaving. He pulls out into the street and hits the gas, the silver Taurus cries its whirring toothbrush cry as he exits the development.

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Dave is tired. As he drives down the road, he finds it hard to stay awake, he knows he can’t go to work like this, but he figures he really should. He pulls up to the intersection, makes a left, and he’s on his way to the business park, a right and he’s going back toward the quarry. The light is red. He has a couple seconds to think.

“I can’t go back to work, it’s too late.” The light turns green and Dave punches the accelerator and makes a hard right. No way is he going to work. He will park in the quarry and sleep there until six or so. That’s the plan.

At seven thirty Dave wakes in a cold sweat in his silver Taurus. He’s still parked at the quarry. He jerks the seat into an upright position and floors it, he’s already late and time is not on his side. The car’s wheels spin and gravel kicks up behind it. The engine whirs it’s toothbrush sound and Dave rockets down the quarry road and out into the cold winter’s night.

“Okay Dave, you were working late to make up for the hours you missed. Yeah, that’s good, she’ll buy that, right.”

Somewhat settled, he slumps down in his seat and cruises on home.

Dave pulls into his driveway, exits the car, and opens the garage door. He walks past the ‘Cuda in the garage and this time does not touch it. He barely glances at it. He has bigger fish to fry. Dave reaches out for the door, opens it and is greeted by the smell of reheated meatloaf. Jenny sits on the couch across the kitchen, her legs crossed, leaning back.

“Honey, I didn’t think you would be home tonight.”

“Well, I had to make up for those extra hours I missed this morning.”

“Oh, that makes sense...”

There is a pause and neither one speaks for what seems like an eternity. Eventually, Jenny’s mouth opens.

“Listen, Dave, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and what you said this morning really means a lot. I’m sorry I was so cold and I really think that you’re trying this time.”

“I meant every word I said, honey.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you, but I know how much the car means to you. I’m not going to make you sell it.”

Dave’s mouth drops wide open: he practically needs to pick his chin up off the floor.

“What?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t do that to you, honey. I’m not going to make you get a minivan either. But when the kid comes around, we are going to need an SUV, and I’m taking you up on your offer. I’m going to accompany you to the dealership.”

“Sounds great! Now I’m hungry. Let’s dig in, I haven’t eaten all day.” Dave pauses and stares at his wife’s stomach.

She hasn’t begun to show yet, but he wants to touch the baby all the same.

“I don’t deserve too, not after last night, not after going to the quarry today, not after loving my car more than her,” Dave thinks. He doesn’t let his hand reach out, and the two of them get up off the couch and walk over to the kitchen table, on their way to finally join together in the sanctity of love and meatloaf.

— Jed Seinfeld

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“Rust Never Sleeps” by Jamie Thomas, XII: photograph

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Racing

I heard myself breathing, out of breath because I left for school at 8:01 and drove so fast that I almost hit the car in front of me and ran down from the rink and my backpack went up and down and up and down and I made it inside the school before the doors locked me out and I ran into a French teacher who started yelling at me but I kept racing, so fast that the freshman masses cleared to make a path for me and I walked into class right as the clock ticked 8:10.

I glanced at her notes and copied them. Bacon was a scientific philosopher. Lord chancellor of England. Worked for pre- Cromwell Stuart Kings. Then I thought about how I really love bacon and miss the taste but I care about animals and one time I was very hungry and I took a handful of chopped up bacon that mama was cooking and chew chew chewed and then gulp swallow gulped but then I forced myself to throw up and mama worried but I promised her it was no big deal.

I leave school after that class because the Dalai Lama is speaking. He said the well being of humanity is our own well-being, we all want to live a happy life; none of us wants to suffer. So we need a sense that we all belong to one human family. Something like that. I’m going to get a ticket since I parked in the Princeton faculty lot and I’m missing calculus and derivatives are really hard and I have to figure out what to write for that one supplement because I really don’t know why I’m a good fit for your school and I have to check everything off my list in three hours or else.

I get in to bed and start to worry about Francis Bacon because he seems important and try to forget about the Dalai Lama because I don’t have time for him even though

I know he’s important and I set my alarm and place it on top of Goldfinch, the book I am reading but not really reading because I’ve been on page three for fifty days, probably longer.

I try and close my eyes but they won’t shut. When I was running down from school this morning I think my list fell out of my backpack and I really hope it just drifted away and nobody found it but somebody might have. My heart starts to pound.

I hear a thump thump thump that isn’t my heartbeat.

It’s coming from the attic. The ghost in the rocking chair.

Every night I hear her above me, up and down and up and down. I shouldn’t be scared but I am. I haven’t brushed my teeth yet so I dash into my bathroom and shut the door and brush brush brush and then leap back into my bead and pull my covers around me.

I think of all the things I don’t know and my heart starts to beat faster and faster. What if the moon falls out of the sky and hits me and if I try really hard could I light up like a firefly and will I die tonight because my appendix is going to burst? And then I can’t think of anything else so my heart starts to pound again so I think of nothing and I concentrate on nothing nothing nothing

nothing

noth

— Niki van Manen, XII

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“Split Personality” by Emma Shainwald, XI: photograph

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Invisible Girl They count the empty spaces the cheekbones Admiring the expensive fur coats Long sleeves curled around tiny fists Pupils glassy like black ice on the ceiling or inside the runway lights Airbrushing the waxy skin, the brittle bones the pale legs and blue fingertips Ruby red lips saying no while her hands drip with gold too heavy to hold the fork Blankets and snow white sheets Inside she swims between the numbers adding them up in her sleep Cold underneath the flannel and wool past the yellow bruises, yellow arms Clutching lunch money, unused she forgets about the quarters in her pockets or the water bottles on the table or the phantom in the mirror, saying “you’re almost there.”

Wrapped in the comforter she dreams of chocolate milk and grilled cheese sandwiches ice cream sundaes and mashed potatoes of a world where the butter melts without sit-ups and the phantom in the mirror doesn’t exist.

Then the dream ends and she wakes up to mannequins and diet pills skeleton legs and x-ray arms the temptation of invisibility But she loses herself in the velvet movie theater seats each candy wrapper crinkle a symphony that she yearns to hear She reaches for the music And sees the ruby red lips saying no the phantom on the screen, saying “you’re almost there.”

—Sara Chopra, IX

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Writing on the Window You drove without your glasses, which scared me at first, so I took a sip of whatever Julia had put in my backpack, something fruity that she bought earlier from a store called “Lounge X”.

We drove fast and without speaking, the streetlights flickering orange on your skin, silhouetting you for a second while your face was still obscured by the dark shadows and the moon. At some point I realized that you reminded me of a portrait Matisse painted of his son: a face comprised of bright colors but coupled with harsh lines and a pensive face full of sorrow.

In retrospect, I must have looked crazy, tracing my finger around the leather seats, humming a Beyoncé song while the orange stained my kneecaps and hid behind the trees. I don’t remember much about the actual drive except that you were wearing a brown, oversized coat and for some reason your window was down which was strange because it was about 20 degrees outside.

Then I said something funny and you tried to hide your smile, tilting your face towards the window. I could still see your teeth, your eyes crinkling at the seams so I smiled too and you stared at me till I looked down pretending not to notice, pretending to seem occupied with my orange kneecaps and the small hole in my tights.

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You kept staring, which made me laugh a laugh I’d never heard before, so I stopped and held your hand hoping you wouldn’t notice.

An hour later we sat amongst your sister’s hockey gear in a tangle, fondling each other’s hands, asking questions we didn’t think we could ask. You stroked my hair and asked me if I was happy here, right now, with you.

And then you told me that I was beautiful and you peeled off my two arms to write our names on the car window so carefully and so sure. You wrote it and I laughed that laugh, and you didn’t turn around because you were writing on the window, “Me + You”, with a heart around the words.

And then you whispered something short, something I never heard before, something careful and gentle in that place between dreams and consciousness. With that you wrapped me in your arms. And you didn’t see me smile, but I smiled all the same because I saw the writing on the window, slipping away with each exhalation from our frozen lips.

But I just wish that I had known that you weren’t smiling then at all, because to you the writing on the window was just a doodle, nothing more.

— Lulu Nye, XII

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“Diamonds” by Alexandra Marshall, XII: photograph

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Patrick I wipe my hands against the apron and look out the window of the kitchen, watching his 8-year-old hands play with the lighter like he does every day, and I think about how he would always light Patrick’s cigarettes when we would all sit on the roof of the apartment at night and how people only saw us as flickers of light in a darkness that swallowed everything else whole. I’ve always wanted to ask him how he feels now that his dad is gone but I don’t want to push him over the edge, but maybe everything already has pushed him over the edge and maybe he’s hanging by his fingertips, screaming for me to pull him up and maybe I’m stuck in the kitchen with Patrick’s arms wrapped around my waist from behind humming anything

by Billy Joel, breathing in the smoke from the cigarette hanging between his lips. I look at my hands and realize that they’re almost bleeding because of the wiping and I call Blake in for dinner and his sneakers light up as he runs in and I want to tell him to take them off but I’ve tried so many times that there’s no point so instead we sit and I eat the chicken first and he doesn’t let his peas and carrots mix just like Patrick and I hear Billy Joel on the radio so I start to cry and he drops his fork and lights up his sneakers as he stomps away with the lighter in his hand.

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— Victoria Lach, XI

cy m b a l s 2015

Heels on a Harley Perfection is my obsession. So I need a three-hour head start. I wake up at 4 am and pat my comforter until there is not a single wrinkle or fold.

After meditating for an hour, I wash my hair and body with lavender soap and descend into the kitchen at 6:30 am for the exact same breakfast that I consume everyday – liver pâté with caviar and truffle oil imported from France.

My breakfast is accompanied by Mozart’s 5th concerto.

With every minor chord I bite into my food, and with every major I take a sip of water. The ratio of bites to sips is 3:1.

I hold my fork at a 45-degree angle, and it takes me exactly 12 minutes and 33 seconds. My long skirt follows me to the piano where I play “morning reprise” for 53 seconds. I tuck in my polo. Time for school.

My bike growls. Adrenaline rushes, tickling the dragon on my arm. Skrillex pounds. The light turns red so I look over and see a sinister grin driving a red mustang. I pull down my shades and rev. I don’t wait for the green.

As the cop is writing my speeding ticket, I show him my tattoo of a you-know-what on my you-know-where.

Then, I rip it up. Nobody can tell me what to do, not even a cop. My skin sticks to my leather jacket . And I cruise.

I lean my bike against a parked sedan at the gas station and run inside. Sausage and beer crawl up my nose. 55 cents a pint. I grab a pack of cigs and stuff it in the pocket of my ripped jeans before the guy at the counter sees.

Buzzed and lit, I hop back on my bike. Wind in my face tempts my eyes shut. Throwing my hands up in the air, I press my knees to the handlebars and let them steer.

I stomp into school, emitting a palpable swagger. The rubber soles on the bottom of my feet drag on the speckled tile and leave a dark, black mark behind my every step.

The bell rings so I walk slowly to class. I steal a freshman’s lunch money then sit all the way in the back corner of the classroom. Nap. The next bell wakes me up. Saliva drips down the corner of my cheek onto the test on my desk. Another F.

I crumple up the paper and stuff it into the depths of my backpack. Why did I fail again?

I tiptoe to the bathroom, slide off my combat boots, and walk to the sink. Several splashes of water later, the makeup drips completely off my face and exposes my skin.

My cheeks are cold and my eyes, dilated. I’m inadequate, aren’t I? A below average, low-level untouchable of the academic pyramid.

The bell rings right after we get our results from our last test. Another F. My feet ache from these heels- but since they’re fashionable, they’re worth it. A crumpled note flies onto my desk. You look cute today ;). Obviously, but I look up anyway to see who is going to hold my books for the day.

I plaster a shy look on my face and scribble back my phone number. He walks me to the guidance counselor, balancing my coffee on my stack of books in one hand and holding my purse in the other. Twirling my hair, I kiss him on the cheek and send him away.

I tiptoe into the guidance counselor’s office. It’s empty.

After sliding off my heels and rubbing my feet, I walk to the sink. Several splashes of water later, the makeup drips completely off my face and exposes my skin. My cheeks are cold and my eyes, dilated. My own pupils stare at me, carving me into a small, vulnerable piece of flesh. Why did I fail again? Why is everyone out to get me? I’m inadequate, aren’t I? A below average, low level untouchable of the academic pyramid.

The guidance counselor is cake compared to my later appointment with the doctor. My concaved shoulders droop to the ground. The ground is made of speckled tile, right, left, right, left. Plopped on the couch to ponder the meaning of my life.

“How do you feel today?”

I hate this question.

“Confused.”

— Devika Kumar, XI

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Primary and Secondary Colors

You hit the gas pedal and the car accelerates, faster, faster, and faster, like it’s egging you on in some weird way.

I glance over at the needle on the speedometer and it’s right in between 70 and 80. I’m kind of nervous, kind of scared, and kind of wish you would just slow down a little. But at the same time, I think, this is harmless teenage fun and I should be enjoying this. I’m sixteen for God’s sake. So I just sit back, and look out the window quietly, while you hold my knee in a slightly protective manner. I close my left hand over your right hand on my knee, realizing how much larger your hands really are in comparison to mine. It makes me feel like I’m a kid again, where everyone and everything is so much bigger than me. The car ducks into a two-lane tunnel, and I fix my eyes on the lights illuminating the dark concrete walls. The lights blur into a single streak because of how fast we’re going, and after a while, my mind blurs.

Soon, I get confused and everything around me swirls into a big mess for a little bit, sort of like when I was in elementary school art class, learning about primary and secondary colors and how blue and red mix to turn into purple, how blue and yellow mix to turn into green, and so on. In the second grade, I tried to mix green and yellow paint together, thinking that it would turn into blue, but it just turned into an ugly brown color that reminded me of the geese poop that I would see at the park sometimes. That’s when I learned that some things just don’t work like that. ­

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— Emily Um, XI

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“Negative Space” by Adam Gershen, XII: photograph

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Never Board

James wakes up early when he knows the tide will be high and goes into the garage and digs around the clutter of rusted beach chairs that my family uses every year when it’s cocktail hour and metal shovels that cut feet if you aren’t careful when you’re digging holes in the sand and buckets where I collect baby crabs and sometimes they die because the sun is too hot so I let them go and more beach stuff because it’s early in the summer and we haven’t taken everything out yet. James finds his surfboard and he grabs three more, one for my cousins and me, but he doesn’t make me carry mine because he’s the big cousin. I’m in charge of the towels. He’s sure to strap the boards in so they don’t fall out when we bike over to the beach across the street from the rich people houses.

We live on the bayside, which is fun when you want to jump off the end of the dock where it’s deep or catch minnows, or go tubing on the boat, but today we want waves. So we bike over to the big houses and walk up the path with the little stones that hurt because it’s still the beginning of summer and I haven’t worn my bare feet in a while and I lay down our towels far enough away from the water so they won’t get wet but close enough so when I’ve had enough waves I don’t get cold walking out.

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I grab the surfboard I called before we left because it was bluish-green and it matches the ocean and walk out to my ankles to get my feet used to the chill before I go completely under. Sometimes it’s better to just run in so it doesn’t seem so cold but not today. I put the ankle strap on because I’m not fast enough to catch the board. I’m up to my hips so I lay down on the surfboard and make sure my feet aren’t hanging off the sides because a shark could nibble on my toes.

I go to where it’s shallow and bury my feet in sand and let the waves carry me, but I don’t move because my feet are the anchors. I dig my fingers down and grab more sand.

I think this is the best way to catch sand crabs.

I grab towels. It doesn’t matter that it’s covered in sand because we’re at the beach so we wrap ourselves up. We walk down the path that hurts my feet but they were too cold to care.

— Nicole Giannotti, XI

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Sharon Ann Lane: The Universal Nurse

Stop the bleeding, clear and maintain airway, protect the wound, prevent or treat for shock. Stop the bleeding, clear and maintain airway, protect the wound, prevent or treat for shock. I peel my eyes from the floor tracked with mud and look at the clock, which reads five minutes past four—only two minutes since the last time I checked.

It feels like a lifetime since we got the call of incoming soldiers twenty minutes out. At any second, hundreds of men would come stumbling, fumbling through those monstrous metal doors—some with missing legs or severed arms, some with blood stained uniforms or tattered tee-shirts wrapped around bleeding wounds.

However, all were categorized into one of four groups: those with neither minor injuries nor requiring urgent care, the injured with less severe injuries whose transport can be delayed, the injured who could be helped by immediate transportation, and finally, the deceased who are beyond help. For many who needed immediate transport, it was their last ride to anywhere.

Eight minutes past four. Breathe—slow and steady, in and out. I watch as my chest expands and contracts with each breath. Surprisingly, these simple body movements bring me enormous comfort—I know I can count on my body to be working properly if my mind isn’t. Focus— stay focused. I close my eyes and go through the fourlifesaving steps one last time: stop the bleeding, clear and maintain airway, protect the wound, prevent or treat for shock. It almost has a little rhythm to it. As I sit on the cold, two and a half legged stool, I look around at all the other nurses sitting on misshapen chairs, swinging their legs back and forth, gripping their stomachs, rubbing their hands together. I look down at my own trembling hands and realize my lips are quivering. It’s funny how many things you don’t notice when you’re focusing on something else, something bigger. I glance at my fingers

and realize my nail beds are bleeding from picking loose hangnails—a nervous habit I was never able to shake since I was a little girl. It used to get me into a great deal of trouble back home. My mom would always nag, “Puhlease stop that awful habit of yours. You’ll pick off your entire nail bed before you ever find a husband.”

Only a year ago, my mom was all strung up about me “not being able to find a husband.” Now, all she worries about is if I come home or not. It’s funny—I’m sure she wouldn’t mind the picking anymore, not if I were there and not here.

When I told her I was leaving business school to join the U.S. Army Nurse Corps Reserves, she practically got on her hands and knees to beg me not to go. That fresh, spring morning when the sun shown just right on your skin, I had to report to Travis Air Force Base in California with orders to Vietnam. It was then that I knew she had finally given up. When I wrapped my arms around her frail, frigid body, it was as if I were hugging a corpse—a cold, lifeless corpse. She convinced herself that the next time she’d see me was in a delicate, lace dress, hands crossed over my chest, hair done up in a lovely braid with pearls fastened around my neck to match the ones hanging from my ears.

It was unsettling to know she was saying her goodbyes.

Tears well up in my eyes just thinking about it. I try to quench the burning feeling behind my eyelids, but it’s like trying to stop a waterfall from falling. She didn’t think I was coming home, how could I?

I don’t even remember seeing the doors rip open or hearing the shrilling screams of the legless as they stagger through the colossal double doors. I watch as everything blurs past me. Doctors, medics, nurses, and soldiers—they all morph into one big, unrecognizable mess. Men in camouflage cloaked in mud come rushing in like water continued on next page

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pouring through a drain. My brain throbs from all the shouting and running and wounded and recklessness.

I guess Lieutenant Kirsten was right—nothing prepares you for Nam.

“Thank you miss! Anything you need me to do, I’m Chris. And your name is—“

Standing there, feet cemented to floor, unable to move, a husky looking man bulldozes right into me.

I shove Chris out of the way to assess his friend. He lies there, shaking, wheezing, holding a dirty piece of cloth to his mouth. He takes away the cloth for a split second to catch his breath, or should I say try and catch his breath.

I notice drops of blood on the dirty threads. Damn it, he’s bleeding into his lungs.

“Hey! Watch it,” I blurt out.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry miss,” he babbles. “You gotta help my buddy. He’s right here, miss. A nurse was just here tending to him, only a minute ago. Another doctor grabbed her to help stop the bleeding of some other poor bastard. His lungs, his lungs were crushed by a cinderblock.”

He grabs me by the shoulders and screams into my face, “He can’t breath miss, he can’t breath!”

I swipe his hands off my body, shocked by his clamplike grip on my shoulders. He backs up seeing that he’s startled me. He stands there, panting, soaking in sweat.

He bends over at his waist and presses his hands into his thighs hoping to give his body some relief. Beads of sweat drip from his hairline, down the slope of his highly arched nose, and finally, over his cracked upper lip into the crevice of his mouth. You could make out the tracks of the sweat droplets from the clear streaks across his muddy face. Between heavy breathes, he takes his right hand away from his right thigh, looking as if he might collapse from the missing support, and latches onto my arm.

“Please miss,” he whispers, “you can’t let him die.”

He lifts his head towards mine—only slightly, but just enough for me to look into those glassy, red eyes. They beg me to do something, anything.

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“Move. Move I said!”

“My name doesn’t matter—my name is miss. What I need you to do is get out of my way.”

“Chris, stay there!” I yell over my shoulder as I rush toward the towering, pull out shelves where the medical tools are kept. I scan past the A’s and B’s and when I finally come to the C’s, I run my hands along every shelf until I get to the one labeled Chest Tubes. I pull out the shelf, blindly stick my hand in, and feel around for a plastic covered chest tube. When my fingers finally grasp onto the small package, I yank it from the shelf and rip open the seal on the top.

“Hurry miss! His eyes are beginning to flutter and he’s loosening his grip!”

“I’m here, I’m here. Now, what I need you to do is hold these clamps on the tray, can you do that?”

Chris scoffs, “Phh. Of course I can do that. Hell, a five year old can do that.”

I have no time for big egos.

“Now, pass me that sharp looking tool right there… yes the one that looks like a knife…but be careful it’s a lot sharper than one. Good. Now when you see me make the incision along his chest, I need you to take this here scalpel from my hand and hand me the clamps.”

cy m b a l s 2015

This time he doesn’t say anything. He just gives me a very shaky nod of the head. That’ll have to do.

I take the scalpel and lightly press it into his friend’s chest. It only needs a little pressure because it’s so sharp.

As I feel the skin break beneath the blade, I push harder and through the chest wall. I’m in.

“Hand me the clamps.”

I wait for a good five seconds and nothing happens.

“Chris, damn it, where are you?!” I scream.

As he quickly grabs the scalpel from my hand and replaces it with a clamp, he blurts out, “Here, here. I’m sorry miss. I mean that is my buddy and all. I don’t like to see him cut up like that—”

He blubbers on and on like a nervous wreck. I imagine he’ll never stop since I eventually just tune him out.

Ok—attach the vacuum pump to the chest tube. Insert the chest tube into the chest cavity. Secure the system and watch for draining blood.

“Yes!” I practically yell, “I got it! Now, if all goes correctly, we should see the blood drain from his lungs and into—”

“Into where? Miss, you didn’t say into where!” Chris screams.

“Just give it a second!” I shout back at him.

Surely enough, the red fluid begins to run through the plastic tube like blood running through a vein. A wave of relief floods my body. I loosen my grip around the clamps and release the tension in the chest—I can finally breath too.

He asks meekly, “Miss, does this mean he’s ok?”

I rest my hand on his shoulder, “You did good Chris, you did good.”

Chris’ face scrunches up into a tight ball—now he really starts bawling. With each breath, his whole body shakes and it feels like an earthquake. He raises his grimy hands to cover his face, trying to “be a man” and all, but the tears keep rolling down.

Through all the snot and tears, he finally gets out, “Henry thanks you so much. That’s his name, Henry. He’s the sweetest guy you’ll ever meet, he really is—that’s why he’s my best buddy. You saved his life today, miss. I don’t know what I would’ve done without him. Thank you so much miss, miss—“

“Sharon,” I answer proudly as I roll my shoulders back and stand up tall, “Sharon Ann Lane.”

One month short of her 26th birthday, Sharon Ann Lane died from a shrapnel wound when the 312th Evacuation Hospital was hit by rockets June 8th, 1969. First Lieutenant Lane was the only American servicewoman killed as a direct result of enemy fire during the war. She was awarded the following medals: the Purple Heart, the Bronze Medal, the National Order of Vietnam Medal, and the (South) Vietnamese Service Cross. Patients regarded Lane with a great deal of love and affection. She is remembered today as a kind of universal nurse, the nurse they can thank for her efforts to not only treat patients’ physical wounds, but also mend their emotional ones.

— Tess Gecha, XI

A single drop of water squeezes out of the corner of Chris’ eye.

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What’s wrong with me?

1.

“Uhh, hisorryexcuseme. I’ve actually already had my yearly checkup. I’m here for a SICK visit.”

“Uh huh, yup ok. Recite the letters on the bottom row.”

“X-H-Y-K-W-E-Q-K-A-H no wait sorry B-A-H. I cough. For emphasis.

“Let’s test your hearing.”

She scribbles things on my chart. Her shoelaces are untied.

“It says you were in for a checkup last month!

“Uh.” “Just going to check your temperature and have a look inside those ears.

“Ok.” “The doctor should be here shortly! ” “Uh. Thanks.”

2.

When I go to the lab for testing there’s a brown haired boy in the waiting room. He’s whistling. Loudly. He stops. For a second.

“Hey” “Uhh. Hi.” “What’s wrong with you?”

In between each word he manages to squeeze in a whistle.

I cough to avoid speaking. He’s whistling Happy Birthday.

The nurses take him to get his blood drawn. And he’s still whistling. Loudly.

3.

Then he seizes. The door is wide open so I watch the whole thing. His body shakes and shakes and shakes and I shut my eyes because it seems like it will never stop. Then it does.

The nurse brings him some apple juice.

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4.

The next week I’m brushing my teeth and I discover a gross only-see-this-on-medical-tv-shows rash on my tongue.

“Mom: show me your tongue.”

“Uhhhahhh.”

We go to the bathroom and compare.

“That’s not normal. Put that away. I’ll call the doctor.”

5.

I go to practice. The sun is hot. Soon my body is covered with red bumps. I want apple juice.

“Hey Nik, you alright?”

“Uh..yup!”

6.

I drive to the doctor’s office again.

“Allergic reaction to the medication. Very common.”

“Ohh.” Let’s do bloodwork. To be sure.”

“Ok.” In the waiting room I see the brown-haired boy. He’s wearing the same striped neon Nike shirt.

“Hey, you again!”

7.

Then he whistles. The nurse calls my name before his and she puts the needle in my vein. When I wake my eyes are woozy but I notice my nurses jungle print scrubs are on backwards.

8.

“Looks like you fainted huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you been in for a checkup recently?”

— Niki van Manen, XII

cy m b a l s 2015

“Evolution” by Anna Williams, XII: acrylic paint and collage

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“Construction of Physical Texture” by Shana Levine, X: architecture

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“Color War” by Touria Salvati, X: photograph

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“Out of the Fire and into the Frying Pan” by Jamie Thomas, XII: photograph

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cy m b a l s 2015

Go Juice Gone Crazy Ban the beans, man. Ban the Joe like the Mary and the Coke. Cuz when that clock reads 5AM and you only have two words on your Word document, sh-t starts hitting the fan. You start to see things floating around, and your heavy head hangs limp from your useless neck. Bricks on your eyelids and spine weak like jelly, you look for that steaming cup of cappuccino. 10-20 mins. BAM. Juices start running through your body and you jolt upright and your mind churns into overdrive. You laugh now at your Superman abilities, but you miss the incoming Kryptonite. Few hours pass and you enter the state of: “I feel so sh-tty that I can just melt onto the ground and become one with the Earth.”

Every night, you make a choice, and it’s usually quite simple and it’s either

A) Hit the sack and pray for a snow day.

B) Switch outta your pajamas and get a few toothpicks for your eyelids cuz it’s going to be a long night

C) Scoop out the rest of that horrible tasting Nestle Insta Coffee into a cup and pour in some hot water and gulp

Picking A and B are no good cuz neither gets you that A that you need to make honor roll, but just maybe, that medicinal tasting cup of Joe might give you some needed inspiration to crank out that essay. Next morning though, when it hits, it’s like a heavy log smashing into your face on its way down the Niagara Falls.

First you lose your patience, your tolerance to sunlight, then your limbs twitch outta control, and lastly, you lose your position as an Alpha while your guard is down.

But in the Qniverse, that’s gotta be like #1: Never let your guard down. Or you might just wake up on a flat disc orbiting the Qniverse to Q’s Fifth Symphony: Laughter Psychotico.

— Jacky Sun, XI

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“Intramural” by Ashley Abrams, XI: photograph

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“Old Friends” by Spencer Wilkins, X: photograph

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“Disembodied” by Sarah Parks, XII: acrylic on canvas

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“Red and the Black” by Alexandra Marshall, XII: acrylic on canvas

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“Inside Out” by Eris Gee, XI: paint and ink

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“Cnidaria” by Catarina Montenegro, XII: photograph

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“Lost My Heart” by Catarina Montenegro, XII: photograph

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Metropolitan Mess Suddenly the gallery doesn’t seem so large anymore and all I can see is your face in every paint stroke every photograph every mark on the scuffed-up floor And suddenly it has been a year and the only sounds I hear are the ambulances racing to your house racing to the hospital a few hours too late a few weeks too late a few years too late And suddenly I’m in the middle of the park surrounded by people but without anyone without you and the skyscrapers are closing in and the freezing air is shoving itself down my throat but I’m overheating and all I want is you.

— Kathleen Crowell, XII

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Growing Back Dad found my favorite hair tie underneath the counter Placed it in my hands with a clink And asked me if I remembered Curling pallid fingers around painted flowers I nodded The years of clacking coming back The rhythm as I ran Across tinted leaves that crunched Into shattered pieces A wafer breaking into layers As the day melted into vanilla cream When the hours were crisp and time was clear Until minutes passed between closed gates And Mom tells me that people hold secrets That there are things I can’t know I want to know them Dad buttons his shirt like always Says he made his train twice this week The dog greets us slowly Sleeps often

I call my absent sister Tell her I miss the sound of her voice Look to my growing brother Tell him I miss the look of his undone face Leave voicemails on Grandpa’s phone Tell him I miss the feel of his laughter That bubbled up between the creases of eyes I don’t wait for him to pick up I tell him that We’re grown And the roof doesn’t fit this house right I tell him how much years change us How midnight giggles evaporate How little voices grow deep How we fall And stand without knowing if hands will catch us I tell him that we get up I tell him that we grow up And start to know of secrets — Chloe Berger, XI

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“Multiple Nudes� by Morgan Mills, XI: acrylic paint, rubber stamp and stencil

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“Construction of a Concept” by Noah Liao, X: architecture

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Give me an exoskeleton

Reasons why Rome fell

If I were to be a Katydid I would be born to the buds When the sheets of the world are washed And pink precipice on noses shift from side to side My toes would dip across grass Rain would dilute the green Of my face My feet are tied to rubber soles I’m trying to change with the seasons Winter takes time To recover from It’s March, you say It’s time to get over the sadness My jacket lies on top of my skin You try to peel me like an orange Take my layers off And let a body like mine crumble Into pulp splayed cross the corners of teeth Trying to rip into the core of A sweet world Everyone’s filling up with sun Watching with brows furrowed As I’m not growing petals And I’m still cold Hardened snow in the corners of my lips Cheeks swollen with mouthfuls of frost Put blankets and mittens and cover me with wool I can’t breathe in blue skies

The golden light had flowed through the gaps in their hands Leaving traces, like memories Scars like palaces Large and magnificent Father would wear his failure with pride Wear it under his shirt beside his cross He would blame one of the Caesars Grumbling at the dinner table Exhaling stories of music He stands tall like a Corinthian pillar His face cool and smooth Hard as marble He speaks of forgotten glory Buried tremors of excellence Run ragged to the ground The Gladiators whose metal has rusted over The tired spears that bent with the wind It took time For the stones to break People stood and watched as the cracks Let rain into the buildings They tried to glue it all back together Put it on their backs like Atlas But their bodies caved in And the sun sank in despair As Rome became a ruin before it’s eyes ­— Chloe Berger, XI

­— Chloe Berger, XI

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cy m b a l s 2015

The Rocks We Jump My Brother knows everything. So he led the way. Down the steep trail, a mile and a half. I was wearing the wrong shoes, he wasn’t. He was shirtless, I had no shorts on, my legs felt every bush and branch. His didn’t. He wore his towel around his shoulders and arms like a snake. I wore my towel on one of my shoulders, but it kept falling. So I wore my towel around my shoulders and arms like a snake.

We passed by openings where walkers are meant to stop and take a breath, or a picture, or a nap. But we didn’t stop to take a breath, or a picture, or a nap. Because we were in the mountains of Spain, could see the ocean, and were going to the rocks.

He had found the rocks the morning after the fight with Cece broke. The night before, she told him things that weren’t true. He had believed her. Not because he wanted to. He didn’t know the things she told him weren’t true. No one could find him the rest of the night or morning. But I knew where he was. He’d been scouting the rocks since we got there.

The rocks weren’t complex, just randomly stacked, paused in mid-crumble. He loves the simple things, lines that make a building, the smell of cigars, the sound of an upstate lake. I love the simple things he loves.

His legs stepped down fast and strategically, but looked effortless. His legs are longer than mine, only because he’s taller than me. He’s 6’2, I’m 5’8. and 1/2. In a second, his legs were able to judge every root, rock, or broken log and decide if they were stable enough for his weight, once deciding he would step down. He never fell. I fell once.

I could smell the salt and hear the waves. I couldn’t see the waves because of the trees. Neither could he. He was

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telling me about the fight between him and Cece. His tone dropped and he sounded fragile. He’s never fragile. He told me he came to rocks, down the steep trail, a mile and a half, and cried. I told him she didn’t mean it.

“Sisters can be mean, and crazy. And you don’t cry.

Remember?” I told him that.

I made jokes about alcohol.

He laughed.

His tone bounced back.

We saw the rocks.

We slid down a muddy steeper hill off the trail and landed in small pools in the rocks, filled with left over warm water from high tide. I took my shoes and shirt off and put my towel next to his. The rocks were rough and not meant for walkers. The rocks hurt my feet. They hurt his feet. He walked to the edge and put his toes off the rocks.

He smiled. I didn’t smile. There was a 4 foot drop when the waves hit the rocks, and then a 9 foot drop when they pulled back. The waves were loud. They seemed stronger than me.

They seemed stronger than him.

“Jump when the waves hit!”

He stood up straight but howled like our dog does, laughed, and jumped.

I couldn’t see him, just the wake he made. Then he came bobbing up and flipped his hair smiling and barking still. I didn’t want to jump. I couldn’t hear him. He signaled me with his hands up. I stood and looked out towards him.

Closed my eyes and jumped. ­­— Carly King, XII

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“The Stranger” by Becca Biros, X: photograph

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CVS Part I

They took three bottles of champagne from behind the bar and walked outside, it was too dark to even see each other’s faces so he grabbed her waist in his right hand and held two bottles of the Krug Brut in his left, heading her towards the only light in the darkness, the flickering CVS sign across the street.

She leaned against him because there was nothing else to lean against and his right shoulder was warm and he seemed like he would lead her in the right direction. They walked into the CVS shh’ing each other and made their way to the small bathroom in the back with white lights that reminded Denise of hospitals. They talked between sips, Patrick had a lot of questions.

“Have you ever been married?” he took a big gulp.

“No.” “Do you want to get married?” another big gulp.

“Do I have another choice?”

“You could not get married.”

“And I suppose I could not have kids either.”

“Who said you have to have kids?” he set aside the bottle and looked at Denise who had one eye closed and was looking into the top of her bottle with the other, the bottle was dark and the liquid on the inside created a sort of gold glare that reminded her of the stars painted on the ceiling of her room when she was a kid.

“No one says those kinds of things, they’re just assumed, they happen naturally; people get married, they have kids, they get old.”

“I hope you realize that that’s not how it works,” he

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loosened his tie and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. She looked at his body against the tile walls of the bathroom and realized that he didn’t look like he belonged there, his dark skin contrasted with the white lights in a way that made her have to squint her eyes if she thought about it for too long.

“I want to have kids.”

“Do you want to get married?”

“Yes.” “We could live in the city, get a nice apartment and then when our infants become toddlers we can move into a small neighborhood in the suburbs,” he waved his hands and painted a picture of what their life would look like while laughing because he knew it would never happen. Denise closed her eyes and imagined kids running around a front yard, a girl with Patrick’s hooked nose, and a boy with her washed out blonde hair. He interrupted her thinking, “We should get back soon if you want to see Kate throw the bouquet. Hey maybe you’ll even catch it!” He stood up before she could answer, and held her by the waist since she was struggling to stand up. Denise pulled up her gown and carried the ends of it so that it wouldn’t drag, Patrick held the door open for her.

Part III

Denise tapped her fingers to the beat of Simon and Garfunkel’s If I Could on her steering wheel. She pulled into the CVS parking lot and looked at the sticky note stuck onto the front side of her wallet, 2 bags of ice, 1 bag of cough drops. It was mid June, and she stepped out of the car and pulled a pair flip flops from the passenger seat, throwing them on the ground and wiggling into them.

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A big refrigerator lined the right side of aisle 1 so she decided to get the ice first and then make her way down the other aisles. A shiver went down her spine when the freezing air came out from behind the door that she swung open. She grabbed two bags, and stacked them atop each other, laying them across her forearms. Walking around the corner from the first aisle to the second, she heard a raspy, familiar laugh. Her jaw and the ice dropped simultaneously. She bent down to pick up the first bag and saw from the corner of her eye that that manly hands were already picking up the second bag. Standing up slowly, she prayed that it would be anybody else. She looked up and her eyes fell right into Patricks’, Patrick whose beard was gone, who had lost a good amount of weight and was wearing an old Abaco Bay tee shirt he had gotten when they took a trip to the Bahamas.

“Denise..”

“Patrick!” she unsurely took a few steps towards him and wrapped her right arm around his neck, feeling his right hand against her waist. She took a few extra steps back, “How are you? How long has it even been? Two, three years?”

“Two and a half.”

She stopped thinking about Patrick right after he had left her. They had spent months trying remedies, pills, to get Denise pregnant, but in the end they were both exhausted and nothing was working and Patrick couldn’t be with someone who couldn’t give him the life he always wanted.

Feeling herself getting anxious, she spun her wedding ring with her index finger and pinky, trying to come up with questions to make the encounter less silent, but Patrick got to it before she did, “Ice?”

“Ice? Oh, ice, right, yes well I um….my…my husband just got a promotion. He works at that office building, the one on States Avenue, you remember that street don’t you? It was always on your way to the dentist!”

“I remember.”

“Right…so we’re having the family get together for a little celebration, Dave did everything we just needed ice… for the coolers.”

“When did you get married?”

She looked at her ring when she answered, “Six months ago.” Patrick handed the bag of ice he was holding to Denise, who stacked them up on her forearms again.

“I should get going, ice, it melts. It was great seeing you Patrick, really, great.”

She heard from people in town that Patrick never got married, that he started drinking more and lived alone.

She walked to the cash register, smiled at the cashier, forgetting all about the cough drops.

After putting her bags into the trunk of her car, she closed it and leaned against it, squinting from the sun, but staring in the direction of the country club across from the CVS where her and Patrick had met. She and Dave had visited seven countries over the past year and were planned to visit eight more, something she would never have time for were she to have had kids. The sun set slowly and she got back into her car, happy to be going back to her small suburban home with three dogs running around the front yard, happy to have Dave, who had given her the life she never knew she wanted.

— Victoria Lach, XI

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“Charger” by Ziad Ahmed, X: 3D printing with solar panels

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cy m b a l s 2015

Santa

On a Wednesday afternoon in mid December, you take the four train back home from your cubicle on the corner of West and Murray. Three years out of Yale and you’re still just making coffee for the hotshots in the corner offices.

Things could be worse, though. After all, you’re beginning to make your way up the corporate ladder, and Goldman Sachs is already paying you well over six figures, while many others in the city are working twice as hard and not even getting paid half as much. The screech of the train as it slows to a stop jolts you back to reality.

When you file off the subway and up on to the sidewalk, you are overwhelmed by the smell of hot cocoa and the bitterness of the winter breeze as it whips against your cheeks. You’re a little over a block from your apartment building, when one of those Salvation Army Santa Clauses starts ringing his bell and asking for donations. You don’t usually give money to solicitors on the street, but today was payday, and Christmas is right around the corner, so you think, “What the hell?” and drop a few bucks into the tin bucket covered in chipped red paint.

You look up from the bucket and can’t help but stare at this Santa for a few awkward seconds. Although he is happily obese, dons a snow white beard that takes up most of his face, and wears a suit of red velvet, there is something off about him that you can’t quite wrap your head around. Something strangely familiar. Even though you have never seen this man, you feel like you know him.

Your eyes go out of focus for a while trying to make sense of the unsettling feeling that has swept over you. Santa’s presence seems to give off a spark that ignites a previously extinguished flame of hatred inside of you and causes both your body and your brain to go numb.

As you rub your eyes to try to escape from this feeling that has manifested itself inside of you, Santa’s face starts to change its shape. His soft, white beard disappears and gives way to a thin layer of stubble that clings to a once chiseled jawline that is now surrounded by the swollen

fat of his neck. A bead of sweat works its way down your temple as your head begins to spin at the sight of this inexplicable metamorphosis. His velvet suit fades into a loose-fitting tweed jacket and a worn out pair of corduroy pants, and his curly, powdered wig that lies beneath his pompom hat falls off his head to reveal a well-oiled scalp that is littered with patches of light brown hairs.

You shut your eyes tight, hoping to block out the image that is coming together piece by piece. But, it’s no use. Just as you close your eyes, your other senses are attacked relentlessly by this still unidentifiable image. A strong scent, seemingly a combination of aftershave and a teenager’s tacky cologne, rises up into your nostrils and down into your mouth until you can taste the tang on your tongue. A soft voice tickles your ears as its warm breath thaws your face in the December air. After a while, you decide to reopen your eyes in hopes that you will find this was all a bad dream and you are still on the four train on your way home from work.

But, this is no hallucination. You adjust to the light and, in doing so, you can’t help but notice a perverse twinkle radiating from the face in front of you. You slowly work your eyes up his figure, revisiting each grotesque feature that has taken over Santa’s body. Then, all of a sudden, your eyes meet his and something in your head shifts.

It happens in an instant. Just like that, the Salvation Army Santa Claus is lying unconscious on the sidewalk before you. Immediately after he goes down, the tightness in your chest goes slack, and the fragmented image dissipates as you are left standing awkwardly over Santa’s bruised body. As a crowd starts to gather around the scene, you massage your sore, chafed knuckles and leave another few bucks in the Salvation Army’s tin bucket before you hurriedly slip away to continue on home.

Still seeing your fifth grade science teacher and feeling his fingers crawling along the tender part of your inner thigh as you fade back in to the darkness of the dusk.

— David Bialow, XII

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Felonies

Faucet Water.

I glance, down, at my wet feet.

And I think about how you run.

Like a faucet: nowhere.

— Victoria Lach, XI

Sometimes, I think about last week’s, best friend, and repeat her name so many times, the syllables sound in com pat i ble to her smile

which f a l l s away by pieces, like, a jigsaw cartoon, her name, seeming unlike a name, a face, I wouldn’t recognize, even in a line up .

— Victoria Lach, XI

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“Anthro” by Abby Ling, X: charcoal drawing

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This is a Meditation K Ok Okay Ok• Okra Oprah Oprah Orpah Orca Sea World Animal Abuse Animal Testing Standardized testing SATs Saturday mornings The View from Saturday The View Room with a view Dirty room Dormitory Dormant volcanoes “Young Volcanoes” Young and reckless Sonic Youth Youth XL XXL Football

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American football American Girl Dolls Girl, Interrupted Teenage girl Teenage romance Romance novels Young adult novels Adultery A The Scarlet Letter American literature Literature The Fault in Our Stars Okay Ok K — Sara Chopra, IX

cy m b a l s 2015

Mt. Rainier

I hunkered down in the warmth of my sleeping bag, listening to the wind scream lonely notes to the crags above. Often, I glanced out through a tiny hole in the plywood, only to see light clouds drift across the horizon.

Every time was a little darker than before. My ice axe and helmet hung from a rusty old nail. My gloves slept next to me, and the rest of my gear waited in my pack while I listened to the wind groan in and out of peaks below.

“Wake up time” rolled in like the weather. My heart beat fast and steady like the wind, and my hands shook like the hut as I piled layer upon layer of clothing onto my body.

I searched for my footing on the uneven frosted rocks, and sat eating instant oatmeal, with my rope team. Over the clink of my spoon and bowl was the constant clicking of crampons, along with faint whispers of team members running through their checklists. I roped myself in, and listened to my guide, Leah.

With my ice axe facing uphill, ready to self-arrest if needed, one step slaved after the other as we zigzagged, one switchback after another. I kept my head straightforward, each step taking me closer to the summit, my mind unable to wrap itself around the height and size of glaciers and peaks thousands of feet below. I focused on mimicking Leah, each step strong and patient, digging deep into the ice, and followed by a cold deep breath as her chest expanded.

The chill in the wind, and the intimidation of the climb was enough to keep a constant flow of adrenaline coursing through my body. At each checkpoint our group grew thinner than the one before. As I climbed higher, my lungs searched for oxygen, and I glanced backward, watching the string of headlamps fade into the night as they descended.

Snow fell dry and light. I pulled my gaiter over my chapped mouth and nose, holding my ice axe tightly while snowflakes rode the wind to my goggles. Each crevice, a different width and height, seemed to moan as I slowly crossed each depression. Some glowed icy blue against the beaten snow like huge glow sticks.

When we reached the summit at sunrise, I dropped my pack to the ground, and lay on it, gathering what breath I could. The pounding in my chest faded slowly. There were no crevices to plummet down, cliffs to slip off, or strong winds to blow me away. In my mind, I erupted with cheers amongst the other climbers.

I glanced out the window of the plane like I had through the little hole in the plywood, and saw the dry, thin clouds roll over Mt. Rainier one last time. I closed my eyes and heard the roar of the wind, tasting the instant oatmeal as it slid to my stomach. I felt the loneliness, fill with a comforting independence as I put my head back and fell asleep.

— Mason Ward, XII

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The Sketch

The Clockwork Garden

The lines fall roughly into place and start to thread my fears into the page in black Dispersing rage and joy through sketchy art.

She spends the night in the arms of the moon caressed by his light As the clockwork garden turns and turns with her dancing feet on every hour.

The head a set of circles set apart connected by a ramp down to the back The lines fall roughly into place and start To fill the body, fleshing out the parts But I don’t have to use a single track Expressing rage and joy through sketchy art.

The motion spins in shadows from the heart that lies untouched between the many cracks.

The lines fall roughly into place and start To find a form with edges sharp and smart.

I stream my soul though ink and find my tack Dispersing rage and joy through sketchy art.

Remember then that you don’t need to chart the perfect course to make a piece that packs a punch. But let the lines fall now and start Releasing rage and joy through sketchy art.

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— Sarah Parks, XII

In the darkness her lover cradles her and turns her face away from the stars, singing “Tell me the story about how the sun loved the moon.”

And the woman in his arms sighs, turning pale like a doll or a peaceful Juliet, asleep until dawn’s breath.

The ground beneath their bodies hums rolling gears in the clockwork garden They nod awake as the blue bells shake and her lover is gone.

In the darkness of the empty dawn she rises and waves farewell to the sinking horizon “Tell me the story about how the sun loved the moon,” whispers through the stars like fire.

— Sara Chopra, IX

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“Chess Board” by Luke Franzoni, IX: woodworking and 3D printing (mixed media)

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Memories of Camp (A Pantoum)

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I know a place Where happiness dwells in the wood; It floats through the air In its homey mustiness.

At the rough-hewn dinner table, we lay out a board and hand-cut cards.

On the right, next to the window, I am sitting and laughing at a corny joke.

Happiness dwells in the wood Of our little cottage.

Its homey mustiness Is like a hug from an old friend.

We play out a board game with hand-cut cards, New Hampshire outside the window.

I am sitting and laughing at a corny joke and I fall onto my sister’s shoulder.

Our little cottage Sits on the lake, where we Get hugs from our old friends And stick our toes in the sand.

New Hampshire outside the window flies by, my memories fresh.

I fall onto my sister’s shoulder Sleepily, and smile.

Sitting by the lake, we eat grapes and read books.

Sand sticks to our toes when we walk barefoot back up the steps.

My fresh memories fly by, floating through the air.

Sleepily, I smile: I know that place.

I eat grapes and read a book at the rough-hewn dinner table, My bare feet resting from their walk.

I sit on the right, next to the window.

— Sarah Parks, XII

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“Picnic” by Jamie Thomas, XII: photograph

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cy m b a l s 2015

The Typical Unusual

Harper talks really fast. Faster than centipede legs bouncing up, gliding across my basement floor. Her speed of talking fits well with her piece. It astonishes me how many thoughts rush through my mind each day, and I still can’t remember half of them.

Doughnut people? Oh, that’s me. I look at Adam’s evil picture then wonder what it would be like if our whole bodies were doughnuts. We’d have to roll everywhere and we would leave tracks of cinnamon sugar. Or we could have stubby arms and legs similar to Plankton’s. (Spongebob)

Oscar paints himself.

While Ritvik is talking, he fires his pen cap across the room. Paul kindly recovers it, but throws it back just as fast, right at Jacky. Luckily, Jacky has the cougar reflexes and snags the pen cap mid-air. Q asks, “Can you catch bullets?”

Jacky laughs, but we know.

Oscar’s face matches that of a baby’s right when it is about to start crying, silent, but scary; when he finds out he signed up for a conference on the wrong day.

Q is talking, but then can’t remember the name of a student so I revert my attention back to the reader then we hear “NAVIN!” attention back to Q.

Oscar masterpiece? Thick black pen on his arm, “Mudblood.”

Oscar breaks into a “Did you know?” fact and Q concludes his informative session with, “We’ll be back for more Oscar facts after these messages.”

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Before I present I take out my retainer so I don’t “embarrath mythelf”. I do anyway, because I realize that everything that I thought worked, was all in my head. Q mentions a poetry class he was in and how he would share something and no one would get it, but he would think, “Are they stupid?” The difference: “Am I stupid?”

I see Q’s computer camera covered because he doesn’t want any outsider receiving the experience of English class without him knowing. But little does he know the stuffed animal cow on top of the bookshelf spies on us.

Grenade in Q’s white shelves, within his reach, just in case for the occasional alien. Door opens. Boom.

— Chris Chai, XI

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Hawaiian Fried Rice I looked at you nervously rub your left temple, trying to forget about question eleven on the test you had taken and that’s when I knew in a few months you wouldn’t understand me anymore.

I was sitting in your bed, counting the creases in the sheets while you washed your face. I chose the left side of the bed, because I remembered that you once told me how as a child you thought someone bad was going to come through the door, and even though you told me that you didn’t believe that anymore, I knew that you still slept on the right side.

And I often wondered why I came to your house so frequently. Like you it was chilly, neat, but uptight in the perfect flower arrangements and black and white furniture, but you were my only true friend. And although you filled my days and nights with worry, you understood the deep sadness of being overlooked, and shared my frustration in living our sheltered lives free of rebellion.

But as the months went on, you didn’t see what was happening to me, you didn’t see that I was changing. I think a part of you didn’t want to see it.

I was eating the popcorn you had put in your microwave, but I remembered that you hadn’t eaten much of your fried rice at dinner, even though you were excited about it all day at school, because you knew it would taste good on a Friday night, after your International Relations test. You didn’t eat it, but instead grieved over the fact that you didn’t have a boyfriend and hadn’t been kissed since May 2012.

The water in the sink was running and I ate another kernel from the bottom of the bowl and hoped that I was wrong about it all, but as you rubbed your temple, that’s when I knew for sure. That’s when I knew it was my last time on the left side of your bed, awaiting your sharp whispers of frustration. That’s when I knew it was the last time you would know me.

You were hungry now though and I remembered that so I didn’t eat much of the popcorn, just two pieces plus a kernel from the bottom of the bowl.

— Lulu Nye, XII

You had SAT and ACT books piled high on your desk.

Most of the time they reminded you to share your crammed thoughts and words of stressful self doubt with me, hoping for some reassurance, some mutual despair.

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Still Something The yoga lady with stone abs says to hum “Om” three times. Cross-legged, open palms, lights out. Clear mind, think of nothing, but think of your breathing, do nothing, but do your breathing, empty your conscience, don’t think, but let thoughts wander, think about everything until everything becomes nothing, be mindful of nothing.

Which is something.

I’ll never do nothing. If I’m doing nothing, I’m really thinking about doing nothing, and thinking is not nothing, not at all. Don’t think about nothing, because an idle mind is the Devil’s playground, said my superstitious Italian great-grandma, who my sister and I used to visit in the nursing home and fight over the soft blue chair in her room.

Thinking about nothing forces the mind into dark places it shouldn’t go and I stew and stew until I’m convinced that I’ll have an aneurism when I’m alone and no one will find me or feed my dog for days.

I can’t be alone with my nothing thoughts, so I cram my brain with silly thoughts. On the second “Om” I don’t find peace like the yoga lady with the abs wants. I calculate I’ll buy 3 pairs of leggings with my birthday money. Or I think about eating the store-bought guacamole in the fridge that tastes so good probably because of all the added salt.

Something kind of smart enters my brain, like what would Aristotle say about thinking nothing when the whole point of the human psyche is to reason. I’ll forget to write it down.

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The yoga lady says to take my peace with me throughout my day and I pretend to nod and believe her. Nothingness can’t give you peace because nothingness can never solve anything. A massage might feel nice but it won’t get you in to college or teach your piano fingers a concerto, and later you’ll feel the minutes speeding up when all you want is to collapse face down into sleep and the knot in your neck will come back anyway.

In two minutes of meditation I’ve figured everything out.

Doing nothing is like fixing a symptom and postponing a cure. Pure nothingness, useless. Do nothing, bad grade.

Do nothing, no friends. Do nothing, no feeling, just dusty floors and unfolded laundry and empty reality TV. End the day staring up at the flat white ceiling at 12:43 a.m. too awake from doing all that nothing. I don’t drift into the third Om, because I hear treadmills and imaginary phone buzzing and telepathically check my email. Who wants to be idle? Zen is boring. I’m calm enough now, anyway.

Really, I’m probably fine. Don’t I sound fine?

— Caroline Lippman, XII

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My Two Cents I dig through the stiff leather zippered pouch, with too-fat fingers for too-small coins. And almost give up because the man behind me is already taking out his card and ordering coffee over my head. Four dollars and sixtyseven cents for my chai latte and cinnamon scone from behind the glass-cased display.

Ignoring one. One floating in the bottom of my bag with no pockets or side compartments. Quintessential-shinyclassic copper. Sheltered and ignored. In chemistry last week I read that copper oxidizes when it makes contact with air. How long would it have to sit outside my purse before turning green like the Statue of Liberty?

The copper is shiny, like it hasn’t been used before.

Sequestered in the depths of the bag, the pink one my mom doesn’t like because it has no pockets to compartmentalize phone-wallet-keys-lipgloss-glasses. Everything inside is pooled in a central jumble, colliding like gas particles in a pressure cooker. I leave the penny there.

Even the parking meters don’t accept pennies. They swallow them for 0 minutes like empty calories.

Worthless. Grandpa says to save a penny is to earn a penny, but I can’t buy anything with a cent. They, whoever they are, shouldn’t make pennies anymore.

But I should pick it up. Open my red leather wallet with all the bills lined up and presidents facing the same way, and zip it into the bulging pouch. It shouldn’t hide in the bottom of the bag, alone and shiny and cold. In the stuffed wallet it could at least share body heat with all those dull dirty worn coins I never use. Unless, like today, I try to pay with exact change.

But I still save one in the bottom of my bag and say thanks to the cashier and hand him a five dollar bill instead.

— Caroline Lippman, XII

The cashier waits and I mumble sorry. He shrugs and says take my time but I don’t think the man in line agrees. Two quarters, two nickels. Sixty cents in my palm and I count out six pennies.

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November First The police ran the license plate number and it came back clean. The neighbor called them when she saw the black sedan in the street in front of her house. Tonight I learned that her name is Kathleen. She lives next to me, she has a son who rides a red scooter around the cul-de-sac and a big floppy dog the color of hazelnuts. There’s a small greenhouse east of her kitchen window with a glass wall that slopes down into the earth, and maybe she was in the greenhouse watering her toad lilies when she saw the black sedan and called the police who ran the license plate number that came back clean. I scratch at the edge of my desk with the tip of my mechanical pencil, leaving .5-mm wide indentations in the oaky wood.

If someone were plotting a high-tier, worthy-of-time-insolitary crime they would not use a car with an inculpating license plate. The ones who go around egging front doors or the stealing sprinkler heads won’t think about it. But this guy knows what he’s doing. Waited until the father goes off to Ohio with his leather briefcase and the mother’s visiting cousins in Hackensack. Empty garage. Clean license plate.

The driver was a well-prepared serial murderer, and his black sedan is in the street outside my house.

The paper skulls that hang over my desk have acquired ironic smiles. They looked nice for Halloween but now I want to run them through my father’s paper shredder but they were a gift so I let them smirk. I crumple up my physics homework and bounce my heels against the floor

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until my dog starts barking at invisible intruders. Maybe not invisible. Because the police left and they’re looking for the driver, who is probably a drunk who forgot where he parked but could very likely be a serial murderer. He could be lurking in my pantry, poised and ready for whenever I go looking for pretzels. He could be picking apart the walls, brick by brick, like a big game of Jenga, so that when I open the door in the morning the skeleton of my house will come down and bury me. Maybe he’ll make a human-sized rabbit trap to hang over my bed. I get up to double-check the window locks, covered in cream-colored paint that makes me nauseous.

I leave every light on until the moment I am sitting on my bed, tucking up my feet so they don’t dangle down by the dark underneath. The black sedan is still sitting in the street. The lights in the greenhouse are out. I go through another nighttime round. Walk downstairs to check that the alarm is on. Walk back upstairs, pivot at the top step, and check one more time because maybe it said ‘Alarm off’ and I just forgot. All of the cords unplugged so they will not cause a fire. I empty my backpack onto the floor and repack it. And I recheck the flimsy girlish useless window locks.

I leave the lights on as I lie face-up with my hands folded and close my eyes, but the light shines through my lids. An origami-paper house, easily unfoldable. The police said the license plate number came back clean.

— Meghan Wilmott, XI

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“Pyramid Dreams” by Emma Shainwald, X: charcoal drawing

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If your arms were strong enough

Soliloquy 1

The wind blew the dust off the earth’s face Blew bones off backs Hung heads of men Who shiver as they hear the clack Of beauty that fell out of hands Of mothers that look like children Who dream of promises With money under their pillows There are wrinkles in this city Grey hairs over buildings We’re trying to pluck them out Face against the mirror With the desperation of Mother’s curls That slip from her fingers She looks with eyes the darkest shade of a lost blue Watches her flowers wilt Her boa shed feathers Until it is only rope Wrapped across her neck Shrunken into herself Her feet left the ground Her face lifted No longer a crumpled napkin of folds on skin Her mouth no longer pulled back like strings on puppets Her eyes absolved She had risen

Oh! How life treads upon the soul, In an effort to improve And exceed expectations above all else To impress those who have yet to teach me.

And to think! That I, simply one man, So burnt by exhaustion of labor, Ostensibly masked by the appearance of a Half-assed bumbling fool!

A child yet still! Must carry upon my Back, the very foundation of society As well as all the centuries of exploration and experimentation so vast, It’s as if all the ill troubles That seek to accost the mortal being, Have on me, laid down to the fullest of its extent The weight of a thousand minds!

Like wretched monsters, of sorts A treacherous test of mental skill Robbing me of the very time we all hold so dear.

But it’s a trap in the circle of life.

If I don’t suffer now then I surely shall later, But if I face the terrors of anguish and anxiety Then perhaps after years of effort, I might, Be at peace.

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— Chloe Berger, XI

— Gil Levitan, X

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Lies I am confident. I have friends. I am loved.

I feel comfortable in my own skin.

I don’t care what other people think of me.

I am a nice person. I tell the truth.

I am Intelligent.

I am liked.

I am a moral Human Being

I am sane. I don’t need help. People care about me.

I am actually good, at anything.

I deserve to live I don’t possess hatred. I’m not a hypocrite. I’m funny.

I’m healthy. I am happy. I have a good personality. I am likable.

I know what I am talking about. I am well versed. I am a hard worker.

I know how to love. I love myself. I can be myself. I don’t want my father in my life.

I don’t need him.

He means nothing to me. I don’t need to be afraid of him. I don’t hate him for lying.

I don’t hate his nepotism. I don’t need closure.

I don’t hate him for what he did.

I feel justified in my feelings about him.

I’m done thinking about him.

We all make mistakes.

I know who I am.

I can fall asleep at night. I can happily fall asleep at night. I have no regrets.

Tomorrow will be a better day. I’ll wake up happy.

All I have to do is close my eyes.

Forever.

— Cameron Smith, X

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“Road Not Taken” by Adam Gershen, XII: photograph

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Here I am, Look at me My hips sway to the mezzo forte tune, My toes tap as the melody crescendos The spotlight wavers on the black stage, As I blend in with the midnight backdrop At the fermata we give great pause, Like a slave to his master The drone of the baby-grand bass brings us to our rhythm, Like a lion stalk, stalk, stalking his prey The balloon-lunged independent trumpet plays a concerto, Like a white man trumping the streets of Harlem Adagio to allegro, we quicken in haste, Integrating onto the dining room floor, Here, we all morph into one, Black bodies swinging through tuxedoed elites, High hops and insured ladies

When the piece comes to a point of dissonance, the band rallies together, While we tap, move, and shake towards the perfect chord Avoiding a clinker The ritardando brings a slowing pace, At the coda my hands dance to the final beat Da capo, da capo, And how, Tomorrow it shall repeat This cycle of prejudice, smoothly and softly, crescendoing with ease, like black fingers on ivory keys This is me, Here I am

— Jacquelyn Hart, XI

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Stuffy

Ancient relatives stroke my cheeks and second cousins ask about school, and grandchildren past bedtime crawl around waitresses’ feet. Family friends I don’t recognize claim I look like an adult, and ask if I remember that they knit me a scarf when I was four.

My father offers me a glass of champagne, and as I socialize the room gets fuzzy and warm from the traffic of slow-moving relatives blocking open space between tables.

My grandmother puts her arm around my waist like she always does and steers me through the crowded room. And I see my grandfather looking at a picture across the swarm of clinking glasses and polite kisses on the cheek, so I smile and small talk my way back through the maze. Yes…college is exciting…thank you…no, I’m not sure what I will study…how are you?

I make it back to the picture on the easel. They were so young that her face looks airbrushed and his hair is thick dark black, the way my dad’s was when I was little. I’m staring at those two pairs of deep brown eyes, and my three-year-old cousin toddles over.

He outstretches his chubby hand and knocks down the picture, so I put it back up and he knocks it down again. A game. So he giggles and I pick him up but put him down when I remember about his ear infection in both ears. He vanishes into a cluster of posed cousins looking at three different cameras.

With the picture straightened on the pedestal I survey the room of people chatting and gossiping and filling up on appetizers. Two people, and their brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews, and three children of their own, and me, and six more grandchildren after that, and maybe one more if my mother and I are right about that aunt. The room feels tiny, but maybe it’s just full. My uncle starts to toast and my grandparents hold hands and anyone can see that after half a century, the two teenagers still want what they wanted when they were 18. They met when they were my age, summer camp counselors who met at a weekend social and fell in love and planned a wedding for December where she wore her mother’s dress. I ask my dad permission for another glass of champagne.

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— Caroline Lippman, XII

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“MLK” by Rebecca Kuzmitz, IX: pencil drawing

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Sand Trapped

The Keurig machine finishes crapping out French vanilla. I swipe my Lake Placid mug off the linoleum counter, and let my fifth cup of coffee pass my lips. I sigh, then gulp. Rinse and repeat.

My cubicle is decorated with a pile of rolled-up balls of paper in the corner beside the tin trash bin. My sports fanatic kid brother gave me a plastic basketball hoop to rest above the heap of trash, and take some shots. But even at 11:00pm, the bin is empty.

Sip.

But coffee gives me cotton mouth — so I chase it by finishing off a 2-liter black cherry seltzer water, and toss it at the hoop. Miss. I’ll make a note of that.

I spin in my chair. One loop — twice — thrice. My vision clears, that’s when I notice a motivation poster in the cubicle next door. It tells me to hang in there, and maybe that meant something back in ’87, ‘cause it’s just like the movie poster of that dude dangling from a clock in ‘Safety Last!’

Sigh. Sip. Spin.

11:17 — nice! It’s Powerbar Time! I peel of the peanut butter cliff bar’s skin and toss the wrapper at the hoop. Miss.

Now my printer is jammed. My boss keeps the only printer from this decade in his office, cause he’s obsessive, and threatens to burst a vein from beneath his forehead every time he misplaces even a stack of business cards. He has a deviated septum, reads GQ, and practices putting in his office. But really I only see him when he’s checking out my frayed pants or breathing down my neck if he’s planning on laying someone off. The rest of the time he’s in his office with his assistant, Debbie, who’s 13 years younger. She always has questions for him about working the printer, but after a while she goes back to work, and his wife brings him lunch after yoga.

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I type Command P, then select: BQG_Printeri2698.

So there I am knocking on his door even though I see it’s dark, and know he left at 6. I walk in, grab the documents from the printer, and spot a bottle of whiskey that rolled under his filing cabinet. I snag a paper cup from a stack next to his Brita filter, and begin to help myself.

I spill, then trip and knock his brass name plaque off his desk. Richard “Dick” Wheston Jr. — CEO.

Little Dick’s whiskey tastes like gasoline — too bad.

I cough up fire, and my bladder tightens against the coffee, and seltzer, and Powerbar: dinner for the late night working man. Wow, I gotta go.

The handicapped bathroom is the closest to me. I’m pretending the carpet is molten lava, and I can only hop from stain to stain. The bathroom is dirtier than Harold and Kumar’s, but gives me more stains to jump to. Miss. Yikes, there goes my leg.

I’m back at my desk crunching numbers for Dick, making spreadsheets of BS. The Excel page is covered in statistics of subscription rates to a magazine in East Asia.

Dick wants to play golf with me Sunday. All right, if I let him win by another eight strokes again, I could be an editor in three years — two if I compliment his technique.

That, or I could just quit. I’d choose the latter if it promised me a job that could just pay for new pair of slacks or loafers – preferably not from Old Navy, where they come with a free bottle opener or carabiner.

Last time we went out on the green at the Bentley Acres Club, Dick harassed the management about new members wearing two button polos. I don’t know when golf became the sport of choice for middle-aged suits. Some guys have a stick up their ass, but Dick has an entire set of clubs. Maybe a caddy too.

— Austin Phares, XI

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“Pretzel Logic” by Helen Healey, XI: photograph

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“Double Vision” by Ashley Abrams, XI: photograph

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The End An out-of-focus outline of you towered over me as I listened to your voice asking me what I wanted and I didn’t understand why everything I said seemed foreign to you. I thought back to when we first met and you told me that your mom had an obsession with cleaning out halfway melted candles because that’s what they did in Rennes, France, where you were from, which I thought was funny at the time. You told me that life was short and I shouldn’t be sad all the time but then I thought about how life is the longest thing that any of us can do and I concluded that your wisdom was more like indifference. You asked how I knew this was the end, and I told you I knew because I loved the memories more than the shadowy silhouette of what was right in front of me, then I went home and cleaned out all of my half-melted candles.

— Victoria Lach, XI

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CYMBALS STAFF

CONTRIBUTORS Ashley Abrams, XI 38, 78 Ziad Ahmed, X 54 Chloe Berger, XI 46, 49, 49, 70 David Bialow, XII 55 Becca Biros, X 51 Chris Chai, XI 64 Sara Chopra, IX 21, 58, 60 Kathleen Crowell, XII 45 Peri Feldstein, XII cover Luke Franzoni, IX 61 Diego Garcia, IX 2 Tess Gecha, XI 29 Eris Gee, XI 42 Adam Gershen, XII 72 Nicole Giannotti, XI 28 Coby Gibson, X 7 Jacquelyn Hart, XI 73 Helen Healey, XI 77 Ritvik Khandelwal, XI 8 Carly King, XII 50 Devika Kumar, XI 11, 25 Rebecca Kuzmitz, IX 75 Victoria Lach, XI 24, 52, 56, 79 Shana Levine, X 34

Gil Levitan, X 70 Noah Liao, X 48 Abby Ling, X 57 Caroline Lippman, XII 66, 67, 74 Alexandra Marshall, XII 23, 41 Morgan Mills, XI 47 Catarina Montenegro, XII 43, 44 Lulu Nye, XII 22, 65 Minori Parelkar, X 6 Sarah Parks, XII 40, 60, 62 Austin Phares, XI 76 Touria Salvati, X 35 Jed Seinfeld, XI 12 Emma Shainwald, XI 20, 69 Cameron Smith, X 71 Jacky Sun, XI 37 Jamie Thomas, XII 18, 36, 63 Emily Um, XI 26 Niki van Manen, XII 19, 32 Mason Ward, XII 59 Anna Williams, XII 33 Spencer Wilkins, X 39 Meghan Wilmott, XI 68 anonymous 10

On the cover: “Steel and Stilettos” by Peri Feldstein, XII: photograph

Sophia Bae, IX Annie Batterman, XII Chloe Berger, XI Sara Chopra, IX Nia Daids, XII Sanjana Dugar, IX Hadeel Eltayeb, IX Hallie Hoffman, IX Michelle Leung, IX Shana Levine, X Julia Marshall, X Erin Murray, XII Minori Parelkar, X Emily Simons, X Katie Simons, X Dani Stevens, XII Niki Van Manen, XII Spencer Wilkins, X

Faculty Advisors Jamie McCulloch Karen Latham

cymbals is printed on 50% post-consumer recycled paper

cymbals seeks to reduce its impact on the environment as much as possible, printing the magazine on 50% post-consumer recycled paper. While the editors considered using 100% post-consumer recycled paper, we felt that the artwork would not be showcased in the way that it deserves. The color process is CMYK. The cover is printed on 80# Endurance gloss cover stock with a protective UV coating. Paper stock for inside pages is 50% Recycled Roland Opaque 70lb. cymbals title is set in Avant Garde book, text is 10 pt. Times New Roman, and captions are 8.5 pt. Helvetica. The cost of each magazine this year was financed entirely by its annual budget. We printed 350 copies at a cost of $9.00 per copy.

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