page 3 /1 opinion / the 6, harbinger issue / september 2005
Knowing Esmie
Esmie changes from a best friend into a stranger an opinion of katie jones It was odd when the friend who I had always wanted to be was reduced to a headline in the newspaper. The girl who I could have philosophical discussions about life and religion and everything else with suddenly starts talking like a seven-year-old. She disassociated herself from everyone. Her eyes are dead. Her posture slack. It was weird when the next thing I knew, Esmie was strapped down and locked up. She used to be the most beautiful, intelligent girl you ever saw. Now she’s that girl who stabbed her mom. But that’s not her--not to me. The two of us and our other two best friends met in kindergarten and somehow we stayed close through middle and high school. We’ve enjoyed way too many strolls and allnighters and concerts and birthday parties to stop believing in her, even after she was charged with her mother’s murder a little over a month ago. The girl all over the news isn’t the same girl I once knew, but that doesn’t change how I feel about one of my best friends in the whole wide world. The whole situation has been extremely surreal since the night it happened. The first Friday of the school year and I’m watching some movie. People running around, being loud. Cell phone rings. Esmie supposedly hurt someone. A second later we’re crowded around the computer. Some movie is still playing. I find it funny that time didn’t stop. I read the article on the screen a dozen times and every time I read it I was shocked it still said the same thing. A teenage girl was accused of stabbing and killing her mother, Shu Yi Zhang. A picture of Esmie’s house was beside the article. Those new housing developments all look the same, but I could tell it was her second story window seat. When bad things happen most people start blaming it on themselves, and I was no different. I started thinking of every time I could have done something to change what happened. I didn’t invite her to my 5th grade birthday party because we were mad at each other. I forgot to tell her she could stay at my house if living at home got too unbearable. Instead I just let things happen. I shouldn’t have. I am a bad person.
LANCER voice nora salle - 9
“I think Roberts will have a very negative effect on us, because no on e appointed by Bush could be good for us.”
Stories from the
inside:
What it’s like to be grounded for the first time an opinion of ben whitsitt
Katie and Esmie: Best friends Esmie Tseng and Katie Jones attend a birthday party together. But a few days later when I read her first letter, she didn’t sound too abnormal. It snapped me back into reality and I realized that nothing was my fault. This is just an obstacle in our friendship, I thought. I blocked out all the words I kept hearing over again: snapped, stabbed, crazy, poor girl, murder, murder, murder. This was a false hope. When my friend’s mom Nancy Mallett went to visit her, I knew it wasn’t just an obstacle. The change inside and in her appearance was disheartening. When Nancy visited her, they stapled a band around Esmie’s wrist. No hugs allowed. If they hugged, Nancy could slip her something. Security gaurds watched their every move in the little white room. Nancy tried to make a joke, but Esmie didn’t laugh. The old Esmie would have laughed. The new Esmie just said, “That’s not funny.” Her expression was blank. Recently Esmie has gained more rights at the Juvenile Detention Center. She’s able to socialize with other people her own age and go to classes. She has also been allowed to listen to her music again. While this is encouraging, I know it will be a while before we can exchange words. It’s strange, knowing I’ll probably never pull another all-nighter with her again in my life. We’ll never play pinball over the phone again. Maybe we’ll never ever tell a joke with our eyes. No more philosophical discussions. It’s like missing a ghost.
I could rationalize all I want to, think positive and put it out of my mind, but being grounded is terrible. I recently had an epiphany about being grounded my second term of grounding ended. My epiphany was that having to sit at home sucks and parents should stay out of my business. Of course, since the big bang, parents have always been known to meddle in the affairs of their kids and make their lives miserable. This I knew, but what I did not know was that parents aren’t stupid. I was under the impression that all parents are oblivious to everything that involves fun. My dad tapes documentaries on KCPT about how dragons from 1011 A.D. could’ve destroyed the human race with one fowl breath of fire. But at the end of the documentary they figure out that dragons never existed. Wow, pretty sweet. Nevertheless, my dad gets 90 percent of his life’s entertainment out of it and gets the notion that I should be excited about dragons too. So who can blame me for thinking that he has no idea about what I do for entertainment? Being wrong hurts. It also leads to unpleasant periods of time that I have to sit at home and watch the nature channel because I gave false information to my parents about my whereabouts and what I was doing over the weekend. They found out about where I really was and to put it bluntly, I was screwed. When my parents and I had a little meeting about my altercation, they acted like they were prosecutors during the Watergate scandal. My day of reckoning, in other words, turned into a three-hour trial. They threw so many questions at me that I wasn’t prepared for and so many thoughts ran through my mind. My mom was trying to send me through the guilt trip but I kept zoning out and her words seemed to have no meaning to me. When she finished with the trip, which was very long and arduous, the two interrogators expected me to answer their questions honestly. Here comes another epiphany. I realized that lying involves risk but telling the truth just leads to merciless punishment. So I lied and tried to make myself look innocent by placing the blame on someone else. To my surprise the parents soaked in all the bull I threw at them and I thought I got away with a pretty good deal, two weeks grounding. I have never been grounded before so I didn’t really know what to do with all the time that was on my hands. Some people would’ve done their homework and that thought did run through my mind. Every time it did run through mind though, it ran out as quickly as the thought entered. Instead of doing homework I decided to feel sorry for myself and watch all 80 channels I have on the TV. Two weeks seemed like a year and when I was finally free, I told myself I would never get grounded again. Because we all know that being grounded in Johnson County is so terrible, it’s like being in prison, and I also like to whine.
Do you think the appointing of new supreme court justices, like Roberts, will effect you? rachel clarke - 10 “There are only two open seats anyway; two new justices won’t be enough to influence decisions.”
victor karpov - 11 “The fact that he is a younger man is good, because our generation relates to him more easily.”
kyle westphal - 12 “It will effect our generation somewhat, but I believe it will affect the generation after us much more.”