Helm 2014

HELM Harker’s Eclectic Literary Magazine 2013-2014

Volume 15

Spring 2014

Member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association

HELM Harker’s Eclectic Literary Magazine

Volume 15 Spring 2014 Member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Medalist 2012

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Letter from the Editors Dear Readers,

We’re thrilled to present to you Volume 15 of Harker’s Eclectic Literary Magazine! Our club has grown tremendously over the course of this year, both in scope and involvement. We’ve worked fervently to put this issue together, and we’re honored to share with you the result of our efforts.

For the first time, this year’s publication features works of not only our peers and faculty members, but also a number of pieces from Harker alumni. This issue marks the start of this new tradition we’ve decided to instigate in hopes of showcasing the continuation of students’ literary and artistic endeavors past their time at Harker.

The creativity and sheer vibrancy behind every one of these submissions are unmistakable. From a delicate watercolor depiction reminiscent of a dream, to an intricate illustration that employs a combination of digital and charcoal mediums; from a captivating tale brimming with allusions to prominent literary figures such as Bradbury and Poe, to an elegant portrayal of ethnic discordance found in everyday exchanges, this year’s selection is a genuine testament to the rich diversity of thought our student body has to offer.

Finally, we’d like to dedicate the 2014 issue of HELM to the ever eloquent, sincere, and compassionate Jason Berry. He gave his students the best gift— that of trust, understanding, and unconditional encouragement. Mr. Berry will be forever remembered for his impeccably phrased pieces of advice and his countless heartwarming anecdotes. Thank you, Mr. Berry, for being able to connect so deeply with us, to share with every one of your students a tidbit of your genius and knowledge.

As he wrote, “literature is almost never about solving something or arriving at a conclusion; rather, literature serves to approximate an answer, arriving at what might ultimately be an answer before it is one.”

Juhi Muthal and Katie Gu (Editors-in-Chief)

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table of contents

Writing

Some Nights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Margaux

Portrait of a CafĂŠ on a Sunday Morning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Meilan Steimle

amalgam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Elisabeth Siegel

Basic Maladies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Katie Gu

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Hannah Bollar

Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Namrata Vakkalagadda

Memories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Mary Liu

Lament of the Winter Wind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Tiffany Zhou

Six Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Katie Gu

Greener Pastures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Meilan Steimle

Flame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Agata Sorotokin

The Storyteller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Andrew Rule

All I Am to You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari

Rasberry Blood Sorbet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Wei Buchsteiner

23C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Connie Li

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Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Kimberly Ma

LETTER TO THE BEST FRIEND I HAVE NOT MET YET . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Margaux

veins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Elisabeth Siegel

Trash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Efrey Noten

After Birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Alexandra Rosenboom

Darjeeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Allison Kiang

To Qinghe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Connie Li

venus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Elisabeth Siegel

Jingle Bell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Rachel Wu

New House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Alexandra Rosenboom

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Photos & Art

Ideal Illumination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Jerry Shen

Have We Really Come to This? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Ben Spencer-Cooke and Connie Li

Butterflies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Callie Ding

Patriotic Atmosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Safia Khouja

Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Shay Lari-Hosain

Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Nikita Parulkar

Burden of Future Generations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Sophia Luo

Musée d’Orsay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Devin Nguyen

Tree of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Jerry Shen

Hummingbird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Doreene Kang

Firing Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Riya Chandra

Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Alice Wu

Dulce Via . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Alexis Gauba

Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Shay Lari-Hosain

Sunburst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Natasha Mayor

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Ripples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Madelyn Wang

Chiseled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Katie Gu

Bloodred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Natasha Mayor

Living Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Jerry Shen

The Colors of San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Riya Chandra

Preserving the Xinjiang Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Callie Ding

Secrets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Safia Khouja

Barceloneta Beach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Natasha Mayor

The Animal Inside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Jerry Shen

Moonwalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Natasha Mayor

Cover photo by Devin Nguyen (alumnus, Class of 2012)

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Some Nights Margaux

Some nights I want to become drunk on the stars and bathe in the pale moonlight. I lust for the night to grip my skin and the shadows to wrap around my shoulders like a silent blanket.

The night is too young to be this level of exhausted, but not late enough to spark creative ingenious. I don’t think anyone should write at this level of lonely and tired- Apathy is a gentle wave, comfortably numb, and just the right amount of melancholy for a bitter aftertaste. If I had the option, I would be drunk. But I’m not even miserable enough to write of some draconian struggle, some word bracelet to manifest into angst.

It’s a negative, night-time buzz. I’m not even sure if I’m actually sad or if I’m just thinking about depressing topics, which is a possibility.

Tonight the moon is young like cheap wine: not worth half its value, and painfully synthetic in its fallacious sweetness.

It is tender, and the universe treads lightly in a candlelit glow. The winter world is welcoming, and the night sprawls over trees like warm velvet.

Some nights I just want to sleep and forget everything.

Some nights are for dreaming, and some nights for endless streams of hyperventilating, sweaty palms and anxiety.

Some nights are for escapades, charming adventures, events to defy the conventional.

Some nights are for the rage like blinding light, and some nights flow like warm champagne: unbound, boundless celebration.

Some nights are for forgetting consequences, and others to become the very ramifications we feared the night before.

Some nights are for actions to regret the next morning.

Some nights are to be held in the palm of your hand, taken with the full-force of life, and others are to long to be held.

But tonight is another night; you will sink into sea of pillows and long to be held. And this night will welcome you. The blue dark will embrace you, in all your perfect imperfections.

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Ideal Illumination Jerry Shen Grade 12

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Portrait of a Café on a Sunday Morning Meilan Steimle Grade 09

“I’m a writer.”

My standard answer to the most standard of questions. It comes up, at frat parties, on dates, and just in life in general. “What do you do?” people ask, and I always answer, “I’m a writer.” ***

I’ve come to this off-campus coffee shop to practice my craft, as I do every Sunday. I suppose that I should be going to a rundown café with an accent over the “e” in Italy, where they serve espresso in chipped ceramic demitasses. A Starbucks in downtown Madison is hardly Italy, the “proper” setting for my writing, but pathogens lurk in every dubiously cleaned cup. ***

Right after my announcement, people’s eyes always flit across my body, as if I must smell of clove cigarettes and musty scarves. Then they ask, “A poet?” and I have to shake my head no.

They always look vaguely let down, like they were hoping to go home and tweet about this living, breathing poet they met, only to find that I don’t own a beret or spout impromptu, rhyming couplets. ***

The girl is here again. I’m writing a portrait of this cafe, and she’s my subject. She always turns up here, at exactly 10:30 AM every Sunday. She is wearing ivory today, which means that she’s trying again, as she’s been doing every week for a while.

She is petite. I know and she knows that her size belies her nature, that she actually towers over everyone else at this cafe. It’s in how she used to throw her hands out as she talked, in her fuchsia pumps, and in the way she would toss her head back when she laughed. She’s been muted for months, her color palette fading into neutrals, her gestures becoming subdued.

Her friend is here as well -- the caramel girl whose hips sway too much for a virgin, but too little for the easy girl she wants to be.

The boy sits a few tables over from the girls, as he does every week, reading a book. He is tall, but not big, with slender hips and shoulders. Hailing a middle-aged waitress with a tentative hand, he asks about her family, cocking his head to the side. As the woman responds, he nods, eyes wide with childlike excitement, his full concentration on her story about her 3rd grade daughter’s trip to the science museum. After she returns to the kitchen, the boy gets up and slides between the tables on his way to the bathroom, twisting his hips to maneuver between tables, softly uttering unheard apologies.

As he leaves, the girl stares at the back of his head, lips slightly parted, drawing in a quick, shallow breath. As he disappears into the bathroom, she turns back to her friend and adjusts the lavender bow in her hair. “Do you think he even notices me?”

“Maybe,” the caramel girl replies. “Maybe not. But there’s no shame in putting yourself in the right place at the right time.”

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The girl sighs. “It’s just that you’ve taught me how I should be, but it still isn’t working.” Her voice is peppy with a piercing quality to it, one that she changes to an airy whisper whenever he is in the room. She’s trying so hard to hide her brash, pulsing spirit, trying to be small like him. Because ivory is moth’s wings and warm breath misting against cool skin and gossamer curtains fluttering in a cool breeze. Because he shines with the muted glow of ivory. ***

The next question they usually ask me after I’ve inevitably disappointed them is if I write novels.

“No,” I say, laughing a little, but I don’t feel like laughing. ***

I’d love to introduce myself to her, the girl whose name I do not even know.

We’re the same, she and I, because every day, she wraps herself in others and keeps trying, hoping beyond hope, that she can transform into the small girl she so desperately wants to be. That she can paint herself, the red of her soul, ivory. That someday she can make the boy realize that they are the same, and he will open his eyes and see her.

We’re the same because, when I introduce myself, I could just say, “I’m an Econ major,” and all the people would just nod, and I wouldn’t have to feel like I am letting them down with my clean cuticles and lack a tragic backstory. And I wouldn’t have to admit, after sheepishly dismissing all other possibilities, that I write short stories, only to see their brief confusion quickly shift to disinterest.

I have to leave. My laptop is on 6%, and the boy is back. ***

I come back a week later to “paint,” but as I take my usual seat, I notice that for the first time, the boy and girl are sitting together. He smiles shyly at her, sliding his mocha latte towards her, and she grins back, hiding her lips behind her hand. She is wearing an eggshell, eyelet dress and blushes often, eyes turned downwards.

My mind is fuzzy from a fading hangover from last night’s dorm party. The halfremembered antics are punctuated by one clear memory.

“You’re a writer?” His voice is slurred with beer as his eyes sluggishly travel from my heels to my leather jacket. He sniggers, “Don’t screw with me, shawty.”

At least she’s happy.

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Have We Really Come To This?

Revelers at Stumptown Coffee in Seattle, 2/16/14 Ben Spencer-Cooke Faculty

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Café des Flore, Trés Heures Connie Li Grade 12

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amalgam Elisabeth Siegel Grade 10

The lamp is shadow honey dripping across her skin as she reads to me the bedtime story that is sewn from dynamite, her voice sharp & aging and not inviting argument.

I am rock solid. A scratchy blanket is folded over my silhouette (I am listening intently just behind the yellow curtain of the horizon).

Her word, throbbing like a fire alarm, surge within and threaten to spill over in burning synesthesia, but instead I concentrate on the flickering lamplight in the stratosphere and slowly fall asleep.

I dream.

Placing shells on their backs, the rabbits of the world become gods among clover while we are left side by side at the bottom of a lake.

Your tongue is paper, and with my mouth full of ashes, there is discord. Catastrophes like us remain the sole recipients of a streetlamp’s attention until daybreak.

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I rise again.

I stare at my bedroom with a new wonder at my painfully familiar surroundings. I have hung shoelaces off the walls with the plastic bits cut off, because I can’t stand to see things finished. In the mirror, my hair is tangled earbuds and headphones because I never want to forget the sound of the sun setting or hope being lost or the Smashing Pumpkins.

Now I turn to you, as you snore in the armchair in the corner.

All I know right now is that your face looks stitched together (but I don’t mind, really), and, combined with the paper flooded over with ink sitting at your feet, it makes me want to punch you in the face.

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Butterflies Callie Ding Grade 12

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basic maladies Katie Gu Grade 12

It was something about her hands, I think, that could really make you wonder.

I read somewhere (or picked up upon one of those hushed metro conversations or maybe culled from the melodies of some quondam band’s song, I can’t remember) that eyes are the gateways to the human soul, or windows, have what you will.

I had believed that, gulped up the words as eagerly and fastidiously as any thirteen-year-old would a seemingly profound line of philosophical sentiment. But her hands; you would have had to meet her, to see her creased and exquisitely sculpted hands to realize how much they told.

I first saw her, seated alone in the right-hand corner of Mr. Harrigan’s Study of Visual Arts P3, on the first day of sophomore year. There was nothing extraordinary to her; yet, I was intrigued by how she seemed confident, proud almost, in her solitude. I took the open seat beside her. Immediately, I noticed how ink smudged and seeped into the wrinkles of her palms, spreading to etch out a thin spidery collection of fragmented, weaving lines; how her fingers seemed to perpetually yearn to remain outstretched, to grasp the end of an adjacent fountain-pen and into the liberation that a blank, white page (or surface, or sheet) offers, sketch and paint all of life’s basic maladies. First impressions are hard to scratch out.

There was a vagabond aura about her, and I think that’s what intimidated, or even sometimes alienated people. From the wind-chipped cracks along the dells between her fingers, you can imagine that she’s a patroller of pavements streaked with midnight moonshine, with a gaze that spoke as much of tranquility as of unrelenting authority. The way she would direct her hands; it’s always with as much purpose as intention, as if every flick of a wrist, every tap, tap, tap of a fingernail on the mahogany coffee-table, every strum of a thumb along the edges of a book, could proffer a life’s truth, a fundamental precept to existence.

She’s a creator, in every sense of the word; an opportunist, and a self-proclaimed artist. She would have been a best friend, and I thought it very fitting that when she threw herself in front of the Amtrak train headed south from Amherst to Worcester one foggy Tuesday night, her face was so bashed and her body so mangled and gutted that when the policemen arrived in their polished cars, stifling the air with swirling lights and blasting sirens, they were only able to identify her by examining her hands, of all parts. A fingerprint scan.

Tell me again that eyes can tell you the essence of a person. Whisper your adages, clutter my head with your little apothegms, but I tell you: nothing spoke so clearly to me, no table talk at a downtown café, no fireside chat accompanied by a warm mug of tea, could have told as complete a story as did Avery’s hands.

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Patriotic Atmosphere Safia Khouja Grade 11

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Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Hannah Bollar Grade 11

The faces stare blankly In revered silence.

Cameras out. What An occasion for them.

The ceremony begins.

A man walks forward A lone procession.

Head up. One step. Then another.

Slowly in time - to the beat of his poem.

To a viewer he has no name.

He is the guardian soldier.

An unknown for an Unknown. a protector of a gone protector.

But he too will leave soon.

His face. This walka symbol of my life gone, but proof of his life still living.

At least he will still be Remembered.

He will return home and smile, Seeing his wife and child.

Yet I must stay another day. ‘Til the next soldier arrives.

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And all those who follow him will leave for more.

And once again I will stay forgotten as known – but known as forgotten. ¨ They know not my name.

They know not who I am, Though of course I do.

They known not the triumphs And troubles I’ve faced.

They know not the skirmish

Or battles long gone But again, I do.

I know the war. ¨ They pace and praise And sanctify my essence.

Yet known not my name.

They laud me with glory And honorful worth But know not the troubles I’ve left alone.

They know not my life

Or what has been lost;

The child, or wife, A brother long gone.

They praise and honor

Yet know not the truth The faces of anguish

The cries, fallen friends

To come home to strangers.

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They know Of me,

An existence that was, An existence that continues to be,

Though I no longer am.

Dark eyes await. ¨ I once too could smile

At such an occasion At such a wondrous spectacle Of the honor of the great war The man turned, clapped his heels and shouldered his gun once more.

I lost that smile though, Before I even left.

As you might too, Once you forget. ¨ I am the unknown and forgotten But remembered by strangers.

What a burden I carry then, in knowing the truth.

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Shay Lari-Hosain Grade 10

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Heroes

Namrata Vakkalagadda Grade 12

Do you remember when your parents were the gods of your world?

Your teachers had the knowledge of everything to be known; Your siblings were your ultimate protectors, And your friends were those who with to oldness you’d grow.

Take me back to those days, The ones I can’t remember; Where the people around us Were the heroes of the world, and all of life was a wonder.

How can I keep my innocence in the world, When my role models themselves steal it from me?

I want them to not be human - to not have flaws and insecurities and problems, So that my life will be experienced peacefully.

Take me back to those days, The ones I can’t remember; Where the people around us Were the heroes of the world, and all of life was a wonder.

Those days seem like a far-fetched dream now How can I get them back?

I desperately need something to hold on to at this time, And growing up is simply enhancing those things that I lack.

Take me back to those days, The ones I can’t remember; Where the people around us Were the heroes of the world, and all of life was a wonder.

But as each day is experienced, I grow as a person more and more.

These flawed role models of mine become more human, Causing me to relate to them even better than before.

I can see them for their good and learn from their bad, And their pains, to all, become a lesson.

Heroes are great, not for their lack of faults, But for their ability to utilize their imperfections.

Leave those days behind - they are already in the past; Bring me new hope to carry on till tomorrow.

My heroes of the world will remain just as so, And life will remain as it was before: a wonder.

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Nikita Parulkar Grade 11

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Memories Mary Liu Grade 12

There’s a library up inside my head, A tomb of memories, locked and lost, Encrusting thoughts with cold, cold frost, Weighing down dreams with heavy lead.

Fluttering films flicker with visceral light, A forgotten cave, echoing with our laughter, The waves kissing its mouth, inundated soon after— A memory that smiles and fades like night.

Halt now, for these volumes are thick, A single moment of light turns to lengthy day, Take shelter among shelves, for books never betray, That leather bound happiness will harbor no trick.

Thrill seeking sneaking inscribed in dark book, A midnight ride to a midnight beach Under a bounty of dancing stars seemingly within reach.

4 AM and we broke curfew with triumphant look.

In solemn corner a pale white pamphlet lies, Imprisoned by a rain of fire and ice, Memories of a loaded dice with enormous price, I swear it to be worse than a million goodbyes.

That dark ending of hellish space, A pleading reminder to depart from past, Or forever suffer until all days last.

Then, a rolling thunder unveils its face.

Shattering glass, fearful cry, and wounded hand, The door’s closing, Get out, get out!

For God’s sake, try another route!

There’s still time, but immobile I stand.

There’s a library up inside my head, A tomb of memories, locked and lost, Encrusting thoughts with cold, cold frost.

I’ll never abandon my land of the dead.

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Burden of Future Generations Sophia Luo Grade 10

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Lament of the Winter Wind Tiffany Zhou Grade 9

A storm of sleet swirls in the air.

Bright lights penetrate the flurry, dancing in an eternal stream as if they were a rush of glittering crystals at a ball, a Tolstoyan ball with its glimmering chandeliers and shining pearls, but most sparkling of all the smiles of the ladies and gentlemen whirling waltzes, stomping mazurkas, lost in a frenzy of deep, genuine, passionate joy.

I wander towards this magnificent show of lights.

My own ball gown trails behind me, catching itself against the tails of a student’s coat, brushing a little girl’s hair, snagging just a bit against a gentleman’s hat— as fleetingly as a sheet of silk lingers against the slightest protrusion of skin— and brushes it off.

Cries and curses abound. There’s a penetrating shriek As one of the lights falters a bit, and there is a soft thunk, almost inaudible under the shout of the gentleman screaming, “Curse you, you confounded winter wind!”

The little girl ducks, clasping her scarf around her head, quickening her pace, desperate to evade the wrath Of a dictator, like all of them, who smiles innocently as she plots The demise of the quaking forced singer of her national anthem.

No, this joy is not for me, Not the joy of hearts beating deliriously to a dashing mazurka Danced with one’s bosom friends and closest kin— who knows, future husband too.

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No—I am the queen of solitude.

The slightest rustle, a momentary glimpse of my face— and all heads are ducked in deference, all curtains snapped shut in humility, all voices rising, chanting our national anthem in shrill, anxious voices, just as that gentleman did, as if praying that I might spare them— Just to please me.

I smile absently and brush by them.

I hate it—I hate this fear, this irrational trembling that seizes them Every time they glimpse me.

Can I not pass behind them with a lingering smile on my face Without them trying to flatter me?

Can I not peek in one of their windows while innocently passing by Without them gaping and pointing, that accursed national hymn ringing in their hearts?

The warmth of humanity touches me— yes, me, this cold-hearted queen of solitude.

I love to see the children smile as they huddle close to each other, whispering eagerly over a game of checkers.

I love to watch the ladies and gentlemen whirl to the tune of a snapping polonaise, joy in their hearts, laughter on their lips, delighting in one another.

And that girl, the daughter of the ball’s host, who giggles as she strokes the hair of her lighthearted brother, both’s faces more radiant than the glittering chandeliers standing sentinel above them— A smile appears on my face whenever I spy These pictures of happiness; an aching longing to partake in such joy stirs awake from its languid repose in my heart.

But this joy, too, is not for me.

Scarcely have I turned my face to them when they turn me away with awed stares And trembling deference, bowing hurriedly, Secretly praying that I, this great dictator, this absolute monarch Will spare them.

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That student now—stumbling through the snow, caught in the folds of my ball gown—perhaps he has a sister at home, Eagerly awaiting his arrival, quick to lovingly brush the snow off his hair, And he will greet her with a fond embrace, both’s eyes illuminated with The glow of their unspoken joy, warm and deep as the humble fire nearby.

Yet now he bustles away, bows obsequiously, mutters a few strains of our hymn’s chorus as if sarcastically assuring me, I’m patriotic enough to spare.

I am more than that—more than the queen of solitude, ruthless sovereign over a stormy land, that he knows.

But so long as they ask it with their actions, their glances and stolen words, I will rule them with as icy a fist as they ask for.

And so I entwine my fleeting fingers in his coat’s lapels And whisk him reeling to the frozen ground.

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Museé d’Orsay Devin Nguyen Class of ‘12

30

Six Years Katie Gu Grade 12

For now, our ends have finally melted.

Hot wax, pouring down sinews of frayed twine, has coalesced memories into puddles brimming with ash-tinged, burnt, lingering regret.

Detachment upon tension upon resignation swish like chaotic ocean waves whose ebb’s approach lies far off into the horizon.

There is really no layer of comfort, no soapy, wishful truth to be sought here.

Reconciliation — what a quixotic word.

All that’s left is an untainted feeling of fragility.

This is undoubtedly a final prelude to shambles.

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Tree of Knowledge Jerry Shen Grade 12

32

Greener Pastures Meilan Steimle Grade 9

I close my eyes, but the sun shines through my eyelids and paints a vague orange glow in my mind. I squeeze them shut tighter, and -- there -- utter and complete blackness. I lie here in my mind, within the black, and I imagine myself curling into the fetal position and drifting away. Another gust of wind blows an early autumn leaf, one of the courageous first wave, onto my face, and my eyes open reflexively. The spell of the darkness is gone.

Summer may be over with 7th grade soon to begin, but the sky is clear and blue, the kind of blue that reminds me of the smell of laundry warm from the dryer. I inhale the scent of the leaf on my face and sigh, the warm updraft of my breath enough to lift it off my face and send it spiraling to the grohing the bravest leaves take the jump from the safety of the tree, falling through the sky. “Pretty,” I say. She does not reply, and that’s okay.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow shift, and the gund.

Lying beside me is Abigail, staring unblinkingly into the laundry sky, arms and legs making a star on the grass like she is about to make a snow angel. Despite being two years my senior, she is short and stocky like the ladybug crawling up her forehead. My limbs, spread-eagled like hers, seem awkward and gangly in comparison. But differences like this fade when we are both silent on the springy turf of our backyard, watclass door at the back of the house opens. Caleb squints against the light of the setting sun, his eyes finally resting on Abigail and me. As he makes his way over, another maple leaf flies off the tree and into his hair. The image amuses me: my straight-faced brother, walking towards us with a leaf in his hair, and, for some reason, I imagine him being a woodland elf, protecting the forest.

“Afternoon, Acorn Prince,” I say.

He stares at me blankly for a second before shaking his head. “I’m going to have to rake up these leaves,” he says. “You guys should probably go inside and get ready for dinner.”

“But Caleb!” I pout, throwing my hands into the air. “It’s such a beautiful evening!” I grab a handful of leaves from beside my head and toss them into his face. “We should stay and appreciate it!

What do you think, Abigail?”

“Now Abigail.” As Caleb addresses our sister, the tone of his voice changes subtly as it always does. “If you go inside and pick up all your toys, Mommy said you can have some ice cream after dinner!

How does that sound?”

“But the leaves!” I grin at Abigail. “So, do you want to go do work,” I ask, frowning theatrically, “or stay out here with me?”

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Abigail’s slanted blue eyes turn upwards as she smiles. “Naomi’s right. Iss ... really pretty,” she says clumsily. “God ... muss be smiling ... today.” Her voice is halting and slurred, and I see Caleb nod carefully like always.

From a very early age, I knew my sister wasn’t like the other older sisters of my preschool classmates. She was shorter than I, even back then, and she didn’t take care of me and give me advice like the older sisters in stories did. “You have to be the older sister,” Caleb used to tell me, and that was okay.

However, on my first day of first grade, I recall overhearing a conversation among Abigail, my parents, and Caleb after I came home.

“I ... am older!” Abigail was saying. “Why ... can’t I ... go?”

And so my parents explained to Abigail that she was different from me because God made her that way, and she should be proud of that. Caleb, solemn even at nine, added that one day we were all going to a place in the clouds called Heaven where she would be the same as us. I remember Abigail’s face opened, and she looked hopeful.

“So I ... can be like ... Naomi?”

That was the day that my parents announced Abigail and I were old enough to accompany them to church.

In the years that passed, I began to recognize, somewhat shamefully, a trend within myself. During prayers, I could never bring myself to pray the whole time. I would always find my eyes drifting to my siblings, watching Caleb’s furrowed brow and twitching lips and Abigail’s gaze, filled with light, fixed on the crucifix at the front of the church. And I began to realize I was different.

I was 10 when I put it together. It was nighttime, and I awoke in my and Abigail’s shared room with a rectangle of moonlight on my face. It felt magical to be alone in the dark, the pale white glow illuminating the dips and curves of my comforter. Then I looked across the room and saw Abigail, still asleep, and I began to cry. Would she ever confide in a best friend, fall in love, know the joy of having children? I wasn’t sure. If there was really a benevolent God above, why would He force Abigail to endure such hardship? And then it hit me. What if there was no God, and Abigail would never get to go to Heaven and truly be my older sister? Was this why I was faltering in church? It made too much sense, and that scared me.

It is at moments like these that I wonder how Caleb, down-to-earth, unimaginative Caleb, can see what I cannot, when I can see so many beauties and wonders in life that he will never be able to comprehend. Yet he ploddingly continues to believe in something he can never see, earnestly, loyally, his gaze fixed on an ever receding point just below the horizon. Sometimes I feel like one of the maple leaves clinging to the tree above. I can shiver and sway in the wind, immersed in the sensations of life. But what I can’t do is fully surrender myself to the wind and let go, wholeheartedly and blindly throwing myself into something I can’t understand, forcing myself to stop thinking and just believe. So here I am, a coward, too unsure to believe, but too afraid to live in a world where Abigail has no chance for a second life. Maybe someday I can be brave enough to open up and devote myself like Caleb and Abigail. But not today.

“I suppose He is,” I respond, smiling gently at Abigail.

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Hummingbird Doreene Kang Grade 10

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Flame Agata Sorotokin Grade 11

Devouring Life, while Time does strike, A fiendish Beast awaits – He licks at flesh and ink alike – Bells tolling at the Gates – Once roaring Ares flashes by, Accompanied by Spark – Earth will be silent – ashes lie Where Death has left its mark – How tamed is He when near Stained glass, How fragile near the Scroll!

The Traveler won’t step back, Alas – Yet Hope reigns in my Soul –

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Firing Up Riya Chandra Grade 9

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The Storyteller Andrew Rule Grade 10

The house thronged with them: dozens of men and women, hundreds of them, eating, dancing, laughing, some in antique European costume, others in wide 19-century dresses, still others starched into tailored 1920s suits, and even a few wearing rags and tatters, like beggars off the street. Men and women from across history in this house, men and women from different times, from different homelands, from vastly different walks of life, all chatting and joking about the one uniform aspect of their lives.

In one corner stood a prim, mustached man in elaborate Elizabethan clothing, gesticulating passionately as he discussed kings and queens, ghosts and witches, Brutuses and Caesars, Montagues and Capulets. Only a few feet away, a serious Frenchman with dour eyes listened in fascination as his companion described submarine ships that could, indeed, travel twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Here, a man spoke of ominous ravens and Red Deaths; there, a figure swathed in professor’s robes vehemently debated over the relative merits of orcs, dragons, dwarves, even hobbits. Each guest had his own story to tell and retell, and each had to raise his voice to be heard over his colleagues’ clamor.

The result was a delightful buzz that swept through the house like a wave, laden with vibrant characters and plot twists— but still the storytellers kept going. And their host listened.

The host was an old man, an ancient man, a man to whom time had not been kind. His wispy hair had all fallen out except for a few silvery strands on either side of his head, which sparkled in the library’s lamplight. His long nose seemed fragile, brittle; his papery eyelids drooped over his tired eyes. Wrinkles spread like roots across his delicate features, marring the once-handsome face, etching deep lines through his cheeks, his forehead, even his bald crown. He didn’t need to shout over his clamorous guests in order to tell his story; his deep eyes and labored breaths spoke volumes more than his mouth ever could about his experiences, joys, and sufferings.

Currently, the host was deep in discussion with a robust young storyteller, but although he employed his whispery voice with utmost conviction, it was clear the two men’s conversation was nothing more than a friendly debate between old companions.

“Certainly, Mr. Bradbury, your knowledge of science-fiction is vast, but the assurance that such a story must take place in the future is absolutely ludicrous,” challenged the host.

“Ah, but here is the crux of the issue—I make no claim that science-fiction must occur at some point a certain period of time in the future, only that such a setting is necessary to establish a sense of displacement, of unreality, in the story from the offset.”

“Even here you are mistaken, Mr. Bradbury! Alienating the reader immediately will only dull the blows you establish within the text.”

“Well, why not ask Mr. Verne? He practically invented the genre…”

And so the conversation turned as the host mingled with his guests, greeting each one like a long-lost relative before conferring over their stories and characters. His knowledge of each tale was matchless, his respect for the guests without peer; his arguments were confident, but quietly so, and he never seemed to care whether he won or lost in the debate. The simple act of discussing masterpieces with his guests was reward enough.

Finally he had to excuse himself for dinner, although it clearly pained him to abandon his friends, and many pardons passed between host and guests before the old man finally backed apologetically from the room.

“I know it’s abhorrent behavior for a man to abandon his visitors like this, but it’s been several days since I’ve last eaten, you see…”

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“Really,” insisted Austen from the back of the room, “it’s all fine. We understand entirely.”

“Of course we do,” added Bradbury. “The living have to eat every now and then, don’t they?”

A chorus of voices swelled from the crowd, encouraging the old man not to worry, but he wasn’t soothed.

“Honestly, my friends! Who will listen to your stories while I’m gone? You’ll have no one to debate with, no one to keep you company! Imagining all of you shut in here alone, lonely and afraid—oh, it breaks my heart even to imagine!”

“If you’re going to leave us,” cried Poe irritably, “can’t you just get on with it? Come off it, my good man! You can’t very well host us if you shrivel away to nothing!”

Shutting the library door quietly behind him, the old man turned for the kitchen.

After all, he admitted to himself, Poe, as usual, was right. Once, a long time ago, he had tried hosting for more than a week without stopping. Swept up in the joy of his guests’ stories, the joyful buzz of their words leaving no room for hunger in his mind, he had indulged himself, for a brief moment, in the thought that he had finally become immortal like Shakespeare and Steinbeck and all the other storytellers. He allowed himself to think he could go on listening, debating, laughing until the end of time.

Then, of course, one day, he had collapsed.

It was rather unpleasant. His guests had faded away so that he was alone, alone, and for the first time since they had arrived he had felt hunger, thirst, pain, loneliness…

The old man shuddered as he stepped into the kitchen. It wouldn’t do to look back on that experience. He knew, now, that he was not immortal and never would be. To think otherwise wasn’t just indulgent; it was proud, arrogant. Blasphemous, even.

So, he’d just have to go on eating, drinking, and sleeping, sustaining his fragile body a little longer so he could keep his guests company.

Or were they keeping him company? He couldn’t remember anymore.

The kitchen was a tiny square room in the front of the house and the only one with windows and doors leading outside.

Every window was closed and barred with the curtains drawn, so that the only light in the room had to diffuse through thick shades before it entered. By design, of course; bright lights hurt the old man’s eyes. And the door itself wore an imposing padlock and, for good measure, an enormous ironwood bolt.

When he had built the house as a young man, he had lifted that beam himself. He’d been strong as a young man. He had locked and bolted the door so he would never have the temptation to leave the house. He had never wanted to leave the house because…

Memory failed him. Ah, the frailties of an aging mind.

The old man opened the cupboard above the cobwebby sink and pulled out a can of soup. When he had built the house, this room had been filled with stacks on stacks of all sorts of nonperishable products, but the years had passed, and in recent memory all he’d had to eat was soup. Even that was bound to run out soon. He counted—twenty-four cans left.

He didn’t mind the lack of variety. To him, food was a frustrating nuisance, a necessary chore he looked forward to with about the delight and anticipation a six-year-old feels before his dental appointment. He didn’t even heat the soup up anymore—he wasn’t sure he still remembered how to. It didn’t matter. He’d stopped tasting food around the time his hunger and thirst had disappeared. A blessing, really—it left more room in his jumbled mind for what was really important.

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His gaze meandered. It slid over the dusty curtains, bypassed the immovable door, even moved straight past the dwindling soup supply to come to rest on a chest in the corner of the room.

The chest was padlocked like the door, but whereas the lock on the door was mostly for show, this box would clearly withstand even the apocalypse, unless, of course, the apocalypse had the right key. The chest had been closed by someone who never wanted it opened again, and the old man had a sinking suspicion that he had been that someone.

His papery eyelids drooped in despair; no matter how hard he tried, his sluggish mind wouldn’t provide him with the answers he needed. His brain had become musty and unused, unresponsive, a locked box with the key trapped inside. A looping puzzle with no solution.

He finished his soup and tossed the can away, not caring where it landed. He’d been down here too long already, shirking his duties as host. And a moment later he had hurried back to the library, where the greeting and stories of his guests melted the misery away.

“Old friend,” Dickens asked some time later, following the conclusion of a particularly fiery debate over the literary purposes of ghosts, “if I may ask a question?”

“Of course, Mr. Dickens,” his host replied graciously. “Anything you wish.”

“Well, we’ve all had the privilege to witness firsthand your knowledge of our stories, and I daresay that it sometimes rivals my own.”

“You flatter me, Mr. Dickens, but I will admit that I am deeply familiar—intimate, even—with your work and that of your colleagues.”

“Right. Well, I don’t mean to pry, but we’re all curious how you came to attain this bottomless well of knowledge.

No other man—no other mortal man, that is—could ever hope to match your level of mastery. I couldn’t help but notice that you beat Professor Tolkien into submission yesterday—old John Tolkien himself, quite possibly the hardest-headed fellow of us all! Surely there must be some background to a man like you.”

A warning light flashed in the host’s head, and he winced visibly; he didn’t like bright lights. But, as much as he wished he could avoid the question, a good host never ignores his guest, and besides, Dickens wasn’t the sort of man who would let a question go unanswered.

So the old man wracked his memory for the appropriate memory—

But the frailties of an aging mind plagued him anew…

He forced a laugh—and improvised. “It’s quite simple, Mr. Dickens. I grew up on your stories, the stories of everyone in the room—I teethed myself on the works of Shakespeare, one could say—and even the most ordinary of people can hold his own in a debate once exposed to such brilliance in such concentration.

“But you’re no ordinary person,” the storyteller replied gently, inspired eyes pulsing like coals, “and that’s what I’m trying to get at.”

“I beg to differ. I am the only ordinary man in the room—”

“When will you ever realize that these notions of inferiority are entirely misguided!” exclaimed Dickens, and his eyes burst into flame as he threw his hands in a wide arc over his head. “You’re missing the point entirely with your facile expressions of humility. You have a spark in you, old man, a spark that everyone in the room has. Why, this might be the

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highest concentration of sparks in the world!” His voice dropped in volume, but not in passion: “And your spark is brightest of all, for you are still mortal; you are still alive. The rest of us will never write a story again, but you…”

Alarm bells erupted in the old man’s head, and he reeled as the full force of Dickens’ statement barreled into him. “You mean to say—”

“Yes, old man,” cried the storyteller. “My question for you is, have you done it already? In your long life of listening, have you ever written a story of your own?”

A story of his own!

To create a world of words from thin air, as real as or realer than the world he lived in? To breathe life into a person who would live, love, die according to his own designs? To follow in the footsteps of the greatest men in history? Was Dickens suggesting he could join the pantheon of his towering heroes?

The idea astounded him.

The idea enraged him.

“Sir, you insult every man and every woman in this room to suggest that I write a story! Never, never would I dream of desecrating your hallowed art with my own unworthy hand. Never! And to propose that I could match, that I could exceed your legacies…No man shall ever match your brilliance with the pen—no man, but me least of all. The time for creating is over, and the time for listening is begun. If I know anything at all, it is this.”

Dickens’ eyes flared.

And for some unfathomable reason, an image of the chest downstairs flashed in his mind—the chest, the mind that held so many hidden answers.

“Still you deny it,” murmured the storyteller. “Clearly, even your heroes cannot convince you. But perhaps you can convince yourself…”

He nodded, once, toward a sagging velvet couch. “Under there.”

The old man checked. The key winked at him through the dark.

He found his courage when only three cans of soup remained.

Unlocking the mind is a dangerous task. The more the old man considered it, the more he feared whatever lay inside the chest. It was a thing of the outside world, of the world he’d left behind, and he didn’t want it to destroy the world he’d constructed for himself inside these walls, the world built of a hundred other worlds that existed only in the storytellers’ voices.

But whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the chest. He’d be in the middle of a debate with Wells or Eliot, and suddenly the world would fade away, and only the chest would remain. He’d be floating in Shakespeare’s rhythms and verses, and then his reverie would snap as the chest surfaced once again in his mind…

So he could put it off no longer. To wait would be to run out of soup, and that meant…What did that mean? Did it mean collapsing in the library and drowning in the hunger and the pain? Did it mean an eternity with his guests, or an eternity without?

He could take no chances. Even if it was Pandora’s Box, he had to know.

The latch hiccupped when he flipped it; the hinges moaned. Time itself caught its breath.

Decades-old air whispered its way to freedom.

41

Dream Alice Wu Grade 10

42

All I Am To You Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari Grade 11

Letters in a word.

Words on a page.

Pages in a book.

That’s all I am to you.

Each syllable: evanescent, flying, scattering.

Every pause: dragged, Slowing.

The spaces stretch infinitely attempting to link the words I stopped listening to.

Attempting to pull my attention, drag me again to your trap.

I thought it over through and through, That’s all I am to you.

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Dulce Via Alexis Gauba Grade 9

44

Raspberry Blood Sorbet Wei Buchsteiner Grade 12

Hochbadenstein. You probably have not heard of it, and I would not be surprised. A little German mountain town with a brief mining history is not exactly on anyone’s short list for travel locations. Around twenty years ago, Hochbadenstein was actually in the national news because a crazy man took a couple of schoolchildren hostage on a school bus. This town was never heard of again, until recently when the media caught wind of the Pacciello Ice Cream parlor murder. I was involved in this story a lot more than I should have been, certainly overstepping my comfort zone.

Last summer, I was about on my way to get groceries when my I suddenly heard a small boom coming from the engine bay. Unnervingly loud rattling followed, as smoke started coming out from under the hood. “Goshdarn it, not again!”

I had no other choice then, but to drive this piece of crap to the local mechanic. Surprised that I made it in one piece, I rolled into the shop. A strong, hard-bodied man came up, leaned on the car, and poked his head through the window. “Ah, Julius. It’s good to you again!” A heavy grin formed on Max Müller’s face. He stuck out his large weathered hand. I shook it.

“I need to get rid of this hunk of metal.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll fix it in no time.” He popped open the hood and peaked inside.

I nodded in concurrence to whatever he said, without actually understanding anything when he was diagnosing the problem. I waited a couple of minutes until Max told me he was done. “Hey! Since you’re a frequent customer, I’ll treat you to some ice cream from Paciello’s.” It was a warm day and I could not say no. Max whistled over for his apprentice. “Thomas!

We’re just off to Paciello’s for a bit. I better not come back to the shop on fire!”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

When we turned around and left, Max muttered under his breath. “First he’s late this morning, then he gives me this attitude. I’m telling you, there’s something off with this kid.”

When we entered the ice cream parlor, Max looked up at the door, raising an eyebrow. “I used to come here all the time as a kid because they have the best spaghetti ice cream and the nicest service on the planet. The clerk’s been here for, goodness knows, how long.” Max turned to the counter. “Hey Helga! I brought a friend with me today!” No one answered. He tried again, but to no avail. With a look of confusion on his face and a raised eyebrow, he jumped over the counter without hesitation and strolled into the backroom. My mouth salivated at the sight of all the assorted flavors of ice cream and sorbet.

Seconds later, he reemerged but his face was slightly pale and green.

“Are you alright?” He did not acknowledge my question in any way. Curious, I too entered the backroom, but almost slipped at the sight of the elderly woman sitting on a chair. Her head was tilted forward and there was a trail of dry blood

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emanating from her nose.

The next couple of hours passed by, like a blurry whirlwind. Beads of sweat trickled down my forehead under the tight scrutiny of the demanding policemen. They asked us questions about anything we could possibly know. However, like Max, I had nothing to answer and so they let us go. Max regained some of the color in his face but the shock remained evident. He did not utter a single word on the way back to his shop; I would be surprised if he did. **************************************************************************************************

The next morning, I read about the murder in the local newspaper. According to the medical examiner, the clerk died of blunt forced trauma to the head. The murder weapon could not be found but they did find footprints of a large-looking boot, as well as fingerprints all over Helga’s body. Both of the prints matched those of the undertaker from the cemetery across from Paciello’s. He was arrested last night and will most likely plead guilty. Just like that, it was over. ************************************************************************************************

In the afternoon, I decided to visit Max. As usual, he was working on a car, but without the usual gusto and enthusiasm. “How you holding up?” He dropped the wrench and just gave me a hard stare.

“It just doesn’t make sense... I know him!”

“Who?”

“The undertaker. I’ve also known him since I was little. He wouldn’t harm a fly.” Without warning, he just walked past me like a man on a mission. “Where are you going?” He did not reply, but I knew the answer already.

Not a single soul was at Paciello’s when we arrived. Max simply ran through the yellow police tape and immediately swooped over the counter. First, he opened the cash register, but there was nothing in it.

He was looking around frantically till he stopped and stared at the ice cream for a second, leaning in for a closer look, almost as if he were looking for a problem on a car. For a second he bent down and disappeared under the counter, but before I knew it, he was up and running again, out the door. I could only catch up to him after he strayed off the sidewalk and brushed through the bushes, looking for something on the ground.

A couple seconds passed until he jumped up again to return to his original course. For some reason, he was going straight back to his shop. “Max, wait! What’s going on?”

He suddenly stopped right in front of his garage, trying to regain his composure. “Don’t say a word, Julius. Just follow my lead.” I followed right after him, passing all the machines and cars along the way. When we reached his office, he sat down in his chair and called for Thomas. The apprentice walked in and sat down opposite of him. “What’s going on?” Max got up and as soon as he locked the door, a look of desperation appeared on Thomas’ face, like that of a lost puppy.

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“Why, Thomas? Why?”

“Just let me expla—,” but Max cut him off with a wave of his massive hands. “You know what? Let me do the explaining.” He proceeded to pace back and forth, like a prosecutor accusing the defendant.

“I’ve seen you jump at every opportunity to filch even the smallest amounts of money. The change left in the cup holders of customers’ cars, for one. I imagine that every day, you walked past Paciello’s, contemplating the idea of stealing that fat, juicy ice cream revenue. After all, that poor old Helga is defenseless and slow. So, yesterday morning, you finally came through and went in when she had her back against the door. You knocked her out, took the money from the cash register, and came here to resume your normal return at my shop. No wonder you were late.

But guess what! You actually killed her.” Thomas stared down at the floor the whole time.

“As daft as you may seem, handling the tools around here, you’re a pretty sly guy when it comes to robbing an ice cream parlor. When I went back the second time, a gleaming smudge spot caught my attention. I took a whiff of its distinctive smell. It was Nullig Auto oil. I think you might have heard of it, we used it specifically in this shop and it ruins our clothes. Sometimes I leave behind oil stains on my furniture at home when I brush past with my stained work clothes. By then, I knew it was you, and so I ran as fast as I could to find you back at the shop, but I had to confirm a hunch first. When I opened Paciello’s door yesterday, I was wondering why the shrill little bell above it did not ring. You removed it, so the old lady could not hear you coming in. On the way to the shop, you threw it into those dense bushes on the corner of Amsel Street, getting rid of the evidence.” He pulled out a small bell from his pocket and held it up high into the light. *******************************************************************************************************

We were watching Thomas being driven away in a police car, when an inspector approached us. “We still don’t have enough evidence to incriminate him.”

“Oh yeah, before I forget. The police report said that the murder weapon was something round and small, basing it off the wound on Helga’s head. If you had noticed that the ice cream scooper was not in its designated water dipper, you would have discovered that it was hiding in the raspberry sorbet. It hid the color of Helga’s blood quite well. I believe you should be able to find the prints you need.”

The inspector grunted and muttered something that sounded like “thank you”. There was something on my mind that was still bothering me though. “Max, why were the undertaker’s fingerprints all over the clerk’s body.”

“Well, I’ve known the two long enough to sense that there was something more than a mere friendship between them. He must have gone in that morning, after Thomas and found Helga on the ground. He could not leave her lying on the ground. He picked up her body and moved her into a chair; something a bit more respectful. His guilt from not having prevented the crime combined with the shock from seeing her dead, rendered him speechless as he offered no resistance to his arrest. You know, Julius? Love makes you do strange things.”

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Shay Lari-Hosain Grade 10

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23C Connie Li Grade 12

The first thing you notice is her tired chestnut bob. It has probably seen too many salons, a stubborn little curtain determined to swing open every time she tucks it behind her ear.

That’s right, turkey neck, take the stage again and again; it’s good to see something real. Pat yourself on the back.

You sit up, because this is a chance to turn to her, and you’re reeling; her hazel eyes are already slashing Judgment in wide stripes from your screen to worn upholstery, flit from Walter White rocking the Aztek and Skyler, then back to the sun outside–– how isn’t she blinded, here where the clouds hide nothing, only mirror sheer light back into your pupils–– You can’t help it; you bow under this silent swarm of petty thoughts slipping out of the hive, from those prim pressed Arden lips, hissing in a pressure concert opened hours ago by the Boeing’s drowning whisper.

Look, you tell yourself. Breath after breath.

A single smile is your breach, your battering ram, there will be no little Dutch boy and his chubby Dutch fist to plug the leak save yourself, if you let it happen.

But can you trust this compressed cabin atmosphere with a voice so irresponsible it wishes for just the surface, the meek algae of a rolling chocolate depth?

Can you part your lips, tell her you love her eyes, you’re happiest when flying alone, she looks like art nouveau?

Can you tentatively offer her, even find the end in the spool that makes you?

United, we stand silent around the carousel; divided, we fall like dominoes under the touch of the first man with the gall to suddenly recline his seat. For he is tired, and those seventeen centimeters are suddenly too much for him to bear, and 2B, and 4A, and 11C and 19C and then, click, you push the button, even though you’ve never minded sharing the armrest.

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Soft polite captain-speak in cursive––We are beginning our descent–– Seats to normal reclining position–– And you kill those cautious tendrils of hope, slice the roots in your heart with the same blade as her eyes, because Delta is no slower than any of us when it comes to touching home again.

But suddenly hazel darts have pinned you against space–– you cannot believe that in the delay of several sand grains, her wrinkled lips form, “That’s my son’s favorite show.”

She is smiling at you––the gate is open–– you take a stuttering step and at once everything rushes out–– does it snow in Virginia, that part of the States? Oh no, well, the summer mists of Santa Cruz were crystal on your eyelashes, you struggle to hold your voice clear, you are on your way home, but everything is swept up as you grab onto her dimples and swing from them like a giddy child, sing that though they look like river-carved deserts, (and she thought they were, and bloomed an astonished crows-feet eagerness, a moment you plucked and stored in a jar) the coy hills below are only lounging under a summer dress of brown scrubs, waiting for autumn to burst on their pixie cuts. Then, you should see them, when they flush the loveliest green and become the mother’s embrace where you stripped wild seeds off the stalk in handfuls and built a circle of rocks, your own house.

The hill where you ignored your grandmother’s call to dinner because someone else was in your rock house, foreign socks and hazel eyes, and you already knew her, already more familiar to you than the beating of your own heart.

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Sunburst Natasha Mayor Grade 10

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Fall Kimberly Ma Grade 12

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Ripples Madelyn Wang Grade 11

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LETTER TO THE BEST FRIEND I HAVE NOT MET YET Margaux Dear Boris Locke,

I used to send you hundreds of emails when I was younger- ranging from hand-written letters sent by a grammatically conscious and incurably curious nine year old to the digitized queries of middle school me in some form of an existential crisis. I’ve probably composed thousands upon the fateful day I encountered an addictively depressing ecstasy in the form of your series, Bitter.Sweet, some lazy day upon which I was probably too young to should have been reading it. I don’t think you mind very much. You’ve become my best friend over the years. I know you’re not supposed to do this with fictional characters, or with musicians who have been dead for longer than you’ve been alive, but I’ve always ignored all recommendations regarding that matter. I know you probably won’t read this. You’ve never answered a single one of my letters, Facebook messages, or emailsnot to mean that you don’t read them, but your lack of response would point otherwise.

However, no longer shall I send countless handwritten notes or compose a heartfelt email demanding the whereabouts of the Elendman orphans, nor shall I flatter you endlessly with my infinite supply of compliments and things I find pleasant about you and your work. No, today, I begin writing about my life to you.

I’m sure you’re wondering why some teenage girl, and especially one you have yet to meet the acquaintance of, is telling you about her particularly bland shade of monochromic high school life. The answer is quite simple: You are my best friend.

(As previously mentioned.)

I don’t mean “best friend” in the sense that we gossip over boys on the phone, or we trust one another to paint our hair with hazardous materials. No, not in that “best friends for half a day” sort of thing. I mean it in the sense that of all the people in the world, you understand me better than I know myself, and you’ve done it hundreds of miles away.

What I love about great authors is that they teach you things that you didn’t even know about yourself. They indulge you in these full-fleshed out characters who come to life and fly off the page with such intensity and rapid force, you are swept up in the hurricane that is the story. Next thing you know, you’re an intimate friend, a confidante, a fly on the wall of a blooming relationship. You watch a character’s downfalls, their happiest moments, and it’s all so beautiful and happening so quickly that you fall in love with the character; this is who you want to be, who you want to be with, the type of thing you want to do in life, what you never want to do to your friends and family, these are the things that you are suddenly filled with such impetus to live and do! And while I have never singularly identified with a specific one of your characters, I feel that I am all of them. I see in the characters traits I have lost, the strength I must find, and I am the essence of the story. I am the characters; I am the narrator; I am the articulate choice of letters strung together in a beautiful word bracelet. And all in all, I am in love with your work, with your being, and what I have known to be you. And because of all of this, you are my best friend.

Some people would find it sad that my best friend isn’t a person that I regularly interact with and go to parties with and typical teenager-ey things like that, but really it’s not. In some ways, it’s sort of exhilarating. You’re a person I barely know, who understands me better than most people who try ever seem to do, and yet, we have this one-sided bond.

So, best friend. Today is I turned sixteen. Uncle Kurt used to say that he would be there for me, when I needed it most.

I’m sure it’s some hormonal thing, like our biological clocks all are scheduled to go off at the same time but some are late and some are early. I guess that’s why people act batshit crazy in high school. Sometimes I’m not even sure if I have a clock.

With Love,

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Lydia

Chiseled Katie Gu Grade 12

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veins Elisabeth Siegel Grade 10

your words are flicked into my veins like you’re playing a game of pool casually methodical excellently aimed flippantly lethal. you’ve got a storm in your own bloodstream, though, so sometimes (always) you’re louder than i can hope to be. my arteries are a tree branching out through my limbs like an ancestry or a heritage but different, somehow for I make myself up and make up myself i don’t let people swing on the branches, but the twigs tend to crack a little at the edges

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Bloodred Natasha Mayor Grade 10

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Trash Efrey Noten Grade 12

Thomas was adamant. “Trash is public property. I just took a piece of paper out of a waste basket—I didn’t even do anything with it. I was just curious about what the right answer was.”

“You know, the Supreme Court has ruled on this. Trash is not public property until it is outside the curtilage of a home or business. You’re an adult, correct? A junior in college? Mr. Aldrige? That was not rhetorical.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I am an adult, Dr. Knox.”

“Then you really don’t need for me to spell it out. This council finds you guilty of cheating.”

“Dr. Knox, you-“

“Cheating!” The woman shouted, slamming her open palm on the table. “You are expelled from this institution. I’ll give you the honor of telling your own parents what a good boy—or, man, rather—you’ve been.”

“In the meantime,” another member of the council started, “Clean out your apartment. You have until the end of the quarter, which is…this Friday! My goodness, Alison, have you written your midterm yet?”

desk.”

Dr. Knox never broke her glare with Thomas. “I have. Let’s just hope Mr. Aldridge doesn’t steal it from my

“Let’s just hope Mr. Aldridge doesn’t steal it from my desk!” Thomas mimicked the law professor’s words, which had grown fainter over the months. He searched through a black trash bin with his flashlight. Tuesday nights in this south Charlotte retirement community meant dozens of trash bins had been rolled to the curb, and payday, as he had begun to call it, was only a sunrise away.

1133 Wilson Court’s trash contained nothing interesting. Maybe he could work with the fact that there was less food waste this week than last, but it was really a crapshoot and Thomas could do much better than shooting craps. The recycling bin didn’t even have any summer catalogs in it—God knows 1133 loved her summer catalogs. He opened his notebook, made a small “x” next to an entry, and continued to 1135 Wilson Court.

One peek into 1135’s recycling and Thomas knew he was onto something. An elaborate, flowery “Get Well Soon!” greeting card stared back at him from the top of the pile. He grabbed the card and read the message contained: “Hi Dad. Sorry to hear about the fall. How about this weekend I get them to install a ramp? It’ll be my belated birthday present for you. –David” Thomas opened his notebook again and wrote, “1135 – Fell down stairs. Distant with son david. Recent birthday.”

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1137, rest her soul, had passed three weeks ago. Thomas had drawn a line through the entire row.

1139 was a severe old woman who, if his notes were correct, had taught English in a Catholic girl’s school for fifty odd years. Her trash was indicative of her eating habits, and her eating habits could be summarized with the image of tumbleweed blowing across a Bolivian salt flat. But there was something new in her recycling bin. Thomas grinned. An empty, translucent orange pill bottle hid underneath some grocery catalogs. He examined the label and saw the words “Donepezil 10mg. Take once a day with meals.” In his notebook, Thomas excitedly scribbled, “alzheimers!” He then flipped to a page near the end of his notebook where he kept more detailed tabs on the residents with degenerative neurological issues. There were seven (now possibly 8) senior citizens who he could work multiple times a day. The old man at 1982 Magnolia, for example, was not only moderately wealthy but was essentially unable to form new memories. Thomas created a new entry for 1139 Wilson and continued to 1141.

By sunrise he was up to speed with the lives of the senior citizens on Wilson Court. He returned to his car for a victory nap and awoke around lunch to the sound of garbage trucks rumbling past. He usually didn’t have to worry about doors slamming in his face, since for most he was their only visitor for months. The sheer idiocy of these geriatric, arthritic sacks of loose skin never ceased to amaze him.

He knocked on 1135’s door. “IS THAT YOU, THOMAS? GIVE ME A MINUTE, I’M RIGHT NAKED.” Thomas smiled and stepped back.

Moments later, an old man opened the door and Thomas went to work. “I’m getting something already, Mr. Houghton! Don’t tell me a gosh darn thing!” He pretended to think intensely, shutting his eyes and humming an unrecognizable tune. “I see…stairs, something bad related to stairs. You fell down the stairs, didn’t you? That would explain the crutches.”

Mr. Houghton was, as usual, enthralled. “Come inside! We’ve got lots to talk about!” He poked Thomas in the rib with one of his crutches and stepped aside to allow him to enter. Once Thomas was seated in the kitchen, Mr. Houghton began his lengthy ritual of sitting down. Thomas shot to his feet, but the old man waved him away vigorously. “I killed 13 Japs at Guadalcanal so I don’t think I need any help sitting in my damn chair!” He laughed heartily as his bottom eventually found the seat of the chair. “Ok, Thomas, gimme something else!”

Thomas again began to feign deep thought and after several seconds, he opened his eyes. “It was your birthday not too long ago.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one! It’s everyone’s birthday recently!”

“I wasn’t done. It was your birthday recently but…your nephew…no! Your son didn’t get you anything.”

Mr. Houghton grew quiet. “Yes, my son-“

“Your son David?” Mr. Houghton nodded sadly. “And this wasn’t the first time. All he does is try to fix the problems you don’t need fixed. You don’t need a present but you want something genuine.”

The old man was expressionless. “If he’d just come over. Instead of just writing me goddamn letters! He lives in Greensboro and if an old man lives an hour’s drive from his grandkids and never sees them he gets a little agitated! I’m sorry to cut this short, you’ve been right admirable but I’m getting a little riled up here. I already left you your payment under the vase by the entry.”

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“Thank you. I’m sorry about your son.”

By now Mr. Houghton had restored his stoic protective shell. He shot up as fast as he could, then clutched his knee and winced. “You know! I killed 15 Japs at Guadalcanal so I don’t think I need your sympathy!” Thomas nodded and left the house, snatching his forty dollars from beneath the orchids. Behind him, Mr. Houghton angrily hurled a crutch across the kitchen.

1139 was a train wreck of a woman. Mrs. Agatha Campbell, or Aggie the Haggie if one were to ask her former students, was watering a patch of oversaturated dirt in her front yard when Thomas approached. She looked at him frantically. “Freddie! Oh, it’s so good to see you! What a pleasant surprise! Just let me finish watering these begonias, go right in! I’ve made peach cobbler—I know how much my favorite grandson loves it!”

“Thanks, gramma! It’s the perfect birthday gift!” Thomas responded, momentarily taken aback by her uncharacteristic cheeriness.

“Your BIRTHDAY? Heavens, of course! I’ve got something extra special for my sweet little angel! Go into my purse and get yourself a nice dollar bill!”

“Thanks, gramma!” Thomas repeated. He quickly located Mrs. Campbell’s knitted handbag near the entryway and stuffed thirty four dollars into his pocket. When he turned around, he nearly walked straight into Mrs. Campbell as she was entering the house.

“Freddie! I can’t say it’s not a pleasant surprise, but I would have appreciated a phone call before you walked right into my home!”

“Gramma, you just invited me in!”

Mrs. Campbell studied him intensely. “No, Freddie, I don’t think I did. Now, I’d love for you to stay but my church group will be here any minute and I haven’t even dusted off the patio chairs!” At that moment, a car pulled into the driveway. “Oh, fie! There’s nothing more embarrassing than a dusty patio chair. That’s probably Mrs. Rodriguez— she just loves to show up early and you know how those Mexicans are about clean houses. Freddie! If you’re on your way out, why don’t you go parley with her while I fix up the patio?”

Thomas rolled his eyes. “Sure thing, gramma.” He approached the car and, all at once, felt his internal organs compress into a tight wad. The car’s window sported an “I Bleed Carolina Blue” decal and a sticker proudly proclaiming the driver’s membership with the North Carolina Bar Association. But worst of all was the all-too-familiar scowl of the woman sitting in the driver’s seat. She killed the engine and stepped out of the vehicle, changing her scowl to a smile in the process.

“Hello, Freddie. Have you been enjoying my mother’s cobbler? Maybe you light-fingered a piece right from the oven?”

Thomas’s body had locked itself in place. “Huh?”

“I’m sorry, allow me to clarify. I said, Mr. Aldridge, have you sampled, and have you subsequently derived pleasure from, my mother’s cobbler? Cobbler in this case being the baked dessert involving fruit and biscuit dough. I

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don’t mean to assert you have been munching on my mother’s shoe repairman. I imagine he’d taste exceedingly… leathery?”

“Your mother?”

“Yes, her mother.” The response came from behind him. Thomas spun around to face the tight-lipped Mrs. Campbell, who had restored her characteristic raven-like demeanor. “Really? Freddie? Fresh baked pastries in the oven? Who do you take me for, Marie Callender?”

“It’s alright, mom. Give Mr. Aldridge some time to think. I’m sure his brain will need a few minutes of silence to put all the pieces in place.”

“How did you find me?”

Dr. Knox shrugged. “I merely drove down from Chapel Hill last week to help my mother around the house. That night, I saw one of my…favorite students digging around in a refuse bin. Even I didn’t think you were capable of ruining your own life to the point of poverty that quickly, so I decided to park a few houses down and watch your handiwork. Last night, my father-in-law was kind enough to let me use the label of his Alzheimer’s medication.”

Thomas stared at the ground “I didn’t do anything illegal. Are you gonna ban fortune tellers now?”

“No, unfortunately. But what I can do—what I already have done, rather, is tell each and every one of your clients how you operate. Maybe inform some headline-hungry news outlets. Maybe put a hidden camera in the entryway. And believe me when I say some of the residents here take much less interest in the law than I do. You’re free to go, Mr. Aldridge, once you remove the thirty-four hilariously fake dollars from your pocket.”

Thomas reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of cash. The twenty had a depiction of Andrew Jackson wearing a party hat and shutter shades. He threw the paper to the ground and stormed off down the street.

“Don’t overexert yourself, Mr. Aldridge! Your brain needs that energy or you might lose your precious last neurons!” Mrs. Campbell called after him.

As Thomas approached his car, he found a note taped to his windshield written in furious, yet elegant, cursive. “I never killed a man much less a Jap. Leave and don’t let me change that.” Quickly looking both ways down the street, he snatched the note from the windshield, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it into a recycling bin on the curb before speeding away down Wilson Court.

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Living Street Jerry Shen Grade 12

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After Birth Alexandra Rosenboom Faculty

Milk pools my eyes and yours flicker with pooling.

Recognition blurred, so time yawns past us, cylindrical. Swaddling light I can’t be sure of, city fields darken your forehead of hair. A home where we means violence or otherwise. Your eyes grey and mine becoming. Absolute statements falter against the window, against your tearless cries. A shade made from the sun but eves wane. Single words melt floodlights from beyond the driveway, beyond the freeway, beyond the bridge, the sand.

Because nature builds itself in such shadows, our tent sags back into the first land. Nothing clear but what’s undersea, unfielded. And so in the earliest hours, I learned there are no hours. In my earliest darkness, you were already here.

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The Colors of San Francisco Riya Chandra Grade 9

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Darjeeling Allison Kiang Grade 11

Liquid amber drips off the side of my mother’s tea cup, translucent spheres falling toward the scarlet-tinged paper embroidered with perforated holes in the shape of the Chinese character, shé: It is the Year of the Snake, which, as my mother had told me when I was a child, was an honorary gift bestowed upon the creature which had triumphed as one of the twelve victors in the Jade Emperor’s race in the creation of the zodiac.

Every year, my family congregates at the same restaurant, The Magnolia, for a banquet in celebration of the Lunar New Year. This year, my cousin Addie brings home her boyfriend. From the incessant texts my phone has been receiving for the past year about this mysterious, shadowy, figure of a prince, I can tell that Addie’s relationship is serious.

Addie has always been something of an older sister to me, despite the fact that I actually have two younger siblings of my own. This year is the first time Addie has returned home since she went off to New England to study nearly two years ago. Being the epitome of every Asian mother’s dream daughter, Addie never takes a break from her work; my aunt and uncle had to fly to Boston a few months after she entered university because she had collapsed of dehydration while enslaving herself to her future success.

We’ve never been as excited to meet anybody as we are to finally know Addie’s boyfriend. When my mother found out the news, a chain of emails circulated about the family gossip network. Grandmother cannot resist to point out to my aunt that the last time someone in my generation married was ten years ago-I was six then, the perennial flower girl, being the youngest in all of my extended family at the time.

The grandeur of the event was alluring-the scented candles, free chocolates at every table, flowy chiffon dresses-I had never dreamt of becoming a Disney princess but I would now fantasize of diamond rings and peony bouquets.

As my sisters and I stand by the entrance to our private dining room at the Magnolia, greeting the elders, ushering them to their seats, my four year-old cousin Oliver toddles up to Addie: Who-da-new-poson, he asks. Why his hair so red? I follow and turn to them, smiling at seeing her for the first time since her graduation.

“Lynn, this is Will,” she bashfully introduces him. I extend my arm to shake hands, but he accidentally shocks me instead.

Will towers over the average-height Chen clan, hair fiery as a flame and soft-spoken, conspicuous amidst the sea of babbling Chinese. He seems lost but slightly amused by the influx of elderly Asian women who pester him with awkward questions about what it means to be “ginger” and if he has ever tried stewed chicken’s feet in dim sum. I watch as he patiently puts up with the tactless questions and wonder how he manages to tolerate my unmanageable family.

Addie is across the hall, still greeting the elders who look upon her and exclaim how beautiful she

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has become with her porcelain-china skin positively glowing, and how flawless she is as a daughter, having taken on two part time jobs, sending monthly checks to her parents approaching retirement. Grandmother sits her down, and I watch Addie patiently explain to her how she manages to survive without weekly dim sum at the Magnolia with the honorable elders.

After the last of my cousins once removed, cousins twice removed, and cousins I call cousins but are actually family friends finally settle in, Addie flops at the table and wearily lets out a sigh, as Will takes his seat next to me. A never-ending deluge of Asian delicacies from abalone to shark’s fin soup arrives from the kitchen; Addie playfully feeds a close-eyed Will all of the foods.

“I’m sure Will’s more at ease now that he’s at a fully English-speaking table,” I say. He laughs, his captivating emerald eyes crinkling at the corners.

Later, while the teens at the next table ask Addie about what college is like, Will turns to me, asking to teach him how to use his chopsticks. I show him how I maneuver my index finger and thumb, and when he drops his rice ball, I reach over to his dry, coarse hands with scars I discern that are not unlike my own and move his fingers for him. Once he manages to clumsily pick up the scallops, he thanks me, flashes a cheeky grin and proceeds to use his newfound chopstick skills to put some Empress chicken onto her plate, just as Addie returns to our table. I am sure that Addie hates Empress chicken.

At the fifth wave of dishes, Will tells us about his childhood. As a child, he lived in Surrey, England before moving to Toronto, explaining his imperceptible accent. A single father raised him with his sister. I shrink in my seat as my quizzical relatives drill him on what is to them a foreign upbringing. He wrangles his hands when someone asks him what his father does for a living, what is his yearly income, and if he knows his mother.

The waiter then interrupts with a plate of my favorite sticky rice, Will stops and distributes some to Addie then me. He takes the break of interrogation to ask me what I plan to do in and post college. To be honest, I am not sure, but I say doctor. I vaguely remember afterwards Addie having told me that she had met someone at the medical school. I am pulled back into conversation with his offer of allowing me to shadow him over the summer. I accept too quickly, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Then I realize that I don’t even remember what it was that he told me he did at the school. To have something to do, I refill everyone’s teacup, and I notice that Will has left his untouched and cold.

When it is time for the traditional rice cakes and lotus soup to be served, my sisters prance around the room with their cell phones, snapping photos with everyone. They convince Grandfather, Addie, and Will to take a picture together. When they say “cheese,” Grandfather oddly glares instead.

Afterwards, Grandfather serves everyone with a slice of the lychee and red bean flavored rice cakes himself-he says that they represent family reunion and good fortune. He gives one to everyone at the table except for Addie and Will. The servers miscounted the number of people he claims. I offer to share mine, but Will is a gentleman and politely refuses.

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As everyone moves to leave, Addie goes to grab her coat, and Will offers to take a photograph with

me. My sisters giggle when he puts his arm around me and my cheeks burn a shade of scarlet. I am not sure why, but afterwards, as we are parting, I tell him that Toronto is my favorite city and that I would like to study there. He gazes back at me and chuckles.

On our drive home, Grandfather pulls me close to him, staring intently into my eyes. “You will not disgrace our family. Don’t ever forget that you are Chinese first before you are American. You will be sure to marry zhong-guo-ren. You know what that mean, yes? Chinese person,” he resolutely says to me.

The next day, Addie comes to visit our house with Oliver, who she is babysitting. It is four o’clock, and my mother carefully pulls out her china tea set. Grandfather berates her for mixing the tea leaves in the storage canister-Darjeeling white and Darjeeling green are not compatible in flavor he says. Will arrives then to pick Addie up, but we insist on them staying for tea first.

My sister brings out the cream and sugar from the cupboard at Addie’s request. Grandfather glowers when he sees Addie add two sugar cubes to her tea.

“Don’t you take it plain?” he asks her as he rises to make his own pot of green tea.

“Yes, but Will takes his with sugar and cream. It tastes much better, you know. I don’t know why I haven’t done it before,” she replies. “Why don’t you try it?”

Grandfather grumbles something about tradition, but I nod when Will offers me a sugar cube.

The white crystals dissolve into the fluid gold. I raise my cup and drink.

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Preserving the Xiajiang Tradition Callie Ding Grade 12

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To Qinghe Connie Li Grade 12

Bowls of gardenia blossoms wetly kissing the rims in a panic of leeching brown; five year crab plant silently peering from under its spindly limbs to its sentinel roaming the kitchen. This is our daily rock: the uselessly thick chopsticks wondering at her habit of washing disposable bamboo ones and lovingly burying them, neighbors, in an endless cycle of grey rubber coffins.

Hard to close the eyes to evidence of some unfathomably, terribly fragile corduroy bird flitting between the rice cooker and the wok in the too-large slippers that everyone’s feet have mangled. (Mine too.)

It is easier to pretend not to notice the flat face of the microwave’s thaw button staring, the absence of any memory of wrinkled thumbpads in the fifteen years since it was installed.

Or some bone will fall from someone’s mouth, ting, on the table as she orchestrates, Meilin, not meimei or baobei as my parents milk croon coo, hers instead shivering contraction of soft maroon lips. Flexible. The warhorn call of a tough octogenarian with the guts and the guns to have eternally defeated me in arm wrestling. Wàipó: 12, me: a fat, fat 0.

Dripping heaps of eggplant being airlifted two feet and parachuting into my bowl, hearty comrades of tomato and egg, strange mushrooms barging to colonize my rice–– Wàipó, I did not ask for this radish, smiling helplessly. Eat, she replies, face blank to state, how could you imagine doing otherwise. I smile and shrug, open sesame, my mouth now a bin for this love that I cannot stop, this hunger of ours that must eventually wane after the taste of six long hours of CCTV endless games of Sudoku, oh Nanjing blood misting yellow skies, hei, this blossoming youth pinned to the earth by her pale calves spitting fire in Shanghainese as the world slowly uncurls from her wok-lifting punches falling pit, pat, ever softer and lighter on its shifting skin.

Hàochīléi.

This is love.

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Secrets Safia Khouja Grade 11

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venus Elisabeth Siegel Grade 10

i could hook venus figurines on each knob of your spine. the way you respire reminds me of rivers running for their lives in opposite directions of one another. the break in the current is where I was born. your syringe smiles and tolerant fingertips do not belong anywhere near me though i cross paths with worshipful addicts every so often to keep me wary, on edge, and slightly pissed off. your days are numbered in sans-serif font, but I’ve chosen to name mine instead. perhaps this is easier.

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Barceloneta Beach Natasha Mayor Grade 10

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Jingle Bell Rachel Wu Grade 11

You’re asleep now, but you’ll find this tale, along with my bells, when you awaken.

I want you to know me and how I became who I was. Not what rank I held, or how precisely I killed, but me.

People knew the ringing bells and recognized them as harbingers of my tasks, but no one knew me. I was simply part of the collective, nebulous group that ironically, protected the light.

So you ask, why do I speak of this identity in the past tense? I’m sure you’ve already guessed what association I was a member of, and drawn a myriad of prejudices against me for that alignment. I won’t deny what I’ve done in the past. I won’t deny the lives that I’ve taken. And I definitely won’t deny that I was exceptional. I’ve been able to cleanse the filth off this world without hesitation. If they refused to return to the light, then they deserved to be eliminated.

I was selfish: a task completed meant better reputation for me among the Tribunal; I was apathetic: their lives mattered as much as a squashed spider’s; and I was stubborn: my choice was the right choice, my way, the only way to live.

Now before you hate me too much to continue reading, rest assured that I’m not who I was. I’m not sure I don’t miss my past identity, but there’s no returning to my old ways now; I’ve gone too far, and I am punished for my deviation. In a few days time I will be captured and taken somewhere, silent and clandestine. Exactly where, I can’t guess, though there I will meet the end that I’ve brought to so many others.

Let me repeat this to you, or tell this to you for the first time, if you haven’t caught on: I’m not a bad person. I had my ways, and they suited me fine. But something inside of me gnawed at my resolve, the origin of that thing I do not know and can only curse at. It brought me to my current dilemma, which I had never expected to be in. Not me.

Anyways, I wanted you to know my story, Edwin, so that when I’m gone, you’ll know what curse or blessing you’ve laid upon me. I want you to know that you’ve changed me beyond repair, but I do not hate or thank you for that. I simply am.

What I’m sharing doesn’t start with childhood memories or fond appreciation for my parents. I had none.

My name is Alexandra, assigned to me by the Tribunal. I’ve always preferred Lexie in my dealings with other people, since it makes me sound slightly more friendly. I’m not quite sure how old I am, though I presume I’m somewhere around my late teens or early twenties.

My career started when I was young, around eleven or twelve years ago. All I remember is the tall, debonair man who held my hand the entire way from the orphanage to the imposing iron gates of the Tribunal.

“I want her,” he had requested.

The adults at the orphanage quickly nodded, took some brief glances towards me, and turned away. I’m certain they knew what the man would turn me into; they just didn’t say. They didn’t resist giving me up either. After all, why would you deny an Adjudicator?

And so, then began my career with the Tribunal.

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What happened after that, I don’t remember very well.

The Tribunal took charge of my education, since I have “fond” memories of sitting in a room laboring over my slate. Some classes I viewed as useless. Other classes, however, I found to be of great interest. Those dealt with the fundamental laws governing our land. Rules of conduct engrossed me, for in rules and guidelines, I found order, something our land had great need of. I hammered into my head the different offenses against the state, ranging from slander to military rebellion. I understood that a leader’s punishment was the extermination of his whole family, while a follower’s punishment was simply his own life. I memorized, I loved, I worshipped those laws. They defined my earth and painted out my sky. Without that dedication, I would not have landed in this respected, yet despicable, position today.

I spent a few initial years exterminating these relatively easy dissenters. After my immediate success, I was assigned to charges, who for once, tested my physical and mental limits. These years have been, undoubtedly, my most difficult years as an Adjudicator. I eliminated dissenters who bore within themselves, new life. They forced me to cleanse militants who endured some mishap at birth and didn’t develop as others do. And most horribly, I’ve had to kill children, whose fault lay in their mothers or fathers. I was selfish and I was apathetic, but these years tested my resolve.

Now here’s where you come in.

When I was assigned to you, I saw no “catch” to the charge. You were a normal, healthy, young man. You had a history of contributing to rebellious antics. You were a blatant insurgent.

The first night on this case, I entered your house, delivered your first bell, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. I was about to leave the same way I had come, when you caught me, not with stealthy traps or deadly weapons, but with words. A single jarring question, and an ensuing story.

“Reina, Jeremiah, Nicole, and Annabel. Do you remember them?”

That stopped me dead in my tracks. Yes, of course I remembered. They were among those whom I’ve killed the past year. Hesitating, I decided to stay and hear what you had to say.

“My mother, my father, my sister, and my lover. I heard from our leader that they all died at your hand.

Did they?”

Hanging in chimney like a spider, I silently nodded.

Sensing that I hadn’t moved, you continued, “You took everyone I loved, for what? Why? We’ve done nothing to you. We opposed the tyrants you serve out of desperation, out of hunger, out of the craze that comes to those who don’t expect to survive the night’s cold.”

I felt a growing sense of guilt push itself up my throat. I meant well.

“You think killing people is hard? You think you’re left without a choice? Try to choose between dying of hunger out in the woods with your hands bleeding because you’ve gripped the handle of an axe for hours, and a meal -- scanty and not enough, but the first food you’ve had in six days -- with the assurance that you will oppose those who made you so poor, so helpless. Have you ever wondered why there are even people out there like us? Why we would oppose your government, fully aware that you might kill us?”

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No, I hadn’t. There hadn’t been reason to. The Tribunal taught me that they defied the laws of the land, the same ones I praised in my sleep, so they should be exterminated.

“Kill me. Kill me and relieve my pain. You’ve taken everyone else, so now, take me. I don’t care to live in this world where I choose between death and death.”

I couldn’t.

By then, my resolve was already wavering. Your words were the catalyst; they addressed the uncertainty in my soul and shoved the truth up against my face. I was a tool.

I told you earlier that I’ve changed, and I have. Whatever I decide, I won’t kill you.

You’ve opened my eyes to the world and I won’t repay you with death. But as much as I want to spare you, I cannot; it is my obligation to kill you. My sense of duty still permeates the foundation of my mind, even though you have struck down its walls.

I’ve tied myself into an impossible knot, so I’ll be leaving now, good bye. If they find me, so be it. If they don’t, so be it.

As for my suggestion to you? Run. Run as far as you can and don’t you dare stop. They’ll be coming after you as soon as I’m gone, so run. For me, for you, and for everyone you’ve lost: run, live, fight, and win.

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The Animal Inside Jerry Shen Grade 12

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New House

Alexandra Rosenboom Faculty

That is the tragedy of tense, you say. A name expands in each new one you inherit. What pours from any bottle : wheat, abandonment, the river brown beer of my dominant eye. Swoon of wet cedar swelling. You look out from concrete. From what grows in the ground and the ungrounded.

From everything that’s born to want more space : Rain warps the front porch and its wood bends wind. If what was is not is, watch it move instead : a flea market mirror we shine back into gold. A foghorn we’d scrawl to mist and moan. Linen sheets we’d bleach back to summer white hills. But a slow drip pools the hardwood, proving the fealty of water. You say such light falls forward while all darker colors recede. As sadness when we’re not looking.

A brown stain blooms through the ceiling.

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Moonwalk Natasha Mayor Grade 10

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In Memoriam This year’s magazine is dedicated in loving memory of Jason Berry, a beloved teacher and coach who touched the lives of all his students and countless members of the Harker community.

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Dear Students,

In a world that promotes selfishness and narcissism, you must find it daunting, if not nauseating, to hear about or listen to someone preach the merits of values. It’s arguably even worse to read about dead people and their ideas when their own suppositions about the world have fallen by the wayside. Politicians lie and cheat on spouses and then want you to vote for them based on their integrity. Advertisers sell you their products by making claims they cannot possibly support.

And it’s not just the corporations and politicians who lie and cheat. Harvard students (over 100 of them) were caught in a massive cheating scandal this summer. The prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan was just featured in The New York Times, and students interviewed argued that because “the social currency is academic achievement,” cheating is acceptable. One might lament that in such a cutthroat, win-at-all-costs society, why should the individual even care?

I empathize. I sympathize. But I refuse to give up hope for the individual.

I have little to no idea what it must be like to grow up as you do, to have the pressures that complicate what should be a simple life. Growing up used to mean skinning your knee while jumping off a swing set or eating ice cream so cold you thought your brain would freeze. Growing up used to mean exploring creek beds and turning over rocks to find slippery, scaly things. Growing up used to mean making forts in the basement and hiding flashlights under pillows so you could read late at night. Growing up also meant having your heart broken by the girl in the front row who passed you a note with a check in the box that read NO. Growing up also meant the sting of failure on a test or a last second shot careening wide of the goal and losing.

Now, you are asked to mature too quickly, to discover secrets well beyond your years and scope of experience. You are asked to ascend to loftier heights than Icarus and not fall. You are asked to speak as articulately as a philosopher and know what the words mean and register in the hearts and minds of others. To do such is to know not the taste of hard work and duel diligence; rather, it is to find the success of a few without the support of many.

In your classes, you are supposed to succeed, but I wonder if you know how. I am sure you have your own formula for success. Perhaps you have figured out the percentages of what you need to make on each assignment to arrive at some sort of logarithm for a particular GPA. In turn, that GPA will allow you to apply to a select group of colleges who publish their own data to attract a certain caliber of student. That’s fairly smart thinking, but it negates the very art of an education.

An education should impart knowledge. It is wrestling with ideas, struggling with theorems, working out philosophies. Your education should be the extension of the self, a molding of the mind in its formative stages. In the study of literature, it is finding flavor in words, the playful push and pull of syntax, the rapture of a story, the unfolding of years layered in syntax, the negotiation of ideas in a conversation that lasts all night with friends and spills over into the classroom the next day. It is grappling with a text and shaking free its ideas, its conflicts, its characters, waylaying the corrosive indigestion of prejudice and championing the mistreated. This education is an exercise in close reading, in paying attention, in examining the relationship of word and image.

To be studious means to be patient. And perhaps it is this word patience that provides consternation, especially in a world of instant gratification, express lanes, and rushed orders. Back in the days of yesteryear, we had not

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instant messages, no texts, no tweets. We waited for a letter in the mail. We waited for a phone call. We waited for music, for movies, for books. This waiting, hard as it was, taught us the value of a commodity, the smile wrought by a familiar voice, and the comfort of an author.

This is not to say that you don’t understand these values or their rich rewards; rather, your world around you seeks to program you otherwise. Indeed, you would be wise to adhere to Franklin when he writes “I know of no character living…who has so much in his power as thyself to promote a greater spirit of industry and attention to business, frugality, and temperance with the American youth.” Even back in the 1700’s, Franklin realized that the future of tomorrow, the future of America, the future progress of a nation rested in its youth. He further exhorts in his letters that “there is scarce any accomplishment more necessary to a Man of Sense that that of Writing Well in his Mother Tongue.” This, then, is the aim and function of youth – to think well, to write with beauty, to create an individual of sense and reason.

You are charged with no easy task, but to accomplish it will find you resolute in your affairs later in life.

Revel in the struggle. Delight in the course you take. Promote care and concern. Be gentle. Find reward in difficult matters and abandon them not.

Above all, read promiscuously and know thyself.

Always in your corner, Mr. Berry

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The HELM Staff Juhi Muthal and Katie Gu: Editors-in-Chief Juhi Gupta: Chief Designer Design Team: Katie Gu, Juhi Gupta, Connie Li Public Relations Managers: Efrey Noten and Brandon Yang Photography Editors: Juhi Gupta, Safia Khouja, Nikita Parulkar Writing Editors: Ishanya Anthapur, Cynthia Hao, Maya Nandukumar, Elisabeth Siegel, Brandon Yang Secretary: Nitya Mani Club Members Sahana Narayanan, Meilan Steimle, Kathy Duan, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Allison Kiang, Neil Movva, Manthra Panchapakesan, Shreya Maheshwari, Kacey Fang, Serena Wang, Priscilla Pan, Madhavan Nair, Tiffany Zhu, Andrew Rule, Sophia Luo, Kaitlyn Gee, Agata Sorotokin, Alexis Gauba, Hazal Gurcan, Irene Bashar, Nikita Ramoji, Chirag Aswani, Tiara Bhatacharya, Andrew Tierno, Doreene Kang, Nina Levy, Joyce Zhao, Stephanie Scaglia, Sanjana Marce, Lauren Liu, Judy Pan, Anika Mohindra, Daphne Yang, Belinda Yan, Abhinav Ketineni, Soham Khan, Elizabeth Edwards

Special thanks to: Dr. Douglas, for her guidance during the entire process Desiree Mitchell, for her help with printing the publication The Administration, for funding our efforts The English Department, for its continual support of HELM

harkerhelm@gmail.com harkerhelm.wix.com/homepage

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