Teen Ink magazine - April/May 2022

April/May 2022

Follow us on Social Media

By teens, for teens

Poetry & Art Contest Winners Announced!

Teen Health Educator of the Year Awards!

Did your teacher make the list?

C

Artwork by Sophie Hao, Parkton, MD

Contents

April/May 2022 | Volume 36 | Issue 5

www.teenink.com

OnTheCover 18Teen Jobs

• Working for People • Teaching in Mundelein • Applying Oneself

22Educator of the Year

• Mrs. Amy Finn • Mrs. Carol Ulibarri • Mr. David Wagner • Mr. Cody Smith • Ms. Tyler Davis • Mrs. Nancy McFarlin

Artwork by Daniela Martinez, Altamonte Springs, FL

5Teen Ink News

• Contests & Call for Submissions

6Memoirs

• Printed in Black Ink • Kidney Stones • Picking Vegetables

10 Health Focus • • • •

Cutting Carbs How Are the Children?

The Expander Demonizing Addicts

• Mr. Gustavo Chaviano

28 Points of View

• Netflix, I'm Begging You…

32Sports

• The Comeback • Hard-Won Love

36 Travel & Culture • Ecuador, Te Amo • Amalfi Hike • The Ghosts of Gondar

42Book Reviews • Paper Towns

• The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks

Follow us on Social Media

45Movie & TV Reviews • Encanto

• Lie to Me • Nightmare Alley

48 Music Reviews • "Low" by David Bowie

• "Ultraviolence" by Lana Del Rey • "Saturate Before Using" by Jackson Browne • "Folklore" by Taylor Swift

52Amazing Teens • Ainsley Costello

54 Video Game Reviews • Battle Brothers

• NieR: Automata

56 Fiction

• The Time Lord • Ms. Perfect

60 Poetry

• Free verse, haiku, sonnets, & more

Art Galleries

• Photography, watercolors, charcoal, oil paintings, & more • "Where Do Your See Love" Art Contest — page 30

Editor

Letter from the

How Do We Look?

Dear Teen Ink Readers, Out with the old, in with the new! You might have noticed a new look on our website and magazine, but I can assure you, it’s still the same, great Teen Ink. After 33 years of publishing teen voices from around the world, we wanted to modernize and put out a new look for this publication that better reflected teens in 2022.

In this issue, we are focusing on teen jobs and health. As the school year comes to an end, you may be thinking of finding a summer job to make use of your free time and earn some money. We’ve picked out stories from teens hard at work in their jobs, as well as those who are just starting out in the application process. Perhaps these stories will help you feel not so alone in what is such a big step toward adulthood.

The insights don’t stop there, though. In our health section, we hear about the benefits of athletics, the dangers of dieting culture, and the sheer fatigue and stress that comes with being a teenager in this day and age. We hope that you’ll be able to relate, learn and recognize the importance of keeping your mind, body and soul healthy.

Please enjoy the April/May issue of Teen Ink magazine, and be sure to pay some special attention to the Educator of the Year contest page!

(Was your teacher nominated this year?) Additionally, let us know how you feel about our rebrand at editor@teenink.com!

Sincerely,

The Teen Ink Team 4

t im b u S

Click Here to Submit Your Work

Your

Work

Enter our Contests!

Cover Art Contest Submit your photo or artwork for a chance to appear on the cover of Teen Ink magazine! All art submissions are eligble.

Winners receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card!

Click Here to Enter!

We Also

Need:

• Travel Stories and Photos

• Video Game Reviews

• Book Reviews

• Stories About Finding Your Identity

• Stories About Visiting Colleges or the College Submission Process

• Movie Reviews • Music Reviews

5

MEMOIRS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Artwork by Ella Snyder, Winter Springs, FL

Black Ink

by Madison Cossaboom, Newark, DE

T

hrough the storm of shrill screaming and uproarious laughter, I drove my hands into my backpack and pulled out a gray folder. Carefully opening the folds, I scanned paper after paper in search of a crisp, stapled packet. My balance, along with my thoughts, began to falter as the school bus continued to make abrupt stops and jagged turns left and right. I slipped the packet out of the folder’s grasp and handed it to my friend. With that simple exchange, I traded my life’s work for anxiety and anguish.

My heart, soul, and passion were printed on a mere 14 pages in fine, black ink. Mentally, I was building walls of stone and brick to surround my fragile spirit in protection. If it were to be crushed at this moment, it would be irreparable.

I followed the movement of my friends’ nimble eyes reading word for word, breezing through each line. As page after page was turned, the only thing my mind could truly focus on was interpreting her expressions. Sometimes her eyebrows lifted, or her jaw would dwindle lightly. With each modest change of character, my desire to view her imagination grew evermore.

Academically, I was often praised for my ability to craft and write essays above expectations. However, what my friend held in her hand wasn’t proofread or edited. It was an undiluted, raw story – perhaps the purest example of my writing yet. I practically handed her a piece of glass and hoped that she wouldn’t shatter it.

A tsunami of dread was almost guaranteed to crash over my heart as she flipped over to the last page. It was as if, perfectly timed to that precise moment, the bus suddenly became hushed and the jerking ceased. My friend peered up from the papers and her mouth simply gaped at me, whether in awe or discontent shock.

My eyes met with hers and awaited her feedback, but no words were exchanged. Her expression might as well have been written in an incomprehensible language. Only two sheer words were just enough to impair the silence and tension that was intertwined with

6

My heart, soul, and passion were printed on a mere 14 pages in fine, black ink the space between us.

“Read this,” she murmured to a girl sitting behind me, passing the packet further from my embrace. Once more, I filed into the waiting room for my own story, anticipating the results that were my friends’ opinions.

The story was tossed around the backend of the vehicle like a game of hot potato. Each sheet of paper had lost its brisk sense, now on the verge of crumbling and tearing. It was an utter reflection of my own certainty. Like the ocean, it swayed back and forth without end. I allowed myself to take one deep breath, then confront the possible mayhem my writing may have stirred.

If I ever saw a shooting star, I would wish upon it to have a documented film of every word, every phrase, every minuscule detail my friends gushed. The vexing wave that once towered just above my heart disintegrated into butterflies that now fluttered around in my stomach.

Opposed to giving me harsh criticism, they applauded me. They filled the air around them with nothing except empowering and elating comments. If my heart was an unscathed match, they transformed it into a blazing bonfire of determination. Amongst themselves, they talked about my work as if it were an awardwinning novel.

As I stepped off the bus I could no longer hear the ear-piercing shrieks or the wailing of kids on the bus, only the praise and cheers of my ever-growing writing ambition.

MEMOIRS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Photo by Maggie Chen, Brentwood, TN

Kidney

Stones

by Marina Matson, Racine, WI

M

y grandma, an engineer and Russian native, was the most hardworking, persistent, driven, and goal-oriented person that I have ever met. She was the first female engineer in a big factory in Russia. She designed blueprints for an airline railroad in the Republic of Georgia and created many apartment building designs. I knew her as someone who always had a saying or quote for every situation. One of my favorites was this: “в нормальных семьях по наследству передают драгоценные камни, а в нашей - только почечные.” Or, “In normal families, precious stones are passed down, but in ours – only kidney stones.”

Because people usually develop kidney stones between 35 to 40 years of age, I haven’t quite received my inheritance yet.

But, is it possible that I truly inherited nothing from her beside the right genes to house kidney stones?

To get through blockades in life takes resilience, and that is something that I have inherited from my grandmother.

To be presented with an obstacle, work through it, and still not lose passion and joy for life is hard. But reminding myself of how my grandmother pushed through her struggles motivates me to continue. One day, after making the necessary revisions on an apartment design, a two-by-four was dropped on her head from the top of

I felt lost. I didn't know who I was.

'Who am I without tennis?' I asked myself a 20-story building, causing severe brain damage. But still, she defied her doctor’s predictions, got back on her feet in two months, and returned to work in three.

Even though such a physically and mentally traumatizing event has never happened to me, it would be false to say that my various paths of life have been without blockades. For eight years I played tennis.

Of course, since I started when I was five, it was just for fun. But by nine, I decided I wanted tennis to be more than a hobby, so I worked harder than I had previously, and eventually, I was ready for my first tournament. The thrill of calling “out!” and the feeling of the fresh ball against my strings sent adrenaline and dopamine to my brain. I emerged from that event with a trophy: first place in the consolation bracket! I knew I wanted to try again, to try to get an award in the main bracket. I started competing and practicing more and more until, eventually, I had collegiate-level

dreams. And, according to my coaches at the time, those dreams were completely within reach.

However, like my grandmother, when my game started to reach new levels, disaster struck. However, my disaster didn't identify as a two-by-four. It goes by a different name; Snapping Hip Syndrome. Like the Joker, Snapping Hip Syndrome has an evil best friend – hypermobility syndrome.

My doctor said that if I continued to play tennis, I would be in a wheelchair before I was legally allowed to vote. I felt lost. I didn't know who I was. "Who am I without tennis?" I asked myself.

Then, like my grandmother, I started healing. Not only physically, but also mentally. I realized I had made tennis my identity, and without that, I felt empty.

So I decided to change that. I pursued many new activities to rediscover who I am. Through that process, I tried to use my inherited strength, determination, and drive from my grandmother to power through the hard times when I missed the feeling of my racket striking a moving ball.

But I found new feelings that drive me; the clickity-clack of my keyboard as I conjure stories and books, and smooth swish of the bottom of my heels as I waltz across the floor, and above all, the electric buzzing in my brain as I finish a book in the early hours of the morning.

7

MEMOIRS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Vegetables

by Grant Yang, Scarsdale, NY

Artwork by Connor Brown, Ulster, PA

8

MEMOIRS | APRIL/MAY 2022

A

swell of relief came with the puncturing, shrill sound of the bell, welling up from within in a comforting embrace.

The droning of the teacher quickly turned to a quiet muttering in competition with the rising voices of my classmates as they came out of their sedentary slumbers. 12:10 marked the magic minute – when the silence of the hallways would be quickly overrun by a tumultuous tumble of children, not only chasing their ravenous appetites, but also escaping the threat of another mundane class. Stepping into the hall, a cacophony of metal lockers and frantic footwork overcame my lecture-lulled senses, shocking me into the daily realization of the events to unfold: lunchtime.

In a time in which classes carried inconsequential weight for all but the most studious, middle school life was centered around a sentiment all together more trivial; classes were not interrupted by a lunch break, rather, classes were an annoying prerequisite before lunch. And while middle school presented a lighthearted introduction to academics for many, it was widely understood that study often gave way to more pressing issues of the adolescent times. In the same manner that children would often pick at their food, throwing certain vegetables away with the rest of their trash, it was of utmost importance to keep one’s “plate” presentable in middle school. In the moments when one would stand frozen before an insurmountable cluster of tables, availability partially played a role in deciding the seating for the day, but in the end, it boiled down to a matter of picking vegetables.

My hands gripped considerably at the tray, my milk carton wobbling in response to my vigor. A plate, soaked through with the juices of the daily mystery mash, rested on top of the unsteady surface, the apex of the mash mountain adorned with a great, big, ugly piece of broccoli. A raucous roaring filled the air, product of each student shouting incognizant of another’s similar attempts, hanging plump in the ears with noticeable mass. Fixed to the ground in indecision, I stood at the head of a mass of people huddled together on benches too small for their social affluence, observing the carnage with the

eye of one from afar: indifferent, yet frightened by the ferocious nature of it all. My feet failed to guide me to a seat.

It went back as far as the first day of middle school. Suddenly reunited with the summation of every elementary school, the new middle schoolers found themselves at the front of a foreign entity: the challenge of reassimilating into friend groups with the new social pressures previously absent in a younger adolescent.

Comfort often took precedence, with the first group established remaining the primary circle throughout one’s middle school life, and in the case of lunch, those who missed the first opportunity to integrate into the group were all the more eager to sprawl about on the tables, claiming it for their own to curry favor. These social shenanigans made it such that seating became starved, resulting in an informal assigned seating of sorts, with change not enforced officially, but certainly being a rarity.

It was widely understood that study often gave way to more pressing issues of the adolescent times I was no radical. It only took moments to reorient myself and trudge to the familiar faces that came with lunch every day; I stepped over the same daily card game and dropped into the seat, tray placed onto the table. The commotion carried on with the same intensity as usual, though it seemed almost muted as I idly picked at the mash.

I spooned a bit into my mouth. The texture was luxuriously smooth, so disgustingly smooth that my throat rebuked my attempts to swallow. A piece of broccoli met my spoon. Without a second thought, I picked it out, setting it aside to throw away later.

Artwork by Seojin Taylor Moon, New York, NY 9

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022

Cutting Carbs

by Lizzy Lawrence, New York City, NY

Artwork by Michelle Meng, Schaumburg, IL

T

ake it away from me! I’m being soooo bad! I just can’t resist! Whether it’s my mom, dad, sister, or friends, I constantly hear these phrases while sitting at the dinner table. The waiter takes our orders, brings our drinks, and what comes next? Almost always, they bring a complimentary gift: whether it is focaccia sprinkled with rosemary, slices of a fluffy baguette, or buttery garlic naan, bread is the perfect pre-appetizer snack. The question is — will I eat it? When I’m with my family, my mom will shy away from the forbidden basket, watching intently as I take a bite. If I’m out with friends, thoughts race through my mind as the petrifying platter arrives: Who is going to take the first piece? Is anyone going to eat it at all? If someone does take it, how many bites will they have before pushing it away, shrieking that they’re “so stuffed” after one bite? The fear of eating bread is a real one, and it seems impossible to escape because of the ripple effect it creates. This isn’t just the case with bread, though. It’s all carbs — bread, rice, potatoes, and pasta, to name a few — foods that we often label as “bad” or “special treats,” foods we don’t eat unless we’ve “earned” them. Cutting out this food group is promoted: common, normal, healthy.

10

The gravity of female dieting culture has come crashing down onto me

A basic Google search tells you that “carbohydrates are your body's main source of energy: they help fuel your brain, kidneys, heart muscles, and central nervous system.” Carbohydrates are essential to the human body, so why are we so afraid of eating them? In the past decade, eating a low-carb or “keto” diet has gained an immense following, further stigmatizing eating carbs. Before it gained popularity, buying rice at the grocery store was as simple as white or brown. But now, the grocery store aisle is overwhelming: rice made of cauliflower, pasta made from chickpeas, bell peppers instead of burger buns — any “healthier” options people can think of. Even if you’re not on the keto diet, there’s a sense of guilt walking down the aisle: I should buy the cauliflower rice instead, shouldn’t I?

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022 I should be more healthy. You give in to the substitutes, convincing yourself that they will taste just as good (spoiler: they don’t) and that the real pasta, or rice, or bread, is in fact bad for you — exactly what the diet industry wants you to think. This surplus of low-carb options puts pressure on us to feed into the latest diet trends. This isn’t the first time this has happened, though. The wheel of diet trends is constantly turning: Atkins in the '70s, fat-free in the '90s, Weight Watchers in the early 2000s, and now, a keto craze. As the cycle of dieting repeats, restricting different food groups becomes more and more normalized.

Today, I see promotions of keto everyday in grocery stores or on TikTok and Instagram. This wasn’t a recent discovery, though; I first learned about keto at a young age—the summer going into fifth grade. During the summer weeks we spend at my grandparents’ house at the beach, my dad can always be found reading on the porch. One day that summer, I immediately noticed that he wasn’t holding his usual New Yorker magazine, but instead a thick book with a laminated green cover, plastered with images of vegetables surrounding big white letters that spelled K-E-T-O. I soon found out that my dad was going keto (whatever that meant) in an attempt to lower his blood pressure. I was genuinely shocked for a few reasons.

One, I was horrified that my dad couldn’t eat frozen bananas, our favorite summer treat. The other reason, though, was more extreme. As my dad read his green keto bible, I realized that dieting was not something exclusively for women. My mom, and other female figures in my life, never went on diets when I was growing up, so why was I confused to see a man doing it? This confusion is no coincidence: the dieting industry is directly targeted towards women, and my perplexed 10-year-old self proves it.

While thinking back on this, the gravity of female dieting culture has come crashing down onto me. At the grocery store checkout, it was never a man on the cover of Shape magazines — it was a woman with a tape measure around her waist. Growing up, I watched thin women in commercials choose cake-flavored yogurt over the real thing. When watching "Mean Girls," I didn’t question it when Regina, Karen, and Gretchen all pointed out their insecurities while standing in front of a mirror. Agonizing over your appearance, and dieting as a result, is a rite of passage for young women in our society: we’re told that we’re never quite good enough and need to go to extremes in order to achieve perfection. At 10 years old, I had already picked up on these messages from the media — they are almost impossible to avoid internalizing at a young age.

My whole feed became filled with videos to the point where I thought barely eating, ananlyzing everything I ate, and overexercising was normal for someone just entering high school diet trends are. It’s the same sense of guilt as the cauliflower rice in the grocery store: I should like this post. I should be healthy. At 14, I fell into this trap: videos of girls 10 years older than me talking about their diets, workouts, and so called “wellness.” My whole feed became filled with these videos, to the point where I thought barely eating, analyzing everything I ate, and over-exercising was normal for someone just entering high school. Realizing that these behaviors aren’t normal has allowed me to grasp just how dietfocused our society really is. This feed didn’t disappear overnight — I had to stop interacting with these videos for them to go away. It took strength to unfollow, unlike, and attempt to unlearn everything that social media told me was healthy. When ideas and behaviors are directly targeted toward you, it’s hard to shy away from them without feeling badly about yourself. Every once in a while, a “What I Eat In a Day” video will pop up as I’m scrolling through TikTok. Now, two years later, I have the control to click the “not interested” button.

Artwork by Amber Yu, Trenton, NJ

In the climate of modern day society, these commercials and movies would be questioned or canceled, so it’s easy to think these ideas are gone. In reality, they are just reincarnated on social media. On any social media site, it is so easy to compare yourself to others and fall into dieting and exercise traps — posts that encourage behaviors like cutting out food groups or counting calories. On TikTok, there is a whole genre of videos called “What I Eat In A Day,” where users (mainly women) film what they eat, which is sometimes not much at all. Every once in a while, videos like these are fine. But once you like one video, follow one user, or click on one link, these videos will take over your feed. These ideas spread faster than they ever could before, and target young girls long before they are teenagers.

Social media that promotes dieting, over-exercising, and an unrealistic beauty standard is easy to be roped into — just like

11

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022

How Are the

Children?

by Piper Wilson, Pittsford, NY

T

he traditional “How are you?” greeting is abandoned in the Maasai culture in favor of a greeting that more accurately represents their community. Emphasis is placed on the wellbeing of the children — of the future. If the children are thriving, the community is thriving. And so, they ask: “How are the children?”

Artwork by Anonymous, Republic of Korea

How are our children? Stressed.

Overworked, unrested. Generally speaking, we’re exhausted.

And why shouldn’t we be? We’ve had a wild few years. Yes, so has everyone, but ours has been heightened by our lack of prior long-term memory. Long-term memory

The pandemic takes up 20% of our longterm memory storage kicks in around seven years old, and the eldest of us students are 17 or 18.

This means we’ve had about 10 years of memory stored — most of which we forget instantly — and the pandemic has raged for over two years now (two years on March 14th!). Do some math, and we realize that the pandemic takes up 20% of our longterm memory.

And that figure is amplified the younger you are ­­— our young freshman, still 14 years old, have almost 30% of their long-term memory overrun by COVID-19. By contrast, 40 to 50-year-olds will have between 5.4% and 4.25% of their long-term memory interlaced with COVID. 95% of their memory — completely normal.

12

No wonder it’s difficult for adults to understand the strain we’ve been under.

This is a blip in their lives: it’s become ours.

It’s unfathomable to adults to understand what a major event this is for us. Twenty percent of their long-term memory would be Obama’s presidency. Twenty percent for us? The COVID pandemic.

Now that we’re no longer hybrid, adults can jump back into “everyday life.” But at our age, “everyday life” changes every year, so much so that normalcy isn’t a term we really understand. If we’re really supposed

to go back to the last “normal” year of school we had, I should really be back in 3rd grade. So, this normal isn’t “normal"; it’s another “new normal” that we’re struggling to adjust to. Sure, it’s easier, being with friends and talking during class, but somehow, we have three extra days in school, and we still move at the speed of sound. It’s so much, all at once.

All of this is worsened by the burden of expectations. Unintentional expectations, but expectations just the same. We should be able to go back to normal. We should

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022 be able to regard the pandemic as a blip in the past — and I’m sure, someday far in the future, we will — but now? Masks and social distancing are all we know. And all these things take a toll on everyone’s mental health: distancing yourself from your close relationships so you don’t get sick has the unintended consequence of ruining these relationships. I felt like I sat so far away that it was uncomfortable to speak last year. I didn’t talk. I’m a quiet student, generally, but I’m never silent – if we had a class together last year, you’d never know that.

On another note, there is some expectation that when someone’s grades are good, their mental health is good. Let’s be clear: the two variables are not linearly related. In an observational study on mental health and GPA, where GPA was measured on a 100-point scale, and mental health was self-reported on a scale of 1-10, I found an R-value of -0.51. For those of you not in AP Stats, the R-value tells you how closely the two variables — mental health and GPA — are related. With an R-value of -0.51, we know that GPA and mental health are only somewhat correlated — if there’s any correlation, it’s a negative relationship between the two. Students with lower GPA values generally recorded a better mental health state.

There is such an emphasis on having a good GPA and getting strong test scores, and such little importance placed on coming to school in a good mental state. People come to school exhausted: while the majority (approximately 40%) said they were able to get an average of 8 hours of sleep per night, another 40% averaged 5.5 hours of sleep a night. To us, it appears as though the message is sent out that a 98 on a test is more important than getting a good night’s sleep beforehand. I’ve seen this in action: me, my sister, and my brother have all stayed up past midnight to cram for a test (that we generally do poorly on, since we were ready to fall asleep mid-2nd period).

The importance placed on being a wellrounded, smart individual is so extreme that we do not acknowledge the part that’ll stay with us past college: our minds. We must take care of ourselves. We don’t get to get rid of ourselves. We’re stuck with us. It’s certainly a much more impressive demographic to say that the school has a 98% graduation rate and an AP enrollment

rate of 50%. There’s a 1 out of 2 chance that you, yes you, reading this, are in at least one AP class. But what’s the purpose of being in an AP class if it stresses you out? If

Find an adult in your life whom you trust and make time to talk with them … being isolated can deteriorate anyone's mental health it exhausts you? If it confuses you? If we’re amid a pandemic and you need stability, why would you pick up harder classes? This isn’t criticism: I’ve done it too. But why?

I don’t know.

It seems the school — the community — wants to come across as perfect. But we’re not. We have flaws. Everyone does.

What are we supposed to do? Yes, the children are not well. And what?

It seems futile, but there are actions we can take. We can normalize mental health days — it’s okay to take a day to yourself (with permission from your family, of course) and destress. Avoid last-minute work and get things done early — this sucks, but it helps you in the future. The most important thing is to advocate for yourself! Go to your teachers and request a small extension to finish a paper or project. Not everyone will say yes, but it never hurts to ask and lift a weight from your shoulders.

What should we ask of adults? It’s certainly unreasonable to put our entire mental health on authority, but we should be able to ask for help sometimes. Find an adult in your life whom you trust — a parent, grandparent, tutor, coach — and make time to talk with them. This will strengthen your relationships, inherently improving your mental health, and will give you a chance to talk about what you’ve been going through.

While you’re there, take a minute to ask about what they’ve been struggling with, too.

ones in the world. Every single person is going through this together. And being isolated can deteriorate anyone’s mental health — not just children. But it’s hard to remember this when no one talks about it.

Several students said that they wished mental health became a normalized discussion topic. It’s such a taboo subject, discussing depression and social anxiety, among other things. But it’s not an uncommon experience: depression affects 1 in 10 people in any given year, and as for social anxiety? Being around twice as many people is enough to make any introvert feel claustrophobic. They’re more integrated into our community than we realize.

My school has introduced WIN days, but many students still don't know what WIN days are. WIN: What I Need. Clever, right? On these days, students are given an X block schedule where teachers can hold classes.

These classes range from fun, low-stress activities to study halls and added learning periods. I remember attending a WIN Day where we learned how to write a DBQ, and another where we did some meditative coloring. They’re fun. You’ll love it.

How are the children? We’re struggling. But we’re working at it.

If we want our community to improve — help the children get well — it can’t be done alone. Each community is not just the students, not just the teachers, not just the administration. It’s all of us.

We need to come together. This is a challenging time, and now more than before, we need support. Students need support, and a community can’t be STRONG without a foundation: a resilient student body.

We need to be well before we can be STRONG. And someday soon, we hope to be able to shout from the rooftops: Our children are well.

We have to acknowledge that although our experience in the COVID-19 pandemic has been amplified, we aren’t the only

13

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022 Artwork by Jyothis Maria John, Ernakulam, India

The Expander

by Anonymous, OH

T

he day is Veteran's Day, a day remembering those who have fought in battle. Though I was never in any physical battles, looking back this felt like a foreshadowing of what was to come. Because I had something similar to those veterans that day — I had a close encounter with a small but deadly piece of steel.

My mother has prepared a cookout, and my grandmother is here to eat with us. (This was not unusual; she lives only a mile away.)

In front of me, there was a plate with a large, perfect hamburger, cooked as close to perfection as my dad could get. I was just about to take a bite of it when my mom gave me a sharp look.

“No eating until grace,” my mom said. Though it was only four words, she said it so slowly that it made the message clear to me that I had caused enough trouble this evening.

Earlier that evening, before we had food prepared, I had made an extremely ill-minded decision. At this point in my life, I was very interested in carnivorous plants. I had one large pitcher plant with a small saucer containing water, as it is the only way it would grow.

I moved it to the center of the table, as I thought for some reason in my mind it would be a good idea to eat in front of the glorious table decor of a plant that slowly eats insects alive. Unfortunately, I

14

spilled the water saucer all over the table. My mom gave me a sharp look and we cleaned it up, as she never shows her anger in front of grandma.

Parents never say grace, so my brother Connor and I were the only options. I always like to volunteer him, and my dad would always go along with it because he loved the way he would always say grace.

I started choking and stood up to see if that would help Naturally, I said, “I think Connor should do it. He always makes it the best.” Which wasn’t a lie. He always has the best grace.

After Connor said grace, we were officially permitted to eat. I took one large bite out of my hamburger, but what should have been juicy and delicious, had a sharp, metallic taste followed by that feeling when you get a potato chip stuck sideways in your throat, but much, much worse.

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022

I started choking and stood up to see if that would help. I swallowed the last bite of the hamburger, but a different feeling was in my mouth when I swallowed. Something felt weird about this swallow; it was like I was missing something. That’s when I realized what was wrong — I had lost my dental expander. It suddenly made sense now — since when does a hamburger taste brittle?

My mom jumped up, all the previous frustration gone from her.

“What’s wrong?” She exclaimed frantically.

I looked her straight in the eye and said, “I think I swallowed my expander.”

Her face went pale and she quietly commanded “Open your mouth.”

She looked and her eyes went wide. She looked at my grandma and dad and said, “Oh my god. He’s right.”

Most people say that, in situations of extreme stress and terror, everything feels like a blur. That is not entirely how I would describe it.

I remember my panicked mom calling the hospital.

I remember my dad taking me in the car.

I remember him telling me to try to cough it up.

I remember the feeling that, maybe, I wouldn’t make it through this.

I remember going to the first hospital and them telling me to lay down on a bed.

I remember myself trying to calm down.

I resolved something that day.

I was going to live life to its fullest I remember my dad saying we are going to the children’s hospital.

I remember sitting in the waiting room.

I remember being calm when the doctor told me I was going to be all right. He said that he’d seen kids who’d swallowed fish hooks before.

I remember the doctors taking my COVID test.

I remember my mom finally making it into the hospital.

I remember calming down and watching "Moana" with them.

I remember falling asleep after they gave me an anesthetic.

I remember waking up and the doctors telling me I’m doing just fine, though they couldn’t get it out yet.

I remember the horror of seeing the X-ray of the vile dental expander stuck in my throat.

I remember going to sleep again and this time, waking up without a sore throat. For the first time since I took a bite of that hamburger, I felt at ease. There was no longer a piece of metal in my throat, and no longer the feeling of lead chains over my shoulders.

The situation hit me hard, but I’m thankful it didn’t blur like all of those people say. I began to realize how random the expander incident was, and how I never even expected it. The truth is, I could die any moment. Anyone could.

I resolved something that day. I was going to live life to its fullest. I began to develop a more positive attitude, and I began to live in the moment. Instead of just watching TV or playing video games all day, I took up painting, a deeply relaxing activity. I learned to be more positive than before, causing me to eventually turn into a leader at my Boy Scout Troop and feel much better around other people.

If I’m being honest, I don’t regret swallowing that expander. Sure, it would have saved me a lot of stress and horror and medical bills at the time, but it eventually caused me to become a different person.

I now have a much better understanding of how fragile life is, and it helps me to live life to its fullest.

Artwork by Ke Deng, Great Barrington, MA 15

HEALTH | APRIL/MAY 2022

Demonizing

Addicts

by Ash Southwell, Highland Village, TX

Artwork by Kaeya Patel, Washington, D.C.

I

could see that she was killing herself. I could see the excitement in her face every time she injected that poison into her lungs just to feel a temporary buzz. It hurt to see her own self-destruction consume her. Every time we got home, she would reach into her bag and put the poison to her lips. I knew she didn't care about her well-being, and she didn't consider how her actions affected me. She was too far gone in her obsession. That’s the difficult thing about addicts— they're aware that what they're doing is unhealthy, but they lack the motivation to make an effort to stop. They lack the ability to recognize their problem. They lack the empathy necessary to see that they could be hurting others.

That’s why I feel bad for them. That’s why I stayed by her side.

Addiction is a heavy burden that weighs down everyone, especially the addicts themselves. It’s common to demonize addicts and paint them as abusive monsters. While I agree that addiction can make people do or say twisted things, I don’t agree with the general stigma that surrounds it. Addicts are just scared children who are desperately trying to survive. What if you were depressed every day and your suffering became so unbearable that you considered taking your own life? Of course you would chase that one thing that makes you forget about your pain, no matter how temporary that relief is. Addiction is just the result of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

However, that doesn't erase the pain you cause to others. It doesn't excuse your words or actions. That’s why addiction is such a tough topic to tackle. Addiction hurts everyone. And I needed to tell her that I was hurting.

The night we fought was a mess. I remember telling her how her substance abuse affected me. I told her she had a problem. She was drunk on the other end of the screen and started spitting insults and excuses at me. I couldn’t bear to see her like that. It hurt too much. I poured my heart and soul out in front of her as if it was an offering

16

for the gods, and she discarded everything. My eyes were glossy and thick with tears. I sat and watched her in silence as my brain tried to comprehend the gravity of her words. Then she said it. The one thing that broke me.

“Why don’t you just leave me if I’m such a hot mess?”

Everything was finally clear. She would rather lose me than lose her drugs. But I would rather lose the world than lose her. I would rather lose every drop of blood in my body than lose her. I would rather lose my own life than lose her. And I know she felt the same way. She was just in so much pain that she wanted to push the problem away.

She wanted to push me away.

I spent day after day watching her slowly kill herself, and I said nothing. Like all addicts, I knew she was in pain and just needed help. She didn’t need a lecture or punishment. What she needed was my support. That’s all I wanted to give to her. I just wanted her to know that I would love and help her through every step of her recovery.

But she didn’t want my help, and you can’t help someone who isn’t ready to be better. So I stayed by her side, ready and waiting to hold her when she cried, ready and waiting to serve her every need, ready and waiting to be the best friend I can be for her. I just want her to be okay. I just want her to be safe and happy.

If you or someone you care about needs support around substance misuse or addiction, please call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit www.samhsa.gov

Artwork by Aesha Jackson, Louisville, KY

Artwork by Evy Mansat-Gros Greenville, SC

Artwork by Clara Robinson, Boston, MA 17

TEEN JOBS | APRIL/MAY 2022

People

by Anonymous

Photo by Dinesh Oggu, Atlanta, GA

A

s I worked for hours and hours at my job, sweeping the floor with the small, red-handled broom, the rain came. Without hesitation, the lifeguard team sprung into action. We went as fast as we could – our priority was getting kids to safety and reaching shelter ourselves.

As lightning struck, the pool was cleared and we were safe. A counselor had taken the kids to the main lodge where they would wait for the storm to end. This was easy for us – we had spent time practicing and working on this plan with each other.

As I headed to the guard room, the counselor for this group tensed up near the door. He stood shaking, and talked frantically to the other lifeguards.

“I’m not sure where he could have gone, the outside door to the bathroom was locked!”

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I enter the room.

“We can’t find a camper.”

“Maybe he’s still in the bathroom,” I reasoned. “He surely couldn’t have run that far.”

“He’s not there,” Rafael, a fellow lifeguard, said as he entered the room. “Just checked.”

Oreo, the head lifeguard at the time, sprung off his chair and ran outside. I quickly followed him out into the storm. Rafael and Narwhal caught up as we exited the pool deck and headed into the nearby woods.

Just then, a call on the walkie-talkie: “Break

18

to all staff, make your way to the storm shelter, there is a tornado warning in the area.”

I never wavered.

I never doubted myself. I knew the task at hand, and I committed to it We froze – glancing at each other. We needed to keep searching.

The three of us continued to the Junior Village, the area of camp where the kids’ cabins were. We found another group of counselors talking and discussing the procedure for dangerous weather. We ran up to them.

“We need help,” I said to the group, “We can’t find a camper.”

Immediately, everyone jumped up and began looking. We split up between the woods and the village. Our boss approached and started helping us search each cabin. He seemed confident and calm, as he normally does.

I broke off, alone. I moved to the lake as the wind ripped branches from the trees.

I entered the small cabin for staff, hoping the camper was hiding in there. No luck. I sprinted back to the main lodge to meet up with the group. As I ran, I heard the wail of a

siren coming over the lake.

As I returned to the group, we heard noises from the radio.

Our boss took the radio from his backpack.

“We’ve found him.”

The mood changed. Everyone returned to the main lodge and there, we greeted the missing camper happily. We were all smiling ear-to-ear, despite the dark sky looming over us.

I wasn’t the hero of the story. I wasn’t even the main character. I did barely anything to help! So what? Who cares?

When I was on duty, I wasn’t the head guard, but I followed orders when instructed to shut the pool down. When I learned we were missing a camper, I wasn’t the first to bravely run out into the storm, but I took my part supporting the leader. As they took a risk, I followed, taking the same chance. I never wavered. I never doubted myself. I knew the task at hand, and I committed to it. I worked with people, and I worked for people.

This story could have been different. I could have been the only one to walk out in the dangerous weather and save the day, but that’s not how the world works. Without a team, we are worthless. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Teamwork is what sets me apart.

I work with people.

I work for people.

TEEN JOBS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Mundelein

by Kayla Baltazar, Mundelein, IL

P

icture an introvert’s hell – and I don’t mean big crowds. Instead, there are three little girls accompanied by their moms, who are looking at you expectantly, wanting you to teach all six of them how to dance.

Their eyes are like stage lights that don’t stop shining at you, following your every move and catching every little blemish and imperfection. This stage is more terrifying than performing in any competition; the parents could be harsher than any competition judges. The kids are dead silent when you ask how they are. One bursts into tears when their mom lets go of their hand – fat tears and ugly sobs as they plead for their mom. Tough crowd today, I guess. When they leave the class, you breathe a sigh of relief until two minutes later, when it’s time to be performance-ready and do it all again.

The first time I ever taught, I was substituting for one of the other dance teachers. When she asked me if I was available, I happily said yes, and my email was flooded with Spotify playlists and 15-step sub plans for each class to get through. So, on Saturday, at 8:30 a.m., I taught my first dance class all by myself. The first class was a parentand-child duo class. Something about teaching parents to dance with their kids as a 16-year-old newbie teacher felt so intimidating. For one of the dances, I played the song “A Thousand Baby Doughnuts,” handed each pair a hula hoop, and exclaimed, “let’s dance with our big doughnut!” Without realizing my fatal mistake, which is that handing a two-year-old a hula hoop made it the prime item to throw at me. The mother’s face went tomato-red, blubbering apologies as I plastered on a fake grin and told her it was all good. All in a day’s

work, I figured.

The classes I taught next summarized the whole situation: you never get peace and quiet. Parents drop their kids off and exit the building, leaving me all alone to teach kids who want nothing more than to do anything but dance.

I look to the assistant, wondering if the kids were always this rowdy or if I was the one causing a disturbance.

The studio is filled with impossible levels of noise: tap shoes, music, and shouts of children. They hang on the barre – something I knew was dangerous from personal experience. I barely managed to keep them in line for an hour, persuading them to behave with promises of freeze dance and Disney princess stickers at the end of class.

As you finish one class, you barely get to blink before a new set of kids are suddenly at your door, here for the lessons their parents paid for. It’s a challenge to see if you can maintain the kids’ attention for the duration of the class. Many people wonder why I bothered to teach when I’m already busy enough with dance as it is: practices, performances, and competitions alike.

Who wants to deal with crying, whining toddlers, on top of the task of teaching them to dance? But performing let me show my passion – teaching helped me spread it. Having my own classes to lead helped me realize that I don’t only dance for myself, but also for the little girl in the doorway with aspirations just as big as mine. The girl that foolishly hung on the barre with her friends would’ve looked at me with wonder in her eyes, and I can’t help but think I’m making her proud.

Artwork by Kelly Lu, Santa Clara, CA 19

TEEN JOBS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Applying

Oneself

by Erik Rosenkranz, Clarkston, MI

Artwork by Clare Kim, Seoul, South Korea 20

TEEN JOBS | APRIL/MAY 2022

A

s I sit in the cold chair in the plain room, I feel as if I am on fire. My heart is beating at an inhuman rate, and I feel as if I couldn’t see five feet in front of me. It’s not like rehearsing to myself on the car ride over did any help, I think to myself. Now I’ve learned about the natural “fight or flight” response to these types of situations, but neither option was particularly appealing to me in this moment. I felt mentally and physically paralyzed, as a hand extends from the figure in front of me, now hanging in the void that I am conventionally supposed to fill.

It was a sunny summer afternoon and I was out playing basketball with my brothers. It was then when I received a text from my friend.

The breeze stopped and my basketball became suspended in the air as I read his text. He informed me that there was a job opening for a tech position at a local library.

At this point in my life, I never had experience in a job. My immediate thoughts were of hesitation, but not of outright rejection. Getting a job to me was a nerve-racking idea. How would I apply? I don't even have a resume yet. What experience should I have in order to be compatible for the position? I knew that I had to “put myself out there” and “apply myself” sometime relatively soon, but I just didn’t know if now was the right time for me. I was procrastinating on the inevitable.

the interview.

About three weeks later, I received an email from the employer informing me that while I had decent experience and was able to grasp the concepts I needed to know for the job, I had lost out to another, more experienced applicant. I still remember the split-second drop my stomach did, but I didn’t really feel it. This natural gut reaction was not equivalent to what I was really feeling: gratitude. Although I did not get the job, I was thankful for my friend's suggestion, the opportunity that the employer gave me, and for my parents who not only let me, but encouraged me to go through this experience. With this experience in my past, I am now able to move forward in life more confidently, as I know what is to come in my future. Applying oneself, I realized, isn’t about the prospect of success, but about the experience and journey that one will always go through regardless.

I knew that I had to 'put myself out there' and 'apply myself' sometime relatively soon, but I just didn’t know if now was the right time for me After I came inside and told my parents about it, I received encouragement to apply. After all, I had just taken a class about computer basics and got a certification. I would finally have something to do over the summer, and I would get paid for doing it!

This was a rare opportunity for something that I would only ever see once, so I decided to take up my friend's offer.

That night, I began filling out the required paperwork necessary for myself, the employer, and my school. This was an arduous task for someone like myself, who had never filled out paperwork. I then began to create my resume. I looked at a sample template online in order to do so. Everything went smoothly until I got to the “experience” section. It was then that I realized I had no real-world experience with this kind of thing, other than a small event I did last summer.

The feelings of hesitation resurfaced like a pot of water beginning to boil. After all of this work, I now just realized that I don’t have any real world experience? Was I simply doing all of this work for nothing? Despite all of these thoughts running through my head, I found myself ignoring them. I reassured myself that this job was an experience that I had to have, regardless of the outcome. I powered through the rest of that resume knowing it was integral to my journey. The following morning I called the employer and scheduled

Artwork by Eva Choi, Hightstown, NJ 21

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR | APRIL/MAY 2022

Educator

of the Year

SCHOOL STAFF: Speech Therapist

Mrs. Amy Finn Arrowhead Union High School, Hartland, WI

by Ryker Rathje, Pewaukee, WI

I

usually don’t pay attention to most of the people I meet in school. Process was the same every year. New year, new school, new faces that I eventually forget about as they didn’t make much of an impact. That was the deal with me most of the time.

With me being on the autism spectrum, I have trouble speaking with people. So, as part of special education, they assign me to a speech therapist so that I could hone my skills in conversation. I also so this as more of a hassle as I thought my time was better spent working.

I met Amy during my freshman year. She’d come in during one of my study halls to pull me out. She always said “can I take you out for a bit?” which makes me think it’s optional. I always went with her, though out of fear of upsetting her. Room 134 is where we’d go at south (at north it was room 123). She goes in and I follow suit. We’d sit down, me at the end of the table with her to my right; then the session begins.

At first with Amy, I was kind of a steel trap. She’d get a couple of “mhms” and some shoulder shrugs here and there. A couple of times when she’d ask me a question, I’d just sit there with my eyes staring into space (mostly because I didn’t know how to answer or didn’t want to). She’d help me practice conversation by getting me to ask who, what, where, when, and how questions.

Most of the time, though, it was a low mumble whenever I asked one and it would take me like 10 years to come up with one. Amy would try to fill the silence by talking about her kids or something she’d be doing the weekend and offer me a chance to jump in on the one-sided conversation. Occasionally, on some good days, I’d be pretty talkative. I’d talk about something I was interested

22

Overall Winner! in like games, movies, some weird fact I learned about, or just talking about general stuff. Most of the time, though, it was just silence from me. The whole point of this was to get me to be better at talking to people, but that’s kinda hard when the subject can’t even answer a simple yes-or-no question. North campus was uncomfortable for a bit. The place was more maze-like with shorter hallways and had a big common area which made the place feel too open. Eventually, I got used to it though. My sessions with Amy changed when I transitioned. Being pulled out was still annoying, but not nearly as much as before. When we talk, I still give the occasional “mhm” and shoulder shrug, but now there were more words involved. I started giving thought-out, on-the-spot answers to her questions. There were still moments of silence in-between my answers, but now I actually respond to most of her questions.

It’s not all business with her too. She’d ask me about video games or movies and I would give her my opinion. I tell her if I’m planning on seeing a movie, she’d ask about it, I tell her, and then she gets interested and might plan on seeing it. Same goes for video games.

Practicing with Amy has actually helped me in other ways. I used to not ask for help during class as I want to figure out the work on my own. Most of the time, it ends with me sitting there for like 20 minutes with no clue what to do. Now, whenever I’m confused or missing something, I ask the teacher any chance I get, which from experience, has benefitted me greatly. And whenever I’m asked a question, I can answer it if I know it. I can also sometimes behoove myself to answer it if I’m not called on.

When I was with my friends, conversation just came naturally because we were so comfortable being around each other. I’d always ask a question if I had one. When I was with people I didn’t know, it was way more difficult as you don’t know that person very well. Thanks to Amy though, I’ve managed to make progress little by little to improve my skills when speaking with others. Although most people I’ve met in school haven’t made much of an impact on me to make them worth remembering, Amy’s one of the good few who helped me improve both in my work ethic and myself as a person. I appreciate all that she’s done for me and I will remember what she taught me for years to come.

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR | APRIL/MAY 2022

MATH

Mrs. Carol Ulibarri Etiwanda Intermediate School, Rancho Cucamonga, CA

by Clara Lee, Rancho Cucamonga, CA

T

he “Educator of the Year'' contest is the perfect opportunity for me to properly share with everybody out there that Mrs. Ulibarri is the most extraordinary teacher in the entire world. Everyone may have an excellent instructor who has guided them with care throughout the school year, but I’ve had a teacher who has illustrated genuine compassion for her students and love for the career she has. Mrs. Ulibarri is the most compassionate, intelligent, ardent, whimsical teacher that I know; I don’t even think there would be a single term to depict the admirable character she holds as an educator. She teaches with such prestige and humor, captivating the class and instigating a thirst for knowledge in any student. Everyone is in awe of the clarity of her methods, the way she is able to explain math with such coherent technique to ensure that all of her pupils comprehend the material. Assurance can be provided to anyone who possesses even a trickle of doubt as to whether Mrs. Ulibarri is the finest contender for the credit she deserves.

Mrs. Ulibarri’s classroom is certainly any blooming student’s dream.

Inspirational posters and quotes beautifully decorate the walls with style and color, giving everyone who enters a feeling of inspiration and motivation. She isn’t a person who believes there are limitations to what we can do. One distinct memory comes to mind when I think about her classroom. I was filling out my high school packet one day, and I was supposed to sign up for a very advanced math class that Mrs. Ulibarri had recommended. Even though not many freshmen take this course, my teacher had said it would be a great fit for me. But, I wanted more; instead of signing up for the regular version of Integrated Math III, I selected Integrated Math III honors. When I spoke to her about my recommendation, she was both surprised and amused that I had made that decision. She said that there may be a chance that I wouldn’t be chosen for the honors considering my age, but she said that I was making the right choice by challenging the unwritten restrictions. She told me to “shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you still land among the stars.” It was one of the quotes she hung on the walls, and those words have been the fuel to the fire of motivation glowing in my heart. Her words inspired me to push beyond my limits. Mrs. Ulibarri’s classroom is certainly my favorite place in the entire school. It is a wonderful,

quiet retreat with soft jazz music and lavender scented air. She opens her door during lunch, for anyone who would like to join her, entertaining us with funny stories from her career and lending an ear to anyone who wishes to share their thoughts on any and every subject.

Mrs. Ulibarri is always so kind and discretional, both a counselor and a teacher. Ready to give advice on how to solve any issues, and offering solutions to help us bypass the obstacles that stand in our way. She even tutors her students after school, offering extra help to any of her pupils who wish to obtain an additional breakdown of the lesson covered that day. She dedicates so much of her time to ensure that all of us will succeed, which is such a laudable characteristic to have. She has been teaching for a very long time, in so many different places. She has experienced so much good and bad, but she never loses her enthusiastic spirit of her love for math.

Mrs. Ulibarri is the first teacher who has demonstrated what a true classroom family is, illustrating the special place she has in her heart for all of us.

All educators can instruct, but Mrs. Ulibarri can teach. She is undoubtedly the most forthright person that I know. Anything she writes on the whiteboard lodges itself into memory, and anything she explains organizes itself into a small file in the brain. When the time comes for us to finally use the skills we obtained in class, her lessons are right there in our head to guide us. Mrs. Ulibarri has never ceased to enchant us with the magic of math, everyday, proving her doctrine that nothing is hard if you can understand it.

We have never had trouble comprehending anything she has taught us in the past year because her simplistic explanations are better than a lecture of a thousand words.

Mrs. Ulibarri is an amazing teacher who has been at our school for 30 years now. She has inspired and touched the lives of countless students who will always remember her with love and care for shaping them into better people. She is the first teacher I will sincerely regret losing once I graduate middle school because she may be retiring this year. I won’t have the luxury of visiting her if she takes this path, so I wanted to nominate her for this competition.

My teacher never receives enough credit for all that she has done for the school and the students. As a reminder of this school year, I created a student ID of myself at my dream school, giving it to her on “future career” day. So, one day, even if we’re in different parts of the world, she’ll know where I am and that she was the one that helped me achieve my dreams. Mrs. Ulibarri has always been so supportive of everyone with what they want to do with their lives, and for this, I want to recognize her. Therefore, I am writing this essay to demonstrate how much I revere her wonderful character.

To show her how much I appreciate her, and to show her that we all love her to the moon and back. This contest has been a great opportunity for me to share with you all just how commendable my amazing teacher is.

23

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR | APRIL/MAY 2022

SCIENCE

Mr. David Wagner Merton Middle School, Merton, WI

by Elle S., Hartland, WI

S

ince I was in kindergarten, I’ve known I love animals. I announced I would be a veterinarian, and still hold that goal today. As I grew, I naturally started learning more about science, and about nature. While I was a good student, I didn’t know that much about the world. I knew endless facts about animals, but I knew almost nothing about myself. It wasn’t until seventh grade in Merton middle school, when I met my science teacher, Mr. Wagner, that I started to open my eyes.

He had a love for teaching, which was obvious as he spent the majority of the school day smiling. He was passionate about science, and passionate about giving his students more than factual education. Yet, as he taught me about thermodynamics and the periodic table, I couldn’t help but soak it all in like a sponge. I knew I loved animals and nature, but I didn’t realize how science could fascinate me and fill a void that lay in my stomach for years prior. Mr. Wagner nurtured my passion for science because his own was infectious—a thrilling, contagious drive to learn more. He helped me discover my purpose and the aim for my life. Mr. Wagner may have taught me how to love school, or I suppose he may have simply shown me why I should.

Mr. Wagner now teaches other subjects, but in 7th and 8th grade he was my science teacher. Yet, he was also more. He was a mentor, and friend of every student. Even my classmates who despised science would be happy in his class, because he made every bad grade seem like an opportunity rather than a failure. Mr. Wagner was proud to be himself, and inspired others to be the same.

Often, he would take a large part of our class time to pull our chairs into a circle, shoving the tables to the sides of the room so that everyone could fit. He made one person stand in the center, and randomly called on others to join them. They would each exchange compliments, and he required they cannot be about physical appearance. We would compliment each other on our hard work, the positive things we noticed that people might think go ignored, and it brought us together. It made us closer, and helped us grow as people to notice more than a pretty face or expensive shoes. I believe Mr. Wagner was so loved because he knew the value of teaching rather than instructing, and it was clear through everything he taught me.

Mr. Wagner had a record player in his room, well-known and remembered by any student lucky enough to have him. He would play records of songs from any decade, and help us find the meaning in them, or simply to give us exposure. I still remember the first song he played for us was Uncle John’s Band by Grateful Dead. After the songs ended and students were awakened from their trance, he would invite us to look deeper into the lyrics, and see it as more than just sounds that entertain us. In middle school, I never listened to music besides what was on the radio or the next pop song without meaning. It wasn’t until he showed me the power of music that I developed a taste of my own. I started discovering artists, found art in their songs, and revealed what genres made me feel whole. I wouldn’t have discovered the importance of music if Mr. Wagner had not taught it to me.

24

Photo by Connor Caldon, Gilford, NH

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR | APRIL/MAY 2022

SPECIAL AREA/FACILITATOR: Coach

Mr. Cody Smith Prospect Training Academy, Oak Creek, WI

by Cameron Scott, Hartland, WI

I

have played baseball my entire life, but I never tried playing for a team that was considered competitive. The end of the 2016 summer, right before I turned 13, I had chosen to go for a much more expensive and competitive team with Prospect Training Academy. One of the first coaches I met was Cody Smith.

He was a coach that worked a lot with the older kids and taught pitching for a majority of his time. I always thought I threw hard, I could throw any pitch at any time and no one would be able to hit it.

I learned through watching the older guys Cody was teaching that I was not as good as I thought I was. I wanted to be like those older guys throwing mid to high 80s. I would take lesson after lesson with a bigger group of my teammates, trying my absolute best to get better. I would always think to myself, what did these guys have to do to be able to throw this hard?

I began to do private lessons with Cody. He would watch me pitch and measure my velocity on my throws. I threw very slow. After a few lessons with Cody, I didn’t see much progress. I started to get down on myself and tell myself there was no future for me in pitching.

Cody taught me something very important about baseball and life through these lessons. I remember after a few weeks of working with Cody we started to do pull downs. I increased my velocity a significant amount. After each throw, Cody would smile and get excited as if he was the one making progress in his own work. Every improvement, big or small, Cody would display this excitement and joy with me that made me feel as if I accomplished something amazing. Cody’s fiery passion made me begin to fall in love with the process of improvement just as much as accomplishing my goal.

Shortly after my seventh-grade season I began to develop anxiety and depression. It gradually became worse and worse until it began to overtake my life. It became a long term issue that I even battle to this day, but Cody taught me something very important without knowing he would later become a huge part in how I deal with my mental health today. He taught me that I need to focus on something small first to accomplish a much larger goal.

To this day I can still hear his passion for coaching and that booming voice he had, that he displayed at each and every practice. During my darkest days in my life, I would always try to remind myself that I need to keep pushing and working everyday just like Cody had taught me with pitching. I needed to find a way to celebrate the little things in life and find joy in improving myself whether it is with mental health, school, or baseball. I just needed to keep practicing and find a passion, like Cody had, for accomplishing small feats.

Although what you did for me was indirect, it impacted me to this day as you were one of the first educators/coaches in my life that celebrated reaching achievements with me. You made me feel like I could achieve anything I wanted as long as I worked hard at the small things. Thank you for being the best coach I have ever had and changing my life through the game of baseball.

25

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR | APRIL/MAY 2022

HISTORY/SOCIAL STUDIES

Ms. Tyler Davis North Brunswick Township High School, North Brunswick, NJ

by Celeste Mckenzie, North Brunswick, NJ

W

hen I think of an analogy between me and Ms. Davis, I think of Cory and Mr. Feeny from "Boy Meets World." Their relationship was fundamentally comedic and yet often so valuable to Cory’s adolescence and future. The interactions between Cory and a simple history-teacher-turned-principal shaped him into the man he became in the later seasons of the show.

I remember when I entered high school, I was gravely disappointed that “Boy Meets World” did not give a very accurate depiction of what high school life would look like. There were no crazy adventures or entangled love stories or teachers that I felt I had truly connected to on a personal level — the last one hit me the hardest. My entire life I’d been molded into thinking this was how my high school life was going to be like, only to find out that Disney Channel lied.

And then I met Ms. Davis.

It’s hard to even articulate what she did for me, but I think the easiest way to put it is that she was there. Sometimes, the simplest phrasings are the most powerful. She made herself available when I was dealing with things that I didn’t really believe anyone

ENGLISH

Mrs. Nancy McFarlin Palisade High School, Palisade, CO

by Patience Weir, Grand Junction, CO

26

else could possibly understand. Like growing up feeling unloved because of my weight, my relentless need to seek out approval from the relationships in my life, or even how growing up black in a circle of white culture doesn’t bode well in the long run. She made me feel safe being vulnerable, and like she cared. She made me feel seen and for the first time in what I realized was an incredibly long time, I felt like Celeste. Not just a ghost walking around in a Celeste-shaped body, but a person. With feelings and experiences that mattered. That someone cared enough to listen to.

Growing up I never had a role model that looked like me and I thought I never would. And then I heard that there was a black female teacher who went to an Ivy League school that for some reason unbeknownst to me was working in North Brunswick Township High School. Oftentimes, people of my demographic forget that our goals are not intangible or out of reach. I started to let that weigh me down and prevent me from being the best student possible, but Ms. Davis, just by being herself, gave me hope. The real reason we connect is that we allow ourselves to be each other in our rawest and most vulnerable forms. Even if I’m just a kid. Or a student. And she’s probably like 500 years older than me or something. She just makes me feel like Celeste. And deep in my soul, I know I make her feel like Tyler.

We are not Cory and Mr. Feeny. We are Celeste and Ms. Davis. And there is an oddly comforting feeling in that cognizance.

Ms. Davis once told me that the reason she started working at North Brunswick was because of the diversity and that she wanted to be the role model to black students that she never had. I hope it makes her happy that she can count at least one.

N

ancy McFarlin is the Honors Comp/Lit teacher at Palisade High School, in a small town known for its peaches and surrounding mountains. Mrs. McFarlin has impacted so many kids in a positive way. Here is how she impacted me …

Thinking back on my freshman year of high school, I never would have thought that one teacher would change my life so much. I met Mrs. McFarlin my eighth grade year at an IB Shadow day. Her instant bubliness and welcoming arms immediately drew me towards her. Her class was a comforting space and she challenged my writing. I have always been interested in writing and many teachers

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR | APRIL/MAY 2022

considered me talented, but no one encouraged and challenged me like she did. Freshman me walked into her class with a lot to say and to get off my chest. I was in the depths of my eating disorder, I had just lost my mom, and like everyone else I was navigating life through a worldwide pandemic. She quite often allowed me the creative freedom to express myself through my writing. While there was content that she had to teach, she gave me just enough wiggle room to grow as an individual writer. Her class was always right after lunch, and she always encouraged me to finish my lunch in her room during class. When she found out that my mom had passed away, she was nothing but supportive. Maybe it was her mother's instinct, but her kindness was extremely helpful when grieving all while navigating my first year of high school. At the end of the year she pulled me aside for a conversation and I’ll always remember how inspiring it was. She told me that I was very talented and had it in me to be an author when I was older. She encouraged me to pursue a career in writing after graduating.

More recently, this year (my sophomore year), I took her creative writing class to build upon my love of writing. In that class she gave us much more creative freedom and ability because the curriculum wasn’t as strict. Each piece of writing she gave us feedback to improve it and other comments to encourage us. I specifically remember one story I submitted, a memoir that I am creating. She came up to me after reading the night prior and she told me she couldn’t stop crying after reading it. That was a pivotal moment in my life when I realized I could impact people through my writing.

I could change lives and inspire people through my writing. That’s when she encouraged me to enter my first TeenInk writing contest.

She continued her positive attitude through contracting COVID and not being able to be at school for quite a few months. Overall, her teaching has inspired me greatly and she truly deserves to be educator of the year not just this year, but every year.

CREATIVE ARTS: Choir

Mr. Gustavo Chaviano Arrowhead Union High School, Hartland, WI

by Laynie Walloch, Hartland, WI

S

ometimes, with a seven-hour school day followed by hours of rehearsals, a student can spend more time with their teachers than they do with their family. A teacher can either make this a grueling experience or create another family at school for their students.

Mr. Chaviano teaches choir for grades 9-12 which includes five different choirs of varying levels of difficulty. He also directs The Broadway Company which is a musical theater troupe that is known for its high skill level. Mr. C is passionate and dedicated to making his students better all-around in music and life.

I see Mr. C twice a day, once during the day for choir class, and again at the end of the day for rehearsals for The Broadway Company. Our rehearsals start during the school day and can run until five o’clock or as last as 9 o’clock at night. During these long hours, it gives him time to truly get to know us. He is always ready to listen. Over the years in high school, I’ve had some rough days, and he’s always

been someone that I knew I could go to for support. Running up to him before choir class, he listens to all of my daily grievances and makes a sassy remark that is sure to cheer me up. No matter if it was issues in a class, a funny story, or the latest piece of gossip, he was always there with a comfy seat in his office and an open ear.

Mr. Chaviano always pushes his students to be better because he knows that they are better. We have long hours of Broadway rehearsals so that he can make sure that we are acing all of our dance steps and know every note of every harmony in the show. He has mastered the art of tough love and says the hard truth because we need to hear it. He sets the bar high but teaches us that we can meet it every day. When we hit the mark, he is sure to tell us how proud he is and celebrate our accomplishments with us.

He prides himself on the environment that he has created within The Broadway Company. All fifty students within it are friends who support each other through every up and down that we face in rehearsals and life outside of the theater. He creates a space where, even as each other’s greatest competition, we can see each other’s talents and work together to make each other better.

Most importantly, Mr. Chaviano always tries his best to treat us like people. If he sees an issue, he always comes to the students first. He trusts us to problem solve on our own to teach us those important life skills. He has helped me break out of my shell and become who I am today. I came into high school with very few friends and not a lot of confidence, and now I can leave with a bold attitude and knowing that I have at least one hundred other people who have my back.

Thank you, Mr. Chaviano.

27

POINTS OF VIEW | APRIL/MAY 2022

Netflix, I'm Begging You …

Please Stop Letting Adults Write Teen Shows

by Haylee Griffith, Arvada, CO

Artwork by Ella Hedges, Dayton, OH

I

saw a TikTok the other day showing a scene from the Netflix original Never Have I Ever showcasing just how awkward a scene was (watch it at your own risk). This scene specifically made me cringe because of how obvious it is that an adult wrote this.

Nobody has said any of the slang they were using in years and it was honestly hard to watch this TikTok in its entirety because of how out of touch the writers truly are with teenagers nowadays.

28

what needs to stay in the past.

Even I’ll admit I have a hard time keeping up on slang sometimes, but when a show's main demographic is teenagers, it’s crucial

There's no shame in asking for a little guidance

This is nothing new for Netflix.

to put in the time to make sure it is actually engaging the viewers.

This TikTok got me thinking about just how common it is for Netflix shows to be written completely by adults who seemingly have never had an interaction with a teenager in their life.

In order to have a show written by an adult really stick with a teenage audience and make them feel for the characters, they need to understand that times have changed.

It’s difficult to put this against the writers sometimes because it must be hard keeping up with what is currently cool to say and

It’s more than just outdated slang.

While the usage of outdated terms is

easily the biggest reason these shows lose relatability, we should also take into account the fact that the writers of the shows haven’t been teenagers for a long time.

These adults don’t know what being a teenager is like right now because so much has changed so quickly. I’m sure at some point high schoolers did cry and eat ice cream on the couch after a breakup but nobody does that anymore (yes, that was a real scene written in a Netflix show in 2021, I wish I was kidding).

Seeing a scene like that in a show revolving around teenagers in today’s society makes it hard to feel for the character because we’ve never been in that position ourselves.

It’s almost insulting that adults think we still do stuff like that.

It seems sometimes that writers for these Netflix shows just look up what teens think is cool, read one article from 2016,

POINTS OF VIEW | APRIL/MAY 2022

then write in an entire scene where all the main characters start dabbing and flipping water bottles which is just not enough to genuinely connect with their audience.

exploring their sexuality in the modern world and many events and ideas were pulled from real high school experiences Zelda went through.

Relatability is a major key to succeeding when your audience is a bunch of high school kids so by not having that factor, you lose us and our interest immediately.

At just 17, she began writing the show and shared that experience with The Hollywood Reporter:

This ends up making the main characters we’re supposed to be rooting for seem boring and it becomes hard to watch.

A simple fix.

People that write these Netflix shows are clearly gifted and know how to make a story come to life so by just getting a little input from teenagers, they could really make their shows stand out in a good way rather than in a negative way.

I know that the actors on the show probably couldn’t care less about what the script says, they just do what they're told because it’s their job. I highly doubt they will cut in and say they don’t like what their character is saying out of nowhere.

I do think, however, that they would be more than happy to give input if they were asked. This could help so much in the long run by getting feedback from the people who know the target audience the best and are the ones that will be acting it out.

Other simple fixes would include asking your own kids what they would do or say when put into a certain situation to get the most accurate ideas or even hiring young consultants or apprentices and ask them.

There’s no shame in asking for a little guidance. It will end up making viewers much more satisfied because all we want are characters we can connect with.

A great example of a teen show.

Generation (stylized as Genera+ion) on HBO max was created by 19-year-old Zelda Barnz and one of her two fathers.

The show focuses on a group of teens

“When I started talking to my dad [Daniel] about this idea, his attitude was, ‘Well, if you want it to be a show at some point, just write the show.’ I thought I couldn’t do that because I didn’t know how to write a script yet. And he was like, “I’ll teach you.”

It became this project that we started working on together.” -Zelda Barnz Since her father Daniel already had experience writing and directing, it was a perfect opportunity for her to offer a new outlook on high schoolers we rarely see.

This show stuck with fans so well because the person behind it knows what she’s talking about. Seeing characters from a teenager’s eyes for once eliminates those stereotypical ideas people associate with us and helps us connect the show to our own experiences.

Don’t take it from me, take it from some of the many Google reviews for the show: “To be quite frank, I think this show is amazing. It’s not every day that someone tackles real-life struggles with teens and I think this show aids those who may not understand what their teenager is going through or what the person themself is going through to identify themselves.” -Q Burch “This show is not perfect but overall it’s different from other teenage/young adult projects. I like how the writers accurately capture the angsty confusing and fun moments of figuring yourself out as you grow up.” -Evelyn Lopez Now, I’m not saying that we should let 17-year-olds write every coming-of-age show from now on because it does need to be ultimately left in the hands

It would be refreshing for teenagers to finally watch a show and fell connected to the characters for once of professionals who have been in the industry for years.

All I’m saying is that Zelda worked closely with her dad who knows television and can help lead her to success and many writers for shows could learn from him and get the input and experiences from teenagers in order to ensure an accurate and noncringe-worthy storyline.

Final thoughts.

I feel that Netflix could benefit from working with younger writers or at least just trying to understand and connect with us on more than just surface level.

Other streaming services seem to understand that only teenagers can be accurate in storytelling for shows revolving around them.

I’m sure Netflix knows that no matter what they produce people will watch it and that’s what matters to them as a streaming service at the end of the day. However, It would be refreshing for teenagers to finally watch a show on the app and feel connected to the characters for once.

It doesn’t take much for the writers of these shows to really make it meaningful, just a few conversations with teenagers could help dramatically.

If they start to really connect with their audience this way, I more loyal fans would start to emerge and fall in love with the new and improved storylines.

29

Artwork Contest

Where Do You See Love?

Contest Winner!

Artwork by Claire Yoo, Euless, TX 30

Artwork by Jyothis Maria John, Ernakulam, India

Artwork by Austina Xu, Cupertino, CA

Photo by Amber Yu, Trenton, NJ Artwork by Ela Ponnachana, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Photo by Avery-Grace Payne, Cypress, TX 31

SPORTS | APRIL/MAY 2022

The

Comeback

by Saura Patel, Cincinnati, OH

Y

ou have to work as one, think like one, you all have to be one.”

Coach Dan tried to lift us up as our team was on a two-game tying streak. We all knew something was missing and we knew our chemistry was gone. Instead of everyone crossing to each other and doing wall passes, we were dribbling through defenders when there were wide-open players. I was captain and I felt like I was letting my team down. I was trying to be a good leader, but something just wasn’t clicking.

In practice that day, Coach Dan’s quote stuck with me. I just couldn’t forget about it. I realized I needed to do what the quote said. I had to work with my teammates and be a leader. When my teammates needed my help, I needed to do everything I possibly could to help them. I knew what I needed to do. I just needed to execute my plan, and that is the hardest part. When it was my turn for the drill, I held onto the ball for about five seconds and then passed it to my wide-open teammate. She got it, immediately shot it, and it was blocked.

32

Darn it, I thought to myself because I knew if she would have passed it back to me, I would have had a wide-open shot. After the shot, Dan pulled us over and said that we needed to do more wall passes because that would be the key to winning. So my teammates and I tried to do wall passes, but we were just getting so frustrated when it wasn’t working. As I dribbled down the thick grassy field, anger was brewing through me. Each step was heavier than the last, and I had to try extra hard to keep myself from falling. I was so angry because nothing was working. I felt like we had tried everything to get our chemistry together, but our strategy was not working. Maybe all of my team needed to talk about what was happening and get our anger out. So, after practice, my team had a meeting and I told

myself that I needed to be a leader.

“Guys, we need to do something about getting our chemistry back,” I said.

“Nothing’s working and I am just getting so frustrated,” Jane said.

“Me too. At the beginning of the season, we didn’t have this problem,” I replied.

We all nodded in agreement. I felt like a bad captain because this team needed a leader to guide us through the season, and I was doing the exact opposite. I had absolutely zero ideas to help my team get out of our tying streak.

I needed to remember to be a leader and lead my team to victory We were all deep in thought when Katie laughed,“It’s almost like we need to get into each other's brains.”

As we were laughing, Coach Dan called the captains over. Katie, Jane, and I jogged over to him slowly because our legs felt like Jell-O. We were exhausted from doing drills in practice today. Dan came up with a plan that might fix our problem: switching positions. He put people that work well together close to each other so they connect passes easier.

This changed our approach to how we played our game. Now more things were getting put together, and we were thinking like one. More passes were being made and more goals were being scored, but I knew the new positions weren’t going to win the game — it was going to be our attitudes. We had to have confidence in ourselves and not take ourselves out of the game because of

a tiny mistake. No one was going to stop us from being the best that we possibly could be except ourselves. Now, when it was game time, the past wasn’t going to matter, but the actions we made throughout the game were. We needed to remember to hold our heads high because we were a good team, and we needed to prove that to others.

That night as I was trying to fall asleep, I thought about ways to make myself a better leader, but I just couldn’t come up with anything. My brain felt clogged and no ideas were coming out. Nevertheless, I had to connect with my team and not get upset when someone messed up. I wanted my team to look up to me and see me as a good example. I didn’t want my team to think I was a bad captain because we were in our tying slump. Ultimately, I felt horrible about the situation because my teammates had voted me to lead the team to success. They believed that I was a good leader at the beginning of the season, and now I needed to show them I was a leader the whole entire season.

Today’s the day, almost as important as the championship. Before the game, I talked to my team.

“Today we have to work as one, just like Dan said at practice the other day. We have to show others and ourselves that we are the best team out there and that we deserve the win. Every single one of us needs to lead our team out on the field. Let's win and have fun!”

Now that I talked to my team, I needed to talk to myself. I needed to remember to be a leader and lead my team to victory. I was overthinking everything and I just needed to play my best and lead by example. As I jogged onto the field, I knew that today I would show the world that I did deserve to win and that I was a good leader. Each step

SPORTS | APRIL/MAY 2022

I took, the more confidence I gained. The field lights shined bright as I was getting ready to start the game. These lights were like my stage light because I was ready to put on a show.

My heart was beating so fast it seemed like it was going to explode. My body trembled as the referee blew the starting whistle.

The ball escaped my feet as I passed it to my teammate. She dribbled down the field and the game began. There was something different about today. Maybe it was the cool but perfect weather, the wind blowing my hair, or the way the crowd cheered for us.

But that was not it. It was a feeling. It was the feeling that the chemistry we had lost somehow returned to us. It was no longer missing, because pass after pass, we never lost the ball. The ball soared through the air as I scored the first goal.

Yes, I thought to myself, this is what we have worked so hard for!

We were being unselfish and giving the ball up when we needed to and shooting only when it felt right. This is the game I loved.

All of the frustration I felt earlier this week left me. The game went by so quickly, and I was so proud of all of us and how the game played out. Goal after goal after goal,

My heart was beating so fast it seemed like it was going to explode my confidence was boosted, and at that moment, I knew we had what it takes to win the championship. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but after this game, I just knew our team was never going to be the same again.

Everyone would always give 110 percent for all of our games and practices because the end result of winning and seeing that your work paid off is something remarkable.

As my family and I drove home that night, I felt so proud of my team, how I played, and my leadership, but I also remembered that none of that would’ve happened without my team. We never could have won if we didn’t work together. I felt so proud because of our teamwork and bond. Coach Dan was right, we needed to work as one and not be segregated because that is how we are going to win and be successful. I also stepped up as a leader and led my team to victory.

As I continue my journey through life, I will always carry this memory with me because it made me a better person. It taught me to be unselfish and that not everything revolves around me. I also now know that I need to step up and be the leader that my team needs. I know now that I can’t achieve anything without having confidence in myself.

Photo by Jiaying Zhu, Shenzhen, China 33 33

SPORTS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Photo by Yutang Shan, Johannesburg, South Africa

Hard-Won

Love

L

ook at this scar! Guess how I got it. I capsized my boat and tangled my line with the floating ball!"

On the side of my ring finger and pinky, there is a darkened strip of skin. I would not stop hyping my daring adventure to everyone I met, as if the scar was a trophy I had won instead of an ugly mark. Even after six years, the scar's distinct color hasn't faded, nor has my enthusiasm for sailing diminished. It is a constant reminder of my magical transition from fear and resistance, to loving the mysterious ocean and sailboats.

It was not until 5th grade that my mom finally convinced me to follow in the footsteps of my adventurous brother and join the sailing camp. This was to be my first trip away from my mother for two weeks, and I was well aware of its potential to be an unforgettable experience … but only due to its undesirability. Would I make new friends? Would people like me? Would I

34

by Hantong Li, Wellesley, MA

The scar is a reminder of my magical transition from fear to loving sailboats and the mysterious ocean miss my mom? Would I enjoy sailing? Before boarding the train, I again asked my mom for reassurance.

"Mom, are you sure that you’ll take me home if I don't like it?"

"Yes, of course, but I’m sure that you’ll like it."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

However, despite my mom’s optimistic support, my sailing non-adventure confirmed that my worries were not baseless. If, in the summer of 2016, you had had a chance to visit the Bohai Sea, just three hours away from China's capital of Beijing, you would have found a group of sailors with orange life jackets and red helmets standing in a line, ready to start their journey. Pulling the boat carriers with all of their might, the sailors dragged the heads of the Topaz boats onto the sandy beach two at a time and parked them at acute angles to the horizon. One peculiar sailor would have grabbed your attention, appearing immature and mostly confused.

She, too, was turning around on the sand, yet turning only her body. You would see her holding her hand out, closing her eyes and circling, desperately trying to feel the direction of the wind but only finding herself getting dizzier. That sailor was me – someone who couldn't tell where the wind was coming from.

SPORTS | APRIL/MAY 2022

The abstract concepts of wind direction and where to place the sail respective to the sailor never made sense to me.

When the sailboat is going in a windward direction – making a 45-degree angle with the direction of the wind – the sail should make a 22.5-degree angle with the hull, or be positioned ¼ of the way in. When the sailboat attains beam reach – running perpendicular to the direction of the wind – the sail should make a 45-degree angle with the hull. When you are going in the close-reach direction … You get the idea! The concepts are not designed to be something that can be easily grasped, especially for a sailor who could not discern the direction of the wind.

It was impossible to memorize all the numeric values before experimenting with the boat and learning through trial and error. I did, however, remember some words of wisdom: "Pull the sail!" On windy days, the hysterical calls of "Pull the sail!" echoed throughout the vast, empty sea, and they stuck in my head. Then, believing that I had found a quicker path to success, I would use my last bit of energy to pull the sail parallel to the hull of the boat, the boom touching the tip of my helmet. I later learned the hard way that sailing was not that simple.

Along with my unpolished skills, I was also an ambitious sailor. Believing that I had "learned a lot," I aimed to win a medal in the weekly races that were run on Fridays, but it was always just a fantasy for me during that first year.

During my very first race, the wind was really heavy.

"This is the time when you can prove yourself," I said to myself, pulling the sail toward the middle of the boat as the coach blew the whistle, announcing the start of the race.

I had to use all my body weight to prevent the boat from tilting, with my entire body reaching out of my boat and leaning backward. My right hand clutched the sailing rope tightly, ensuring that I would not lose the sail and have the boat come to a sudden stop. My left hand clutched the rudder equally as tight as I made my way out of the "boat cloud" in front of me.

Sailing is now a key component of my identity I could have simply loosened the lines at the cost of lowering the boat's speed, but I chose not to. By the time I was aware of the consequences of my decision – waves splashing onto my face, my mouth filling with cold and salty seawater, the sail flapping with a strange sound signaling a dangerous and awkward situation – I had already lost my balance. Remembering the "words of wisdom," I pulled the sail closer to my body but only found myself getting closer to the roaring ocean. The freezing water drenched my life jacket and filled in my shoes; the sail already hovered over me, seawater ceaselessly flowing into and crushing my nostrils.

I was almost drowning in the ocean. I yelled hysterically for a coach to help while employing my last bit of strength to pull myself onto the centerboard during my final attempt at turning the boat right side up.

Had it not been a requirement to finish the race, I would have gladly sailed back to land.

By the end of the day, I was determined to have my mom pick me up, blaming everything on my decision to go to the camp. If I hadn’t gone to the camp, I would not have almost drowned in the ocean. If I didn’t almost drown in the ocean, I wouldn’t have lost the race. If I didn’t lose the race, I would not have wasted a single week of my summer, accomplishing nothing but watching every other person surpass me as I tried to right the capsized boat.

This was, of course, not the end of my journey, for sailing is now a key component of my identity. However, as I reminisce about my transition from a novice sailor to a more proficient pilot of the boat, I find it indescribable, difficult to put into words. I will, of course, not tell you that the experience was not inspirational: I did not spend hours watching online sailing lessons, nor did I read textbooks about

how to become a better sailor. Rather, the transformation was nearly magical, as if some force had enchanted me and I suddenly became a gifted sailor.

The following year, finally convinced by my mom that I should overcome my failure, I found myself, for the second time, boarding the train with my brother, heading toward the Bohai Sea. I was not expecting any huge improvements in my skills, self-mockingly telling my brother that I should prepare to meditate daily to combat the anticipated mental breakdowns.

However, seemingly magically and to my great surprise, all the concepts suddenly made sense; my memories of salt-drenched clothes were replaced by joy and a sense of community.

As I became a more experienced sailor, I developed a stronger connection with the charm of sailing. When the wind was calm, I lay calmly inside the hull and watched the coaches lead the younger students to align their boats, reminiscing about the days when I was one of them. But windy days brought great fun, as they allowed me to adjust my sail and centerboard and enjoy the excitement of sailing at a faster speed.

The more competent I became, the more I loved sailing, as I shifted my focus from keeping the boat from capsizing to trying out more advanced sailing techniques.

Though Covid-19 has stopped me from boarding the train to the Bohai Sea, it has not stopped me from exclaiming, "The wind today is perfect for sailing!" It has not stopped me from being involuntarily pulled to sailing venues. It will also not stop me from appreciating the beauty of nature and the rewards of teamwork.

However, I still haven't figured out whether to appreciate my mom, my grit, or my courage for the joy that sailing brought me. I stopped trying to identify the strange force that made sailing a magical experience. Instead, I tried to imagine myself as the force – the source of it all.

Carrying my suitcase and my magic, I board the train every summer and wait for the enchantment to come.

35

TRAVEL & CULTURE | APRIL/MAY 2022

Artwork by Yincheng Qian, Dallas, TX

Ecuador,

Te Amo

by Megan MacFarland, Attleboro, MA

36

TRAVEL & CULTURE | APRIL/MAY 2022

V

omit climbed the back of my throat like a hiker determined to reach the peak of Mt. Everest. I swallow the bile, nearly gagging. My eyes focus on the baggage claim carousel that seems to go around and around in a loop of endless boxes filled with other travelers’ temporary lives. My own luggage never seems to come fast enough.

I can barely even see the carousel through the crowd of people, but I refuse to move from my spot at the back. One wrong step at the wrong time, and bile in my throat will have reached its peak. I see the people I'm traveling with, none of whom I had known 24 hours prior, and most of them were laughing. My brain can’t even fathom the idea of something being funny at the moment. All I can focus on is pushing down vomit, silently gagging, and scanning the baggage carousel; determined not to embarrass myself in front of these new people any more. My panicked mind races, and the carousel runs around in a slow cycle, refusing to give me my suitcase until everyone else on the trip has theirs.

My feet tell me I am standing in the airport in Quito, Ecuador; while the clock tells me I should be sleeping, and my heart begs me to tell it why I have decided to take this trip. I won an 11-day free trip, although ‘free’ is a relative term because I’d gotten vaccines that no one would call cheap. They’d scared us through their insistence that we get the shots, beware of stray dogs, don’t drink the tap water, and understand that altitude sickness is a real thing. But knowing there is danger is different than actually encountering it. After the bus dropped us off from the airport, and I’d nearly emptied my stomach onto the floor of the hotel lobby, I realized that altitude sickness is not actually a myth, and I should be seriously concerned. The sickness went away eventually, but the fear of disease lingered.

The first day, we all adjusted to our new home for 11 days; and the second, we tested the rough waters of spending every waking moment with the same people. By the third day, I became very close to three of the other girls on the trip, and the one who I hung out with the most was named Carly. I sat next to Carly on the bus, and we enjoyed ourselves more than we probably should have. We laughed about how I was the only one saaying “no gracias” to all the vendors who walked by, and who somehow always returned to try again. She laughed about the horrible facts I told her about shark fin soup, and I laughed about a cooked hamster the waiter laid on our table one day that Carly actually tried. We both laughed about the work we did at the farm we visited, and my distaste for almost all the food the restaurants served us. We all took on Ecuador together, somehow brave in the face of newness.

One day on the latter half of the trip, the group began to climb a steep volcano named Cotopaxi, whose height brought a lack of oxygen and bitter cold. A few of us struggled and lagged behind, so we decided to turn around and return to the bus.

“What is this stuff falling from the sky?” Carly, who hails from southern Texas, wondered aloud.

“You mean the hail?” I quipped.

I took a photo of her wrapped in hefty layers, with her hood covering her glasses and the hail falling down around her. It was

her first experience of something she may have never witnessed again. I think she tucked that photo into her heart’s back pocket.

My panicked mind races, and the carousel runs around in a slow cycle, refusing to give me my suitcase until everyone else on the trip has theirs A couple days before we were set to return to the United States, I stood in an outdoor market, surrounded by tents, colors, people and thoughts. I remembered that the first piece of information I found about Ecuador before I came was that people will rob you.

A woman will throw a baby at you, or a child will pickpocket you, and suddenly, you’re stuck in a foreign country with no money and endless questions. As I stood there in the market, my mind pinballs, rolling around thoughts that neither escaped nor stayed still. My recently purchased drawstring bag clenched my shoulders tightly as I kept looking over my shoulder for someone who was not there.

Ecuadorian vendors have a way of looking so deeply into your eyes that you feel as if your life may become worse if you walk away without buying what they are selling. As I ponder these thoughts, one approaches me.

“Tres por quince dólares,” he offers.

I counter, “Tres por diez?”

“Doce.”

I hand him $12, and now I have a bag that politely whispers "tourist," a stubborn insistence on being suspicious, and three bracelets generously sold to me at a lower cost than originally asked. Two of the bracelets have unknown final destinies, as they will go to recipients who will slowly fall apart from the giver, but the one that is left has a special place in the heart of its owner.

One day I will find myself far away from this market, and the brown and turquoise speckled beads of that one bracelet will draw faint memory-filled emotions from me every time I notice its string around my wrist.

On the 11th day of the trip, the same bus that brought me to the first hotel and took me on a tour of its country, now brings me back to the place I started. It sends me off to a new life. Maybe I am not that changed, and maybe one day I won’t remember any names or faces of the people I have met, but I have experienced something new, and embedded memories deep into my soul. I would like to think those count for something.

My heart beats a little too fast as I go through customs, in the same way it does whenever a police officer enters a room I’m in. Did I do anything wrong? No. But did I? "Did you go to a farm?" The screen asks me when I try to print out

37

TRAVEL & CULTURE | APRIL/MAY 2022 a ticket to enter the security line. The question is a simple one, at least, it appears to be. Yet, because I answer yes, it becomes the surface layer of a printed ticket marked with a red flag. That ticket takes me on a trip down a special hallway through the airport. At the end of the hallway, I spend an hour with a customs agent. He speaks rough English to me as he scrubs the sneakers that walked on the farm until there is no trace of the farm left. And as I stand there and watch him, I know I will never forget this moment, especially because it also happens to be my first time re-entering the United States through an airport. Because I answered yes to the farm question, I do not get to say goodbye to Carly, and this absence of a farewell devastates me. We occasionally chatted and said we would visit each other, but words only carry meaning when carried out.

Those 10 and a half days will have had to be enough. And honestly, I think they were enough.

Ecuador barely let me enter its borders without poisoning me, but once it had me in its grasp for 11 days, it wouldn’t let me return to

Photo by Gabrielle Beck, Tenafly, NJ

3838

Maybe I am not that changed, and maybe one day I won’t remember any names or faces of the people I have met, but I have experienced something new, and embedded memories deep into my soul my own country without a fight. Somehow, though, on the 12th day, as I sit in my home in Massachusetts, I want to go back.

I probably won’t visit a farm next time.

TRAVEL & CULTURE | APRIL/MAY 2022

Amalfi Hike

by Piercen Hunt, Hartland, WI

Artwork by Weiqian Yan, Troy, NY

S

weat drips from every inch of my body, falling from my skin onto the rich soil of the mountainside. I reach for my water bottle, only half-full. I start to worry. With two miles until the top of the trek, and the descent to follow, I need to ration what little liquid I have left.

My dad leads the way for our group. His continuous words of encouragement hardly have any effect on my siblings and me.

Every so often, through a break in the trees, we spot the Mediterranean Sea. Reflecting the sun like a mirror, it seems to be the only escape from the scorching Italian summer.

The canopy of trees overhead provides very little relief. Any shade that the leaves offer is voided by the humidity beneath the treetops. Every step is more painful than the last.

Trudging along, my legs scream at me to give in to the demand of the ascent.

Shoving the thought to the far reaches of my mind, I fall into the mundane rhythm of left, right, left, right, left, right.

As we near the explorable limits of the cliffs, there are more opportunities to catch

Trudging along, my legs scream at me to give in to the demand of the ascent a glimpse of the picturesque scene laid out below. The small holes in the vegetation, however, can only be observed when vision strays from the narrow path.

From the back of the pack, my sister mumbles incoherently about how tired her legs are. Luckily, her complaints are short lived; we have reached the top of the trail. For the first time in hours, no trees or bushes obscured our vision off the edge of the cliffs.

The beauty of the scene simultaneously steals the breath of everyone in my family.

Stunned, we say nothing – not even my sister. We only stare at the landscape laid out below. It seems like blue stretches on forever. There is no clear definition of where the sea and sky meet.

Looking straight down, the town resembles a model set. I feel like if I reach out I can touch it, even from miles away. Small dots shuffle about in the square. The townsfolk resemble ants, traveling in every direction, appearing confused when observed from such great height.

My family and I exchange looks of content.

We share the details that we each saw on our own. A beautiful boat in the distance.

A private beach tucked away in a cove. A house built on the side of the cliffs below, appearing like it will topple into the sea.

The beauty grasps our attention far longer than intended. Letting out a heavy sigh, a feeling of peace consumes me. Perched high up on the Italian cliff, every woe washes away, leaving just me and the ocean sprawled out below.

My daze is broken by my father summoning me for our return trip down the mountain.

Looking back, I take one last look at the wonder spread out in front of me. Sucking in one last breath of the ocean air, I plunge back into the treeline.

39

TRAVEL & CULTURE | APRIL/MAY 2022

The Ghosts of

Gondar

by Hana Tilksew, Clovis, CA

Artwork by Jordan Liu, Richmond, BC, Canada

40

I

n the highlands of Ethiopia, sits a city that has been the center of history. She has seen the rise and fall of kings, the birth and destruction of empires, the virtues and pitfalls of men. Gondar was none of these things to me the summer I turned 16 – instead, she was a fantasy.

From the moment my father announced that we would be taking a summer trip to Ethiopia, my brother thought of the skyscraperstudded city of Addis Ababa, while my sister looked forward to riding a motorboat across Lake Tana. I, however, dreamed of Gondar.

I’d seen the city nicknamed the Camelot of Africa before, and I still remembered the smell of my grandmother’s house and the crows of her roosters. But our last trip to Ethiopia had been for the sake of family, with people to greet and cheeks to kiss. This time, we were going for what my father called “educational purposes,” which I understood as his excuse to show us as many landmarks as possible.

Gondar was the apple of my eye in the weeks leading up to the trip: something to look forward to amid all the frenzied traffic and strange looks guaranteed to us, with our American hair and American jeans. This was the native land of my ancestors, where they had lived and died and worshiped; a portal to an age that no longer existed, the glory of which was now remembered only in old books and ardent lyrics.

It took seven days of trudging my feet and sighing loudly to get us to Gondar, but as I rolled up the famous hills sandwiched between my brother and my father in one of Ethiopia’s notorious bajaj, shaking hands clutching the thin fabric of my tibeb dress, I knew that this was it.

As my father headed into the ticketing office to find us a tour guide, I surveyed the grounds, with buildings that seemed to glow and balconies that seemed to beckon. With our English-speaking guide in tow, I itched for all the stories I would tell my friends back home.

The tour began with Fasil Gemb, the main structure of the compound and onetime living quarters of the imperial family. We were shown the central castle with its reception hall, banquet hall, and royal chambers. We saw the guard towers, cramped little rooms with windows just thin enough to shoot a trespasser on sight. Every room seemed to come alive as we passed through it, whispering centuries of secrets it had witnessed.

Authentic relics remained, like the glasses that noblemen used to drink tej, Ethiopia’s famous honey wine, and the original hearth that connected the two dining rooms. Animal horns that had been attached to the walls for the purpose of holding meat were now dark and calcified.

TRAVEL & CULTURE | APRIL/MAY 2022

The emperors that had walked these halls were ghosts of the past: ghosts that could not rest because they were trapped behind museum glass rather than buried in Ethiopian soil some of the most precious manuscripts in the world, written in Ethiopia’s ancient language of Ge’ez. It had once been a center of majesty, but its current state of dilapidation was the work of thieves – not the kind of petty criminals that could have been thwarted by the guard tower, but the kind that came as friends. First Great Britain, breaking peace between the nations when it decided that hoarding sacred artifacts for its museums mattered more than integrity. Later Italy, when it decided that if it could not make Ethiopia a colony, it had to take something.

The castles of Gondar were no longer a compound, but a graveyard.

The emperors that had walked these halls were ghosts of the past: ghosts that could not rest because they were trapped behind museum glass rather than buried in Ethiopian soil.

Today, Ge’ez classes are offered in England and Germany for European scholars who aim to decode holy texts stolen from their motherland. Everything about this is a trespass – on a history, on a religion, on a people. And though Ethiopia is the only African state never to be colonized, it is not free from the stains of foreign imperialism. There are still the graveyards dedicated to monks murdered during the Italian occupation, the statues erected in honor of fallen generals, my own great-grandfather’s war medals that my grandmother wore until her final day.

Like many Ethiopian-Americans, I have always been first to speak of Ethiopia’s successes, her historic feats and unknown triumphs. The losses had never felt worthy of mention – why should they be, when they could only be a source of shame? But I know now that those losses are worth mentioning, if for no other reason than recognizing what we had before it was taken, and appreciating everything our forefathers did to ensure that we never suffer the same defeats again. The ghosts of Gondar may haunt Ethiopia forever, but they will never break her.

I was in awe. What must it have been like to live here? To work here?

To behold this place when it had cost lineage and a title to get in, instead of a few Ethiopian birr? To revel in the glories of the old world, with no idea that it would ever pass away?

We then came to the library, and all thoughts of what a fairy tale this place must have been disappeared.

This crumpled hunk of stone, our guide explained, had long held

41

BOOK REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Book YOUNG ADULT FICTION

telling him to shut it. Margo promised Q a night of exhilarating revenge, one certainly to remember and shine out alongside all of the dull, repetitive days.

each character. The depth that lies behind a mere combination of phonetic letters, practically an iceberg with secrets entirely submerged in unforeseen waters.

What would turn out to be the aftermath of

When the story comes to an end, the reader may think it’s a good book. A stereotypical, guy-cannot-live-without-the-girl kind of young adult novel. If you peel off that cliche like a patch covering a hole in an article of clothing, what is awaiting to be discovered is the philosophical features that John Green intertwines with each sheet of paper.

It adds a new hidden level of intellect to each character, and the plot itself.

It transforms from what seemed to be teenagers messing around, simply having fun just months before their graduation, to falling down a rabbit-hole that are the ponderous questions of life.

Paper Towns by John Green will absolutely lasso you right into the creases of each page, not letting go until that final page is flipped

Paper Towns

by John Green

Review by Madison Cossaboom, Newark, DE

“

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

Quentin “Q” Jacobson is surprisingly alright with having his days fade into the same shade of identicalness. Going to school, staring at the clock for seven hours, going home, IM-ing with the same friends, and admiring the same girl who’s had his heart since they were nine years old.

May 5th was supposed to follow the same routine – until Margo Roth Spiegelman appeared on the other side of his window in the middle of the night, nine years after

42

possibly Q’s most electrifying night alive, is not what he expected nor was prepared for.

Margo had always been a fan of mysteries, although Q never quite expected her to become one herself. Thought to be left with an unfinished ending, it doesn’t take long before Q realizes that she left a trail of clues behind – specifically for him.

On the cusp of adulthood, the story follows Q and his ambition to discover what happened to Margo. But the farther he ventures down the path that is the enigmatic life of Margo Roth Spiegelman, he’s quick to learn that she may not be the girl he always thought she was.

Paper Towns by John Green will absolutely lasso you right into the creases of each page, not letting go until that final page is flipped. To the average reader, it may seem like a wonderfully-spun and crafted mystery – it is, without a doubt. Although the best aspect of the book is not the plot at all. Perhaps the best aspect of the book is the depth hidden behind the name of

With that said, there isn’t a book without any flaws. While reading, I found myself wishing that Q would talk about something other than Margo. It is the plot of the book, yes, however a never-ending 20-page train of thought about one girl seems a bit much.

I hoped that the book would include more elements about his life as the protagonist such as school, instead of solely around Margo.

To the people who aren’t afraid to open their mindset to new ideas and questions, this book is a great recommendation. This recommendation is also open to those who enjoy romance (a rather underwhelming amount) and mysteries especially. The writing itself is well-organized and has a comedic flair to it, specifically a taste in childish, immature humor. It keeps the book lighthearted and not spiraling down into endless, philosophical thoughts.

BOOK REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks

by Mackenzi Lee

Review by Abigail Sterner, MacLean, VA

W

e read books to escape. We read to go on adventures, and to find new realities, and to witness truths that seem more real when they are captured within pages. We read to live a thousand lives and experience a thousand wonders. We read to be seen and understood. We read to see and understand ourselves in new ways. That is why it is crucial to see realistic depictions of mental health in fiction: reading these depictions allows us to face ourselves.

The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee is a prime example of a story that handles mental health in a way that reflects the truth of chronic anxiety and compulsive disorders.

Each passage that dealt with anxiety was written respectfully and truthfully. Though these descriptions were often so close to reality to be triggering, they were balanced with enough light not to make the overall story feel overly dark.

Following Adrian Montague, a lordling who discovers he has two older siblings after the tragic death of his mother, The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks features poignant mental health discoveries, family relationships, pirates, politics, and enough humor to fill a stand-up comedy routine. The novel centers around a hunt for a mysterious spyglass owned by Adrian’s dead mother, which eventually leads him to his long-lost brother Monty. Though this is technically the third and final novel in the Montague Siblings Trilogy, the books can be read out of order, though it is easier to start with The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue.

It is crucial to see realistic depictions of mental health in fiction: reading these depictions allows us to face ourselves

ignoring it, there was never a moment where Adrian mysteriously overcame his anxiety, nor did it ever stop being important because the plot dictated that it was trivial.

The sibling relationships between Monty, Felicity, and Adrian were a delight to read about. Each sibling had more than their fair share of issues, but they found ways to understand and support one another despite it. Monty and Adrian had an exceptional bond that jumped off the page, and though they had almost two decades between them, their relationship was vibrant and alive. All the characters in The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks had defined personalities, each with complex backstories and relationships. Overall, I could not have asked for a better end to this trilogy or a better book to deal with chronic anxiety.

The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks is not a novel that is easy to forget, nor one that dissolves into blurred letters once the final chapter is done.

Photo by Ditri Collaku, Tirana, Albania

In the pseudo-historical 18th century, the political climate of London was paired well with slices of the rest of the world, from Amsterdam to Rabat. Though this novel is technically not historical fiction (it deviates strongly from actual historical occurrences), the setting and the story still read like an early adventure book. The witty dialogue and easy writing allowed The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks to fly by, with hundreds of pages disappearing in a matter of hours.

Beyond the excellent writing, the portrayal of family relationships and anxiety really set this book apart. Adrian suffers from a severe form of chronic anxiety paired with obsessive-compulsive disorder, though the modern terms for these challenges are not used until the author’s note at the end of the book. The author did a fantastic job of creating a character with traits aside from mental health disorders, while building relationships around Adrian that were supportive. While other books unsuccessfully deal with this issue by

43

Photo by Kenzie Montgomery, Gibsonburg, OH

Artwork by Haylee Griffith, Arvada, CO

Artwork by Jackie Lao, Shanghai, China

44

MOVIE & TV REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Movie & TV MUSICAL FANTASY

Encanto Movie

Review by Aubry Conway, Cannon Falls, MN

I

’ve always wanted a magical house.

I’ve dreamed of having the walls and floors move me about and bring me my shoes and socks, my dresser opening for me and picking out my wardrobe for the day, and my bed making itself when I wake up in the morning. So, when I saw the trailer for a movie about a magical house named Casita, I knew I would love it straight away. I’m happy to report that I was right. “Encanto” is an overall fantastic movie for people of all ages because of its strong and relatable characters, catchy music, and beautiful setting and culture.

The characters in “Encanto” are some of my favorites in the Disney franchise. Mirabel is the star of the movie, a strong-willed

and hopeful character who makes it her mission to save the Casita when it starts crumbling. She never gives up on her home even when everyone else has. When the Casita starts to break and everyone else is evacuated because their gifts disappeared, Mirabel still climbs up and tries to save the candle that holds the house's magic. One of the stronger side characters is Bruno, the outcast uncle who sees the future. He

There are plenty of different ways they showcased Colombia's culture, from the very design of Casita to the food they eat is kind and compassionate, even when his family rejected him. When Mirabel went looking for him and became stuck on a piece of floorboard, Bruno saves her even after all they’ve been through. All of the other members of the Madrigal family have distinct personalities, even if they don’t get as much screen time. Camilo is mischievous and sarcastic, Isabela is ambitious and straight-laced, and Dolores is nosy and empathetic. Though, one thing that really helps build up characterization in “Encanto” is the music in it.

The music of “Encanto” is one of its strongest features. “The Family Madrigal” was the perfect opening song to this fantastical film. It showcases all the members of the Madrigal family and their gifts: Julieta, Bruno, and Pepa’s ability to heal with food, see the future, and control the weather with emotion. It also includes

all of the cousins and their abilities. The song does all of this while skirting around the fact that Mirabel didn’t receive a gift.

The next song, “Waiting on a Miracle,” exhibits how since Mirabel didn’t get a gift, she feels like an outcast and disconnected from the rest of her family. Mirabel longs for a gift and has been “patient and steadfast and steady,” waiting to get one. The last song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is a musical number discussing the estranged uncle, Bruno, and how they feel about him. From Dolores’ sympathetic take, (“it’s a heavy lift with a gift so humbling”) to Camilo’s terrifying viewpoint, (“he sees your dreams and feasts on your screams”), it shows a wide range of emotions toward him, and I think it’s a very silly, yet thoughtful song. However, a good setting is needed to convey the message the music is trying to give.

One of the last reasons I love “Encanto” so much is because of its gorgeous setting and the culture in which it comes from.

“Encanto” is based in Colombia, a country in South America with rich history and traditions. There are plenty of different ways they showcased Colombia's culture, from the very design of Casita to the food they eat. Casita’s design is representative of traditional Colombian homes with colorful siding and flat-roof tiling. One of the many foods that Julieta makes to heal people, arepas, is a Colombian breakfast food made of dough and filled with meat, cheese, and all sorts of other veggies. The family's clothing is also representative of Colombia's culture: the women wear colorful skirts and dresses, while the men wear slacks and either button-downs or ruanas, the Colombian version of a poncho.

The last thing I would like to mention is how beautiful the animation is. There is so much detail in every frame, that it almost looks real, apart from the characters being animated.

45

MOVIE & TV REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

The only critique I have for “Encanto” is that the ending comes far too quickly, and the conflict is also resolved quite fast.

Now, this is standard for a Disney movie, but I feel as though it really could have benefited if they had taken more time for the characters to start slowly forgiving Abuela for her emotional abuse, instead of them forgiving her right away. This goes especially for Bruno, who quickly forgives Abuela just because she gives him a hug and kiss. He even apologizes for everything he did even though he really didn’t do anything wrong – people just had many misconceptions about him. In spite of this, I believe that it’s an awesome movie with plenty of other good qualities.

'Encanto' is an overall fantastic movie for people of all ages because of its strong and relatable characters, catchy music, and beautiful setting and culture In conclusion, “Encanto” is a fantastic movie because of its captivating music, exceptional characters, and marvelous setting. “Encanto” is more than just a silly movie about a magic house to me, though.

Its characters struggle with some of the same things I do and it’s refreshing to see those issues on the big screen. It tackles issues like generational trauma within Latino families and, while I don’t personally experience it, I can see how much of a difference it can make. In “Encanto,” Mirabel said, “Even in our darkest moments, there’s light where you least expect it.”

I think that’s a beautiful way of thinking about how even when times are tough, there is always a way out. I still hope that one day I will find a house every bit as magical as Casita.

46

DRAMA

Lie to Me TV show

Review by Yuheng Wang, Beijing, China

“L

ie to Me” is a charming expose into the intricate web of lies that make up our lives and navigates us through a world, as we now see, shrouded by deception.

The January 2009 debut of this Fox show instantly enraptured viewers. Words might deceive, but crumbs of truth are always left behind. The drama instructs viewers on the proliferation of microexpressions that reveal concealed emotions by weaving them within captivating storylines. The unraveling of one lie leads to another, and another, until an entire conspiracy is exposed.

Even when an entire mystery is solved, expected endings still do not arrive. In one episode, a congressional candidate is rumored to frequent a sex worker, who is actually a politician’s daughter and looking to quit the profession. If the lie is exposed, her reputation will be forever tarnished, but he will be exonerated. Thus, to publicize the lie or not: that is the question. The father chooses to sacrifice his career to give his daughter a second life opportunity: he resigns and buries the truth.

Detecting lies is important, but digging out the liar’s motive is more significant.

The process of peeling through layers of lies mirrors the complexity of our entangled existence in this world. “Lie to Me” teaches us to think more than twice about truths and lies. An American soldier who lied about a Taliban compound turned out to be an undercover agent who was abandoned by his motherland. His lie was a sinuous protest against U.S. officials’ irresponsibility. A female writer claimed to witness atrocities in Africa and used the experience to call for international help.

Her lie gave voice to the vulnerable victims of violent crime.

Lies are often envisioned as removable components. In fact, lies and truths are woven into life. People tend to “lie up to three times every ten minutes.” If lies were expunged, life would be uncanny.

The process of peeling through layers of lies mirrors the complexity of our entangled existence in this world This reality accounts for the decline of viewership in later seasons. Season one was an immediate sensation. Dr. Cal Lightman is a detached expert and his penetration into people’s foggy lies enthralls viewers. In contrast, in seasons two and three, Lightman is more directly involved and compelled to confront the lies that have constituted his own life. It is entertaining to watch Lightman’s adroit manipulation of the scientific scalpel to anatomize others’ lies. When that same gaze is used to pierce our own vest of lies, and expose our naked selves, we refuse Lightman and embrace opacity. Lies still abound.

MOVIE & TV REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

THRILLER/DRAMA

The film begins with a man dragging a wrapped body into a hole in the middle of a house. He then lights the house on fire and walks out. This man is our protagonist, Stanton, played by Bradley Cooper, a charismatic grifter who treats every situation like a chameleon, blending into his environment and becoming exactly

Themes of loss, triumph, and justice are very common throughout, as we follow a man trying to rise up in life and become successful Nightmare Alley Movie

Review by Aidan Baughman, Oshkosh, WI

G

uillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” is a phenomenal movie that will never see the success it deserves. I really had no idea what to expect going into this movie, and the marketing made sure of that. Previews showed a horror film set in a carnival that included monsters, but none were present in this film – at least non-human monsters. This was also accentuated by del Toro’s typical mystical style, which includes strange creatures and magic. Instead, “Nightmare Alley” is a grounded noir thriller in many different locations, that abandoned the carnival shown heavily in the trailers after the first third of the film. Themes of loss, triumph, and justice are very common throughout, as we follow a man trying to rise up in life and become successful.

who he thinks he needs to be to get what he wants. Stanton joins and rises through the ranks of a carnival, taking odd jobs here and there and learning as much as possible from his peers, all the while preparing to leave. Eventually, Stanton leaves the carnival for a solo career to become a psychic with a woman named Molly, played

by Rooney Mara. They eventually get married off-screen and the relationship is borderline abusive at times. These characters have little on-screen chemistry, which is enough to take you out of the illusion of the movie, at times. Stanton continues to take increasingly dangerous gigs and employs a therapist to help him learn about his clients. Can he keep up the act and fool a man who threatens all that Stanton has built?

on a scene and we truly feel the locations, from the dirty and dark carnival to bright foreboding buildings. That’s not to say the film has a slow pace, as the entire runtime is packed with important events and intriguing dialogue. There are graphic scenes of physical violence and drug use at key points in the film, yet they never feel gratuitous. The shot composition is straightforward, but during pivotal scenes, there can be a real sense of claustrophobia.

Sometimes we are almost trapped with these characters and their choices.

The characters of this film were almost entirely fleshed out and a joy to watch.

While the leads of this film, Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett, play their parts with a lot of vigor and emotion, many of the supporting characters are almost dull and one-dimensional. Actors such as Ron Perlman, who played a strongman, and Willem Dafoe, who played the carnival’s owner, were used extensively for the marketing of this film, but for the most part, were left behind after the first third. The supporting cast was still fun to watch on first viewing, but lacked anything to come back for on rewatch.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this film to anyone who can bear the watch time, as it has a lot to offer. This may not be the usual output for del Toro and Cooper, but that’s not inherently bad. Together they created a truly interesting and engaging movie that could be enjoyed by many people who may have missed it.

Boasting 150 minutes, “Nightmare Alley” has a quite indomitable runtime. Such long movies are rarely that popular with mainstream audiences. I love the way this movie treats the audience as smart moviegoers who don’t need everything explained immediately. There are beautiful moments when the camera just lingers

47

MUSIC REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Music POP

Low

by David Bowie Review by Aiden Barbour, Delray Beach, FL

I

think we all hear Bowie before we hear Bowie. The hits, — "Changes", "Moonage Daydream", "Space Oddity" — we all hear these great songs and we admire the great pop songwriting that Bowie displays.

We hear the charismatic character whoever he chose to be at that time. We love the catchiness and the great playing. But as I was getting into Bowie, I began to hear the actor, the musician, the man behind the art who has always worn himself on his sleeve; not in a superficial way, but an honest one.

It goes without question that The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust is his most flamboyant work. It’s a Broadway play as much as it is an LP. Bowie paints himself as a flashy guitar rocker from the future and an androgynous slayer who’s going to slay the guitar like no other. Possibly like

48

no one ever to be, as there is an oncoming apocalypse soon to wipe it all away. If Ziggy was living in this pre-apocalyptic world on the brink of disaster, the David whose mindset formed Low was after, and now he’s drowning in the sink.

What’s the sink? It’s a murky clouded pool, some dismal place to wash your face while not washing it, some disaster-soaked marble space where you can put your hands in, then goes your arms, head, torso, waist, and legs — sinking, sinking until you’re low. Hence the name, Low. If Ziggy was like fireworks bursting in the air, Low is the bits and pieces shimmering beyond the horizon, blending into the black. That's why I love this album.

It's dripping with so much melancholy that you could fill buckets with it I will admit that when you first put on this 11 track record, what I’m saying may not seem like the case. “Speed of Life” has some, well, speed. As does the whole first half of the album, frankly. But depression, hurt, addiction — these things don't stop your life, merely alter it. So although Low dabbles in post-punk with its groovy, strong baselines, and driving drums — it is saturated with bitterness. It’s a big change from the early 70s Bowie sound — not glam.

It’s Station to Station Bowie, it’s Heroes Bowie. Anxious, nocturnal electronics bleeping and blooping, David Bowie frantically singing very longing, cold lyrics; we’re in the sink, alright.

On the second track, “Breaking Glass,” it seems like he’s physically having a

breakdown. Breaking glass, or drawing something he doesn’t want his woman to see. When I think of why he’s breaking the glass in particular, it’s because he’s not happy with what he sees or with the person he is. The final lyrics are, “You're such a wonderful person / But you got problems / I'll never touch you.”

This could be him speaking from the woman’s perspective, but it also could be him talking to himself in the mirror, conflicted on whether he loves or hates himself. We see more of this franticness on the next track where he speaks to his personified soul. “I'm just a little bit afraid of you.” The man who always wore himself on his sleeve is now questioning who it is he’s wearing. “Oh, what you going to say? / Oh, what are you going to do? / Ah, what are you going to be? / To the real me.” When David Bowie finds himself, or just when he chooses to be vulnerable and be the real him again, what are people going to think? In this song, it seems that he is scared sh*tless.

Then, we have the greatest traditional song on the album, and one of Bowie’s best hits, “Sound and Vision.” I love this song.

He starts it off by contemplating sound and vision. Don’t you wonder about it? I sure do. I think in this instance Bowie is consumed by it, part of this depression is the sound and vision, but it’s also part of his escape from it. Brilliantly, he then uses lines describing his room as “electric blue” and the blinds as pale, as he drifts into his solitude while looking for inspiration.

I often experience this when I try to write about different things. The pressure of making something good is hard, especially when the best inspiration only naturally comes in spurts. Fortunately, when you get that inspiration, you are happier for it… until you run out, again.

Now, the second side of Low. I’m honestly

MUSIC REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

not gonna talk much about it. It is something you have to listen to. It’s an almost-speechless half that speaks more words than Bowie could have physically said. It’s dripping with so much melancholy that you could fill buckets with it. Tony Visconti and Brian Eno did some fantastic work on these tracks in collaboration with Bowie. One thing I will say though is that “Subterraneans” is a masterpiece. Bowie’s vocals are sprinkled fragments of your broken soul on top of the wonderful music being made. As the record ends, look up — look up to the surface of the sink. You won’t see any light coming from the surface, we are far, far too deep. All we can do is what Bowie did, embrace it.

ALTERNATIVE

Ultraviolence

by Lana Del Rey Review by Stella Corbin, Newark, DE

A

dream of motorcycle love divine, linen, pearls, and the gold of life in L.A. — Ultraviolence takes you there. It's expository of the beauty in divine feminine sadness. Her poetry is the Californian sun that is shining through the window of whatever classic car she's in the passenger seat of. Her melodies are the tears rolling down her cheeks during all the parties and bright lights. Her persona as the 'west coast sad girl blessed with beauty and rage'

only stands taller with the stilettos she's wearing on the cover of Ultraviolence.

Lana Del Rey spent her life before the spotlight surrounded by music and poetry.

At the age of 18, she started singing in small clubs and bars. Her lifelong love and breath became her poetic songs. Elegantly, she built an aesthetic world of the 1950s/60s inspired by sad girls and bad boys on motorcycles living under the Hollywood sign. Seven record releases later, she is the ‘queen of sadness.' Recently just named 'Artist of the Decade,’ Lana puts all of her emotion and beauty into every record; but her power is even more intense and sweet 'like cherries in the spring' on my favorite of her records, Ultraviolence.

Probably her most emotional record tells a story of her beauty in a life of danger, obsessive love driving through the west coast. She captures and exposes the beauty of sadness — and the sadness of true love. The black and white cover and motif of blue hydrangeas paints the feeling that is amplified by each track. Chic grunge, soft beaches, loud engines, red lips. Each song is complemented with the intensity of the lyrics and the life she writes about.

Her lover, or maybe her downfall, is her everything — the air she breathes, the cigarette smoke she exhales. She flaunts the beauty in her psychotic emotions, the obsession, the running away, getting drunk on the ache. The lyric from the title track, “Ultraviolence,” encapsulates a lot of the melancholy on this record.

"We could go back to New York/ Loving you was really hard / We could go back to Woodstock / Where they don't know who we are" — you can feel the longing she has for her man, but also the pain that love and longing cause. You can feel how she would do anything for him, but he won't change.

She would change everything for him, start over completely for him. But, the revelation that she can't fix him, dawns on her in “Shades of Cool."

"But you're unfixable / I can't break through your world / 'Cause you live in shades of cool" — She explains that his heart’s unbreakable, she speaks the truth of the love in her heart, but the coldness all around her. Throughout the album, the addiction she has to this type of love

begins to break on the horizon. Songs like “Black Beauty” and “Cruel World,” depict the abuse and pain of her relationships, but in a charming way that showcases her love and attachment for those aspects.

Her poetic depiction of her depression and escapism is what makes Ultraviolence such an experience. Each track pushes you further into some golden, lemonade, French perfume ascension, and you'll notice tears rolling down your face at the warm despair.

Like the late nights that she sings of, the drugs gateway an even more permeating addiction, her lover. She knows she needs to get free and run away; but going back to New York — going back to the start — won't solve anything, although she tries. The pain is easy to love because “I'm pretty when I cry.”

You can almost feel her heart pumping her gold veins when she sings, "I'll wait for you babe, you don't come through babe / you never do, babe, that's just what you do / because I'm pretty when I cry."

Part of the beauty of this record, even if you can't relate to all aspects of it, is that you can feel Lana's sadness and you can start to understand your own. Her sadness is what gives her writing its allure and conceives her ability to find beauty in everyday life, and in the darkness of her permeating love.

Listening to Ultraviolence has the power to make me feel less alone in my own emotion and infuses it with some mystical type of glamour. It is very rare that an entire album has that ability. The images that form in my head are some of the most gorgeous, blue hydrangeas, beaches under stars, classic cars, long brown hair, kisses, cigarettes, and expensive perfumes dancing a choreographed ballroom waltz.

I wish I could write about the power of her words as eloquently as she writes her songs. The forever magnetic cocktail of her darkness, sadness, and golden Hollywood world will never stop inspiring me to live for who I am and find the glamour in ordinary moments, otherwise thrown away. Lana's music will never fail to put you in a pretty black dress and speak to you in a mysterious and bewitching way. Her beautiful and effortless melodies rub off on you, and will never fail to make you feel your deepest most enchanting emotions.

49

MUSIC REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

ROCK/FOLK ROCK

Saturate Before Using

by Jackson Browne

Review by Lydia Quattrochi, Somonauk, IL

I

n 1972, it seemed like all the cool, rich kids in California were gathering in each other’s basements to play music and fall in love with each other. A soft, slow, and easy listening music wave from California was like a hinge that turned the country’s way of thinking upside down. Among the rich-kid faces, one of the most famous music influencers was a young man named Jackson Browne.

When Jackson Browne released his first record, Saturate Before Using, in 1972, the Soft Rock Craze was in its flower-dizzied climax. Saturate Before Using was decorated to look like a sack of water carried throughout the California desert. It contained a raw and wild assortment of hippie songs that are still very beautiful today. While most people know Jackson Browne only for his hit songs, “The Pretender,” and “Running on Empty,” he got his start with two special tracks from this album, “Doctor My Eyes,” and “Rock Me on the Water,” that summed up the change from the 1960s to the 1970s.

More than that, they are intensely personal and use vivid poetry.

“Doctor My Eyes” is about a person in despair who has become world-weary and “cannot see the sky.” He is begging — “Just

50

say if it’s too late for me.” A driving piano background fires up the senses. Its energy, verve, and cheerfulness distract from the song’s morbid subject matter. The person in the song has hardened himself, learned to see “the evil and the good without crying,” and now he can no longer find beauty or hope in the world. Without feeling pain, he cannot feel anything good either. The question is hard — is it worth it to have a life of depression and distress if that’s the only way to see beauty? Can beauty only be seen on a background of pain? Will you actually regret having not grieved enough at the end of your life? “Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry?”

“Rock Me on the Water” is a lyrical masterpiece about going down to the sea in the face of the apocalypse. It combines Biblical references with hippie words. “When my life is over, I’m going / To stand before the Father/ But the sisters of the sun are going / To rock me on the water now.” It seems like it was written for the hardships of 2020 and 2021, with lyrics like “You’re lost inside your houses, there’s no time to find you now — while your walls are burning and your towers are turning, I’m going to leave you here and try to get down to the sea somehow.” All the key changes at the end give the effect of waves crashing on a beach. It is about unity, hope, spirituality, and idealism — themes that soon became rare in Browne’s increasingly depressing songs.

Spirituality is also the theme in “Song for Adam.” It is about Browne’s friend who committed suicide by jumping off a building in India. The violins and the funeral slowness of this piece are jarring and tear-jerking. Browne used a Biblical play on words by saying, “Now the story’s told that Adam jumped, but I’ve been / thinking that he fell,” (the Fall of Adam is described in Genesis 3). In his grief and loss, the singer finds out how fragile he is and how short his days are growing. “I'm holding out my only candle / Though it’s so little light to find my way.” He compares life to “a song that’s growing fainter the harder I play / That I fear before the end I’ll fade away.” The loss of Adam sets off a falling-domino reaction that means despair for all human beings everywhere. Browne ends the song by saying regretfully, “I hope I’ll get there, but I never pray.” Perhaps the death of his friend

makes him see that his life is spiritually bankrupt — and there’s nothing he can do to change it except keep going in the dark.

“Looking Into You,” is raw and startlingly mature as well. A soft piano ballad with heavy lyrics, it is about going back to his childhood home and facing the fact that everything has changed — and not for the best. The song’s barely-disguised meaning is about the hippie subculture of the 1960s.

Browne’s house symbolizes hippie idealism that dies and fades away into oblivion.

“And I looked into the faces all passing by / It’s an ocean that will never be filled / And the house that grows older and finally crumbles / That even love that cannot rebuild / It’s a hotel at best, you’re here as

It is about unity, hope, spirituality, and idealism a guest / You’ve oughta make yourself at home / While you’re waiting for the rest.”

Saying that love cannot rebuild a house was a death sentence for hippies’ hopes and dreams. Browne describes “the great song traveler passed through here / And he opened my eyes to the view / And I was among those who called him a prophet / And I asked him what was true.” This is probably a reference to Bob Dylan or the Beatles, whom many 60s kids worshiped.

“Looking Into You” sums up the 1970s “Me Generation” philosophy — "...the distance has shown / How the road remains alone / Now I’m looking in my life / For a truth that is my own.” No more Woodstock festivals or crowded rock concerts for peace could bring people together now. Truth belonged to individuals alone.

“My Opening Farewell,” is a slow, sentimental ballad. It has a wonderful guitar and wonderful lyrics that sadly describe the end of his relationship with a woman.

“There’s a train every day leaving either way / There’s a world, you know / You got a way's to go/ I’ll soon believe, it’s just as well / This is my opening farewell.”

“A Child in These Hills” is an obscure track that is as purely “hippie” as a song can

MUSIC REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

be. Browne is the child in these hills — the Hollywood Hills of Southern California.

“Chased from the gates of the city / where no one had touched me / I am away, I am alone / I am a child in these hills / and looking for water / and looking for life / Who will show me the river / And ask me my name?”

“Something Fine” is sweet, soft-sounding, and offers beautiful imagery. “Under the Falling Sky” is a funky and finger-snapping change from the heavy and morose tracks on this album. The singer is urging a girl that he calls a “warm and lovely mystery” to abandon her past and give herself to him and be his lover. It isn’t much more than 70s barroom music, but it has some good lines — such as, “Our shadows wake each day, though they don’t know why / They hope and try, live and die.”

“From Silver Lake” is a long, complicated story about Browne’s hippie friends. It is weird and complex because it has a counter-melody at the end. Both melodies can’t be listened to at once. Even though the multilayered, gibberish lyrics are frustrating, and the song makes no sense, it has a feeling of wistful pain and loss. “He won’t be back / And the sun may find him sleeping / In the dust of some ruin far away / He won’t be back.”

“Jamaica Say You Will” is a beautiful piano ballad set in the 19th century in a small seaside town. Water references beautifully connect this piece with “Rock Me on the Water.” It begins, “Jamaica was the lovely one / I played her well / As we lay in the tall grass / Where the shadows fell.” Lyrical progression builds up to an immortal last chorus — “Jamaica, say you will / Help me find a way to fill / These sails / And we will sail until / Our waters have run dry.”

Saturate Before Using has shortcomings, like all albums, but it is still a hundred times better than most things played on today’s radio. All of these songs are carefully and lovingly worked together in a graceful and seamless way; they seem interconnected. Saturate Before Using contains valuable messages about human nature that outlast its early 70s audience, and we can love and relate to them today.

ALTERNATIVE

Folklore

by Taylor Swift Review by Allison Xu, Rockville, MD

J

uly 24th, 2020. It could easily pass as one of those dreary, lonely summer days in that bleak year. But it wasn’t.

The release of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift’s album Folklore brought a fresh breeze to our pandemic isolation with a sense of calm and healing. The album came to us as a pleasant and timely surprise, with an exquisite style distinct from her fairytale-like romantic songs like “Love Story” or her vibrant hits like “Shake it Off.” The album is characterized by a gentle acoustic melody and heartfelt emotions.

Swift dives into the realm of storytelling with her cinematic songs, sending thought-provoking messages that do not need a high level of seniority to understand and appreciate. She incorporates a unique musicality into each of her songs — a soft, catchy beat fading in and out, layers of musical strings and instrumental chords, steady vibrations, and rhythms — all complemented by Swift’s light, expressive vocals.

The craft of lyrical phrases and lines is remarkable, like a collection of introspective poems revealing profound thoughts, experiences, and epiphanies.

Words are chosen and placed for their cadence and flow, presenting the meaning

and feeling beyond their literal facade.

Swift captures the essence of small moments in life, leading listeners into an intimate, sentimental reverie awash with nostalgia. Each song explores what it means to be human with a soothing familiarity, such as an ode to childhood in the sentimental song “seven” and a modern-day bittersweet summer romance in the poignant ballad “august.”

Refreshing yet reminiscent, Folklore makes us fully immersed in the emotions as stories unfurled like undulating streams.

Whether it be a relaxing, lighthearted song like “Betty” or “Invisible String” to sing and dance along or a slow, wistful one like “My Tears Ricochet” or “cardigan” to muse about — they leave us brimming with wonder and healed by aspirations and dreams.

Despite the subtle layer of fantasy throughout Folklore, Swift does not want

Leading listeners into an intimate, sentimental reverie awash with mostalgia this album to be merely an escape from the harsh reality that we are facing. Her songs spark love and power beyond our egoistic self. This was particularly important for people who were experiencing solitude and frustration during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in the summer of 2020. In “epiphany,” she expresses evocative thoughts on the sacrifices made by healthcare workers during the pandemic and the deep meaning of human connections. Her gift to us in those songs is not to be lost in the gloom, but to transform it and keep our hopes solid.

In Folklore, Swift slips numerous hidden messages into her songs, which are usually up to listeners to interpret and unravel, but one theme is undoubtedly clear — even amid a worldwide pandemic, every one of us can still find our own folklore.

51

AMAZING TEENS | APRIL/MAY 2022

AINSLEY

Costello

Interviewed by Lydia Quattrochi, Somonauk, IL

A

insley Costello, a 17-year-old singer-songwriter, who has been touring with an adult backup band since she was 13 and has been writing her own songs since age 12, just released a single called “Little Sister,” in which she enthusiastically belts out her heart’s wish — to step out of the shadow of her idolized, influencing “big sister” and gain her own identity.

“So that when you look at the family picture, I won’t just be the little sister.”

Today, she was excited to share her story, which included a culture-shock move from the familiar music bubble of Seattle to Nashville’s “Music City,” as well as a battle with mental health and the setbacks of life

Photo courtesy of Ainsley Costello in general, during the pandemic.

LQ: When did you know that the life you’ve chosen of singing and songwriting was the one for you?

AC: It all got started because my dad was a musician, and he went to LA in the ‘90s to do the same thing that I’m doing here in Nashville. My dad was a songwriter; he toured all over the world, so I definitely caught the bug from him. He was always playing guitar and piano around the house when I was younger, and I loved the music that he was playing. I’ve always loved performing – I’m definitely a musical theater kid at heart, too. I’d always wanted to write songs ever since I was really little because

I love writing and I love expressing myself.

But I started really writing songs when I was 12, and I started playing guitar when I was seven, and so at that age in my life, that’s when it started to really blossom and bubble up.

LQ: What is your favorite song that you’ve recorded so far, and why?

AC: It’s always going to change, because whatever song I put out recently is probably going to always be my favorite. But at the moment, I have to say my favorite is my new single, which I put out a couple days ago, called “Little Sister.” I was kind of restrictive with how I shared that song with people. It was the first song that I wrote

AmazingTeens Doing AmazingThings 52

AMAZING TEENS | APRIL/MAY 2022 with Nashville co-writers. It’s a song that’s really, really special to me, and I had been wanting to write it for probably two or three years up until the time that I had written it.

So, actually, at the time when we had it all written down, and Kelly and Steve, who I wrote that song with, I feel like I walked off of that write, just on cloud nine, like, “oh, I finally wrote it! I did it! Yes, this is amazing!”

LQ: Where do you get your inspiration? Who is your favorite influencing artist?

AC: I’m Gen Z, I am definitely of the age group that grew up loving the early 2010s pop and stuff, so I mean, what girl my age wasn’t inspired by Taylor Swift. That’s actually what “Little Sister” is about, I’m basically writing a letter to her. I kind of had this shocking moment when I first moved to Nashville — because I think a lot of people are under the impression that Nashville is just “Country Music City”, but it’s “Music City.” There are so many amazing bands and genre-breakers that have come out of Nashville that you would have never even known were from there. Paramore and Kings of Leon are definitely in that vein. I love some John Mayer, and there’s another artist here who is amazing who I think everybody should check out: her name is Caitlyn Smith, and she’s been super inspiring to me.

LQ: By listening to the lyrics in “Love Letter” and most recently “Little Sister,” it seems like you have a mission to help young girls who are struggling. Did you have any life experiences that influenced these beautiful messages? Did you learn them from people, particularly women in your life, that you look up to?

AC: With “Love Letter,” I wrote that in July of 2020, and you know, we all collectively experienced 2020 together; it wasn’t the best year for anybody. And that was the first year that I really struggled with depression and anxiety for the first time. I had never experienced that before moving to Nashville — and that’s not directly correlated to Nashville, that’s just Covid, and quarantine, and the pandemic. But I wrote that a couple months into living in Nashville, because I was really sad, and wasn't really loving myself. I was like, “I’m putting out this music in the worst time that is ever present to put out music.” So, with “Love Letter,” it was a really special song to me because I wrote that in the most random of places. I wrote that song in my

"I DON’T THINK AGE MATTERS AT ALL IN THIS INDUSTRY. IF YOU WORK HARD AND YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS" closet, like, of all places I could have written a song. I just took my guitar and wrote in my closet, and I wrote it in like, 30 minutes, which is super, super quick for me. But I was definitely trying to write down what I felt like I needed to hear in that moment. One of my other friends was really struggling in that time period too, so I wrote that song equally for me and her.

LQ: What are the greatest challenges you find about being a musician so young? Have people ever made it hard for you because you are young?

AC: For sure, I think the music industry is pivoting a little bit more toward understanding that there are a lot of young people who are pursuing this just as much as there are people in their 20s and 30s pursuing this. But I’ve definitely had some pushback because I’m young. There have definitely been a few people who have underestimated me because of my age, but yeah, I think of all the things that I would tell young people around my age who are going into the music industry, it’s just to keep going; put your head down and work; write those songs, so that when it comes time for people to be like, “Oh, you’re too young, it’s not really going to work out for you,” you can show them this amazing song or this amazing performance, and then you can totally prove your worth from that. I don’t think age matters at all in this industry. If you work hard and you believe in yourself, that’s all that matters.

LQ: How have the events of current months and years, particularly the Covid lockdowns, affected your work?

AC: It affected my work because it kind of forced me to let people in, in a way that I hadn’t really done in my songwriting. My first album came out when I was 15. It was a collection of country and country-pop tunes. And I’m super, super proud of that album. But you know, I hadn’t really written about my mental health on that album. And I hadn’t really written about things that are

super deep and personal that weigh on my soul every day. So when 2020 came around, and I was really experiencing anxiety for the first time, I was kind of forced to dig a little deeper into my writing and write about anxiety, write about coping mechanisms, of living in a world like that. And it also affected my work because we couldn’t play live shows, or we couldn’t get out into the world and see people in person. That really took a big toll on me, too, because I love performing. I love seeing people in person.

I just decided to write as many songs as I could, and last year, I released a song per month, which was a lot of work, but it was super, super rewarding.

But when I got to Nashville, because I had the time to just put my head down at work, I challenged myself to write a hundred songs in a year. And I did that. I actually wrote my 100th song on December 31st. So I just barely made it. But yeah, it was hard.

It was definitely a great time for me and my artistry, learning how to write with other people, but it also helped me learn a lot about myself.

LQ: I really like the covers you did of “Dreams” and “If It Hadn’t Been for Love.”

How do you put a personal spin on old songs to make them like unique creations?

AC: Since my dad’s a musician, I’ve had a lot of exposure to him and his bands putting wacky spins on covers, too. I actually picked up this one cover that he did with one of his old bands. We did “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash, but we put a hip-hop beat underneath it. Definitely having my dad in the music industry and having my dad be an amazing musician really helped me try to figure out like, “How can I put this take on this song?”

But you know, it’s really funny, because as much as I still love the country genre, it’s kind of ironic, because when I moved to Nashville, I took this total 180 and I was like, “Hmm, maybe I don’t want to be a country artist." And so now I’m kind of just in this space of learning to take the Nashville way of songwriting and put it over on top of LA pop-rock, which I think is really interesting.

But I love covering old songs too, like you said. And so I love it when I play an old song that people don’t really expect. I see people’s faces in the crowd being like [gasp].

53

VIDEO GAME REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

Video Game ACTION/FANTASY, RPG

Battle Brothers

by Overhype Studios Review by Max Contreras, Newark, DE

B

attle Brothers is a gritty tactical role-playing game (RPG) that lets players manage a ragtag group of mercenaries. Developed and published by Overhype Studios, Battle Brothers is not a game for everyone. It is a game that will test the player’s patience and perseverance in an unforgiving world.

There are no acts of heroism; men will die, and parties will be decimated. The only option the player has is to try again.

The game is set in a low-power medieval, fantasy world where the noble houses are just as deadly to the player as the goblins and orcs that roam the world. Players are given many starting scenarios ranging from a new mercenary band to northern raiders

54

seeking their fortunes in wealthy southern lands. Once one is chosen, the player is placed into a randomly generated world.

No matter the start, the beginning of any mercenary band is a tumultuous one. The men your company starts with are often weak, and the ones you afford to hire and pay are often weaker. You’ll typically take who you can afford, be it a simple farmhand or a eunuch. When hiring mercenaries in towns, the player is given a short vignette on their backstories, adding much to the game’s fantasy and setting the stage for a dogged mercenary group.

Once you assemble your motley band of men, you’ll be taking on contracts from towns. These range from protecting a caravan to retrieving a stolen item from bandits. With contracts comes combat.

Combat in Battle Brothers is turn-based and the chess-like men hop along with hexes in a grid. It’s somewhat endearing until you see one of your men decapitated in a single blow from a raider’s ax. Each weapon type has its own special abilities, and each tactic has a counter-tactic. The

The player has one objective — to survive game is most difficult in the beginning, but still manages to make enemies competitive throughout an entire playthrough. Men from poor backgrounds will often have shoddy gear, and you’ll not have enough funds to equip them, forcing you to work with what you have. Combat is brutal, often requiring trial and error when facing new enemies. Over time, your ranks will slowly fill with men who have lost a finger, have had their nose sliced off, or now wear an eyepatch, and trophies from battles won.

I must mention how the men actually look in the game, their image consists

of only a torso, head, and arms. Still, given the limited portrait, the characters are incredibly detailed, their faces are especially striking. Each piece of armor is displayed on the mercenary, as well as their weapons. The armor is mostly historical, and mail and gambeson are a common sight. Men will be able to upgrade their equipment over time, often acquired through battle or bought from a town.

Mercenaries advance from farming tools such as pitchforks and flails to war picks and greatswords. You’ll get a great sense of accomplishment seeing your once band of peasants develop into seasoned warriors.

The leveling system can be a bit clunky.

Stat increases are based on roles, and some backgrounds are predisposed to have specific higher stats. For example, an adventurous noble will start with a greater melee attack stat than a rat catcher and will gain more attack each time they level.

Each mercenary can also have positive or negative traits; players can witness their clubfooted cripple struggle in battle as their bloodthirsty barbarian brother swings his ax wildly. Having men with somewhat random stats makes each brother more unique. but makes optimization more difficult. Players who want to optimize their bands will often find themselves struggling against the game’s random elements.

With no end goal in Battle Brothers, the game depends on the player to set their own. The player has one objective — to survive. In such an unforgiving world, survival will be difficult; but the game gives the players all the tools needed to thrive. Battle Brothers is a consistent game, offering consistent fun. There are always surprises around the corner, and with the constant threat of men dying, stakes are always high. The game is triumphant in what it sets out to accomplish — a brutal and gritty look into the running of a mercenary band.

VIDEO GAME REVIEWS | APRIL/MAY 2022

ACTION, JRPG

NieR: Automata

by PlatinumGames Review by Anonymous

I

magine an opening scene of high-tech jets flying into your field of view. A mission has been assigned to you — take down the Goliath (a giant robot). You gain control of a flight unit, a high-tech jet. Your friends in the other flight units are being shot down one-by-one from a gigantic laser. You can’t stop it from happening. You are fighting alone, against a creature you are not able to take down by yourself. What will happen next?

NieR: Automata is an action role-playing game (ARPG) in which players take the role of combat androids from the YoRHa units across an open world. Combat is hack and slash action-based, with the player fighting enemies in real-time in a variety of game environments.

I find music to be an overpowering part of a game, as well as sound design. I’ve found many games to have good music, but after hearing the same few songs over and over, I tend to feel more irritated by it rather than enjoying it. NieR: Automata — which is a sequel to the NieR series — shows a great span of amazing songs that I never get tired

of. To explain why this is so important, I’ve played the game with almost 100% completion; which is stated to take about 61 ½ hours to do — an average play through is 21 hours. Not once did I feel upset by hearing boss battle music restart over 100 times, because I refused to take the easy way out by turning on the AI function.

Speaking of the AI function, it’s a feature that allows you to switch from physically pushing buttons to attack, to the AI in the game attacking for you. Turning AI on is a great way to play without much worry of truly being good at fast-paced attacking (which is needed to get anywhere in the game). Being able to admire the game more without worrying about dying every two seconds is surprising to me because not all games offer this choice. The game is otherwise very skill-based to be able to progress how intended. I played this game for the challenge it brought and the story.

The story is vast with many small endings throughout the game with an overall, final ending. The story takes on many details that aren’t always so obvious — better described as hidden in plain sight. The scenery is vastly different with each divided area of the world. All locations bring a different feeling; whether that feeling is the fear of death looming in the next room, or an enchanted dream that has come to life.

Seeing the characters react to one another and letting you build up a very clear description of their personalities allow

This game has had so much dedication and creativity put into it by the creators you to see how they might really be feeling about a situation. There is also a great amount of detail within the characters alone. The main characters that you play as and follow you everywhere you go throughout the story are 2B and 9S, who are androids. Androids are a race of sentient robots. The androids are assigned Pods, and Pods are tactical support units that

help with missions. Both 2B and 9S have their own pods named, Pod 042 and Pod 153.

I find the number of details to this game to be uncountable. Whether the details are about the history of its world or the

Words can't describe how outstanding [the fighting animations] look and are to play past games, they have been placed in perfect spots around the playable world; just waiting for the player to find, and to help fill in on parts of the story that were mentioned in previous games of the NieR series.

Now, I’m not going to go in-depth about the words can't describe how outstanding they look and are to play. I always feel a sense of joy by simply hitting the right counterattacks in order to create a perfect knockback or kill. When fighting the enemy — commonly, robots — that have invaded the Earth’s surface, you have to learn how certain types of robots attack. They were built with different kinds of bodies and weapons, so learning to avoid getting hit is key to continuing the story.

NieR: Automata is my favorite game.

Everything in this game has had so much dedication and creativity put into it by the developers. This game has represented the NieR timeline greatly, even with it being something far from the original games. The stories meet up nicely with some loose ends left for the players to contemplate what happened between the stories. I heavily recommend playing NieR and NieR Replicant, before NieR: Automata to get the previous story, and to get a better understanding of this review.

55

FICTION | APRIL/MAY 2022

The

Time Lord

by Joseph Hess, Lake St. Louis, MO

Photo by Marian De Silva, Gampaha, Sri Lanka

A

s I reached toward the time machine, my fingers tingled with excitement. The largest step in mankind, a leap beyond what was ever thought to be possible, was just in front of my hands. The light blue swirl of the rift illuminated my face and the rest of the laboratory. With my photogun carried on my belt, my nitrogen explosive in my pocket, and my oxygen ventilator on, I prepared myself to enter the doorway.

“Dr. Hulis, are you sure about this? It’s common sense that messing with time is dangerous.”

“Silence, Lovitt!” I hushed. “Would you rather continue living with the smog, the war, the famine? Or do something to fix it?

I must destroy Basin before they ruin our planet!”

“But, we don’t know what changing the past will—" “I said shut it! I have to do this. The future of mankind is at stake.”

With my heart pounding out of my chest, I reached into the time machine. After

56

30 long years of research, work, and money spent, I couldn’t stop shaking.

My masterpiece was finally complete. I enveloped myself in the pale blue light, and readied myself to save the world.

After 30 long years of research, work, and money spent, I couldn’t stop shaking The first thing I noticed was that I noticed nothing. There was no ground beneath my shoes, no smells entering my nostrils, no voice to pierce my ears. The only thing I could rationalize was the endlessly expanding pool of empty, with the familiar blue hue swirling and coalescing like a stream around me. I looked to my left, and noticed something I found to be quite odd; a stream of red light off in the distance.

But that was absurd! I was the first man to ever time travel. How could there be other

streams in time? My trail of thought was cut off by a screeching sound, and a bright flash of light.

I was hit by a solid wall of fuzzy matter.

It took me a second to realize that what I made contact with was the ground. I opened my eyes to see soft, green spikes as far as I could see.

“Is this what grass is?” I softly stated, the wind sloshing through the green.

Behind me, a strange noise chirped. I whipped my head around, only to see a large brown statue with a small feathered creature on it. The books I read as a child really were true! The statue must have been a tree, and the creature a bird. Taking in my surroundings, I slowly took off my oxygen mask. I could tell from the plethora of life around me that I would not need the artificial oxygen of the year 2213.

Rage bubbled up inside my chest. How could these people treat this illustrious world with such disregard? Did they not realize the harm they caused to our planet?

I knew I would have to set things right.

Picking a random direction, I engaged my

FICTION | APRIL/MAY 2022

jet boots, and began toward finding the closest sign of civilization. Trees whizzing past me, my jet boots flung me forward.

A small city started forming in front of me, and I turned off my jet boots. I knew I wouldn’t want to stick out; I would probably be stripped of all my equipment and arrested, and the fate of the world sat too high on my shoulders for me to risk it.

Wandering around the simple tar streets, I knocked on the first house I saw. A rather small, buff man opened the door and peeked through. “Greetings, Mister!” I kindly acknowledged. “Would you happen to know any information about the company Basin?”

The man let out a stifled laugh. “Isn’t that startup company I heard about in the local news?”

“I am trying to find where their building is.

Could you give me directions?”

The man pulled up what looked like an old rendition of a phone. “If you don’t have anything to view this on, I can print it out for you.”

“Yes, please.”

The man nodded, and walked back inside.

After about two minutes, he came out with a stack of white sheets. “Here you go, I hope you get the job!”

“Oh, I’m not applying. I just need to visit someone,” I retorted as I walked away.

Turning my jet boots back on, I flew to the location the man listed on the map. The location was about 15 miles north. I knew relatively where it would be, as there is a statue commemorating it nearby, so I had already configured my time machine to bring me close to where it is. The original Basin company was in a small building with about three or four rooms. Accelerating down to a walking speed, I pulled out the nitrogen explosive from my pocket. This would be the day Basin was destroyed.

They would not become a large political power, they would not waste all of the world’s materials, and they would not make everyone a wage slave for them. I would destroy them before they could get to that.

I felt the same lack of sensation as when I was traveling back in time I pressed the button on the explosive. It was currently working hours, so I knew that everyone who worked for Basin would be in the building. As I tossed the nitrogen explosive near the building, a faint smile crept up on my face. The man who ruined the world would die that day. The explosive went off, and a flash of white ensconced my body.

When I could see again, I realized I couldn’t.

I felt the same lack of sensation as when I was traveling back in time. “You had to play God, didn’t you?” an omnipresent voice echoed into my brain. An entity appeared in my vision – a being resembling everything, yet nothing, exuding light, yet absorbing it, too.

“Who are you?” I squeaked out.

“Who am I? That is a good question,” the voice reverberated back. “I do not have a name, I simply do my task, and my task is to enforce the laws of time. I guess you can call me the Time Lord, if it puts your mind at ease.”

"The laws of time?”

“That is correct. You seem brilliant enough to have discovered how to bend time. Did you not think that what you were doing would break reality? What you have done has completely corrupted your reality!”

“What!? What do you mean by that! How would me going ba—” “If you destroy your reason for going back in time, what reason would you have gone back for in the present?” The Time Lord calmly questioned. I felt the blood rush from my face. How did I never think about that?

“But, I had to destroy Basin before they—” “Is that an excuse to play God? Just because you’re not brave enough to combat

your issues in the present means you’re powerful enough to change the past. If you are genius enough to travel through time, surely you could’ve used your intelligence to fix whatever atrocities were committed.”

I couldn’t feel my knees. I had been so focused on my work with going back in time, I never even considered how I could save the present without it. I thought back to all the research and discoveries I had made, and envisioned all the ways I could have made things better. After a short silence, I murmured, “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Well, I can’t keep you here. You’ve committed one of the worst crimes: The destruction of a reality. I shall punish you accordingly. You will indefinitely live your mistake through.” A low hum shuddered through my body, and another bright flash enveloped me.

As I reached toward the time machine, I could feel my fingers tingle with excitement.

The largest step in mankind, a leap beyond what was thought to be possible, was just in front of my hands. The red swirl of the rift illuminated my face and the rest of the laboratory. With my photogun strapped on my belt, my hydrogen explosive in my pocket, and my oxygen ventilator on, I prepared myself to enter the doorway. “Dr. Hulis, are you sure about this? It’s common sense that messing with time is dangerous.”

“Silence, Lovim!” I hushed. “Would you rather continue living with the smog, the war, the famine? Or would you rather do something to fix it? I must destroy Sahara before they ruin our planet!”

“But, we don’t know what changing the past will—" “I said shut it! I have to do this. The future of mankind is at stake.”

With my heart pounding out of my chest, I reached into the time machine. After 30 long years of research, work, and money spent on it, I couldn’t stop shaking. My masterpiece was finally complete. I enveloped myself in the pale red light, and readied myself to save the world.

57

FICTION | APRIL/MAY 2022

Artwork by Arin Rockwell, Athens, PA

Ms.

Perfect

by Lauren Gelbwachs, Hopkinton, MA

J

ust look at her. I mean, she’s perfect. Her face is perfect. The perfect nose, the perfect lips, her blue eyes spaced perfectly apart. The mirror next to me showed quite the opposite. My nose with its bump right in the middle, holding my glasses into place so I never have to push them back up. My dirty blonde hair that everyone tells me is actually brown is nowhere near her perfect blonde hair. My outfit could never look as expensive as hers.

I know it’s just an advertisement, but that… person, is everywhere. It's the same girl every time, same hair, same eyes. Every feature is the same. It’s just what they are advertising that's different: the makeup on her face that doesn’t make her any prettier than she already is. The extra expensive clothes that my family could never afford.

The purse she holds is different in every photo. The only other thing that remains the same is the purple button right underneath the picture, reading “Want to look like this? Click here,” but I have never dared to click on it.

After taking one last glance at it, I slam my laptop shut, a little extra violently than I had intended. I had to double-check I

58

hadn’t broken it just in case, so I flipped the lid up fast enough that she wouldn’t display across the screen again, and shut it quickly after examining the screen for cracks.

“You ready, hun?” My mom shouts up the stairs and reminds me of our dinner out with my sister, who’s home for the night.

Delaney was always the pretty one in the family. She had the perfect blonde hair and the perfect nose. She was the one who got good grades and the perfect skin. My two brothers and I, well, we are the opposite.

She was the definition of perfection, and no one understands where she got it from.

I wish I could look like her sometimes, but I don’t want to let anyone know that.

“Yeah, just a minute,” I yell back down, hoping the sound is carried to her so I don’t have to yell louder.

I head to the bathroom and turn the curling iron on. While that heats up, I go back to the bedroom and grab the dress hanging in my closet. I neatly took it off of the hanger and put it on, making sure not to wrinkle it so I wouldn’t have to iron it again. Back in the bathroom, I finish curling my hair and go downstairs.

“Is everyone ready?” mom shouts, unnecessarily loud since everyone was already downstairs. We head toward the door, so she gets her question answered without a response.

The car ride was the same as it always is.

The narrow roads leading to the restaurant were the same ones we always drove down to get to the center of town. Peering out of the window, I saw that the billboard we always pass at the blinking light wasn’t advertising the usual electric car. It was the girl again, sitting there with her brand new phone. It’s like she’s following me, out of nowhere.

“Did that billboard change to some dude holding a phone?” my brother Dylan asked, as he also looked out the window.

“No, it's a girl, Dylan. I think you should get your eyes checked,” I responded back to him.

“It is very clearly a man. I think you should get your eyes checked, Lana.”

“What does he look like?”

“He has short brown hair, and is dressed like he is going to some country club outing

FICTION | APRIL/MAY 2022

or something.”

“Mhm,” I respond sarcastically. I don’t even try to ask my other brother, Landen. He’s always in a world of his own, so there’s no chance he even glanced at it.

Dinner went by quietly and quickly. My mind was only occupied by that billboard, and very few words left my mouth. Back home, I went into my room and opened up my laptop again, only to find that girl advertising her perfect outfit to me, just as I had left it.

“Click it,” I hear from behind me, and it makes me jump a little bit. Delaney, now standing behind my desk, points her finger at the button on the screen, right below the image of the girl. “Just click it. There isn’t any harm in a little button.”

“But I don’t know what it does.”

“Does it really matter? What is the worst thing that could happen? Maybe it will ship her outfit to our house.”

“I don’t know Delaney, it seems a bit weird.”

“Just press it, okay?”

“Fine,” I respond defensively. I hesitate for a moment more, but I could use the set of clothes she has on her. Or maybe her

hair color, or her nose. Even her eyes. Who knows what will happen, but no risk, no reward, right? So, I click it.

My mind goes blank for a second. I can’t see, hear, or touch anything. My bedroom disappeared from around me, and everything was black. Delaney was gone, and it was just me.

All of a sudden, everything reappears.

Except this time, I must be standing next to my bed, looking directly at my desk chair with my laptop open. The laptop didn’t have that girl advertising anymore, in fact, there wasn’t even an advertisement popping up.

After a second of confusion, I see someone sitting in my desk chair. It looks like Delaney from the back, but it couldn’t be because Delaney was standing right beside the chair. I couldn’t see her face, but she had that perfectly straight blonde hair in that outfit just displayed on the laptop.

The girl swivels around to reveal the exact replica of the figure in the advertisement.

What? No, she isn’t real, I think to myself. I go to take a step forward, but I don’t move.

Not an inch. Panicked, I try to reach for the chair, an arm length away from me. Again, I don’t move at all. Looking down, I realize I am not in my own body, it’s as if I am just viewing the scene in front of me like I am in a movie theater. A gut-wrenching feeling

grows in my nonexistent stomach.

Even with my vision glued to the scene in front of me, I hear a faint cry. I can’t turn my vision to look in the direction of the cries, but the sobs get louder and louder.

“Who’s there?”

“I am so sorry Lana,” she says, in between catching her breath.

“What? What do you mean? Who are you?”

And then, I realize.

“Delaney?” I hear from outside my bedroom door, and Dylan opens it and walks in.

Surely he would realize something is wrong, especially if some random girl is sitting in my chair.

“Mom wants you guys to come downstairs, we have a surprise,” he says.

What? No, no, he must have seen that girl.

There is no way he didn’t recognize that it wasn’t me. It’s so obvious.

Behind Dylan, Landen runs into the bedroom and leaps right onto the girl’s lap.

He hugs her, and she hugs him back. He didn’t notice anything wrong. Nothing.

Artwork by Genevieve Gungor, New York, NY 59

POETRY | APRIL/MAY 2022

Artwork by Akhila Mushini, North Attleborough, MA

To the Memory of James; An Apostrophe

She sat me down, tears threatening to fall.

She told me you were gone.

My whole world was gone.

James, you were more than my cousin.

You were my best friend, You were my whole world.

We did everything together.

The first third of my life was spent with you You made me who I am today.

You had gone to the pool with your friends, But you had gotten too excited.

You loved the water.

You jumped in, your lifejacket left on the bench, And you didn’t come back out.

I still remember that day.

You were seven, I was five.

We were at grandma and grandpa’s, Dressing up like we always did.

You were the policeman, I was the firefighter.

We were playing a game, A game that only we knew the rules to.

The water had swallowed you whole, It wrapped you in its arms and didn’t let go.

It held you there until your last breath had disappeared.

Yes, you loved the water But it ended up being your downfall.

We ran around the house, Laughing but forgetting What was funny in the first place.

Your mom had come down to check on us, Just in case.

But we were fine.

We were always fine.

She cooed over how cute we were, Presing a sloppy kiss to your cheek.

You made a face, I laughed.

Your mom reached into her pocket, Pulling out the camera She carried with her everywhere.

She told us to hold still and smile.

You grinned, looking off into the distance.

I was smiling too, my eyes glued to you.

You were everything to me, You were my whole world.

I wanted to be just like you.

A week passed.

I had just gotten home from preschool.

My mom got a call.

60

I was terrified for the longest time after.

I hated water for taking you away And I was terrified it would take me too.

I didn’t swim.

I didn’t go to the beach.

Bathtime was always a struggle.

I didn’t want to go away too.

I still miss you, James.

I’ve never been the same since you left.

I no longer hate the water.

We’ve come to a sort of understanding.

But I still miss you.

The photo from that day is sitting on my desk Along with a note that you never got the chance to give me Your parents found the drawing, James I look at it every single day Sometimes I feel like you’re with me I love you, and I miss you But I’ll be okay I promise.

by Hallie Farnsworth, South Jordan, UT

Remember the Tomatoes I haven’t given up trying to be a strong woman, a really good one even.

But, when I was a kid, I was excited about tomatoes, their unique smell biting fresh may.

So I collected white flower buds, and green bulging flesh with dark sage veins.

My mother scolded me, rightly, for criticizing the tomatoes’ taste as I took a bite, too soon.

Chewing and spitting, a deer in the garden.

I hated them: my sour not-quite-ripe things.

I’m 17 and remember all I’ve done wrong.

So ready to stop a man from abusing me, That I pluck unripe tomatoes and criticize As he’s just trying to grow It’s hard to love sour not-quite-ripe things.

by Anna Mares, Pittsburgh, PA

The Dens A cold, industrial, concrete forest Abound with scavengers, grazers, hoarders A shadow creeps off a tree of dismal glass and stone A dark, narrow path Where prey blindly stumbles into A den of wolves Teeth gnash A pitiful scream A grisly scene Another falls to the criminal machine

by Wyatt Mosser, Cannon Falls, MN

POETRY | APRIL/MAY 2022

He Was Not the Moon

Descent

Mother's Day

He was not the moon.

He was every little star, dusted across the sky, and lighting up the dark.

If we must burn Burn our bodies down.

Down to the ground with the spiders and the centipedes.

Even farther still to the bottom of the sea.

I’ll live down there with the unnamed mysteries, Maybe I’ll even become one myself.

Burn me down to the volcanic crusts, Where I can burn with kindred spirits, And wallow in the ashes.

Take me down further still, So I can dance with the demons, And wipe my face with blood stained towels.

Burn my body down so I can twirl with the damned souls.

Lower me all the way down And let me rest between the devil and the deep blue sea.

before lights-out a mayfly whizzing by broken from the huddle

He was not the moon.

He was a galaxy bursting with colors and adorned with planets.

He was not the moon.

He was the delicate gravity spinning planets in his hand, holding the universe together.

by Arabelle Brooks, Johnstown, OH

Love, It Begs Avarice, of Dante’s most persecuted, hastily consuming entirety; only needing the slightest quench of carelessness, weakness, lethargy.

Power, subject to invisibility, slyly slipping past society without detection until abusing, killing, maiming, it leaves itself bare Ignorance, growing without control throughout the land It lays waste the plains, the waters Voraciously feeding off all free things Until it cannot cease Love, it begs, yet no one gives Still waiting, hoping Patiently for victory

by Anonymous, NY

Sand He's like a shower after a long day at the beach; Initially, the relief, sins- sand- washing off, until that sand is gone and the water is hot, revealing burnt skin you didn't know you had, and you can't tell if you should turn the water off and sit in silence, wet sand laying on your feet, or if you turn the temperature up and lean in-how much of that pain is he worth?

How much are you?

by Bella Knowles, Orlando, FL

by Samantha Sextonson, Homewood, IL

Laundry Laundry is like a cinder block The task weighs you down It’s impossible to avoid No matter how awful everything is, the laundry needs to be done each week you’re a tent being poorly pinned down by a heavy slab of concrete and although the task drives you crazy, the routine keeps you sane.

by Chengye Lin, Bristol, CT

The Dove Dream, Freedom-Quarantined A dove will soar through the cotton white clouds and the cool night breeze till the sun finally falls.

It spread his wings under the colorful rays and goes forever on for however it may.

While the locked up crow Stalks in his cage moving up and down the damp dark space With his legs all chained His wings all tied He tries to struggle to no avail So he closes his eyes and dreams He dreams of flying, he dreams of freedom And he dreams of what the dove all has.

Wish to be free, free of restraints the little dark cage Can hold him no more.

For his dreams are free.

by Bill Wang, Shanghai, China

by Anonymous, TX

Rage Is a Candle A burst of flames lighten the quiet room The closer you get the hotter it gets Hisses of sheathing gather in the corner Consoling will leave a hardened shell Let rage pour till the last bit of wic Dripping wax spills continuously Smoke untouchable But one whiff tells all It rises and fills our mind, this room All you see are warm bright colors They dim and flatten Step closer and the wic is no more Rage is a candle

by Natalie Romo, Dallas, TX

Artwork by Evaleah Caceres, Las Vegas, NV 61

POETRY | FEBRUARY 2022

Caterpillar Diary — Darkness Leads to Light Life as a caterpillar is certainly ephemeral, But now its like a premature burial As a larva I could go outside, Eat my fill, then hide From Hawks and other thugs While I lay low with the other bugs.

I loved the warmth of the sun above Now I'm in the dark and I cannot move I’m trapped in a coffin of silk, not wood I have no air, I have no food I feel some changes, but I cannot see Is this how my life is going to be?

I do feel safe. I do feel warm.

I don’t feel that I will come to harm.

But I am an animal and I have needs I need to eat and move and breathe.

And I need to find myself a mate So I can go and procreate.

A child asks “What is this?”

The teacher says “A Chrysalis.”

Is that what my prison is called?

It’s opening up, I’m going to fall!

But even though I’m upside down I’m not falling to the ground.

I see a young child’s face Looking at me in a glass case.

The teacher takes the case outside.

And opens the top so I can fly.

Because what I feel, those huge things Are actually a pair of amazing wings.

Now I’m a beautiful Monarch Butterfly People Ooh and Ah as I fly by.

I can soar toward the Sun and hover and dive I feel one hundred percent alive With so many options, where will I go?

I think I’ll migrate to Mexico.

by Andrea Zhou, Great Neck, NY

midsummer fingertips stained with scents of cigarettes blue skies and unshared secrets a shoebox of regrets

by Amy Wei, Pasadena, CA

Artwork by Chloe Im, Seoul, Republic of Korea

A Woman with Wings

Countless

She walks her path, With her head held high Connected with god, She soars above the sky Breaking through the glass ceiling It’s her time to fly

There is a countless Amount of rocks on planet Earth just like there are countless Grains of sand on just one beach just like there are countless Stars in the sky just like there are countless Strands of hair on your head just like there is a countless amount of time in life.

To the society that failed her, She bids goodbye She’s on a mission, To achieve her well deserved position Nothing can stop her, She has made her decision With a heart of gold, And a mind of steel She owns the wheel To navigate through the unknown, And conquer it all Turning heads her way, Who is she you might ask?

She’s a woman, Who runs the world.

by Dishita Jallan, New Delhi, India

by Evan St. Andre, Salt Lake City, UT

Repairing the Unrepairable get it off me. take all of it off. my pasty skin. my greasy hair. my bony legs. tear them off. maybe then they could see what's wrong with me. where the pain hides inside me. where the nightmares prepare to haunt me. where the pieces of my shattered heart fell. maybe then they could fix me.

by Serenity Douglas, Paris, TN 62

POETRY | FEBRUARY 2022

Stork

Wonderland, Perhaps

Storks by the bayou plop! Ripples expand and wane peace settles. Stillness

Sometimes it's small, seems so superficial

by Zhen Xuan Liu, Irvine, CA

Would I Still Be Me? I like spaghetti with tomato sauce, mushrooms, and shredded parmesan cheese I like lots of vegetables and turkey on my subs and hot salted caramel on my ice cream But say I preferred my noodles plain, my cheese grated, meatballs instead of mushrooms, mayonnaise on my subs, and fudge on my ice cream — Wouldn’t I still be me?

I dress for comfort, with oversized hoodies, jeans, and scuffed-up sneakers But what if I wore fancy shirts, short frilly skirts and the newest brand of shoes If I dressed for appearance — Wouldn’t I still be me?

If I traded my books for a TV screen and woke up early on weekendsWouldn’t I still be me?

If I stopped writing stories or watching DreamSMP — Wouldn’t I still be me?

And if I stopped being insecure and didn’t care what other people think — Wouldn’t I still be me?

But what if I stopped being shy and spoke my mind If I wasn’t scared of people — Wouldn’t I still be me?

Or what if I quit writing songs, playing guitar or piano, threw out my art, and put down my pencil — Wouldn’t I still be me?

What if I donated all my stuffed animals — Wouldn’t I still be me?

What if I was all alone and wasn’t the slightest bit afraid — Would I still be me?

by Anonymous, UT

No battery on my phone, a forgotten homework, a burnt toast, a little disappointment and then I remember the sorrow I've been trying to avoid Is being sadder easier when you are already sad?

My mind wandering down solitary streets Following an elusive rabbit Maybe I'm a contemporary Alice Falling through a hole, because I was running through the city With a frightened wonder A touch of relief in the void, as if I were suffocating before the sigh lets me breathe Wish I could scream, cry and laugh at the same time Feelings in all their wildness Memory of the past and perhaps the future I try to think of impossible things to free myself But I'm trapped by myself, the allure of my thought, my emotions I'm dizzy, it's not Wonderland.

by Mia Araña, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Patchwork People Patchwork people are works of art as their memories make their heart stitch by stitch of a golden thread proves that they arent dead see their faults and all they are and never forget their sewn up scars scissors may cut and break and tear but these people arent afraid nor care sew their scratches, breaks and cuts and patchwork people are the friends I trust.

by Wade Joseph, Lambertville, MI

The Moon's Children — A Ghazal Someone has murdered the honest sparrow.

The butterfly broke the bones of the darkness.

The sunrise braided her hair each morning with ribbons of diamond and ice.

Winter has fallen in love with a wildfire.

The stars have forgotten how to write poems.

The sky has stolen the river’s name.

Love sang the sun to sleep.

Night’s heart is hidden in the frozen fields.

I raced the moon’s children all the way home

by Abigail Walmer, Houston, TX

Sunlight She’s blindingly bright.

The kind that cuts you like a sharp blade, makes you squint if you look any higher than your own feet.

The kind that’s loud.

Full of static, white noise, that crowds your mind and blocks you from thinking, until you blink and ask “what?” again and again.

The kind that demands repentance She’ll warm your skin, kiss you with glory, until a cloud comes along and you miss the joy like a lung.

She’ll force you on your knees so you beg for her return.

But when she does, expect a blazing heat, a sequel with something to prove, until you’re begging for her to leave and she. Won’t. Listen.

She’s loud, demanding, insecure, and fickle.

You’ll be praying for her to leave, for a break, for Christsake; but as soon as she does, you’re rubbing your eyes wondering where you went wrong.

Good luck with her. She’s a diva.

(Oh, and just wait until you go inside.

The world never looked grayer, And the mediocrity throbs in your eyes.)

by Angelina Parker, Hillsborough, CA 63

POETRY | FEBRUARY 2022

Poetry Contest

Family Traditions Folding Cranes Guangzhou finds its way back to our muggy kitchen

Contes Winner!t

occupied again and again by my mother’s homesickness I hear in the soft silences when she folds me cranes filled with leek, pork, and scallions. I call them birds — not dumplings because they fly me back years when America was only a dream.

Naturally, I fold my own now — hands caked in wheat flour, asking how many pleats or feathers in clumsy Cantonese.

At dinner, my chopsticks pluck a boiled crane, bathe it clean in soy sauce and set it free like our heritage.

by Sam Luo, Rosemead, CA

The Family Squeeze At the dinner table we don’t say grace, we don’t say a prayer.

Instead the four of us take each others hands in a big circle and someone must give a squeeze.

Left or right, you never know which way it will go.

The energy passing through begins and ends with us.

by Sophia Ciraldo, South Glastonbury, CT 64

Artwork by Michelle Meng, Schaumburg, IL

POETRY | APRIL/MAY 2022

The Ice Cream Spree When a New Semester Starts Eating ice cream makes you light, Dad says Eating ice cream makes you fat, Mom says But I say, who cares.

The day when a new semester starts, It's the day I get thirty new books, Twenty new classmates, ten new teachers, Five new courses, But negative three old friends.

Red, yellow, brown, and blue, Strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, and Ocean-cool, Hot air lifts balloons, Angst melts with each spoon; Dad says a person is like an automobile, Mom says ice cream is like the fuel, I say, let's fill.

by Anonymous, China

Far into Rural Minnesota If you follow the rough asphalt and rock Far into rural Minnesota, Past the turkey farms and fields of corn, A cabin sits on a low-lying property.

If you follow the property to where water laps against lanky stalks, Smelling of lemon and thyme, You will hear the growl of a floating engine Sends loon to the air.

If you follow the loon to the end of the dock, Until you’re steps from dancing on the water, The radiance of the sun Will refract off nature’s mirror.

And if you look into earth’s seeing pool, You will see The cobalt sky and pear-colored grass.

The elegant birch and ink-black squirrels, Far into rural Minnesota.

by Sydney Davis, Carbondale, IL

Christmas Eve Afternoon Your hand on mine ladle dipping narrating a New York morning on a fire escape circulating the air a tongue that does not sing red white and blue you curl your praise around inflection laced with Brooklyn roots and Coney Island summers each manicotti shell a story author: me foreword: you title: “Christmas Eve afternoon” skip an ugly chapter Chapter 15 “Two Years and One Funeral Later” a phantom hand old bones dissipated guides mine as I empty memories onto the iron separate each moment with wax paper and a Brooklyn-stained word 38 perfect shells “Grandpa would be proud”

by Nora Vaudo, Vienna, VA

Together: Like Beef and Noodles It’s so much warmer to stay inside And watch the slow snow fall Blowing on my hot spoonful My steaming udon noodles I drink comfort, slurp satisfaction My body radiates invigorating warmth Rich spices together Synergized in slow brewed broth Hand stretched egg noodles Made the old loving way with tradition I can taste the caring hard work a meal done right Potatoes, carrots, scallions Evoke a past autumn harvest Slow stewed hearty beef Makes for red chili burps My chopsticks lift the noodles Out of the golden soup, my tongue Savors the flavors, warmth Seeping through bone into soul

by Amber Yu, Trenton, NJ

Contributors MEMOIRS

TRAVEL & CULTURE

Madison Cossaboom, 6 Marina Matson, 7 Grant Yang, 8

Megan MacFarland, 36 Piercen Hunt, 39 Hana Tilksew, 40

HEALTH

BOOK REVIEWS

Lizzy Lawrence, 8 Piper Wilson, 12 Anonymous, 14 Ash Southwell, 16

Madison Cossaboom, 42 Abigail Sterner, 43

TEEN JOBS

Aubry Conway, 45 Yuheng Wang, 46 Aidan Baughman, 47

Anonymous, 18 Kayla Baltazar, 19 Erik Rosenkranz, 20

EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR CONTEST Ryker Rathje, 22 Clara Lee, 23 Elle S., 24 Cameron Scott, 25 Celeste Mckenzie, 26 Patience Weir, 26 Laynie Walloch, 27

POINTS OF VIEW

VIDEO GAME REVIEWS

Wyatt Mosser, 60 Arabelle Brooks, 61 Anonymous, 61 Bella Knowles, 61 Samantha Sextonson, 61 Anonymous, 61 Natalie Romo, 61 Chengye Lin, 61 Bill Wang, 61 Andrea Zhou, 62 Amy Wei, 62 Dishita Jallan, 62 Evan St. Andre, 62 Serenity Douglas, 62 Zhen Xuan Liu, 63 Anonymous, 63 Mia Araña, 63 Wade Joseph, 63 Abigail Walmer, 63 Angelina Parker, 63 Sam Luo, 64 Sophia Ciraldo, 64 Anonymous, 64 Nora Vaudo, 64 Sydney Davis, 64 Amber Yu, 64

Max Contreras, 54 Anonymous, 55

ART GALLERIES

MOVIE & TV REVIEWS

MUSIC REVIEWS Aiden Barbour, 48 Stella Corbin, 49 Lydia Quattrochi, 50 Allison Xu, 51

AMAZING TEENS Lydia Quattrochi, 52

Haylee Griffith, 28

FICTION

SPORTS

Joseph Hess, 56 Lauren Gelbwachs, 58

Saura Patel, 32 Hantong Li, 34

POETRY

Hallie Farnsworth, 60 Anna Mares, 60

Daniela Martinez, Front Cover Sophie Hao, 2 Ella Snyder, 6 Maggie Chen, 7 Connor Brown, 8 Seojin Taylor Moon, 9 Michelle Meng, 10 Amber Yu, 11

Anonymous, 12 Jyothis Maria John, 14 Ke Deng, 15 Kaeya Patel, 16 Aesha Jackson, 17 Evy Mansat-Gros, 17 Clara Robinson, 17 Dinesh Oggu, 18 Kelly Lu, 19 Clare Kim, 20 Eva Choi, 21 Connor Caldon, 24 Ella Hedges, 28 Claire Yoo, 30 Austina Xu, 31 Ela Ponnachana, 31 Avery-Grace Payne, 31 Jiaying Zhu, 33 Yutang Shan, 34 Yincheng Qian, 36 Gabrielle Beck, 38 Weiqian Yan, 39 Jordan Liu, 40 Ditri Collaku, 43 Kenzie Montgomery, 44 Haylee Griffith, 44 Jackie Lao, 44 Marian De Silva, 56 Arin Rockwell, 58 Genevieve Gungor, 59 Akhila Mushini, 60 Evaleah Caceres, 61 Chloe Im, 62 Michelle Meng, 64

Editorial Staff Managing Editor: Noelle Campbell

Consulting Head of Strategic Partnerships: Chane Hazelett

Consulting Senior Editor: Cindy W. Spertner

Production: Katie Olsen

Editors: Kylie Andrews, Ashley Nix, Jada Smith

66

Teen Ink is a bi-monthly journal dedicated to publishing a variety of works by teenagers. Teen Ink Magazine and TeenInk.com are both operating divisions and copyright protected trademarks of StudentBridge, Inc. Teen Ink is not responsible for the content of any advertisement. We have not investigated advertisers and do not necessarily endorse their products or services. Publication of material appearing in Teen Ink is prohibited unless written permission is obtained. Teen Ink is designed using Adobe InDesign.

Resources

April/May 2022 | Volume 36 | Issue 5

• SAMHSA’s National Helpline 1.800.662.HELP (4357)

SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1.800.273.TALK (8255) S upport and assistance 24/7 for anyone feeling depressed, overwhelmed or suicidal. Talk to a skilled, trained counselor at a crisis center in your area at any time. If you are located outside of the United States, call your local emergency line.

• Crisis Text Line

Text “HELLO” to 741741 The Crisis Text hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the U.S. The Crisis Text Line serves anyone, in any type of crisis, connecting them with a crisis counselor who can provide support and information.

• International Suicide Prevention Hotlines www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines

• National Domestic Violence Hotline 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) N ational call center refers to local resources; Spanish plus 160 other languages available; no caller ID used.

• National Sexual Assault Hotline 1.800.656.HOPE (4673)

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network - RAINN Nationwide referrals for specialized counseling and support groups. Hotline routes calls to local sex assault crisis centers for resources and referrals. Spanish available.

• National Eating Disorder Hotline 1.800.931.2237 F or 24/7 crisis support text: NEDA to 741-741

• Self-Harm Hotline 1.800.DONT.CUT (1.800.366.8288) • Planned Parenthood Hotline 1.800.230.PLAN (7526) • GLBT Hotline 1.888.843.4564 • TransLifeline 1.877.565.8860 | www.translifeline.org

FREE 1-Year Premium Access!

Brightmind Meditation and Mindfulness App

We’ve teamed up with Brightmind to offer you 1 year of FREE Premium Access (a $100 value). Here’s what you’ll get: • Full access to customizable Core Meditations • Hundreds of addition guided meditations • New content added regularly Click HERE to claim your FREE membership 67