2022 Anthology and Catalogue: Select Works by YoungArts Honorable Mention and Merit Winners

YoungArts

Anthology + Catalogue

Select works by 2022 YoungArts Honorable Mention and Merit award winners

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YoungArts

Anthology + Catalogue

Select works by 2022 Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing

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2022 National YoungArts Week+ T-Shirt Designed by Maya Ragazzo (2013 Film)

Acknowledgments YoungArts is grateful for the knowledge and commitment of a vast network of guest artists and educators who have helped to shape and inspire the next generation of artists whose works appear in these pages.

Special thanks to Anthology + Catalogue Selection Editor, Dr. Joan Morgan, Copy Editor, Jordan Levin and Associate Curator, Luisa Múnera.

This volume and YoungArts programming are made possible with the generous support of many. Please visit youngarts.org/donor-recognition for a complete list of donors.

Above all, we extend our sincerest gratitude to the artists featured. We dedicate this publication to you, your families, teachers and mentors.

Letter from Artistic Director On behalf of YoungArts, I am thrilled to share with you the collection of works housed in this Anthology + Catalogue. This publication is designed to introduce you to a cadre of fresh artistic voices and to bring you closer to their stories. Affirming the caliber of their expressions, these editions are often the first opportunity for young artists to see their works published, and represent a bold step toward a professional future in the arts.

Comprising literary and visual artworks that span the gamut across these mediums, the works by 2022 Honorable Mention & Merit award winners offer us a glimpse into their perspective of our interconnected world. From poetry, novel, short story and creative non-fiction to playwriting, script and spoken word pieces, the writings exemplify the artists’ curiosity: of their bodies, their heritages, their communities and their realities. Similarly, the images contained in these pages represent this profound moment in history and offer vision and originality in design, photography and mixed media and yet only scratch the surface of the expanse of each artist’s creative potential.

YoungArts is dedicated to nurturing that potential and to providing guidance and opportunity in support of their future works. I encourage you to immerse yourself in the words and textures, the colors and patterns, the imagination of these artists—and then to carry their perspectives with you on your own journey.

Lauren Snelling Artistic Director

Letter from Sarah Arison It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to the Anthology + Catalogue of works by 2022 YoungArts Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing. The artists published in these pages are the voices of tomorrow, and I hope you make note of their names as you are likely to see and hear from them again.

YoungArts exists to ensure that artists have the support and professional and creative development opportunities they need to pursue a life in the arts. My grandfather, Ted Arison, had a deep love and appreciation for the arts and believed that no young person who wants to pursue a path in the arts should be dissuaded from doing so. Together with my grandmother, Lin Arison, he founded YoungArts to provide emerging artists with financial awards, mentorship and early-stage programs to help advance their careers.

Four decades later, more than 20,000 artists now have access to ongoing support from YoungArts. What began as national program to recognize accomplished young artists has grown into an organization that provides artists with the resources they need at critical junctures throughout their entire careers. When named a YoungArts award winner, artists are equipped with lifelong access to support in all aspects of their creative and professional development with a particular emphasis on access to space, funding and resources to aid their creative process and experimentation.

By reading this Anthology + Catalogue, you are a part of this vision and mission. Thank you for supporting artists.

Sincerely,

Sarah Arison Chair, Board of Trustees

Table of Contents Select works by 2022 Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing Miriam Alex Gryphon Alhonti Michelle Amponsah Ashley Bao Renee Barnes Catrielle Barnett Nailah Benjamin Dana Blatte Lucza Brewer Mason Burton Leonardo Cabrera David Chen Ayden Chi Jennifer Chiu Andy Choi Jonathan Chu Adia Colvin Wesley Cornejo Shealeigh Crombie Youjaye Daniels Sydney Davenport Jordan Davidson Valentina Diaz Owen Dudney Chloe Els Neva Ensminger Alice Estrada Feiye Fan Penelope Fisher Milo Ryan Fleming Grace Flinchbaugh Janelle Frazier Anji Friedbauer Joseph Gamble Jenna Garcia Melani Garcia SydneyBlu Garcia-Yao Ryan Gdovin Paige Glover Zoe Goldemberg Madyson Grant Ruby Griffin Savannah Gripshover Kyli Hawks Victoria He Deirdre Hickey Zipporah Hinds Sisira Holbrook Claire Hong Anna Hu

12 14 19 22 24 25 26 27 32 33 34 35 37 38 42 51 52 57 58 59 60 61 63 64 69 73 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 90 92 93 94 95 96 109 114 115 116 117 118 121 124

JH Tina Huang Michael Ilisoi Shnayjaah Jeanty Isaac Jekel Christopher Jeong Claire Joseph Sophia Kagan Myra Kamal Abigail Haewon Kim Esther Kim Jennifer Taeyoung Kim Shelby Kim Grace Kosten Divyasri Krishnan Carolyn Lau Wyatt Layton Ariana Lee Christian Lee Eunice Lee Nana Lee Yeonjae Lee Dez Levier Kyra Li Stella Lin Daniel Liu Michelle Liu Olivia Liu Sophia Liu Katelyn Lu Ella Lukowiak Natalie Macadar Travis Mann Emily Maremont Gabriella Martinez Caitlyn Mason Samuel McIntosh Cameryn McNeil Devon Meenaghan Karolina Montalvo Eli Nachimson Marley Noel Tess O’Brien Eliza O’Keefe Aiko Offner Chinonye Omeirondi Isabelle Orr Asen Kim Ou Ashley Park Daniel Park Kristen Park Alize Perez Sohum Phadke Felicity Phelan Deeya Prakash Isabella Pla Michelle Qiao

125 127 130 131 133 134 135 136 137 139 140 142 143 144 145 152 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 162 164 173 176 177 178 180 185 186 187 188 199 200 201 202 203 204 206 207 211 213 218 221 224 231 232 233 234 236 237 238 243 246 247

Reina Quinonez Neda Rahimi Gaia Rajan Kashvi Ramani Norah Rami Isabella Ramírez Avani Ranka Xander Ratledge Matthew Rebecchini Clarise Reichley Samantha Reineke Mea Richards Olufela Rodriguez Camila Salinas London San Luis Grace Schlett Maria Fernanda Serra Almeida Leite Lucas Sewell Nalani Sexton Ashley Shan Evy Shen Isha Sidibay Owen Simon Daniel Slater Grace Q. Song Sara Sonnenblick Kira Sotos Steve Stevens Esther Sun Ekansh Tambe Cheyenne Terborg Cielo Valenzuela-Lara Paul Valois Amina Walker Olivia Walker Alison Wan Amy Wang Ashley Wang Ray Wang Grace Warren-Page Katherine Wei Jacqueline Wheeler Brea’ Williams Caroline Wu Lina Wu Catherine Xie Alice Yang Karen Yang Esther Yeon Natalie Zhang Elizabeth Zheng

260 261 262 263 265 268 270 272 273 274 276 287 288 289 290 291 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 312 313 314 315 316 319 320 321 325 327 328 329 331 332 334 335 338 339 340

About YoungArts About YoungArts Notable Winners Guest Artists 2022 Guest Artists Special Thanks to Educators 2021-2022 Supporters Board of Trustees Staff Presenters

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YoungArts Anthology + Catalogue

Select Works by 2022 Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing

Miriam Alex Tulip Mania & I will tell you the Marlboros are mine when your shirt is singed with smoke.

I lie about exes, doctors’ notes, every history. You ask the wrong questions, & I let them wax, pregnant with disbelief.

You spend the nights with the television, mouth parted like a bouquet. This, a kitchen fire, hungry & alone. Bills crumpled the fridge, the whine of an old smoke detector. The moon shifts its weight over our bodies, & we still beneath. The television flickers from Morse to silence, & you aren’t awake to hear it. The only stutter you know lies at the edge of everything we have ever known. Eyes forward.

Anoint our throats with kerosene.

Don’t look at me: not here, not now.

Even now, I won’t tell you I can’t see you until a night before, when I am alone in a motel somewhere on the interstate, knelt by the receiver. How everything burns on weekends, how tulips starve.

In the glint of the window, there is a face I do not recognize. Wings alight. Flight log eyes. A body in transit. Everything, desperate to be known a moment longer. I wonder if you could know me. But I can’t cup light.

God, I can’t even hold you.

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Poetry Nashua High School South Nashua, NH

Bloodletting for Clocks After Life is Strange

I saw the fly in the milkshake first. A skinny waitress apologized in pinched French, handing us a punch card for another lunch. Next time, I said, maybe we’ll visit the diner by the faded music store. I’m leaving for Los Angeles, you said, finally. You’d found a script to pocket your body in, a future on a smoke break by the mall. You’d rolled your tank tops tightly, swaddled a stray wine bottle like a stillborn. The night before you left, you kept an Advil and a glass of water on the wobbly dresser.

In the end, I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t even text.

Rewind.

On Monday, I booked tickets to my mother’s house, told you to call in sick. I kept every cigarette pack I found under your mattress in a shoebox and called it a sign, a God tired of smoke and mirrors. You never made it to LA. Instead, you found your seat on the train beside me. I bought the newspaper, read ads and looked for the missing as if they were lying in the aisles. And for a moment, I thought I saw you there, in the valleys of cheap moquette and steel. At dinner, your mouth waned. When the cat died that night, the rain almost washed its body into the gutter. We burnt what was left.

Rewind.

I promise, I looked for when it went wrong, tax returns and flight logs and photo booths. Evidence of our quiet deaths. In every timeline, you left me.

You’d sink into the sea or elope or unhook yourself from the respirator. I could never get this right.

Really, I wish I could have promised you anything more than passage. My watch is still in retrograde.

Rewind.

Summer. The wharf and seagrass. A watch, buried in the sand. I forgot that eventually, I’d find myself before you. I couldn’t remember our pre-history, only that here, I never caught you and your name at the bus stand. Instead, I let myself find that Sunday with the fly and the French waitress. Not a soul was left.

Reset.

I saw the fly in your milkshake first. The waitress apologized in tight, pinched French. You told me you were moving to Los Angeles, and I wept.

The tickets were cheap, so I bought and left them in your mailbox. I couldn’t say I loved you at the terminal. Just, I’ll see you soon. Just, give me a call when you land. An Advil on the dresser the morning after. A morning pregnant with silence. The cat, curled like a clock on my chest. And for once, it was all enough.

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Gryphon Alhonti

Play or Script Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Houston, TX

BEST INTENTIONS INT. LIVING ROOM - EARLY MORNING The TV tells a story. A television displaying a painting - Two Comedians by Edward Hopper: two performers bowing on a stage. Then a SIGNAL GLITCH switches the screen into a rerun of a television motivational speaker.

It’s clearly an older rerun - the motivational speaker has a transatlantic accent and the picture is in black and white and slightly fuzzy. He is talking to someone, but not an audience. However, he is the only person visible.

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER Intent, want, loss, desire--these don’t matter in the long run.

They’re petty human traits. Do we, as a modern human race, really know what past kings and queens and presidents wanted? Lost?

Even intended? With something as fickle and slippery as intent, how does one determine what a man who you’ve never met, only heard of, intended? Intent lives in our bones-A full-screen glitch, as if this feed is the televisionEXT. BACKYARD - EARLY MORNING A girl is RUNNING. Norah, seventeen years old. She runs out of her backyard and into the street, sprinting down the sidewalk in full, high-definition glory. The sidewalk beneath her feet is littered in stray, washed-out chalk marks and drawings.

EXT. BACK SIDEWALK - CONTINUOUS It’s a dark night, just a little before sunrise, and her feet are flying beneath her. Her Converse are old and battered, and her backpack is weighing her down. In a t-shirt, jeans, and zip-up jacket, she is in no position to be sprinting down the sidewalk.

The neighborhood is an average American neighborhood - a bit too old to be considered suburban, but not grand enough for a higher tax bracket. The trees are old and have lived there for decades, having seen many children, much loss, and an indiscernible number of new beginnings. Some of the trees are carrying swing sets and tires, others are still wrapped up in Earth Day decorations, marking the month as April.

And then, in a voice overMOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER (V.O.) (CONT’D) --Everyone who has ever lived…every animal and every tree branch, has known loss. How are we to determine the weight of loss when it changes so frequently? When it really is a case-by-case basis?

There are people calling the girl’s name. In the distance, a faint ‘NORAH!’ can be heard, echoed by several voices -- her neighbors. She keeps running. She turns the cornerA blue Mazda is waiting for her. In the car sits ALLISON, seventeen years old. Norah abruptly STOPS, nearly tripping over herself.

ALLISON Where were you? I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes. We’re gonna miss the train.

NORAH (out of breath) They caught me.

What?

ALLISON

NORAH (struggling to get the words out) They-they caught me. She saw me. She’s right behind me.

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ALLISON Oh my God what are you waiting for? Get in right now!

Before Norah can take another step, one of the voices catches up to her. An older woman, AUNT HARPER, about mid-forties, is straggling behind her. Norah immediately freezes at the sight of the older woman.

AUNT HARPER (kneeling over, out of breath) Wait! Norah, please!

Allison makes gestures at Norah to try to get her to get in the car. Norah doesn’t move. In fact, she’s not even looking at Allison anymore.

AUNT HARPER (CONT’D) Norah--please. Why are you doing this? Where are you going?

NORAH (hesitating, trying to justify herself) I have to leave. I have to. You have to understand.

Norah begins to take small steps backwards.

NORAH (CONT’D) I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. You have to understandAUNT HARPER But I don’t! I don’t understand! So help me--why are you leaving?

And of all the ways, like this? (enunciating) Don’t I matter to you?

Norah begins flailing her arms around, frustrated. She turns to look at Allison, pleading, but turns back around before she can see Allison’s response. She’s caught between two worlds-two choices. She takes a moment to catch her breath and collect herself, trying to face Aunt Harper.

Then, she begins.

NORAH Listen-I’m sorry, okay?!

You’re suffocating me! You’re choking me! I have suspended every want and need I have for you-every single one. And you don’t even bat an eye. I’m so tired.

Aunt Harper takes small steps towards her, like she’s about to scoop up an abandoned kitten cowering in a corner, but Norah’s not done.

NORAH (CONT’D) Ever since I moved in with you, you’ve made my life into a string of attempts at pleasing you, making sure that everything is up to your ridiculous unsaid standard. That’s not what I came here to do. I needed support after Mom died, but you’re not being that anymore. So I’m leaving. (exasperated, throwing her hands up) You’re my aunt! You should be helping me, not doing thisAUNT HARPER (cutting her off, choosing her words carefully) So tell me…tell me these things. Don’t just leave. We can make this better…like you said, we both need this. There’s a reason you came to me back then, and it’s the same reason you should stay. I’m here to help!

NORAH There’s a reason why I went to you and there’s a reason why I’m leaving. This hurts me as much as it hurts you, I swear it. But this isn’t a decision you get to make. Not this time. (hesitating) And I didn’t mean to do it like this, I swear. But I just had to let go cold turkey, y’know? I just had to…do this…

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As Norah is speaking, she turns towards the car and opens the backseat door, dropping her backpack off. There are two duffle bags and a guitar case in the backseat already. She tucks the backpack in nicely, taking her time. Then, she pauses for minute, mustering up the will to turn around and face her aunt for the final time.

Giving Allison a look, she closes the backseat door and turns back toward Harper.

NORAH (CONT’D) I am not a human being. I am not a whole human being. Not when I’m around you. I am not good enough-- I’m lost, confused, distraught by whatever new thing you think is bothering me, instead of asking what is. (she steps closer and closer to Aunt Harper) There are days when you look at me and I’m not sure whether you see me or some manufactured, twisted version of me you’ve created and become attached to. (taking a breath) I think it’s time you start letting go.

There are still neighbors calling Norah’s name in the distance. Neither Aunt Harper nor Norah think to do anything about it.

Norah stops. Aunt Harper is shocked. This is not how she expected this conversation to go.

Cutting them off: a GLITCH back to the speaker.

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER As for desire, that is different than want. I think that’s something we can all agree on. Want is fleeting--it’s temporary and shallow.

It’s the one link we all have to the child in us. The child wants the toy, it does not desire it. Desire is deeper. It’s a want that runs through your veins and into your being. It’s something that cannot be stated in words or actions-it’s something that you cannot see on the surface. So in that, how are we to determine what someone really desires? Who are we toInterrupting him, a GLITCH back to Aunt Harper and Norah, standing off on the corner.

Allison shakes her head - the sun is coming up. They’re going to be late - they’re going to miss the train.

AUNT HARPER (wiping tears) Okay. Fine. Leave.

Norah lets out a frustrated groan.

NORAH This-this is what you do! You know I didn’t mean it like that.

AUNT HARPER No, you clearly did. It’s not my fault you don’t love me anymore.

Leave.

NORAH Please…I didn’t mean it like that. I take it all back. (turning back to the car) Hold on, let me go get my stuffAUNT HARPER No! Just…go! Go. Leave. (quietly) And don’t bother coming back.

Norah doesn’t hear the last bit. Slowly, cautiously, Norah goes to the passenger-side door.

Finally breaking eye contact with Aunt Harper, she gets into the car. Without hesitating, Allison STARTS DRIVING. She’s kept the car running during the argument.

Aunt Harper doesn’t move from her place.

INT. CAR - CONTINUOUS

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The sun is just beginning to stream in through the windows, having just made its ascension into morning. Shadows cross through the light in the tree branches, interchanging into different shapes forming on Norah and Allison’s faces.

Norah is no longer looking at anything but the road ahead of them, almost daydreaming, an Edward Hopper painting personified.

In a smooth transition, the shadows disappear as they exit the neighborhood. The sun is now shining clearly, without obstacle, through one side of the car, illuminating all it touches. (driving) That was intense. (pause) Are you okay?

ALLISON

NORAH (in a daze) Uh…yeah. Yeah, I think so.

ALLISON I know that was hard for you. I’m proud of you for that.

NORAH Yeah. Thanks.

Allison considers reaching for the radio, her hand reaching, but changes her mind at the last second.

NORAH (CONT’D) (still in a daze) I know it’s for the better.

Yeah.

ALLISON

NORAH (to herself) It’s for the better.

GLITCH one final time back to the speaker. There are gaps in his speech, but the general idea is present.

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER So these petty human traits--what are our parameters for determining who is good enough to possess them? What are our guidelines? How do you measure the goodness and validity of a human being by a set of traits you can only be marginally aware of? A set of traits one feels in the bones - a set of traits not measurable by spoken language nor body language. That is why I call them petty. That is why I call them small. We must be above such things when considering the goodness of our brethren and colleagues. We must consider-INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS The entire ordeal has been playing on the television this entire time. In some sort of technological glitch, the two feeds have been playing over each other at some parts, cutting their respective audio tracks off, and switching back and forth.

The sun is shining through the windows, but not bright enough to be morning - it’s just made its full rise. The sunlight is streaming in undisturbed, just as it was in the car with Norah and Allison.

Two people WALK INTO THE LIVING ROOM, only partially visible. A WOMAN and a MAN. WOMAN (tired) What is this? Why is it on? (to the man) Did you leave it on last night?

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MAN I don’t know, maybe. Just turn it off. I’m going back to bed.

The woman grabs the remote and switches the screen back to the painting. This time, it’s Intermission by Edward Hopper - a young woman sitting alone in an empty theater.

WOMAN God, I hate that thing. It keeps turning on and off on its own.

MAN We’ll talk about that later. I’m too tired for this right now.

They step out of the living room, their footsteps echoing, completely unaware of everything that has just occurred.

Through the window, a blue Mazda drives by.

The lights turn out.

THE END

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Michelle Amponsah

Short Story Liverpool High School Liverpool, NY

scheherazade [but there is no happy ending] He was everything her mother and her aunties told her she should want in a husband: a little bit older (he was twenty-three; she had just turned nineteen) with a good career (urban planning engineer), a good family (they were rumored to be distantly related to the Ashanti king) and a good body (six-foot-two and dark as oil, Lord have mercy). Aside from that, he was active in his church and genuinely gentle, which was rare for an African man.

Even in his boyhood, he had never so much as struck a bird, let alone a friend. He was the oldest, with five younger sisters. They were all beautiful, and all fiercely loyal to him.

the hundreds of bobbing heads and fragmented shouts, in the midst of the glistening coconuts and starched kente dresses, she could momentarily forget herself and her plainness.

So when he hovered at the gates of her family’s compound one Sunday afternoon, asking for her, she was thrilled. She put on her nicest head wrap, and they walked around the settlement in the evening haze. Fires quivered. Boys hunted squirrels. Little girls folded laundry. The old women stared hollow-eyed as they ground their peanuts into juice and remembered the tall, beautiful men of their youth.

He proposed before the summer ended. Her mother was ecstatic - she called her friends and her sisters, bragging about her daughter’s grand wedding-to-be.

Their conversation was stilted, mostly due to Scheherazade’s nervousness and the fact that it had been years since she’d spoken to a man that wasn’t directly related to her.

On their wedding night they took their time. They made music of each other. They teased out melodies from each other’s mouths.

In his arms she was no longer a virgin village girl: she was a virtuoso, a quivering violin.

“I am sorry to call for you so late….”

“You are fine!”

“You are probably wondering what my business is here.”

He took a deep breath, and if Scheherazade’s eyes were not deceiving her, she thought she noticed a bit of perspiration on his temple.

She felt a surge of power within her, and she straightened her spine. If she could make this man shake, what else could she do?

How much magic did she possess?

“She’s a wonderful woman, your mother.”

“She is.”

“And I’ve been watching you.”

“Watching me?”

But he saw her. He saw her, and he wanted her.

He wanted her for the purest reason that a man can have for wanting a woman: no reason at all.

She was sweet and young and he wanted to look at her and hold her and feel her youth sticking to his fingers like molasses.

It was a two-part event, the first a private ceremony held in the groom’s home, and the second a public affair where the palm wine flowed freely, where people got sick on meat pies and danced into the wee hours of the night.

Scheherazade liked handwashing his suits. She liked when he tore greedily through her carefully prepared dinners. She liked wiping the oil from his face with a napkin. She liked washing his bowls, fussing over his hair, and picking the lint off of his collar.

But what Scheherazade loved most about being a wife wasn’t her complete control over the housework or the fussing. It was knowing that every morning, when she woke up, there would be a warm body next to her. Expecting her.

For the rest of her life, her energy and thoughts would be completely consumed by someone else.

It was the biggest relief she had ever known. She slept well at night, knowing that the good Lord had given her this man, this gift.

After nineteen years of aimless wandering, mind-numbing chores, and inconsequential conversation, God had given her a Purpose.

“Yes. At the market. I’ve been meaning to introduce myself but I’ve been too cowardly.”

Which is what she believed, until she came home one evening, her feet blistered from walking all day at the market, to find him in bed with a girl.

Heat struck Scheherazade’s cheeks, thinking of him watching her in her dingy, tattered house dress, scaling fishes.

She couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t let him hold her for weeks. He had transformed.

He walked her back to her family’s compound and smiled.

His arms were not pillars--they were pythons. His smile wasn’t the beginning of her world - it was the end of it.

“I’m glad to have met you, Scheherazade. We should do this again.”

“Absolutely.”

Scheherazade tossed and turned the whole night, too giddy for sleep. This was better than anything she could have possibly dreamed up.

Here was the most eligible bachelor in the village, and he had picked her. She’d never gone to university. She’d never traveled abroad. She didn’t have relatives in the States or the UK. Her life wasn’t remotely interesting--she woke up, gathered eggs for breakfast, then cooked and washed and scrubbed and pounded all day and late into the night. Sometimes her mother sent her to the market to buy sweet bread or red peppers. She loved going to the market alone, because there, in the midst of

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She had done everything right. She had walked a thousand miles in the sun for him. She had given him her mornings, she had given him her afternoons, and at night, she had given him her whole self, no matter how exhausted she was.

And this is how he repaid her? By defiling the most sacred place she had ever known?

When she couldn’t bear being around him anymore, she told him she was going to visit an old friend, then took a taxi back to her mother’s house. She couldn’t even make it inside before she collapsed to her knees, tears and snot smeared across her cheeks.

This was where she had fallen in love.

Her mother came out to meet her in the middle of the path.

How could he do this to me?

It’s not uncommon, my love.

He picked me, like a flower. I don’t understand it. Am I not woman enough for him?

Her mother shushed her, wiping the wetness from her eyes. She gave Scheherazade advice on being good, on looking the other way, on finding ways to hyperfocus--scrubbing pots until they gleamed, sweeping every corner of the compound, and slaving over her stove.

stretched out her housedresses in the most beautiful way, like she was going to burst at the seams at any moment. And she was young. All night long Cynthia’s girlish giggles drifted through Scheherazade’s window.

She had laughed like that, once.

They were all younger than she, with the huge, dewy black eyes of does and plump skin.

By the time Scheherazade diced the onions and tomato and ginger, cleaned the meats, shook everything over the fire, and pounded the fufu, the sun was directly overhead and the children in their pressed white uniforms were already on their way to school. She was covered in goat guts and sweat was sliding down her spine. He couldn’t see her like this. She ran to her room and scrubbed her skin until it gleamed, then slathered her body with shea butter. She put on a brand new dress and draped gold around her neck and wrists. The dress was too big for her now, but it didn’t matter. She was going to look absolutely radiant when he fell in love with her for the second time.

I used to look like that, Scheherazade thought to herself.

Scheherazade pounded on the door of Cynthia’s hut.

Scheherazade was always kind and always gracious to the new wives. And when she couldn’t take it anymore, when she felt her skin trying to separate itself from her bones, she locked herself in the bathroom and cried, silently, into her fists.

Cynthia answered. Her eyes were wide and bright.

She told Scheherazade to make good lady friends at the market and to spend as much time out of the house as possible.

Her mother’s wisdom was enough to keep her going. Until he took a second wife. Then a third.

She cooked and swept, like she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat anything. She was losing weight just as rapidly as he was losing his money.

Taking care of three wives was putting an undeniable strain on her husband’s once-bottomless finances. If she didn’t act quickly, she would get so thin that she would disappear, or he would go bankrupt and become one of those men who drank on the street and fell into the gutters. She couldn’t tell which would come first.

They both seemed like a special type of death.

Sangri lived where the road ended. It was deep in the bush, where the cabs and trotro could not go. She was so old she remembered the British occupation. Her home was dirty and it stank of urine, but she knew everything there was to know about herbs.

She was a type of goddess, a master of the dirt and its secrets.

She had powders that could give a barren woman children.

She had vials of blue liquid that promised tight stomachs and cantaloupe breasts. She had roots that could put people to sleep forever.

Scheherazade told Sangri of her husband’s wandering eyes and the tiny harem he’d formed. Wordlessly, Sangri went to her chambers and returned with something that looked like cocoyam, but much smaller. When Sangri placed it in Scheherazade’s hand it was light.

“Here,” Sangri said. “You make broth with this. Boil for two minute.

Pour it in soup with your turkey and goat. Very good. This will take care of problem.”

Sangri’s accent was thick - a Northern accent. Scheherazade wanted to make sure she had the instructions right.

“Will it make him love me again? Will he stop bringing other women home?”

Sangri nodded stiffly.

“It will solve problem.”

She tried to ask more but Sangri was quite finished with her, which she made clear by announcing she was going to bathe and promptly pulling her dress over her head. Scheherazade made the trek home alone.

The next morning she rose at 4 AM to prepare the soup. It wasn’t like she was disturbing anyone - her husband spent most of his nights in the hut for the newest addition to the compound: Cynthia. She was like a gazelle—fast, flexible, graceful. Her hips

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“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Scheherazade said, barely containing her irritation. “Where is he?”

Cynthia blinked, pulling her wrap tighter around her small frame.

“He is in bed still.”

Scheherazade fought the urge to shove Cynthia out of the way and drag him out by his ears.

“I need to speak with him.”

Cynthia walked away. There was more soft laughter and the rustling of sheets.

And then there he was.

He was no longer the beautiful beast that showed up at her doorstep all those years ago. He was older, fatter, and slower.

But as soon as he appeared in the doorway Scheherazade felt the familiar flutter in her soul, the blossoming of heat just below her belly button. He had acted without regard for her for four years.

He had stomped her hopes and kisses into the dirt. He had broken her heart a thousand times, and here she was again, holding it in her palms. Sacrificing it. She felt stupid and silly and madly in love.

He wiped his eyes.

“I was lying down. What is it?”

“It’s almost noon. Aren’t you hungry? I made light soup. And fufu, too. Just how you like it.”

When she was done, she wrung her hands together and watched his face.

“It’s been so long since we just sat together, my love.”

He grunted. “Get my bowl. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Scheherazade nodded and ran back to the kitchen in the center of the compound. She formed a mound of fufu for him, then heaped goat and turkey into his bowl. Then, she poured in the broth from Sangri’s root, her heart thumping like thunder. She was going to get her man back. She was sure of it.

“Is it enough?” Scheherazade asked, placing the bowl before him.

“Plenty.”

“Let’s pray.”

She grasped his hand (oh, how good it felt to hold hands!) and began:

Our Father in Heaven. Thank you for your never-ending grace and mercy. We pray that you bless this meal and nourish our souls. Let us be strong and full of vigor so that we may exalt your name all the days of our lives. Amen.

years. The rejection, like black tar that coated her soul. The nights she spent in bed alone, her eyes aching from spent tears. Locking herself in the bathroom just so she could get a moment away. It had exhausted her.

Her husband nodded and dug greedily into the food. He tore up the fufu, sucking the soup from his fingers. Scheherazade looked at him adoringly. Every cell in her body hummed, waiting for the moment he would be hers again.

Scheherazade crumpled to the floor.

“I loved him. I wanted children one day and you…”

“My God, Scheherazade,” he said between swallows. “How do you do it? You’ve done this before but this… this is by far the best-”

Sangri left her boiling pot and held her. Scheherazade was too tired to push away her hands. Her hands. They were big and warm and rough.

Oh my God, Scheherazade thought.

“You thank me one day.”

He’s choking.

“Thank you?!”

She rushed up and beat on his back, then his chest, trying to get some air in his body, but he just kept gasping, open-mouthed, choking on nothing. His eyes continued to roll awfully in their sockets. The whole episode was shorter than a minute.

Sangri shook her head sagely.

There was her husband. There was her beautiful husband, her gift from God. Crumpled up on the tile like a plastic bag. She held him and wept. Full, body-wracking sobs that flowered up her spine and sprouted from her throat.

“You stay here and you rest.”

This was not what was supposed to happen. He was supposed to come to his senses. He was supposed to cast away the other women. He was supposed to kiss her and tell her she was enough, she had always been enough, she would always be enough. Sangri told her it would be so. Sangri promised -

The red-hot hatred that had propelled her was waning by the minute. She could hide here for a while, with Sangri and her tea and her herbs. She might be alright. There could be life without him.

Sangri. That she-devil.

Scheherazade got to her feet and brushed off her dress. The other women would come out soon, and when they saw this awful scene who knows what they would do to her? They would think she killed him.

Oh, God. Had she killed him?

No. Sangri. It was Sangri and her deception. She had to find Sangri.

Scheherazade ran through the countryside with no water, no food, just the dress on her back and the burning desire to find Sangri and reverse the awful thing she’d done. As she ran she kept getting visions, visions that arrested her heart and stole her breath. There was her husband, sitting by the water one night, smiling at her. Their first kiss, and how she was convinced she could take flight. The mirror in the corner of her room, and how she had stood before it, rubbing her stomach, praying for movement.

Sangri. Sangri had taken everything sweet from her.

“You witch!” Scheherazade screeched as she burst through Sangri’s makeshift door of mud and bark. Sangri was standing at the stove making what looked like tea.

“You are angry.”

“And you killed him! You did it! You lied to me!”

“Lie?” Sangri just stood there at the stove, stirring. Her big black eyes were at once innocent and menacing. Scheherazade’s blood was as hot as the pot on the stove.

“I’ll report you to the authorities. I’ll tell everyone how wicked you are.”

“Wicked.” Sangri chuckled and continued stirring.

Scheherazade paused, and that breath was enough for her thoughts to arrange themselves, for her eyes to fill with tears, for her to realize just how exhausted she was. It wasn’t just the wild dash she had made over to Sangri’s house—it was the past four

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“No man, no trouble. I try telling you.”

“But what am I going to do now?” Scheherazade asked miserably.

Sangri went to the stove and dipped a cup in the boiling liquid.

“Drink,” she said, placing the cup in Scheherazade’s hands.

Scheherazade put her lips to the cup and drank. The tea was spicy and sweet. Was that ginger she tasted? Turmeric? Cinnamon? She drank and drank until she was staring at the bottom of the cup.

Sangri stroked her head.

“You are better. You are better. You are better…”

The last thing Scheherazade saw were Sangri’s holy hands. Wiping the tears from her cheeks.

Ashley Bao

Short Story Cab Calloway School of the Arts Wilmington, DE

The Sixth Sister The oldest wants to start the story at the beginning, the youngest wants to begin at the end.

Beginnings should be logical. Time is a straight arrow, the oldest says.

How boring, the youngest says. She was not always the youngest, but she assumed the mantle reluctantly once enough years had gone by. They know the end. Best leave the most unexpected for last.

The second oldest rolls her eyes. She has listened to this bickering for too many years. Start in the middle if you can’t decide.

Why decide at all? the middle sisters ask. The two of them are closer than the rest, bonded by their birth order. No matter that only one of them is truly the middle sister now. Unlike the youngest, they refuse to rename their birth order. When we remember her, we do not start at her birth nor do we start at her death. We remember her in unexpected orders at unexpected times.

The sisters discuss for a few moments more, but the middle sisters have a talent for being correct. # The day before her fifteenth year began, we were preparing to celebrate. We lit the sea glass lanterns, woven kelp curtains, and lined the cove walls with pink coral wreaths. We chatted about her fifteenth year, how excited she must have been to finally break the water’s surface and see the land above. The youngest sister wagered that our sister would never want to leave the sky once she saw it. By then, we rarely saw our sister; she spent most of her time wandering as close to the shore as possible. We assumed she would tire of it eventually, as we all had.

We waited, ready to shower her with delight, and she didn’t arrive. For hours, our father scoured the seas, trying to find the place where she must’ve hidden. She swam through the entrance leisurely while he was away, holding a scrap of leather in her hand.

When she smiled at us, our impatience melted away, falling to the sandy ocean floor. We gave her presents, braided her hair, and hummed childhood ditties we had heard from the sea.

Our father returned in a rush of bubbling anger. We heard thunder rolling from far above as he scolded our youngest sister.

We huddled together, hiding behind the kelp. But when he left, she had simply laughed.

Father is himself today, I see, she said to us. So who shall take me to the surface? # We were daughters of the sea, born from clamshells and algae and raised by a father who commanded the waters with a single flick of the wrist. We had skin on our torsos and scales on our tails as if the ocean couldn’t decide whether we were fish or human. The sea had given our father five children at first though it promised six.

The five of us grew up as children do: we chased our tails, endured our father’s lectures, found love outside our little cove.

The oldest kept track of the calendars, learning to count time like the back of her hand. The second oldest mediated disagreements between the various coral reefs, an arbitrator with a tongue that never twisted. No one truly knew what the middle sisters did when they swam out to the deepest trenches where the light could not penetrate the abyss. They couldn’t articulate it in words, but they always returned home at the end of the day.

The youngest sister is the only one who can’t recall life as an incomplete family. She was only in her fifth year when our final sister was brought home, wrapped in a seaweed blanket and crying in our father’s arms.

We each held her against our chests, the youngest getting to touch her first. She quieted in our arms. Her fins were as small as our thumbs, and we could not help but tickle her tail. Her eyes

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were wide and wandered as if looking beyond us while we cooed over her.

We five had been born in quick succession, but she had taken her time to arrive. Timeliness would never be her virtue.

That first night, we all sat around her and sang the lullabies and nursery rhymes she had missed in the womb. Even our father joined us at midnight, serenading his littlest daughter until long after she had fallen asleep. # The oldest sister was the one to suggest the storytelling.

During the day, she is our father’s protégé. During the night, while her younger sisters cry on her shoulders, she thinks of her own failings. They have no mother, so she must look out for her sisters.

Whenever she sees white seafoam, she is reminded of her failure.

Reliving these memories is a form of self-punishment. # Here is where our memories diverge. When the littlest turned fifteen, the oldest two sisters swear we took her to the shipwreck first, and that she met the human deep underwater. The youngest three claim we watched the ship sink below the surface of the ocean and then on the surface, she saved him. It doesn’t matter though. We all remember her voice that day, the way it floated across the wind and haunts all our dreams. She had sung one of our songs. We can’t bear to recite the words anymore.

The human had black hair cut close to his scalp. We thought he had died, but our sister was adamant about his beating heart. He was motionless under our sister’s careful hand as she breathed life back into his ghostly skin. We watched with bated breath as she took him to the shore, his body landing in the sand below the cliffs where men with brown robes and crosses on their necks gathered seashells.

Do you think he will survive? she asked us, breathless from the exertion of transporting an unconscious human, leagues across the sea.

Each of us claims to have been the one to speak first, each with a different answer.

Of course, the middle sisters said.

Saltwater is too harsh for human lungs, the oldest said.

Maybe, the second oldest said.

We can only hope, the youngest said.

It is only looking back that we remember the newfound shine in her dark eyes. In our memories, her voice shimmered, her figure buzzing with excitement. Before she had seen humans as black specks drowning far away from our cove, but this one must have been different. We never asked, and we wished we had. We wish many things. # The second oldest sister struggles to find her place. It’s natural, she supposes. A product of the birth order. Her oldest sister is a natural leader, her youngest sister a romantic at heart.

The middle two might as well be twins with their connection.

The second oldest tries out seaweed weaving, coral farming, and indoor decorating. She isn’t good at any of it. In that way, she thinks she will always understand her sixth sister the most. She, too, wants to find a niche, but she is not brave, or reckless, enough to leave the water. # We remember our first dinner without her. Our father was fuming, trying to find her with brute force. He commanded fish to search for any trace of her in every crevice of the sea. She was good at hiding though, and we knew he would not find her unless she wanted to be found.

The oldest sister suggested she might be at the shore where she had left the human. Infatuation was a strong emotion after all. But it didn’t explain why she wasn’t coming home.

No one thought she would have visited the sea witch.

Though the witch’s magic was strong and her promises true the price was always too high. Stories of those who lost something they could never regain because of the witch’s deals bubbled through the seas as gossip too common to be untrue.

The youngest was the one who gathered enough courage to see the sea witch and ask. In the lair, she heard our sister’s sweet voice singing our songs, the words echoing from the rocky walls. The sea witch asked for our hair for a chance to save her, and we obliged, forever tying our bodies to the witch’s magic.

We knew she had a plan for our hair, but it didn’t matter. We understood, then, why our sister had paid the price. Some wants were worth the risk. # After the tragedy, the two middle sisters, thick as thieves, visit the sea witch. In twin voices they asked, Why did she come?

The sea witch only laughed. She wanted to, sweethearts.

Desire is everyone’s vice.

While they are in the deepest ocean trenches, they think back to the sea witch’s words. They desire to stay in the abyss and never return to their father’s home, but they don’t have the courage to succumb to their want. They envy their little sister’s strength of conviction. # The most normal moments are what stick out in our memories. Her first steps outside our cove, her always being late to dinner, her attentive gaze whenever we told her about our visits to the surface. We all preferred the familiarity of the water, but she craved air like seagulls craved unsuspecting mackerels.

At five years of age, she would ask us to describe the shore and the sky every night when we tucked her into bed. Most nights we only rolled our eyes at her childhood fancy and sang her the same songs as always, maybe with one changed lyric. But sometimes we couldn’t resist her pout and obliged. She always slept best when she dreamed herself out of the water.

We used to dance in the coral reefs. The youngest especially liked the attention of the crustaceans and fishes. Slowly, our sixth sister copied the youngest’s movements, and eventually, she was the one who enthralled the most fish. Her movements naturally exuded charm, and we could never replicate it.

Once, when our sixth sister was too boastful of her abilities, the youngest knotted her hair while she slept. She woke up screaming and the two of them fought for the entire month until the second oldest sister forced them to apologize to each other.

Despite the bickering, the youngest was always the closest to our sixth sister, and she remembers the nights they would steal away together. Sitting on sandbeds, the two of them complained about our father and exchanged secrets like currency. It was on one of those nights that the youngest remembers a conversation about the world above the water.

There’s nothing for me down here. Everyone else has already found their place with nothing left for me. Our sixth sister had looked up to the surface. I want to see the land and sky.

The youngest agreed in her own way. She wouldn’t mind a change of scenery or a higher calling but was also content with the fish and the seaweed and the dancing on reefs. That was the difference between us and her. She could not help but look for more. Our father thinks he spoiled her too much, but we think it was inevitable. There are some parts of a person you can never change.

These are what we remember when the nights are dark and our sister’s voice creeps into our heads. Her laughter, her longing, her hopes, her daydreams, her loves. We sometimes want her to disappear, to forget our sixth sister like our father has tried to do, but it doesn’t heal the hurt, only masks it. # The youngest has found love with one of our father’s assistants. They spend their days looking in each other’s eyes and feeding each other seaweed on picnics in the coral reef. Everyone knows of our tragedy, so the youngest doesn’t have to explain her bouts of grief to her lover. At night, when she lies in her lover’s arms, the youngest often feels guilty. She has the love her sister sacrificed

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so much for. Deep down, she knows her sister wanted more than love, that her guilt is unfounded. So she tells this story to reassure herself. # Like lightning, the second oldest sister tilts her head above and stops the storytelling. Her worried eyes look for shadows.

What’s wrong? the others ask.

I heard something above.

Ships pass frequently, but the sounds of their hulls scraping against the waves remind the second oldest sister of terrible memories. The sound never leaves her mind.

You shouldn’t worry about it, the oldest sister reassures her. Nothing but the ocean breeze.

But another ship comes, and this time all the sisters hear it and the story resumes unbidden. # The water was murky as we swam to the surface. The middle sisters held the sea witch’s dagger, its silver edge only sharpened by the water rushing past. We were all shivering in the cold moonlight once we reached the ship where our sister was.

The ship itself was larger than we had even imagined. The hull alone was bigger than any of the shipwrecks down below. We had no feet, so we relied on the waves to rock us high enough to peer through the windows. We saw her in a room. Fabric draped the windows instead of kelp, and she stood in front of a mirror.

Her long legs and wide feet were such a strange sight, we almost didn’t recognize her until she turned around.

The middle sisters spoke first.

We have come to save you, they said.

Our newly shortened hair swayed in the sea breeze as we looked our baby sister in the eye. In fifteen years, she had grown taller, but we would always be older. Each time she shifted her feet, she winced, and we too felt her pain. We wanted to reach out and braid her hair, tuck her into bed, and wish the suffering away.

She smiled at us with bright but sagging eyes. We longed to hear the voice she had sold away, so we gave her the knife and begged her to kill the human and return home by sunrise. She could not speak any promises, but she held the dagger between her fingers, considering the offer as we returned to the ocean.

We waited underwater, holding hope between our clasped hands. Timeliness had never been her forte, but maybe today she wouldn’t be late. # The light broke across the horizon, and we saw the white seafoam forming a sheen across the ocean. We knew, then, that she would never return. # The youngest sister wipes tears off her face. She can’t remember her lost sister without crying. Out of them all, she is the one who still has her hands clasped, hoping in vain for a triumphant return. The oldest wraps an arm around her sister’s shoulders and lets her sob against her chest. The oldest admires the youngest for crying. The oldest sister has comforted us through so many tears, she has none herself to give.

The second oldest sister thinks about their father. He is locked away in a cove somewhere, far away from his five living daughters.

He cannot bear to hear this story because his version ends with too many regrets to count. His last daughter is the shadow that will follow him for as long as he lives. The second oldest sister remembers a time where she begrudged her father for caring so deeply for so long. She too loves her sister, but life continues whether you try to stall it or not.

It is not until even more years pass that her life pauses long enough for the grief to slam down upon her shoulders.

The middle sisters wonder about their lost sister. They want to know what compelled her to save the human that day when the boat collapsed. They want to ask why they weren’t enough for her to stay. They want to know why she loved someone who didn’t love her in return. Understanding their sister is the mystery they will spend the rest of their lives solving.

We remember her not by her voice or her beauty, but by the wake left by her body, the ripples that skipped through the thick ocean water and onto our own skin.

Renee Barnes

Visual Arts Lovejoy High School Lucas, TX

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Memory Book - Page 2 Ballpoint pen on varying tones of Stonehenge, leather cover 2019

Catrielle Barnett

Visual Arts Minnesota Connections Academy Saint Paul, MN

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Yek and Key Ceramic, underglaze and glaze 2021

Nailah Benjamin

Photography American Heritage School Delray Beach, FL

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Resilience Digital photography 2021

Dana Blatte

Poetry Sharon High School Sharon, MA

SHARON, MASSACHUSETTS

REAL CONCERN*

After Gaia Rajan

The horizon ruptures in the shape of my name.

Dana, Dana, it calls while I sleep on my belly between rotting oaks. I will dream about the sky, how it unfolds like a bruised lid, how deer dung marks constellations in the dirt.

Later, I will drive myself across town.

I will run laps around the track until I have no more breath because every note of birdsong sounds like it is mine. Instead, I sweat into my palms.

Nearby, there is a statue of a dead woman and I can’t remember her name. Only that she lived once and died between my textbook pages.

I call her Dana and wonder if she kept her promises but her mouth stays sewn to her cheeks. When I go home, I shower and still smell like pine needles.

I will never be clean. I believe this so much I let water collect anywhere but on my skin.

At sunset, I lock myself indoors. Anyone who has known me is dead. I am built of stone. I bury a pretty bird under the oaks, then dutifully slice the tires on my car.

My stomach cramps. I do not sleep. I stare at the horizon until it melts. When I die, I promise the sky I’ll carry the shape of its name.

The sediment beneath my feet flickers in a long-distance television program. First, the static of the reporter, the electrical buzz of helicopters swarming overhead. In here, a friend urges. It’s safe. Safe being a wall of mud bricks broken on their journey to the sky.

Where are the others? I ask to mean the people I brought.

The ones I am responsible for because I know their faces. Pocketed them; talismans.

Then: bullet in the air opening my ear. Friend screaming, Dana! while a soldier scoops me by my wrist, draws me as one would a line in the sand.

I can’t respond because I don’t remember her name.

The soldier races me to shelter—more bricks— and my classmates douse me with their hands.

Clawing at body-rubble like shhhhh, shhhhh. Guns can’t hear you but triggers can. We leave after one, two, three. The soldier is gone.

A helicopter descends. Names fall out of my pocket like abandoned wings.

Sky, pop-pop-popping. I know I am in a dream because the news doesn’t influence me.

Except now my knees—the world—dead in my arms.

When we land, I lift my face only for the camera that picks me into sentences. Wrong place, wrong time. White girl free to go home, rise from her bed to hit snooze. *drawn from the headline of a New York Times article on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to Representatives Seth Moulton and Peter Meijer’s trip to Afghanistan

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Dana Blatte

Short Story Sharon High School Sharon, MA

BIRD OF PASSAGE The real estate agent saved Inbal the trouble of removing the sold sign from the front yard. He stowed the tacky advertisement emblazoned with his grinning face in the passenger seat of his car before sliding into the opposite seat, adjusting his rearview mirror, and backing out of the driveway. From her vantage point amid the cluster of oak and pine trees that bordered the property, Inbal ground her teeth—the automotive engineers really had designed the back-up beeper to be as shrill as possible— though she didn’t need to worry. Breaking in would be easy.

She had done the research. On the real estate agent’s website, which belonged in the 2000s era of obnoxiously brightly colored backgrounds and pixelated graphics, Inbal found the house’s sale announcement. From there, she merely tracked the residents’ statuses on social media. The sellers—an older white couple with twins freshly graduated from Ivy League universities— had officially packed their belongings into their refurbished home a few towns over, and the buyers—a South Asian family with three children under the age of ten—were on vacation in London for another few weeks. And a few weeks was all Inbal needed to regroup from her voyage to the East Coast.

The real estate agent’s Honda Civic sped past a stop sign and out of sight. Inbal flicked the small spider scaling her thigh into the dirt and stomped into the backyard. Thank God for these dense Massachusetts forests. A sleek grill filled one corner of the porch, an uneven picnic bench bridging it with the four screened windows that allowed Inbal to peer inside. The interior was sparse but luxurious. Widerooms overlapped like the mouths of rivers.

Perfect for someone who didn’t plan on staying long.

Before resorting to the two twisted paper clips in the pocket of her backpack, Inbal tested the doorknob and gleefully discovered that it gave with only the slightest pressure. She loved wealthy neighborhoods. Wealth made people trusting. Gullible, in Inbal’s opinion, though she couldn’t despise any flaw that made her life twice as easy.

She wandered through the rooms. The walls were all a cool, off-white color, which fueled the sensation of perusing a museum.

Thankfully, the previous residents had left a few necessities—a mattress, a refrigerator, a few scattered potted plants, and a wide hallway mirror. Inbal paused in front of the latter. Seeing her face always came as a shock, and Inbal never tired of it. Well, that wasn’t true. But she could still recognize her ability as a miracle.

She traced her hawkish nose, her nearsighted hazel eyes, her round cheeks—features nicked from a random girl on the streets of Philadelphia. Inbal already missed her previous face, the one she’d brandished in California, the one that belonged to a girl rightfully assailed by model scouts—and, now, by news reporters.

She’d only adopted her new appearance—and the temporary moniker of Inbal—a few days ago, but she needed to exercise greater caution. She was a murderer now. But she wouldn’t get caught as long as she didn’t own a murderer’s face.

So, Inbal remade herself. She narrowed her jawline, sunk the apex of her nose, and fanned her darkened eyebrows. As the tingling subsided, she contemplated crying. Any lesser girl would have caved to the impulse. But Inbal could hardly muster any emotion other than disgust for the younger version of her mother that welcomed her stare in the mirror. At fourteen, when blue and red sirens pulsed against the walls of their dingy studio apartment after her mother’s latest drug-related scheme went sideways, Inbal had disappeared and never looked back. Her transformed reflection served as a reminder that she couldn’t trust anyone, not even herself or the tens of versions of herself she’d molted like ill-fitted wings.

The alarm on her phone rang. Inbal hissed—it was already 8:30 AM; she’d let time sift away—and fumbled with the device

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until the sound cut off. New person, new school, she thought wryly as she unlocked the front door and began the twenty-minute walk to Lakeview High School. * By the time she surfaced at the parking lot, she’d already crafted her new personality. She was Tahlia, an introverted Jewish girl with her postsecondary aspirations set on the Ivy League.

Yale, maybe Brown. Her parents were on a joint business trip to California, but they had sent her to settle in before they flew over with the rest of their worldly possessions. Typically, Tahlia preferred to play party girls—their sharp, spontaneous behavioral patterns granted her more freedom, and more fun—but it was safer to blend in. Boring, but safe.

She wended through the throngs of students gathered on the rounded sidewalks, tucking her chin as if she was selfconscious. She asked a teacher for directions to the main office, then walked in, introduced herself to the secretary, and crossed her legs in a stiff chair to wait.

Another girl entered soon afterward. Tahlia watched her intently, trying to decipher her social status. She was pretty in a girl-next-door way, but she was also dressed as preppy as a Vineyard Vines mannequin. Sleek dark curls paired with an argyle sweater and a black mid-length skirt.

“Sanjana Varma,” the girl said, unprompted. “Your glorified tour guide for the day.”

She paused for Tahlia to introduce herself, which she didn’t. Behind them, the secretary coughed into her fist.

Right, manners. Tahlia hurriedly stood, dropping her backpack in the process so she wouldn’t have to respond in detail.

“I’m so clumsy,” she apologized instead. To her surprise, a smirk flashed on the other girl’s cheeks. Tahlia had pegged her for the innocent do-gooder type, but she modified her categorization accordingly.

“First thing you need to know is that Lakeview is pretentiously competitive,” Sanjana said, herding Tahlia into the bustling hallway. She side-eyed her. “Are you taking AP classes?”

“Five,” Tahlia said. Slowly, as if admitting her own intelligence pained her. Truthfully, Tahlia always suspected she would be a model academic, though her continual relocations made for incomplete transcripts and nonexistent standardized test scores. It was a good thing she’d spent a few weekends taking Photoshop classes at a public library back on the West Coast.

Sanjana nodded. “Then you’ll spend a lot of time in this hallway. With me,” she added, gesturing to her backpack stuffed with binders and folders. Tahlia respected her lack of humility.

The rest of the tour unfolded just as blandly: Sanjana showed off the library, the cafeteria, and the gymnasium—all iterations of the high school landmarks Tahlia had seen dozens of times. Frankly, Tahlia wasn’t interested. There were plenty of people, however, that could still prove worth her engagement.

Starting with Sanjana, who Tahlia was suddenly keen to probe.

“You must be popular,” Tahlia remarked as they entered the foyer at the conclusion of the tour. The bell had shrilled five minutes ago. First period was in full swing, which meant she and Sanjana were the hallway’s only occupants. “I mean, you’re so smart, and so pretty too.” And gullible, just like everyone else.

“Thank you,” said Sanjana, her cheeks darkening. “You know, you should sit with my friends and me at lunch. Your schedule says you have AP Spanish in Room 204 with the rest of us, so I’ll take you there and handle the introductions.”

Tahlia smiled. At her previous school, she had studied Mandarin, so her Spanish languished in a state of disuse. It was irrelevant, though. “Sounds great,” she said and proffered her arm to the other girl.

Sanjana laughed, though she acquiesced. “Oddly formal, yet endearing.”

Tahlia shrugged. One compliment, and the girl had buckled like water under a stone. The next few weeks would be as simple as breathing. * Within the first week, Tahlia developed a routine. Life in the suburbs was predictable, and Tahlia was grateful for the illusion of normalcy.

Every morning, she exited the house at 7:30 sharp. She preferred not to wake too much earlier because the negativity bottled in her chest would seep into her thoughts. Tahlia tried to be indomitable, she really did. She chatted with Sanjana and her friends at lunch and politely deflected their requests to visit her house. She liked them—they were intelligent and ambitious but not exactly kind—though their conversations were complicated territory. They spoke of family vacations and birthday parties and memories from freshman year. They pried into Tahlia’s past, only to scoff when she refused to divulge details. Tahlia didn’t have a past, not one she cared to share. She hid behind flattery—she asked to borrow Sanjana’s stylish clothes, lauded her friends’ lunches so their parents would arrange extra portions just for her. It was all very utilitarian, though warmth still rushed in her chest when they readily agreed. After school, Tahlia spent her afternoons poring over her homework—at first, to establish her A-student status, but then because she derived pleasure from the assignments. They were predictable too, full of neat equations and neat diagrams and neat answers, which Tahlia sorely needed. Her lifestyle didn’t invite many ready-made solutions.

Until the second Tuesday in town. While she was engrossed in solving an integration problem set, an engine rumbled to a halt outside the garage.

Tahlia grappled for a plan. If it was Sanjana, Tahlia wouldn’t have to scrounge for any lies more complicated than the ones she’d already created. But then she recalled Sanjana’s complaints about her upcoming driver’s test. It couldn’t be her. It had to be—The real estate agent. Tahlia flew out of her hunched position on the hardwood floor. She grabbed her worksheets, articles of Sanjana’s clothing strewn in a ring around her, and her backpack, then flicked the light switch and fled toward the refuge of the trees.

Outside, buttery light poured from every window in the house. Tahlia wanted to scream. Get it together, she admonished.

The man’s presence wasn’t permanent; he would leave eventually.

Until then, she’d have to endure the woods. It’s not so bad, Tahlia reasoned. She had survived worse before. Besides, it was her fault for falling prey to the illusion of security. She was still a nomad, no matter how naively she pretended to belong in a spacious house, or an AP classroom, or Sanjana’s group of inane yet amiable friends.

Tahlia lowered to the ground. Pebbles and pine needles striated the undersides of her legs with pink. Get it together, she repeated. Last time, she hadn’t. She had thought she belonged in California. She had dated Aidin, a boy on the track team who teased her mercilessly for her purposely abysmal results in their world history class. They had kissed, gossiped in the corner at parties, even spontaneously driven to San Francisco to devour cake crumb donuts from Bob’s Donuts. Then, one night in his bedroom, she’d changed her face for him.

He yelped. “That’s not natural, Ally.” She’d been Ally then. A girlfriend, and, seconds later, a monster. Just as rapidly, his brown eyes adopted a greedy glint. “Can you do it again?”

So, she did. This time, she became a boy from the grocery store. She usually avoided it because her body didn’t match, but she wanted to shock him even more.

“That’s sick,” Aidin exclaimed, peering at her as if she were an artifact housed behind the cloudy glass case of a history museum. “Do it again.”

She did. Again. Partially because she liked him, but also because she relished the opportunity to perform. The only other person who knew of her ability was her mother, and she’d instructed her daughter to conceal it at all costs. Poverty was

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burdensome enough without a daughter who’d attract all sorts of unwanted attention.

But his fascination quickly irked her. He wanted her to prank his friends, to mirror a celebrity—to let him use her so he could be famous. Of course, she declined. He didn’t like that—Aidin never liked being told no. He threatened to tell the school, then the police, who she really was. Not Ally. Not innocent. Still, she still held that the subsequent murder was purely self-defense.

He reached for her as she twisted toward the ajar door. She wrenched out of his grip and hooked her foot under his knee. He tripped, thudding against the floor with a groan. She smashed the first heavy object she could locate—a lamp so hideous his mother must have purchased it for him as a practical joke—repeatedly onto his skull, stuffed the loose bills from his bedside drawer into her waistband, and boarded the next outbound train.

A few days later, in a diner in Utah, she spied her old self on the national news. I look good in that photo, she thought dully as she pierced a seasoned potato wedge with her fork and delivered it to her mouth. Focusing on anything else would pave room for tears. When nothing but salt and pepper decorated the plate, she wiped her mouth, paid with one of Aidin’s twenty-dollar bills, and walked to the bus stop to snag her next ride.

Now, under the moon, with her stash of belongings in her lap, Tahlia finally cried. Sobbed, really. The tears smeared her homework, though, at this point, Tahlia had no intention of completing it.

To her left, a car engine sputtered. Headlights retreated onto the street, thinning the shadows into ribbons—Tahlia’s evidence that it was safe to return. But she hesitated. She was so close to repeating her mistakes. The more time she spent at lunch, fighting with Sanjana and her friends over attractive celebrities and unfair teachers, the deeper she buried herself in her cover story. Soon, she might never resurface. She had to remember that it was all a farce—a clever one, but still a farce. If she vanished by the next morning, no one would be any wiser. In a month, she would fade into a rumor. A girl without a name.

Unfortunately, the idea was no longer as appealing as it once was. Besides, Tahlia had school in the morning. An AP Calc test, in fact. Eventually, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything other than trudge inside, where she promptly sprawled across the floor, slinging her backpack beneath her head as a pillow. In a week and a half, a real family would occupy the rooms. That, at least, reassured Tahlia. In a week and a half, she wouldn’t have to make a difficult decision. They would make it for her. * Predictably, Tahlia barely slept. She didn’t salvage her homework or study for her test. She wondered who she would be under less hostile circumstances. Maybe she would be a party girl like Ally or an unassuming girl like Inbal. Instead, she rested somewhere outside of every girl she’d been. She had spent too long acting like them to ever truly be them.

By the time Tahlia contemplated closing her eyes, beeping pierced her ear.

I know, she groaned, sitting up to smack her alarm clock.

Still, she complied with her routine. She smoothed the wrinkles in her clothes, dabbed water on the circles underneath her eyes, and exited the house at 8:30 sharp.

As cars with student driver stickers began to populate the roads and backpacks bobbed among the bushes, Tahlia made the executive decision to veer in the other direction. Away from school and toward the motley of stores and businesses the town called its industrial center.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Sanjana, no doubt. Tahlia was five minutes late and the girl was already bursting a fuse. My reward for developing legitimate relationships, Tahlia supposed.

But she was technically a truant. So, after detouring down a side street, she prodded her face into a new shape. It remained more or less the same, save for reduced baby fat in the cheeks. Good enough that no one would mistake her for a high school student.

She continued to the center of town, where she ordered a coffee and a pesto mozzarella panini at Linda’s. She paid with the

last of Aidin’s cash, then took her paper cup and slid onto a circular seat by the window. The town was too small for crowds, but Tahlia enjoyed spectating the passersby. She gave them fantastical jobs and marriages and passions and hoped that at least a few of them were accurate.

“You done?” a man in an apron interrupted. He gestured toward her cup, in which only coffee grounds remained to splotch its sides.

She shook her head. They couldn’t kick her out as long as she proved she was a customer. She had learned that over the years; cafes attracted those who had nowhere else to go.

The waiter reappeared a few minutes later with a frown and her panini.

“Thanks,” she muttered, biting into the focaccia. Cheese thickened on her tongue, mingling with basil and garden tomatoes.

The money had been well spent, even if she now had no means of legally obtaining any other goods for the next week and a half. Luckily, the lunches and breakfasts at the high school were edible—and free, if you snuck in when the cafeteria serving ladies were on break—so Tahlia wasn’t concerned with sustenance. But she couldn’t keep borrowing Sanjana’s clothes before the girl questioned Tahlia’s nonexistent wardrobe.

Hours passed. The waiter stopped loitering by her seat, and Tahlia kept sipping her empty cup and making uncomfortable eye contact with the other customers. Finally, at the insistence of her phone, she scrolled through her unread messages.

Sanjana wanted to know how she could miss such an important test. Her friends wanted to know if they could exploit bringing her the assignments she’d missed as an excuse to explore her house. She sighed and put her phone away. No one had warned her that friendship could be so taxing.

The bell above the entrance jingled. As she had done all afternoon, Tahlia swiveled to greet the new customer, only to startle so abruptly she nearly knocked her plate to the ground.

Sanjana walked briskly to the front counter and ordered her regular. Nine days in, and Tahlia had already memorized her after-school go-to: an iced mocha latte with oat milk. Sanjana downed too many of them a day to be considered healthy, but Tahlia hadn’t processed that all coffee addicts required a source and that Linda’s was Sanjana’s.

She lowered her eyes when Sanjana’s gaze wandered in her direction. It was a foolish fear—Tahlia wasn’t even wearing the youthful face Sanjana would recognize—but the close call with the real estate agent had unnerved her. Apparently, rightfully so.

“Tahlia!” Sanjana said, her voice brightening. Her hand flapped in an enthused wave.

Tahlia fixated on her silverware.

“Tahlia?” tried the other girl. She went as far as tapping Tahlia on the shoulder, so Tahlia had no choice but to feign ignorance. She pitched her voice higher to do so—disappointingly, changing her face did not account for the other aspects of her physicality—but it worked without a hitch.

Sanjana jumped to apologize. “I’m so sorry. I have the wrong person. Again, sorry for bothering you.”

“No worries,” Tahlia said lightly.

Sanjana lingered for an extra second, the gap between her thin brows creasing. “Hey, wait, where did you buy that blouse?

And those pants? I lent that exact outfit to my friend the other day.” Her frown carved deeper into her cheeks. “Why do you have her backpack too?”

“Have a nice day,” Tahlia said brusquely. She shoved Sanjana and sprinted onto the sidewalk. Before Sanjana could emerge from the restaurant, Tahlia ducked into the public library and marched to the bookshelf in the most dimly lit corner. So much for subtlety—and safety. Sanjana was observant. Too observant. Tahlia never should have engaged with her beyond superficial pleasantries, and she definitely shouldn’t have abandoned her classes. The town was making her clumsy.

In the meantime, it was too late to hail any transportation elsewhere, so she browsed the shelves, picking books at random to flip through until a polite but firm librarian evicted her.

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“Use your library card if you want to borrow any books, or come back tomorrow,” the woman offered.

Tahlia considered it. “I need a library card first.”

The woman brought her to a cluttered black desk, where she typed Tahlia’s fraudulent information into a computer to produce a barcode slapped to a plastic card. “There, it’s all ready to scan.”

As soon as the door shut behind her, Tahlia tossed the library card into the bushes that pockmarked the entrance. For good measure, she kicked the dark brown sentry of a statue that abutted the double doors, then traveled the rest of the way home with the corners of the books stabbing her collarbone. A library card was just another anchor. Books, at least, could be crammed into backpacks.

Tahlia was going to gather enough cash to schedule her escape. She was going to betray Sanjana. And she was going to hold herself together while doing it. * “I’m sorry I missed school the other day,” Tahlia told Sanjana. She’d offered to walk with Sanjana to school, even though Sanjana’s house was on the other side of town and Tahlia had had to set her alarm thirty minutes earlier to fix her face. The buildings increased in size and modernity as she neared Sanjana’s house, which kissed a wide circular driveway. The trees obscured most of its details, though Tahlia noted the four identical garages and the tiered chandelier that glinted through the staircase window. “And I’m sorry for not responding to your messages. I was busy.”

Sanjana leaned against the stone pillars that crowned the border of the driveway and cinched her sleek ponytail to her scalp.

“I was just worried. But I get that moving is hard, especially since your family’s delayed.”

“Yeah, well, they’ll be here soon.” Tahlia checked her phone.

“Are you done primping? We’re going to be late.”

Sanjana finished tightening her hairdo and strolled into place alongside Tahlia. “You know, the strangest thing happened to me the other day,” she began as they made their way down the street.

“Oh?” asked Tahlia, dodging a mailbox to justify the slight quaver in her interjection.

“Yeah.” Sanjana’s ponytail swung like a pendulum. “I went to Linda’s for coffee, and I saw a woman who looked exactly like you, but older. And she was wearing my clothes!”

“They couldn’t be your clothes because I have them right here,” Tahlia argued, hoisting her backpack as proof.

“I know,” said Sanjana slowly. “I trust you, I do, but that was freaky.”

Tahlia could predict what would occur next. Sanjana was a news junkie, so she had likely watched the same clip Tahlia had dismissed in Utah. She was also likely disentangling the truth from Tahlia’s cover story and realizing that there was much less of it than expected.

The other girl babbled on. “Do you have an older sister? Or a cousin, maybe. I understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” she added quickly. “We’ve only known each other for a bit, but you can trust me too. I know people in this town can be judgmental.”

The scenario Sanjana had constructed in her head was ridiculous—maybe she’d watched more soap operas than nonfiction media. Besides, Tahlia wasn’t afraid of people’s judgment.

“I don’t have a sister. Or a cousin, or any other secret relatives,” Tahlia assured. For once, she wasn’t lying. Her hand flew to the back pocket of her jeans as if she’d received a notification, though she didn’t launch any apps. Instead, she forced her eyes wide and pointed to the time. “We’re really going to be late! Stop dawdling, and, while you’re at it, stop binge-watching so many trashy dramas. They’re giving you impossible ideas.”

Sanjana let Tahlia urge her into a faster pace, but her smile was too tight not to be a grimace. So, Tahlia was surprised when Sanjana blurted that a classmate was hosting a party later that day and that she wanted Tahlia to accompany her.

Over the years, Tahlia had attended numerous parties.

Some were arrogantly glitzy, others so tame her thoughts

outshouted the music. She didn’t like the latter, but, after hearing the rumors percolating through the grade, she’d already investigated the host’s social media profile. His house dwarfed Sanjana’s, and judging by his friend’s lewd comments under his posts, his party would be the antonym of tame. So, Tahlia agreed, although her reluctance was genuine; murder tended to spoil positive memories.

“It’ll be fun,” Sanjana promised, and Tahlia chose to trust her. * Tahlia admired herself in Sanjana’s floor-length mirror.

Rose-shaped fairy lights spiraled around the edges like vines around a trellis. They gifted Tahlia a pale, undulating glow that made her more beautiful than she deserved. The satiny coral top Sanjana had lent her didn’t hurt either.

Sanjana applauded as Tahlia spun, her black tennis skirt flaring around her thighs. “Perfect,” she said approvingly. “Let’s go.”

Sanjana’s efforts to secure a ride had failed, so the two made the unceremonious journey on foot. Streetlights dotted the sidewalks, but their light was too weak to scythe through the shadows draped between the tree branches. Tahlia decided she didn’t like the stillness of suburbs at night.

Finally, they summited the steep hill where the host’s mansion was perched. Bass reverberated through the pavement.

Shouts, along with erratic car horns, crested above the music, and spots of artificial color scattered across the lawn. Tahlia would never have imagined Sanjana there, but her friend simply led Tahlia into the masses of their classmates.

From there, time slurred. People fed Tahlia jokes like grapes and she washed them down with spiked lemonade.

Sometimes, she forgot her companion. Alcohol made her slippery, her identity slipperier still. She might have shifted her face a hundred times and never noticed, though she figured someone would comment if she accidentally became the girl from the national news. Meanwhile, Sanjana flitted in and out of Tahlia’s peripheral vision. She didn’t drink, but she danced and stained her dress with grease from cheap potato chips.

After an indeterminate number of hours, she latched onto Tahlia’s wrist. Her hair was tangled over her shoulders, and her grip was so firm it was like a plea. “Tahlia, can we go upstairs for a second? I want to talk.”

“Tahlia?” Tahlia replied, just catching herself before she mumbled her birth name. The room kept spinning, even when she stopped moving. “Sure, sure, let’s talk.”

They flossed through the gaps between bodies. The jostling triggered Tahlia’s fight-or-flight reflex as much as it upended her thoughts. Sanjana didn’t bother to speak over the clamor, and she strode toward the staircase with an even pace.

If she confronted Tahlia about her lies, Tahlia’s loosened tongue wouldn’t be able to deny them, no matter how desperately her mind resisted.

Tahlia trailed in Sanjana’s wake. For some aesthetic reason, no handrail ran along the steps, which didn’t mix well with Tahlia’s currently limited coordination. If she was lucky, Sanjana would push her over the edge. Tahlia giggled at the image of her limbs splayed across their host’s luxury carpet.

“This is serious,” Sanjana said, turning to glare at her on the second floor.

Tahlia flinched. She had voiced a similar reprimand at a party before, and it hadn’t ended with an unmarred conscience.

They entered a guest bedroom at the end of the hallway.

The lights came to life upon sensing their motion. Sanjana settled on the floor, Tahlia beside her. A television displayed their reflections from the opposite wall, and Tahlia was tempted to turn it on just to prevent the inevitable.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Sanjana blurted. Her fingers fiddled in her lap.

Tahlia blinked. “What?”

“You were so reserved less than a week ago!” Sanjana shook her head. Her curls were frizzing. “It doesn’t make sense—you’re already so confident. And you drank a lot of alcohol. And that whole thing with your lookalike in Linda’s! It’s like you’re a different person.”

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Tahlia laughed. This time, the sound did escape from her lips. “I am a different person.”

“I don’t understand.”

The confession bubbled in Tahlia’s throat. She’d been masquerading for years. She’d confided in people—people like Aidin—and they had all betrayed her. She hated vulnerability, the exposure that came with it, but she was also exhausted. She possessed no money, no articles of clothing that didn’t belong to someone else, no home or portrait-perfect family. Right now, she only had Sanjana, and she was on the brink of losing her too. So, Tahlia turned toward Sanjana and sunk her fingers into her own face as if it was clay.

Sanjana covered her mouth with her hands as Tahlia worked. “Who are you?” she finally whispered. Half reverence, half fear.

Tahlia spoke with Ally’s lips. Her green eyes and detached earlobes. “Do you recognize me?”

“Of course not,” shot Sanjana. But then she did, the realization prying her jaw into a gasp. She backed away, rumpling the guest bed’s lumpy blanket. “I saw you on the news!” She faltered as her elbows hit the headboard. “You’re... you’re a murderer.”

“I am.” It was the first time Tahlia had ever admitted it aloud. The words were smoother than she’d anticipated, as if she’d been rehearsing them all along. Aren’t I supposed to feel lighter now? “I swear, I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant,” Sanjana spluttered.

“I listened to the story. I read it all. You killed someone. You left a boy to die!” Even the pop song thumping from downstairs couldn’t diminish her revulsion. Her eyes were flared and wet, and her cheeks were taut, as if she was fighting her gag reflex.

Sanjana rose to her feet, still quaking, and twisted the doorknob. Simultaneously, she removed her phone from her bra, fingers poised to dial three digits with which Tahlia was too familiar.

Before Sanjana could type 911, Tahlia slapped her. The phone tumbled into Tahlia’s palm while Sanjana careened toward the wooden dresser. Her head cracked against the corner, and she slumped to the ground. It all happened without fanfare. Aside from the blood welling beneath her dark hair, her stupor looked intoxication induced.

Tahlia stood over her friend’s body like a ghost while the phone screen darkened from neglect. Without the password—which Tahlia had stupidly neglected to memorize—the device was useless to her, but she planned to dispose of it, and her fingerprints with it.

First, however, she lugged Sanjana into the closet. Unsurprisingly, it was a walk-in, so her limbs fit with minimal maneuvering. Next, Tahlia slid the door shut, sealing her friend underneath the canopy of bone-white clothes hangers, and strode down the hallway. She skimmed her hands over her face, sharpening and indenting her skin while she pondered her next name.

No one paid her any heed as she cut through the crowd and into the night swollen with crickets. It didn’t matter what face she dressed in; she was still forgettable. She couldn’t even remember herself or the morals that had once kept her psyche in one piece.

Hopefully, when someone discovered Sanjana, they wouldn’t recall her recently acquired friend. Eventually, however, they might learn Tahlia’s address and confront a very confused South Asian family. They might even unearth Tahlia’s trail, the names and people trampled in her footprints.

But it didn’t matter because Tahlia—Linda, now—was already gone. With the half-dead phone, sleek credit card, and wrinkled brand-name clothes of the girl who might have been her real friend. Running through the dusty streetlights as much as she was running from them.

Lucza Brewer

Photography Waterford School Sandy, UT

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Web Digital photography 2021

Mason Burton

Photography Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

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Untitled Digital photography 2019

Leonardo Cabrera

Visual Arts Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Dallas, TX

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Imploding Collage / cut paper 2020

David Chen

Creative Nonfiction Phillips Exeter Academy Exeter, NH

Two-Faced I am a two-faced liar living a double life.

One of those lives is at a boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire, where I am surrounded by the laughter of dormmates as we play Super Smash Brothers (or they play, and I watch, because I’ve never been much of a fan of video games anyway) in the common room and talk about the biology test tomorrow (which I study for tonight from 6:00pm until midnight) or the English narrative due on Friday (which I’ve gotten three people to look over, but I should get five). In this life the music I listen to is Taylor Swift, or Sia, or Maroon 5 (or really anything in English), not Jamyang Dolma (like Dad requests every other day). Isn’t it funny how this Chinese artist has an English name?

The other of those lives is in Duluth, Minnesota. It’s a city of ice fishing and skiing in the winter, a city of jogging on the Lakewalk in the summer surrounded by the sound of Lake Superior’s crashing waves. In this life I am a Chinese boy who will take over the family restaurant when he’s older. I am a cashier counting crinkled dollar bills from a family of three—mother and two children—or a newly printed hundred-dollar bill that came straight from the bank, handed over by a businessman in a suit and tie. I am a waiter carrying plates of Cream Cheese Wontons and Sesame Chicken to the customers, setting them down on the Chinese zodiac single-use placemats we order from New Wha Ming, the wholesale company. I am a fryer-manager, a bagger, a ragdoll to be screamed at when orders were made wrong or when a customer wanted to scream. Mom told me to ignore them. Try to, anyway. I couldn’t. Couldn’t get the cussing out of my head, couldn’t get the anger, couldn’t get the hate out of my head. *** They have an “Asian/Chinese Food” night at the Elm Street Dining Hall at Exeter (I’ve come to realize this happens about once a month, but sometimes the days in between when we are served pasta, sandwiches, and fried chicken seem to last forever). Pepper Steak with Snow Peas (which is served in my family’s Chinese restaurant that serves American food). Lo Mein Noodles (which we also serve). Stirfry. Fried rice with sausages and bacon in it. Mom tells me to send pictures every day, so she can see what I eat (on WeChat, of course, where she also sends me articles on how to get into college and ways to improve at math). “I’m not worried about your schooling because I trust you can figure that out yourself.

I am most worried about your food. You don’t eat fast enough.

Which is why you don’t eat enough.” So she orders me Chinese food every weekend. It’s pretty good for what it’s worth, yet I will always drool after the shrimp and the fried pork pieces covered in an acidic soy-based sauce that my dad (Chef of the House) makes and the layers of simple flavors that come with it.

They serve American food when it’s too busy at the restaurant—which is either on New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s, or Christmas Eve. Domino’s is what we get. I also serve American food at home, when it’s my day to cook, to experiment with the various American recipes I find online. Spaghetti with marinara and meatballs. Strawberry jello. Hand-whipped Cream. Deep-fried Mozzarella Sticks. Burgers. Smoothies. At least white rice is in every meal.

“Mom! This is too much!”

“You are already too skinny!”

“I’m always too skinny for you!” *** I talk with my Chinese friends as we eat in the dining hall before I head back to my dorm room. I speak English (and Chinese when I’m in Chinese class). We complain to each other about the homework, the tests, the projects (the sleepless nights that we don’t tell anyone but each other about). I sleep at 1am. I text my

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friends over Instagram to see how their homework is going. It’s not done. It’s never done.

I drown in a sea of white. My friends, all except one, have pale, milky skin. A couple of them have blue eyes. Another has curly hair. They don’t talk to me much outside of school, except to ask me for help on math and English. Before I sleep I call my sister, and speak to her quickly, which means I’m speaking in English.

Mom says I should speak Chinese with her. It’s hard, but I do it. Try to, anyway.

It makes her happy. *** I watch YouTube in my dorm room (on my bed, lights off— it’s very calming). The dim glow emitted by the computer lights up my face, and the dark blue comforter on my bed wrinkles into a pile next to me, with just the corner draped over my knees. Lights from passing cars flash through the window once in a while. Still, I don’t draw the curtains. I like seeing the town.

The videos seem to always be about thoughts and opinions. “Today I’m making roast chicken and potatoes” (Let me know how you like chicken cooked). “Today I am ranking cereal brands” (I’m not a big fan of Cheerios). How do Chinese people differ in their thinking? How can people identify the difference (the slight differences in the way we act, think, move, speak)?

Identify the Chinese person and vote them out (identify why they’re different, why they are fundamentally different from “us,” or me). Is it the straight black hair, or the yellow skin, or the 20-degree slant of my eyes? Is it the extra padding of fat under my eyes? What is it? What is it compared to your white hair, your white body, your white eyes? Thoughts and opinions.

At home in Duluth, I watch math videos on Khan Academy, learning about trigonometry at 9am in the morning, and watch violin concerto performances of pieces I’m learning at 9pm in the evening because Mom says I shouldn’t be wasting my time. “Do something productive.” She’d rather that I focus on learning. After I watch the videos—if I even start them in the first place—I practice my violin. I practice math. I practice how to be a good Chinese son, because I know deep down I’m not. Her house, her rules. I do what she says. Try to, anyway. Most of the time. But I think that watching YouTube videos is much more interesting. Thoughts.

Opinions. *** Can I argue back to her, now that I’m in her house, under her rules? I do. I shouldn’t. It’s not how good Chinese children act.

That’s not how I was raised, how I was taught to behave, how I know I should behave. But I am surrounded by friends who do talk back to their parents, and it leaves an impression, an inkling of how to argue back.

“Mom! Stop! Just pick me up at 5pm, okay?”

“Sorry! My dad is just so annoying sometimes.”

“My family sticks their nose in everything I do!”

My mouth twists in discomfort, but I close it.

I try it out at home when she pushes a large bowl of white rice and another bowl of vegetables and another bowl of pork at me.

“Mom, I don’t want to eat so much!”

She nods, leaving. She wipes a gathering tear, quietly and gently, from her eyes. I can’t bear it. I follow her, hug her, tell her I’m sorry.

I eat all of it. Try to, anyway. It makes her happy.

The next time, I keep my mouth shut. It doesn’t work.

Repeat. *** Sometimes I wonder when I’ll have to combine my two lives. Is it even possible? To bridge my lives, the seemingly independent worlds with different cultures? Can I take my two

personalities, my two bodies, my two faces, and connect them?

Honestly, I don’t know.

I think the answer is yes. Hopefully, anyway. Hints of this combination exist. It exists when I am more Chinese-American than Chinese or American. It exists in me adding crushed red chili peppers to spaghetti sauce and drinking oxtail broth in the same meal. It exists when the dining halls serve dumplings made by Asian parents on Chinese New Year. It exists in the meetings on Thursdays from 6:00pm to 8:00pm on the left side of Wetherell Dining Hall, where spoken Chinese rings through the air and fills in the spaces that English leaves behind instead of them competing with each other. It exists in the way my Chinese name matches my English name. It exists in the bowl of steamed white rice that can be found at every single meal. Or maybe not. Maybe those are false hopes, false clues, false assumptions that lead me into a trap of safety, a trap of an illusion of connection.

Maybe I will forever remain a two-faced liar.

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Ayden Chi

Photography Harvard-Westlake School Studio City, CA

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Untitled Digital photography 2021

Jennifer Chiu

Creative Nonfiction White Station High School Memphis, TN

Time Lapse In another life, a better life, the south-facing walls of my apartment are plastered with floor-to-ceiling windows. Beneath me: the cityscape spreads out, the sunset melting into the streets, the skyscrapers melting into the sky. Everything melts, and I drip lazy onto the couch. On my laptop—which is tinged warm against my thighs, fans blaring—someone has splattered multicolored text against a night sky. The cursor blinks white and white again, and I let it.

In this life, I am content. Every day I wake up and get ready.

I eat breakfast: I make omelets, toast. I smear cream cheese on a bagel and take a picture, save it to my camera roll before I begin work. I block my hours on a calendar in pastel colors and hang it against an off-white wall. Everything is planned, routine. There is no surprise. For work, I have chosen a color palette of fuchsias and turquoises and cream yellows for the monospace text. All the letters are so simple, so clean. I settle into a cyclical rhythm and parse the hours like clockwork.

In this life, I remember to rest. I take scheduled breaks. I open the New Yorker and read an article. I read the short fiction and enjoy it so much. When my timer goes off after fifteen minutes, I return to my computer. The chair is still warm, the shape of my body still imprinted in it. For dinner, I make something simple. Noodles. Rice. I go to bed at 10 P.M. and fall into dreams that I do not remember come morning. I wake up and get ready. I eat breakfast.

I watch my life play out in loops. In this life, I am so happy.

Recently I have been waking up past noon, though I do not actually wake up past noon. I do not know when I wake up, except for the days when I am shaken from a fuzzy dream and reach beneath my pillow to find out that it is only 8 A.M. I slip back into an uneasy sleep, or sometimes, I do not sleep at all and instead lie in bed trying to catch my dream. It flutters away from me like it is taunting me. I give chase and I never win. Sometimes I manage to catch up to it but it simply melts before my eyes. I am a terrible predator, so instead I spend the morning curled up in a ball. I do not think or sleep. I am suspended in a state of half-consciousness, and a voice in my head tells me I am wasting away like this. I tell it that I am taking things slowly, that I am trying to preserve my youth before it slips through my fingers like water, and I know that I am lying, but I can no longer remember at which point I began lying, so I take it all for gospel instead.

Some days, I wake up crying and do not remember why. I set a timer for ten minutes, and after the alarm rings, I wipe my face dry and fall back into routine.

In March, it felt like time was crawling to a standstill, the hours oozing into sap and hardening. Now, I feel as if I cannot rest enough. Time keeps slipping through my fingers. I am too greedy—I scoop it into my hands and salvage what I can, cupping it into my mouth, wiping what drips onto my chin with my hand and sucking my fingers dry.

There is never enough time in the day. I wake, and the sun has already slithered past its highpoint, already on its descent. I am only awake for a few hours before it slips below the horizon again. While it is in the sky, I keep my blinds wide open and siphon what I can. I have east-facing windows, meaning there is more sunlight in the morning, as the sun is rising into the sky. It is a shame that I am not awake for this, but I do nothing to change it.

I cut my corners elsewhere. I eat lunch. I do my best to eat more slowly, chew more mindfully, but when I check the clock after finishing, only six minutes have passed. I try again the next day—ten minutes. I think I am trying to slow down, but I won’t let

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myself. I don’t know what I am doing with this extra time, only that there is none, that somehow my minutes are being stolen and I do not know where. At the end of the day, even with all these shortened ends gathered in my fist, I still do not have enough to tie it all together. Instead, I fall apart at night and spiral into my dreams.

Over the years, I’ve made small efforts to record my dreams or what remains of them. I try different things: notebooks, loose-leaf paper, the notes app, another notes app, text messages, sticky notes. None of it works and years later, I still chase my dreams like snowflakes. I bring my hand to my cheek and confuse my tears with snow.

I give up trying to remember my dreams. They are the first thing I lose in the morning, and I languish in their absence.

The days lengthen. First I watch through my window as the sky splits into daybreak. It is already cracked over the landscape by the time I slip out of bed, and I shield my eyes from the glare. Still, I leave the blinds open and write a letter that ends up being thrown away with the calendar pages and sticky notes.

I attempt to follow something of a routine. My New Yorker subscriptions arrive and pile on my nightstand. I sneak in reads between classes, during classes, after classes. The tote bag arrives a few weeks later and I am so happy. I match the cream canvas to the text of my flashcards and spend the entire morning imagining and reimagining color palettes. When I finish, I eat lunch in the fifteen minutes I allot myself, counting my bites on my fingers. Somewhere along the way, I lose count and swallow the rest in frustration.

My days are jumbled by afternoon and I realize I am running out of time. I rush out the door before sunset and kick up dead leaves as I wander up and down the streets of my neighborhood. Each day, I see the same houses and same streets, but somehow I can never remember any of them. Instead, I find that every day paints the houses a different color, changes the taste of the air on my tongue. I take pictures and pray that I might remember, but when I return to look at them, there is nothing familiar.

The phone screen flushes warm against my face, and by the time I finally fall into dreams, I have already forgotten them.

Sometimes I wake with the phantom of a dream caught in my throat. I choke until I can find a glass of water to wash it down, leaving only a taste of dust on my tongue.

Snow comes for the first time in years. It’s unexpected, and at first, I am not sure what to do. It does not snow here—the winters are colorless and muggy, and I only count the days until spring.

I sit at the dining room table and watch the snow collect in fat flakes on my back porch. At first, it is a fine dusting, then the sidewalks disappear. The road. I put on the only pair of boots I have and slip outside. In the snow, everything is different: brighter, newer. The details of the houses are crisper, the lines cleaner and straighter, and I am struck by the sudden clarity. I pull out my phone and take a flurry of pictures to preserve it. None of them are good, but I keep them anyway.

My footsteps are soft on the way home and the snow crumbles in my hand when I try to pack it together. I examine a snowflake on my palm and watch it melt. My hands sting red with the cold by the time I get back inside and I warm them against a pot of soup. Are you crying? my mom asks. No, I just thought the snow was beautiful, I say.

Under the snowfall, the days seem longer. It feels as if there is more time. The hours spool beneath my fingers and, at

night, the snow is so luminescent under the moonlight that I almost mistake it for daylight. It is so beautiful it makes me cry, and I remind myself to write a love letter before I can forget.

There are many letters I want to write, people I want to write to, but there is never enough time. I try. I take so many pictures of the sky, colors and colors and colors. In my dreams, I run from end to end, recoloring what memories I can in brighter colors. I try to journal—scrawling my thoughts into any notebook I can find, and I think for the first time that I may be falling in love with the world.

In a week, it will all be gone. The snow, the footsteps, the ice.

The houses will remain, though not exactly the same. The sidewalks will return, as will the roads. But for now I can only see my own footprints in the snow. I mourn it already: how all this light, all this brightness will return to water. I wish I could stop it somehow, make time stop and suspend everything like this. Like dust caught in the air, snowflakes in mid-flight. I wish it could be like this just a little longer, wishing I could tell the sunlight to wait, the snow to stay a little longer. Saying please, please don’t go just yet.

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Jennifer Chiu Drowning This time, I have no excuses. For water overflowing the sink. For lead rusting down my throat and pilling into paste. I was born drowning, lungs bloated with my mother’s blood.

Every year she asks for reparations. To sliver back her blood before ancestry runs out because my life is only a loan, and my mother is only my mother until blood starts flowing between my legs and I trade her inheritance for the soft cloak of a new body. Instead, I give her pruned skin and pulp figs into my mouth, seeds spitting on my skin and crackling like flares on an open harbor. An explosion. All the sunken ships aflicker with flame and martyred in the name of womanhood. I am scared of drowning but even more scared of immolation—I tell my mother that I am different, that I am built for pier not pyre, so I drown and drown and drown until I convince her that I am extinguished. There is no resurfacing here: how blood drips onto the bathroom floor. How every fig rots into saccharine and I vomit everything pristine and white.

A body replaces itself every seven years, so I beg never to metamorphose. Every new skin can only exorcise the previous with fire, but I was born drowning. How I claim myself lifeboat and sink under the weight of my own body.

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Poetry White Station High School Memphis, TN

Heritage Unwound My grandmother pulls parsed consonants from her lips the way she unearths the soft underbelly of steamed fish, separating bone from skin, sinew from flesh.

She wraps vowels with the soft skin of baozi, molding and pinching them into shape, sinking valleys under her fingertips.

She flavors her syllables with crushed garlic, ginger sliced with sharp inflections in tone, dipped in rice wine until they taste of fermented memories of famine— desiccated terracotta earth drought of moisture, wet rice brought to parched lips, chewing slowly, carefully.

I was raised on the language of gluttony.

The words that come out of my mouth drip thick sesame oil, coagulating in the corners, consonants caught in the edges. I am trying to pry dialects I cannot claim from blood-stained fingers that have clawed at the earth for too long, plucking diphthongs from rice fields and trying to fuse the vowels together with glistening tar. Floods carve a river through my throat, and heritage that is not mine seeps from my lips.

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Andy Choi

Play or Script Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

BONGSAN MASK DANCE TITLE CARD: “Act 1: Shaman’s Dance” EXT. UNIVERSE- DARKNESS We open on a blank, flat landscape with no Sun and no moon. Everything is dark. We cut to an old woman, GRANDMOTHER MAGO who lays on her back, sleeping in this darkness. We hear her snoring loudly. She slowly rises from her slumber, molding the ground with her hands. As she molds the ground into vague structures, a photo of a natural monument quickly occupies the screen - first Paektu Mountain, then Delicate Arch, then Iguazu Falls, and so on. As she molds more and more of the ground, a montage of human/environmental disturbances plays.

BEGIN MONTAGE Canyon stream flowing, eroding the banks.

Lava dripping into pounding waves.

Volcanic eruption.

Rain and flooding through a forest.

Urbanization time-lapse.

Deforestation through slash and burn agriculture.

US military tank rolling through Korea.

Nuclear testing on Pacific atolls.

END MONTAGE FADE OUT: TITLE CARD: “Act 2: 8 Monks’ Dance” EXT. WILDFLOWER FIELD- SUNSET We open on a large, hilly wildflower field. It is summer. JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN are sitting next to each other, facing the sunset. Two bikes lie next to them. JAE-HYUN is fiddling with the grass, while SEUNG-EUN is scrolling through his phone.

JAE-HYUN So have you told him?

SEUNG-EUN looks at JAE-HYUN with a perplexed expression on his face.

Who?

SEUNG-EUN

JAE-HYUN You know who. You’re literally obsessed with him.

SEUNG-EUN Of course not, do you think I have a death wish?

JAE-HYUN You know, when people keep feelings like that bottled up inside, they sometimes explode.

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SEUNG-EUN There must be a lot of homo guts everywhere then. Homos like us.

Both JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN laugh. SEUNG-EUN leans on JAE-HYUN’s shoulder.

SEUNG-EUN I just want to feel his palm. Just once. Maybe if I’m feeling brave, his shoulders. Maybe just to feel his breath on my skin.

You’re crazy.

What about it?

JAE-HYUN SEUNG-EUN

JAE-HYUN laughs, shaking his head. He shifts his body to face SEUNG-EUN. JAE-HYUN Are you sure you know the difference between love and obsession?

SEUNG-EUN Don’t ask me stupid questions like that.

SEUNG-EUN stands up, grabbing his bag and looking down on JAE-HYUN. SEUNG-EUN Personally, I think the concept of love is part of the bourgeois machinery of capitalist society. The whole idea of loving someone makes me sick. Procreation. Squirming around a bed in the darkness like two little fishes stuck on land, bound together for who knows how long before they inevitably come to hate each other. I’ll have none of it.

JAE-HYUN So why are you so obsessed with him?

JAE-HYUN stands up. SEUNG-EUN shakes his head.

SEUNG-EUN Because I’m shallow and desperate and yearn okay!

They say nothing, facing each other in silence.

JAE-HYUN You know I have a crush on someone too.

SEUNG-EUN lightly punches JAE-HYUN’s arm, grinning.

Wait who?

Never mind.

SEUNG-EUN JAE-HYUN

JAE-HYUN looks down, away from SEUNG-EUN, then looks back up. SEUNG-EUN looks towards the setting Sun, now almost totally set. He stretches his arms, then cups his hands around his mouth.

SEUNG-EUN (screaming) I hate this stupid small asscrack of a town!!!

JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN laugh, pick up the bikes, and bike furiously away from us. The camera pans towards a homophobic banner hanging between two trees.

FADE OUT: TITLE CARD:

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“Act 3: Sadang’s Dance” EXT. SIDE OF A ROAD- NIGHT We open on an empty, narrow country road. JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN walk their bikes on the side of the street towards us. They are completely alone. They stop under a streetlight.

SEUNG-EUN awkwardly walks around with his hands in his pockets. JAE-HYUN takes a cigarette out of his bag.

SEUNG-EUN (gestures) Where’d you get that?

JAE-HYUN I took it from my brother.

SEUNG-EUN Nice. Can you let me try?

Sure.

JAE-HYUN

JAE-HYUN rummages around his bag, frowning.

JAE-HYUN I forgot to bring a lighter.

SEUNG-EUN (scowling) Are you serious?

Yeah.

JAE-HYUN

They stand in silence for a few moments.

SEUNG-EUN (sighing) Do you wanna sit down?

Sure.

JAE-HYUN

They park their bikes and sit down on the curb.

JAE-HYUN It’s getting a little chilly, do you want to sit closer to me?

Okay.

SEUNG-EUN

They move closer to each other. JAE-HYUN puts his arm around SEUNG-EUN. SEUNG-EUN You know about the cigarette thing? I’m kind of glad you didn’t bring a lighter.

Why?

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN Because that stuff is nasty. And it shortens your life.

JAE-HYUN When did you start caring about that stuff?

SEUNG-EUN Mm...well...I want to live as long as I can. Meet as many boys as possible.

JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN smile.

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SEUNG-EUN Do you want to live for a long time?

JAE-HYUN I don’t know. I don’t think I can decide something like that. The universe is made up of so many intricate, complex threads of fate.

I can’t just wake up and decide that I’m gonna live to 100.

SEUNG-EUN (shaking his head) You’re spouting metaphysical bullshit. I ask a question, you answer.

Concrete terms.

JAE-HYUN (pausing) I want to die when you’re not here. You…make me happy.

SEUNG-EUN Oh sure, I bet every fag does.

They inch close to each other. All we can hear is the loud screeches of the cicadas around them.

Hey Jae-hyun?

Yeah?

SEUNG-EUN JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN Can we do something??

What?

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN pauses, fidgets, looking down at the ground.

Can we kiss?

SEUNG-EUN

JAE-HYUN looks shocked, blushes, looks down. SEUNG-EUN looks at him in silence.

SEUNG-EUN It’s just… you’re the only homo I know.

Do you like me?

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN I don’t want to talk about that right now.

JAE-HYUN pulls SEUNG-EUN in towards him. They kiss. It is sloppy and noticeably awkward.

They both roll onto the asphalt, with JAE-HYUN being pressed against a fallen chestnut. JAEHYUN stops and sits back up.

JAE-HYUN Wait a minute, I need to get rid of this chestnut.

JAE-HYUN tosses the chestnut out from under his back. SEUNG-EUN sits beside him, legs crossed.

Jae-hyun?

Yeah?

SEUNG-EUN JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, so I’m saying this right now.

I don’t like you. I’m just practicing. I’m gonna go to Seoul and find a rich man and leech off of him and drive expensive cars with his money and-

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Ok. Whatever.

JAE-HYUN (a little distraught)

JAE-HYUN stands up, picks up his bike, and turns away from SEUNG-EUN. JAE-HYUN Do you know why my grandma is so cranky? My grandpa was a member of the Workers’ Party. Right after he fled to the north they closed the border. That’s why my grandma moved our family all the way up here, right next to the DMZ, to be closer to him, even if it’s just physically. Every morning she takes a hike up the mountain and curses that barbed wire. I’m scared I’ll end up like that.

Like what?

SEUNG-EUN

JAE-HYUN That one day I’ll lose someone that I love. Suddenly. Without notice. And I’ll never be able to tell them how I feel. And that I’ll bear that lonely worthlessness for the rest of my life.

SEUNG-EUN doesn’t say anything, gets on his bike, and bikes in the opposite direction. JAEHYUN takes out his earbuds and walks his bike towards us. He is crying.

BLACK. TITLE CARD: “Act 4: Old Monks’ Dance” EXT. SCHOOLYARD-MORNING We open on a schoolyard during fall. There is no one outside- it is serene and quiet.

INT. CLASSROOM- DAY JAE-HYUN sits in the back row, next to a window. His face is illuminated by sunlight. He stares out pensively, tapping his pencil on the notebook in front of him.

EXT. SCHOOLYARD-DAY JAE-HYUN walks through the front gates, heading towards the bike rack. He sees SEUNGEUN walking towards him. He initially turns and puts his feet on the pedals, but with another glance, we realize that SEUNG-EUN is bleeding badly and his face is beaten up and bruised.

JAE-HYUN, looking shocked, runs towards him.

JAE-HYUN

Are you okay?

SEUNG-EUN What does it look like?

JAE-HYUN helps SEUNG-EUN up, carrying his arm on his shoulder. They walk around the corner and sit down in front of a closed shop.

SEUNG-EUN I thought you were never going to talk to me.

JAE-HYUN (pauses) Well that was the plan.

SEUNG-EUN digs into his pockets and pulls out a cigarette. He begins to smoke it.

You smoke?

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JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN nods.

Since when?

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN Since I realized maybe boys aren’t worth shit.

SEUNG-EUN pours a water bottle over his face, washing the blood off with his hands. He then stands up, walking down an alley, and JAE-HYUN follows.

SEUNG-EUN (laughing) I did what you told me to do. I told him.

Oh my god.

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN The funniest thing is, I didn’t feel anything when I told him I liked him. It was like everything I felt had dissipated.

JAE-HYUN (gesturing at SEUNG-EUN’S injuries) Did he do that to you?

SEUNG-EUN doesn’t respond, walking faster ahead of JAE-HYUN. He suddenly stops, facing JAE-HYUN SEUNG-EUN Can you take me to Seoul?

EXT. TRUCK ON HIGHWAY-AFTERNOON SEUNG-EUN and JAE-HYUN ride in the open-air bed floor of a truck. Driving the truck is an old man, our TRUCK DRIVER. SEUNG-EUN opens the back window of the truck.

SEUNG-EUN Thank you for taking us.

No problem.

TRUCK DRIVER

SEUNG-EUN shuts the window and sits back down. Both SEUNG-EUN and JAE-HYUN slide down and lay down next to each other on the back of the truck. We get a bird’s eye view of them talking to each other.

JAE-HYUN So what are you going to do now? Are you gonna come back?

SEUNG-EUN I’m dropping out. I can’t possibly go back to that place. Imet this guy online and I’m gonna live with him for a little bit.

JAE-HYUN Aren’t you a little scared about living with some stranger?

SEUNG-EUN The whole world is scary when you’re a fag.

JAE-HYUN What are you gonna do?

SEUNG-EUN Whatever comes along. You know, I never thought I’d have a future.

When I was little I clubbed a snake to death with a rock at a creek.I think God cursed me then.

SEUNG-EUN closes his eyes. Camera shifts so that we see the sky from their point-of-view.

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JAE-HYUN You sure chose a nice day to run away to Seoul. Look at those clouds.

SEUNG-EUN I’ve always wanted to be a cloud. To be mysterious. Almost invisible. I hope that when I die all the moisture leaves my carcass and becomes a little cloud. Floating with no thoughts. Empty.

EXT. SLUM AREA- DUSK The TRUCK DRIVER pulls up to a slum area and stops the truck. JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN climb out of the back of the truck.

TRUCK DRIVER Sorry guys. I wish I could take y’all farther but I’ve got business to take care of.

SEUNG-EUN It’s okay. Thank you for taking us this far.

TRUCK DRIVER Say, are you two friends or(laughs) Just friends.

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN side-eyes JAE-HYUN. We see their backs as they both walk away from us through the different alleys of the slum.

EXT. SUBWAY STATION- NIGHT SEUNG-EUN and JAE-HYUN stand next to each other on a subway platform. There is barely anyone there.

SEUNG-EUN Thanks for walking me all the way here.

It’s no problem.

JAE-HYUN

SEUNG-EUN You’re not expecting some sort of reward for walking me all the way here, right?

JAE-HYUN (laughs) Nah. I hope your scars heal. And that whoever that man is, that he takes good care of you.

SEUNG-EUN He’ll probably get really bored of me. Kick me out.

JAE-HYUN Well, you can always crawl back to our village.

The subway car pulls into the station. SEUNG-EUN pulls JAE-HYUN IN AND gives him a quick kiss.

SEUNG-EUN My parting gift for you.

SEUNG-EUN runs into the subway car right before it departs. JAE-HYUN waves at him, and SEUNG-EUN waves back. JAE-HYUN walks towards the stairs, back towards us.

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FADE OUT: TITLE CARD: “Act 5: Lion’s Dance” EXT. MOUNTAIN TRAIL- MORNING We open on JAE-HYUN and his GRANDMOTHER traversing a steep mountainside. He walks behind her. JAE-HYUN is older now, with a mustache.

EXT. MOUNTAIN LOOKOUT-MORNING JAE-HYUN and his GRANDMOTHER look out across the lush, green landscape. The barbed wire and the soldier’s outposts of the DMZ are visible. JAE-HYUN’s GRANDMOTHER sighs, shaking her head.

INT. BEDROOM- MID-DAY JAE-HYUN is packing up his bedroom, getting ready to move. Next to him is another man, presumably JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND. JAE-HYUN takes out a box from a bookcase. He opens it.

Inside, we see photos of him and SEUNG-EUN from high school. JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND looks over his shoulder.

What’s that?

Oh nothing.

JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND JAE-HYUN

JAE-HYUN closes the box. He and JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND kiss, then stare into each other’s eyes, smiling.

EXT. WILDFLOWER FIELD-AFTERNOON JAE-HYUN rides his bike towards the wildflower field, earbuds on. Once he’s there, he takes out the box of photos of him and SEUNG-EUN. He buries it.

INT. HOSPITAL- DAY. JAE-HYUN races down a hospital corridor, dodging visitors, nurses, hospital beds, trash cans, etc. with a worried look on his face.

EXT. GRAVEYARD-DAY. JAE-HYUN stands in front of a small grave, face down. JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND tries to comfort him by placing his hand on JAE-HYUN’s shoulder. JAE-HYUN shoves it off. Incense burns in front of them.

INT. TRAIN-DAY JAE-HYUN sits facing JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND. JAE-HYUN looks outside, seemingly oblivious to his boyfriend’s attempts at getting his attention.

INT. APARTMENT-NIGHT The apartment is totally empty save for many unopened boxes that have been packed from JAE-HYUN’S bedroom. JAE-HYUN and JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND fight. JAE-HYUN’S BOYFRIEND storms out of the apartment. JAE-HYUN slumps down on the ground, his face in his hands.

EXT. CITY-NIGHT JAE-HYUN walks through neon city lights and a rowdy fish market. Expressionless.

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EXT. SIDE OF A ROAD- NIGHT Place where SEUNG-EUN kissed JAE-HYUN from Act 3 is shown. GRANDMOTHER MAGO walks around the streetlight. She sits down, holding a lighter. She uses it to light a paper lantern, letting it float into the night sky. She walks away.

FADE OUT: TITLE CARD “Act 6: Nobleman’s Dance” EXT. TRAIN STATION - DAY JAE-HYUN walks onto a train platform, crowded with people, many of them holding reunification flags. The signs say “Seoul to Pyongyang” and “Reunification Express” on them.

He has a somber expression on his face.

JAE-HYUN (V.O.) I wish there was some way for me to go back and undo what I had seen. To have forgotten about you. And I was so close.

JAE-HYUN boards the train, finds an empty seat, and sits down. He puts earbuds in and opens a blank notebook. JAE-HYUN turns to look pensively out the window.

We watch the scenery that JAE-HYUN sees- bucolic countryside, apartment complexes, forested mountains, etc.-pass by.

JAE-HYUN (V.O.) The bus was delayed that day I learned about your death. I picked up a newspaper that was left at the bus stop and flipped through it. I don’t know why that column caught my eye. Why I kept on reading. 22-year-old gay man. Lee Seung-eun. Strangled to death in a hotel room in Jongno District. No leads on the suspect. It’s funny how life works like that. One minute you think everything’s nice and smooth and suddenly the poles switch and everything’s turned upside down. Life is surreal. Like a never-ending dream. One long, stupid, crazy dream.

JAE-HYUN (V.O.) I wonder if you’re watching me right now as the cloud you always wanted to be. By now you might’ve turned into rain and entered the water supply. I would drink you and you would come out of my eyes as tears. Or maybe you’re at the very bottom of the ocean. We slip in and out of each other’s lives so easily. Like pebbles flowing down a stream. Like shadows intermingling at sunset.

Our view of the passing scenery gradually turns upward. We see a solitary cloud, floating in an intensely blue sky.

FADE OUT: TITLE CARD: “Act 7: Old Man and Old Woman’s Dance” EXT. FIELD- DAY We open on a large, green field. It is very foggy. A chestnut is thrown into our field of view (presumably the same chestnut thrown by JAE-HYUN from Act 3). JAE-HYUN and SEUNG-EUN wear Korean traditional mourning clothes and are on opposite sides of the field. They run towards each other and hug, swaying from side to side.

I missed you. (smiling) I missed you too.

JAE-HYUN SEUNG-EUN

BLACK.

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Jonathan Chu I Made Teeth from the Hooves of Wild Horses because mother is dying. Sold them as prehistoric caricatures. The heat raised them like dentures of the dead. Little fairies with their wings sawed off. She fights against the space in my mind, different suns on the same plane.

When I lost my right molar, jesus came to borrow my tooth for a wedding, left a nursery rhyme in my pillow case. This year, mother began to timestamp cards. Sitting on the veranda, next to the lilacs, paper sprinkled like rat traps waiting to be cradled in time. Mother has started rationing the history she has left.

Between birthdays and Christmas, she splits them like slices of buttercream cake. While I sit under the cupboard, plucking canines until my cuticles fall asleep.

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Poetry St. George’s School Vancouver, BC

Adia Colvin

Novel Cape Henry Collegiate Virginia Beach, VA

The Black Collective 1782 She has her ear pressed to the wall.

It’s the only choice she makes that means anything. Even blinking changes nothing it is so dark—no sunlight coming through the planks anymore. There is metal around her wrists and ankles that used to be too tight but now hangs slack. And everywhere around her are bodies. Hot black bodies that form an ocean of their own; leaking and moaning and making moving impossible.

But she can turn her head away from them. She can let the wood scrape her face and she can talk to the sea.

She tells it her name. Bekoe. Came To Fight. She entered the world at war, was born with two teeth at the bottom of her mouth. Days later when her father saw her, he decided her name.

And when those men from the northern village came to her city she took arms alongside the warriors. Had screamed until her voice left her when they dragged her to the ship… Her lips catch splinters as her whispers turn to hissing. Bekoe! Bekoe! Bekoe!

Underneath her name she is saying Tight skin and Thick skull I Need Out My teeth are Sharpening and My nails are hardening Just Give me the Chance to Bite— I Came to Fight.

She is talking to the sea and It Finds Her. Spread across the Atlantic It Finds Her. Pressed flat by the weight of the ocean, It Finds Her. Because she is hungry and It Is Hunger. Because she is ready and It Is Willing. Because she is dense and It Is Empty.

From below, It Answers Her Call.

ATIENA “Did you do the homework?”

Emma, jolted out of her current fixation (scratching away at the dark wood of the table where we sat), looked up at me, the shimmering pink of her lips leaving just enough room for air to pass through. “There was homework?”

I rolled my eyes, looking back down at my book. “I don’t see how you plan on graduating, Emma…”

She snorted, earning the usual nasty look from Mrs. Freida, the librarian, as she reshelved books behind us.

“Sorry.” I whispered, trying my best to ignore the faces Emma was making at me.

Mrs. Frieda simply shook her head as she pushed her cart further into the dark stacks of the library.

Emma leaned in, lowering her voice. “You know…” She started in that very Emma way of hers that assured me whatever would follow would be exhausting.

I laid my hands flat on the page of my book and leveled my gaze at her. “...if we still shared any classes together, like, at all, then I wouldn’t have forgotten the homework in the first place.”

She smiled, poked my elbow with the tip of her eraser and I remembered as I often did just how gorgeous she was. Her wavy blonde hair glowed in the orange light of the overhead lamp that hung above us, and light brown freckles speckled her high cheekbones, crawling across the bridge of her thin nose, which sat regal and irreverent above her small mouth, bowed and pink. She looked like she’d stepped off a movie set, a manic pixie dream girl

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that had stumbled into the real world and, by some twist of fate, decided I was a worthy project. “How is jazz going, anyways? Real... groovy?”

I internally cringed at her choice of words, sighing. “More like impossible…” I closed my eyes, thinking back to my first day in the classroom. In auditions, the music had flowed from me as freely as if it were nothing, like opening up a vein and letting the red have its way with the room. But now, I get in front of the piano and my fingers don’t know what to do. “Mr. Emmet says I’m in my head too much, but I don’t know.”

She sat back in her chair, pulling her knee closer to her chest (I swear, she has no idea how to sit properly). “Well on the bright side, if you flunk out, maybe you’ll get to be put back into classical with the rest of us.”

“Yeah, maybe.” The thought made me sick. The truth was, I’d meant to audition for the classical concentration. I walked into the room, told the panel the piece I’d be playing. They exchanged a look and asked me to play a jazz standard instead. And even though that wasn’t how it was supposed to go...I don’t know, it felt right somehow.

But Emma? What would feeling right even mean to a girl like her, who moved like a breeze through the world, never encountering resistance? Feel right? I could see her asking. As opposed to what, feeling wrong? And I would be forced to cross that desert stretched between us, the one only I ever seemed able to see and willing to brave, crawling on my hands and knees to join her on the other side, laughing and admitting my silliness. I did not have the energy to withstand the Trials of Friendship with Emma today.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay...” She said, “So. Can I see it?”

“See what?”

“Your math homework.”

Just as I was about to respond, a voice called from the entrance of the library. “Atiena?”

I turned to see who spoke, and I just about fell out of my chair when I realized who it was.

He was sort of leaning into the room, and the brightness of the hallway behind him overpowered the moody, yellow light of the library, reducing him to little more than a shadow. But I could make out the shape of his hair, taller than it was wide, and the cool, sandy brown of his skin. Ellis Martins. A fourth year. A star player on the school’s lacrosse team and killer on the double bass.

He was a legend here. And there was definitely no way he knew my name.

“Atiena? Atiena Johnson?”

And yet, he just... kept... saying it.

I stood, and the sound that the legs of my chair made as they scraped against the marble floor was too much to bear. I cleared my throat, straightened. “Ah...yes?”

He eyed me, and his gaze told me that whatever he had been expecting, I was far from it. He straightened, fingers drumming on the door frame. His smile was slow and slight. Okay, it seemed to say once it had at last finished forming, I can work with this. “Headmaster needs to see you.”

I frowned, looked back at Emma who raised her eyebrows at me.

“Tee... what did you do?” She hissed.

“Nothing, I didn’t….” I looked back to Ellis, dread settling on my chest. “Did he tell you what for?”

“Nope.” He took a step back, into the hallway, holding the door wide enough for me to walk through.

I did not want to walk through that door. And honestly, if it had been anyone other than Ellis Freaking Martins, I might not have. Of all people at this school, he was probably the one I

wanted to impress the most. Not just because he was an amazing musician, not just because he was popular, and not just because he wore the Dautry Academy of the Arts’s uniform in a way few boys here managed to, but because he was black too. And if he didn’t like me, who did I really have to blame for that but myself?

“Should I come with you?” Emma asked.

Before I could answer, he said “Don’t worry, I’ll look after her,” pushing the door open even farther.

I tried on confidence as I walked toward the door, tried ignoring the way my whole body was shaking and the wrenching feeling in my gut as I went over in my head everything I’d done in the past three weeks, trying to determine what the Headmaster could possibly want from me. I didn’t register the door swinging shut behind us, and my feet were on auto pilot as I shuffled after him.

I searched and I searched and I searched and came up empty. There was nothing. Not anything bad enough to warrant me being called into the office, nor anything remarkable enough to warrant praise. I’d been woefully average. I’d blended in, same as always. So why was I being singled out? “...alright Atiena?”

“Just Tina, actually.” I mumbled, before looking up at Ellis.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I asked if you were doing alright.” His expression suggested concern, and I wanted nothing more than to melt into the checkered floors, to fade into the wooden paneling of the hallway. Being miserable was fine, but having others see that in me was a very specific, very tortuous form of mortification.

“Oh. Yeah, I’m just... just freaking out a little bit here.”

He laughed. “Nothing to be afraid of. I’m sure you’ll do great.”

“Do great…?”

“The Headmaster comes off all big and scary, but he’s a teddy bear.” He smiled at me, and it was just bright enough and wide enough to calm my nerves. “And I promised your friend I’d look after you.”

His reassurance brought me far enough out of my head to notice our surroundings. We were in the Russet wing, the oldest part of the building, run down enough for the words “charm” and “character” to be used to glamorize it. These hallways never had many people in them, not at this time of day. Most of the rooms back here served as storage, but there was also the old gym that half the eighth grade had sworn was haunted, a couple history classrooms and the middle school teacher’s lounge. The one thing that was not?

“This isn’t the way to the Headmaster’s office.”

He looked at me wide eyed, as if remembering. “Oh, crap, you’re one of the returning students aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“I knew there was something I was forgetting.” He laughed.

“Maybe Sumaira was right, I should take notes at those meetings.”

Ellis’s smile might have quieted my nerves, but the alarm bells were going off regardless, however distant they were. My pace slowed. “Where are we going?”

He stopped at the double doors of the old gym. There was a chain around the pull open handles. Was that supposed to be there? Ellis pulled out a key to open it. I know he wasn’t supposed to have one of those.

And even though, logically, I knew I should have been afraid, I couldn’t pull myself to that place of fear. My heart wouldn’t beat any faster, my thoughts wouldn’t zip around like I needed them to.

“You know, it’s weird, Tina.” He said as he undid the padlock.

“Usually all the black kids here know each other. There are only so many of us, but I’ve never seen you around. I mean, I’ve seen you around. I’ve had to have, the school isn’t that big, but, I’ve never seen you seen you, you know?”

I swallowed. “I don’t.”

He yanked open the lock and pulled the chain through the handles. “I am sorry, really, for having to do this like this. I don’t like having to, honestly. Fear never quite tastes... right.” He looked down at his hands, measured the weight of the chains he held in them.

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“But, you know how old folks get about tradition.”

All I could do was repeat, “I don’t.”

“Ah!” He shook his head. Something in me wavered, the sharp static of terror running through me like lightning before being snatched away. “You’re really going through it now, aren’t you? I’m sorry, again. I wish I could say you have nothing to be afraid of, but I feel like I’ve lied enough for today. Come on over here, Tina.”

And I don’t know why I don’t know why I don’t know why I went toward him and his outstretched hand as he once more held the door open for me into that pitch–dark room, only that I didn’t have to try on confidence or ignore the shaking of my hands because I wasn’t scared at all. I felt safe in a way that I knew I shouldn’t have and it was so confusing that I didn’t know what to do except for follow his instructions, much like the survivor of a car crash goes along with the gentle guiding words of their savior.

I stepped alone into the dark room, and as I heard the creaking of the door closing, I said, “But break ends in five minutes.

I have a chem quiz today.”

His cackling laughter was all I could hear before the door was pulled shut.

And then it was thundering claps, at first coming from nowhere, then rushing right at me. I tensed, watched the dark for the source, brought my arms to my chest, holding my breath there.

And then there was no air, I’d stopped breathing, stopped taking in oxygen, stopped taking in, not hearing the words being hurled at me: “Don’t let him close the door! Quick, before he—” They are too late. There is the distant sound of rattling chains. A click as the lock was put in place. The clapping (footsteps?) stopped as the yelling did, and the noises that followed were quick pants, a couple muffled curses.

Only then, when the reverberation of the footsteps on the other side of the door stretched away thinner and thinner, when my eyes didn’t adjust, when the buzzing of the air conditioning unit above was the loudest thing I could hear, did the fear begin to set in.

The person before me, who was still little more than a disembodied collection of sounds, groaned. “This is just perfect.

Absolutely freaking amazing.”

The fear felt like shivering, only hungrier. I wrapped my arms tight around myself and whimpered. How did I get here? What had he done to me? Why had he led me here? What had he meant?

“Hello? Girl, why’d you let him lock us in here?”

I shook my head, turned from the noises, digging around my back pocket for my phone, my fingers slipping and sliding across the screen in an effort to pull up a flashlight. It came on, and the air was a little easier to find. It wasn’t perfect, I could only see seven or so feet ahead of me, but it was something.

I swung the light around, trying to get my bearings. The first thing it landed on was the noise. It seemed it had been another person after all. A girl, taller than me, in a pink leotard and grey sweats. Dark, curly hair, bronze skin, silver septum piercing…

She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

She raised her hand in front of her face, squinting. “Ow.” A chill shot up my spine, causing my teeth to chatter. I moved the light from her eyes. “Sorry.”

“Well, look who it is.” She smiled. At a time like this, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how. “So you were the one to apologize after all.”

Ah. That’s where I knew her from. She was the girl in the dining hall, the one who’d bumped into me. I’d said hey and she’d said hey yourself, looking at me in a way I hadn’t really been looked at before. But that was a week ago, and I hadn’t seen her since.

“What are you doing back here? How did you even get back here?

The door was locked.”

“Well, obviously I’m not here by choice.” She took in a deep breath, shaking out her hair, looking up to the ceiling. “I’m missing ballet right now. Madame Felix is going to kill me. All over some dumb prank.”

“Prank?”

“Well, that has to be what this is, right?” She dropped her arms. “Freshman initiation. Some hazing type stuff.”

Something about what Ellis had said to me, out in the

hallway, about me having nothing to be afraid of, about tradition... even before that, what he’d said about me doing great... that didn’t feel like a simple case of senior/freshman abuse. This didn’t feel right at all. I needed to get out of here.

“I’m Nuru, by the way.”

“Tina.”

“Oh, I know.”

I frowned at her. “You do?”

“Yeah, I’m friends with your roommate, Kweli?”

“Ah.” Kweli. She was a character. I was pretty sure she hated me, not that I could blame her—I’d kind of been avoiding her.

I’d never been sure how to act around the other black kids here.

Mostly I tried to avoid interaction all together.

I swept my flashlight around to see the rest of the room.

The old gym was just like I’d remembered it, weathered linoleum basketball court, the metal bleachers with blue peeling paint, the grey double doors scuffed black…

I pushed my weight against them, but no luck.

“That ain’t gonna work.” The girl, Nuru, said from behind me. I flinched—I didn’t know she was standing so close. “Trust me,” She continued, “I tried. Lock won’t budge.”

I braced myself against the doors, my breath getting heavy.

“Oh my god, he locked us in here.”

“That he did.”

“He locked us in here and I just watched him do it. Why... why had I just watched him do it?”

“Woah, chill.” She reached out to me and I flinched away.

“Don’t, I—” God, I was acting unhinged. I centered myself, using my finger to flick a loose strand of hair from my face. “Sorry.

I just. Don’t like being touched.”

She froze, slowly pulled back her hand. “Alright. It’s cool. I won’t touch you.” Her voice was feather light, careful. She spoke to me like I was some feral creature, a wild bucking mare that needed to be calmed down.

Maybe I was. I certainly didn’t feel civilized.

“I’m sorry.” I said again.

“It’s good. I don’t like being touched either. Saved me the trouble.” She edged toward me. “It’s like I said, this is probably just a prank. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

I shook my head. “You don’t get it. Out in the hallway, Ellis, the boy who locked us in here, he was saying some... weird stuff.

Like, I don’t know. I have a really bad feeling.”

Her eyes searched my face, her expression full of lines: the tight one of her mouth, the wrinkles between her brows and around her eyes. All under the sharp shadows created by my crappy cell phone flashlight.

Then, behind us, a scuffling in the hallway. Muffled screaming and uneven footsteps from beyond the door. We scrambled away from it as the noise grew closer and closer.

“Let me go! Let go of me!”

I knew that voice…. I looked to Nuru, her eyes shining with the same sense of realization, and at the same time we said her name: “Kweli.”

“I’m telling you Ellis,” Came an unfamiliar voice from behind the door. “I don’t know how but she sussed me out the second I approached her.”

“Uh–huh.” This voice I knew belonged to Ellis.

“I’m serious. Wait, what if that’s her talent?”

“Yeah or, more likely than that, you struggle to complete basic tasks.”

“Har har.”

“Get off of me!”

“Could you,” A grunt. “Could you get the door, Ricky?”

The chain holding the door shut sounded off again, and the doors were thrown open, creating a blinding white light, and Kweli was thrown in with us.

The doors were pulled shut too fast for Nuru and I to react, but Kweli was on her feet just as they were closed, banging against them with her palms and fists. “Hey! This is neither funny nor cute.

Open this door up right now! Hello? I know you can hear me. Let me out of here! Hello?”

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It wasn’t long at all before the noise in the hallway stilled, and Kweli’s attacks against the double doors slowed.

Nuru was the one to clear her throat.

Kweli jumped, grasped her chest, turning and blinking hard at us. When she caught her breath, “Where’d y’all come from?”

“Same as you, I’m guessing.” Nuru said.

“What’s going on? Why did they lock us in here? What’s happening?”

I shook my head. “We don’t know.”

Kweli shook her head violently, the chin length crinkly dreads that framed her face vibrating as she did so. “No. No no no, we need to get out of here.”

“Okay, will everyone just calm down? Deep breaths.” Nuru said. “We were brought here by a bunch of kids. Not just kids, but preppy private school kids. The worst thing that could happen to us is, like, getting paint dropped on our heads or a poorly lit Instagram photo. You two are acting like—” “Like what? Like we were just kidnapped, brought to a secluded location, and locked inside? Because that is exactly what’s just happened here!”

“Kweli’s right.” I said. “Whatever they have planned for us, innocent prank or... or something else, I don’t really want to stick around to find out.”

Nuru sighed. “Okay, well, what are we going to do?”

Right. What were we going to do? All I could conjure right now was a series of worst case scenarios... I needed to focus. I tried breathing in deep, but that only made me want to cry even more. I wiped my eyes. Tina. It’s time to get yourself together.

What were the other exits to this place? There was a backdoor, right? Yes, a back door, the one that led to the back parking lot.

The one that was on the other side of this lightless chasm.

I swallowed, gripped my phone tighter in my hands. “Guys.

There’s a back exit on the other side of the gym.”

We exchanged a look, grave nods. They didn’t want to do this anymore than I did, but staying put was not an option. Phone in hand, we stepped into the dark.

1797 It is not wind moving stiffly through these cotton reeds.

Nor is it night covering this land in sticky blackness—though that is what the white men and women will believe. But every Negro knows what lies like a snake and waits wide-jawed for him the moment the sun falls from the sky.

All but Babe. Poor Babe. Poor little, too young thing. Her mama tried to warn her. Told her countless times, “Now when that sun sets, you best get out dem fields Babe, y’hear me? It scared of the sun, see, but it slurps moonlight up like oysters.”

Countless times she said this. Even when Babe was a precious little wrinkled thing she could hold in the palm of her hand, whose little fist could just barely close around her pinky finger, Babe’s Mama told her this.

It’s not like Babe don’t remember. She’s thinking now wandering out into a sea of cotton that rises up past her head how funny it is that it slurps moonlight up like oysters. She always giggled at that part of the story and it scared her Mama.

Po’ Babe is looking for stars. Just as she catches one with her gaze, there’s another a little farther up ahead shining twice as bright. It’s almost like the Starvin’ Man left a trail of breadcrumbs in the sky to lure her away from the safety of her Mama’s bosom.

It’s not like she doesn’t know what it is neither. She’s seen its meals firsthand. Broken men and bent women who move through the world with no light in their eyes. Who open their mouths just for flies to come out. No life left, no bones, just skin and the rememberings of the muscles underneath. Po’ Babe’s even heard the name the gossiping women would whisper back and forth over laundry: zumbi. She’s heard the humming and seen the head shakes. “Musta been that Rotten Thing again.” They say. They know better than to call his name.

All ‘cept Po’ Babe. She’s singing a song to the stars as she ambles through the reeds. Trying to sing them to sleep, bless her heart.

“Look out, star mine Swinging high in the sky The Starvin’ Man’s a comin And it’s you he wants to find” She discovered skipping that morning, Po’ Babe, and now she’s bouncing through the fields as he catches her scent.

“Look out, Lady Alice Pickin’ cotton seeds The Starvin’ Man’s a huntin’ You know he’s ready to feed” Po’ Babe never had a chance. Wasn’t born with easily excited hair, so when the Starvin’ Man settles in round her shoulders, they don’t stand on end. She doesn’t know to run, but even if she did? How far she gone get on them short legs? Po’ Babe… her Mama tried to warn her.

Look out! Po’ Babe Run, hide and take cova!

The Starvin’ Man’ll getcha Yeah, he’ll eat you up for suppa.

KWELI I had known the boy was lying the second the words came out of his mouth.

It happened outside of math class, as everyone was filing inside. He’d grabbed my arm to keep me from entering. “Kweli Ghebo?”

I’d pulled away from him, adjusting the strap of my backpack. “Uh, can I help you?”

He was taller than me, which, fair enough, wasn’t that hard to achieve. But he was obvious about it, towering above me with thick, dark coils close to his skull and a navy blue tie loose around his neck. He was one of the few fellow black students here, which put me at ease, if only slightly. I still didn’t like the way he’d grabbed me like that.

“It’s the Headmaster.” He said.

I frowned at the word. Headmaster. It had bothered me when I saw it on the brochure, just like I’d been bothered by the statue that sat in the middle of the quad and bothered by the various buildings on campus named after slave owners. The Warner House, where I slept and where I ate everyday, was named after a man who was probably doing cartwheels under the earth at the fact that negros were attending his alma mater.

All of it was going to change if I had anything to do about it.

“What about the Headmaster?” I asked.

The boy had smiled, and not one inch of it reached his eyes. He fiddled with the hem of his blazer. “He asked me to bring you to his office.”

And I knew it wasn’t true. Not because he wouldn’t meet my eyes to say it, or because of how he didn’t commit fully to the word, but because I knew he was lying. Just like I always knew when people were lying. As clearly as I could see the blue of the sky or hear the piercing sound of a fire alarm, I could taste the scent of his lie as it fell upon my ear.

Mama would always say it was the ancestors. That I had “the gift.” She was into that kind of stuff, meditating and burning sage and setting intentions for the traffic to start moving. As for me, well, it was hard not to pick up things here and there. I had my fair share of crystals and made sure to give thanks in any way I could to the ancestors. But I’d yet to have the kind of revelation that made these rituals feel urgent like Mama’s were. Thus far, my “third eye” had remained shut.

But even though I had this gift, I hadn’t ever gotten the hang of how to use it properly.

For example, there I stood in a hallway that was quickly emptying out with a stranger twice my size in a place I didn’t know right after he’d told me a lie, presumably in an effort to

55

lure me somewhere. And instead of going along until I had more information or calling for help or even kicking him where the sun don’t shine and booking it in the other direction, I squared my shoulders, looked him dead in his face and said: “No he didn’t.”

His smile became strained, wrinkles gathering around his eyes. “Yes, he did.”

Another lie, another opportunity for my escape, and still I repeated. “No, he didn’t.”

Naturally, he grabbed me and dragged me down the hall.

Now I was here, walking through this creepy old gym, the sound of our footsteps bouncing off the ceilings too far away to see in this darkness.

“Do you think it’s racial?” I asked.

Nuru frowned. “Why are you whispering?”

I blinked at them, continuing, “Do you think it’s racial?”

“Nah.” Nuru shook their head. “The girl that brought me in was black.”

“So was the boy who brought me.” Tina said.

“I’m just saying,” I continued, “What are the chances that the only three black girls in the grade are sequestered for this nonsense?”

“You aren’t wrong. The whole thing is mad weird. I mean, there aren’t even that many black kids here to begin with, and everyone that brought us in was black?”

“Maybe,” That Tina girl squeaked. We waited for her to clear her throat and continue. “Maybe it’s the black student union?”

I shook my head. “They don’t have one here. I already checked.”

We weren’t far from the back door now, the foot of it just dipping into the pool of light cast by my flashlight. “There.” I pointed.

“How do we know that door isn’t locked too?” Nuru asked as we pressed on. “It wouldn’t make much sense for them to lock us in here if there was an exit on the other side. I mean, unless…”

“Unless going through this door is exactly what they want us to do.” I finished.

We stopped three feet before it. Much like the double doors that served as an entrance, this one opened outward, a dingy blue metal with scuff marks where it met the floor. Above it, a ghastly FIRE EXIT sign glowed red. I turned to face Tina and Nuru.

“It could be locked.”

“Could be.” Nuru nodded. What little I could see of her face told me that she was hoping it was.

After taking a breath, I extended a shaking hand, pressing down on the silver bar handle and pushed…

Nothing. I let go of the breath. “It’s locked.” I said.

“Okay.” Tina said, head just nodding away at nothing. “Okay, what if we—” Thud!

We flinched, looking back to the door where the sound was coming from.

I looked to Nuru for the confidence she had shown earlier, but only found the same fear staring back at me. I watched their hands curl into fists. “What the—” Thud. Again. This time we were looking at it, this time we could see the door shake, could feel the sound under our feet.

Something out there was trying to get in, badly.

Thud. A dent formed in the metal. I had a feeling that it was going to succeed.

“Guys—” “Run!” The word clawed its way out of my mouth before falling flat to the floor like a stone. I was already running back the way we came by the time I said it, the soles of my school regulation loafers slipping across the linoleum. I could feel Nuru behind me, and based on the way the light from Tina’s flashlight was bouncing around the room, I could only assume she was following.

Twack!

Was that one louder? It sounded louder. I could feel it in my thighs. How long would it be before whatever was out there got in? Got us? I didn’t know where I was running, only that I needed distance between that danger and myself. It certainly didn’t hurt

that I had a buffer of two whole other bodies between me and it, though I am ashamed to admit it.

The final thud was the thickest, punctuated with a metallic twang, and then the clashing sound of the metal doors as they crashed into the floor.

I covered my head, falling to the ground, feeling Nuru and Tina doing the same around me, with Nuru letting out a loud curse and Tina pulling them down. The room grew warmer and brighter, and before our feet stretched a horrible shadow. A rippling mass of muscles headed by two curling horns, far larger than anything living should be.

I flipped over just as Tina had the sense to turn her light in its direction, just as the thing pushed air from its nostrils. And the thing was, it seemed, a ram, only three times normal size, with gangly grey fur and wild eyes that seemed to scream out for our skin to adorn its spiraling, beige horns, the color of aging bone.

I screamed; it had been a while since I heard the sound of her own scream. I pushed away from the floor with the palms of my hands, leaning closer to Nuru kneeling down at my side.

“The hell is that?” Nuru choked out, her voice a higher pitch than I’d known them to have, the words themselves crashing into each other.

“It looks like a ram.” I said. I think I said.

I must have said, because immediately after Tina expertly observed, “It’s too big to be a ram.”

The thing lowered its head, brought its front hoof (a foot in diameter) against the ground.

“Whatever it is,” I interjected, “it’s headed right for us!”

We dove out of the way just in time, Tina to the left, Nuru and I to the right. It barreled right through the space we’d been cowering, the Not Ram, stopping just before the wall on the opposite side.

Nuru pulled me to my feet, and I caught Tina’s eye on the other side of the room, wide and wild, as her chest rose and fell arhythmically.

What are we going to do? I tried my best to ask with my gaze, and she got the message, raising a shaking hand and pointing behind Nuru and I. “The—the storage locker.” She hiccuped. “The lock doesn’t work.”

The Not Ram breathed out again, straightened and turned, setting its sights for Nuru and I. She nodded at me, grabbing my arm, and together we ran for the door Tina indicated, about twenty feet away.

The creature bayed, only it sounded like a chorus of rams, and two octaves too deep. Again, we could hear the scraping of its massive hooves against the ground as it prepared to charge once more.

Nuru got there before I did, already tugging on the handle of the storage room door. It jangled, but didn’t open. She cussed.

“Lock doesn’t work my ass...”

“Maybe it’s just stuck?”

She nodded, brushing their hair from their face. “Help me.”

I grabbed the handle right above where they gripped it, using as much of my weight as I could muster to pry open the door. It gave, if only a little. We were making progress, but would it be fast enough?

Nuru huffed, threw a glance over their shoulder, “Where the hell is Tina?”

1797 Losing Po’ Babe, that is the last straw. At the end of the winding dirt road that runs parallel to the fields, the same dirt path where Po’ Babe had wandered off just three nights before, the women of the plantation are getting to work in the cabin, hidden away from the overseer’s eyes.

Nine of them are working there. They communicate in silence, movements synchronized and minds joined by their common goal. Most are too young to know this work in its original form— they’ve been forced to practice the craft in snatches:

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whispered words here and hidden herbs there. Borrowed recipes from the Cherokee and spells from the bible. It changes nothing.

The magic that runs through it is just as old and just as true.

They invite the four elements inside for the night: fire, air, water, earth. Spread a white cloth ‘cross the floor to keep their work pure, place candles and stone on it. Water and sage.

Whatever trinkets they can find. High John, black pepper; oil, salt and bay leaf. They reach out—reach backwards and forwards. Root of my root and soil of my soil. Bone of my bone and blood of my blood.

Wind rushes through the cracks in the planks of the wood.

The flames on the candle flicker and shadows move across the walls. The women know they are not alone—that they’ve always walked in the footsteps of all who came before. They call out all the same: Root of my root and blood of my blood!

Po’ Babe’s Mama is the one to hold the knife. One of the older women, Lana, begins about the work of anointing it. Lady Alice says the spell.

“Whoever dwells in the shadow of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Blood of my blood.

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.”

Soil of my soil.

“You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.”

Bone of my bone.

“If you say, ‘The Lord is my refuge,’ and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.”

Root of my Root.

The earth below the women shifts. The distance between this world and the Other draws down to nothing— Lana holds up a hand. “It is done!”

The knife glints. It hums. It sings for Po’ Babe’s Mama.

“Look out, star mine Swinging high in the sky The Starvin’ Man’s a’coming And it’s you he wants to find” She swallows past the bitterness in her throat. Lady Alice throws open the door and it rattles on its hinges. The trees that surround the cabin are monstrous things—His hands reaching out to grab them up and swallow them down. They’ve gotten His attention, but He cannot act so long as that blade is singing that song. Talle and Freddy already dug the hole. They stand by with their shovels and watch Po’ Babe’s Mama draw closer and closer.

She drops the knife inside the shallow pit, blade pointing back down the winding dirt path, past the field, and to the white house that sits on the horizon and whatever world lies beyond.

She straightens as Freddy and Talle lift their shovels once more to bury the knife, staring at the big house, just barely visible through the waving reeds and under this cover of darkness.

You want a meal? She asks that Rotten Thing with her gaze.

Out there, ‘way from here. We’s protected here. We’s watched over.

It will Heed Her Advice.

Wesley Cornejo

Design Arts Carmen High School of Science and Technology Milwaukee, WI

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Darkened Cloak Black poly-satin 2020

Shealeigh Crombie

Photography Greens Farms Academy Greens Farms, CT

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Identity Swipe Digital photography, Citra Solv transfer, lightbox and colorful plastic sheets 2021

Youjaye Daniels

Creative Nonfiction South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Greenville, SC

The—Lovely—Red—Skirt Red isn’t my favorite color—Jezebels wear red, the church mothers said—forced to wear Pentecostal approved skirts swiping against my ankles—with thoughts of having them mangled with every weighted stride—my skin sewn up into dusky, gray cotton fabric—I choose to comply—to a lie that my body—has to be— adorned in modesty—to make the creator of this same body—give me access to everlasting life.

To please—my flesh cleansed of rebellion—I admire this stolen skirt from the back of my closet—it’s short—scarlet red—velvet smooth—feisty and taboo—like the discovery of this hidden treasure—inside a heavy duty trash bag of clothes known as acceptable apparel—given as gifts to the huge black family of seven with an unemployed father—a Diversity Visa Lottery Immigrant—failing—nonetheless, I take it for the purpose of hope—shove it into my basket two hours before my mom— under his instruction—snuffs and filters it out—from the “oldest to youngest” selection process—of scavenging through piles of stained—new—garments.

One day I’ll be able to wear it.

In fact, I do—sneak it into my textbook-stuffed backpack— fold it nicely so it won’t wrinkle—rush to the bus and sit in the front seat—like I usually do—head resting on the cold, dewy window pane—in pain hearing the laughter of the stylish, popular girls being passed love letters like church tracks on a scorching Sunday afternoon—my Song of Solomon—to myself—smeared along with the Vaseline sucked from the side of my right cheek— and when we arrive—I run to the bathroom after getting off the bus—I go into the smallest stall—I needed to go into the big— accessible one—she’s morbidly obese my doctor whispered into my mother’s ear—those words stung, but still—I squeeze off the decoy—my thighs spilling over like the unraveling seams— screaming with every slight rip—stretch.

And I carefully take out the lovely red skirt—place it on my body—climbing up my hips with ease—a perfect fit—shocks my body with confidence—finally comfortable in my own skin— while despising it—forgot about how I felt—the red skirt singed my waist—insinuated my overdeveloped curves—okay with being locked outside the gates of heaven—if only I could live out this last lustful day—for I desire myself in this moment—but not for long.

I strut to class with a tight backpack—my chin and head tilted up approaching my cubby—the teacher gasps in horror— sprints to the entrance of the door—clutches my wrists before I can get any further—yanks me—pulls me—I sit outside the principal’s office—listening to her expert opinion on what my adolescent body should be wrapped in—through the midnight blue cinder blocks—anything but that she said—this isn’t even like her—call her father, I insist.

I get dress coded—my father absent—per usual—out looking for work with his phone off—they call my mom instead— the pressure of shame towers over me as I wait for her—for hours—reading The Babysitters Club—I look up and stare—a petite, white girl with a lovely prasine green skirt on—shorter than mine—but, she’s called cute—administrators admiring its emerald beauty—my head hangs low—I get into the car—thighs too thick for an eleven year old my mom complains—but it’s not my fault— blame God for not answering the many prayers I prayed—on the same knees covered in baby fat—like the rest of my temple— blame WIC and EBT for my gluttony—when food was finally in the

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cabinets—it was more than enough—even though we never had enough—besides those occasional—seasonal—gifts we received— the hand-me-downs—the—lovely—red—skirt.

Sydney Davenport

Photography Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center Columbus, OH

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Latifa Sauda Digital photography 2020

Jordan Davidson

Poetry Colorado Academy Denver, CO

A School Girl’s Helen A man wrote a Helen that wished for death and yet I cannot help but wonder what if / what if she hungered for carnage / aching to see those who hurt her carrion for dogs and birds* / the hardness of bronze made meat of soft stomachs on the knuckles of battle scabbed hands / what if the mounds of corpses made her smile in vengeance paid not in full for her girlhood but paid back in kind / each man that burned fuel for smoke clotted pyres burned married to his lust / what if Aphrodite laid beauty on her sleeping frame as a weapon not a curse / gifts for Paris forgotten in bloodlust between red lips as any golden apple becomes an apple of strife if tossed hard enough / so keening a whispered battle cry Aphrodite still screams avenge me / and Helen said yes YES / what if she grew up blazing and knew she was beautiful and never regretted through the fists of men and blackened eyes / each successive torment midwifing her from humanity and to goddesshood / what if Helen’s rage not Achilles brought such doom for so many sets of arms that falsely claimed her / with no man she would rest / at midnight she tears open the stones of Sparta to the gates of Troy / this terror of men a glorious recitation screamed full throated over the death ridden plains / she crows let your wreckage be my triumph / I have slaved so many nights for you / my body I reconquer from your throat / do not touch me / DO NOT TOUCH ME / I AM FREE ALONE / I AM WHOLE ALONE — What if Helen ignited the walls of Ilium just to watch something burn?

*from Homer’s Iliad

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Dear Eve, Love Lilith I

Loved you even if the salt of your eyes crawled legions

from your cheeks to mine even if You were the crescendo of a metal nebula sewing us together at infinite seams Even through your barbed wire lips and celestial tongue

the copper seals of our teeth clashing When your nails painted bruised galaxies on my collarbone

each rupture heaven on my way to You and the choice you made to sever the ribbons

of our bible packaging so scripture Burned as the ashes beneath our feet execrated the space

between the stars and you and all of Me and our blistered palms and the taste of your mouth

on mine and his and my saliva At the bridge of your taste buds exploding from

starlight to dusty meteors The supernovas caged in our ribs thundered self-destruction

as an angel born defeated drove their Stake in exorcism through you and across the universe

towards me made mockery of divinity For the enforcement of holy perdition lies lying on your tongue

so you begged gravity to return you Wanting to the recesses of his arms

because you would rather him drown You than spend another night

sweating your life into your palms With which you dug a grave

for the memories of loving Me.

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Valentina Diaz

Design Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

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Wave 100% upcycled denim 2020

Owen Dudney

Novel Francis W. Parker School Chicago, IL

THE LAST RECORDER A part of me has always craved transgression—it is the one thing keeping me from an easy life, a happy life, a peaceful life.

There are millions who would kill for what I was born with: a title and an estate, a trust fund holding enough money to set entire cities up for life, wardrobes full of beautiful clean clothes, hot food whenever I want it, a warm bed, the strange brand of freedom that comes from my family name.

Of course, that is merely what I was born with; which is to say, its current worth to me is almost totally nonexistent, because I have chosen quite casually to throw it all away. Perhaps, since I have never known life without such things, I have underestimated their value. Or perhaps I am uniquely qualified to understand what they really are—slave-made things, products of the greed and sociopathy of my forebears. Within the chest of every man, there lives an idolatrous, solipsistic little gremlin; it gnaws at one’s heart like Nidhogg at the roots of Yggdrasil, annihilating the things that let us see the world as others do, condemning us to a paradise of not wanting and not caring. It took me a decade and a half to realize it—the whole world was built to feed my gremlin, mine and those who were born into my position, and though that does not excuse my actions it might perhaps make them more understandable.

I have a job to do. I haven’t yet worked out exactly how I’ll accomplish it, but it’s there ahead of me nonetheless. The whole world is dark and cold right now—it’s the middle of a Polar night, and from where I’m standing the only visible lights in the world are the stars and the Aurora Borealis above me.

And the lights of the ship, I suppose. I can barely see the water down below—the night sky and the ocean barely look any different from where I’m standing. The sea glitters where it isn’t dark; I suppose the waves are catching the starlight and bouncing it back at me.

For the first time in a long while I feel at ease. Things haven’t gone well for me lately; I’ve been forced to confront certain elements of my past that I’d really rather not think about.

My father is still in Three Fires, which I presume he’s irate about.

He has no idea where I am, and sitting around at home while the world changes in ways he can’t control has never really been his style. He’ll be coming to get me soon, and I suppose that’s another thing we’ll have to contend with.

And I say we—I need to check on Katya. When I negotiated our travel arrangements with the ship’s captain I was very clear that she was to be treated with the consideration she deserves—I secured for us a private dormitory in the deepest bowels of the ship, back from the days before most of our vessels’ functionality was automated. Most of the crew sleep up top near the bridge; now that there are only ten or so of them on board, there’s no need to sleep below the waterline. We’ll have the entire hallway to ourselves.

Anyway—Katya. I left her alone belowdecks, which was probably unwise, but I needed to spend a little time by myself. My whole life is a balancing act—sometimes spending too much time around other people disturbs me to the point where my chest aches, but spending too much time alone makes me wonder how cold the water down below is. We’re hundreds of feet above the waterline—if I were to jump into the ocean, I wouldn’t feel any sort of temperature. My body would burst as soon as it hit the sea.

I shudder. It might just be the cold. I should probably get belowdecks—I’ve only been out for five minutes and I already feel halfway frostbitten. Every important thing left in my life is down there—Katya, my staff, three more days’ worth of clothes, and some jewelry I stole from my mother’s armoire. Anything else can be replaced or done without. There are four days left until we reach Juneau, four days left until we reckon with our respective

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pasts and futures, and when everything happens I know who and what I want by my side.

Even in Arctic waters pirates are a concern; therefore, every door to the ship’s interior requires a six-digit code to open.

After three tries with my gloves on I finally give up—I remove my left glove with my teeth and punch in the code with my bare fingers. The door unlocks; I still have to pull it open, though, and on instinct I use my ungloved hand.

That may have been a mistake. My hand sticks—it must have gotten a little wet somehow, maybe from a trace of melting snow that somehow got through my glove. I pull slowly, carefully, breathing on my fingers as they come free one by one; by the time I’m finally free the door is buzzing, irate at having been left open.

Into the ship and down six flights of stairs with my hand halfway frozen solid; I’ll need to use my staff to fix this.

I make sure to walk down the stairs as loudly as possible, even as my hand throbs with pain. Katya complains incessantly about the noise I make when I move; once I tried to enter our room without making any noise at all, only to end up pinned against a wall with a knife against my throat. From this I have deduced that she does not enjoy being startled. So I let my feet pound against the metal stairs; I clomp down the hallway, each step heavy as can be, and knock on the door with my ungloved hand.

I wait a moment or two, but I admit I’m losing patience; the dormitory is heated, but the hallway isn’t. Finally the door opens—a blast of hot air from inside. Katya is standing there, dressed in grey sweatpants and a t-shirt; for a moment my heart soars with pride.

Only a few days ago, I watched her put on her body armor simply to step out into the hall and use the shower. She still has one of her knives in hand, but—even the tallest tower is built brick by brick. She can take all the time in the world to be ready; I’ll be with her every step of the way.

As I step through the door Katya’s knife stabs into me; she mumbles something, perhaps an apology, then withdraws. Once I’m inside, she almost folds the knife, then starts; she then glances outside the door, once in each direction, before closing it a bit too quickly. She relaxes visibly once the door is shut. I watch her play with the knife for a little bit; it used to disturb me, watching her flip it through her fingers like a magician performing a card trick, until I realized that she had been doing this for several years and still had all her fingers attached. She’s transfixed; I say her name twice, and still her attention never wavers. She never looks toward me.

I give up. Much of our friendship occurs without words; Katya is made entirely of action, and I find that to be one of her most attractive characteristics. My staff is leaning on the wall of the dormitory, next to the bag with my clothes and my jewelry; I pick it up with my good hand and hobble back to the bed.

This next part is a delicate operation, and it will proceed much more smoothly if I’m sitting down; suddenly I become aware that Katya is watching me. This is disheartening but not unsurprising: she’s scared of the power I hold. For most of her life Katya has lived in a world where Strange Elements are used exclusively as instruments of harm. My world, where they are to be used for the benefit of all mankind, is entirely alien to her.

The boat is rocking quite a bit. If I were an amateur at this, it would be advisable to postpone the operation until the waves had settled; if I were an amateur, it would be advisable for me to find someone with two good hands and ask them to heal me instead. I am not an amateur. I lay my staff horizontally across my legs and begin the healing process.

My staff is an object of beauty. It blends eighty-six years of tradition with the finest points of modern technology and technique; it allows me to draw from any practice of Elementalism I care to, from the bluntest Corpumancy to the subtlest forms

of Chordamancy. The body is hollow, a cylinder of red brown Tamarack wood, dimensionally expanded by a proprietary blend of crystals studded along the interior. The interior itself contains another cylinder—a very long, very thin ingot of any Strange Element of my choosing.

Here is the trick, my staff’s private glory: by rotating its head, I am able to shunt the contents of my staff’s inner compartment into a space outside the world. Nearly every form of crystal or ingot or dust or even liquid can safely be placed in my staff’s pocket dimension, stored away in another world for safekeeping. Then whenever I need a specific Strange Element, I merely rotate my staff’s head to the proper position, check the viewing aperture to make sure I have what I need, and apply it through Elementalism as I see fit.

The wounds on my hand are a combination of frostbite and torn skin; for most, it would hurt to the point of disorientation, but over the years I’ve been able to build up an unusually high tolerance for pain. Due to this capacity I retain the mental clarity necessary to heal my wounds. I twist the staff’s head, looking for one of the more distinctive Strange Elements in my possession— pink crystals shot through with dark green infusions, shining with a faint inner luminescence.

Recuperene—another proprietary blend, this one designed as a mass-market medical aid. Easy to use, but I need to be conservative with the amount. I only have about three-quarters of my normal stock, and there’s no way for me to get more until we arrive in Juneau.

I channel my will through the staff. In my head there is a chain of action—a flow of cause and effect, running from the palm of my good hand through the crystals. From there it continues into my wounded hand—the pain briefly intensifies before fading entirely. All that’s left is a numb fizzing sensation, as though someone has injected club soda into my bloodstream.

I chuckle briefly—Katya is still staring at me. I don’t think she understands why I did what I just did. Suddenly I put things into context—to Katya, blood is cheap and Strange Elements are precious. In her lived experience, it is foolish and wasteful to heal wounds by any method other than time.

My hand is free of blemishes. Katya has rarely allowed me to see her unclothed body, and then only for the briefest of moments; still, I know that it is covered head to toe in scars. She’s perfect. I can’t understand why anyone would hurt her. I cannot conceive of how anyone could allow her to be hurt.

I do not like to cry; I especially do not like to cry in front of Katya. I become aware that I am gripping my staff with great force. I stand up and quietly excuse myself from her presence; she watches me go as she always does, with wide and empty eyes.

The corridor is cold and brightly lit. For a moment I consider going back to the top deck, but that would be even colder, and as dark as the hallway is bright. I take a seat against the wall and begin to ruminate.

My mind wanders; I allow it. I like to consider myself somewhat more sensible than Katya, but who knows if that’s really true or not. She would die for me, I know that. I don’t know if I would for her.

Blood is cheap and Strange Elements are precious; it is foolish and wasteful to heal wounds by any method other than time. Who knows if that’s really true or not. The point is that it reminds me of a friend of mine, really two friends but mostly the one. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. I’m not even sure what you can call that type of wordplay.

It’s too bright in here. I had a scarf but Katya took it to use as a tourniquet. As we were leaving the house at Three Fires she was shot in the arm; the shot grazed her and she barely winced like it was nothing. She took my scarf without asking and wrapped it around the wound; it was soaked through with red in moments.

She later apologized for ruining the scarf. When I healed her she looked at me like I had grown a second head.

I’m overthinking this. That’s my job—Katya underthinks so I have to compensate. She is made entirely of action; she lives entirely in the present. This is how and why she can be used and abused for

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ten consecutive years, experiencing more pain in her youth than most people do in their lives, and think it all normal and right.

I become aware that I am very tired. I’ve been sitting out in the corridor for an indeterminate amount of time, and I don’t really know how late it is. I do not own a watch. Having spent my life surrounded by the wealthy and powerful, I can say that it is very much an upper-class thing to avoid wearing watches, or to use them exclusively as showpieces.

For a very long time, my father wore a beautiful Swiss watch, fully mechanical, that for whatever reason he elected to keep unwound. That is to say its hands were stuck at 5:17 for three or four months, those months being between January and late April of 2020. I have no idea why he did this. Given his upbringing, it’s perfectly possible that he never learned how to wind a watch. It’s possible that he believed it to be automatic, or self-winding for the uninitiated, and did not check it often enough in the interceding months to realize his error. It’s possible this was another one of his inimitable, interminable mind games; many wealthy and powerful people make a show of punctuality, and of expecting punctuality in turn, but my father preferred to make people wait. The act of inconveniencing another was a demonstration of his power over them. This is exemplary of his general conduct.

When I was a child I played squash, and for a while I was very good at it. I do not believe my father ever watched me play.

Katya needs me. I hope she’ll be OK without me for a little while. I need a moment or two.

I’ve developed the habit—the nasty, unladylike habit—of gnawing on my clothes whenever I feel some strong emotion or another. This happens only very rarely. I am wearing a stiff blue blouse with a red cravat, layered with an unfashionably thick jacket and a fashionably thick cloak. I have a thinner jacket, but Katya insisted I leave it behind; as sensible as her advice often is, I sometimes do regret following it. Of all these items, my cloak seems by far the most palatable; it’s lined with fur, but not the kind that’s long enough to get stuck between your teeth.

After a while the left hem of my cloak is nicely masticated.

I’ve been curled up into a little ball for at least twenty minutes or so; I believe I’ve restored my composure enough to maintain dignity in front of Katya. I knock on the door and shortly thereafter Katya opens it.

She has a knife in her hand again. I almost bite my lip before restraining myself. Sometimes I can’t bring myself to look at her.

I walk over to my bed and sit down; the mattress wrinkles under my weight. It’s thin, maybe eight or nine centimeters thick, and stuffed with some sort of artificial fiber. It strikes me that this is going to be the thinnest mattress I’ve ever slept on. I’ve slept on proper mattresses and I’ve slept on the ground, but nothing in between like this.

Katya isn’t playing with her knife. I generally hear it click open and closed even when I’m not actively watching her; now the absence is audible, palpable. It scares me.

“Something is wrong,” she says, and I jump.

“Is there someone coming?” I don’t know who could be here so soon. General Long is a busy man, and an expensive one at that; I don’t believe my father would be so anxious as to hire him yet for my retrieval. Alvin Roberts is chronically uninformed and rarely leaves Rampart. Alex Everyman… Someday Alex will be a true terror in every sense of the word, but as of this moment he shouldn’t be anything to write home about. I’ve heard much about his education and training from his classmates; during his time at the Institute his contentious relationship with Contractor significantly impeded their development as a dyad, and therefore his ability as a combatant. In short, not a threat for the time being.

“No. Something is wrong with you,” Katya says. She speaks with all her trademark courtesy and delicacy; it jolts me out of my reverie. Katya’s misconceptions demand immediate redress.

“Nothing is wrong with me, Katya,” I say.

“You’re lying,” she says.

“I’m not lying,” I say.

“Okay,” she says.

Neither of us speaks.

“How do you feel?”

This is new; Katya’s never asked me anything like this before. “I feel fine.”

“Okay.”

Another silence.

“You always ask me how I feel.”

“How you feel is important, I believe. It determines—it determines who you are.”

“Why?” “How you feel determines how you interact with the world.

It determines the choices you make, and I feel, as… you know, I feel that your choices make you who you are.”

“Okay,” she says.

I wait.

“I’m going up to the deck. If you need me, I’m happy to talk.” Katya gets up and begins to get dressed—first the body armor, then her own coat, much lighter than mine. She grabs her knife and walks out the door.

For a moment I almost laugh. Katya is acting like me.

We’ve had this same conversation at least three times, only the roles have been reversed; now she is repeating, word-for-word, the things I say to her when she appears to be uncertain or melancholic.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Katya can’t help me— she underthinks so I have to compensate. But she deserves to believe that she can; she deserves to dream whatever she is capable of dreaming. I have to give this to her. I’ll let her wait up there for a moment or two, then go up and say what she needs to hear.

I put on my gloves and grab my staff; in the past I’ve used it as a sort of comfort object, much as Katya uses her knife. I want to complete the impression that I am emotionally distressed and in need of support. I leave the room, locking it again from the outside.

By the time I reach the door to the ship’s deck, I’m exhausted. This is my third or fourth time climbing the stairs today; my legs are aching and my face is already cold. I heave the door open, step outside, and gasp. Now that I’m outside I can see the sky falling.

There are lines of light tracing through the sky, commingling with the Aurora and the stars, punching holes in the clouds before they cascade into the ocean, shattering and refracting, rumbling like thunder, playing the air like an instrument.

I see colors, I see fire, I see physics at war with itself—the Strange Elements straining against the laws of the earth, slowing beyond the friction of atmospheric entry, their colors flaring outward from points into coronae, blooming, a rose garden from the firmament.

From horizon to horizon the sky is set ablaze—this is Starfall, this is glory, this is the new world. I turn my eyes to the sky and see it all—it’s three-dimensional, with new lights gleaming into being right as the old ones fade. As they enter the atmosphere, some types of Strange Elements generate powerful electromagnetic fields—hence the Aurora, bending and warping around the lights as they change. I feel waves of static electricity pass over me; the wind buffets me as the sky is torn apart. I hear splashes along with the thundercracks—the Elements are hitting the sea. Most will sink to the bottom, never to be seen or touched by man.

Katya stands against the railing, silhouetted by the lights in the sky. The glow plays off her pale skin, pale like snow and riven with dark scars. She turns and I see her as if for the first time—her eyes are always bright, but now they’re touched by something beyond brightness. It’s as if they have a shine all their own, a beautiful intrinsic light.

I see my own breath hang in the air in front of me. The air rumbles. “Katya,” I say. She doesn’t reply.

After a moment I go on. “Katya, you—I want you to know you’re my dearest friend. You’re precious to me, I—I mean that.

You’re my dearest friend in all the world.”

“For real.” A statement or a question? Katya’s intonation is sometimes difficult to interpret.

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I look out over the ocean and watch the starfall. I don’t know where to go from here. Katya can be a very complicated person.

“I don’t—Katya, there’s no problem. I just get a little overwhelmed sometimes.” I pause so she can think. “There’s a lot… a lot has been changing for me, very quickly, in fact, and I don’t always have the ability to keep it in perspective like you do.”

“I don’t do that.”

“What?”

“I don’t… keep things in perspective. You know me. I just go to places… like people need me to. Do what they need me to.”

Katya’s eyes are cold; still they catch the light of the starfall, catch it and reflect it.

I think for a moment or two. Perhaps a moment too long?

Impossible to know.

“Katya… you’re a product of your choices.”

“You say that.” Blank intonation.

“I mean it. You didn’t choose your life until now. You’re not… Kayta, you’re not a bad person.”

“Okay.” She’s lying.

“Katya, I mean—you didn’t deserve any of this. None of this.” I reach out to touch her shoulder before stopping myself.

We’re not there yet.

Katya grunts. I’m not sure if she knows I almost touched her, and if so, how she feels about it. She’s too complicated. For a moment I want to go back to the dormitory.

Then after a moment’s pause: “This is about you,” she says.

Her voice is smaller than normal.

I almost laugh. “No, it’s really not. But it’s okay; I suppose I haven’t been clear enough about that yet. Most of—Katya, most of what we’re doing here is for the world. I know you know that.

But the other thing is—Katya, you need to go home.” She stiffens.

I realize I’ve forgotten the reason why I came up here in the first place.

“Can’t. You know I can’t.”

“They miss you.”

“Don’t even know them. I forget—“She swallows and a part of me breaks. “I forget their names.”

“I know. I’ve done research, Katya.”

She looks at me suddenly. Katya associates sudden movements with violence; when she moves her body this fast, it means that she either intends to kill you or has forgotten the finer points of her own etiquette. Briefly I hope that this is an instance of the latter.

“You’ve done research.” There’s a note of strain in her voice.

“Yes.” Her mouth opens and closes again. Finally she speaks: “Can I see them?”

I nod. “Of course. After all, they’re in Rampart; once we get there, you can see them as much or as little as you like.” This is a lie.

She hesitates. “If I don’t want to see them…”

“It’s your choice.”

“Okay.”

She turns away from me. The world as a whole is brighter now; the starfall has illuminated the sea and the sky. I see Katya and the ship clearly. Her hair catches the light like black glass; though I cannot see them, I imagine her eyes as they always are.

The ship shifts in some minuscule way; I hear the sound of something shattering. “Katya, I believe we ought to get inside.”

Katya nods, briefly and subtly. It’s slightly dangerous to be outdoors during a starfall; although it’s rare, you could in theory be hit by Strange Elements as they descend. As we enter the ship I hear something else, faint but getting louder.

Somebody’s coming up the stairs. Katya stiffens beside me and I step in front of her. Katya has often said that she is uncomfortable with how I take the lead in potentially dangerous situations; nonetheless, I consider it necessary to do so, chiefly because of the legal dangers Katya may place us in if she acts without consideration.

I recognize his uniform before his face. It’s the ship’s captain, a young and fairly handsome man whose name I cannot

bother to remember. He appears briefly startled when he sees us; I wonder if Katya is pointing some kind of weapon at him.

He composes himself. “Miss Polaris,” he says, and I remember that I am the sort of person he believes me to be. “I didn’t expect to see you two up so early.”

I laugh. I have trained my laugh over many years to be airy and ladylike. “Of course we’re up; we’re early risers. Katya and I have a daily routine to keep to.”

He laughs too. This is starting to sound like a cocktail party without the cocktails. Ostensibly I am too young to drink; however, I am a member of the wealthiest and most influential family on Earth, which means that there are very few laws that I must abide by. I have been able to attend cocktail parties and similar events since the day I mastered the shibboleths of the upper crust; this places the date of my first alcoholic drink at around age fourteen.

My overall point being that I am practiced in the sort of pseudo familiarity with which people behave when they try to ingratiate themselves with their betters. That’s how the captain acts towards me, all smiles and Miss Polarises and such. He invited me to tea once, but Katya was clearly uncomfortable with the idea, so I declined.

I gather myself. “What will the seas look like today, Captain?”

“Smooth as glass.” Another big smile. Katya is curiously silent.

“It looks to be quite the starfall out there.”

“Quite, quite!” The use of the word Quite implies something about his upbringing; he’s the sort of social climber who conflates pomposity and class.

“Hopefully it won’t interfere with our journey.”

“Ah. About that.” For the first time, he looks uncertain about something. “Unfortunately, unless it lets up in the next hour or so it most certainly will.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

He clears his throat. “In Iceland, labor laws dictate that shipping vessels cannot be loaded or unloaded during a starfall. To ensure the safety of the workers, of course.”

“What?”

“I know. The socialist countries can be so very— “Iceland? Excuse me, sir? You say—we’re going to Iceland?”

He looks at me very strangely for a moment or two. “Miss Polaris, I—“ “No, no. Explain this to me.” I speak slowly and clearly, as though to a child or small animal. “This boat is bound for Juneau; I checked the itinerary back when we were on shore. We’re supposed to turn west and journey through the Labrador Sea. We’re not scheduled to make any stops. How is it that we’re going to Iceland?”

For a moment he is very surprised; then he clears his throat and rocks on his toes. “Miss Polaris, the ship was never bound for Juneau.”

“What?”

“There were, ah, multiple vessels due to leave Three Fires on the day we left. You told me that this was the only Polaris freighter bound for your destination, but you never specified what that destination was, and I assumed that—out of concern for your privacy, you understand—you would rather I didn’t pry. So we didn’t discuss your destination.”

I am generally a fairly unemotional person; I can maintain my composure even in the most taxing situations. Nevertheless this news shakes me. I stare at him, gobsmacked.

He continues. “Now it occurs to me that you would, ah, presumably not wish to end up in Reykjavik, although of course it’s a beautiful city, but unfortunately we really can’t afford to make a detour, fuel prices being what they are these days, aha.” He turns his eyes to me and I see sympathy; I can’t tell if it’s genuine or not.

I must be out of practice. “I really am very sorry, Miss Polaris.”

I swallow. “But Captain, you are aware, of course, that… as a member of the Polaris family, my time is precious, and my attention even more so. Surely that’s worth the extra fuel costs incurred.”

Again with the misty eyes. “Miss, I’m sorry, I—I’m certainly

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very sorry, but some of this ship’s cargo is quite perishable.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars of product could be lost if we were to make a detour of only a few days. And, of course I don’t have my map with me so my estimates will necessarily be somewhat approximate, but a detour all the way to Juneau, there and back, that would be something… something like five thousand miles one way, ten thousand round trip. So even ignoring the loss of product, this vessel simply does not have the range to make that journey unless it’s fully fueled, which it isn’t. You’ll have to catch another boat, or a flight, although of course Canada being what it is an overland flight might be somewhat…” He trails off.

“Although of course your family has access to more advanced methods of transportation. If you give me your Father’s contact information I’m sure he and I—“ “No, no, that won’t be necessary. Thank you. Thank you for your service and for your hospitality.” I flash him my best polite smile; I’ve seen it before on thousands of faces, on adoring crowds and hired help. I hope familiarity is sufficient for accurate emulation.

I have no idea how long a mile is. Americans.

The Captain nods again and smiles. We come to the same conclusion at roughly the same time—there is nothing more either one of us can do for the other. Katya watches him as he slips by us, up the stairs and through the door.

For a moment I envy him. I noticed he wore a wedding ring—his world must be a simple one, sailing around the globe only to return to the people he truly cares about. He must see it in their faces every time they reunite—how joyous it is, to love and be loved in turn!

He is known. He is known by his employers, by his family, by his friends, by the network of connections he cultivates between his inner self and his outer world. He builds bridges where I build walls. I know nothing of this man, but I understand him as deeply as I can understand anyone. As deeply as anyone is worth understanding.

The stairs rattle beneath me as I walk downwards; the corridor was always overlit, but now it seems even brighter.

Perhaps the sun is rising.

I need to get to Juneau. I needed to get to Juneau yesterday, but today even more so, if only because every second I waste is another sliver of life shorn away from the world.

Katya and I will grab the bags before our disembarkation.

I know nothing of Reykjavik. I don’t speak Icelandic beyond an awkward pidgin. I don’t have a map and I don’t have any paper money—just jewels, clothes, my staff, and Katya. My Katya.

Katya doesn’t know me. She knows nothing of my inner character; I have never truly bared myself to her, done away with every layer separating my soul from the world. She does not understand me; I believe she would kill me if she did. I don’t know whether this is just or not—Katya has always operated according to her own peculiar sense of morality, and I have been told that I do so as well—but nonetheless I am quite certain it’s true. I do not find this state of affairs to be disagreeable in the slightest. There is no one save Katya who I truly trust with my life; it seems only fitting that I should trust her with my death as well.

Oh, how joyous it is to be loved in turn!

“I cannot believe this. Just cannot fuckin be-LIEVE this.”

The radio is playing. Louis thinks about turning it off, but decides to leave it on. He likes this song.

“I mean, you know how it—it’s commercial capitalism, it’s commercialism, that’s what it is. You know back in July I went into, Christ, what’s the fuckin store, I went into—I went into Sears and there it was, they had the Halloween decorations. A whole aisle, it’s just wall-to-wall Halloween, it’s all jack-o-lanterns and shit.”

The rain batters the windshield. It’s slow driving in Seattle today; the traffic is all backed up down the Pipe. When Louis was a little kid and this sort of thing happened he always said the same thing: SOME-body made a mistake.

“And you, you, you see it again with this Christmas stuff.

Christmas music horseshit. There’s a—it’s October, it’s fuckin

October, and we’re already back at it again with this bullshit. This is just how it is. They—what they’re doing is they’re moving up all the holidays cause you gotta buy more shit.”

Dusky out today. Dusky and wet—there are rivers in the streets, little rivers pouring down drains and things. The rainfall: Louis looks at the patterns it draws, deltas and other river-type things on his windows, and wonders.

“They—one time I shit you not it was New Years, and—and I go into Belk to buy condoms or something, only it turns out Belk doesn’t fuckin—doesn’t fuckin have condoms, and there they were—I look in the holiday aisle, and there’s a guy in there, taking down the Christmas shit and putting up the Valentine’s stuff. Lots of it, too, not just—not just the introductories. I’m talking like boxes of chocolate, I’m talking the little… the fuckin… teddy bears that hold the stuffed hearts and shit. You squeeze the palm and they say they love you. All sweet and shit.”

Louis nods along, smiling. The sky rumbles high up; it’s gonna be a big one today. The rain’s just getting started.

“And so I talk to the guy, and the guy, you know, he’s a regular fuckin golem. Man is this—this big fuckin weep-woop”— Uncle D bulges out his eyes and tightens every muscle in his face—“This big man who’s, you know, he’s like the Scarecrow, he’s got no brains—I ask him where they keep the condoms and he says they don’t have condoms. Like I’m a fuckin idiot!” He laughs uproariously.

Louis turns back towards him and smiles. Generally he’s a pretty good-natured guy—his teachers like him and his friends like him even more. He’s captain of the baseball team, plus a bunch of other stuff on top of that—he does a little bit of politics on the side, volunteering and things, plus a tiny bit of Student Council work.

“And so I, what can I do? I go out of Belk and I go to Walgreens. This is—you know, this is down by 4th and Bradford, so you know—they’ve got that sort of weird corner thing going on, and—hey, fuck, what’s that?”

Louis looks up. He missed it. “What was it?”

Uncle D puffs out his cheeks like a chipmunk—this is what he does whenever he’s thinking deeply, which only happens every once in a while. “Not lightning.” He pauses. “I mean, it kinda looked like lightning, but it was straight. It was like a”—He points out the windshield, then leans forward and drags his finger across it, from the left edge to the right. “Like a laser or something. Just flash, bright blue!” He chuckles. “I mean, bright bright. Like real bright.”

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Chloe Els

Short Story Niwot High School Niwot, CO

The Red Scare October 27, 1956 It was just supposed to be a harmless little prank.

We stamped the summoning circle into the football field until our bare feet were caked with mud, and our breath hung in clumps against the blackened air. Danny took my red-stained hands in his, and we flung back our heads, exposing our throats to the pale moonlight as we screamed for everything we were worth.

Screamed until nearby kitchen lights flicked on and neighbors dutifully dialed the police.

Took them long enough.

Danny lowered his gaze to mine and spoke, his voice hoarse. “Do you think—” The wail of a siren cut him off. “Christine!”

I gripped his hands tighter to steady my own. “It’s alright,” I soothed. “It’s alright. We wanted this to happen, remember?”

His blue eyes widened as the sirens grew closer; he reminded me of a deer about to be mown down on the highway. If I hadn’t left the Miltown pills on my vanity in our desperate hurry, I could have gotten him to calm down. More selfishly, I was craving one. Badly.

I forced a smile and then a high, sharp laugh. “Oh come on Danny.” I swung his limp arms through the darkened air. “Haven’t you heard? Everyone’s practicing magic these days.”

Even in all his terror, Danny managed to lift a shaking eyebrow at me.

“What?” I snapped, fanning imaginary flames, my arms aglow in the light of the flashing police car.

“I’ve seen chickens act better than you,” he said, his hands twitching along with mine.

“Oh really,” I drawled as two police officers stumbled out of their car and sprinted towards us. “You’ve seen chickens? We live in the suburbs, Danny. Where would you have seen chickens?”

“Dead chickens, then,” He managed before he was tackled to the ground in a tangle of limbs and grass stains. “At the supermarket.”

“Hands down,” the other officer yelled as he toed the line of the muddy circle, brandishing his pistol. “I can see them from here.” He pointed to the red stains that spread up our wrists. Every witch they had caught so far had blood on her hands. “You’ll burn for this, witch.”

“It’s just paint,” I said, choking on the smell of rust and the wild urge to laugh. “We haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just a prank.”

The officer gnashed his teeth as he handcuffed me. His bald spot shone like a second moon. “Pretending to practice witchcraft is also illegal,” he said as he dragged me into the back of his car. When he let go, he wiped his hands on his trousers.

Danny slammed into my side a moment later, his head bowed. The siren lights flickered across his slicked-back hair, painting him the color of a bruise. My heart panged, and I squeezed his hand in the dark.

The officer who was driving squinted at Danny in the streetlamp light. “Hey,” he said. “Aren’t you—” Danny nodded gravely. “Yes sir.”

Both officers swore and turned back to the road.

I let out a sigh of relief. No one would suspect a thing. …

March 12, 1957 “And then you were taken to jail?”

I glared at the man pacing in front of me. He was shaped like a cartoon arrow with bowed legs and dark hair gelled into a curly spike. A red tie lanced him from throat to gut, tempting me with an act I already wanted to commit.

“Yes.” I dug my nails into the mahogany witness stand; my arms ached with exhaustion from the night I’d spent locked in the makeshift jail cell across the hall.

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The witch trials had become garish imitations of real ones. Seven jury members sat to my left in folding chairs while the audience lined the pale green perimeter, clutching combs and pearls. There was no judge. The cold air smelled like ashes, serving as a reminder of the nine witches who had sat here before me. And burned shortly after.

I would make a nice, even tenth.

“How long were you detained, Christine?” Mr. McArthur asked, dabbing at his shiny forehead. Purple shadows hung below his electric blue eyes.

“Why are you asking me this?” My head sagged like overripe fruit ready to burst open, bloody and bright. “You already know the answers.” Beneath it all, I buried what I really wanted to say: you know me.

He shook his head, brushed me off with a shudder.

“You know, I doubt you’ll be invited over to dinner again, Mr. McArthur,” I said softly, itchy in the deathly silence. “This isn’t very neighborly of you.”

The audience hid their laughter behind pale hands.

Mr. McArthur scowled and leaned in towards me, draping his cologne over us both in a dense cloud of citrus and tobacco.

He’d worn the same one for all seven years I’d known him, and it was as familiar as a baby blanket. “Christine,” he breathed. “You do understand you’re on trial for witchcraft, don’t you?”

I balled my hands beneath the pleats of my skirt, gripped with loathing. “Perfectly.”

“And, if you are found guilty, you will be burnt at the stake?”

I inspected my pinky nail, trying to look as bored as possible.

The tremor in my jaw betrayed me, and his eyes flashed in triumph.

He held out a small prescription bottle filled with white Miltown pills. “Would you like one?” he asked. “You look a little anxious.”

Sweat pooled at my forehead, my knees, my hands. I do. I wanted one so badly it hurt to breathe. “No,” I managed. “No, I’m fine. I don’t want one.” I could feel my black hair slicking to my forehead, framing my face like a strange bathing cap.

“Oh, come on, Christine.” He shook the pills under my nose.

“Just have one. You look sick with nerves.”

My lips parted against my will, and he placed a pill on my tongue. I gulped it down greedily. The familiar taste of the tranquilizer coursed through my throat, my chest, making everything feel so wonderfully still.

Mr. McArthur resumed his pacing, tucking the bottle into his sport coat pocket. “Let’s try this again,” he said. “How long were you detained, Christine?”

I straightened my shoulders. “Less than an hour. My mother picked me up, remember?”

“What’s your mother’s name?”

“You know her name.”

He glared at me.

“Etsuko Roseland.” I tore my gaze away from him and stared out at the jury.

Seven sets of blank eyes were lined up like marbles, ready to be knocked.

“But people call her Elizabeth.”

The eyes brightened. They knew Elizabeth. Elizabeth was nice and smiled without showing her teeth when people looked at her strangely for being Japanese. Elizabeth was a model housewife, numb from head to toe.

It was too bad she couldn’t make it today.

“And this is the full story of what happened on that night?”

Mr. McArthur drawled. “The charges were dropped after your first arrest?”

“Yes.” “Because you bewitched them?”

“I didn’t have to do anything,” I said, squeezing my hands together to keep myself alert. “You let us go that night, remember, Mr. McArthur? You said you were happy to.”

The blood drained from his face as he realized his mistake.

The shred of familiarity he shared with me had tripped him up.

“Whatever VooDoo you used on me that night—” “No,” I said. “You let us go that night because you didn’t want your reputation stained by your son spending the night in jail.”

Mr. McArthur gnashed his teeth. “When you pulled your little prank, were you aware that your neighbor, Glenn Seavey, had been murdered less than an hour before?”

It was a ridiculous question. One he shouldn’t have even asked.

The lie came easily. “No”. …

November 10, 1956 On the day of Glenn Seavey’s funeral, Danny brought me flowers like we were going to prom. He wore a leather jacket over his funeral attire in the sort of rebellious fashion that made my mother shudder when she answered the door.

I wore a black dress with low heels and net gloves because my hands were still a little stained from the prank. Unfortunately, gloves weren’t in fashion for men, so Danny had scrubbed his hands until they were red for a different reason.

He smiled crookedly at me and batted his bloodshot eyes.

“You know, my mother always said we’d end up going out.”

“We already have,” I said crisply. “Remember that disastrous date in our freshman year?”

“Well, anyway,” Danny said, handing me the wilting supermarket lilies. “I heard Roger Caswell is pining after you again.”

“Really?” I tucked a lily behind my ear, pretending not to notice the dejected sag in his smile. He had the same expression every time he passed Roger in the halls at school.

Danny leaned in, pretending to adjust the flower in my hair.

“I can’t stop thinking about him,” he whispered. I could smell gin on his breath.

“Who? Roger? I mean, he’s alright I guess.” The joke felt cheap from the moment I said it, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I meant Glenn Seavey.”

I drew back, heart pounding. “Try harder. Unless you feel like watching me burn at the stake.”

As we walked out the door, I swallowed two Miltown pills from my purse and smiled as my heart stopped trying to beat itself to death.

We skimmed over the pearl-colored roads in Danny’s polished Chevrolet. The sky was bright with afternoon sun over the identical houses and shaved squares of lawn. Danny swerved a little but refused to let me drive.

At the cemetery, he opened the car door for me with shaking hands. I hardly felt the ground beneath me. My parents parked beside us.

“Just act normal,” I hissed, stumbling ahead of my mother who kept trying to adjust my hair.

The funeral was very quick. A few members of the church choir sang a haunting rendition of “Amazing Grace”, their voices swelling over the thick crowd. After a round of applause, several attendees placed lilies on Glenn’s shiny black casket. They looked over, expecting me to give up my battered bouquet, so I buried my head in the sickly petals and pretended not to see.

The only thing truly remarkable was how Alice Seavey never shed a single tear for her dead husband. She just stood beside the casket, clutching her pregnant belly and waving off condolences.

As Glenn was lowered into the ground, the rumors started swirling in earnest.

“It was witchcraft.” One woman declared. “Roy McArthur thinks so too.”

“Alice must have done it. Look at her,” said another with a sniff.

“But her hands aren’t red.” That was always a popular part of the story. Rumor had it that performing witchcraft could burst

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the veins in your hands and turn them the color of the communist flag. Another Red our town couldn’t stand.

“Maybe she washed the blood off.”

“I hope she burns for it.”

They were so quick to accuse, but it could just as easily be them on the stake. The witch we burnt last July had gone up in smoke only a week after she was accused. Not a shred of hard evidence was ever found. She just gave people the creeps during her trial.

“Poor Glenn was a war hero,” said a woman as she dabbed her dry eyes with a gloved hand.

“He was a raving lunatic,” my mother whispered to me. “He never got over that awful war.”

My father shot her a warning glance and pressed a pill between her waxy red lips.

I squeezed her hand at the sight of Danny’s father nearby.

“Hi there, Mr. McArthur,” I said with a sleepy smile.

Danny’s dad barely managed to sneer at me, consumed with watching Alice stand apart from the crowd, gripping her swollen belly. He had just been assigned as the lead interrogator of the Glenn Seavey murder, and the witch hunts had provided the perfect time for him to catapult his career from small town paralegal to suburban VooDoo attorney. One day, voters would swoon over his patriotic efforts to cleanse the town.

After the funeral, Danny and I went to the Drive-Thru. We ate pancakes, drank coke, and I took another Miltown pill in the parking lot.

As the edges of our skin turned orange against the setting sun, I licked crystallized maple syrup off my fingers and turned to Danny. He had finally settled down and his eyes were shut as he leaned back in the driver’s seat. “Hey Danny,” I whispered, “Promise you’ll never tell anyone about what happened that night?”

He only blinked at me and our fates were sealed. …

March 12, 1957 “What happened that night?”

“Mr. McArthur,” I said with a lazy sigh. “I’ve already told you. Danny and I didn’t want our schoolmates to know we’d been arrested for pulling a stupid prank.”

Mr. McArthur pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance.

My mouth twitched. “It’s okay if you’re not sure what to ask me now. I mean, you’ve known me since I was ten so I understand if this is all a bit much for you—” “Shut up.”

“But, just out of curiosity, what is the lucky number of girls to kill before you become the mayor?”

“Shut up!” He resumed his pacing, hands clamped over his ears. “What happened after Glenn Seavey’s funeral?”

I shrugged. “Well, Glenn’s widow, Alice, was run out of town by you and your work pals a few days after the funeral—” “Because she was a witch who used dark magic to murder her husband.” He raised an eyebrow at me as if he could prompt a confession. As if we were both in on some treacherous secret.

“She was innocent.”

“How do you know that?”

I jutted out my chin. “I just do.”

The audience hummed furiously.

Mr. McArthur shook his head and clawed at his pockets. He opened a different prescription bottle and crammed a Benzedrine pill into his mouth.

“Can I have one?” I asked, knowing perfectly well I couldn’t.

There was nothing more dangerous than a witch on stimulants.

He nearly foamed at the mouth as he stuffed the pill bottle back into his pocket. “If you want ten years in jail.”

“Mr. McArthur.” I fought to bat my heavy eyelashes. “I’m already set to burn at the stake. I would welcome ten years in jail.”

He stopped pacing and closed in like a bird of prey. “You stopped taking Miltown after Alice Seavey left town, didn’t you?”

I didn’t even flinch. “Did you see her face when you tore her front door down?”

“What sort of question is that?” He patted his pocket for a

comb and cursed when he couldn’t find one. His thinning hair was beginning to unravel and expose itself.

“Her eyes were empty.” I flicked back my hair with a wicked smile I could hardly feel. “She barely even noticed what was going on because she was so numb from Miltown.”

“So you admit it? You stopped taking Miltown after Alice left?”

I took my time finding Danny in the crowd. He was hunched over in his leather jacket with slicked-back hair and hollow cheeks. For a moment, he was indistinguishable from his father. They had the same ravenous gleam in their eyes as they awaited my answer.

My heart squeezed like a trigger. “Yes.” …

December 15, 1956 I was curled up on the bathroom floor, heart pounding out of my chest. Time was racing so fast it made me dizzy. My eyes glazed over until it all became a shallow blur.

I had been trying to quit Miltown for over a month, and it hadn’t gotten any easier.

I thought drawing a bath would help, so I turned on the faucet and lay on my back to watch the steam roll across the ceiling. My bathroom was beautiful, filled with pink tile and the smell of rose perfume. A lone cigarette was stubbed out in my ashtray.

When the tub was full, I climbed in wearing all of my school clothes. My skirt billowed to the top of the water while my nylons turned slick and dark. I stayed in the tub until the alarm went off for hand inspections. Then I climbed out and went outside soaking wet with lipstick dripping down my chin. My damp skin shivered in the biting December afternoon.

I tripped over the plastic flamingo on my front lawn, but the other women lined up on the street pretended not to see. We still tried to maintain a shred of dignity through all of this.

My mother and I stood on the edge of our front lawn with our toes gripping the final blades. Mother wore slippers, but I dug my bare feet into the dirt to pass the horrible time.

Danny stood across the street with his little sister to calm her. She was only four and clutched his hand with wide eyes. His mother hardly noticed either of them.

Next door, the Seaveys’ house was gutted, its entrails collected and sold after the police solved the case in record time.

Alice Seavey was guilty of murdering Glenn. Thank goodness, otherwise running her out of town might not have been such a great idea. She should have burnt, but the baby in her belly made everyone uneasy.

The inspector circling the street finally approached us, his gaze low. Mother and I held out our hands, and he gripped them tightly, searching for even a hint of a broken capillary. No one had ever seen it happen, but people swore that using magic made your hands bleed red with guilt. If a witch could manage the pain, she could burst hearts while they were still in their ribcage. Untangle veins and set them end to end. Commit the kind of atrocities people only witnessed on battlefields.

I tried not to wince as my skin erupted in goosebumps.

“Have you been taking Miltown regularly?” The inspector asked.

“Yes.” He handed me another bottle. I nearly uncapped it and swallowed all the pills in a single desperate gulp to stop the ringing in my ears. My hands shook as I tucked it away in my damp pocket.

After inspections, Danny followed me upstairs so I could change and fix my makeup before our Winter Dance. Neither of us really felt like going, but we both needed a distraction.

By the time we arrived, an artificial blizzard had struck the high school gym, ravaging it with white crepe paper and wrinkled party balloons. The air was thick with hairspray; if someone had lit a match in the middle of the dance floor, the whole place would have gone up in flames. In anticipation of this, teachers flanked the doorways, waiting for something to go wrong.

They didn’t have to wait long. I had barely danced to three songs before Danny got caught doing… something. He got beat up

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pretty badly by the boys in our class. Of course, the teachers just stood by and watched. In their eyes, the punishment fit the crime.

After that, I couldn’t handle all the noise anymore, so I took a handful of Miltowns in the girls’ bathroom and got a ride home with Roger Caswell.

I was barely conscious for days after the dance. The world swam in and out of existence. Roger’s lips on mine in the backseat of his car… the whites of Danny’s eyes as he passed us by, cradling his broken nose… a stray pill I found in my vanity drawer… music playing faintly in my bedroom… another pill chased by lukewarm coke… steam rolling and rolling and rolling across my bathroom tile…

Until I was sitting at the kitchen table watching Mother cook. She wore a full skirt and apron, and her black hair was peeled back in rollers. We had both taken a few pills that evening, so Mother was humming softly to herself as she stirred a pot on the stove.

That’s what made Miltown so popular in the beginning.

It ensured a peaceful transition from the workplace back to the kitchen. For a while, we took it willingly. After the war, we wanted the aprons, the gelatins, and the stability of the suburbs. We wanted peace.

But I never wanted to end up like my mother, who couldn’t notice the thin stream of drool trailing down her chin as she stirred and stirred and stirred.

Once my tongue unstuck itself from the roof of my mouth, I tried calling Danny a few times, but he never picked up.

It took weeks for me to build up the courage to try and quit Miltown again. …

March 12, 1957 “And I guess that brings us to today,” I said. “You already know what happened next.”

“Then enlighten everyone else,” Mr. McArthur said. His lips were powdery with Benzedrine.

“Oh, alright.” I turned to the jury with a lazy dip of my chin.

“Danny was tortured in the halls for months after the dance. I tried talking to him but he refused. He’d become a different person overnight.”

Mr. McArthur glanced at his son as if it had never occurred to him that Danny had changed. That he had come home with bruises, tears, and eventually girls.

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted for sport, Mr. McArthur,” I said softly, toying with the hem of my skirt. “You forget that you were a person before you were prey.”

The jury murmured amongst themselves. It sounded almost like laughter.

I shivered in the sterile room. “Last night, I was doing homework at the kitchen table. You know, the kitchen table you sat at a hundred times when my mother invited you over for dinner—” “That’s enough!”

“You broke down my door and arrested me for being a witch.” My stomach curdled at the memory. “You locked me in that room down the hall all night because Danny told you to, didn’t he?”

My voice was strange and detached. I already knew the answer. I’d known since the moment he walked into the room in a cloud of guilt thicker than his dad’s cologne.

Across the room, Danny shuddered.

Rare pride gleamed in Mr. McArthur’s eyes. “He did his civic duty to our town.”

“He told you I was a witch—” “You are.”

“That I quit Miltown to practice witchcraft—” “You did.”

“All so that people would forget what he had done at the dance.”

“What did Danny get caught doing at the Dance?” Mr. McArthur’s tone was soft now, quizzical. Danny never told him.

The story was on the tip of my tongue: There’s more than one kind of witch hunt.

Across the room, the blood drained from Danny’s face.

He had the same wild look in his eyes as at the dance when they

found him in the Janitor’s closet with that boy. The familiarity broke my heart.

I shook my head slightly, loathing myself. “No, I’ll leave that to him. We both know how he likes to tell stories.”

Mr. McArthur took out the Benzedrine bottle again and shoved a chalky tablet into his mouth with shaking hands. I paid close attention to which pocket he put the pills back into. “You know what else he told me?” His teeth chattered with artificial energy. A ticking bomb about to explode. “He told me that you killed Glenn Seavey with your witchcraft. Popped his brain like a party balloon.” Doubt flickered in his eyes, but he quickly blinked it away.

Oh. My stomach dropped as shoes scuffled across the room.

Danny tried to squirm his way out, but the doors were locked. He refused to meet my burning gaze.

“I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to believe that,” I said bitterly as Danny rattled the brass doorknobs. “Well—” He gave up and crumpled against the wall. His cheeks were damp, but his jaw was set; he didn’t regret what he had done. “I hope it was worth it, Danny.” A hot tear rolled down my cheek. “I hope—” “Stop embarrassing yourself, Christine, and tell me what happened that night.” Mr. McArthur interjected. “Before you pulled your little prank to cover your tracks.”

I finally understood his roundabout questions. He had been wearing me down.

“You’ll never believe me,” I sniffed, although it was hard to remember why it mattered so much. The walls were drifting apart, fizzling into a million particles until the audience was half-buried in pale green sand.

“Yes, I will, Christine.” His voice was brimming with false sincerity. “Tell me what really happened, and I promise I’ll believe you. I just want the truth.”

My breathing slowed against his beautiful little lie. I could picture him on television one day telling voters the exact same thing. “I didn’t kill him.”

Mr. McArthur grabbed my wrist and twisted it until it bruised. “Yes, you did, witch. Tell the truth.”

My hand sagged in his grip. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Then who did?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” My mouth split like a gash. “He did.” …

October 27, 1956 The night Glenn Seavey died, Danny and I were sprawled out on my bed listening to records. It wasn’t technically proper for us to be alone in my room at night, but Mother knew there was nothing to worry about. Danny and I never loved each other like that.

My room was pale pink, with fuzzy carpeting covered in magazines I never got around to putting away. The scissors I used to trim my bangs were still on my vanity table beside a vase of fake flowers and two perspiring bottles of coke. It was like living in a photograph.

A gunshot ripped through the comfortable silence and we both sat up.

I stood and peered out my bedroom window. A light was on at the Seaveys’ house, strangely burnt and crackling at the edges.

The awful silence forced us out onto the front lawn. Our eyes strained against the dark, searching for trouble we didn’t want to find.

When we got to his house, Glenn was on the floor with blood pooling out of his head. The gun was still in his hand. A glint of silver in all the bubbling gore.

After the war, he couldn’t go back to normal life in the suburbs no matter how hard he tried. Even the Benzedrine he took to keep himself from getting stuck in phantom battlefields wasn’t enough. Not when he was convinced he was still under attack.

Alice had passed out next to him with blood slicked down her hands from trying to staunch the bullet wound. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I could barely feel anything at all.

Danny splashed into the mess to find a pulse. When he didn’t, he flailed, splattering me with goo as he begged for help.

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I told him to get up before anyone saw us with blood on our hands. …

March 12, 1957 “Stop lying, Christine.”

“I’m not!” I fought to meet his gaze. “I’m telling the truth.

Please.” My voice broke. “Please, I want to go home.”

Mr. McArthur pressed a finger to his lips and turned to the jury. “Gentlemen,” he said mournfully, “she has to burn.”

I gripped the witness stand until my knuckles turned white and tried to fight against the horrible numbness that I had spent so many years enamored with.

The seven jury members turned to each other, concealing their decision behind pale hands. My stomach filled with dread as they simultaneously nodded and turned to Mr. McArthur. “She has to burn,” they agreed. Their voices blended like a coldhearted choir without a judge to speak for them. These trials didn’t need reason.

“No,” I begged, my heart screaming against the false calm the Miltown provided. “No! It wasn’t me. Please, you have to believe me. Didn’t you see the gunshot when you collected him? It wasn’t magic. I’m not a witch!”

Mr. McArthur was almost remorseful as he dragged me from the witness stand. He kept his gaze pinned to my shoes, but even those must have been a little too familiar. His breath hitched.

I waited until his gaze slipped away from me entirely, and I leapt. Without feeling, I clawed at his face, his eyes, his neck until blood bloomed under my fingernails. He doubled over, and I tore open his pockets.

Two pill bottles clattered across the mahogany floor.

We both dove, but I reached them first, curling around the one I wanted as the audience stampeded us with bloodlust in their eyes and invisible pitchforks at their sides. For once, Danny fit right in.

Pressed to the ground, I forced the pill bottle open and dumped its powdery contents down my throat. Then I crawled to my feet, waiting for the Miltown to work.

It took only a moment.

Amidst all the chaos and pain, as the suburbanites dragged me back down to the floor, the world went still. When the first match was struck, my heart barely ached. Although I thought they would have at least taken me outside like the others. They were getting frantic, sloppy.

Orange flames devoured the linoleum, filling the air with the acrid stench of burnt plastic until they reached my nylon stockings.

And I was engulfed.

Neva Ensminger

Novel Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

Cage the Devil Celia. In the many years since her youth, very few things have changed about Catherine Patterson, but if you saw her trapped behind the bars of the prison cell she’s lived in since she was twenty-three, you wouldn’t recognize her. She doesn’t look the way she does in all the documentaries they’ve made about her life.

She’s not visibly racked with guilt about all the horrific things she’s done like in that clip of her trial they play in every movie, nor is she the oblivious young woman she was when her star was still on the rise, just waiting for the right moment to hit. Instead, if you were to go visit her, as I have many times over the past year, you would find that she is smart, and somehow worldly even though in her entire life she’s never left the state of California. She still looks like a movie star, the kind of person who could command the attention of millions, had she not made some terrible decisions. And despite the fact that those choices, the ones she made when she was so young, too young to really know what was going on, will forever keep her behind bars, she doesn’t regret them.

There are some people who will tell you that Catherine Patterson is a monster, who murdered her ex-husband in a failed cult ritual for no other reason than because he wanted to help her, yet she would tell you she did what was necessary to survive. And I, despite much evidence to the contrary, believe her entirely.

This is her story as she told it to me.

Catherine. Long before she was out of other options, Catherine had William. She used to tell people that he was the most decent man she had ever met, not the most crowning achievement when you consider all the other men she’d known, but it’s true that he was a gentleman to his very end. He was so much older than her, but she didn’t care, he was always much nicer to her than all the boys she knew that were her own age.

They met when Catherine was just sixteen years old, when she was still going to school down the street from her parent’s house. She was walking home, and he was shooting some angstfilled movie nearby, one of those films where the men beat their wives, hate their jobs and never cry. She always hated those.

Catherine knew who he was from the moment she saw his face, as William often graced the cover of the flimsy, shiny magazines her mother wouldn’t let her buy at the drugstore.

She didn’t say anything, instead she fluffed her pin up curls and smoothed her pretty blue dress as she stared at the camera, hoping to attract his attention. It was a minute before he noticed her, they were in the middle of shooting a scene where the main character got fired from his job.

“Cut,” William yelled, when he finally saw Catherine twirling around in the corner of the scene. “You there,” he screamed, pointing towards her. “I think you just ruined my favorite shot of the day.”

Catherine looked up at him, feigning surprise. “Oh I’m so sorry,” she said, “It’s just that I’ve never seen anything like this on my way home before.”

William smiled back at her, and she knew in an instant that this was her way in. It might not be like it was in her beloved movies, where the guy meets the girl and they fall in love in a second, but it was something. She had never had ambition before but finally she knew what she wanted; every person in every house in every town in America was going to know her name. He might not have been her dream man, but he was a way into that dream, and at sixteen she couldn’t really tell the difference.

“Do you have somewhere you need to be,” he asked, “I could take you home, since I’m sure you don’t want to be caught up in all this hullabaloo.”

She shook her head, not wanting to seem too eager. “It’s really fine, my house is just a few-”

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“It’s the least I can do,” he said, “since we so rudely interrupted your walk home. I’ll even buy you a soda on the way.”

“Well, alright, if you insist.” She batted her eyelashes at him, every bit the demure girl she’d soon play in the movies. He did insist, buying her a root beer at the soda fountain around the corner, then walking her home. Not wanting to lose the biggest chance she had to become a part of the glamorous world of Hollywood, she asked him to walk her home from school again the next day.

“It’s just that I’ve so enjoyed your company and I’d be remiss if we never saw each other again,” she said.

He hastily agreed, for his part not wanting to lose his shot at the prettiest girl who’d shown any interest in him since his divorce.

William started walking Catherine home every day, sometimes taking her for a drive, though not into the city because that’s where all the photographs were. Catherine thought the whole thing was dreadfully boring, but never said anything to him about it. Why risk angering him when she could still lose it all, she thought. These meetings went on for months before William finally asked her on a proper date, and even then he just wanted to take her to the park. All he wanted was her company, he told Catherine, so she kept up the innocent teenage façade. That night she wore her favorite baby blue shirtwaist dress and the patent leather mary janes her father had given her for Christmas. Catherine had put her hair up in a ponytail, like she knew William liked, and used one of her mother’s rollers to curl her bangs. He met her on the corner of the street by her house at eight, carrying a bouquet of yellow roses, her favorite flower.

“These are for you,” he said, handing her the bouquet with one hand as he wrapped the other around her waist.

That sort of thing might have been incredibly attractive to Catherine if she’d met William in his younger years, but alas, he was nearly fifty when they first met and had two children who were around her age. But it was still a nice gesture, and he was rich and liked to listen to her talk, so she stuck around, always playing the long game. He proposed almost exactly six months after they first met, on her seventeenth birthday, in the same park where they’d had their first date. He’d invited her out after her curfew, which was a strict ten pm, as her parents didn’t approve of William and didn’t want Catherine seeing him too late at night. She’d had to sneak out of her room to meet him there, climbing out the window of her bedroom on the first floor.

That night, he didn’t meet her on the corner, instead she walked to the park alone, in the dark. When she finally found him, sitting on a bench by an artificial lake, he stood up, only to get down on one knee. He didn’t preface the question with anything, not a hello or how are you, he just asked.

“Catherine,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

She said yes, nearly crying, not because she was so happy, but because she had done it, she’d get her chance at stardom. The next morning, when Catherine told her parents, her mother did cry.

She told Catherine that she was selling herself out, abandoning any chance she’d ever have at happiness for money. What she didn’t know was that Catherine was happy, happier than she had ever been in her entire life, because she was getting what she wanted more than anything else. They got married the weekend after Catherine’s high school graduation, in the backyard of this house in the Hills. It was a small wedding, the only people in attendance were Catherine’s sister Mary, and William’s kids. Her parents refused to come.

Still, it was a beautiful ceremony, her in her white lace tea dress, her blonde hair up in a chignon, and him in his blue suit, his graying hair slicked back the way he did for movie premieres.

He vowed to be loyal and true, she vowed to be by his side until death parted them. It was sweet, not too emotional.

It was only after the wedding that Catherine started to feel attached to William. It wasn’t so much a romantic love, as it was that she cared for him as a friend, as she began to see all the delightful things he tried to keep hidden from the rest of the world. She loved that he liked to drink tea and read the newspaper to her before bed and to make the two of them breakfast in the mornings, even though she was the wife and ought to know how to cook. She found it endearing that he crooned jazz in the shower and forced her to watch the westerns he always refused to make. Even now that he’s long dead and she’s wasting away in prison, when Catherine Patterson thinks of her husband, she remembers those early days in their marriage, when he was gentle and kind and brave. She remembers that he protected her when she needed protecting, keeping her out of the tabloids, even when she was being purposefully reckless. They were friends then, but she was fairly certain that he knew she was using him and that he didn’t care. For a short while, they had a happy, albeit loveless, marriage. She was never a good housewife, but it didn’t matter at first, William was just happy to have her company. She was always pressuring him to let her go with him to parties, or along to a set, just to see what it would be like.

She never told him outright that she wanted to be in a movie, but he knew. William used to joke to his friends that that was what he got for having a young wife, because “she’s got enough moxie for the both of us.” Secretly, though he didn’t really care that Catherine didn’t like to cook or was uninterested in having children because he thought her ambition was charming.

Catherine, for her part, never lost sight of why she married William: to make it into the movies. She knew things with William were going to be rough from the start, as he wanted someone to take care of him, and she wanted a career, but she was willing to ignore that problem until the night she met James Miller. It was at the Chinese Theater, at a premiere for one of William’s movies, a gangster flick that James starred in. Catherine was wearing her nicest dress, a strapless purple evening gown that William bought for her on their honeymoon.

The two of them had had a big fight about whether or not Catherine would be allowed to attend the premiere. William didn’t want her to go, claiming “it’s not a woman’s movie.” But she won out in the end, he could never say no to her, if she begged enough. Catherine had left the movie and gone outside to the front of the theater halfway through. William had been right after all, as he usually was, that the movie was too much for her delicate feminine sensibilities. She noticed James Miller smoking a cigarette outside the entrance of the theater, in front of the paparazzi William had trained her to abhor.

To her, he looked obsessively cool, like he was trying too hard to look young, with his hair gelled up and his leather jacket and ripped jeans. It annoyed her, but she walked up to him anyways and tried to pull the cigarette away from his face, making the first and most famous picture of the two of them to grace the cover of a tabloid.

“Let me take a drag,” she said, with very little conviction.

She knew who he was when she approached him and was quite frightened of his reputation as a hard ass.

He shook his head at her, staring at her like she was the child she was trying so hard not to be anymore. “Shouldn’t you be inside,” he said, “That’s where all the action is.”

Catherine shrugged. “It’s not my movie.”

She leaned in closer to his face, and pulled at his cigarette again. This time he let it go. “I suppose that’s true,” he said, “And it’s boring as hell anyways. Definitely not my best work.”

She laughed, giggled really. “Don’t tell my husband that.”

“It’ll be our little secret,” James said, smiling his magazine smile, the one that had all the girls falling all over him. He knew what he was doing to her, and she let him, because he was just that good at it. He leaned in, taking the cigarette back. “Can I tell you something?” She nodded. He could have told her anything at that moment and she wouldn’t have minded. He blew a ring of smoke, then bent down to talk into her ear. “I know what you want,” he said, “And I want it for you too.”

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Catherine looked up at him in surprise. “And what is it,” she said, “that you think I want?”

But he didn’t answer her, instead smashing his lips against hers. It wasn’t romantic at all, but she didn’t protest, though she wanted to, because that would not have been polite. Instead, Catherine kissed him back, even though it was sort of vaguely uncomfortable. She wanted so badly for him to like her, she would have done anything for his attention. When she finally got him to pull away, he laughed. “I think you and I could be very helpful to one another,” he’d said as she turned to go back inside the theater.

She was so clueless that she had no idea what he meant, if she had she would have walked away and never come back.

Celia. James Miller would say of their meeting in a 1974 interview, “I think I saw that she had the potential for something big, for what I didn’t know, but she mesmerized me and I wanted to do anything I could for her.” The interviewer asked if he thought he knew then what her potential was. He answered: “I think I saw that she had the ability to kill.”

Catherine had never heard of this interview, but when I read it to her, she scoffed. She thought it was preposterous that James Miller or anyone else could see that she had it in her to kill somebody. “He couldn’t have known I could do it,” she said, “Because I didn’t even know that myself.” She does admit, though, that she too became mesmerized the night she met James Miller.

Not by him, but by what he was offering her: a chance at the life she had always dreamed of. And she jumped at that chance.

Catherine has told me many times that she believes that in another life where she didn’t go to that movie, she could have been the biggest star in the world. She had the face, the talent, the desire, she says. She would have found another way to get in the movies.

She knows that this much is important to her story: Catherine Patterson did not need James Miller to live her dreams. But he came along first, and she liked him and she would have done whatever he said. What happened between Catherine and James Miller after that night at the theater, I’m not entirely sure. We’ve talked about many things, Catherine and I, but what exactly she had to do to land her first role in a movie has always been a blank spot.

What I do know is this: somehow, despite the many obstacles she had to go through to even make it to an audition, Catherine Patterson got cast in her first movie in the summer of 1958.

Catherine. When she told William about the part, he was shocked. “How’d you even get a part,” he’d asked, “You don’t go anywhere, you don’t do anything.” This was true, no matter how much Catherine hated to admit it. She didn’t have many friends, except for James, and he barely counted; she never left the house except to accompany William to parties, and even then she only got to talk to the wives of fancy Hollywood men, who all hated her because they’d liked William’s ex-wife, Mina, better.

She was isolated from the world she so badly wanted to be a part of. So, when she mentioned to William that she had befriended James Miller, and that he had gotten her a part in the screen adaptation of some cheesy French romance novel, he was not only surprised, he was so furious, he refused to let her take the part. He told Catherine that it was improper, that she shouldn’t have involved another man in their business. If she wanted to be in movies that badly, she should have gone through him first.

Catherine thought this was ridiculous. She had expressed to William, several times, in no uncertain terms, exactly what she wanted, and he had always ignored her. It was the whole reason she had jumped at James’ offer to help her, as William had never encouraged her ambition.

But she didn’t tell him this. Instead she said, “Fine. If you won’t let me go, I’ll just call James and he’ll pick me up.” It wasn’t an empty threat. When the time came and William still refused to let her go, she phoned James.

“I cannot believe him,” James said on the phone, “What kind of small man doesn’t want his wife to have her own dreams?”

He was always saying things like that to her. She found it encouraging. At that time, James Miller also lived in the Hills just

a couple minutes drive from William’s place. He picked Catherine up in his BMW Cabriolet, and they argued for a minute because it was topless and she was worried it would mess up her hair, which she had hot-ironed that morning. But in the end he won, and they drove downtown to a tiny lot where the movie was shooting. James had walked Catherine halfway to the director’s trailer to pick up her script before they were stopped by a production assistant.

“Excuse me sir,” he said, “This is a closed set, only actors and crew are allowed.”

‘Don’t worry about it kid,” James said, “I’m her manager and I just need to approve the final script before she can begin filming.”

It was the first time he had referred to himself as her manager, and she was horrified. She thought he was doing this as a favor for her, friend to friend, saying he was her manager when they hadn’t even discussed it was overbearing, and rather rude.

She didn’t tell him this, instead just said that he didn’t have to come in with her. “I’m ready for this,” she said.

“I know you are, hon,” he said, but came in anyways.

Celia. The first time I went to visit Catherine Patterson, the guard on duty told me she probably wouldn’t want to see me. Apparently, all sorts of people wanted to speak to Catherine all the time— mostly news reporters wanting an exclusive, but occasionally a lawyer or an old friend would come and try to convince her to consider applying for parole. She rarely saw anyone, he said, so I shouldn’t expect to be any different.

“Who are you anyway,” he’d asked me. “She definitely won’t want to see you unless you’re somebody.” I gave him my name and he looked at me funny.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll give it a try, but no promises on my end.”

The guard went through the door of the visiting room where I had been waiting, back into what I assumed must be the main area of the prison. After a few minutes, he came back, with an older woman in tow.

“She’ll see you now,” he told me. “She has an hour before her shift at the cafeteria.”

The woman walked up to me and stuck her hand out to shake mine. “I’m Catherine,” she said.

“I’m Celia,” I replied. “But you already knew that.”

She nodded, like she was recalling a memory from long ago, and not just minutes prior when the guard had told her who was here to see her. “I did.” She smiled at me, and I could see in her face just a hint of the woman she used to be. “Why don’t you sit down and we can talk about why you’re here.”

“I’d like that.” I sat in the metal chair, and reached over into my tote bag to pull out my notebook and a pen.

She sat down too. “So,” Catherine said, “I take it you’re not a reporter.”

I shook my head. “No. I’m not.”

“But you are here to interview me.”

I shook my head again, harder this time. “No. I’m just here to talk, and to learn.”

“To learn?” Catherine looked at me, studying my face like she knew me but couldn’t remember how. “People don’t come to me to learn. They want something they can sell.”

I assured her that I wasn’t interested in money, hers or anyone else’s. “Like I said, I just want to understand.”

“That’s rather an unusual quest you have there, to understand. Many people nowadays don’t even try.” She looked me dead in the eye. “I’m not sure there’s anything else I have to say, not to you, not to the world, not to anyone.” She stood up, and went back inside the prison.

At first I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t talk to me, I thought maybe I had done something to offend her. But then I realized that Catherine Patterson has spent her whole life explaining herself, to reporters, to juries, to parole boards, to everyone and anyone she’s come across. But I also couldn’t give up that easily. So I came back the next week, and the week after that, and every week after that until finally she agreed to sit down and just talk.

Catherine. Catherine used to tell reporters who came to visit her in jail that she thought she might have been a better person,

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lived a better life, if she had been satisfied with the tangential fame she had achieved by marrying William. If it had been enough for her to appear in magazines as “William Patterson and wife,” she might not have taken such extreme measures. As she said in her trial, she has no regrets, but if she did one would certainly be that nothing was ever enough for her. Not being beautiful, not being married to a rich man with a nice house, and, in the end, not even being in movies. She thought while shooting that first movie, the French one where she played the mistress of the main character’s husband, that something would click, that eventually one day she’d walk onto set and feel fulfilled. But she never did. It was like there was a void in her, and even when all the attention was on her, she still didn’t feel whole. She was so confused in those days, waiting for something in her life to make sense. She had thought that her greatest joy in life would be being in front of the cameras, but it wasn’t.

William never faulted her for it, though he was perpetually frustrated with the fact that she couldn’t figure out what she wanted. One minute, she would tell him that she couldn’t be a housewife because she wanted to be the most famous woman in the world, and the next she was crying that it was never going to be enough. All William wanted was to support her, but things were falling apart and he couldn’t figure out why. He knew that it must be James Miller’s fault for intruding in their marriage. He and James had never really gotten along. William could be harsh when he was directing and James was one of those actors who wanted to control everything. They respected each other, and continued to work together, but when James started managing Catherine’s career they began to despise one another.

It didn’t seem like that big of a deal to Catherine, sure she was miserable, but she would have been miserable if she’d had to stay at home for the rest of her life to have babies and take care of William. She thought she could keep those two parts of her life separate, but what she didn’t know is that in a business like the movies everything comes at a price.

She was naive and it wasn’t too long after that first movie started shooting that James Miller came to collect. William wasn’t home that night, he had gone to San Francisco to visit his son.

Catherine was trying to relax by reading one of her favorite books, when James knocked on the door. She answered it right away, opening the door to see James all dressed up in a sport coat and jeans that weren’t ripped. She laughed at him, he never looked that put together.

“Well, well, well, Mr. Miller,” she said, smiling, “What can I do for you this fine evening?” He flashed her his magazine smile.

“I was thinking we might try something,” he said, like what he was about to propose was nothing out of the ordinary.

“What?” She was willing to try almost anything, if it meant she might feel better.

“Well, I was thinking about the best way to grow your reputation,” he said, leaning against the doorframe, “You know, since you’re still feeling uneasy about the movie.”

“Uh huh.” Catherine squinted at him, not catching onto what he meant. “Why don’t you come in and we can talk about it.”

He shook his head. “Here’s the thing, in order for this to happen, well-” He paused, looking rather nervous. He started again, trying a new tact. “See there’s this club downtown, and I was thinking-” “I can’t do that.” She knew exactly where he meant, and that if she went, William would never let her anywhere near James Miller ever again and she didn’t want that. She still had a life to live, movies to make, and people to charm. No matter how upset she was right now, she was not going back to being a housewife, especially not for going out with a man who wasn’t her husband.

“William would kill me.”

“He won’t,” James insisted. “And even if he does, I promise to come to your funeral.” He laughed, but Catherine didn’t think it was funny. “Come on, honey, he’s not even here, it’ll be a good time.

And besides, we need the publicity.”

She still had doubts. The kind of people who went out to clubs were celebrities for sure, and they did always look like they were having a good time, but they were the worst kind of people.

Catherine didn’t want to ruin her career before it had even begun, but she also knew she couldn’t afford to say no to James. So she didn’t tell him no, that she thought it was a bad idea.

Instead she hastily agreed.

“That’s a good girl,” he said, “Besides, how much trouble can you get in with me there?”

He advised her to change, according to James her favorite house dress would only attract stares, and not in a good way. Still, nothing she had in the house was good enough for him, apparently all the beautiful clothes William had bought for her were too conservative for the clubs.

“I cannot believe that you don’t have any party clothes,” James said as he went through Catherine’s closet, “It’s such a shame.

She thought, not for the first time, that he was being ridiculous. Catherine had plenty of nice clothes and it wasn’t like what he was wearing was that much better than anything she had. But he was a man, so she supposed the rules might be a little different for him. It took him almost an hour to pick the least objectionable outfit, a dark purple dress with a bustier and a taffeta skirt, and then at least another forty-five minutes for her to do her hair up into a French twist. By the time they were finally out the door it was nearly midnight. They got into his car, and James drove them down to the Strip. The car ride was silent except for James’ humming. She was nervous, she had never been to a nightclub before. She knew William went to them sometimes, but he never took her, saying they were no place for a lady. Clearly, James Miller did not share this belief.

As he handed his keys off to the valet, James opened the door for Catherine “Here we are.”

The street was packed with people, Hollywood wannabes and stars alike, cameras flashing in all directions, capturing pictures of people at their worst.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked him.

He hesitated for just a moment, then flashed her his biggest smile. “Yes, dear, I think it is.”

He grabbed her arm, pushing past all the people, and into a club with neon palm trees on its sign.

“This is the best one,” James said.

Even from the entrance, Catherine could tell she was not going to be a fan of this place. The inside seemed so much smaller than its impressive outside. The black walls and strobing lights seemed to be closing in on her. It reeked of body odor and smoke.

She was overwhelmed, a little anxious, and mostly wanted to get the hell out of there. “Remind me why we’re here again,” she said to James, but he was nowhere to be found. Catherine became increasingly worried, sweating off her makeup and through her pretty dress. She pushed through the crowd.

“James,” she shouted, “James, I want to go home.” Still she couldn’t find him. She turned to one of the women dancing next to her. Catherine said loudly, fighting to be heard above the rock music, “I came with a guy, have you seen him around?”

“No, sorry,” the girl said. Catherine started to walk away. “Hey you!” Catherine turned back around. “You look like you’re missing something.” Catherine must have looked shocked, it was just that this random girl could see right into her soul. The girl shouted at her again, “You should come and meet some of my sisters, they’re really good at helping people find their missing piece.” Catherine considered it for a minute, but decided that this girl was probably just drunk, and went back to searching for James. When she finally found him, he was in the opposite corner of the club, holding two cups of something and a packet of what looked like aspirin.

“James, I want to go home.”

“Just try this first,” he said, “You’ll have more fun.” She took one of the tablets and downed it with some of the liquid. James was right, she thought, though she hated to admit it. They danced until sunrise, and she didn’t even object when he kissed her in front of all the cameras. The next day their picture was in all the tabloids. The headlines read: “James’ New Beau?” William was so furious when he saw them, he called from San Francisco.

“How could you think it was a good idea to go out late at night with that man,” he yelled on the phone. “Do you know how

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worried I was when I saw this on the newsstand? He’s fucking sticking his tongue down your throat. I thought it couldn’t be because you’d never be that stupid. But there it is in black and white, Catherine Patterson caught kissing James Miller on the Sunset Strip last night. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“James thought it was a good idea,” Catherine whispered into the phone.

“Oh James thought it was a good idea. That makes it okay!

Why in hell would you listen to James Miller, Catherine? I’m telling you he’s bad news, for you and for me.”

He was right and Catherine knew it. But she ignored him and her gut feeling because she was still chasing after impossible highs. It would be years before she understood the full ramifications of the choice she made that night, to ignore William’s sound advice. She could have had it all, had she looked around for a minute to see all the things colliding all around her.

But she didn’t, instead, she said, “fuck you,” and hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

Celia. When I was thirteen, my mother died in a drunk driving accident, and my father, being the drifter that he was, sent me to live with my former starlet turned recluse grandmother.

She lived in a sprawling apartment in a suburb of Los Angeles that she still paid for using the generous alimony checks from my grandfather, even though he’d been dead eleven years.

My grandmother, lovely as she was, was entirely unsuited to have someone depending on her. She hated children, and had only had them with my grandfather in the hopes that children would make him stay even if a wedding ring would not. She never treated me like a child, though, not even the first time I met her.

The day I moved in with her, the social worker who was in charge of my case dropped me off at the front door.

“Remember,” the woman told me, “your grandmother is doing us all a favor by taking you in. Try your best not to upset her.” She rang the doorbell, and my grandmother opened the door dressed in a white robe with a fur collar. Her hair was crimped and her eyes were wide as she took in the scene before her.

“Hmm,” she said. “How old are you again, girl?”

The social worker glanced at me, as I said, “Thirteen.”

My grandmother considered this for a second, blocking the entrance to the apartment as though she were still thinking about whether or not she really wanted to let me in. “I suppose thirteen’s grown enough,” she said, unblocking the door, “though, you’ll have to learn how to smoke.”

Catherine. By the time her first movie came out, William had finally come around to the idea of Catherine having a career.

The whole fuss he made about James Miller butting into their lives and arranging her schedule and generally making everyone miserable had subsided after Catherine appeared to become more used to the spotlight. Catherine figured William just needed to show off his strength, and once both she and James had cowered properly, he’d become more pleasant about the whole ordeal. She thought that maybe he thought if he just gave her this one thing, she’d settle down eventually and be the wife he thought he was getting when he married her.

It was another several months before William realized the flaw in this plan, and he’d come to regret it. But for the time being he was perfectly happy to let Catherine have her silly little career making chick flicks and partying on the Strip. After all, how much trouble could she really get in with James Miller around? As long as she came home at the end of the night, safe and relatively sober, Catherine could have gone to the moon for all William cared. And she did come home, and to her that felt like she was doing enough for their marriage. She was going through the motions of being a wife, but her heart just wasn’t in it anymore, not that it had ever been truly invested. Things were falling apart, and William could see it, James Miller could see it, and the rest of the world, had they been paying attention, could have seen it, but to Catherine everything was fine; she couldn’t have tried harder if she wanted to, and she didn’t want to. One of her and William’s last happy

moments together was when her first movie came out, the one about the French aristocrats. William hadn’t been too happy when he’d found out what the part was, he thought Catherine shouldn’t take jobs where she had to play disreputable women, but once he’d warmed up to it he decided to take her to the premiere instead of letting her go with James.

He’d even bought her a dress, a red column gown, with matching shoes, and let her pick out his tie. They went to dinner in the Hills at an Italian restaurant that was all the rage, and even though William was generally opposed to her drinking, he bought them a bottle of champagne.

“To my lovely wife,” he toasted her, “And all the great things I’m sure we’ll do together.”

Catherine was sure he was talking about starting a family, but ignored it. It was a nice sentiment at least, she thought, though to her it is sort of ironic now, considering the greatest thing she ever did in life was kill him.

“And to you,” she said, “my wonderful husband, for your eternal support and devotion. Thank you for everything.”

They clinked glasses. Catherine downed her champagne in one gulp and immediately poured herself another. She would come to regret this, as after dinner they got in the limousine and her stomach began to churn. Her face was flushed and she was sweating off the makeup she had painstakingly done at home as she tapped her heels against the floor of the car. She was a wreck, but William was real sweet to her about it.

“Now, honey,” he said, “If you keep doing that, you’re gonna break one of those new shoes, and neither of us wants that.”

She nodded but didn’t stop until he placed his hand on her thigh.

He looked her dead in the eye. “I’m serious. I’m sure you made a wonderful movie, and now all you gotta do is go out there and tell everybody how much you loved making it.”

She glanced out the window. “And what if they hate it?”

“They won’t,” William said, “because I’m sure it’s impossible to hate anything you do.” He smiled at Catherine and took one of her hands with both of his, and all the tension in the stuffy limousine faded away. For a minute, she forgot all the reasons she had been so opposed to just being his wife. In that moment, it felt like the most natural thing in the world that she should give up everything she had worked so hard for, because being half in love with him was enough. Even though she knew that she couldn’t give her dreams up, that James Miller wouldn’t let her even if she tried, she berated herself for not even being satisfied, for not wanting that life.

She almost said something, almost told William that she wanted to go home, to quit, but before she could even fully register the calm that had washed over her, the car pulled up to the theater and all her ambition and anxiety came flooding back.

As they stepped out of the car, William took Catherine’s arm, and cameras flashed and people called her name from all directions.

“Catherine! Look this way!” they called. “Catherine! Just one picture of you and your husband honey, just one.”

“Just smile,” William whispered in her ear. “That’s really all they want.”

She did smile. She smiled her way into the theater. She smiled through the movie, even the part where her character died.

She smiled at all the cameras taking her picture as she and William left the theater and got back in the car and all the way home. She smiled as William kissed her cheek and sang her praises as he got ready for bed. She smiled as she took off William’s dress and put on one that James had bought her and as the doorbell rang and she opened it to find James standing on her porch.

And Catherine smiled when he asked if she was ready to go. She smiled and said, “Only if you are.”

Celia. The first time Catherine let me in to talk to her after the first visit was nearly six months later. I had driven from my place in the city to the federal prison in Victorville. When I got there, the same guard was on duty as the first time I visited Catherine.

“You’re here to see Patterson, right?” he asked.

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I nodded. “Yep.” “And she knows you’re coming?” The guard looked skeptical, like he wasn’t entirely certain that I knew who I was there to see.

“Well, she better,” I said. The guard looked at me funny.

“I’ve been coming here every Wednesday for half a year. Not like it matters, she never wants to talk to me.”

“Man, you’re persistent,” he said. “I dig it.”

I smiled uncomfortably, crossing my arms and turning half away from him.

“I’ll go check on her for you.” He went through the door, then returned a few minutes later with Catherine in tow. “Looks like she wants to talk to you after all.” He left.

Catherine walked over to me, her orange jumpsuit swishing as she did. “You came back,” she said.

“Several times.” I was perplexed as to why she was suddenly interested in talking to me.

She sat down, and I did the same. “So tell me again why you’re here.”

“I wanted to talk to you, to understand a little bit,” I said.

“To understand what though?” she pressed. “Why is it that you feel it is necessary to talk to me, when you could just as easily read a book, or watch one of those horrid movies they’ve made about me? What is it that you feel is missing?”

This outburst puzzled me. Catherine Patterson has had to justify her decisions to the world for years, what was one more person? “I’m not sure,” I said.

Her eyebrows furrowed. “You’re not sure?”

“No.” I paused. “I guess I’d just like to hear it from you.”

She nodded, “What would you most like to know?”

Catherine. After that first premiere, Catherine felt everything was going her way. Her marriage felt somewhat legitimate, even if she wasn’t the wife William was pushing her to be; she was getting bigger and better jobs and was even lined up to star in a romantic comedy about an heiress who falls in love with a journalist. James had mostly left her alone to deal with her own affairs, except for when he decided she needed to go out and get her name in the press, and even then she was mostly having a good time.

She and James were out on the Strip quite a lot in those days, and for a while things were good. She had learned to like the crowded bars and the neon lights of the dance clubs. She did like to dance, after all, so it wasn’t too bad, and there were almost always cameras to take pictures for the next day’s papers, which was what James wanted since according to him there was no such thing as bad publicity.

This didn’t make sense to Catherine, but she figured he knew best. After a while though, the whole scene had started feeling less like an adventure, and more like a chore that had to be done. The first night that it was no longer fun and games for Catherine, James had shown up at her house late, only a few hours before the clubs were going to close. She didn’t want to go out, she had had a long day of shooting and was not in the mood to be social, but James dragged her out anyways.

The second they got to the club, he immediately ditched her to talk to some girl he had met the last time they had been out and left Catherine standing in the dingy corner of the club for over an hour. She tried to talk to the bartender, but he told her that if she wasn’t going to order anything, she was wasting his time. Then she’d approached a group of girls, but they kept rambling on about inviting her to an initiation session where she could meet their mother, so she gave up on them.

Eventually, James wandered back over with a drink in one hand and a few pills in the other. He took a sip, swallowing the pills. Then he looked over at Catherine. “Wanna sip?”

She shook her head. “I’ll pass.”

He frowned at her. “You know, you don’t look like you’re having any fun.”

Catherine couldn’t believe this, first he dragged her out, then complained that she wasn’t having a good time. “Well, I’m not,” she said, “So good.”

James rolled his eyes at her, like she was a child who couldn’t possibly understand him. “It’s not supposed to be fun, Catherine.”

She crossed her arms. “If I’m not supposed to be having fun, why are we here?”

“We’re here for the publicity. We want you to seem young and fun, and not like a stuck up brat who’s married to an old geezer.” He stared at her for a minute, puzzled, then said, “You really need to have a drink.”

“I already told you, I don’t want a drink.”

He scoffed. “Too bad. I’m going to go get you a drink, go dance or something.” He pushed Catherine in that general direction of the dance floor. “I’ll be right back.”

She went out to the dance floor, trying to look pleasant and not tired and pissed off like she actually was. She danced for a little while with some guy she had seen in one of William’s movies, but figured he’d probably report back to her husband so she stopped. She danced some more with another guy, but James still hadn’t come back.

Finally, she heard his voice calling out over the crowd.

“Kitty!” he screamed, the name he only used for her when he was drunk out of his mind. “Kitty, come over here!”

Catherine followed his voice to the back of the club.

“Kitty, there’s someone I want you to meet,” James said when she found him. It was one of the girls from the group.

Catherine didn’t acknowledge the girl. “Look,” she said, “I want to go home now, so either you take me or I’ll walk.” She turned around fast.

“No!” He grabbed her arm. “Don’t walk. We can go now. Just let me go get the car.”

Catherine faced him. “James,” she said, “you shouldn’t be driving.”

He looked her in the eye. When he was drunk, his eyes looked like a puppy dog’s. Catherine found it hard to resist. “I’m truly fine, Kitty,” he said, “Never been better, actually.”

Catherine didn’t believe him, she thought he was ridiculous to think that he could drive in his inebriated state. She didn’t want to fight him on it, but she also didn’t want to die because of his reckless behavior.

“Really James,” she said, “We can just call a cab. We’ll come get your car in the morning.”

James shook his head and grabbed her arm again, pulling her towards the exit. “No cabs,” he said.

Catherine sighed. “What if I drive instead?” she asked.

“You don’t have a license.” James said, slurring his words.

“That’s not safe.”

“Fine, then” she said. “Drive. But see if I care if you get us both killed.”

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Alice Estrada

Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

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El campo Acrylic paint on paper 2021

Feiye Fan

Design Arts Canyon Crest Academy San Diego, CA

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Curvature Fabric paint, white muslin, black zipper, thread, and cotton stuffing 2020

Penelope Fisher

Photography Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH

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Familial Monsters Silver gelatin print 2020

Milo Ryan Fleming

Design Arts Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists Saint Paul, MN

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Short Sleeve Patchwork Embroidered Button Up Cotton and linen napkins, cotton fabric, buttons and thread 2020

Grace Flinchbaugh

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Visual Arts Lovejoy High School Lucas, TX

Mobile Graphite on watercolor paper, glass beading strung on thread and hung on metal rods and planning page 2021

Janelle Frazier

Photography Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Dallas, TX

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Same Street 35mm film 2019

Anji Friedbauer

Visual Arts Buckingham Browne & Nichols School Cambridge, MA

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Hospital Under Lamp (1) Graphite and oil paint 2020

Joseph Gamble

Visual Arts The Alabama School of Fine Arts Birmingham, AL

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Natural Growth 5 Maple, poplar, oak, hickory and alder saplings 2021

Jenna Garcia

Visual Arts Lovejoy High School Lucas, TX

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Wildlife Book Hand-stitched Stonehenge paper and fabric, brush pen and Micron 2021

Melani Garcia

Creative Nonfiction Phillips Academy Andover, MA

To Be Honey Some of my neighbors claim that the fire started when a drunk knocked over one of those dollar store Jesus candles, others whisper that it started from “la marijuana de Socrates.” The firefighters say that it was an overloaded extension cord. Nobody believes this version. All I can remember were the drowned out screams of my neighbors as the black smoke quickly took over their lungs. A five-year-old, her grandma, and the darkest hallway I’ll ever see.

I didn’t see the smoke at first, I felt it. It’s presence hugged me like a warm, but deadly blanket. The coward had been waiting for hours­—no, years and had been secretly observing and taking notes. It sat in the background-chuckling and eating popcornplaying the same movies over and over again for the short glory of sending shivers throughout my body.

When I finally stumbled out of bed I didn’t know if it was my asthma, COVID symptoms coming back or the nightmares.

In between coughs and a hazy delirium I dragged my body to the front door. The soot bled into the apartment and seeped into my skin, like an uninvited guest that had become a part of me.

A parasitic relationship. A trauma that comes back to haunt my block when it’s bored.

My parents took the longest to get out. They moved with the same leisure as that spoonful of honey stuck to the neck of a jar, acting as if the fire was a part of their nightly routine.

Legal documents, money, and phones were all stuffed into bags.

I stared at the doodles my sister and I had written over the years in the closet my father had built from the leftover wood at Home Depot. I tried burning the words into my mind, but it was all in vain because by then they had disappeared into a blob of suffocating air.

I screamed, but my voice was absorbed by the gray clouds.

I opened the window and let the cool September air bring me back.

Looking down at the garbage stained cement floor from the 6th floor, I remembered how at Andover you were forced to jump off of the railings at Borden to pass the PE requirement. Even though I had a helmet, a belt, and an instructor who was helping me, I hated the fact that I didn’t have control over my own body. It was a teacher who had to make sure I didn’t fall and crack my head open.

I thought of the people who put themselves in situations like these (roller coasters, bungee jumping) on purpose and I shuddered at the thought of paying to test my own limits. Paying for a moment of fear. If you want that then come live at my building for a week.

As I stood on the edge of my fire escape, I looked down at my light blue crocs that I had thrown on in a moment of shock. I prayed to God that these shoes wouldn’t kill me on my way down the dilapidated, narrow steps. I couldn’t feel my legs, or the glass that had cut into the sides of my legs, which explains how I became honey in a matter of minutes.

My parents kept shape-shifting from ghosts to humans.

Sunken eyes, slow footsteps, and I began to see that without my parents’ laughs and humor, they were left exhausted, lost souls who could no longer see in the smoke. They kept on crossing the fine line between the living and the dead. It was strange to see how familiar they were with both worlds, as if they had been living in them for a while now. Nevertheless, they made it out with worn out hands and feet that managed to cling on to the last angel hair of life.

The screams of help broke the spell.

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I think the soot had penetrated into my body so deep that I could feel it tightening around my bones.

I tripped down the dilapidated steps and held onto the red bricks. Window glass and falling steps flew right by my head. I stared at the concrete from the 5th floor.

My neighbor Lidia, who worked as a housekeeper, like my mother, was crying and hyperventilating in confusion. I could feel the guilt as she screamed that the grandma and Luna had been calling for help, but they couldn’t do anything without suffocating even more.

My parents snapped out of their dream-like state. My father had woken up just in time to catch Yessenia who had fallen with her dog.

I continued to drag my legs one by one down the staircases. I was glad it was still dark, and that I didn’t have my glasses on because I would’ve definitely fallen.

At the end, as we silently dragged our bodies back into our smoky apartments, with stabbing pieces of glass that had penetrated our sandals and made those annoying chalk against a blackboard sounds I hate. The halls were full of this black and brown liquid that looked like dirty rainwater. The last man from apartment 2 was dragged out in a wheelchair. It was the man who I always held the door for, impatiently, because his footsteps were like watching a slow motion movie. He could no longer walk after his wife died.

There were never any alarms in our hallways. Not on the first, or second, or third and absolutely not on the 6th floor. The landlords hadn’t bothered to get any because to them, we were just undocumented, Latinos, Black, and immigrants. Our existence was as important to them as the sign DO NOT LEAVE PACKAGES in the hallway was to the mailman. They will continue to leave the packages in that small mailroom, and the neighbors will continue to steal the items.

My alarm was the smell of smoke, and the screams of my neighbors, which hid behind every long, jagged, dark scar on the halls of my building. It was like several lightning bolts had hit my building and left their mark. I have to look down and follow my steps one by one. I have white shoes on, and I locked the door, and I have my metrocard, and I need to text my sister back. I make it downstairs, open the door and I’m outside. Where I feel safer.

In the streets where the air diffuses the smoke, until all I can smell are the coppery smell of pennies mixed in with a little bit of marijuana and falling leaves.

I think my landlords made a deal with an evil spirit because something is yanking and pulling them in all the wrong directions.

Their hopes and dreams are unnatural. They’re filled with visions of prosperity and they play and put our life on the line. They sacrifice us in the name of “business” and can’t look at us anymore. The selfishness is there. The guilt is there. But they don’t care. And they hate it when we complain so they put up ICE posters to shut us up. To tame us and the generations after us. They make sure that we keep on looking down at our shoes, and not at the burned ceilings.

I took a shower three times that day and prayed to God for years to come.

In the name of The Father The Son and the Holy Spirit.

My sweaty palms easily picked up the soot coated on my

face, but I could never get rid of the soot stuck within me. It was worsening my asthma and I haven’t been able to take breath of fresh air since then. It hurts too much and when I can’t breathe I’m scared. Because all I hear and see and smell and hear is a vengeful fire.

Today I can rub away the dirt that has collected in my eyes and chest. I can try to disguise the scent of smoke in my hair with extra coconut shampoo. To be honest, I wanted to cut it all off and buy a wig that didn’t smell like smoke. But by tomorrow morning the sweet smell in my hair will rot and become little fires taunting me awake.

I laid in my bed–unable to create anymore tears–and stared at my smoky walls and broken window. I thought of honey, with its sweet taste that could make you sick with too much of it.

I thought of the bonfires at Andover and how nice it was when we had s’mores, marshmallows and graham crackers. All I had were shaky hands and a bad cough. Intoxication.

There are zombie nights where my soul drags my body with a leash and forces my eyes wide open. And there are times where the soot evaporates from my lungs and legs just to taunt me by setting off false alarms and laughing at its accomplishments. That’s the kind of sick humor that sets trauma into fits of laughter. Trapping screams, last prayers to God, and shaky breaths into a bag.

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SydneyBlu Garcia-Yao Drenched I groan. It feels cold and wet and sticky, and I lack better words for you than this. I should’ve known. I checked the calendar, consulted the star charts, studied my horoscope, and watched the tea leaves fall. I even stopped eating watermelon to lower my internal heat, my mother’s Chinese remedy for cramps. I saw the spotting on my underwear! So why didn’t I wear a pad? Why did I convince myself it wouldn’t arrive until later today? Ugh. I roll away from the wet spot on my bed and grab my phone from the floor: seven in the morning. I groan again, as if irritation could transport me back in time and put on a pad. I close my eyes and try to fall back asleep, but the cramps make my eyes squeeze like crinkled paper. I swear I can see the way the blood drips down, feel the little drop of liquid at the end leaving a trail behind it, trickling.

I push my blankets away, dragging myself out of bed to save the thirtieth pair of underwear from meeting its fate in the trash can. On a Saturday. No one gets up at seven on a Saturday.

Later I found red stains on the floor, the blood smeared after I walked over it. I can’t quite figure out how I managed to do this; it probably had something to do with it being seven in the morning.

I also admit I didn’t clean up the blood on the floor for another two hours.

I compete in hydrology for my school’s science team.

Months of studying textbooks taught me acid rain forms because water is the universal solvent, which basically means anything can disappear inside it. Water flows up plant stems due to its adhesion and cohesion, the stickiness that holds water together. A slightly overfull glass does not spill, as if the molecules refuse to let go.

Here’s what they didn’t teach: why blood is sticky enough to get everywhere, but not sticky enough to stay still. I race against gravity exiting the shower, feeling the blood trail down unrestricted. Like, man, can’t you wait a sec? I just showered! It’s like rain, regardless of how many times you wish it would stop, nothing but time can cease it. It just keeps trickling, threads trailing down my thigh like rain against a windowpane.

Water also has a high latent heat, so it absorbs warmth like a vacuum. One gram per Joule times degrees Celsius. When you get caught in the rain—and you always get caught—all you have is the weight of sticky wet clothes and cold seeping into your skin.

You can never plan for it because it’s sunny, it’s sunny, it’s sunny, it’s sunny, and then you hear the storm shrieking and wailing and inundating away the world, without any warning.

Despite my love for hydrology, I can’t help but resent water.

I’m a sophomore, but COVID meant the first day of school felt like maze walking after two years of online learning. Every hallway looked identical, and after moving districts, every face was a blur—especially with masks. It was just an unrecallable blend of faces and names, AP chemistry jargon, and pretty girls sitting in front of me. And then, I felt it. I felt it. I felt the wetness as I rubbed my thighs to confirm that yes, in fact, I had not dreamed up my period.

I wish I had. I didn’t even know where the nearest bathroom was. My period was a week early, and I had about ten minutes before it bled through. I know you don’t feel my urgency. I know this means little to you. Just like how 75 million women in the United States between fourteen and fifty mean little to you. It’s just a number. The

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Creative Nonfiction Harriton High School Bryn Mawr, PA

times I’ve wadded up tissue paper-thin toilet paper in the school bathroom is just a number. The number of dollars my school spent on buying new MacBooks is just a number, but it’s a number taxpayers care about. The number of dollars spent on menstrual products is much easier: negative. They charge fifty cents for a single, poorly manufactured tampon.

I repeat facts to try to center myself. Maybe that’s why I spent years memorizing textbooks to win science competitions. It felt like something I could control, unlike precipitation and periods.

I kept going to the bathroom to replace the wadded toilet paper and reassure myself it hadn’t soaked through. I don’t remember what else happened that day. I couldn’t hear the teacher over the fear of dirtying my skirt, like a three-year-old who wets their pants.

Four years after my first period, I still can’t resolve the unfairness. I didn’t have a choice in this. I never asked; I never wanted to be a girl. Why did I get stuck with a uterus? Where can I find the cosmic god to reverse this? I’d like my money back, please. I’d like a refund for this body, and I want to receive something better in exchange. I’d like immediate removal of my ovaries, free of charge, free of any more pain.

My mother and I use Chinese for what Americans consider vulgar. Not just to avoid eavesdroppers, but also because of the culture. It’s much more acceptable to discuss the myriad bathroom topics and stomach discomfort. Paradoxically, I don’t even know the word for period in Chinese. I can only say what translates roughly as “I have that,” or, “That has come.” I lack the language to speak about my own body.

That day I asked my friends if they had pads. They said nothing at first, tongues caught on silence, before they said no.

It took them a few seconds to realize that we could talk about periods without the safety of whispers.

Womanhood always felt like a secret. I’ve heard about it on TV, but at school no one talks about their period or the discomfort of bras—which I have thankfully stopped wearing postquarantine. Everyone expects that I know what to do with this body, but I don’t. My body was delivered to me with an unreadable instruction manual and no way to ask for a return, which is really weird because Amazon always allows returns, no questions asked.

Maybe their packaging had an error and printed white ink instead of black; maybe they put in two X chromosomes instead of one at the last minute. When I called customer service, they said in case my instructions were unclear, everything I needed to know would come naturally, like magic. One day, I would wake up and know how to be a woman, just like everyone else.

Unfortunately, that clearly has yet to happen, so I hacked into the algorithms and obtained a 2019 version of the manual.

I think it’s been updated ten times since. The instructions are simple, just fold your legs like a lady, not like some glorified sl*t, even though leaning your legs up makes the blood leak, and men deserve more than seeing something so disgusting, so control gravity by clenching your vagina or something! Any real woman could do it. But don’t you dare display more leg than above your knee tuck in your bra straps wear a jacket on top because oh god what if the boys realize you have breasts it would be a nightmare.

How dare you try to offend them with such disgraces. And be kind to boys, too, sweetheart; you need to be kind because all women are kind, and if you’re not kind, are you even a woman? When they yell at you, when they call you a wh*re, when you’re angry, just

keep it inside because girls don’t have feelings. You’re just a doll, and dolls are meant for playing with, dolls are for throwing away when you’re done, for ripping the clothes off because they’re just godd*mn dolls.

That’s the first page. There are hundreds more. I don’t know what more to say.

I’m so angry. I never knew I was this angry. But even when I’m furious, I’m not supposed to curse because girls like me were raised well. Girls like me never curse because we have manners.

But I am so f***ing angry I could f***ing f**k f**k f**k.

Did you know just six inches of rain can knock you over?

I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about why I just can’t love rain. The problem with rain is not the wetness, the stickiness.

The problem is when pollutants wash into water and roads close and people drown and buildings collapse. On average, rain-based disasters displace around two hundred thousand yearly.

It starts with the rain. It starts with the rain until it funnels into a river, until it empties into the ocean, and suddenly, the problem is magnitudes away from the initial drizzles. Every period, every painful cramp, every time toilet paper is wadded in the bathroom in shame adds up to, on average, one in five American girls missing school because of their period. That’s two million girls. The unspoken expectations, the body shaming, the subtle microaggressions, the not-so-transparent glass ceilings funnel into a raging river. If you survive the river—perilous whitewater and wild waves and all—you end up in the ocean of violence. Without education, girls are vulnerable because they rely on others as providers and can’t leave unhealthy relationships. Their likelihood of domestic abuse rises. On average, 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by their partner in the United States every year.

Normally, I hold onto facts like trying to hold onto air underwater, but sometimes they drown me too.

On average, the ocean is 2.3 miles deep. A drop of rain doesn’t fill the ocean. Millions do.

A week before school started, the Texas Heartbeat Act went into effect. Abortion bans can now be as early as six weeks of pregnancy. Texans can profit up to ten thousand dollars off anyone who aided an abortion. Texas isn’t the first place to try to pass a law like this. It’s just the first place that succeeded.

We blinded ourselves staring at the sun’s reflection off the ocean, so we missed the thunderstorm right behind us. We ignored their cries—the girls and women who thundered while we idled and thought damn, the ocean’s just too big. The ocean is only immense because innumerable rivers feed it.

I once drowned in its depth, believing I was too small to alleviate injustice. I learned these problems were not just unsolvable; they were far off. They weren’t my problems. Here in America, we have equality. It’s only the Muslim women in some far off country we can’t name where their husbands beat them and they’re married at thirteen. Except in elementary school, the teachers asked boys to carry things around because they were stronger. Except my friends in Boy Scouts learned survival skills and engineering while in Girl Scouts we competed to sell the most cookies. (I wanted to build benches and carve wood, too. We made bracelets instead.) Except boys always insulted their friends with eww, you’re so girly. (And those boys would grow up to discuss girls like they were not just objects, but prize animals to critique like in some kind of dog show.) Except I can’t even talk about my body beyond hushed tones in private, only with other women.

But I’m older now. I realize that school and society at large ignoring gender inequality perpetuated it. My periods are not just an annoyance. They’re a constant reminder that my body is not my own; my body is just the body of a woman.

Walk with me. The Laguna Madre is one of many estuaries in Texas. Walk with me and watch the long-legged cranes and the

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spiky palm trees. Feel the water at your ankles, the mud of the marsh grasses, the coldness, the wetness, the stickiness of the water that came from rain, from rivers, all the way to this estuary.

And fall. Fall. Feel the weight of the water—the rain—above you.

If we start from the rain, we dry the oceans. We start with talking about periods, and from there we weave down the stream to inequality in school and microaggressions and societal expectations, and then we wind through the rivers to reproductive rights, to the oceans, to abuse—the path is there. We just need to take it.

If we started from the rain, from the thousands and millions of raindrops, from the hundreds of streams, we wouldn’t be drowning.

I went to the beach before school started. I watched a bit of sea kelp sway with the lapping of the waves, helplessly flowing with the water. The algae encrusted on every rock like a disease, as if holding onto life, but underwater, just below the air of life. In the reflection, I saw myself. In the reflection, I saw all the women and girls before me.

I abandoned my shoes and ran into the ocean to help them, but I lost my balance on the slippery kelp and fell in. But I did not drown. I did not see an ocean. I did not see a vast expanse of dihydrogen monoxide and depth and death. Instead, I saw the droplets of water for what they were.

Scientists project the ocean will evaporate in one billion years. Each molecule will float up into space, forever. We could wait millions of generations, or we could collect the rain from the sky before it empties into the ocean and floods us all.

Ryan Gdovin

Design Arts James M. Coughlin High School Wilkes-Barre, PA

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Arteries Red broadcloth, polyfill fiber stuffing, parachute cord and grommets 2021

Paige Glover

Photography Oakwood School North Hollywood, CA

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Letters to the Young Female Body Digital photography 2021

Zoe Goldemberg

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Visual Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

Androgen 5 Paint marker, tissue paper, fabric scraps, epoxy resin, ink and colored pencil on plywood 2021

Madyson Grant

Short Story South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Greenville, SC

Good Body He was kind enough to save the removal of my pinkie for the second date. Sitting on the countertop as he boiled angel hair noodles, he slipped the knife just against the tip of my finger and kissed me as the skin fell away, the lonely husk of a snake.

Delicate, almost tender. The things he took at first were at once small and filled with grace, and the depths of his smile, how he bent to me, told me I could give myself to him.

One Tuesday, a coffee. With the draining of the dregs into his throat, he took a portion of my lips, sectioned with the stirring stick. Every time I drank, the skin around it puckered and bled and hardened before softening again. And then, my toes. One every so often. He asked if he could, he folded and unfolded me like a fan, all to his desire. Pit of my arm, the connection between my pelvis and hip, all the little parts of me.

He laid me bare when it really began. Between the radiator of his sixth floor New York apartment and a Persian rug whose fibers tasted of rum and sweet pastry, stinging the roof of my candlesticked mouth. My fingertips I found rolled under his armchair, the pinky toe of my left foot lost somewhere under his bed. And my blood, the hair, everywhere, splattering his walls like wicked little red tears as if color chose his apartment to drown.

He handled me with care, told me what to become, and I heard. With each removal, I thought of fallen tin soldiers. Would you believe, when he told my skin to give, my bone to separate from gristle, I listened? I was generous and lovely. I gave him what he wanted.

He told me I was beautiful as a corpse, marked all across his mahogany floor. He said I burst just like a peach, juicy and liquid, bled sweet, and that’s what I became. Delicate-skinned and halfway translucent, waiting for him to pull my stem.

But for the most part, I was a body and he never left.

He turned my skin inside out with desire and the skill of his knife, threw me over his shoulder like salt, a wish.

My body was laid next to dust and spiders, single particles that crawled into my mouth when he went away. Deep into our work, he discovered a cockroach crawling on the pouch of my stomach, brown and slippery, ugly like the rot of a split banana.

The roach was kind to me and only traveled over my body. She did not take. When he crushed her against the cave of my belly, took my thigh and put it in the freezer, I understood I had disappointed him with my mess. And still, my eyes watched from where he had pearled them in resin on the bookshelf, floating apart from the rest of me. At once, I wanted the roach to come back, to keep me company as my body slept, disjointed and ugly, amongst the house of men.

In the days he took to separate my head from my corpse, my remaining toes and fingers from their sockets, the curve of my waist from my breasts, I believed us to be a singular pair. This man had loved me with his boning knife, his cleaver, his threesome of pairing blades. He traced my chin with his petty cutter, gutted me like a slicked-up salmon with the hilt. But he was unkind. He collected the body of the pizza girl he stole a number from the day he killed me. He flirted with her in the doorway with the stench of my body iced next to frozen peaches, my hairs collected in tapestries and still laid in the pillows of his bed. He stabbed her in the stomach on the same rug he wrapped me in our first night together, and I knew she was tasting the same rum, the same sweet pastry I did as he crushed my skull with a candlestick.

And it was not my eyes which moved first, but my mouth.

My lips, from their jar of ice in his freezer, greeted the warmth of my thighs and left arm with ease. My fingertips, rolled and tucked away like little daisies, gathered with the apple of my cheeks and sharp collarbone into a rigid necklace around my throat, adorned with the haloed threads of my hair sewn throughout my skin and

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staggering mass of my leg. My feet, risen as a spine from my back as the square gummy stump of my ankles dragged along the floor.

My teeth painted each nail white, thirty-two, cracked from the heat of the radiator. My waist met my mouth and then, lovingly, socket to socket, as my breasts came to me one by one and joined into a pleasant heap until all of me stood behind him, squeezing the air in a magnificent gaping scream, until he saw me for what I was, monstrosity of monstrosities, phantasmal, and he understood what he made, and I took the chef’s knife from his fingers and opened him up belly to neck and I heard his screams, and for the first time he was aware of me, my newness, everything I had become, and my eyes still watched from their jar on the shelf, opening and closing like gorgeous buds.

Ruby Griffin

Play or Script Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts New York, NY

TOMMY BOY ACT ONE

(Lights flashing red, siren running, screams. Heartbeat. Then you hear one gunshot, the heart beat stops and the lights go black.

Lights slowly go up) REPORTER (You hear a reporter over the system) Another school shooting happened right here in the heart of New York City. 5 dead and 17 others in critical condition…(loud drums start. Next section is gonna be “Dear Evan Hansen” style blocking, walking around in different paths and they all end up at the front of the stage for the last line before they go into the classroom.

When saying their line they should be stopped in front of the stage. Max starts alone sitting downstage center, legs hanging off stage. Then people can start on their path.)

MAX (she uses a remote to “turn off” the TV then sticks remote in backpack) You see this shit on the news every other day It’s exhausting.

PRU

BRI You never think it could affect you HOLT It could never happen at your school MAX If it’s not in your town or your district, who cares right?

FERRIS People keep giving their thoughts and prayers though it does shit.

MOE You can’t bring back the lost souls with your thoughts and prayers.

JAMIE The list of dead and forgotten becomes longer and longer.

Just a statistic

PRU

EMERSON It’s so normal it’s scary.

GRAY Scary? It’s fuckin terrifying (Kids grab backpacks, Bunch of chairs in a classroom now are on stage, everyone sits at the same time as bell rings, kids are on their phone, MOE is passing gum around, GRAY is reading, etc.)

MR. REYNOLDS Ok class, today we’re going to be talking about our thoughts on “Catcher in the Rye” because you should have finished it last night.

Did you finish it?

I didn’t start it.

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FERRIS MAX

MR. REYNOLDS Ah Ferris, did you want to share your thoughts?

I’ll pass.

Max? Still processing.

FERRIS MR. REYNOLDS MAX

MR. REYNOLDS I see. Did anyone finish it? (silence) Okay. Talk to your partner while I collect the homework and then we’ll have a class discussion. You all should be prepared to share. (chatter begins.

Mr. Reynolds goes around collecting homework. In this next section there are multiple conversations going on and the audience only hears bits and pieces of each conversation. Each mini conversation should be clear and easy for the audience to see who’s talking. Either have actors roll their chairs out of the “group” or light them differently or just stage it so it’s easy to tell who is speaking) BRI Oh my god did you see the new episode of Survivor last night JAMIE HOW THE FUCK DID JADE STAY BUT MILLER GOT VOTED OFF? BRI Don’t get me started Miller was hot, skilled and somewhat nice but Jade was just bitchy and annoying.

JAMIE I know I …(muffles out goes to next convo) HOLT Hey Em, do you want to go to Central with me after school? We could grab a bite to eat too if you want.

Ya sounds perfect

EMERSON

MAX Wanna link up after school?

Uh um yeah sure

GRAY

MAX Awesome! JJ said he found this abandoned skate park thing in Brooklyn and I know you skate so I thought it might be up your alley. (to FERRIS) You can come too if ya want mop, even though you suck.

FERRIS When will I ever get you to stop calling me mop. It was one time, god. And I do not suck, I can Ollie… on a good day...But ya sounds good ..broom.

MAX Broom? Really that’s the best you got?

FERRIS Well like broom and mop ya know… broom and mop...it’s funny.

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Gray laughed No I didn’t sorry bud

GRAY

FERRIS Gee thanks “bud”. (To MAX) I’ll think of something, don’t you worry.

MR. REYNOLDS Ok settle down. Let’s discuss it. Let’s start with themes. What themes did you guys see throughout the book? (Monroe raises her hand) Moe wanna start us off?

MOE Yeah so I noticed that Holden fears change and is overwhelmed by complexity and instead of, uh acknowledging that adulthood scares him, Holden invents a um fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality. He wants to like protect his innocence. So ya um the theme I noticed was protecting the innocent and or protecting one’s innocence.

FERRIS You got that straight from Spark Notes And?

MOE

MR. REYNOLDS I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that last remark but yes correct great work. Anyone else? (Moe raises her hand again) Uh yes Moe...again MOE Uh can I go to the bathroom please?

Yeah, take the pass

MR. REYNOLDS

MOE You got it (she gets up gets pass, slips phone in her pocket, handshake with person closest to door on way out and then exits) MR. REYNOLDS Holt, you had your hand up before would you like to share?

HOLT I was basically gonna say what Moe had to say but another theme going along with that is the pain you face when growing up. You lose your innocence and it’s scary ya know. For Holden I mean.

MR. REYNOLDS Yes for sure. Now I would like you to turn your attention to- (there is a loud gunshot. Everyone gets silent and looks around concerned.)

What was that?

MAX

MR. REYNOLDS (Everyone looks concerned in silence for 5 seconds then you hear 2 more loud gunshots) Everyone get against the wall now! (One more gunshots is heard, Mr.Reynolds runs over to the door, you hear “let me in please” a girl(MAC) quickly runs into the classroom and says “thank you” to the teacher, she goes to sit against the wall. He locks the door and turns off the lights. While that is happening you see the kids in the classroom quickly run to the wall all stunned and scared.)

MAX Jesus this can’t be happening MR. REYNOLDS QUIET! AGAINST THE WALL!

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Was that a gun?

BRI

JAMIE Yeah um …(grabs Bri’s hand and she rests her hand against his shoulder and starts crying) ...

Fuck. (long pause)

BRI JAMIE

BRI (to Mac) When did you get in here?

MAC After the gunshots.(Bri then grabs Mac and Jamies hands, they’re in a little huddle) MAX Wait, what about Moe? I don’t know man…

GRAY

MR. REYNOLDS Everyone stay calm and be quiet.

(Everyone is panicking and breathing heavily. You hear a heartbeat. They start to breathe together and it slowly gets louder.

Then they all exhale together. Heartbeat stops. Many people start to grab hands or cry. Tension) HOLT (he stands up and goes off to the side in his own world not in reality, kids continue to act scared behind him in the classroom we’ve now entered Holt’s thoughts ) I always considered myself to be the type of person that would take a bullet for any of my friends. But when I heard that gunshot I only thought of myself.

How do I get out? How do I stay safe? It’s shitty but no one really prepares you for when an active shooter is in your school. I mean you’re expected to just sit in the classroom and hope for the best? Really? Now all I want to do is text my mom and tell her I love her. We got in a fight this morning and I kinda left in a bad mood and I didn’t tell her that I love her. I didn’t think it would be the last time I would see her ya know?...I want to tell my girlfriend that I love her because I do. I love her. I love her with my whole being and I haven’t told her yet because I’m scared. I was scared. Now I’m scared I won’t ever get to tell her. Tell her that she is my world. Tell her that she is my happy ending. Tell her that her smile keeps me going. I love her. (to the world) YOU HEAR THAT UNIVERSE, I LOVE EMERSON HART. I LOVE HER I DO. I love her…but I might not even get to tell her…fuck… Ya know I’m always told that I’m the future and that my generation is gonna save the world. But I might not even get a chance to...to live past this fucked up moment. I might end up just being another name on the list of many. Just another sad funeral on the agenda. How is no one angry that innocent kids are dying every day? How is this my reality? I want to run. I want to run so far away so I can’t hear any gunshots or see any more tears. I want to run so far away so no one recognizes me as the kid from the school shooting. I want to run far away from this school, from this fear, from the gun...Fuck man. There is no good ending to this story.

(Max now on opposite side of stage in another out of body reality, Holt goes back to Emerson)

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MAX I look around at all the kids I’ve known my whole life, all of them crying or holding hands and I’m just at a loss of words... There are so many things I haven’t done yet. I haven’t had a boyfriend or gone skinny dipping or been to Greece. I had so many things on my bucket list that I never had the time to do. Now all I have is time. I’m sitting in this empty classroom and each second drags on. I can count each breath I take and I’m grateful for each breath. Ya never know which breath will be your last... (sighs) but also the waiting and the not knowing might be just as deadly as that gun... I had so many dreams.

I’m not even scared of death, I’m scared that I didn’t live my life to the fullest when I had it. Not going on those fun adventures when I had the chance. I never thought that at 16 years old I would be on the verge of death but here we are. (Max goes back. Silence, many are crying and or comforting a friend, everyone now is in reality) I love you Bri I love you too...

(LOUD BANG)

JAMIE BRI

EMERSON (makes high pitch screech sad noise) HOLT Its okay shh shh it’s okay I got you EMERSON (crying) I’m really fucking scared Holt HOLT I know but it’s gonna be okay…I love you EMERSON I love you too. (she is leaning on him and he comforts her. The set now changes and you see a bathroom with 4 stalls, all locked. The doors start off as a solid color but then melt into a clear door so you can see the actors in the stalls. MOE and PRU are the ones in the bathroom. This next scene should have many pauses because they are scared to talk. Silence for a while then you hear a loud bang, possible gunshot but unknown) MOE (makes a loud noise of fear, not a scream though) PRU Hey… it’s gonna be okay ...I’m terrified. ... Me too. ....

I’m Pru

MOE PRU MOE PRU

MOE Monroe, but you can call me Moe. ...

PRU

MOE I’m glad I’m not alone.

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yeah ... me too.

PRU

MOE ...Um can I come into your stall... I really don’t want to die alone PRU ....yeah...Crawl under (Moe crawls under the stall and joins PRU on top of the toilet, Pru grabs Moe’s hand) MOE ....Thanks. (they share a moment of awkward despair. Set changes back to classroom Jamie now not in “reality”) JAMIE I used to want to die. I used to keep this knife in my room and I would just look at its shine and imagine it slitting my wrists or grab a bottle of pills and imagine swallowing every last one...But when I heard the gunshot all I wanted was more time to live. I’m too young to die. Everyone in this classroom is too young to die.

I don’t want to die in fear. I want to die feeling fulfilled. Feeling happy. I haven’t felt genuine happiness in so long. I feel so surface level. I feel like I have been letting this darkness consume me and swallow me up. I think I could change that though. I just want one more day. One more day where I can just let go and release all the fear. One more day to feel happiness... Just one more fucking day.

(Jamie remains in the false reality because she is now a part of Bris fantasy) BRI I’m in love with my best friend Jamie. I never told her cause I’m not really out yet. I haven’t told anyone that I like girls. I’m scared.

I’m really fucking scared. I don’t want to be treated differently.

My parents say they’re so accepting and love everyone but then talk about how lucky they are to have such a normal and perfect daughter. What the fuck is normal? “Normal” nowadays is seeing a different school being shot up every day. Today it happens to be my school. Everyone will post on their Instagram stories saying how fucked up our government is for not enforcing gun control laws and how they’re sending thoughts and prayers to the families affected but then will forget the next day. I promise you I won’t forget. I won’t forget that moment when I realized there was an active shooter in my school...in my school. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. My whole life changed when I heard that first gunshot. I don’t need your thoughts and prayers. I need help. (Bri melts back into reality with Jamie, Ferris now not in reality with paper) FERRIS Hello reader, here is a list of my apologies that I never got to say and or tried to avoid. Hope you can forgive me even though I’m probably six feet under by now. John, I’m sorry I spilled my apple juice on your pants last week, yes it was funny cuz it looked like you pissed yourself, but I’m sure you felt embarrassed so I apologize and I’m also sorry I posted pics on Snap and uh said you pissed yourself... that was rude and too far. Hopefully you laugh it off now. I know I definitely laugh thinking about it ahha(clears his throat). Mark, Mr. Markie boy, nope please never let me say that again. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how much you mattered to me. You are like a brother to me and I love you man and I’m gonna miss going on adventures with you. Carter, I apologize for telling Mark that you had a massive crush on him. I thought I was helping and I realize now that it was a secret not for sharing so I’m sorry. By the way he likes you too, so you kids go have fun.

You can steal my hookup spot cuz I won’t be using it anytime soon cuz I will probably die in a few minutes. Woah that brought down the mood let’s continue. Uh Jace I’m sorry I said you were an annoying asshole. You really aren’t that annoying. Asher, I’m sorry that I made out with your cousin without asking, to be fair I didn’t know she was related to you but that’s not the point; it was

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fucked up and I’m sorry but can I just say she gave the best… ya know what probably not the time. But ya I’m sorry. And to anyone else I wronged or was rude to I’m really sorry. I mean it. And Max if you’re reading this just a fyi I totally had a thing for you but you’re kinda the most beautiful majestic scary girl I’ve ever met so I didn’t want to say anything. Anyway, have a lovely day and you should definitely stop by my funeral. It’ll be a rager! Adios (throws a peace sign up or awkward wave to the audience and then goes back to reality. Long silence… then you hear footsteps, everyone gets uneasy and uncomfy and holds their breath, set changes to bathroom) Your hand is sweaty Sorry ... ...

PRU MOE PRU MOE

PRU Do you have your phone? I wanna text my sister and tell her I love her.

MOE Um yeah yeah sure (Moe gets her phone from her back pocket and hands it to Pru) PRU (types for about 15 secs) thanks Yeah of course

MOE

PRU Did you text your family already?

MOE Um no I don’t really uh have anyone that would care to hear from me so … yeah PRU Oh I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have asked that was rude MOE No it’s totally fine I- (you hear footsteps, they look at each other panicked and Pru puts her finger to her mouth “sh”. They sit in silence for about 15 more seconds, tension builds up, then footsteps get closer, Moe starts crying and they hold their hands even tighter, then you see the door open and they hear it. Moes gasped and Pru put her hand over Moes mouth. They hold in the position for 5 seconds til you hear the door close. They sit in silence for 5 more seconds then they hug crying. After the moment is done the set switches to the classroom, Emerson is at the front of the stage) EMERSON After hearing about Sandy Hook and Parkland I was always paranoid. I had planned out different routes to get out of the school if I was in the hallway. I know where all the exits are. I tried to be nice to everyone I met so no one would hate me. I make sure to always tell my dads that I love them before I leave for school.

I never want to end on a bad note with anyone. It could be the last time I see them ya know... I shouldn’t have to be paranoid at school. (pause) I always thought I would just run and try and get out even if I was in a classroom. But I just froze up and couldn’t breathe. I felt my heart stop. I couldn’t believe it was happening.

Hearing a gunshot is a different level of fear. How am I supposed

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to come back to school after this? If I survive I mean… how am I supposed to learn in this environment where the main foundation is fear? Every time a book drops or a balloon pops I’m gonna hold my breath and relive this moment. Why is no one rioting? Cuz I’m scared but I’m even more angry. How did we let this happen?

How did everything go to shit? Why isn’t everyone screaming for change? I feel like I’m drowning in this fear. And no one can hear my cries for help. (melts back into reality you know the drill, now Gray is not in reality) GRAY At this point I want to die. I know that sounds dark and selfish but I don’t think I will be able to get up and go to school ever again.

I already disliked school cuz I’m not the most social person but now? Walking into school is just gonna put me in full panic mode.

I’ll see the dead kids’ faces on the walls and hear footsteps and fear that someone is following me and hoping to see my blood spill. I’m gonna have nightmares and be anxious turning every corner. I don’t think mentally I can take it. How am I supposed to come back? How? I’m genuinely asking cuz I have no fucking clue.

What if the shooter doesn’t get caught? What if the shooter goes to this school? What if I’ve passed by him in the halls or even been friends with him? What then? I don’t want to have an image of what he looks like in the back of my mind at all times. I shouldn’t have to wake up every morning with the fear of not ever coming back to my bed. I’m only sixteen...I’m only sixteen. (melts in reality and now everyone is not in reality) ALL (slowly people join, start with one person. As people speak they go to the front of the stage) There were more mass shootings across the U.S. in 2019 than there were days in the year. Let me repeat that. There were more mass shootings across the U.S. in 2019 than there were days in the year. By the end of 2019, there were 417 mass shootings in the U.S. 417 mass shootings. EACH DAY 8 children die from gun violence in America. And another 32 are shot and injured. Since Sandy Hook, there have been more than 2,184 mass shootings and these numbers are just increasing. I’m scared and you should be too. (You hear a gunshot and then blackout. End of Act one)

ACT TWO

(At the top of act 2 the classroom set is far back on the stage with the concerned kids, at the front of the stage which has now been established as a “false reality” you see a man in a black hoodie and black jeans walking across the stage. You are not able to see his face. He slowly walks across the front of the stage. When he fits about the halfway mark of the stage you then see he has a gun in his hand. He then makes his way into the “hallways”/aisle and walks into the back of the house and offstage. The classroom set now comes more forward. Mac is in her own reality now at the front of the stage) MAC My second period class is geometry. My teacher, Ms. Watson, is this horrible woman who is super strict. We have loads of homework every night that I usually don’t even understand. Last night I had a music gig and got home super late so I didn’t have time to do my long ass packet of math homework and I also just didn’t want to do it. I managed to do the majority of it on my way to school. I still had one page left though, so before she collected the homework, I was going to go to the bathroom and quickly finish it. So, after the first 5 minutes of Geometry went by I asked if I could go to the bathroom. And surprisingly Ms. Watson actually let me go without even lecturing me on how I was gonna miss the most important part of the lesson etc etc. I think it’s cuz she knows I’m a hopeless case. But anyway I ended up finishing my homework in the bathroom in like 10 minutes, which I think

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is kinda impressive. Anyways, I slowly started to make my way back to my class. And then...I heard this really loud noise, it kinda sounded like a balloon being popped but 10 times louder. Everyone else in the hallway looked concerned. I didn’t know what it was, or maybe I did but didn’t want to jump to that conclusion. I quickly tried to get back to my class and then I heard 2 more loud booms. (two loud drum beats, she starts to run around the stage showing and feeling the panic of this moment like when it happened) I saw classroom doors start to lock. I ran to the nearest classrooms trying to find an unlocked door. The lights in the classrooms started to turn off and I knew I was fucked. I yanked on a few doors begging the teachers to let me in. I heard one more loud bang and at this point I knew they were gunshots. I was crying and desperately tried to get into a classroom. I finally found one open classroom and ran in before the teacher could turn me away. I thought once I got into the classroom I would feel safe and relieved but I didn’t. I felt trapped (everyone on stage closes in on her, they huddle around her). Stuck in this.. container of fear.

I couldn’t run to safety. If the shooter opened that door I would…

I would probably.. You know (crying) I was trapped so-(someone puts their hand over her mouth and drags her back to reality she tries to resist, she is yelling) HELP. MAX Do you think he is still out there? ...The shooter I mean I hope not. ...

FERRIS MAX

GRAY Why haven’t we heard any announcements yet?

MAX I don’t know. I wish we knew something.

MR. REYNOLDS (looks over at Max)shhh (Jamie pulls out her phone, the phone light shines on her face disturbing the darkness of the room. She starts typing on her phone. She’s crying/in distress.)

MR. REYNOLDS (whispering) Hey! Jamie pst. Turn that off.

JAMIE I have to text my mom, please I haveMR. REYNOLDS You’re endangering your classmates with that light. Turn your phone off. (reluctantly Jamie puts her phone away, then she puts her head in her hand, curled up in a tight ball. After a few moments, the scene shifts to the bathroom, PRU is in alternate reality) PRU I used to take life for granted. I wasted every day of my life cuz I wanted everyone to know that I didn’t give a fuck. I would cut people out of my life without feeling sorry for a second. I was reckless and unkind. Maybe even cruel at some points. And now I am staring death dead in the eye and I don’t know what to feel.

I’m scared for starters. Scared of dying but also scared cuz I think maybe I deserve it... I know I deserve to die. I wasted my life away and watched it go down the drain and didn’t do anything to stop it from becoming a worthless shit show. I sat on my ass feeling sorry for myself. I have a great life but I just wanted all this fucking attention. I’m sitting next to this girl on a fucking toilet, possibly

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about to die and she doesn’t have one family member or person for that matter that she wants to text goodbye. She doesn’t think anyone in her life would care to know that she might die but I have the audacity to feel sorry for myself. I have a whole family who cares about me. I’m so fucking selfish. (screaming very emotional) I’m a selfish victimizing mean horrible person that deserves to die (possibly yelling or crying) I DESERVE THIS. I DO... But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Not today. I want to see tomorrow. (MOE is already in alternate reality now and PRU slowly walks back to stall) MOE I try to find the good in everyone. Even people I don’t even necessarily like. I just like to believe that everyone has a little dose of kindness in their heart. Even my shitty parents have some redeeming qualities ya know. But... I can’t even begin to think about how... horrible you must be to shoot up a school. I’m terrified that I’m going to make it out of this place but my friends will take their last breaths in this school. No one deserves to die here. Not the girls who make fun of me, or the guy that told me I had too much sunshine which I don’t even know what that means, or the assholes who wrote “WHORE” on my locker last week. No one deserves to die. No one. Not like this. I’m horrified that I’m going to have to continue the legacies of my peers. I don’t want to go to my friend’s funeral at 16 years old. I don’t want to have to feel empty and useless for the rest of my life. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me after I tell them where I went to high school. I don’t want to be sitting on a toilet right now fearing that I might die. I don’t want these last few thoughts to be the last things on my mind before I die. I don’t- I can’t… (breaking down) I can’t pretend like I’m going to be okay. I don’t want to feel unsafe at school and at home.

School used to be my safe place where I could just...be. Where can I go now? I can’t put on this fake smile everywhere I go. That’s not how I’m supposed to live my life. I don’t even know which is worse, living and having to deal with the trauma from what is happening in my school right now or dying. Dying seems easier but I’m not ready to give up life yet. (crying/distressed breakdown. The man in the hood appears on stage with a gun, his back turned. He is not real, it’s in her imagination. Moe now directs everything to him) So fuck you. FUCK YOU. WHOEVER THE FUCK YOU ARE.(sobs) WHY DID YOU BRING A GUN TO MY SCHOOL? WHY? why…(she now collapses to the ground, kneeling. Her head is in her knees. She then bangs the ground with her fist. Still crying she looks up) you have ruined me. Are you happy? Are you happy to have destroyed so many lives? Are you finally satisfied? I hope to see your face behind bars. I hope you rot in jail... (sad) WHY? Why would you do this? Why?... I just don’t understand. You disgust me. Just tell me why. WHY? LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME WHY. Why why why. Cuz I don’t get it. I don’t. So please explain to me why the fuck you’re shooting up my school. Why? ..Fuck you. (take a few moments for MOE to have her time in her alternate reality. Man in the hood disappears. The set changes to the classroom but the bathroom stays on stage to the side and you see MOE slowly walking back to stall.)

MAX (to Gray) Hey… you okay?

No.. you?

Been better.

GRAY MAX

(the class remains silent for 10 more seconds. You see Holt comforting Emerson, Bri rocking back and forth, Max has her head rested on Ferris. Then you hear footsteps. Everyone in the classroom immediately gets tense. Max jerks her head up. Mr. Reynolds puts his finger to his mouth signaling everyone to stay quiet. Nothing happens for 10 more seconds but you hear footsteps getting closer. You then hear one bang on the door as if

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someone is trying to break it down. Emerson makes a small noise and she then covers her mouth and starts crying into her lap. You hear one more bang on the door. MAC, who is far from the door, crawls to hide under a desk. You then see the window on the door get smashed, glass scattered on the floor. Then you see a gun and the man with a hood peers into the room through the now broken window. All the children now try to get smushed onto the wall hoping to not be seen. All holding their breath. The shooter then puts his finger on the trigger and the lights go black and you hear 2 gunshots. The lights flash red on each gunshot and you hear some screams.)

Was that yeah.

MOE PRU

(another gunshot. blackout. You hear someone scream HELP 3 times.)

REPORTER (voice over) In New York City another school shooting occurred yesterday afternoon. 13 were injured...Many are still in critical condition… (fade out, Jamie alone on stage. By the end of the next section everyone should be in their own bubble spread out in the front of the stage all wearing white shirts with blood on it, splattered or hand prints.)

REPORTER (voice over) There are no new updates on the conditions of the injured from the school shooting last week. We are sending our thoughts and prayers...

JAMIE I don’t even remember what happened. Everything happened so fast. I just remember seeing a gun and then looking down seeing blood on my hands. My blood. And the rest is just blurry. I woke up in a hospital bed with Bri’s big head in my face (smirk). I saw her relief as my eyes fluttered open and she gave me a very enthusiastic hug. I’m just happy I woke up. (light crying) I was scared I wasn’t going to. I was scared I would die in that classroom.

I know many aren’t as lucky as I am... I’m still really scared. Uh I thought when it was all over I would feel… better. But I don’t. (she then sits on the stage, Max is in the front of the stage far from Jamie) I don’t.

BRI I saw my best friend get shot, and almost die. How fucked up is that? I saw her lifeless body laying in a hospital bed and I was just hoping that she would wake up. I wish it was me who took the bullet because watching her suffer was... is the most...painful thing I’ve ever experienced. She’s the reason I choose to stay alive.

I wake up every morning and I’m excited to see her. If she died… I don’t know what… what I would ever do… I can’t live without her.

A life without her is just… dull. I’m grateful she’s alive but I think we’ve both been traumatized so much that I don’t even know how to act around her. All I see when I look at her is this scared... survivor. I see her screaming in pain. I see her clothes drenched in blood. It’s the nightmare that I can’t wake up from.

MAX My mom has already signed me up for grief counseling and got me a therapist. But they won’t ever understand. They don’t know that feeling of being so scared that you feel numb. They don’t know what it’s like to see your friend get shot and have his blood on your hands. (she shows her hands to the audience, they have red “blood”/paint on them, she puts her hands on her face and in her hair and then slowly sinks to the floor) Just another survivor. Just another fucking statistic.

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EMERSON (opposite end of stage in her own world) I’m going to be homeschooled the rest of my junior year. I can’t walk into that school again. I can’t- I just…(Holt comes over and hugs her, they’re in their own bubble together) HOLT I got you Em, I got you.

MAC It has now been a month since the shooting.

GRAY (walks to the front of the stage) We have to go to school with clear backpacks now.

MAC (enters) Each student and staff member has to go through a full body search before they can even enter the building.

MOE (enters) Each classroom has a “panic” button. I don’t even know what the purpose of those are but….

PRU (enters and should be near MOE) Every window and door is now bulletproof. But guess what? I’m not bulletproof.

GRAY I pass more and more police officers in the hallways. And honestly that makes me even more nervous.

MAC Everyone that enters that school just seems...scared. You see panic on everyone’s face. There is no way to relax in that building.

PRU I’m scared to be alone.

MOE the sound of gunshots is in the back of my mind goingMAX (hitting her head/floor with her hand) Bang, bang, bang MAX, EMERSON (people slowly start to join, everyone that joins picks something to hit as they say it, ex: stomping, clapping, slapping leg, etc, during this MOE will slowly melt to the floor with her hands on her ears) Bang, Bang Bang Bang Bang

Bang, Bang, Bang

MAX, EMERSON, MAC MAX, EMERSON, MAC, HOLT,PRU MAX, EMERSON, MAC, HOLT, BRI, JAMIE, PRU

MAX, EMERSON, MAC, HOLT, BRI, JAMIE, PRU, GRAY Bang bang bang BANG BANG BANGFERRIS (Ferris runs right to center stage, he is in distress) STOP! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE.I JUST WANT EVERYTHING TO STOP! I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE! (everyone but Ferris slowly exits, he doesn’t speak until all students have left and man in the hood has appeared, he is talking to the “gun” rather than the man behind the gun) I have

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nothing left. No more tears to cry, no more shits to give. YOU TOOK EVERYTHING. I am an empty soul with a useless heart that’s just waiting to stop. You have broken me...You’re… You’re a killer. You’re a heartless killer and I hate you. You may not have killed me yet but you have killed every last bit of happiness I had. You show up in all my nightmares and ruin all my dreams. What did I do to you?

WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?... TELL ME! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS? HUH? The gunshots keep replaying in my head over and over again. I can’t think or breathe. I can’t focus. All I hear is BANG BANG BANG, over and over again, it’s taken over my mind. And I see blood pouring from the ceiling in my classrooms, and guns growing off of the trees in the school yard just waiting to be picked. Dead faces and graves pop up while I’m walking down the sidewalk. AND I JUST WANT IT TO STOP! WHEN DOES IT GET BETTER? WHEN DO I STOP FEELING SCARED? WHEN?... I’m scared. I’m fucking terrified that my life has an expiration date that’s rapidly approaching; I’m trying to outrun it but I’m just too slow. I’m just too fucking slow. I hate that everyone looks at me like I’m broken and can’t be fixed.

I hate it. I hate it so much, I want everyone to just stop looking at me. (looks around as if he sees his friends) STOP IT STOP IT. NO MORE STARES OR HUGS OR FUNERALS OR GUNS. I CAN’T DO IT ANYMORE. I CANT I CANT I CANT BANG BANG BANG STOP IT STOP BANG(MAX runs on stage and engulfs him into a hug and they melt to the ground, FERRIS is a mess and sobbing and screaming, he then looks at the man in hood) You did this to me. It’s your fault. You created this fucking mess. (Man in hood walks away) DON’T WALK AWAY FROM ME! (FERRIS tries to break away from MAX, she holds on) LET GO OF ME LET GO PLEASE LET ME GOMAX FERRIS STOP! I’m not letting go, you need to stay here with me.

Just breathe. Stay with me. You’re okay.

FERRIS No, I’m not. I’M NOT OKAY MAX LET ME GO! (sobbing and in distress, long pause of MAX comforting him) MAX I’ve got you. We’ll get through this together. (MAX lets go of him and holds out her hand, FERRIS hesitates and then grabs her hand.

They look at each other and then grab each other and hug for a while.) You can’t leave me yet, I need you.

FERRIS I’m not letting go. I’m here...I’m here (Lights start to slowly fade, you hear a heart beating and it slowly stops, you hear a machine beep because Ferris dies and it melts into “Cough Syrup”-Young The Giant, the last moment should be Max embracing Ferris holding on as if her life depends on it. Blackout.)

THE END.

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Savannah Gripshover

Short Story Conner High School Hebron, KY

EIGHT MONTHS Of course, when it’s reported in history, in the books and in the movies, humanity will note that the first alien contact happened on September third, two thousand and twenty-six.

However, if only Lucian Sweeney had opened his eyes, it would have been nearly a month earlier: on August tenth, his last normal day at NASA. Even then, it wasn’t normal in the sense that it matched the patterns of his old life, that it was the life he had always lived; it was normal in the sense that it was his last day without the cancer.

Before he was moved to the basement, his normal life was that of a scientist. An engineer. Everything short of an astronaut, he once described to his ex-wife’s little nieces — he did the math, he counted the stars, and he was there in headquarters when rockets sliced across the black sky and blazed wild until they disappeared, a million miles higher than what their minds could ever fathom. Then, slowly, a poison seeped in: his eyes, once acquainted with the harsh white beams that filled the ceilings, computers, and diagrams of stars, burned with weakness. His head, usually sharp and calculating ten different things at once, trudged along when it once ran ahead. His equations fell apart. He tried and tried, hours spent after work, recorrecting the clumsy work he forced himself to do at all. His bosses took notice — and leaned a little too hard on his one-off comments about the light and the noise and the dizzying pace — and pitied him. So, he began his first week in the basement.

It was a dark and small square with yellowed, gnarly floors but filled with several million dollars’ worth of beeping, humming screens and supercomputers. The steel staircase down seemed to be an isolated chunk of the building, one where each noise was amplified into howls and each patch of silence was thick enough to suffocate. Every time Lucian walked down, he felt he was walking into a portal, into a space completely severed from the familiar world he had worked in for over a decade.

If he was in the mood to give his bosses credit, it was peaceful down there. The only screen he had to pay attention to was the largest one, the one that sat in the very center of his long dark desk; the page he never left had a black backdrop, easy enough on his eyes, and the blue-tinged white text was just light enough to illuminate the room, while the overhead light rested off above him. The only noise came from the computer’s engines stirring and clicking, settling in on themselves, remembering their code. He was by himself. He wasn’t distracted. His head ached a little less when he was down there, where the oddly cool air soothed him.

If he was not in the mood to give his bosses credit (which he had hardly ever been, since his diagnosis), he was embarrassed and ashamed of how stupid they must’ve thought he was, because the only business ever conducted in the basement was an endless waiting game. Such advanced technology was being wasted on a glorified inbox, Lucian thought; in the years he had worked here, they had never received a contact from outer space. In the years the basement had existed, they had never received a contact from outer space. In the years since history had been recorded, they had never received a contact from outer space.

Yet sitting in this tiny dank corner of one of the most technological, intelligent places in the world, that was what he did every day. He sat down. He stirred his mahogany coffee. And he waited. He waited for a signal, a message, a noise — anything that could confirm an outside force interacted with anything, any message or satellite they had sent out in the past. How could he be surprised when it never came?

It also wasn’t a surprise when, left alone, nobody recognized his health was crumbling.

It started with a sleepiness. The vague sensation fizzing behind his eyes, the droop of his knuckles when he was meant

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to be typing away. Slowly, he reclined to lie his head down on the edge of his desk, and leaned into the feeling: the warmth pooled in the back of his skull only to drip down his neck, into his spine, into all his layers, the full bloom of his lungs being replaced with a faroff lightness and all his nerves drifting off. He melted beneath the gentle pressure. His skin went first, then his muscles and all the tension that seeped through them, then all his fingers and toes. He was only a vessel — a perfect, untainted vessel built for a perfect, untainted sleep, and when he ceased to feel his body, all he felt were the flutters alight in his soul, and he was happy to let himself be carried away, higher and higher, among the milky pink clouds where his imagination swirled.

Then, the cradle of his sleep dropped him from the sky, and he plummeted like a harsh bolt of thunder, shattering against a cruel earth. He woke up choking, his body betraying him, his nerves thrashing and his breath thin. He launched himself out of his desk chair and fell to his knees. Sickness dribbled out of his mouth and hot tears slipped from his eyes. His skin felt like neon, a million sensations burning and chirping away for his attention, which was frenzied and locked onto the far-off light at the top of the staircase, where he imagined peace would be, as if clean air could free his throat.

He collapsed on the third stair, eyes half-open, spit crystallizing on his slack mouth. He cried out and flinched at the sound of his own terrible weakness. He rocketed between panicked, hyper-awareness of his own suffering, and being completely brain dead, his mind flat and shapeless with only the cloudiest of thoughts. He waited a long, long time, begging his body to shut down and fade away. Every time he got close to another escape into sleep, something triggered him back awake: a spasm of his muscles, another roll of slime forcing its way through his mouth, the horrifying reminder of his paralysis whenever he dared to move.

It was Henry who found him. Henry, golden boy Henry; Lucian might’ve considered him his best friend at the office if he hadn’t known just how many people in the building felt the same.

Henry, who was loved by all, Henry who was always ‘just finishing now!’ whenever someone stopped by his door and asked if he was too busy to chat. Henry, who, even though in the sweetest of light he mostly just looked like a plain, kind man, in the dingy flickers of the basement’s clinical white glow, he truly did look like an angel as he hoisted the moaning Lucian into his arms and the backseat of his car.

Lucian woke up to the sound of two things: the steady beat of the hospital equipment he was wired to and the distant chatter of Henry speaking to their boss. Their boss who moved him to the basement in the hope of curing his headaches. Their boss who moved him to the basement because, well, somebody has to make sure the impossible doesn’t happen, at least not under their noses.

He felt like an insect encased in amber; like he had been dissected, spatchcocked, and scooped clean of his terrible guts. Doctors checked his eyes, murmured their theories, and traced the edges of his pale cornflower veins. Long tubes flowed right into his blood and probably his soul, too, considering the wooziness infecting everything.

In fact, Lucian was so drugged, he hardly cared when his boss shook Henry’s hand and thanked him, thanked him. He only blinked when two more of his coworkers peered into his room, recoiled, and returned right back to Henry’s side. He appreciated the sentiment when Henry sat by his bed and clutched his tingling hand and whispered small promises to him. He was really quite happy about it, as he hadn’t seen Henry since he moved downstairs.

It was only when his ex-wife walked in that he finally woke up. If he could have moved his arms, he would’ve ripped the hair off his scalp for forgetting to take her off his emergency contacts list.

He had to watch, both weightless and as heavy as he had ever felt, as golden boy Henry muttered to his ex. Her eyes dropped to Lucian. Her mouth twisted up into a grimace but her eyes, far from crying, were apathetic at best and embarrassed at worst. She sighed, wrapped her hand around Lucian’s for only a second, then disappeared. Henry followed shortly after and Lucian was alone again, visualizing himself being thrown into the sun.

Everyone knew. He understood it right in the center of his heart: if he came back to work, there would be pity, edible arrangements, hushed conversations, artificial empathy. If he didn’t come back, the mystery would poison him and drag him down. It was high school all over again, in the offices with the most intellectual people he had ever known.

He took a few weeks off to recover. His migraines ebbed and flowed, but always came back again. He spent most of his days lying very, very still in a very, very dark room; the black-out curtains billowed from the fan he had on high and he counted in his head until eventually he fell asleep. Once, he made it to seven hundred.

The only place he hated more than the basement of his favorite place on earth was his own home. Misfortune stained the place as tangibly as wine on white cushions and blood splattered against rose wallpaper. First, there was the spare room his wife used to paint in, the one with the gloriously big window he adored but knew she needed more for her natural sunlight. That room was abandoned, as carved out and empty as if the memories never existed at all, only a trick of fiction. Then there was the guest room where his mother slept. He didn’t have the heart to fold up her bed or sell her favorite armchair. The loss left a void in his life, a darkness that curled around him. He wondered if it would infect him over time, a cruelty so real it was bound to manifest.

His doctor, a friend of over twenty years, insisted he get tested again and again until something made sense. So far, nothing did. He resisted medicine (all of the prescriptions, the whale noise soundtracks with hidden healing subliminals, the timeless wet washcloth bundled against his forehead) and never seemed to get better.

It was a doctor half his age who broke the news. He was bronze-haired and baby-faced. He shivered underneath his clean white coat as he stared down at his clipboard. All this youth and optimism, Lucian thought — and he was the one who was ruining his life, ending a streak of happy healing and signed casts. He was the man who would make this poor young doctor disappear into his office, let out a shaky sigh, and ruminate over the fact that he just told someone they had eight months to live.

Eight months. Lucian once spent eight months in Italy.

He once spent eight months planning a honeymoon, let alone his own wedding. He spent eight months perfecting his resume, eight months buying the same thing for lunch every day, eight months caring for his mother before she passed.

Now, it was all the time he had in the world. He spent the first month sitting in his home, always thinking but never getting anywhere. It was inoperable. Well, only technically; they could do anything, throw anything at him, but he had such a small chance of survival that most of the counselors who saw him encouraged him to consider spending the last eight months of his life riding horseback, scuba diving, or at least chasing some kind of peace of mind without the radiation and endless tests. There was an experimental surgery in the works — so experimental that by the time they finalized all their theories, approaches, and papers, he could very well be meat for the worms. He sat around and remembered these things. If he had any friends left, besides Henry who was always painfully kind enough to call every few days, they would have accused him of wasting his only time left. That would have made him recline even further into his sad, surreal silence.

The only thing that shocked him back to life was his father.

His father, a calamity of a man, who shamed the tree-huggers, the hippies, who hated the doctors, the politicians, who believed

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he was capable of writing the next great American novel despite abandoning school his sophomore year, a man who, regardless of whether he was the stupidest or smartest person in the room, always truly believed he was somehow in the right, reached out to him one day. Even just that — the words ‘my father reached out to me today’ — were enough to catch in his throat and make his stomach jump. If he had had any friends left, he would’ve badgered them with all the bad memories, silly stories, and inconceivable facts about this man who spawned him.

“Lucian, I’m telling you this because no one else has the guts to: you need fresh air, you need real food, you gotta get away from that— that pit, okay? They’ve got, well, I can’t explain it to you because I doubt you’ll understand, but you know radiation?”

There was a long moment of silence over the phone. His father did not speak until he got his answer.

“Yes, dad, I know radiation.”

“Good. Good. They haven’t taken that away from you yet.

Don’t ever let them. You need to come to my cabin, Lucian. I’ve got a creek that stretches a hundred yards north and south. Cleaner than any city water. You know fluoride?”

Lucian hung up. Hearing someone else’s stupidity socked him, left him breathless; when he was done choking on frustration, he began to laugh. Slow chuckles erupted into an absurd happiness that claimed his whole body. He shook and shook until all his laughter bled out, then, as he looked around his apartment, he made a decision: he had very little life left and he had to do something, that was obvious. He could not let his father win, his ex win, his tumors win. His job at NASA was the only thing in his life that mattered. His body was bound to disintegrate one day, his people were bound to leave him sometime, and his world was destined to end, both in the smallest of personal scales (his family often died young anyway) and the most cosmic (stars had a habit of imploding).

The day he came back, Henry delivered him a tangle of yellow and white flowers wrapped in baby blue cellophane.

September third. Lucian handled the bouquet gently, although he smelled nothing when he sniffed them. Henry lingered in the basement. He rocked back and forth on his heels, fiddled his thumbs, and waved vaguely around Lucian’s setup of computers. He tried to sound interested, but whenever Lucian explained something to him, Henry’s eyes always darted back to the staircase, where the door to the real world and the rest of the office sat ajar, a blade of true white light scattering on the cold stairs.

“You can go, Henry,” Lucian finally sighed.

“No. No, no, I’ve got nowhere to be.”

Lucian knew that was a lie. His heart stammered. He couldn’t tell if it was guilt for keeping him away or jealousy over the project’s existence that stung him, but either way, he lost what little love he had — Henry coded rocket launches, Henry programmed rovers. Lucian was very grateful for the days he got to update the company website after long hours of staring at nothing.

“I have to get back to my work, Henry,” Lucian said. He turned his back to Henry and focused on the monitor. His fingers reached for the flowers and in his peripheral vision, he watched as his nails dug into the paper and sent a flurry of crinkles into the silence.

Henry mumbled to find him if he ever needed anything, anything at all, and Lucian twitched because of course, of course Henry would say that.

Lucian waited. He waited for anything at all to interact with him. Once or twice a year a hacker would try to send a message, but they’d more or less reveal themselves immediately and then Lucian could email his computer-expert acquaintances to permanently block their signal. No hackers came today. There were no intercepted transmissions from overhead satellites, no jumbled Russian being caught from other space shuttles, not even the harsh thunder of static clogging up the receptors. There were beeps and then nothing. There was the blinking light of the white text and then nothing. There was Lucian, his body warming the only seat in the basement, but even then, there would soon be nothing.

He felt cursed, trapped in a limbo, a labyrinth of his own decisions driven by a karma he didn’t have enough time to believe in — and because he was so sure of his own failings, morbidly daffy over his own self-fulfilled prophecy, he decided, why not check if he had missed anything while he was out? Why not get the final confirmation: he had spent years in college, years studying engineering and science and astronomy, building his place in this establishment, and sculpting his brain to be the machine it was. All those years spent for this, for eight more months of this.

He left the page he normally rested at and clicked around to check the days prior. Yesterday: nothing. That entire week: nothing. Two and three weeks ago yielded the same, the same nothing as yesterday and the same nothing as his entire career.

Until he returned to the day he left. August tenth. A short stretch of text. His eyes flickered to the timestamp of the message.

It had been sent just minutes before he short circuited and left for the hospital. If his math had been right, he had to have received this sometime between his brief nap and his episode on the stairs.

Suddenly he envisioned that moment, him curled up on the ground and blinking away illusions, and behind him, the message.

He clicked it and enlarged it to fill up the screen.

HELLO. WE HAVE ATTEMPTED TO CONTACT A RANDOMIZED GROUND STATION ON EARTH. PLEASE CONFIRM WHO WE ARE COMMUNICATING WITH. Lucian stared at the screen in horror, unable to remember if his pain medications had the power to make him hallucinate.

His hands shook and his tongue clattered against his teeth and his eyes dizzied as they reread each word ten times over.

Never had he done this before, but he remembered his training on how to check where a transmission came from. He scanned it through a program that did his job for him anyway. His brain was on fire; he figured if he did it himself, he would screw it up anyway.

Three seconds passed as the computer program ran the message. Its notification flashed the words unable to detect location — unrecognized spacecraft. Would you like to notify the team?

He clicked ‘no’ before he could even think about it. If this was only a prank from an ambitious teen hacker, or if it was some kind of security breach, it would be his shame to bare. If this was something, though, if it was anything, it would be his until he was absolutely sure of it.

He read the message. He read it again and again. When he was sure it wouldn’t mutate right in front of his eyes, he pulled himself away to breathe. Then, hesitantly, he began to type back.

This is NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., in the United States. How have you managed to contact us?

He bit his nails as he waited. He hadn’t been trained on what to do if there was ever any real communication, only to fetch someone higher up. He turned to face the door. He heard their laughter roll through his head, their chatter and their jokes and their theories; the sound of their crisp shoes on the white tile, their papers shuffling, their angular hands rocketing away at the keys of their computers. Their sweetness, their familiarity, their friendship.

Their success, their selfishness, their laziness; he realized, now, that nobody had checked his computer for him after he was gone.

It sat here, unattended. In the basement.

WE HAD BEEN INFORMED OF YOUR RADIO WAVES AND WENT OUT TO FIND THEM. WE HAVE STUDIED YOU FOR SOME TIME NOW. WE HOPE OUR USE OF YOUR LANGUAGE IS SATISFACTORY. IF OUR INFORMATION IS NOT OUT OF DATE, OUR TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS ARE SIMILAR IN MANY WAYS. The response came in seconds. Lucian pulled at his skin, hair, eyes, nails, his clothes and his ears and his belt. He felt himself for a fever. His head was cool and growing clammy with nerves. He stirred his coffee a bit more, searching for hidden sabotage in the form of a plain white pill. It was only coffee.

Your English is perfect. If anything, formal. How have you managed to study us?

Again, it was immediate.

WE HAVE RECEIVED EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SENT US.

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Dumbfounded, he raised his coffee to his lips, but never drank it — he only sighed shaky, panicked breaths that rippled along the surface.

Lucian and the unidentified spacecraft began to correspond every day after that, as soon as he logged on until the moment he clocked out.

He began to see it as a friend; he had none left after all his years, besides the ones who he paid or who paid him. They communicated the basics first. They established themselves as yes, creatures on an aircraft, one barreling forward several million light-years away. They were going nowhere, they revealed.

They were simply moving ahead, as hundreds of their shuttles did. When they found something, they made note of it, and if it was worthwhile, they approached it; Earth was too far away to approach, they confessed, but they were intrigued by Earth, how badly they wanted some form of contact. The aliens offered that.

They both shared the numbers of their existence, how Earth had seven continents, ten billion people, and a single pale moon.

However, they could not answer most of Lucian’s questions — when he asked them what their name was, what they looked like, what their purpose was, they only responded with the same phrase every time: TO YOU, WE ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE. They talked about that for a while, how their languages and biologies were too different, their societies too complex to summarize. Lucian learned to hold back his questions. Instead, he offered as much of humanity as he possibly could to the aliens. He showed them music, movies, books; he recorded himself reading short stories or singing his boyhood hymns before shooting the radio waves up to the aliens, where they received them with more curiosity than Lucian knew was possible. They had every question a brain could possibly think of, and like a father or a mentor or a god, Lucian sat down at his computer, an encyclopedia split open and ten tabs alive on his phone, educating them the way he always longed to do. He taught and told stories. He made humanity real.

One day, the aliens asked him about himself. They did that rarely and Lucian assumed they did it only to take some kind of sample, connect one small human to the greater world he painted them. Today, though, they wanted to know about him, his life specifically; first, he was battered with doubt, wondering if he had the right to selfishly showcase himself to these creatures. Then, his heart warmed, and he realized that regardless of if he deserved to tell the aliens (which he believed he did, he discovered them after all), the aliens wanted to know, and as a friend, he was willing to share his vulnerabilities.

They asked him about his family, which made him flinch, but regardless, he answered. They asked about his mother and father — a structure that fascinated them, leaving Lucian to believe they had much different childhoods, if they had childhoods at all — and he slowly revealed that he had neither. His mother, dead, was a sweet memory but growing staler. His father, alive, had hardly ever been there, and when he was, he was obnoxious, rowdy, and painfully grounded, unable to imagine a life in the stars, which young Lucian often dreamed of. The aliens, still not acquainted with sympathy, offered him none. They just noted his parents’ absences with the same analysis they offered the weather cycles and the economy.

Despite their coldness, Lucian smiled. His grin ripped his stern face apart, and with his face bathed in the white light of the screen, tears slipped down his cheeks, silver and serene. He had been unhappy for so long. He had been weak for so long. An absurd joy bewitched his whole body and made him weep, the angelic kind he only saw in movies, devoid of snot or ugliness, only a sweet relief that exiled his cancer, his loneliness, his sin. He finally had a friend and a purpose, an accomplishment and a challenge. His life had a meaning and it was the most grand, cosmic mission of all. He had won, he thought to himself as he cried, he had finally won.

After a few more hours of back-and-forth with the aliens, he taught them to say goodbye and they did. He chuckled to himself as he marched up the stairs. His arms heaved with all the notes he took. He made it to his car, a tiny white thing at the edge of the grand parking lot, when Henry materialized out of nowhere,

slapping him on his back and calling out his name, as shiny and happy as a cartoon. Lucian glared at him for a long second, forgetting the world outside his computer. Henry’s smile withered.

“Lucian, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Henry sighed. He tapped Lucian’s arm one more time. “You wanna go inside and—” “Here is fine.” Lucian clutched his books and leaned against his car.

“Look, you know I don’t want to do this,” Henry fidgeted with his thumbs. “But we’ve caught word that, well, you’re talking to someone down there. And I’m not accusing you of anything! I wouldn’t do that!” He flashed his hands in surrender. “But I can’t ignore what the program tells me.”

“It tells you?” Lucian’s words slipped out in a hollow, breathless whisper. He wasn’t surprised. How could NASA not be alerted by telecommunication happening right beneath its nose? He only forgot that other people could see him, know him, perceive him. It had been weeks since he talked to anybody but his aliens. “Oh, yes, it does tell you, doesn’t it.”

“I know it must get lonely down there.” Henry looked at him with his kind, flat eyes. “But, man, this is important tech, you’ve got an important job. You can’t be entertaining the trolls and the hackers and the whoevers.” He looped his arm around Lucian’s shoulder and trapped him close. Lucian twitched; even someone like Henry couldn’t believe in him enough to think he was making real, meaningful progress. “The next time you need to talk to someone, find me, okay?”

Lucian resisted his touch and mumbled his apology, but Henry didn’t let go. He was waiting for another reply. Lucian suddenly felt like he was talking to his father again, that he was his father’s petulant, bastard child again, a difficult and terrible waste of a boy who couldn’t follow simple commands. Henry’s smile and empathy burned him like acid, stank like pity. Disgust slithered through his whole body.

“Okay, I’ll find you,” Lucian gruffed out and pushed himself away. He got in his car and prepared to storm off, but Henry stood there, smiling at him. Lucian clenched his jaw as he realized the obvious: just how stupid Henry must’ve thought he was. Lucian met Henry’s eyes, smiled a forced and clownish smile, and immediately tore out of the parking lot.

That was the last time Henry saw Lucian. The next day, the aliens made their offer.

LUCIAN. WE HOPE YOU READ THIS MESSAGE AND UNDERSTAND OUR GOALS. IF YOU DO NOT, ASK US TO CLARIFY AND WE WILL. WE HAVE COMPLETED SUFFICIENT RESEARCH TO PROVE THAT OUR KIND WILL SURVIVE IN YOUR ATMOSPHERE. IF EARTH IS READY TO MAKE CONTACT, WE CAN DESCEND. WE CAN SHARE WITH YOU ALL YOU HAVE WANTED TO KNOW. WE CAN GIFT YOU OUR KNOWLEDGE OF SPACE TRAVEL AND MORE. HOWEVER, WE MUST STRESS THIS: ONLY ACCEPT OUR OFFER IF EARTH IS READY TO RECEIVE US. IF YOU SAY NO, WE WILL RESPECT YOUR CHOICE AND STAY AWAY. PLEASE ONLY MAKE THIS DECISION WITH YOUR LEADERS, YOUR PEOPLE, AND YOUR FULLEST OF CONFIDENCE. Lucian sat speechless. His paralyzed heart refused to beat.

This was it. This was his everything. This is what he was born to do.

He thought of his mother, who was the kindest person he knew, who taught him about space and showed him her favorite fantastical books; how she embraced his dream of being a scientist, and now, she could watch from the great beyond as he secured the biggest triumph of the twenty-first century. He thought of his childhood self who plastered sickly neon green glow-in-the-dark stickers to his ceiling, who studied when he should be sleeping, who wore an astronaut helmet for five Halloweens in a row. He thought of his closest comrades in school, the ones he watched disappear one by one into brainless jobs and seamless families. He thought of the doctor, the young one who diagnosed him — how once, he was young and full of life too, and now closer to death than ever, only a few short months distancing him from the void, he was finally bursting with the joy of existence again, the possibility and the ambition and the great reveal to his cohorts when he announced his discovery.

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He thought of his bosses. His coworkers, his acquaintances, his water-cooler-strangers with IQs that rivaled his own. How they all doubted him, pitied him, believed he was good for nothing, he could waste away in the basement, a job so meaningless that a monkey could do it, that it was insulting to the monkey to think so low of it. He thought of Henry, how he loved him, how he hated him, how he despised him for making his head hurt with the warring debate on whether he wanted Henry to be his right-hand man or if he wanted him to be fired as soon as he moved up in the world.

For the first time in a long time, he was not thinking of his cancer, but rather all the life and people he was so grateful to know.

May I ask why you’re so insistent on us thinking over our decision?

He asked, mostly because he could think of nothing else to say to the alien race offering to come to Earth. He couldn’t stop smiling. This was it, he kept repeating to himself. This was his life’s worth finally proven.

THIS WILL FOREVER CHANGE THE COURSE OF HUMANITY. YOUR HISTORY, YOUR SCIENCE, YOUR PERCEPTIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. THERE IS NO GOING BACK OR REVERSING THIS DECISION. YOU WILL HAVE TO LIVE FOREVER WITH THE KNOWLEDGE WE BRING. YOU MUST KNOW THAT. Henry reread the message — were they condescending to him now? After their months of friendship, exchanges, learning?

He pictured their slimy, hairless grey mass, their dome-shaped dark eyes beaming down on him, the slime of their teeth as they spat out the words, oh, Lucian, you must know that. How can you not? He stiffened, afraid he had misinterpreted their friendship all along. Desperate, he shot out his message.

We know. And we have been ready to make this decision for some time now. Humanity is ready for you. I am ready for you.

Please, at your convenience, begin traveling.

His fingers pulsed with lightning and adrenaline as he typed the final word. He paused just before sending it to catch his breath. He read it one more time. Strangely, all that panic, all that excitement, bled out of him as he hovered over ‘send’. He was empty. He was calm. He was nothing, not even a pump of blood or a quiver of anxiety. He was pure. He sent the message.

THANK YOU. WE WILL SET OUR COURSE NOW. WE WILL REACH EARTH APPROXIMATELY FOUR YEARS FROM TODAY. Henry did not move for a long, long moment. He waited for the aliens to type again and apologize for saying four years when they meant four days, four weeks, four months. He waited for the delinquent on the other side of the chat to leap out and shame him for falling for such a prank. He waited for Henry to knock on the door, save him from this. He waited to die. He waited for his body to fold in on itself and implode, tearing this whole building down with him, dividing his soul into only a sour memory. He waited for anything; the end of the world, for his senses to flood back, for the regret to drown him. But no feelings came. Neither did the consequences. He was empty. He knew he would have to wait a long, long time for that to change — more time than he had.

He stood up, typed one final message, and disappeared.

If you can, please arrive at this location. You will see a large forest, a cabin, a creek. You may land wherever. Safe travels, friend.

He raced home, buried all his possessions in sodden cardboard boxes, tore down the family photos, and threw all his food in the trash. He wrangled his sweaters and socks into his sad blue suitcase. He ripped his laptop off its sedimentary place on his desk and launched it across the room where it shattered against his kitchen tile, chunks of black wire and wall splattering like mechanical anatomy. He contemplated ripping the battery out of his phone, but his body shook with too much restless danger, and feeling like a devil anyway, he turned all the faucets on high until water drooled over the edge of every tub and sink before abandoning his phone to float and spark in his bath. He punched the wall. He kicked the door. He screamed until his throat ripped raw. Then, he breathed, looked around, gained his composure, and walked out. Not a thought in his head; the head he once

worshipped, the head now tainted with tumors, fat bruise-purple lumps gnawing at his membranes, his body an auto-cannibal, a self-destruct button, a chimera, a mutation.

He drove and drove and drove and although he passed out at the wheel and wet himself in a daze, he woke up right where he wanted: his father’s cabin. The last (and only) time he visited was during a bitter Christmas, one of the first with his wife. The structure was still the exact same, rust-brown and crumbling with shingles that had minds of their own, but now outside, contraptions sprawled around, laundry lines with shabby red flannels hanging limp and homemade fire pits that looked like cult sacrifices. There was no sign of his father. He searched both inside and outside, called his name again and again, but he could not find him. He figured he was at the store, so Lucian made himself at home.

He found a spare room with a single yellowed mattress. He had a long, good nap. When he woke, his father was still not there, so he unpacked his bags and went to find breakfast. There were three eggs missing a carton, which looked weirder than an empty fridge altogether, but Lucian said nothing — as he still had no one to talk to — and cooked and ate them while he sat by the creek.

When the water rushed past him, sometimes it looked black or white, green or brown, but it never looked blue. His father wasn’t there by nightfall, so Lucian resigned himself to believing he was out on a trip. When he got hungry again, he searched the house for his father’s food. He found a stockpile of nonperishables, cans of beans, freeze-dried fruits -- packets of astronaut food, Lucian realized, and he might have screamed or laughed on any other day, but all he did was rip it open with his teeth and pour the powder into his mouth, his eyes unblinking. The days slipped past, first one by one, then ten days at a time, a blur of a sun cycle and long, good naps; he slowly stopped thinking of his father, of his old life, of anything at all. He only thought of the stars. He started to sleep outside more and more to be close to them.

For so long, he hated being small. He could not stand being the weakest, the oddest, the dumbest. He could not stand being average, below average; he could not stand any kind of existence where he wasn’t thought about, and often, and well. He did not want to be a dog or a boy or a thing. He was a man, and a twentyfirst century man — he was destined to be anything but small. He was the only being with the capability to comprehend the greater world, the swirling galaxies, the aliens.

He always thought of them when he looked at the stars.

They were the only thing he ever thought about anymore. He tried to imagine his family, his wife or his mother or his father or his Henry, but all he could see was the wink of his computer screen, a memory long muddled. His soul shrank and shriveled inside his sternum, chunks of it being caught by the breeze and tossed away.

He could not count how much time had passed, not anymore. He wondered if anyone else in the world knew of what was to come for them. His aliens.

He laid with his back against the cool dirt, his hands tickled by the dead winter grass. The sky above him was as dark and infinite as the beginning, as the end, as the in between. The stars were white, crisp, unforgettable. He was so small. He was so weak.

Lucian knew one thing and one thing only as he stared at the night sky: either they would come to him, or he would meet them up there among the stars.

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Kyli Hawks

Photography Lincoln Park High School Chicago, IL

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Alexis Film photography 2021

Victoria He

Visual Arts John P. Stevens High School Edison, NJ

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Our Fun is No “Mask”querade Acrylic 2021

Deirdre Hickey

Creative Nonfiction South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Greenville, SC

Watching Him Fade Away I know the way it begins - those autumn days when the air is a few degrees cooler and drier than the weeks before. How nighttime begins to underpaint the sky a handful of minutes earlier, the sweet dusk a burnt umber. The rottweiler behind the chain-link garden fence lunges at you from its spot in the cul de sac, only to be pulled backwards by its retractable leash tied to the front porch adorned in Pabst Blue Ribbon cans and cigarette butts. These moments belong to a prearranged sequence that has existed long before I could touch it with my own two hands and call the changing seasons a genesis.

Nolan’s birthday is on the Catholic feast day of the Immaculate Conception. Every year we take him to Mardinos in Bedford. The name of the chef at the old Italian restaurant is Eduardo. He’s from Sicily, and on one of our birthdays, he emerges from the kitchen into the dining room and sings something operatic and Italian, his white-pleated toque nearly touching the low ceiling. After the check is signed and my father concludes whatever bit he and our waiter (always Jose) had rehearsed during our meal, Nolan carries his banana cream pie to the car in a to-go container and eats it in front of his Xbox that night. He is simple in the way that January is, the way that Tuesdays are. He exists best in moments when nothing particular is on the horizon. I think that sometimes the month we are born into has everything to do with the way we conduct our lives. I’m a smoldering ember from a summer campfire, he’s the sound of the snowplow coming down your street at 5:30am. I’m the smell of sweet tobacco reverberating through the breeze, he’s the feeling of your thumb skimming the tract of the lighter when it’s freezing cold outside. We learn the world best through the conditions that we first encounter.

Nearly an entire year later, I think back to January when I first got my license. Seventeen out of the thirty-one days of that month unraveled the same way. After school my weather-beaten sedan stalls and gives out in the carpool line after sitting in the parking lot all day. I shift my weight onto my tailbone and lean against the hood of the car waiting for Nolan to bring me his jumper cables. My legs shiver under my knee socks and plaid skirt. Once or twice one of my teachers rolls by slowly, windows down, never quite beginning to stop. They offer help out of courtesy, and with equal politeness I refuse it. I know that somewhere on these broken roads, Nolan is finding his way towards me.

Afterwards, I take the chance that my car might die again and stop at the Deli on the way home. My clogs shuffle through the dirty slush on the sidewalk and carry me to the front of the store, icicle shaped Christmas lights draping the entrance. Somewhere on the wall behind the counter is a framed photo of Nolan’s little league team. When I order a chicken cutlet sandwich, I grab a peach tea out of the refrigerator and answer the clerks’ questions about my father. He’s good, his work is fine. My grandmother’s fine too, thank you. Nolan’s working at the firm with the uncles. Yes, good to see you too. I have rehearsed this monologue in my head countless times. I keep to myself that somehow Nolan became a man overnight. Unannounced, he poured the beer down the sink and filled whatever role my father left empty during those months he spent in rehab. Unannounced, Nolan decided to be the parent we both so desperately could’ve used.

Two Februarys ago Nolan’s best friend drowned right in front of him. I remember getting a phone call that they were searching the water for a body. My mother spent the rest of the night clutching the edge of the countertop, eventually moving to the front stoop where she held her weight on her palms, white-knuckled. I sat by her in silence for twenty minutes before I decided to go back inside and move Nolan’s uniform into the dryer. He was going to ask me when he came home anyway. It didn’t matter if Mom wanted to knock on my bedroom door every three and a half minutes and ask me why he hadn’t texted back— we had the option to either mourn his uncertain death or take the lint out of the dryer and close the blinds and fold his clothes and hope that Nolan would remember where we kept the spare key. He would’ve hated to see me forget how to breathe.

He came home that night, but not everyone was as lucky as we were and Nolan knew that. Mom knew that. The drycleaner who prepared his black suit jacket knew that. Even the dog had to have known after watching our shadows beneath the door hug for the first time. In that muddy creek, he left behind the boy I always knew. The boy who returned each night from football practice with a bag of ice from the QuickMart and red Gatorade rings around his mouth. The boy who shoveled spoonfuls of banana cream pie into his mouth while sitting crisscross in front of the television, never once removing his eyes from the screen. Without warning, we turned down different roads and learned how to walk alone. I turned around and watched Nolan’s back slip into the winter horizon until I couldn’t any longer. Watched him fade away and melt into manhood without asking if I was ready also.

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Zipporah Hinds

Visual Arts Miami Arts Charter School Miami, FL

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Make Sure You Hide Face paint and flowers on printer scanner 2021

Sisira Holbrook

Poetry Lusher Charter School New Orleans, LA

Sunburn There are words spilling from my mouth but they have no homeland.

I speak my own words—residual sun on my cheeks and custard apple rinds empty and cracked on the concrete I used to peer over to address the water buffalo in halos of mango leaves—all sun shocked to lace.

I speak new words—confess the mangled refrains of sand-battered hermit crabs caught between my toes. Silk spills from ragged fissures in my lips, and saltwater and soil. I can’t wash ginger and kaffir lime off my fingers, so they cling to my pens and attract insects.

My grandmother helps me bring the ants outside between crinkled paper towels and I thank her in Thai but the consonants catch, cling to one another, clot in my cheeks.

I slur an apology, cleave vowel from vowel, swallow, string together new words. Syllables collapse before they escape my mouth. She watches me. Slowly, thank you materializes in the air before my lips.

I bow, palms pressed together. My hands are too close to my nose. I correct myself into tears, into ruin.

On the first day of school in America I scrawled my name on a folder with the second s and the r backwards—the only English writing I knew. Now words flounder at my lips instead.

Syllables contort behind my teeth when I pick up the phone. There are too many s’s in my name.

Hello? Hello, this is Sisira. This-is-Si-si-ra. This is Sisira. I speak no language at all.

My first memory of America was gesturing with shaky fingers towards the white, white horizon— the opposite of green mountains, the opposite of rainforest mornings, the opposite of home.

My mother said hima, snow. I choked on the dry, cold evening, syllables sprouting disfigured limbs in my throat. I repeated hiuma? Are you hungry? Shadows of snow and mango lingered on my lower lip.

My grandmother makes me learn muay chaiya to defend myself. My teacher thinks I’m the reincarnation of an ancient Thai warrior: I only trip over my feet when he looks away. When he approaches me speaking English, I know to grab his wrist and let him choose between a broken arm and being forced to the ground. In Thailand, land of smiles, the bad guys always speak English.

I can’t speak. I want to find the answer to a question that begins with you’re beautiful—what are you? and ends in dry, snowy air. I want to understand why the temple bells ring when I walk beneath them when the cashier at the 7/11 between the hibiscus-flanked moat and the fish market laughs at me, asks her friend what a Western girl is doing trying to read the Thai label on a pack of rice crackers.

I want to be able to answer her without pausing: I am Thai and I’m going home now— I’m going to the rice fields after the hot rain falls and the beetles come out to inspect the stems.

I’d lie in the mud until the farmers find me, sing to me in Thai, smile, offer sticky rice nestled in bamboo.

But I can’t be happy there: in the paddies my shoulders will burn chili-red, centipede-red, fire-coral-red, silk-scarf-at-the-market-red, rambutan-red.

Sunset-red. Stripes-on-both-flags-red. It’s a shock to my skin: my country is the sun, and I’ve forgotten how white I am.

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Erosion These walls are papered in wishes flaking off like dead skin but it’s okay, the cousins slipped off the white string in November while I slept on the floor: the blessings are all gone. And that was the end—everything after is an epilogue I can’t extend indefinitely, the ink in my hands running dry. That was two weeks after my uncle’s birthday.

Look, of course I miss you but sometimes I’d rather miss the sea, and I told you without the prospect of a foreign sea within shouting distance I would have gone crazy years ago, but now what do I say? I’m just rotting inside that flooded shipping container I committed imaginary crimes within.

Just thinking of American New Year, of sitting on the container’s cold metal roof dangling my legs off as El tried a couple cartwheels. From above I could only hear your voice, see the top of your head where sparks fell and nested on your scalp, formed a crown, illuminated one hair at a time. Clinging to the door, you tossed up flares in different colors but most of them landed in water.

And then when you were sick, when El and I went back, I knew what I did was wrong. And I’m sorry I could never figure out how to shut the door. I apologized to the white string around El’s wrist and went home to mix half evaporated rivers and seas in an old olive oil bottle. The whole of the world would not fit in my stomach: cocktail of microscopic algae/splinters of mollusks/ hints of feathers and sunscreen caught in dying coral: on my knees I coughed up the Pacific Ocean, the waterfall near my old concrete house, the Adriatic Sea, and then that was the end—everything else melting to saliva and severed seas endlessly staining my hands.

That was a year after my uncle moved in with us. I was remembering swallowing up summer in the concrete house, writing uncle’s cancer on a paper lantern’s interior so you and El wouldn’t see, praying it would burn up in the stars, but you and El and I ran after it as it floated up. You drifted through the garden and into the street, pushing aside the rusting green gates I’d grown up behind, and remember that picture of you leaping over a speedbump? With your right hand flailing in the sky it looks like you’re clasping the lantern between two fingers, and we were enveloped in some sort of dark, jasmine-mist-dampened haze with karaoke lyrics still loosening themselves from our lips, and I wonder whether afterwards the lantern sunk, dragged down into the mountains by the afterimage of your fingernails, paper tearing against the serrated edges of jungle trees, but we ran towards the suspended white-gold paper still, and maybe that was our mistake. Maybe the sky saw and thought we wanted it back.

So while you and El struggled for a final glimpse, I burnt my ankle on a motorbike exhaust pipe, too busy defining the edges of the lantern— or vestige—or star—unable to carry that written weight. Or maybe that was my mistake. Concrete crimping skin, I fell on my right wrist and the white string snagged. Yes, that was the end—everything after is white cotton working itself indefinitely out of my palms.

That was a week after my uncle went to the hospital, and I was remembering finding the temple up in the mountains where the uninterrupted jungle hoards musty pink flowers.

My mother said you know what to pray for. You know what to ask for. And I asked for nothing else but maybe I didn’t hold the lotus? the incense? the candle? my hands? the right way. And tell me you remember how every time I walked beneath the temple bells they rang for me. Auspicious, I thought. Auspicious, I pleaded. El got lost and donated all his change to shadows under arches.

When we found him he was speaking to monks who were tying the white strand around his wrist. White-wristed we circled the center spire. El, distracted by the stone carvings of lions, reached into one’s mouth—fist writhing between teeth. When the first limestone ball stuck, El knelt by the next. Two beasts stared, empty-mouthed as you and I followed El, clutching and struggling to pull the smooth stones from between the jagged teeth. So maybe that was the end— and everything after is just my hands bleeding infinitely into the mouths of the lions.

That was a day after my uncle snuck out hospital-gowned to walk my dogs and yes, I know you don’t care about my dreams but last night I dreamt you and I were back

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in my bedroom in Thailand talking, and I ground my teeth and words came out in salt crystals.

The door to my balcony was open, so you threw the salt over your wrong shoulder, out the rectangle of open air, and read me a note, but before you were done speaking, already there was salt flooding back in over the threshold over the rose moss over the mango trees.

We conspired, whispering about the gods we were trying to believe in, their faces crystallizing in salt spirals on my sand dusted floor on the clawed door on the hand printed windows.

I told you—I told you that— Last night—that was the end, truly. Everything after is just me grappling with your eyes ever staring in the opposite direction, with holy water from Thai New Year evaporating boundlessly from my palms.

That was a year after I saw my uncle for the last time, and there was salt on my teeth at the temple, too. So maybe that was my mistake, or was it the white string on my wrist far looser than yours?—the white string on my wrist warped and strained by the stone teeth of the statues?

El’s and your fingers failed: your arms sagged and El turned to stroking the stone mane, the stone jowls. I collapsed at the feet of the last figurine, bowing my head into rock. You know, we were so sure we could pry the blessings from the lion’s lips.

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Claire Hong coin laundry

at

Poetry Homeschool Los Altos, CA

midnight

coin laundry at midnight [bamboo]: stick hands Ȁ Ȁ Ȁ

both of mine,

Ȁ Ȁ

an [e m b r /y/ o] silk packaging, wrapping paper for ------------------------------ a gift, grandmother says, slips her hands to Ȁ mine into a prize of quarters one for each of the 50 statestur/n the coins in my un/f Ȁ e/d hand, / / _____ Ȁ Ȁ edges Ȁ Ȁate, ---- / / |

burden of

a pandora’s crate--

dream/s

| in |

says

halmoni* smiles, never

//be better than me --------------------------- poor Korean immigrant, | use c o i n s to breach horizon child, then come tell me scent of the stars// the coins in my hand

/yet/

recite

the [un]spoken: my promise: take the foundation as a blanket, a remnant of shoulders

Ȁ Ȁ Ȁ Ȁ

[herit----------age] .

i never tell her that i daydream of writing.

. . .

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with salty

blood

Ȁ Ȁ

around my

in my

dreams

. .

i recall an old Korean legend sun ---&--- moon /up/

[two]

child [ren*]

climbing

/

i used to imagine that i was the sun:

Ȁ Ȁ Ȁ Ȁ

to the

heavens

Ȁ Ȁ Ȁ blond

(like halmoni’s coins, still lingering in my closed

fists)

until parasites

/

the

ladder

to

the

heavens | | |

sw/al/low/in/g

|

[tin/t]

until i am |

[milk]y white:

h o l l o w

pearl scraped of core

i used to imagine that i was the sun: [a child] yet ----------------------- the mirror ----------- reflects [like i]: stcelfer [i ekil]: a silhouette of

b o n e s

cl/ut/ch/in/g ------------- t-a-t-t-e-r-e-d sheets,

even as i dream. *halmoni: korean; grandmother, ren: chinese; people

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asian-american asian-american [human instinct]: to belong i follow the rules, checking boxes with the label asian/pacific islander classified into the category i belong in a box [belong]: go back to your country check box again asian/pacific islander this is my country this is my country this is my country this is my country this is not my country don’t have a country [asian]: human yellow skin, moon crescents for eyes “i can’t speak korean” “an american, then” they tell me i’m american ✓ i’m from america ✓ i can’t speak korean ✓ i don’t understand the culture [asian-american]: wannabe american i’m american ✓ i’m from america, born and raised ✓ i am part of the culture ✓ it’s my country  i have asian roots  i have yellow skin i’m asian-american ✓ i’m from america, born and raised

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Anna Hu

Design Arts Raleigh Charter High School Raleigh, NC

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“Lunch” Page 1 Adobe Illustrator 2021

JH

Creative Nonfiction Seven Hills School Cincinnati, OH

Saturn Devouring His Child I.

This is where it begins: sticky sugar summer, sweat on soaked scalps, red juice dripping down pink fingertips. Sunset like a vintage photograph. My father and his half-moon knife, slicing sweet crescents out of fleshy watermelons. My mother in a blue gingham dress, ice cubes filling her cheeks, ankles silver dollar wide. Me, two months away from seven, twirling, twisting, tangled hair and topless, gap-toothed grin, on the verge of taking flight.

Always waiting for my father to kiss my mother, Hercules and Megara from the movie, pulling close, setting fireworks. It is the Fourth of July. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, thinner than she has ever been. Her hands tremble.

I stop and wait for him to hold her steady, suck the ice cubes from her mouth, leave smooth black seeds between her teeth so watermelons grow inside of her like she says will happen if I swallow them. No - he looks away from her, over her shoulder.

Behind her, I am spinning again. Spinning and laughing and no longer laughing. My mother wraps a towel around me; the heat is nearly unbearable.

Eat, he says to me then. A crescent moon cupped suddenly between my hands, sweet trails slipping down my arms. He chews first and watches my mouth. I am so young. I swallow the fruit until I am full enough to crack open, blood and bone and watermelon seeds spilling onto the grass.

II.

A first smudge of red between my legs, languid aches before knife-sharp pain. My mother cries. Mostly from envy, she hasn’t bled in years. Womb like salt. She whispers with my father: he says Where is my son; she sobs, says I’m sorry, I tried.

My father is eating watermelon when I come home from school, his favorite fruit. Eats the way they did in the village where he was nearly killed. Gnashing his teeth and sucking the juice.

Ravenous. The sound makes my throat close and my stomach seize, I wrap my arms around myself even though I don’t know what I’m covering. The time I pressed my ear to the guest room wall and heard high-pitched moaning. Metal door handle, my father’s nude form. Blurred colors on the television. This is what I think of.

Another jab in my lower abdomen. One body carving space for another. This morning I stood in front of the dresser and put on lipstick stolen from my mother, Armani Red from Bergdorf’s, red as paint and fruit and blood, I wanted so badly to look grown up. Then I held my mother’s jade beads, little moons on yellow skin, remnants of her mother who died before I lived. Now I cover my ears.

What did you put on your mouth, he says. Voice muffled through my hands. Why are your lips so red, wipe that off now.

You’re twelve years old, you look like a prostitute.

Naked dancing women, sequins and slow lights. Big blonde hair and little cheongsam costumes. Red lips. White teeth, watermelon peel. Gnashing. When he chews I hide my face.

III.

Saturn Devouring His Children was painted by Francisco Goya, one of many gruesome depictions of the king of the Titans swallowing his own offspring. In Roman mythology, Saturn is stoic, power-hungry, tearing apart his sons so they will never take his throne. Goya’s is a picture of unbridled lust. The victim is headless and lush. Saturn is feverishly aroused. The boldest color of the painting is a thick smear of red blood.

We study the painting in my Art History class and I wonder what Jupiter saw Saturn as first. Parent or Man. Creator or Devourer. The intersection between the two. That night my father grabs my feet, grips and rubs, I say stop and he keeps pulling, I

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think of the parts of me that come from him and if those places ever belonged to me to begin with.

IV.

Did you know we are what we eat, my mother says to me, as many mothers have said to their daughters. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. We are in a maroon leather booth at a Peruvian restaurant her coworker recommended, industrial lighting and stylized piping, tables made of iron and sharp corners.

As far from China as she can run. Two platters of Causa Limeña and watermelon consommé between us, untouched, mocking.

Like this, she says. This crab. Your body turns every piece into a part of you.

My arms are growing into pincers, hard and ridged and bruised with dark red spots; my teeth narrowing into infinitesimal points. Eyes black and spherical and midnight, a monster at the bottom of the sea. Scylla, Charybdis, a mother, a daughter, too dark and deep and devastating for any man to find.

Baba said he doesn’t like skinny women, I tell her. Chipped corners on the plates, streaks in the iron table. Imperfections everywhere. The valleys and lines in her face, most of all.

Then eat, she says. Her hands grope for her tiny silver spoon, a piece of ice from her water, gulped unceremoniously, frozen to the skin in her mouth.

I feel sick when he looks at me, I say, I show my claws.

Silence, and the squeeze between her brows as she swallows.

V.

When Rome conquered Egypt, so spread the cultivation of the watermelon, sweet and luscious and full, plump with seeds.

Pliny the Elder praised its healing properties, its rich tang, its fragile rinds. The Mediterranean overflowed with dark seeds.

From there, the watermelon crossed to India and then China, carried by merchants and caravans and pirates. Brought to America a few centuries later by the African slave trade. A fruit of conquest. Blood-red and tenacious, it filled barren lands and quenched the thirst of killers.

VI.

Chinese New Year, my father and I dress in red for luck and go to his friend’s house for dinner, leave my mother at home because her bones are full of holes and she can’t stand without shaking. Her jade beads resting on my collarbones. Take those off, you look nothing like her, my father says as he drives. Gaze scalding the rearview mirror. The necklace is ice on my fingertips as I detach it and my neck is even colder.

At the table, Jessica and her parents sit facing us, paper plates stacked with rice and fish and shrimp, seeping sauce, oozing.

My stomach twisting in snake coils. Raise my knife and cut my meat into tiny rectangles, tiny squares, small enough to disappear.

The sounds of dialect growing rapidly dissonant. Windows turning to mirrors and lamplight to fires. Sweat pooling on sequined hems. My father gnashing, gnashing, gnashing. Made to destroy.

Can’t run, can’t cover my ears. Knife point digging into the plate until it tears. He glares at me and I know I’ve failed, no one else sees but his eyes are the only ones that matter. The way they stick too long at the strap of my dress. Linger where my mother’s jade should’ve lain.

Your daughter looks just like you, someone says to him.

Because she’s mine, he says back. Loud laughter. In my cup, melting ice, melting face. Dripping makeup beneath my eyes.

Across the table, Jessica’s mother spoons more food upon her plate. Her father is nodding, chewing, smiling. Boasting about

her grades. Smart girl, he says in Mandarin. Wraps his arm around her and she still grins like nothing changed. Like safety. His fingers on her shoulder. Too near. Still smiling, all three of them. The air thrums with wet heat and I’ve never felt dirtier.

VII.

When I am in New York for a month to study the Aeneid, my father frequents a bubble tea store downstairs from our hotel.

Tapioca causes cancer, my mother says when I call her.

Hollow cheekbones, hollow voice. I ask her if she needs anything and she shakes her head, the phone line crackling and beeping before it quiets.

Classes on weekdays while my father works, but on weekends, he puts his hand on my waist and takes me to Chelsea Market. Stay close to me, he insists, brushes my skin with calloused fingers, close enough for me to smell sweat and watermelon and argan oil shampoo.

How much bubble tea have you had this week? I ask. The pile of plastic cups in our trash can, the heap of rainbow straws, a sea turtle’s nightmare. You’re going to get cancer.

No reply. Walking and walking and the band of my jean shorts pressing on my stomach. On the metro an old man whistles at me, SoHo, Grand Central, the Gould Memorial Library.

Look, it’s a reconceptualization of the Pantheon, I say. My father buys me sorbet I don’t eat. Stares into the V-neck of my tank top.

Ice spilling in my lap.

VIII.

For ten years, China has been the world’s biggest watermelon producer. Number one, my grandfather says when we drive out to the ancestral farmland. I am fifteen and old enough to know this place belongs to the men in the family. Dangling my fingers out the car window as the father of my father points at endless tangles of green vines and yellow blossoms. Why do you read the books of the whites, he asks in Mandarin. Why, when we have all of this.

She’s going to be a classicist, my mother says from the backseat, sharp. Still knows how to lace her voice with ice but only with my father’s family, makes me wonder how she was before she learned to make herself disappear.

Classicist, my grandfather says. Sneers and looks just like my father even though their faces are nothing alike, two rows of yellow teeth, skin drawn with harsh sun lines. Carved by wind and rain and ten years of the Cultural Revolution. Staring at me and the land with the same eyes. Father and son. Twin hunger to own and to conquer.

This earth is a woman, he says as we drive. Soon you will be too. Silly American girl.

IX.

For my sixteenth birthday, my mother books a trip to Italy.

She falls ill before we can go, heart leaping faster faster faster, freezing in place. I stand at our kitchen counter and slice pieces of watermelon onto a china plate. Tiny chunks so she can put them in her cheeks, red and bloody and sickly sugar sweet.

I tell her my father is working late but certainly she knows better, they’ve been married for twenty years even though he forgot their anniversary. When he returns home in the gray hours of night, he passes my room on his way upstairs. Creaking, wooden footsteps. Close my eyes tight and pretend I don’t hear him opening the door. A man, standing in a faint, watercolor shaft of light, waiting, watching. It is the middle of summer and I start sleeping in socks and long sleeves.

In the morning, the plate on my mother’s bedside table is still full. Red flesh beginning to crystallize, seeds peering from gaping pores. If only she would eat and eat and grow rich and plump like the fruit itself, we are what we eat, let the seeds grow vines in her veins and fill her with tiny blossoms so she will never be cold again. Trade ice cubes for watermelon moons, pretend she never miscarried my brother, pretend my father will kiss her and hold her and bite her lips because he too is starving.

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Why can’t you make Baba want you? I almost ask her when she wakes. Swallow it back. Let the words freeze to my cheeks.

If the world were fair, she would be whole and his body would be filled with pearl-shaped tumors. If the world were fair, there would be fathers who love mothers and parents who love their daughters and keep them safe from the world, safe from each other. There would be no danger to begin with.

But instead we have gingham dresses, blue and white, and beads made of jade, ice cubes and wasteland consommé. Women in the eye of the beholder. Belonging to the beholder, existing for the beholder. We exist for the beholder. And in the end we are all drawn in red. #

Tina Huang

Poetry Phillips Exeter Academy Exeter, NH

Mulan for Magnolia after Nancy Huang

i. This is how my grandmother tells the story: Four centuries ago, nomadic women rode their husbands’ horses along the plains of Luoyang, bathed in waters rich with summer’s heat.

Barefoot on the coast, Zhu Mulan twirled around a golden comb.

A mei, she was folding clothes, her infant brother’s linen, when men of stone came to fetch her father of glass.

You see, Mulan’s visions of her father on a battleground manifest in the nightmares of every wife, daughter, and sister.

Remember, this is a ballad.

Mulan knew her father kept the family sword right next to a jade vase.

With the blade, she drew a magnolia, became a son, and put her golden comb in the cinch atop her ill father’s horse.

Of the Xianbei people, Mulan was a nomadic woman Freest when riding through plains, Loveliest when promising to marry Jin Yong, Loneliest when fighting ten years against the Rouran.

Before her last battle, Mulan switched her costume for a silk hanfu, dashed blush on her cheeks, and inspired the men of her army the way all generals do.

The emperor called her China’s princess.

She would have lavished in gold, became the woman she never was.

Instead, she rode back to a quiet village on a nameless horse and entered a house dusted by her father’s last breath. ii. This is how my mother tells the story: Mulan shares my maiden name that I never changed, the last name of my father.

Not Hua, flower, but Zhu, meaning red, like cinnamon mixed in herbal drinks taken to fight an imbalance of yin and yang.

Her father taught her how to fight.

His body’s yang diluted his yin until no flavor remained.

After the recruiters came, Mulan traveled east, bought a fine horse,

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and covered ten thousand li of battleground.

When fighting the Rouran, Mulan sees herself in the breastplate of another nomad’s iron armor, her hands, which once folded clothes, now red and rough.

In this version, she fights ten years and returns engaged.

Jin Yong is a soldier.

Mulan is a Xianbei nomad.

The Rourans are nomads. iii. This is how I tell the story: Mulan isn’t a nomad, she is a tomboy surnamed Hua, flower, Mulan for magnolia.

They call her Flower fucking Flower to please those who hate cinnamon.

Her father’s face buffers on screen, a tanner hue than Mulan’s.

Dragon’s scales are the only red.

I see Jin Yong is Li Shang.

From original to sequel, he goes from one man army to unknown death.

A li is a half-kilometer.

Rourans are barbarians.

Mulan, a symbol for justice, beauty, pride.

Look at the apple; there’s always an apple.

In middle country’s eyes, the Uighurs are the Rourans are the very thing they wanted Mulan to protect her father from, to save a homeland that didn’t need saving. iv. This is how Mulan tells the story: Four centuries ago, I was a woman born to forget the lyrics of this broken ballad.

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Breathe The hooded crane, native to Jiangxi’s mudflats, now lives in my father’s dreams as a preferred method of escape from Kamikaze pilots. On Tuesdays, my father takes kung fu lessons with his neighbors.

Barefoot in a wooden dojo, they study Shaolin, a style derived from the movements of five animals handpicked by a man my father confuses for shī fù. Kung fu artists don’t fight, they label. Every animal has an element and organ, shī fù says.

My father only pays attention to the crane.

Lungs are spoiled — the last organ to function after birth.

Cranes are spoiled. You are spoiled. To match in height and elegance, one must inhale with their whole chest until blood reaches their toes. Cranes represent the lungs, your lungs represent sadness. What are you?

Asthma, my father says. Cranes dance in flocks when lonely. My father hides in his bedroom. Talks to his mother. Dreams away Kamikaze pilots for Sonic the Hedgehog. Tiger. Monkey. Snake. Mantis. My father attends the last lesson to forget the crane, but asks for its element. Shī fù mops the floor and says metal.

Translation: shī fù - teacher

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Michael Ilisoi

Visual Arts Silverton High School Silverton, OR

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Rockwell, Sterne, & I Acrylic paint 2021

Shnayjaah Jeanty

Spoken Word Charles W. Flanagan High School Pembroke Pines, FL

Ode to Virtual Students in Noisy Households to the virtual students in noisy households: the clanging of pots on a thursday morning carries decades of culture, and the squeals of your siblings’ play fights are an orchestra of innocence and all that it means to be alive. when you are called on, do not punctuate your responses with apologies. it is no one’s place to reduce your family to a disturbance. to the virtual students in noisy households: how many times did you beg for headphones before you thought yourself into machine? before you learned how to convert chaos to birdsong? when your mother’s windpipe turns coffin, and your father is the gravedigger, but you have a biology assignment due in the next hour, what happens when the lesson his fists teach your skin is the one meeting you can’t leave? to the virtual students in noisy households: sometimes, the banging of pans on a thursday morning carries the bones of a war, and you become more white flag than child. i want to hear each and every wifi-related excuse that you’ve pulled from your mouth like a sick tooth to hide the fact that in third period you were referee to a battle with no winner, and you were late to fourth because you’ve been a nurse before you were old enough to spell stethoscope. how long does it take for your mother to recognize your eyes as your own and not her abuser’s? looking at your face on zoom is only a reminder that you are equal parts destroyer and destroyed, and by the time you sit down to write about it, all your hands have to offer are apologies. to the virtual students in noisy households: i would ask what it feels like to be your mother’s shackles and your father’s lapse in judgement but not everything feels like something else. at times, the collage of bruises on your body feels as if each of your organs is being divided to the nearest whole number, but a raised voice but has no simile. when your teacher says that there is no reason for any online students to be stressed, that “cheating has gotten so much easier for you all” and “you get to stay home,” upload the draft of your suicide note to canvas. to the virtual students in noisy households: this is an ode to the sons who minimize the screens of their trauma and say they’ll come back to it later, to the daughters who hope to hold their pain as gracefully as their mothers do, to those who don’t see that domestic violence is a pandemic within a pandemic, who don’t see the children who had to choose between their lives and their lives when deciding where to receive an education this year. this poem is for those who’ve learned firsthand that you can’t bite the hand that feeds you even when it is the same hand that beats you. to the virtual students in noisy households: this is the true meaning of a disturbance— hearing an sos, and asking for it to be muted.

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My Origin Stories, or Three Caribbean Folk Tales as Told by an Americanized Island Girl mama likes gnawing light into sugarcane spit, mouth loosening from daisy to deity, apex predator of the cosmos. when the horizon begins to melt from papaya flesh sunrises, she singes origin stories into my lungs. i. my strength ripens wild and rampant on full-bellied mango trees in jamaica, bursting warm-toned carnelian and sweet. here, the sea level is just high enough for the celestine waters to witness the divine ruination that arises when the coconut-laden breeze sculpts femininity from sand and sweat. upon birth, my mother scraped her palms on the scotch bonnet sunset and licked her feral name off her spice-blood wounds. “trust no one who struggles to speak your name”— she slicks this castor oil advice onto my fists so i’ll know it like the back of my hand— “it is the mnemonic for all the things they will never become.” when the isle savors toxic fruit for breakfast, we grow accustomed to wedging bombs into the soft of our throats. she tucks this truth under a tight cornrow: us island girls first find sun dried sorrel blood on the rear of our dresses and begin to taste anarchies brewing on the back of our tongues. divinity has drilled itself into her ribs and sometimes i find her gazing at the cloud-stained sky like it’s soul food. i wish to be reincarnated here, where west indian sun evokes a sort of resilience that is uncharted. ii. my rage lurches as it coasts along torrential winds and upheaval in haiti, surging harsh and cold. here, its timeworn soil knows better than to confuse rebirth with ruin. according to biblical history, corruption is a sin only floods can cleanse— so my father swallowed neptune himself and flushed his ego with an IV bag of saline. how he writhed and howled when he realized he was nothing but salt and a home that is no longer his. osmosis aches like raw uranus failing to settle in your abdomen. like the moon burnt tides, he is transient. each time i brush my teeth, i spit out seafoam and a bit of his culture. i gargle saltwater for a sore throat and hack up a brackish remnant of my father’s love. the cedar patinas on his bronze age skin darken like the 2006 carpet he left us and his god on. i wish for him and the aegean skies to observe, firsthand, the uprising that grows in his absence. iii. what is history if not repetition?

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Isaac Jekel

Visual Arts Holland High School Holland, MI

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Fatima Oil and cold wax medium on primed watercolor paper 2020

Christopher Jeong

Photography Bergen County Academies Hackensack, NJ

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Lee is Happy Digital photography 2021

Claire Joseph

Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

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I Guess I’ll Sleep on the Carpet Fabric, yarn and rug 2021

Sophia Kagan

Design Arts Skyline High School Sammamish, WA

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Seattle Adobe Photoshop, marker, marker paper and fabric 2020

Myra Kamal

Poetry Rancho Solano Preparatory School Scottsdale, AZ

Natural Disaster for my Nana

i. the first anniversary was yesterday and I sat in the pantry while my family visited you. and I tried to recall the prayer you say for the departed and confused it with the prayer for the missing. it may come to me someday as an oyster may create white moon between its lips. instead, I watched moths infest the hearts of rice sacks, heard them all come back from scattering petals above your head, and I realized grief and you would reek the same—both of hydrangeas sticky from our sweaty palms, you’d reek so colorfully of us. ii. there was a whale song I knew once. maybe my bones retained some warbled note because skin certainly has no memory. because I know all that’s left of you are bones and maybe there are some jasmines growing from your femur right now. I hoped we’d gain some heirloom tomatoes or walnut trees but nothing sprouts from your absence. we are all so submerged under whispers of your breath, it is hard to find pockets of air. they come in quiet moments as the tide recedes, we near the surface, all of us, ululating swirls of fat and light. iii. your hands still reek of the pomelo you sliced the day of your funeral.

I keep telling you today is the wrong day to picnic at the beach, but you don’t believe in hurricanes. you bring a pail, collect sand dollars and crab shells, all the gaping carapace you left. lately, I have fallen into too many mirages, vibrating sunbeams ricocheting into asphalt, the ringing after your finger outlined globes in a wine glass. who’s to say the body goes numb when it misses? I am aware of every prickled hair that bends like flower stem over the mulch. tectonic plates converge too tenderly for my feet to glide, colors and bodies shift still the same, emerge into new gem-eyed butterflies every day. a child learns to bathe themselves for the first time, cares for their skin in pools of twilight, as if they will know how to soothe a city in shock, its splayed skeletal brambles, soundless and mosaic as a martyr in chapel light. all the grocery stores are boarded up, the deli too, but perhaps it would be more savory to let the deluge swallow the checkered mess of it. you open the windows, later we find a bird perched on my dresser, the occasional prayer that slips in.

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Self Portrait as a Daughter of Mother Tongue Nani1 teaches me to read the world from right to left, backwards, until I witness living moments unborn. Dawn receding into darkness is Urdu. Motia2 blossoms curling inwards as the sun collides into cold earth. Traveling backwards in time, a memory is Urdu. I swallow the white streetlights of Lahore, let it lull me to sleep like milk. I dream of Basant3.

A thousand colored kites. Nani says they could be a thousand proclamations of love fluttering through heavens. I call them a thousand voices of liberation, colored moths with crystal wings.

I try to grasp one in my hands but create canyons glistening blood.

Each kite is tethered to its rooftop, its string, unwoven skin, unspools knowledge of home. I harness the language to revisit my ancestors resting in the homeland.

Nani believes they hold peace like a centered planet, released from their orbits, the language as their gravity, the petals we throw above their head as stars.

We stand together between the kites of Basant and their graves. Against the dappled light, our inky shadows make calligraphic letters, spelling a word I cannot pronounce.

1 Nani- maternal grandmother 2 Motia- jasmine flowers 3 Basant- spring kite festival

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Abigail Haewon Kim

Design Arts Seoul International School Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, KR

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Laundro Spinn Rhino, Keyshot and Adobe Photoshop 2021

Esther Kim Exhibition to my father

If only museums fit into paper boxes.

I’d store each piece of you in my bedroom, a diorama holding half a century. i. My fingers trace a childhood I never knew.

Years ago, as you tucked me and Daniel into bed, we’d ask for stories. While other homes unraveled the coiled narratives of fathers, we never heard yours. Instead, a fairytale or a prayer. I picture the boy hunched over his desk, pencil in hand, and laugh. ii. [Now, you hunch over a wall, your naked back to your father’s club.]

Last night, mother ripped a clothes hanger off the floor and pulled her arm back— you held her arm as the moon shattered across the floor. iii. America lies in the middle of the diorama.

Decrepit America, sugared-over America. The undersideof-a-dream America. Elevenpeople-puzzle-pieced-into-a-car America. [You hold the American flag out the car window. In the market, too.

Browned and bruised peaches, you buy one and bite. The juices trickle into an innocent smile.] iv. Mother tells me about her because you won’t. You’re like your grandmother, she says.

If only you had met her— two oceans bearing the remnants of her life—her sorrows, secrets, hatreds, hopes—you stare at the mug in your hand—the smell of turmeric drifting upward—you know turmeric prevents cancer? Yeah, it does.

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Poetry Holton-Arms School Bethesda, MD

dear franny choi in the first grade i remember hanging my head low when my umma introduced herself as yoojin. i remember feeling so grateful that my name was not korean, for i had shed that name in skins. i’d already known that i shouldn’t bring bibimbap for lunch, that it would smell bad and look as if my kitchen unpeeled itself. reading “Choi Jeong Min” was sinking into my past. i grazed on it and let it fill my bedroom, seeing how i could find myself in your words, how my childhood seeped through the page. i knew this “paper thin & raceless” you wrote. in there, i see my pigtails and bangs as if i were a doll of sorts. i never liked dolls, but i played with one in my halmoni’s apartment in seoul. it was a russian stacking doll, one you’d crack open to find another to find another. i think there were five in the one i used, and i always felt like the smallest— the last. my american had hidden the korean, and maybe one day, my korean would disappear. i wished it would. i wished halmoni didn’t speak korean every day and let me be. i, too, wished i didn’t have “garlic breath” after i ate her soondubu jjigae. i wished i wasn’t so far away. but now, when i think of college, i wonder what i’ll eat if not korean food, if not soondubu jjigae by umma’s side. she tells me she won’t miss me, but then she laughs and feeds me more. in english class, we’re discussing immigration as one aspect of american literature, yet i don’t believe america is as much a home as some think. my parents’ home is still oceans away. they tell me they hope to go back there, and i wonder why they came here in the first place. if they go, i will follow. i’ll get lost in their streets and maybe find my way to the yogurt lady who used to come by the house, her face as banana milk as mine. then, i wouldn’t forget. when they’d ask me my name, i’d tell them i’m yoonjin, spun from “minor chord” and “gook name.” and like you, i confess. only years later did i know that halmoni had cancer, that god may give and god may take. in two years, i hope to go back

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to her and step inside her apartment, for i know it’ll seem like home. by then, i may know how to cook jjigae. i’ll welcome others there too with my broken konglish slipping out of my mouth. i forget

when i left my mother tongue, but i think it’s still there in the stacking doll, folded within the layers of foreign that seemed so smooth. maybe then, i’ll feel its doll casings like the palms of halmoni, only rougher than the year before. halmoni’s hair spills out slowly, and she bends to the floor as she steps. i hope she stays long enough for me to say thank you and hold her hand. then, i will unravel the stacking doll and press a star into her hand so that someday, i may find her. i haven’t seen “the star” yet, but i will if this “factory yard” lets me go. then, i’ll follow it back.

-umma is Korean for ‘mother’ halmoni is Korean for ‘grandmother’ soondubu jjigae is Korean for ‘tofu stew’

Jennifer Taeyoung Kim

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Design Arts Asia Pacific International School Nowon-gu, Seoul, KR

Kiwa Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Rhino, Keyshot, black foam core and Play-Doh clay 2021

Shelby Kim

DesignArts La Cañada High School La Cañada, CA

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Minimalist Movie Poster Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop 2021

Grace Kosten

Photography Harvard-Westlake School Studio City, CA

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fem/me Digital photography 2021

Divyasri Krishnan Eclipse Elegy When the sun dies, my mother cleans the house.

She and her sister wash the concrete walls with her father’s old vaishti, turned grey by suds and dirt and the dark. Their soft scholar’s hands scrape against the ridges of dry paint.

They draw blood. This is a sort of cleansing, too.

An eclipse, my mother’s mother says, is a time of darkness. Even once the light pours in again, the shadow sticks, like charred flakes in a sieve after you drain the ghee. The clarified butter, bright like so many suns, is faintly sweet. But what I like is what remains, the ashes that stain my teeth. God cannot live where darkness exists, she tells me. But listen—isn’t darkness a natural form of night? God is not a fickle thing; It listens even when the morning is unripe.

Still, they insist—beating out their quiet tenant, their shame-faced shadow child with a straw thodapi. Adi is its echo, a word meaning strike. There is a violence to this cleansing they name holy. Darkness is holy, too, but they beat him anyways, this child in the dregs of light, the clinging ashes in the sieve. We know how to beat our children. We know how to strike back divinity into our walls, our floorboards, our bodies. We streak our blood where darkness once was, and it is a form of prayer. But know this—light is the jealous thing, not God. Light demands what we cannot give, a purity, a clarification. But we are a dark people. We are no sun but night. Know this, too—darkness does not mean rot. Like us, he makes his home in the arms of God.

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Poetry Acton-Boxborough Regional High School Acton, MA

MY MOTHER HAS SURGERY IN TIRUCHIRAPPALLI Everything dulls. In America, the hospitals are fluorescent, light scouring the air. Here, a ripe and quiet darkness.

In a room, in a bed, my mother. She could be dead. She lived when I left, but in the time it takes me to shake together my clumsy vocabulary and ask the nurses for a glass of water, this might change. Things happen in the darkness, independent of our wants.

The fear of infection is an old one to me. To her, new, inherited—See, my mother was born not twenty miles from here, in a city so like this, though to call it a city is to blaspheme. What I mean is— familiarity. The dust that cakes, the callouses that toughen sun-browned feet like old rinds, heat.

My mother made dirt pies as a child. As a school girl, rode a bus greener than the salt-sick shrubbery and rested a hand where a thousand hands had taken respite from heat. She drank coconuts split with a machete strike, through plastic straws rimmed with road dust. She spat with the drunkards and cut her feet on their broken bottles—green like the sea.

She had her tongue cut by a knife of Babel. Many-tongued. I have only the one.

For me she left the sea. Moved across the world to a younger country. Instead of dirt pies she made apple, pecan, pumpkin. She traded out her native dust for lemon-pepper, garlic salt. Drank thinner water. Sheathed her feet in leather until they could pillow her weakened knees. She lost several tongues, but retained one: her mother’s.

I did not.

My mother lies in a hospital bed ten-thousand miles from home—alone.

She wants a glass of water. Her own daughter cannot speak the words to get it for her.

It is a different kind of death.

My mother has lost her hardness. Everything she called hers once could now kill her. This dust, this dirt, this darkness has teeth.

It is like blindness: I, who was born without eyes, do not miss the sight. This fear is entirely mine. But to my mother, it means anguish—she who remembers what it is to see, the warmth of the earth, the smell of the sea.

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Divyasri Krishnan

Novel Acton-Boxborough Regional High School Acton, MA

The Other Side of the Sun SAA And the seagulls went about, about, carving the clouds into dreamlike shapes—here a ship tossed in a gale, there a maiden reaching for the sun.

Saa held the oyster knife between two fingers, the silver plate of the hilt balanced on her knuckles. The world seemed as open as the oyster in her other palm, the meat of it as bright as the glittering sea below her. Along the silver strip of shore was a line of fishermen’s boats, painted all the colors of the sunrise. Stray dogs played and snapped at the water’s edge. Farther up, barefoot upon a rocky ledge, her brother trailed a crab along the curve of a tidepool before skewering it through with his own knife.

“Kavi,” she called to him. The wind swallowed the sound and dragged it against the rocks, over the edge to the water; her brother did not respond.

With a scattering of pebbles near her shoulder, her other brother, Suri, announced his arrival. “Leave him. We’ve collected enough.” He dropped a handful of oyster shells into the basket by her feet.

“Where did you find so many?”

“By the lower tidepools, near the west edge of the mouth of the bay. It smells like sewage, though; I won’t be going there again.”

“Of course,” Saa murmured. The west edge was where the slums congregated, where their stench and presence saturated and poisoned the otherwise normally clear air. Even the clouds that gathered over the shacks of corrugated cardboard and steel seemed blacker, dirtier than the rest.

From time to time, she could smell the slums from here, the odor of feces and rotting sewage carried across the mouth of the river by a strong wind. Soon, as it was picking up, the smell would be unbearable.

“Kavi!” she called again, louder this time.

Kavi glanced up from where he had been stuffing his pockets full of rocks and shellfish corpses. Lithe as a mountain goat, he scaled the jagged rocks up to Saa, his small feet finding perfect purchase where she could see none.

“That’s not enough,” he intoned when he arrived, gazing solemnly into the oyster basket.

Suri pinched Kavi’s ear. “How many do you want? Three hundred?”

Kavi scowled and squirmed out of his grip. “No, but that’s not even enough for lunch.”

“Since when have we ever brought enough for lunch?”

Saa smiled down at him. “Chellom, the fishermen do that. Come.

Amma will be waiting.”

A driver waited in front of their car, a convertible, the top and doors already open. The leather seats would be burning hot, judging by the way the sun shone down today. It was closer in the sky here than in the pictures Appa kept of old Earth. It burned through the clouds and flooded the land with brilliance, setting the rivers and forests steaming.

Along the other side of the bank, the fishermen carried their catch in hemp baskets. They weren’t as effectively insulated as aerogel-lined baskets, but Appa deeply disapproved of such technology and had made it very clear that no man using such an unnatural material would be rewarded with his money.

Saa and her brothers used hemp baskets for their oysters too, but ate most of them as they found them. The ones remaining in the basket might be used for lunch, but more likely they would become fertilizer for Amma’s garden.

Oyster-collecting was a monthly tradition to honor the day of full sun. In the early years of settlement, Saa’s ancestors had

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cleaned and eaten every oyster they had collected. Now, of course, they had fishermen and maidservants for efficiency, but Appa sent the three of them out every month to join in. It was important, he told them, not to forget the old ways.

As the three of them neared the car, Suri whistled. “The rats are coming.”

He was referring to the street children. They were unavoidable, escapees from the slums milling about anyone who looked like they might have money. They stood in a semicircle some ten feet from the driver, wincing and squinting against the sun, their thin rags hanging limply off sun-browned limbs.

Subconsciously, Saa glanced at her own arms; the skin was the same hue but clearly different, smoother, better taken care of. The street children—it was unkind to call them rats—had never applied mashed avocado or sandalwood paste to their arms like Saa and Amma did every night, and so bore the scars of living in nature.

Sometimes, Appa even complimented their rough exteriors, calling it authentic and natural. But Saa knew he liked Amma’s smooth arms, and Saa’s. Even Appa’s idealism only extended so far.

“Kutti amma!” called the street children as soon as Saa was within earshot.

“Plug your ears, Saa,” Suri muttered, but she did not. Such actions were acceptable for young children, but Saa was a lady.

She straightened her spine and stiffened her shoulders like her Amma did when she went out, lifting her chin to raise her gaze above the clamor to some distant point, some great attainable destination beyond the imagination of the crowds around her.

Truthfully, Amma had always been better at this than Saa. She was taller, had better posture, and besides, Saa had always struggled with her focus. Lifting her chin helped, and counting the trees in the distant forest, but still she saw every face below her with crystal clarity, their untrimmed eyebrows, the smudges of dirt across their cheeks and collarbones, their yellowing and horribly misshapen teeth.

“Get back,” the driver growled at one little boy who had ventured too near to Kavi. The little boy didn’t seem to hear, or didn’t care; he pointed at the silver anklets around Kavi’s ankles and clapped his hands, eyes wide, imploring. He couldn’t have been much older than Kavi himself.

The driver put out a pair of meaty hands and shoved the child. The boy’s legs, slender, chicken-like things, could not hold him up, and he stumbled back into the undulating crowd of grasping hands, back into those agonized smiles. Saa couldn’t help but turn her head to watch as foot after foot came down like hammers upon the boy’s limbs and skinny torso, a steady, crushing beat.

She squeezed her eyes tight when she heard the snap, pretending it was an oyster shell coming loose, clattering to the ground. Kavi gasped from beside her, and she heard Suri’s whispered urges to look away, look straight ahead, hurry, hurry.

A chorus of anguished cries rose up from the crowd, like a flock of birds disturbed. The echoes swooped overheads. “Amma!

Kutti Amma!”

“Killer!” cried one, higher than the rest. Saa’s head jerked to the side, as if by some invisible force, and she stared right into the eyes of a small girl, barely up to her shoulder but filled with a fury that seemed to burn through her eyes. She wore no smile, sang no cloying compliments, did not hold out her thin hands for alms.

Her hands were bunched into fists, and Saa shuddered to see the cracked skin along the knuckles bleeding.

The driver stepped in between them, carrying a club this time. “Back!” he roared, and the crowd scattered. This was why Suri called them rats; they ran like vermin, a whirlwind of arms and legs, and disappeared into the tall grasses along the bank.

Someone had dragged the little boy’s body away, too; if Saa stared straight ahead, she could pretend the smear of red on the road was simply a trick of the sunlight.

“You really can’t go anywhere around here without getting mobbed,” Suri commented to the driver. “Honestly. I’ll have to let Appa know; it’s gone too far.”

Kavi, already sitting comfortably in the car, blinked up at him. “But Appa likes them. He says they’re part of the landscape.”

“They are,” Suri allowed, “but—different. You know the weeds in Amma’s garden? How she demands the gardeners pull them up every day?”

Kavi nodded solemnly. “But Appa gets mad at that, too.”

“Yeah, but not really. He gets it. See, if Amma let the weeds grow out, nothing good would grow. They’re a natural part of the landscape, but sometimes you have to… adapt.”

Adapt. Saa closed her eyes. She could still see the little boy on the ground, body broken under the feet that fell mercilessly like a sheet of rain, could still hear the horrible cracking and thudding of flesh on flesh.

It was much too easy to imagine Kavi as the body on the ground. It was even easier to pretend like none of it had ever happened. And yet— Suri nudged her. “Pennyfour?” he asked, meaning penny for your thoughts? the way characters in Appa’s old Earth novels would speak, archaic, oddly eloquent.

“Just tired,” she told him, trying for a smile. The lie tasted like sand and blood.

SAA Lunch preparations were in full swing at the villa when they arrived. Fishermen lined up outside the house, showing their catch to Shekar, the manservant. Gardeners trimmed the last of the expansive bougainvillea. Amma stood on the veranda, palms folded neatly across her silk-covered abdomen. At her direction, the servants swarming the courtyard never clashed with one another; they moved in perfect harmony. They were perfectly engrossed in their own duties, quiet, efficient, content.

“Amma’s done a good job,” Suri commented.

“She always does,” Saa replied, because it was the right thing to say. And true—Amma always outdid herself at these gatherings. One day, Saa would learn the art, and it would become her duty to organize the grand luncheons and potlucks and celebratory suppers for Appa, then Suri, at least until Suri got married.

As they entered the villa, Shekar approached them. He wore his usual servant’s dress, his checkered vaishti looped around his legs to allow easier movement. He did not speak to them, but bowed and held out his hands for the oyster basket, which Saa handed over. His hands were startlingly dark against the white fabric of his shirt.

“Don’t bother preparing these for lunch,” Suri told him.

Shekar nodded and withdrew.

“Why not?” Kavi asked. “We worked hard to get those.”

Saa ruffled his hair. “We worked hard. You terrorized crabs.

Come, let’s go wash our feet.”

Down a set of stairs to the side of the foyer was a small alcove where a salt spring had been redirected. It bubbled up from a hole in a stone basin, and on a small shelf were pumice stones and herbal soaps. Appa had modeled it after an old Earthen foot-washing tradition, and a maid was posted at all times in case anyone needed to clean up.

This time the maid was an old woman, stooped and wrinkled, hands gathered together between the folds of her saree.

By her side rested her broom, little more than a gathering of sticks tied by twine. She jerked up at the sound of Saa’s footsteps on the stairs and braced one gnarled hand on the stone floor to push herself up into a standing bow.

“Kutti amma,” she said thickly, the sound muffled and mucosal.

Saa took a seat on the small stool by the basin, and the old maid lowered herself into a squat and took one of Saa’s feet in her

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hands. With slow, measured strokes, she rubbed a pumice stone along the curve of Saa’s heel and the ridge of calloused skin under her toes. Every movement shook the skin of her arms, which hung loosely off the bone like a brown, age-spotted flag waving in the wind.

How different their skin. It was hard to believe they bled the same, and yet they did. The red on the road under the boy’s body had proved as much.

Suddenly, Saa couldn’t stand to sit there anymore. She moved her feet out of the maid’s hands, knocking the pumice stone to the ground, and pushed off the stool. Kavi, waiting for his turn, blinked at her.

She ignored him. If she looked at her brother for too long, she would see the boy again.

Appa stood in the foyer, hands folded behind his back, a tall and imposing presence among the swarm of servants. He was dressed all in white, as usual, his vaishti long and spotless, ending just above his bare feet. A red handkerchief was folded in the pocket of his white button-down and served as the only dash of color in the outfit; it, too, was neatly folded, clean in its lines.

“Saa,” he called when he saw her, smiling. “Go up, quickly, and get changed. The guests will be here in a couple of hours.”

Saa bowed and hurried up the stairs, passing servants carrying folded clothes, polished silverware, and bouquets of flowers. A dress had already been set out on her bed—a half-saree in red and gold, newly tailored, with a peacock embroidered with green gemstones across the silk blouse.

Washing up was always a luxurious event. The maidservants were well-practiced, their hands warm and soothing where they rubbed soap, then water, then soft-scented body oil across the planes of Saa’s body. They toweled her off and dressed her neatly in the half-saree, holding the fabric in place with pins.

Finally, they lit incense and withdrew to allow Saa to relax.

Usually, the routine worked wonders. But now Saa stood alone in her room, the silk of her half-saree cool against her skin, and heard again the crack of the little boy’s bones. His thin arms and legs at odd angles...

She looked down at her own legs, the soft soles that her maidservant had cleaned. The arms without blemish, skin with no wear, no trauma. Saa had never broken a bone in her life.

She couldn’t even imagine the pain.

By the time she emerged from her room, the house had quieted, all preparations done. The twin suns shone noontime light through the open windows. The crowds had dispersed; all servants were in their stations. Appa was gone from the foyer, Amma from the veranda, and Suri and Kavi were nowhere to be seen.

The silence was so immense that Saa inadvertently held her breath, stepping out onto the stone landing gingerly, as though it would crumble under her weight. The only thing she could hear was her heartbeat, her own breath, and a small tinny buzzing sound that rose and fell erratically. It was barely as loud as a mosquito’s hum.

She followed the sound down the hall towards the East Wing, where Appa had his rooms. The door to the study had been left ajar, the lights still open, and when she peered in, she saw the furniture in disarray, as though several people had left the room in a hurry. The sound was coming from Appa’s radio, perched on a glass pedestal; it was the original radio from the settlement ship that had arrived on their planet all those years ago, passed down from son to son through generations. It was Appa’s most prized possession. “...shocking,” came a voice from the radio, crackly with static. “An incredible drop this morning, heralding things to come.”

“But not unprecedented,” said another voice, deeper.

“Cases are skyrocketing on the synthetic planets, the chancellors having to take action... And Satellite Mao, just gone, my god.”

“It’s hardly a loss.”

“I know, but there’s rumor that it’s carried through space travel on—metal, you know, scrap.”

“I wonder if more will go Mao’s way, given, you know...” The rest of the man’s sentence was drowned by static. Saa waited, breathless.

A few moments later, the first man’s voice sharpened into audibility. “Keep an eye out, folks. At this rate, we’ll be buying mansions on Mantori for pocket change.”

The second man laughed. “That’s if we aren’t all dead by the end of the year.”

More laughter echoed as Saa stumbled out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. She hadn’t understood half of what they’d been talking about, but she knew the voices. They were panelists from the local merchants’ organization. Appa spent many nights listening to their financial advice. They usually talked about boring things, like inflation and stock prices and the interplanetary economy. But this?

What did they mean, that Satellite Mao was gone? And then there was that last thing...

If we aren’t all dead by the end of the year.

She glanced around the villa, so clean, so silent, so still. The summer suns shone through the open windows, their light pooling on the stone floors and running down the lines of the staircase, catching on the crystals of the chandelier. Potted plants lined the hallway, brighter than antifreeze and swaying in the wind.

If we aren’t all dead...

It didn’t make sense. Mao was the third of the eight communications satellites, named after the tech billionaire Jameson Mao. It orbited Eryu, a small synthetic planet between Mercury and Venus. Saa had been there, on a business trip with Appa. They had a local delicacy called imim, a paste made from local flowers, goji berries, and nut milk. It was a lovely place.

Gone? How could a planet be gone?

It couldn’t be true. If it were, they wouldn’t be here, throwing a lunch party. Appa would’ve called an emergency meeting of the other mayors, would’ve dressed in his Official Business Tweed and headed out for the capitol.

Had he? Saa ran to the nearest window and peered out, down into the courtyard. No, there was Appa, speaking quietly to Shekar. And there was Amma, hunched over her hydrangeas. The sight was so familiar, utterly irreconcilable with what Saa had just heard.

Idiot, she scolded herself. Always getting your nose into things you don’t understand, and jumping to conclusions. She could almost hear her mother’s chiding voice in her head. Ignore what does not concern you.

So she would, just as she had to with the little boy. It doesn’t concern you.

In time, surely, the sickness in her stomach would abate.

The clock tower tolled loudly; noontime had arrived.

Instantly, the silence was disturbed, servants flooding from all sides to take their positions. Through the window Saa saw Appa smiling and clapping Shekar on the back, Amma rising to her feet and brushing off her saree. High-pitched laughter from downstairs alerted her to Kavi’s presence, and she gazed down over the stair rail to see him in his kurta, hair combed and face freshly washed, playing catch with an orange.

Saa adjusted her skirt and took the stairs two at a time, bowing to Appa as he came in through the side door.

“You look lovely,” Appa said, his eyes warm. “Go pluck some of the sunflowers from the garden and make a welcome basket, would you? The guests will be here shortly.”

The sunflowers were grown in Amma’s private gardens, housed in a separate greenhouse. She planted and cared for them herself; no gardeners were allowed near them. Saa took the winding stone path through the yard and into the stand of trees behind the villa. The greenhouse stood in the center of a clearing, the sides and ceiling covered in condensation such that Saa could barely see the bright flowers inside.

Mist rained down gently as Saa pushed open the door.

Raising the pallu fabric of her saree over her head, she turned the crank laboriously until the water finally shut off. In the summer sun, the rows of sunflowers steamed. Droplets condensed on Saa’s neck and arms, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

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It was then she became aware of the other presence. The mist had blurred her sight, but now, as it cleared, she could see what she had missed, the distinct shadow stretching behind one of the tables of flowers that very clearly belonged to a human.

Saa caught the cry in her throat before it could escape.

She was jumping to conclusions again. It could just be a gardener, sneaking some of Amma’s fertilizer to use on some of the more stubborn front yard plants. That had happened before, according to Suri, who caught one of them at it.

“I almost didn’t tell,” he’d told her, methodically scratching out the seeds from a strawberry. “He begged me not to. He said he’d give it all back.”

Suri had told, of course, in the end. Amma kissed him on the head afterwards, and Saa never heard what happened to the gardener.

She’d assess the damage first, Saa decided. That seemed like a logical way to go. If it was just a handful or two of fertilizer…

The shadow moved, lithe across the floor, faster than the arthritic gait of Amma’s gardeners. Saa mirrored it, matching its steps until she and it were exactly opposite each other in the greenhouse. When the shadow paused, so did she.

“I know you’re there,” Saa called. “If you come out now, you won’t get in trouble.”

Silence.

Then—an explosion of movement, as the body behind the shadow lunged for the door. Saa couldn’t make out what it was, only a blur of brown, and before she realized what she was doing, she too was halfway across the room, knocking over the neat rows of sunflowers and tackling the creature.

“Let go!” it cried.

A flurry of flailing limbs, legs kicking, something biting down hard on Saa’s arm. She yelled in shock and pushed the creature, no, child, back into one of the tables.

There they sat, chests heaving, eyes wild. Instantly Saa recognized her. It was the little girl from the mob, the one who had called her killer! She was smaller than Saa by a good amount, little more than a bag of skin and bones, but she fought like a demon. Saa’s arms bore the marks, the circle of teeth, the parallel scratches streaked with blood. Her nice dress was stained with potting soil and ripped at the hem; she looked like a mess, a deviant, a child of poor upbringing.

“Who are you?” Saa demanded. Her eyes fell on the girl’s hands, which were bunched in fists and hidden behind her back.

Still, she could see the bright yellow petals of a sunflower peeking out. “Those aren’t yours!”

The little girl tightened her lips together. Now that Saa was looking at her, really looking at her, she was startled by the ferocity in her eyes. Slum children were so often dull, their eyes a watery, sewage brown, their faces expressionless unless they were begging, in which case they became so painfully over exaggerated Saa almost couldn’t stand to look at them. But this girl looked to be made of wire, tightly twined, her eyes twin disks of obsidian, her knuckles crisscrossed with scars. She crouched like a cornered animal, ready to bolt at the slightest movement.

“If you don’t give those flowers back,” Saa warned, “I’ll have to tell Amma.” But even as she said the words, she quailed. Would Amma punish the little girl as she must have the gardener? But of course there would be leniency for a child.

Yet Saa was not sure.

“Do it, then,” said the little girl, her voice clear and low. “Tell your amma.”

Saa stared at her. “You know you’ll be punished.”

“Then do it,” the girl said again, but almost mockingly, as though she knew what Saa was thinking. “Don’t I deserve it?”

Maybe it was the shock of the early morning, or the voices she’d heard on the radio, or just an effect of the sun on her forehead, but Saa could not speak.

Don’t I deserve it?

She could not do what was expected of her., that would damn the slum girl. She simply turned and walked, slowly, slowly, out the door of the greenhouse. The girl’s gaze on the back

of her neck was a tangible heat. And if Saa looked back, she would have seen that her arms and the slum girls were nearly indistinguishable.

JONAH News of the death came over the radio. This was notable not because someone had died, but because the death had been announced at all. The disease had been around so long it was almost a fact of life. But this patient had been in the hospital for three months, longer than any; in a way, the city’s hopes had depended on his condition. Whatever hope was left, anyways.

“Four-thirty in the morning, Monday, May twenty-second,” recited the announcer. “Sources in the Central Hospital report that 0707 has passed away today. Total death toll by C38 has now surpassed three million. Our sincerest condolences to the victim’s family and to all those affected by the disease. We are truly sorry for your loss.”

And then the broadcast ended. It had done its job.

Jonah shut off the radio and sat in the early dawn stillness, staring out through his bedroom window into the nothingness of the alley outside. It was still too dark to even make out the shape of the trash cans or the homeless bodies curled up under sheets of corrugated cardboard and plastic. Turning, he could just see his mother’s silhouette under her blanket, curled inwards like a comma, the rise and fall of her chest staccato and labored. He’d grown used to sleeping through her wheezing, but hearing it now, after the news, made his heart ache.

Quietly, his feet barely a whisper against the ground, Jonah rose and moved quickly out of the room. There was work to be done, after all. He had to clean the kitchen, change the oil in the machines, open the diner for morning service.

Not that there would be any customers. There hadn’t been any for a long while, even before the government had prohibited outside travel. Essential services will come to you, the mayor had said. Together, we will make it through.

Two weeks later, he died—technically of a staph infection, but everyone knew what it really was. By the time death was called, they said, his skin had rotten clean away. You could see down to the slimy cords of pink muscle, sometimes even the bone.

As Jonah scrubbed down the counter methodically, he caught the reflection of his arms in the metal. He imagined them peeled apart layer by layer like an onion, imagined himself laid out on a hospital bed as a perfect dissection of a human being.

Specimen X: Teenage Boy. He imagined himself alive during the process; the pain would be unbearable, he thought, or perhaps his brain would simply stop processing it. Perhaps he would feel nothing, know nothing, would look down upon his own corpse like a spirit. Perhaps he would not even recognize himself.

He did this often. It was hard not to, knowing that this was his fate, the fate of everyone on the planet. The disease was inevitable. Every day was spent in simple anticipation.

By 5:00, Jonah was done with the kitchen. He set away the cleaning supplies and slipped outside through the side door to where the oil barrels were waiting. They were running out, he noticed as he rolled one into the kitchen. Their deliveries had stopped. He would have to go into the city later to restock.

He liked the morning, liked it more than the eerie stillness of what had been regular business hours or the oppressive quiet of the night. In the morning there were birds—they, at least, had not been silenced by the disease. There was the slow rumble as the few businesses allowed to stay open fired up their generators.

As he poured the oil through the funnel into the stomachs of the stove and fryer and ice machine, he even felt the urge to hum. The tune was there, pressing against his lips. But he was long out of practice, and his mouth, too used to staying closed, refused to move.

At 6:15, Jonah used the key hanging by the door between the diner and the kitchen to turn on the lights. The electricity had not been cut today, which was a relief. Quickly, he ran a wet washcloth over the checkered tables and red vinyl seats. He turned all the mustard and ketchup and bottles upright, cleaned their

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caps, and lifted each against the light to check their levels. All full, of course. He set them back down.

The phone on the hook rang suddenly, a loud, jarring sound.

Jonah wiped his hands with the cloth and picked it up. “Esperanza Diner. How can I help you?”

“Have you prepared the shipment?” came a gruff voice.

Jonah was unsurprised. There was only one person who ever called the diner, and today was delivery day. “It’s by the begonias,” he said. “Fifteen boxes, all packed and sealed and labelled.”

“Great,” said the voice. “We’ll come by to pick them up later today.”

“No. I’ll bring them over. I need to swing by for some more oil anyways.”

“Your mother okay with that?” asked the voice, which meant, will your mother be okay on her own? The question of Jonah’s agency had long since been settled.

“She’s sleeping.”

“If she wakes?”

“Her meds are on her bedside table. The diner’s lit up, but the doors are locked. I’ve turned on all the machines, so that should keep the place warm.”

“You’ll burn through a lot of oil that way.”

Jonah shrugged, though he knew the man on the phone could not see him. “I’m restocking, anyway. And we don’t have heating otherwise, so. This is what I can do.”

“Right.” The voice paused. “Are we on for tomorrow night?

Aside from all other things?”

Jonah would have smiled if his mouth remembered how.

“Yes. I’ll be there.”

And the phone switched off. Jonah let it rest on the hook, sighed, and headed towards the kitchen.

The old car was waiting by the dumpster. He loaded up the oil barrels and the boxes, taking care to secure them well with the ropes that hung from the sides. More of the oil needed to be siphoned to start the car, which was greedy and spat noxious smoke. Jonah had heard tell of cars running on solar power alone, but if they existed, they would never leave their testing centers. Oil was a part of the human way.

Not, of course, that it mattered much to Jonah. The city didn’t get much sun at all, never mind enough to power a car.

Satellite Mao usually blocked most of the light.

Jonah glanced up at the sky, streaked with light like gasoline trails under a full moon. The only interruption was a black belt of space debris; the satellite was nowhere to be seen.

This was nothing to worry about in and of itself.

Sometimes Mao had its shields up or broke from orbit to avoid the debris. It was rare that they could see the sun at all, and so Jonah allowed himself a moment of optimism. The first full-sun day in months? Perhaps things were looking up.

As Jonah steered the car into the city proper, he was struck again by the stillness. People were the lifeblood of the city. It had been designed after the human body, with broad avenues as ribs and twining alleyways as veins. Now it was gutted, hollow, a skeletal mockery of its former glory. Everyone was either locked up in their houses or in the hospitals and med stations.

As always, Jonah left the car outside the gates of the shipping district. Stepping out, he thought he could smell the rocket fuel, but that might have just been the gasoline from his car. They were the same, after all.

His mother had commented on that once. We could use our car to fly to Mars.

Jonah snorted. He’d grow wings and take to the sky before that piece of junk was space-worthy. What really mattered was that both the city’s shittiest cars and most important shipping rockets used the same grade fuel. It made no sense.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” a familiar voice intoned from somewhere in front of him. Jonah looked up to see his father limping towards him, his expression as closed off and unfriendly as ever.

“Hey, Marc.”

Marc—not “Father” and never “Dad”—grunted. “You get behind on schedule?”

Jonah checked his watch. He was three minutes late to their usual appointment time. “Relax. I’m here now, aren’t I?” “I’m not getting paid by the hour, boy. Every minute of my time you waste is another shipment I can’t send off.”

Marc took his job very seriously, for which Jonah was genuinely grateful. Not because he cared about shipping—it was menial, back-breaking work—but because it made money. And money bought medicine. And medicine was life.

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Carolyn Lau

Creative Nonfiction Herricks High School New Hyde Park, NY

On Circles I. Sitting criss-cross applesauce on my square on the carpet, I was learning at a young age to enjoy the predictability of things. Smiles would tug at the sides of our mouths with delight at the small mouse wanting another cookie, a storybook coming full circle.

Assigned seats weren’t just seats—they were destiny. Together we woke to drawings on the grass line, snacks shared and cooking in the kitchen, sailing on the lines of an airplane to the solid expanse of the sky, and dipping into rich soil as our j’s looped down to greet the worms.

The lines have no end; where are you little table family of four?

II. On the first page of my written thoughts, I said that day was the best day of my life.

The present is tumbling, unfolding; who looks back when they fall forward?

The word “opend” was underlined—I never saw that word again. A few pages later was the worst day of my life, but “it wasn’t so bad because we frosted cookies afterwards.”

It sparkles the colors of a rainbow, but the bright hot pink of it all hurts my eyes.

III. In grade school, I was taught that figures only became closed shapes when all lines were connected and there was no empty space. I found it interesting how one teensy, tiny, maybe even microscopic gap could completely change something’s categorization. Everywhere, I rushed to “close” things. I sat, waiting, listening for the click of a door when it fully shut as if making the last goodbye statement. I always took good care of my markers, hearing the snap when the cap reunited with the body in a happy little conversation.

The wrinkles in the sheet can only be smoothed out by a hot iron, too dangerous for tiny little hands.

IV. The compass feels strange in my hands, the circles unsteady from the pressure. Through countless failed attempts, I discover how many ways there are to draw a circle “wrong”: a tiny gap at the top, a tiny gap at the bottom, a small overlap on the left, another tiny gap at the top left…the list went goes on. Different new compasses find their way into my hand, lines still wobbly with each one.

I walk down nature’s path where breezes whisper scrutiny and trees squint their eyes.

Tests are handed back, and my not-completely-closed-circle has received full credit.

V. I would have made it a game, “staying in the green lane,” had I still had the naivete of my childhood—staring at the line, hoping it wouldn’t waver past 440 MHz. That line shuddered dangerously the day my music teacher explained my past teachings were full of half-truths.

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“What sounds good to the ear, and what the number actually reads are two different things,” my teacher explained.

“The tuner is wrong.”

The line is becoming a tornado.

The tornado sweeps me up into the air and leaves me hanging. I can’t see the world with everything spinning around me—or at least I can’t see it the way I want to.

I grab my eraser, but the indents remain.

The multiplication tables are laughing like we could forget them.

VI. Like sharks surrounding a baby prey, they circle my circle three times, four times, five times in a never-ending pool of water.

Overlapping my lines and extending past them. They went so far I wondered if they could even see me, a tiny dot at the center.

When I was that tiny, I prayed that at least no one would notice my sloppy kicks.

The sharks are a beautiful scary.

VII. Words have different meanings when said by different people. You told me once that you loved me from the moons in another galaxy and back. But by the time you reached that galaxy, you didn’t remember me. I didn’t try too hard to fix the person I saw changing in front of me.

Overgrown bushes crawl their way through the alley behind the school where we first met.

I’ve stopped walking there. I’m afraid I’ll trip.

The lone spaceship flies further into orbit, many light-years away. Some things will always remain out of reach; I don’t even wave goodbye.

VIII. In my backpack, hidden past the textbooks and the erasers and the computer still running with a million tabs open, was a paintbrush.

The paintbrush feels strange in my hands, the paint filled with too much yearning to leap onto a canvas. Sunrises and sunsets wash stiff blankness with color. My fascination was not with their beauty but with the ever-changing mixture of pinks and oranges and everything in between—the streaks of light brushed quite randomly in the sky. I couldn’t ever really guess what it would look like one day or the next. What I did know was that my face would always warm to the East, and my tears would drown in the ocean West. Dripping past the willow tree I’ve known since kindergarten, dripping through the alley where I found you and lost you, drip, drip, dropping on a spot on my canvas where blue now ran into grey turning brown— I don’t remember ever seeing brown in my sunsets.

IX. (A gap)

X. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want to know what happened next. I don’t want to see my shadow behind me and in front of me. My sun and your moon eclipsed while a shooting star sailed right between them. I would try and draw it for you, but I lost my compass a chapter ago.

Our pasts connect to our present, but what if we aren’t ready to realize? Shaking, and gasping for air with pains in my chest, I’m scared of the future too. My head is throbbing with shapes and jumbled lines.

I am a child. I am a perfectionist. I am sharded. I am the tornado that spins and toys with thoughts, the crashing waves in the pool, the lone spaceship sailing further away, and the beautiful sunset with streaks of brown.

Everything, part of me.

XI. Things don’t always come full circle.

In fact, it’s actually impossible for us to draw a perfect circle.

However, what we do have are countless approximations of circles with tiny variations. Like it or not, our life is full of imperfections that our brains, no matter how hard we try, cannot ignore. We don’t leave enough space for our minds to wander off a page.

The volume of the music grows louder and hotter and louder and colder. Words become open mouths moving like a puppet with a masterful puppeteer. There’s a dome mirror in the far right—watching you. It’s supposed to catch everything, but there’s a corner, one corner, where I have six half-closed, half-opened notebooks filled with thoughts.

I widen the gaps in my circle shape, on purpose.

XII.

XVI. I widen the gaps in my circle shape story because I’m leaving some space to understand myself.

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Wyatt Layton

Creative Nonfiction Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

Hope On My Plate Every day, I awoke to the smell of my father’s rage. It was always the first thing we put on the table in the morning.

My mother and I would dance around the centerpiece, plates of food on my grandmother’s crocheted trivets, and I wonder what I would be if not that, a plate. I wonder what I would be if not something that can withstand knives and not shatter.

It would be easy to say that my father is a good man at heart. That he is just misguided, his own troubled childhood running through his muscles, so much compartmentalized anger that just got let out on me and my mother. That it wasn’t his fault.

It would be easy to say that, but I won’t. I’ve been trying not to lie these days.

I’ve never said some of the things he did out loud. I don’t plan on saying them, either. I imagine you can imagine, but I’d rather not. Even if I were to confront him, picking up my words and swinging them like fists, nothing will change because he will never repent. Not to me, not to God. I do not speak to my father. No, not even on his birthday, not even when he sends me one-hundred dollars for my AP Lang test, not even when he threatens me. I do not speak to him because I do not want to invite a bull into my china shop.

That’s how I look at my life; as a china shop, because where else would a plate like me reside? My shelf is equally fragile and beautiful. Beautiful in the way that an architect would see it, and I am both that and a construction worker. A year ago I wrote a poem comparing my father to a wrecking ball, and now I only partially agree. I still see him as something capable of destruction, but not swinging out of control. He does quiet damage now, damage that’s serenely heart-shattering.

Sometimes, I forget about all the parts of him that sting.

Before I can even notice, I am left with a new open wound. I have been scarred so many times I don’t remember what a clean body feels like.

I really do want a clean body. I want it so bad that on some days, I stand in the shower and scrub my body over and over until it feels clean enough to live with. To me, any part my father has touched is tainted until it can be scrubbed and peeled off, dead skin.

I see a lot of parts of me as dead. To help counteract this plague on myself, I learned to escape into my own world. Not a world with rainbows and fairies, but one with a father I could relate to. I still find myself in that space sometimes. It feels weightless. It feels like a hug from somebody you can’t live without and wouldn’t want to. It feels like the exact opposite of abuse.

I later learned that that’s called maladaptive daydreaming, but I think that’s a terribly formal name. I like to call it hope. Hope sweetens my stomach acid, going up my throat, out of my mouth, and into the world. Hope is vomiting all the reasons he’ll be better this time. Hope feels like asking a higher power I never believed in to strike my father down, because it would be easier if he were a ghost. Hope is him still being here, but still wondering what it would be like to have a father who won’t have to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for the rest of his life. Hope is having blind faith in the possibility that he will get better.

But hope and results are two different things. Results take work. No matter how much I knock on wood, cross every extremity in my body, open umbrellas strictly outside, results require more than simply my hope.

My father has something called an Arteriovenous Malformation (A.V.M). If you don’t know what that is, I barely do.

From what the neurologist said, it is a mass of arteries and veins the size of a quarter in his brain. If it ruptures, he dies. And how sickly sweet that truly is. Fate is truly a cruel mistress, and she did not come to play.

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He guilt-trips me with his probable death scenario sometimes. He leaves voicemails telling me it’s getting bigger or smaller, worse or better, that he’s thriving or dying, depending on how badly he wants me to talk to him. I want to believe him so badly. I want to walk into his arms, get a fatherly embrace. The kind of embrace that proves he has put the work in.

But all I’m left with is this fading hope.

The mindset of “I no longer see myself as a victim” can definitely be empowering to some, but I sadly can’t say the same for myself. I do see myself as a victim. I see myself as a victim but that does not mean I am weak. Being a victim means that I am tired. Tired of getting taken from over and over again. I am tired of putting the work in to make myself better. I am tired of being forced to make myself strong just for other people to pick at my wounds.

But I will anyway, because there are too many children like me. One out of seven people will be abused during childhood.

There are one billion children like me.

So I will not talk to him. I will not write him a text. I will not spend any more time on my father, because I need more than guilt trips, then roses, then sting. I don’t bother to walk around that centerpiece because he is not at my table anymore.

On my table, there is simply me and my mother. Survivors of my father and his destructive tendencies. We have been set on the table with care.

And I still wonder what I would be if not a plate. I will always have knife marks and chips, but I will no longer be something to eat off, or something made to catch my father’s mess.

Ariana Lee

Spoken Word St. John’s School Houston, TX

茉莉花 (Mo Li Hua) “好一朵美丽的茉莉花 好一朵美丽的茉莉花 芬芳美丽满枝桠 又香又白人人夸 让我来把你摘下 送给别人家 茉莉花呀茉莉花” If you know my childhood, you know this folk song was my favorite, my lullaby. While tucking me in, my mother would sing me the story of 茉莉花 (mo li hua), jasmine flowers, 又香又白(you xiang you bai), sweet-smelling & milky white, so we ask the tree to let us 摘下 (zhai xia), take them and gift to 别人家 (bie ren jia), someone else’s home.

If you were in my Kindergarten class, you know Ms. Robin read to us The Giving Tree. Then, I had accepted the sad ending because both the tree and the boy had been happy. Now I read it and notice that the tree is “she” and I can’t help but analyze the gender dynamic. What does it teach? What a mother sacrifices to raise a child? What women are expected to give in a relationship? What boys, who will be boys, expect to take? That the boy grows old but never grows up? My sister saw it, instead, as a commentary on the environment, how we take until nature becomes a stumped fool yet still continues to give. Yet in this analysis, nature is still Earth, the biggest mother, whose nature is to nurture. To help you plant your seeds, labor with you, watch them grow.

If you know Earth, before she became Mother, you’d know that she was beautiful before you had senses to appreciate her. Her familiar yet ever shifting face, her weathered body, scarred and stunning. Her oceans, roaring blue, screaming grandeur. They’ll fill you with the hopes to keep going after your dreams, hopes of a better life, an American Dream.

Yet they will also fill you with water, keep you in Earth’s hold. Mother Earth has rivers that whittle mountains, yet they’re never sharp enough to cut the water that carves them. My mom has a sharp tongue, a sharper mind. When we talk in Mandarin she’s always ready to correct my accent as I reach & reach for my mother’s mother’s mother tongue. My American mouth forever stumbling toward perfection, because 颜色 (yan se) means color but 淹死 (yan si) means to drown to death.

If you know my mother, before she became 妈妈 (mama), you’d know in her first few years in America she worked in a restaurant and accidentally flooded it. Nothing major, she doesn’t even remember what her mother said to her. Definitely no danger of drowning.

If there were to be a serious flood, a shove-all-living-beings-on-a-big-boat-

type flood, the Giving Tree would’ve let 妈妈 reduce her to a stump, take her branches, build a boat & hunker down until she knew that she still had her job.

If there were to be a serious flood, a why-do-we-live-in-a-city-that-floods-every-

two-years-type flood, 妈妈 would be my lifeboat, my lifeline. If the same water we can’t survive without were to pulse around our necks, she would give me every advantage to survive, carry me above her head, though 5’2’’ wouldn’t make much of a difference. If I have a nightmare when I’m fifty, perhaps a mother myself, too big to be tucked in, I know I could call 妈妈, wake her from necessary sleep, and ask her to sing me my favorite lullaby. “让我来把你摘下 送给别人家 茉莉花呀茉莉花”

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Christian Lee

Photography Whittier Christian High School La Habra, CA

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He is America 1 Digital photography 2020

Eunice Lee

Visual Arts Weston High School Weston, MA

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Metamorphosis Wire, rice paper and disposable masks 2021

Nana Lee

Visual Arts Lexington High School Lexington, MA

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37kg Recycled clothes and oil paint on canvas 2020

Yeonjae Lee

Design Arts Seoul Foreign School Seoul, KR

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We Are Different Adobe Photoshop 2021

Dez Levier

Poetry duPont Manual High School Louisville, KY

Blackout Last winter I was the Virgin Mary shivering silver into gold in my bloated pink coat. Snow put the Earth in its pocket as the sun made her grave on the first day of December and while my family choked glass angels on our Christmas tree, my brain teethed on white hot mania and 900 milligrams. When I floated home I was Britney Spears pooling dizzy in my thigh high boots and Seroquel -- I ate America and crossed my legs. Britney and I popped tangerine-kissed pills and squeezed silicone exhaustion under every inch of skin to a chorus of strawberry Pop Rocks sizzling in our slushed heads -- we were blonde and crucifixed. We stomped on dignity and stared into the drooling mouth of the sky.

We worshiped an invisible god. The wind wolf-whistled.

We posed in the McDonald’s bathroom downtown and our spare change rattled in applause from the bellies of our coat pockets. For a moment we were real girls. Stolen lipstick bled raspberry between our teeth and we bled anywhere we could. Our mothers cried for us. Fathers murdered us.

The world sang for us.

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poem for hope Glory stretches over my 17th year like cellophane and I shudder under a halo of love. I’ve been trying to say exactly what I mean exactly how I mean it. I’m always the new girl. Desire soaks softly in gasoline.

I’m Carrie in her soiled prom dress, swamped in horror and flammable shock -- I breathe magic and anguish. The future is fetal and fragile. I’ve switched pills three times in the last month but I still stay up shaking in my salmon stomach bedroom. I eat like grief. The sun is lucid and so is the flesh of my anger.

And exhaust. My poems are too confessional. I don’t know whose forgiveness I’m asking for. But Pat said, “If we aren’t dead yet then let’s not live as ghosts.” This is a prayer for peace. I broke like a clock so I soaked my skin in a tub of floral chemicals until I pruned. I’m pink and plastic enough to accept being a cliché. My gravel-shredded knees are glued with wet grass and quiet optimism. Splatters of light surge through the window. I believe the world can be kind.

I’m too loud to be cool. New York would crush me. This is too obvious. I let everything eat me alive. I want the world. But I won’t always be seventeen and insatiable. With my condition, the jokes write themselves. A man crosses the street and I’m convinced he’s carrying a bomb. The sky yawns and flickers. I wear spidery lashes and the pinkest eyeshadow. Blush primadonna. Lace strangles me like a mummy. Delicate and asleep. I put on my prettiest party dress. The city twinkles, tipsy and flushed. I’m learning how to be quiet. Sometimes things just work out. I feel better than ever. I choke back tears and Lamictal. Tomorrow I am going to watch the yolk of the sky sizzle and sing soprano over my city. My poems tremble and burn. I open Instagram automatically. I feel like I have to remind people to love me. I have a thing for dramatics. I’m a self-inflicted prophecy. This isn’t a poem, it’s an omen. My heart guillotines itself recklessly and fearlessly. That’s a blessing. Venus burns through my skin from the inside out. I’m ripe with luck. Drenched in hope.

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Kyra Li

Creative Nonficton The Pingry School Basking Ridge, NJ

The Day Dad Left “Close your eyes. Don’t move. Don’t think about anything.”

This is what Dad told me when I was seven and couldn’t fall asleep.

In my room on the second floor above the kitchen where my mother ran the noisy dishwasher, Dad sat on my bed waiting for me to fall asleep. From his earbuds came the sound of news as he looked at his phone.

“What if I fall asleep and someone breaks into the garage and gets the ladder and climbs onto the roof? They could get in my room and kill me,” I said, yanking my pink comforter up to my chin.

Dad pulled out his earbud. “Kill you with what?”

“With shears from the garage.”

“How would they carry the shears while they climb the ladder?” He frowned.

“They’d put them in their back pocket. Obviously.” I clicked my tongue.

“Yeah, that could happen, I guess.” He put his earbud back in.

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m just being realistic.” Dad exhaled. “You make a good argument. But that’s a lot of effort just to come kill some kid. Who would want to kill you that badly anyway?”

“Maybe someone I hurt?”

“Like who? Someone on the playground?”

“I don’t know. Just someone.”

“But you never hurt people, do you?” he asked.

“Maybe I did and I just forgot.” *** Before I became a dancer, Dad was a dancer. He stood on the stage of my elementary school wearing a disco shirt and danced to “Staying Alive,” his arms and legs doing disco moves. In the middle of dozens of other dads, he wore the biggest wig, a long black wavy one from Mom’s collection—the one she wore with her pirate wench costume on Halloween. The audience hooted and laughed at all the dads’ gyrations.

Watching him, I imagined myself as a dancer. Only I would be more graceful. I’d point my toes. I’d straighten my knees. I’d make it look easy. I’d dance without the wig.

On the way home, I asked him, “Were you nervous dancing up there with all the other dads?”

“A little.”

“But you didn’t look nervous. You just looked stupid.” *** On my high school track, Dad wore his bright orange workout gear while he jogged. It was after school. Several of my friends stood around chatting with me about the rager the previous weekend at Amanda’s house, where two kids got so drunk they had to go to the hospital and have their stomachs pumped.

“Hey, isn’t that your dad?” Melanie asked.

I looked over, and Dad was running towards the sandpit. He runs with a stiff neck that stretches forward but never moves. He looks weird, kind of like an ostrich running.

I said, “No.” On the way home, I told him, “Dad, you run funny.”

He flicked the windshield wipers on as the rain began to fall. “At least I run. What do you do?”

“Not run.”

“Because you sleep too much. Every time I come into your room, you’re sleeping.” *** Dad stormed into my room and yelled in Chinese, “Do you know what time it is?!”

I felt like I was in a fever dream. My uneven mattress made all my blood pool in my skull. I pulled the pillow over my head.

From the next room, my brother’s music blared: If I ever loved you, I’ll always love you. That’s how I was raised... Outside, a lawnmower

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buzzed in the neighbor’s yard, and kids screamed, “Na na! You can’t catch me!”

“Just get up. You just wasted half the day!” Dad yelled.

“Uh - Okay.” What day is it? Saturday? Am I tired or lethargic? Isn’t lethargy a sign of depression? Am I depressed or just tired?

The door closed. It seemed like a minute later, when the door swung open again.

“Get up! Get up now!” he yelled. I didn’t budge, but the blanket flew off my body. A hand grabbed my wrist and pulled.

Soon, I was lying on the hard, warm carpet like a limp doll. “Get up now! Eat breakfast and get the day started! You have homework, and we’re going to your cousins’! Get dressed! Stop wasting time! How much sleep do you need?! If you don’t get up, we’re leaving without you!”

I closed my eyes.

The sound of the garage closing woke me up. I rose, the carpet fibers leaving ridges in my cheek. I trudged down the stairs and ate breakfast alone. Outside the window, giant trees blocked the view of everything. The big umbrella swayed on the back deck, and the grill cover flapped in the wind. After I ate, I climbed the stairs, closed myself in my room, and flopped onto the bed. *** Dad and I loved Six Flags in upstate New Jersey. We rode Kingda Ka, which was like riding a rocket. We spent the day riding rides and eating overpriced corn dogs, burgers, cotton candy, and funnel cakes. We drank mint julips without alcohol. We took selfies together.

Only that never happened. We never went to Six Flags because Dad worked too much. I had asked if we could go, and he always said, “Some other time.”

He did take me to “Bring your kid to work day.” That morning in New York City, strangers packed inside the elevator, and wobbling up to the 42nd floor was like riding a roller coaster uphill before the drop. His office overlooked Central Park. He sat at his desk and took calls while I jotted algebra equations in my notebook. Other kids sat with their parents in other offices. A co-worker came in, and Dad pointed at me and said, “This is my daughter, Kyra.” That was all he said. He didn’t say, “She’s starring in the school play as the Queen of Hearts, and she’s a dancer.”

On the way down in the elevator that night, I said to him, “All you do is talk on the phone and type on your computer. It seems really easy. I could do that.”

“You always think things are easier than they are. When you learn, you figure out what ignorance is.” *** My mom took pictures of Dad dragging his bag into the airport. He wore a black raincoat and white sneakers. She clicked away on her camera like a paparazzi taking photographs through the window, as if Dad were a movie star about to fly off to film a blockbuster.

Standing at the check-in, he said to me, “Help Mom around the house. Do your homework, and don’t worry about people breaking in.”

A group of travelers squeezed past us to stand in the selfcheck-in line.

“When will you be back?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He waved at Mom. “Like months or years?”

“I’ll be back for Justin’s graduation, for sure.”

“And after that?”

“The holidays maybe? Quarantine in China makes it difficult to go back and forth. But don’t worry. We’ll Zoom every other week, and we’ll talk on the phone every day, if you want,” he said.

He hugged me, and I hugged back. When was the last time we’d hugged? I searched my memory. When was the last time we spoke about something besides school and grades?

After Mom and I got home from the airport, Mom headed to her room, my brother was still out with his girlfriend, and I sat at the edge of my bed. The house felt like it did right after we came back from a long vacation: dusty and silent.

I sat there gazing out my window where trees stood like giants. That man who would use a ladder and climb up to my room with the shears in his back pocket crept into my thoughts.

What would he do with those shears? I’d never thought about how he would kill me after he got into my room, but now I figured he would stab me in the heart. Not because he’s cruel, but because of something terrible I’d done. Because of something thoughtless and unforgivable.

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Stella Lin

Short Story Dougherty Valley High School San Ramon, CA

Three Bowls of Rice Ma always talked about growing up in Hangzhou, China.

She described her family’s apartment: fourth floor, white walls lined with books, scallions growing in pots by the window, her parents’ wedding photo taped on the wall. She told me how she and Jingyi explored the mountains around West Lake, how their hands froze in the winter when they walked to school, how they took their bikes up a hill and raced down without hitting the brakes. “I always chickened out midway,” she said. “But I wish I hadn’t.”

She described how she and Jingyi visited the countryside and walked barefoot to the farms. “We watched the farmers dry tea leaves over a da bian guo1. Jingyi and I bought some, and the farmers wrapped the leaves with paper.”

“You can buy tea in America, too,” I said.

Ma shook her head. “Bu yi yang.” Not the same. “Everything was done by hand. It tasted better, more earthy.”

To her, Hangzhou’s landscapes were greener than California’s dry hills. Impromptu adventures with Jingyi were infinitely better than menial conversations with neighborhood moms.

My mother’s mind was filled with a foreign place and a mysterious girl, and her life in California was nothing but grocery stores, swimming pools, and dry lawns. *** I scoop two cups of rice into the pot. As I wash the grains, the water turns white and silky like diluted milk. Forty minutes later, I open the lid of the rice cooker, put my face over the pot, and let the moisture seep into my pores.

When the heat starts to suffocate me, I scoop the rice into two porcelain bowls and carry the food to the table. According to Ma, dinner should be set with three bowls of rice and three pairs of chopsticks. No phones, no laptops, no homework.

I sit at the dinner table and lay my math worksheet next to my bowl. Spoon in one hand and pencil in the other, I scribble differential equations. Across from me, Ba hunches over his keyboard and barely touches his food. He’s been working more, often past midnight, computer code glaring off his glasses as he sips what Ma called lan cha, trash tea.

We scarf down our dinner like savages. After Ba leaves the table, I wash the dishes, grab my phone, and dial Ma’s number.

Surprisingly, she picks up.

“Hey,” I say, standing over the kitchen sink. I dry my hands with a rag that smells like fish.

“Hi, xiao bao bei.” Ma’s the only one who still calls me little treasure, and I’m five years old again. “Press the video call button. I want to see your face.”

I do, and Ma shows up after a few moments of blurry screen. Grandma now spends her days in a wheelchair, but my mother looks better than ever: her cheeks are pink, her wrinkles seem softer, and she wears a yellow blouse.

Ma opens her mouth to say something, but a different voice comes from her end of the call. “Shei a?” Who is it?

She turns and waves the person over. “My daughter.”

A woman walks into frame, places a hand on Ma’s shoulder, and leans towards the camera. It takes me a second to recognize her straight brows. Jingyi. I’ve seen her in Ma’s best photo album: arm around Ma’s shoulder as they stood in their long-skirt school uniforms, sitting with Ma in a bookstore, holding Ma’s hand as they strolled on a beach. Jingyi now has glasses and crow’s feet, but her square smile is the same, and so is her hair.

“Annie?” Jingyi asks. She says it like Ah-nee.

“Hi,” I say. “Ni hao.”

“Your daughter is very pretty,” Jingyi says to Ma, in Mandarin.

Ma props her chin up with her hand. “Why did you call? Is everything okay?” She’s not wearing her wedding ring, and the tan line on her finger is barely visible.

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fingers.

“How’s Grandma doing?”

“She takes a lot of naps.”

I tuck one arm under my elbow to avoid drumming my

“How’s school?” she asks.

“Alright, I guess. My grades are fine.” Does she know what classes I’m taking? Do I tell her I won a poetry award?

Ma nods. Her smile is the kind I flash at strangers when they ask me how I’ve been.

“Can I come see you?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

A phone rings on her end, and Jingyi squeezes Ma’s shoulder before shuffling out of view. In the background, I catch glimpses of the apartment: morning sunlight, sliding doors, and a row of potted plants lining the window.

“You have school,” Ma says, “AP classes.”

The line falls silent. Ma hides a grimace as my fingers march in place on the counter. Then, she says she has to go make food, and we say our goodbyes.

After I hang up, I cram the bowls onto the drying rack and return the vinegar to the cabinet above the counter. Ma once explained what chi cu—eat vinegar—meant. “Chi cu means you want what someone else has,” she said. “Jealousy.”

Five months ago, the July heat woke me up early, and when the front door slammed, I climbed out of bed and peered out the window. Ma was dragging a suitcase down the driveway, wearing a long orange skirt I didn’t know she owned.

As she loaded her luggage into an unfamiliar car, I yanked at the dusty window lock. But when I opened the window, the car had already driven away. *** I do well in my classes, and Ba gets a promotion. We replace old furniture with what he deems ‘higher-quality’ because he says we should invest in things that last. Costco stops selling ‘trash tea,’ so Ba drinks coffee instead.

One evening, Ba closes his computer as I set his bowl of rice on the table. Taking off his glasses, he says, “Grandma passed away, and Ma will be coming back after she arranges the funeral.”

A week later, I open the front door. Ma stands fiddling with the ring on her finger, avoiding eye contact as if she were a child who broke a porcelain vase. I take her suitcase, lug it upstairs to her closet, and unzip it. Still damp with Hangzhou’s humidity, her clothes smell earthy.

As she folds a pair of shorts and avoids my gaze, I spot the orange skirt and pull it out of the suitcase.

“Where’d you get this?” I ask, examining its pleats.

Ma’s gaze rests on my face before she runs her fingers over the skirt’s embroidered hem. “Jingyi made it for my eighteenth birthday. She sent it in something special, too.”

Ma opens the drawer of her nightstand, takes out a wooden box, and sits next to me. “These are plum blossoms,” she says, pointing to the yellow flowers on the lid. “Jingyi painted them.”

I lean forward to get a closer look.

For the rest of the night, sitting next to the half-unpacked luggage, Ma tells me stories about her life in Hangzhou. As the sky gets light, I fall asleep next to my mother, and I dream of a steamfilled landscape of tea farms and creeks. I dream of a girl taking her bike to the top of a steep hill. She pedals forward, lets go of the brakes, and laughs as the wind billows her shirt. She flies down the road, her silhouette getting smaller and smaller until it disappears on the horizon.

1 2

big shallow pot hello

Stella Lin

Play or Script Dougherty Valley High School San Ramon, CA

FACE ON THE CEILING INT. NEW YORK CITY APARTMENT - MORNING A cramped bedroom: desk crammed against bed crammed against window. Clothes thrown over a chair, books stacked on the floor, receipts piled on the nightstand.

CHENGUANG, a Chinese-American woman in her early thirties, sits up in bed, alone. She looks at a cluster of WATER STAINS on her stucco ceiling; the brown spots form the warped image of a face.

Hello.

CHENGUANG

Chenguang speaks with a slight accent. She watches the face as if waiting for something. She turns towards the window. The curtains are drawn tight, barely letting any light into the room.

Chenguang pulls off her covers. She grabs a blouse and skirt from her closet and pads out of the room.

INT. SUBWAY CAR - MORNING A mostly-empty subway car. Chenguang is dressed simply: gray and black business casual, low ponytail, no jewelry.

Chenguang WeChats her older sister in: (Chinese; English subtitles) “Hello??!”

The last message was sent by Chenguang four days before: (Chinese; English subtitles) “What did the doctor say about Dad’s health? Does he need more treatment? Do you guys need more money?”

The chat is almost one-sided: a majority of the texts are on the right side of the screen.

Chenguang turns off her phone and adjusts her FACE MASK, pinching her nose bridge.

INT. OFFICE - MORNING Sitting in her cubicle, Chenguang enters values into a spreadsheet.

A WOMAN walks by and leans over her desk.

Hey, Chenguang.

Hey.

WOMAN CHENGUANG

Chenguang waves and turns back to her work. The woman hesitates before speaking again.

Chenguang?

WOMAN

Confused, Chenguang turns in her swivel chair to face the woman.

WOMAN Manager wants to see you.

INT. MANAGER’S OFFICE - MORNING A small office with a view of a mostly-empty parking lot. A brass plaque on the wall: For outstanding achievement in contributions to the advancement of our organization and community.

A MANAGER wears a mask and leans over his desk, taking up most of the space in the room.

Chenguang, wearing her own mask, sits on the other side of the room, chair against the wall.

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Chenguang clasps her hands in her lap.

MANAGER I hate to do this, but with COVID and everything, we have to cut back.

Her manager takes off his glasses.

I’m sorry.

MANAGER

CHENGUANG But I’ve been here two years longer than everyone else.

MANAGER I wish I had a better option for you.

CHENGUANG What about a pay cut?

MANAGER Look, I have to let some other people go, too.

The manager reaches into his desk drawer and hands Chenguang her last PAYCHECK. INT. OFFICE BUILDING - MORNING The office is mostly empty.

Chenguang stands at her cubicle, cramming paperwork, pens, cables, and a seat cushion into a CARDBOARD BOX. She rips post-its off the bottom of her computer monitor, crumpling them before she tosses them into the trash.

As a COWORKER walks into the room, maintaining her distance, Chenguang sets the cardboard box on the ground, using her foot to push it beneath her desk.

COWORKER Hey, Chenguang, have you seen Maggie? She went into the manager’s office, and now she’s gone.

Chenguang frowns.

CHENGUANG Dunno. Haven’t seen her.

The coworker lingers at the entryway.

Whatcha doing?

COWORKER

Chenguang waves her hand absently.

CHENGUANG Nothing much. Decided it was time to get this desk organized.

COWORKER (snorts) Organize? Yours is the cleanest one here.

Chenguang chuckles nervously and scratches the back of her neck.

COWORKER Alright, I’ll catch you later, yeah?

Chenguang nods, and her coworker disappears down the hallway. Chenguang continues putting items in her box.

INT. APARTMENT ROOM - A FEW HOURS LATER An apartment, nothing too special. Dishes in the sink, pots and pans cluttered on the stove, magazines piled on the coffee table in the living room.

The door opens, and Chenguang walks in, lugging her box of office belongings. She steps over

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a disorderly cluster of footwear in the entryway, sets her cardboard box on the floor, and kicks off her shoes.

Chenguang plops down on the couch, takes off her face mask, and exhales.

She lies there, right arm over her eyes, her palm facing up. She lies there for a while, the clock TICKING in the background.

Then, there’s a DRIPPING NOISE. Chenguang peels herself off the couch and walks barefoot down the hallway.

As Chenguang searches for the source of the noise, we catch glimpses of her apartment: small kitchen, minimal decorations, a framed family photo on a wall.

Chenguang enters her bathroom, her bare feet landing in a puddle. A PIPE has burst under the sink, and the floor is flooded.

Chenguang inspects the pipe. Grimacing, she turns the angle stop counterclockwise, stopping the flow. She grabs a towel, pulls her phone from her pocket, and dials a number.

Hello?

CHENGUANG

She tosses the towel on the ground, and it slaps against the wet tiles.

CHENGUANG Yes. A pipe has burst under my sink.

Chenguang pushes the towel around with her foot.

CHENGUANG No, I didn’t do anything. There’s just water everywhere.

She scowls.

CHENGUANG Sunday? Can it be earlier? (beat) No, I’m sure there must be an earlier time.

Chenguang continues to mop the floor with her foot.

CHENGUANG Tonight? That’s great. Thanks.

She hangs up and sets her phone on the edge of the sink. Water drips off the towel as she picks it up from the ground.

Chenguang drops the towel in the shower, returns to the front door, and moves her cardboard box of office supplies into her bedroom. After trying and failing to push the box beneath her bed, Chenguang opens her closet.

The space is stuffed: a bright YELLOW SUNDRESS and other flashy clothes pushed to the edge of the hanging rod, plain business casual attire hanging front and center, boxes, textbooks, and newspapers crowding the floor.

Trying to make room for her cardboard box, Chenguang moves her closet items around. While doing so, she spots a worn GIFT BOX in the corner. Chenguang pulls it out, sits on the floor, and lifts the lid.

Chenguang lays the contents of the gift box on the floor in front of her: letters hand-written in Chinese, small keychains, folded candy wrappers, old class photos of her Beijing high school, an old bridal magazine with dog-eared pages.

Chenguang thumbs through a scrapbook filled with photos: Chenguang standing next to a tall AMERICAN MAN at various tourist destinations. In one, she’s wearing the yellow sundress, ring on her finger.

Then, Chenguang’s phone rings on the nightstand. She reaches for it and reads the screen: older sister (in Chinese; English subtitles).

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Chenguang stands, walks to her bed, and sits on the mattress. She angles her body away from the mess of papers and mementos on the floor before picking up the video call.

Her sister’s camera jostles, tilting wildly. We can’t see her sister’s face. A baby WAILS and a toddler SCREAMS in the background. Chenguang cringes.

NOTE: THE DIALOGUE IN THIS SCENE IS SPOKEN IN MANDARIN AND SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH. SISTER (shouting) Honey, could you take Dai Dai?! I’m calling my sister!

The screaming dies down. CHENGUANG’S SISTER appears on camera, holding a BABY. Sorry about that.

SISTER

(beat) Anyways, Mom and Dad told me to ask you again. To come home.

To take care of them.

And also to celebrate your and Dad’s birthday.

I can’t this time.

CHENGUANG

SISTER Didn’t you used to come home every year?

Still pursuing your CEO dreams?

CHENGUANG I want to make a good life for myself here.

SISTER What about that American guy?

What about him?

CHENGUANG

SISTER You can’t live alone in New York. You should come back.

Settle down. Take care of Mom and Dad. They’re getting old.

CHENGUANG Don’t you want to do something other than taking care of other people?

SISTER Chenguang, what if they get COVID? Don’t you want to see them again before they die?

CHENGUANG Right now, the situation here in New York is worse than it is in Shanghai.

I might give them the virus.

SISTER You’ll have to quarantine for two weeks anyways.

CHENGUANG That’s the problem. I can’t be off my job for that long.

Chenguang grimaces.

SISTER Aren’t you being too selfish?

Suddenly, the baby in Chenguang’s sister’s arms resumes its WAILING.

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(to baby) Sshhhh. Shhh.

SISTER

The baby’s cries intensify.

SISTER (to Chenguang) Sorry, just a sec.

Her sister hangs up. Devoid of baby chaos, the room is suddenly dead silent.

CHENGUANG

Hello?

Chenguang blinks at her screen, incredulous. She grumbles, turns off her phone, and leans back to lay on the mattress. Chenguang watches the face-shaped stain on her ceiling.

END OF SUBTITLES.

What.

CHENGUANG (to the ceiling, irritated)

Chenguang pauses as if listening to the ceiling’s response.

CHENGUANG I’m always starting the conversation? That’s because you never do.

As she listens to the ceiling’s silence again, Chenguang scowls.

CHENGUANG (in Mandarin; English subtitles) Speak for yourself. You sit and watch the bed all day.

She gets up and marches to her kitchen. She takes a Ziploc bag out of a drawer and dumps its contents onto her kitchen table.

COUPONS. Some cut from magazines, some folded in half, etc. Chenguang digs through the pile until she finds a BAKERY COUPON. She shoves it into her pocket.

EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD - EVENING The sky is overcast and gray as Chenguang exits her apartment building, hands shoved in her pockets, face mask on. She puts in a pair of earbuds and walks a few blocks through a small neighborhood: narrow streets, tall buildings, and not much greenery.

The place is deserted; the only people out are wearing masks. A PEDESTRIAN walks towards Chenguang on the sidewalk. Seeing him, Chenguang takes out her earbuds and lifts up her hand to wave.

Not noticing, he crosses the street to avoid her on the sidewalk.

INT. BAKERY - EVENING A nice bakery: glass display case with pastel-colored cakes, cookies, and pastries. Mellow background music plays from hidden speakers.

Chenguang hands the cashier her coupon through the Plexiglas shield.

CHENGUANG What’s your cheapest cake?

CASHIER That would be the mini chiffon.

The cashier points to a small circular CAKE no bigger than three muffins.

How much?

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CHENGUANG

CASHIER Four dollars with your coupon.

CHENGUANG You take credit cards?

The cashier nods, and Chenguang hands her card to him. The cashier puts the cake in a box with a cake knife.

Chenguang takes the box, thanks him, and leaves.

INT. APARTMENT - NIGHT Chenguang enters the apartment, kicks off her shoes, and takes off her face mask.

As she sets the cake on the table, Chenguang pauses and looks up at the lights. They’re on, and they shouldn’t be. An unfamiliar coat is also draped across a chair.

Chenguang looks around the room, only to see its crowded mess.

Then, a shuffling noise from the interior of the apartment. Chenguang puts her face mask back on and tiptoes down the hallway.

Hello?

CHENGUANG

When Chenguang gets to the bathroom, she sees a PLUMBER lying on his back beneath the sink.

The plumber turns his face towards her as she comes into the doorframe.

PLUMBER Oh, hello. Your landlord let me in.

The plumber pulls up his face mask and stands.

PLUMBER (CONT’D) I just finished. (beat) There was a bad connection in your P-trap.

Chenguang nods.

Thank you.

CHENGUANG

The plumber rubs the back of his neck and squats to put his tools into his toolbox.

He gathers his things, and Chenguang follows him towards the kitchen. The plumber puts on his coat.

PLUMBER I’ll send your landlord the bill.

He gives her a quick nod and walks out the door.

Chenguang locks the door. She takes off her mask and slides the cake and plastic knife out of the box. She grabs a plate from a cabinet and takes matches, candles, and a fork out of a drawer.

She sets the table, turns off the lights, and lights a match. For a few moments, Chenguang is still as she watches the flame. Then, she blows out the match and puts on her mask.

She throws open the door and glances down the hallway. The plumber is almost at the staircase exit.

Excuse me!

The plumber turns around, bewildered.

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CHENGUANG

CHENGUANG Um… would you like some cake?

Pardon?

PLUMBER

CHENGUANG Is there somewhere you need to be right now?

PLUMBER (shaking his head) No, I don’t think– CHENGUANG I have some cake. I thought you might like a piece.

Chenguang turns on the lights as she reenters her apartment, the plumber following her.

While the plumber lingers by the open door, Chenguang searches through a stack of dishes in her kitchen cabinet. The first few plates are chipped. Chenguang lays them on the counter and continues her search.

The plumber glances at the outside hallway before stepping inside the room. The door shuts behind him.

What’s the occasion?

PLUMBER

He glances between the cake and Chenguang’s back as he sets his toolbox on the floor.

It’s my birthday.

CHENGUANG

PLUMBER Where’s your family? Why aren’t you celebrating with them?

CHENGUANG They’re back in China.

PLUMBER China? My family lives on my street.

That sounds nice.

CHENGUANG

She smiles, almost self-deprecatingly.

PLUMBER Maybe you should go home.

So you wouldn’t be eating your birthday cake with a stranger.

CHENGUANG Would you go back to China if you were me?

Chenguang pulls a plate from the cabinet.

No. Right, you wouldn’t.

PLUMBER CHENGUANG

My family wouldn’t expect me to return if I were a guy.

A pause.

I guess you’re right.

PLUMBER

CHENGUANG They say I’m too selfish.

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Chenguang returns to the table and hands a fork and plate to the plumber. She gestures for the plumber to sit, and he does.

Chenguang takes a seat across from him and picks up the plastic cake knife.

After serving the plumber a slice, Chenguang cuts one for herself. She takes off her face mask and sets it on the table. The plumber hesitates before doing the same.

After wiping his hands on the front of his jeans, the plumber picks up his fork.

They both eat.

It’s good. The cake.

Chenguang nods.

PLUMBER

CHENGUANG This was the cheapest one they had.

She forks another piece off her slice.

But it’s good.

CHENGUANG (CONT’D)

LATER Chenguang waves the plumber goodbye, closes the door, and surveys her messy apartment.

She throws the empty cake board away and transfers all her dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher.

Chenguang walks to her bedroom window, throws open the curtains, and watches the city: the lit windows of the neighboring apartment building, cars moving across a bridge in the distance.

The world outside Chenguang’s window remains in motion while she watches. The quiet bustle of the distance settles in.

Moments of stillness. Then, Chenguang pushes herself off the windowsill, pads to her desk, and opens her laptop. She opens a new tab and types in the browser: “accountant hiring”.

The face watches over her from the ceiling as she starts anew.

THE END

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Daniel Liu

Creative Nonfiction Lake Highland Preparatory School Orlando, FL

Family Portrait as Gutted Fish We tried to make your favorite dish today, Bà. Drunken rice-field eel diced into small squares, boiled into a stew with lotus roots and dried red dates. It was Mā and I who had attempted to do the dicing tonight, and it is because of us that this dish was merely an attempt—our clumsy gashes amateurish along its wet underside, numerous cuts on our own fingers. When alive, the eel’s skin was slick with mucus, and when faced with disembowelment it flailed erratically, thrashing about from cutting board to counter to floor, as if to intimidate its captors, to make a last stand. As we tried to grasp the floundering animal, I couldn’t help but feel bad for it. Plucked and planted a million miles from its homeland, brought to a market of hands, of wads of crumpled green bills, of fish tanks the size of coffins, it now sputtered last words at a final destination: some pseudo-American family’s kitchen counter, right beside the Lao Gan Ma and the frozen tater tots.

Mā told me how frequently you ate the meal back in your home village. She recounted how when you and she were young, you would catch the scaleless fish with bare hands, hold them by whatever grip you could force upon their slimy bodies, and carry them home. From the mud, you would find dinners. You were always determined to provide something: spending countless hours in the paddy fields, you looked, even when all the other kids had gone home, for eels in the umber water. You told me that you came from a family of fishermen, a family that spent generations alternating between the river and the sea, each child drenched in the saline wash and murky beds of water hyacinths. Wooden boats held tight by the wild push of uncaring water, birthing generations of pitiless storms, blood-hardened rope, hands made coarse under the brutish sun.

And now, here you are, a million miles from your homeland, still selling fish. * You taught me how to debone salmon when I was ten. A skill that, to you, it was inconceivable to live without. We had been in our family restaurant for twelve hours already: you, behind the sushi bar, face lax with exhaustion, as if you didn’t even have the energy to keep your face taut, and I, in the kitchen, shelling shrimp and washing dishes. We had already closed shop for the day. The dining room, a space so usually packed with people swimming about, bickering, gossiping, eating, enjoying, living, now empty.

These places made for pleasure and recreation, were turned inside out, made dark with my hand on the light switch and left vacant for us to explore.

You invited me to your station behind the glass, to your yellow cutting-board where you had spent years perfecting a single knife stroke, a single dish. You put stainless steel tweezers in my hand, held my hand over the pink flesh of the fish, and ordered me to pull some invisible obstacle out of its body. A salmon’s bones are almost clear, hidden under layers of fat and meat, hinted at only by geometric white dots lined up along its tissue. Although I couldn’t see them, when my hands caressed its body, all I noticed were sharp things. Each jagged edge of bone built to be perceived, built to be felt and then pulled like spring onions out of the ground.

We were at this for hours, this dance of touch and steel, until we were exhausted, hands oiled with fish fat. I ended up dragging my body over to the dining room and dropped head-first into one of the booths, my arms sprawled across the torn leather. I closed my eyes, and slept. You continued into the night. * A year later and you and I are in a car headed towards the coast before the songbirds are even up. Billboards fly past: repent, they begged. Repent, and you will be saved. You had always feigned Christianity, always complained how you never had time for church, never had the peace and quiet to read the Bible. Amah was

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a Buddhist, and that meant you had to be something different. You really did try to be American, try to be filled with faith. I remember you turning on the country gospel radio and us listening to soft guitar and a Southern accent. You hummed along, unknowing.

We were driving towards some distribution center, the one that air-shipped the seasonal fish from the North. You visited these places often, to collect the fresh pick for the week at our restaurant, but this time you had decided to bring me. When we arrived, we looked like truckers. Blue caps and blue jeans, stock characters of the American South in all but skin. Instead of crates of cargo, we brought an empty trunk, and instead of some bright red eighteen-wheeler, our small 2005 Toyota sat idly in the parking lot of the concrete building. We entered, and a room of real truckers turned to look at us. They stared in curiosity, their heads following us as we made our way to the receptionist.

Palms sweaty, I forced them into my pockets. I didn’t feel shame, as one had come to expect, but rather some disgusting wetness associated with being the odd one out. We were in North Florida, which everyone knows is really the Southern part of Florida.

God was white here, and his people had not seen many who looked like us. But you are reckless and hopeful and optimistic as always, walking smile-first to the lady behind the glass partition, showing her the invoice for the shipment. She does not return the expression.

When we get back in the car, hundreds of pounds of fish in iceboxes stored in every crevice of the car from the backseat to my lap, I am upset with myself. I didn’t know why then, but this ugly feeling of foreignness had begun to stain my ears and face, had begun to infiltrate my lungs, the way I ate, the way I talked, the way I thought. Driving back, the signs reminded me once again to repent. I won’t. * We had our first, real, big argument the summer you asked me to apprentice as a sushi chef at the restaurant. I had been working there for a while, but always in the back, running the radishes through the prep machine or chopping carrots. This time though, you wanted me behind the glass case, on display for the patrons looking for an exotic experience at the sushi bar, mesmerized by some disciplined Eastern technique and far-flung fish with unique Asian names. After two days, I was horrified. It was summer, and I had nothing else to do, but I could not imagine spending the whole of the break getting cuts on my fingers and making rolls that fell apart at the faintest prod of a chopstick. I was much older then, and I had my permit but could not yet drive alone. But driving away was exactly what I promised to do. We were on our lunch break and I told you that I was going home, to a friend’s house, to anywhere I’d never have to see a fish again.

What I really meant to say was that I couldn’t stand what you did for a living. The notion of decapitating fish, of carving out silver skin, of standing for ten hours a day, wet and hungry and hands sticky with dried tuna, for an entire summer, was so impossible to me, that I had forgotten you had done it for almost three decades. That you had done it every day, every week, every month, every year since you had arrived in America. And you were thankful for it. And here I was, throwing a tantrum because what? Because I didn’t like the feeling of fish fat on my hands? Because I thought I was supposed to be living some idyllic American teenage life? * Every single one of these moments with you is haunted by the ghosts of dead fish. Carcasses outline all my memories. Every birthday, I had waited for you to come home after work, and by midnight it wasn’t even my birthday anymore but I wanted to see your face so badly that I didn’t even care. The odor of slaughter, of organs hollowed out of fish was unmistakably strong, strong

enough to cover birthday cakes. I didn’t care. It was only when I got older that I started to wonder about these things, why your jeans were always stained with guts, why you spent so much time at the restaurant, why you couldn’t just sell the business and get a whitepeople job, like a real estate agent or a businessman. Eventually, I thought to myself, was that it? Were fish guts our destiny? I asked all these questions because I couldn’t face what I really wanted: to not be expats on foreign land, to not go somewhere and be the imported entertainment. I wanted so desperately to be American that I couldn’t even face you, my own Bà. I knew you tried, singing along to the cheery pop idols in the car, learning to hide your accent as much as possible. When people talk about guilt, they talk about some warm feeling that rises to your head like a small flame, tenderizing your thoughts. But this guilt is so much sharper, so much more angular––like a knife finding an entrance into the soft underbelly of a live eel.

The offspring of freshwater eels swim out to sea to grow, and when they return, they do not return to their familial rivers and streams, but instead, ones determined by the currents. Random bodies of water. Bà, I am sorry. I am sorry that I am still coughing up this unrelenting narrative, wet with saltwater. Bà, we are fishermen still. This new homeland and its jaws will not change that.

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Daniel Liu

Poetry Lake Highland Preparatory School Orlando, FL

Crash

Elegy

He dies alone, draped in snow.

Left with frigid palms & small things, Amah clutches the phone and watches all her vases shatter at 76 miles per hour. He was not drunk, they say, his hardening body frozen in the black moonlight.

Veins leaking oil onto the asphalt altar—the street baptized in mangled body & steel.

Amah will nurse all her memories like children. Walk miles in her younger shoes.

Retrace her steps until she finds a malfunctioning airbag or a punctured lung. He promised, she would say.

His crooked yellow teeth laid neatly on the pavement.

And the man told Amah that it was impossible, that the car should have never flipped over, the engines should have never become a slaughter machine, motors screaming.

He told her it must have been a mistake— coffin undone, eyes relit, man returned. Amah spends months in his clothes, holding his skin to hers. She repents and sins and repents until the whites of her eyes become flags, begging for surrender. Hands church-like, so fragile, you would mistake them for prayer.

Rooms defined by fog, the wallpaper torn in all the wrong places. She carves an animal out of the window, a thing with wings, blizzard in its mouth. Because a bird is only a bird when shot down, Amah does not cry. Because there are two sides to a flock, the entering and the leaving.

Letters carved from graphite, oiled with white eyes, a twisted flightpath across an empty sea. Mā asks me to write the word again, to invite shame.

She watches as I fail, wringing out the wrong turn, hammering the wrong nail in this still-open coffin. No one knows what we are etching onto our skins, what foreign symbol has bleached, acid-marred, our yellow hands. Again, again.

She is lucky because she can sputter out ash from her lungs, can make out some sharp white noise in this endless static.

Amah is not so lucky, her wrinkled mouth and ears sealed to the sound of the gun-faced god, to the bared teeth of this country.

Broken oracle bones. How to face a nation and its ruptured throat.

Again, until you get right. Mā believes cracked teeth is the key to assimilation.

Shattered glass and house fire, we weaponize our cavities, each crater another missing word, another missing fingerprint. Remember this portrait: a son and his open silhouette folded over a godless emblem, hands clutching the sharpened knife of a new homeland.

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Michelle Liu

Visual Arts The Westminster Schools Atlanta, GA

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Off the Grid Keyboard, magazine cut outs, plexiglass sheets and glue 2021

Olivia Liu

Visual Arts Scarsdale High School Scarsdale, NY

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Are You Listening to Our Voices?

Wire, plaster, paper towels, acrylic paint, tree bark and glue 2021

Sophia Liu California Dreaming In the 1850s, the air indulged in gold that showered the mountains like blood from every brother’s skull.

A white man’s wet dream— we were emptied of crops from the Huang He and brought mouths to our land, parched. We startled awake in blinding light, customs houses, promised the sap of yuccas if we stayed accommodating.They smelled danger: they decreed coins for our staying, calledtheir anger necessary for peace. Justified, our men toiled longer, found their hands burning in soap suds becausewith smoke, laundry feminizes awhite man. I learned how the streets ache, intensifying like a child’s crying. I grew apprehensively, my immigrant intoxicated with lucre, jousting for pennies. There goes my misspent adolescence— black with dirt, slaving in the saloon. The opium in my mother’s placenta couldn’t save the roughness inside me. Though woman-starved, a man called mea yellow whore dressed in a costume of an archetypal goddess. Was I otherness supposed to blush?When the luxury-high withered, carnage charged throughmy mouth numbed the streets, our sobs seen as perpetual rain. I cut a slice of tart, dug my fingers into raw flour and let it rot. We watched as our fathers, hurt, murmured their last words.

A whole percentage filtered out. We heard the footsteps of the exonerated tauntingour ancestors, their faces glaring like the sky in summer. I choose my body to barter with, humoring my saviors; little girl like myself, playing with glass, indistinguishable. With my barely-gray hair, I was deemed immoral. Time inflamed this country, settling for short-term adoption. our filth leaking all over pure America.

My grave, infrangible. This is not an elegy, but a mirror— remindernow ablaze.

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Poetry Great Neck South High School Great Neck, NY

Aubade after Nanking Wai gong was born in the year of the fire ox—the year they drunk danced with violence, massaged saltpeter into an infant’s lips. In a red-glazed night, they mistook our bodies as effigies, our fingers as rose haw, our navels as the bullseye of a darts game. Winter had teethed out of a third trimester fall and every -one was drenched in the secrets from their mothers’ past lives. Every mouth wanted something to untarnish them and some -one other than their own pulse to touch, but we let the wind bathe us and tried not to wonder if there was a girl’s hymen in the lake. We teared to blur our vision and realized that their half-lit faces could disguise so well as our fathers’. So we taught ourselves to squint once in a while to differentiate them, though it didn’t matter. While not ours, they were still fathers, still disguised as noblemen. Then they slipped our skulls underneath glass carpets, pretending that the dead disappear. Still winter, the sidewalks were filthy with shrapnel and there was no song bright enough for even an angel to sing.

I am trying to understand the mass of an acre nauseated with madness: how a little boy cries out Ma with a voice so sacred but grows into a man who laughs after deflating the stomach of a half-mother. I will tell my daughter to always look from a distance before crouching closer—to trust the world through an aperture. And when she sees her zeng zu mu’s head arranged in a grid like checkers, it might as well be an opera mask.

Because they say what’s real is what’s golden, but how could they even begin to surgeon out the napalm from wai gong’s stories? I tell her that everything real can cleave in half without cracking, can be caressed with cut fingers. I repeat that this earth will not forget.

How could it? I smell sinew in the night market and imagine who screamed here. One aglow morning, I comb cartilage out of my hair and find the mandible of my mothers. We remember through the rubine sunset and every child crying with nowhere to go.

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Katelyn Lu

Spoken Word Wissahickon High School Ambler, PA

Aviary what does a grandma smell like? i ask because well, i was never told. i know how she looks, she looks with her children held inside of her eyes at all times. in her photographs, i peer into her irises, the waters where i watch my mother billow. if i squint my eyes, i can even see the tiniest swish of me, and for just that moment, i swish so damn proud. i know her sound. when i try and listen through the telephone, i feel as if i’m a bird trying to comprehend man, beak failing to catch the seeds of a mandarin meal, quickly, before they dissolve into ash and i starve of it. but even though i am never quick enough and i always hurt with hunger, i can still hear her melody. the song she nurses under her tongue, lullabies i cling to in the dark. but o’ great white way, i ask you this: what does a grandma smell like when she’s sino? can you tell me, if she’s the raw rust of tea leaf’s harvest? of pu-erh pulp? is she the ripe earth of a tilled rice stair? is she the ginger singe in the air, the steam trail i chase to the stew pot? ballet of spices. great white country, have you nothing to share? nothing to give after all you have stolen from me. you’ve siphoned all but the broken letters of năinai. misshapen hooks between my lips, piercing the insides of my cheek, until shame blisters around the puncture. words i say with apology. because the wings upon my back should sprawl with the feathers of my ancestors plucked from the fields of the chinese grandmothers and the women before them, angelic flight. but my wings, they shred around bullet holes, silver pellets pressed by the western fist. only in the silent pockets between your god and myself do i admit my tenderest secrets, do i let my nothings out unhushed, do i sew them into slivers of truth. because the truth is, spirit of this country, you give to me a great white sea put between us, whose current i cannot swim in. you give to me lungs wrung of their ginger air, i cannot breathe in. you give to me a horizon collapsed of all yellow sun, i cannot pray in. you give to me wounded skin, bleeding by the blade of star and stripe, skin i cannot heal in. body i can no longer dwell in.

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i beg of you to let me meet with motherland, let me soak in the splendor of eastern slopes, catch the dust yulan magnolia blows, coax it into my skin, and medicate the bite of american snow. why do you refuse me? if you will not grant my wishes, can you do me this one favor, show little yellow me this much mercy and tell my grandma, that i spend those sunless hours wading deep in her eyes, pining upon her songs, pleading to know her, the smell of her. until she is lost to the sand, the floor of the great white under. i ask you to tell her, because i am only a bird, and she does not understand my cry.

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Stricken Bodies Need Shelter my sort-of boyfriend

went missing on a sunday, and when i heard the news i felt it bruise deep in my teeth. my chest started leaking an open faucet, black and blue river down into my throat. a shiner for a mouth instead of an eye. day one. his mother arrives at my door at 5 pm, and she walks with heavy feet. with every step she pedals, my ribs rattle. bile sloshes against my insides as i tell her that her son and i texted last night. we wrote tales under the moon about the lure of disappearing because of how much we wished to forget ourselves, our dreams of anonymous death. what was yesterday’s banter, buckets of teenage melodrama, is today, lament. prickled words of intention, cries for interference unheeded. how could he fit it all: the cash, the cloth, the cold tucked all in his body between cream bones behind popped cells. how did the greyhound bus driver not see a boy with too much violence to stand? how didn’t i? day two. i think about the stage we never reached, from sort-of boyfriend to absolute. how we’d watch the other through smoke strings but never touch our fingers at the cigarette. we’d latch our eyes together but never speak in a language other than gaze. i remember he registered as an organ donor last june, so i shiver at the thought of seeing those eyes again, blackened haunt, in the gas station line, in the sockets of a different man. a man who found his sight again in the corpse of a boy, seventeen. he’d tell his proud transplant story but won’t know that those eyes once belonged to mine. day three. and i’ve started saving photos of him on the evening news, to populate the files of my ache. to pretend that my sort-of boyfriend

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is not a three-day “have you seen this boy” teenage runaway. my gut rots through, torso bitten by the terror that all my memories of him will age and mold with the spores of verbs with antique tense. i dread, but i know that my sort-of boyfriend, is a past was and a past did not a present is and not a future will. i wait for the day when the world stops storing her extra earth in children’s shoulders. when she lifts the weight off our mangled spines and they coil no more. the day of our excavation. the day our jaws finally shake loose.

Katelyn Lu

Short Story Wissahickon High School Ambler, PA

Brotherly The city tonight is a sleeping one. Streetlights yawn thick puddles of yellow. Clouds roll away, tossing and turning in charcoal sheets. Underneath, a breach in the sky—a hall of light that splits the clouds. And you and I are left before the eyes of heaven. The light follows me. It catches the grey in my hair, the wear in my face, when I walk away from you. You, with the blue lips. The quieting pulse. And a last breath, left fluttering in the wind. …

You waited on my doorstep. A sight to behold. Eyes caked with blood. Cheeks sallow, concave. Like your skin was falling off the bone.

“Cliff,” your voice quavered.

“Reck?” I looked you over. Your face was a sickly white.

“Let me in?”

I couldn’t decide what to say. I was stuck somewhere between “No” and “Piss off”, but in the midst of it all, the chain fell off the lock. The door opened wide. And the bite of the cold snapped at my face. You crossed through the archway. …

“This place is just like I remembered,” you said, “it’s been too long, man.”

I fixed us a drink, “Shame you didn’t bother to call. After seven years.”

“Pops around?” you asked.

“God, I hope not. I buried him in the ground myself,” I said.

You were quiet for a beat. “How long ago?”

“About five years. The service was nice, though. All of the two people there.”

“Cliff, will you let me explain?”

“All ears, buddy.”

You ripped into your story—the one you had been rehearsing. The trucking company downsized, and you were among the first ones to go. Your girl took off, with some of your savings and most of your heart. The eviction notice, the nail through your door. The change you scraped together for the bus fare here. The bad luck that just kept chasing you until you hit the wall. My wall.

“This house—everything that went down—thought it better to stay away,” you said.

“And yet you’re back.”

You turned away, and your eyes fell once you saw the blankness of the walls. There were photographs once. A grainy photo of you at thirteen dangling a dead rabbit by the neck, Dad’s hunting rifle propped on your foot. Ma walking down her wedding aisle, our grandfather in tow. Dad napping in his favorite leather chair. I wondered if you were going to ask why I took them all down.

“I ran into some of our old neighbors. They said Ma is in a home now,” you said.

I know. I’m reminded by the bill that comes every month.

You put a hand on my shoulder, “You did the right thing, shipped her outta’ here before she ruined you too.”

“How long you staying here?”

“Not long.”

The light was so dim that it hid your twitches. The tracks.

The fidgeting of your fingers. The dime bags tucked in your shoes.

Now, all I am is sorry that I ever bought your story. That’s my bad. …

When Dad got down to his last bottle and threw his highball at the wall, you knew it was time to play outside. You were so quick sneaking out that I was always running behind. Ma was behind the kitchen window, doing lines of who-knows-what at the sink. Too busy, too high in the clouds to notice us. And if only I could see that years later, you would have that same faraway look that she had.

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“You think you can find a new place by next Friday?” I said.

“Kicking me to the curb already?”

The extra cash I got from double shifts at the warehouse was not enough—still hundreds of dollars short. “Well, until you start paying rent and the bills—” “Nobody’s hiring!”

“Is nobody hiring or are you just not trying?”

“Cliff, I spent the last seven years working my ass off.”

“No reason why you can’t do it again,” I said. “You can get your own job. Your own place to trash. And you can do it by next Friday.”

“So much for family, huh?”

“Yeah,” I cracked a beer, “you saw to that.” …

I used to hate going to bars. The breath of the other drunks reeked of a putrid, dank air. Their words slid up and down as they told the same stories of their wives leaving them and losing custody of their kids. Of getting fired and barely scraping by. Stories of their brothers, who sat rotting on their couches rent-free.

“He’s really that bad?” the bartender asked, topping off my glass. I’m pretty sure her name was Cleo—or Clarissa. One of those.

“And I thought my parents were the deadbeats,” I said, “We really were better without him.”

“Who’s we?”

“My mom. She’s not doing too well,” I downed the rest of the glass, “Alzheimer’s.”

I ignored how her eyes pitied me. “I always thought if I just cut the strings loose, I’d be free of them. But every time I get rid of one of them, another one comes crawling back. They’re like parasites, sucking the life out of me.” I flashed the glass back to her, “Another round?”

“You got it.”

I got to my feet, and the floor started sinking underneath my shoes. I ignored how my surroundings were spinning: Cleo, Clarissa, the rest of the bar. I threw darts at the back of the bar.

They hit the ceiling, the walls, anywhere but the board.

“What do you think your brother’s on?” the bartender asked, sliding the drink to me.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the bundles of extra cash, him passing out, disappearing at odd hours,” she took one of the darts and shot it at the board, “It sounds like he’s getting high out of his mind.”

The dart had hit the bullseye. And with it, the dime bags, shoelaces, silver spoons. Kensington and Adams, the corner where I caught you huddling with some guy on my commute. Just a block away from the alley two brothers would cut through on the way to Junior High. And as they all pinned together in a line, at the center, was your running away from the city; from your deadbeat mother. Starting anew, to become the same. …

“Does it ever get exhausting, Ma?” you said, rubbing vomit out of the carpet, “To do this same dance over and over.”

“Reck,” her words choked through her sobs.

“Does it, Ma? You and your sad junkie life,” you said.

“Ease up on her, Reck. You know Dad did this to us,” I said.

“Keep making excuses for her.”

“Reck, you’re over the line.”

“Cliff, if you love drug addicts so damn much then go right ahead and coddle her until the day you die.”

“Reck—” “Go right ahead. But don’t you ever take me down with you.”

And when the doors shut, I was the one who had to dry

her tears and tell her it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t believe me, but I wasn’t sure I did either. …

“You’re a goddamn liar, Reck.”

I took a swig of my Macallan, and I waited for you to move.

“Seven years go by and this is what you’ve become?

You’re exactly like them. You didn’t think you were, but you are— to the bone.”

You didn’t hear me until I wailed the glass into the wall above you. I hauled you up by the shoulders, specks of glass lodged in your hair, your face hung over your neck.

I stood over you, lying in a heap on the ground. “It makes me sick to look at you. When I come back, I want you gone. And you’ll never show your sorry ass here again.” Were you shaking?

No, it was me. Blood surging, limbs numb, eyes blurry. I held the Macallan bottle up to my lips, and almost, for a second, saw the needle stuck in your arm. But then the second was over, and I kept walking. …

When they found you, your eyes were emptied of all sight, and your ears were silent to all sound. Blood leaked around the needle and down your arm. Your throat rattled. A sound that echoed through your hollow cheeks. Until it stopped. And you and your ghost could do nothing but disappear. …

When your brother overdoses, you soap up your hands.

Wash the puke that fell from his chin. Wash away the races you had, through Kensington and Adams. Watch the water spill right over the closet you hid in, as your old man wailed his highball glass at the wall. Reck, who covered your mouth and held a baseball bat to his chest. Wash the last of him away.

You take a walk, and the heavens will shine down on you and the dark will roll away in your path. Because you’re finally rid of him. Rid of the burdens they all put on you. Rid of the tears from their faraway eyes, the ones you have to dry. And now, as he pauses alone in yellow puddled streets, he doesn’t feel the cold and the wet of the concrete against his back. He doesn’t smell his vomit souring the air. He will not see the EMTs sweep him off his feet. But he almost feels, as his last breath wanes away into the wind.

You’re rid of him for good. And as you finish the last of that Macallan, you fall, and you’re rid of yourself too.

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Ella Lukowiak

Spoken Word Communications High School Wall Township, NJ

perfect

isn’t it incredible

hold your hair back, they tell me. they say people want to see beauty, not the stresses and the scars. not the skin that spills over waist lines, and hair that hangs in knotted clumps still tangled around fingers that pull in anxious circles

isn’t it incredible how every day we wake up with a whole new canvas before us and a sky of colors to smear on it

they say to hide the bruises purpled and invisible the scars that play a delicate melody along the ridge of my spine from too many knives wielded by too many people i would have considered harmless they tell us to work until we bleed leaking fatigue and anxiety from veins of expectation our bones are crumbling from all of the weight they say is necessary our fingers are fumbling with too many buttons to secure, too many trays to carry, too many glasses to balance, and not enough time they braid our hair, tugging strands from the scalp as we wince in the name of finally being enough. they paint our faces to bring out a shine for others to see. we never used to look at our faces. we never used to care. they tell me to pluck my eyebrows caterpillars cut from their branches they tell me jeans aren’t fitting for me, with the way they shape my figure into a box. they tell me that shoulders distract, but a little low cut here and there wouldn’t hurt anyone. they tell me to stand up tall, that the way my shoulders roll forward make me look weak. tired. i am tired. why don’t they see that? i am tired of the pulled hair and the headaches induced by the overwhelming flood of youth the weights piled and pressed in the name of being a woman in the name of expectation in the name of preparation in the name of success this is what perfect is. is this what perfect is?

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isn’t it incredible how when the day is over and we tuck ourselves into the warmth of our own beds we know things we never could have dreamed of knowing that very morning isn’t it incredible how every day we are gifted with 86,400 seeds to hold in our hands and plant into the ground as we water the trees we breathe life into until the next day breaks and we are gifted with 86,400 seeds once again and this cycle repeats but most of us, we don’t use all of those seeds we tuck some under our pillows and into the cracks in the sidewalk, believing they might grow a tree, but all that sprouts are weeds. most of us toss the seeds into the air, mindlessly watching as opportunities fly away driven by our very fingertips isn’t it incredible how it doesn’t matter that we do this every day because the very next morning we are gifted with 86,400 seeds again the universe doesn’t judge us by our past our history doesn’t haunt us or cut our supply of life instead we are given the chance over and over and over again to use the seeds wisely this time.

Natalie Macadar

Photography Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

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FIXITFELP Mixed media collage 2021

Travis Mann

Photography Greenhill School Addison, TX

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0041 Archival pigment print 2021

Emily Maremont

Play or Script San Francisco University High School San Francisco, CA

World of Costumes ACT I Scene 1 At rise, we see an office consisting of desks laden with books, papers, and typewriters. By the door, the statue of a man carved from white marble faces the audience.

DR. NEWELL, mid-fifties, leans against a desk. The EUGENICS OFFICE PLAYERS--ORVILLE, HERBERT, MARTHA, and CLARENCE--bow in a line across the stage.

DR. NEWELL Actors, I am very pleased with your progress. I’ll summon you for edits later.

There are a couple scientific details I’d like to add. For now, you may return to your classes.

Exit The Eugenics Office Players. Enter ESLA NEWELL, a young woman dressed as a flapper, carrying a couple of parcels.

ESLA

Father!

DR. NEWELL My dear Esla. Welcome back to Cold Spring Harbor.

ESLA

Oh Father, I’ve missed you so much. Here, I brought you birthday gifts.

DR. NEWELL That’s very kind of you. (opens the first parcel) Ah. Only you know how much I like my fudge and sugar dates.

ESLA

I suppose you hide your sweet tooth behind your microscope, so it’s hard for people to detect.

Dr. Newell unwraps the second parcel.

ESLA

You wear gloves so often, I thought you might enjoy some homemade ones instead of those boring store-bought ones. Try them on. Hopefully they’ll fit.

DR. NEWELL I think I should try them on later. I’m afraid my hands are dirty. I don’t want to ruin your beautiful work. Do you mind?

ESLA

Oh... not at all. Anyway, how is work coming along?

DR. NEWELL Well, there is lots to do. In our laboratories, we’ve continued our studies on evolution and the laws of heredity. My primary focus is here, where we are documenting the pedigrees of every family in the United States. A difficult task, as you might expect, for we must get countless families to fill out our forms. I tell my pupils: It is everyone’s duty, if their blood is of good quality of course, to safeguard the nation’s moral character. Do you know how many feeble-minded individuals are giving birth as we speak?

ESLA

Ten?

DR. NEWELL Ten times that! And have you seen all the immigrants pouring into our country? Hebrews, Italians, Chinese, and so on. Unless the government takes action,

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these people will lead to a future of Americans who are shorter in stature, have darker complexions, and sexual immorality! See what we are up against?

ESLA

Father, is this the important thing you said you wanted to speak to me about in your letter?

DR. NEWELL Do you recall the last time you went to Wanamaker’s?

ESLA

It was... Monday, when I got a bunch of materials for costumes with my allowance. I have some at home, if you’d like to see. I recently finished-DR. NEWELL When you say, allowance, what are you referring to?

ESLA

Well, the allowance you send me monthly. Is...is something wrong?

DR. NEWELL I received a letter from Wanamaker’s this morning regarding a purchase made on my account of approximately $150. This is a price I absolutely cannot afford to pay. I thought I made it clear to you that you were only permitted to spend $50 per month! Now I must explain to them my predicament. Do you know what an embarrassment this is to our family? Your mother and I worked for many years to acquire this land for our laboratories. We never spent our money on silks and shining shoes. Why waste your earnings when you have the opportunity to help humanity?

ESLA

I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t realize... is there anything I can do?

DR. NEWELL There is something. Our drama club needs someone to design their costumes.

ESLA

The Eugenics Office has a drama club? What for?

DR. NEWELL To share eugenics with our community. If you agree, I will consider continuing your monthly allowance. Here’s the script. The actors wrote in their measurements.

He hands the script to her. She flips through the pages for a moment.

ESLA

I don’t understand.

DR. NEWELL I paid for your entire education. First the Grand Chaumiere and then Barnard. That’s more than most women get. You were trained as a scholar, yet I have just given you a script-ESLA

No! I understand the script. I just...these names...

DR. NEWELL The character names reflect facts proven by science. Now, I expect to see the costumes by the end of next week.

ESLA

Next week, but--

DR. NEWELL Or is there something else on your schedule I should know about?

ESLA

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No, Father. I’ll get started on the costumes right away!

DR. NEWELL Good. And please understand, we all have undesirable traits in us, but it is our sacred duty to rise above them so we can be worthy of our family name. It is something I learned how to do, and so must you.

(The phone rings on Dr. Newell’s desk. He picks it up.)

Who is it? Ah, yes...

As Dr. Newell converses on the phone, Esla crosses to the door. In the hurry to exit, she unknowingly knocks over the statue, which breaks into several pieces. It is hollow inside.

BLACKOUT

ACT I Scene 2 The lights come up on a drawing room containing a sofa and a coffee table. Portraits of past Newells hang on the back wall.

Esla kneels on the floor, a swamp of fabrics before her. She takes measurements with measuring tape and scribbles on a notepad.

Enter BESSIE, a pile of clothes in her arms.

BESSIE them.

ESLA BESSIE ESLA

Miss, your father asked me to give these to you. He wants you to wear

Thanks, but I don’t wear costumes.

It ain’t a costume, miss. It’s the uniform for all female students.

Then I’m glad I’m not a student.

BESSIE

Haven’t you thought about the men who fought in the trenches for the Allies in the war? I betcha they didn’t think their uniforms were costumes.

ESLA

Don’t worry, Bessie. I’ll take what you have and make sure Father doesn’t blame you if I don’t wear them. In fact, these will make a marvelous addition to the new set of costumes I’m making. What do you think, could this be a sailor’s outfit?

Oh, but there aren’t many sailors who wear skirts. On second thought, I don’t see why a play should not have women sailors!

BESSIE

Ain’t it odd for a costume designer not to wear costumes herself?

ESLA

Just look at this pretty ribbon here. If only I had a big hat, it would make the perfect embellishment!

A door knocker thuds offstage. Exit Bessie.

BESSIE

(offstage) Esla! Reggie! Your aunt is here!

Enter VICTORIA. An enormous plume rises from the hat atop her head. Bessie drags a carpet bag in her wake.

ESLA

Aunt Victoria! I can’t believe it! It’s really you!

They embrace.

VICTORIA Yes, it’s really me. I skipped Panama to welcome my favorite niece home.

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ESLA

Oh Auntie, you didn’t have to do that for me.

VICTORIA You know I had to. I was there the day you were born, I might as well be there the day you come home from college. How is my darling?

ESLA

I’m wonderful now! Let’s sit and have tea. Please tell me about your travels-the people, their clothing, everything!

VICTORIA I will tell you tales and more. I’ve brought something I think will please you.

Enter REGGIE, a boy in a white sweater and knickers, both stained with dirt. He catapults himself into Victoria’s arms.

VICTORIA Good heavens!

ESLA REGGIE

Reggie, you cannonball, you almost knocked poor Auntie back out to sea!

Am I strong, Auntie?

VICTORIA Very strong. You have Alexander the Great in you. Why don’t you be a gentleman and have tea with us?

Victoria, Esla, and Reggie settle down on the sofa while Bessie exits and reenters with a tea tray.

VICTORIA Well, I travelled to a place called New Zealand, an island country with lovely beaches in the southwestern Pacific. And there, I made this. (she takes the reddish-brown clay head of a man out of her bag) Let me tell you a bit about him. He was born in New Zealand, a Maori. Now, the Maoris were often chosen by the British to join their army forces. Among subject races of the Anglo-Saxon, the Maoris were treated well due to their skill in combat.

This man--I don’t recall his name--came from a family of pure Maori blood. He was very intelligent and dreamed of becoming a lawyer. So he shaved his beard and wore suits like an Englishman. Alas, he still had the copper skin and oblong skull of the ancient Polynesian rulers who came before him. He had to join the armed forces in Australia during the war. The Australians took his pride. They don’t like Maoris.

Treated him like goose droppings as they did all the rest.

REGGIE

Did you fight him?

VICTORIA I did not. You see, my friend introduced me to him in the hospital ward. He’d gotten hit by a shrapnel--took both feet, wouldn’t stop bleeding. But he didn’t fear death. Oh, no. All that mattered to him was to be remembered as a white gentleman.

That was what he kept saying over and over again. At last I promised him I would see to it that those words were put on his gravestone, ‘Here lies a white gentleman.’ Poor chap. Died just before I left.

ESLA

Did you do it?

VICTORIA Do what, my dear?

ESLA

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Make sure those words were put on his gravestone, as you promised.

VICTORIA To my knowledge, the Maoris who die in battle are not given gravestones. (beat) So what do you think? Do you like it?

ESLA

It’s beautiful, but... is this how he wanted to be seen?

VICTORIA I travel around the world, meeting all kinds of exotic people you wouldn’t find anywhere else. If my art didn’t reflect the truth of what I’ve seen, what purpose would it serve? Even after the Maoris are gone, their image will remain upon the face of the earth.

ESLA REGGIE

I suppose I see your point.

Auntie, can you make a sculpture of me?

VICTORIA Some other time. I want to hear about what your sister’s been up to.

BESSIE REGGIE

Biscuits in the kitchen!

Biscuits!

Exit Bessie and Reggie.

ESLA

It’s hard to know where to start. So much has happened. Well, my friends and I started a theatre in Greenwich Village, opening in just a few weeks.

VICTORIA Splendid! How is it there?

ESLA

Warmer than Cold Spring Harbor, for sure. That is, as long as you know where to look. The Village has many layers to it, like a wedding cake. On the surface are the visitors. All they want is to see a bunch of Bohemians creating a spectacle.

They gawk at people wherever they go, like the Village is a zoo and no one’s entitled to any privacy! On the next layer are the slummers. They’re all trying to prove their businesses have the real spirit of Bohemia, ‘cause that’s what visitors pay for. But underneath everything are the true Bohemians. That’s my friends and me. We live happily and create art for arts’ sake. We drink and smoke and spend our money on what we want, all the fun in life Father wants me to miss out on.

VICTORIA Why did you come back here if you were so happy in the Village?

ESLA

I was hoping that by coming here and playing his daughter, I could get Father to pay for an apartment in the Village. After graduation, my friend Samuel asked me to move into the Village. He made it clear he can’t support me yet. Oh, Auntie, I can’t wait!

I wear their clothes and go to their parties and work in their theatre, but I can’t live in the Village like they do. And there are other costume designers in the Village whose purses never run out of cash. They could give much more to Samuel than me. What do I have? Father’s allowance. Now I don’t even have that because last week I spent three times my allowance money, and he’s angry with me! (something occurs to her) Auntie, can you talk to him for me?

VICTORIA Anything for you, dear.

BELLS CHIME.

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ESLA

Thank you so much, Auntie. I’m sorry. Samuel wants me to be there for today’s rehearsal. I’ll be back later tonight...or maybe in the morning.

VICTORIA Have you told Samuel about your father?

ESLA

Well, I told him about how Father used to study canaries-

VICTORIA Trust me, Esla. It’s not a good idea to keep one’s family a secret.

ESLA

I have to. My friends aren’t people eugenicists would normally get along with. If I told them about Father, they would never want me in the Village again. The first time I went to the Village, I felt like I was seeing people for the first time. But then I realized... It was myself I was seeing for the first time.

Enter Dr. Newell. Esla hurries to pack her bag. Before her father can close the door, she dashes past him. A newspaper falls out of her bag. When she is gone, Dr. Newell picks it up.

BLACKOUT

ACT I Scene 3 In this scene, there are no items onstage because the stage is playing itself.

The Bohemian Players, dressed in a variety of costumes, march across the stage and freeze in different poses. DORMOT wears overalls and strums a ukulele. THOMAS is an American soldier, chest adorned with medals. AIKO poses in an apron, holding a cigarette acting as a paintbrush on an imaginary canvas. Finally, SAMUEL is dressed as a crocodile with jaws that part to show his face. Around his neck, he wears a sign that says: War. Class. Politics.

Esla applauds. The Bohemian Players start to change out of their costumes.

DORMOT THOMAS SAMUEL THOMAS AIKO ESLA AIKO ESLA AIKO

ESLA AIKO

Who’s going to the Village dance on Friday night?

I’m gonna be an Aztec!

That pirate band is coming back.

Not them again.

I don’t know what I should be. Esla, what do you think?

Ooh...how about a Goth?

That’ll do. I have a black dress I haven’t worn in ages.

You’ll be stunning.

How about you? What are you going to be?

Myself, I think.

What a strange creature you are. The costume designer who doesn’t wear a costume to a costume dance!

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SAMUEL

And that’s why we love her.

ESLA

Ah! Samuel, stop creeping up on me like that! You frighten me with your

big jaws.

DORMOT

Anyone seen the announcement in the papers about our play?

THOMAS

Yeah. They say it’s gonna be a real treat. Gonna save the Village even.

Who’re the Bohemians now, slummers!

ESLA

Darling, are you gonna take that costume off before Christmas?

SAMUEL

It’s possible, if I could get the thing undone. This costume is a labyrinth.

(Esla helps him.)

Who’s up for dinner at the Square? Let me get a show of hands. Polly’s? The Dutch Oven? The Green Witch? Polly’s it is.

THOMAS DORMOT AIKO

Aw, come on. Whoever goes to that anarchist’s place anymore?

Jealous that Lois was flirting with Aiko?

He wasn’t flirting with me. We were just talking--

ESLA

Don’t mind them. They’re not being serious.

SAMUEL

Forward march, everybody! The Bohemian Players are off to the Square. You coming, my lady?

ESLA

Go ahead. I need to finish this.

SAMUEL

Work before play. You can’t miss Polly’s goulash. Director’s orders.

ESLA

I’m really busy right now. See you later tonight? Tell Polly and Lois hello for

me.

SAMUEL

(noticing a script on the floor) What’s this?

ESLA

Oh, that’s...

THOMAS

(offstage)

You coming, lovebirds?

SAMUEL

Just a minute. I’ll catch up with you. (turning through the script) Feeble-minded woman...Irish Drunkard...

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ESLA SAMUEL ESLA SAMUEL

It’s alright, Samuel. It’s not what you think. My father-Greedy Jewish Peddler-No! Listen. My father-What--

ESLA

Listen! I’m explaining it to you. My father is making me do these costumes for his drama club because I spent too much of my allowance the other day when we were shopping at Wanamaker’s.

SAMUEL

(reading) ‘The Eugenics Office’? I thought your father studies birds.

ESLA SAMUEL ESLA

Well-You lied to me?

He used to! Then he...changed. I’m trying to convince him--

SAMUEL

Convince him to do what, exactly? Go back to his canaries? They’re prob’ly all dead by now.

ESLA

Not that, Samuel. To help me buy the vacant apartment we saw.

Remember? The one with rose-colored windows.

SAMUEL

And you think he’d let you live here. In the Village.

ESLA

Well, I could tell him I’ve found someone I can trust--the next Shakespeare.

He couldn’t object to that.

SAMUEL ESLA SAMUEL ESLA SAMUEL

Oh? And who’s the next Shakespeare?

Why, you of course!

Me. What’s wrong?

What would you tell him, that I’m some Englishman?

ESLA

Yes, if you’d prefer him not to know you’re Jewish. Even if he did, I’m sure he’d adore you. Besides, you’re different from the rest of your kind. You’re well bred, of good conscience, intelligent, empathetic-SAMUEL

You think I’m different? How many others of my ‘kind’ have you been so fortunate to meet outside the Village? I’ll tell you how many. None! I’m lucky to be here. My parents weren’t alive long enough to see my sixth birthday. My childhood was in and out of sweatshops and being the big brother for my two younger sisters

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until we were found half-starving by our uncle. We saved every spare penny we got to send me to school. Most of my ‘kind’ don’t have the chance to be the next Shakespeare. They have to survive so they can keep their families alive. Don’t tell me what it means to be different. You’re nothing but a mimic of other people’s cultures because you have none! You’re no more real than your costumes.

Enter Aiko.

AIKO SAMUEL

Hey, did I interrupt something?

No, no, we were just talking. Let’s go.

Exit Samuel and Aiko.

END OF ACT ONE

ACT II Scene 1 The Eugenics Office. Dr. Newell and the Eugenics Office Players are working at the desks.

ORVILLE

Why can’t we just get rid of them, sir?

DR. NEWELL Get rid of them? Because it would be preposterous even to destroy the unfit in the fetus! I’ve said for a long time that we must come up with better solutions. The first step is to quell the flood of free love propaganda, theaters and literature that promote immoral ideals. Second, I believe that instead of sterilization, we should place the feeble-minded in institutions until their reproductive period closes. Third, we need a system of marriage recommendations to ensure that young people marry intelligently.

HERBERT And what of undesirable immigrants, sir?

DR. NEWELL I don’t believe any collective race of man is undesirable, per se. Everyone has at least one positive trait. It is the individuals, the ones who carry particularly concerning traits like feeble-mindedness and epilepsy, who should be excluded. Of course, science has proven that the rates of such traits are higher in certain races than others.

Enter Victoria.

DR. NEWELL Good morning, Victoria. Do you like where I put your statue?

VICTORIA Do I like...My dear! It’s broken!

DR. NEWELL Broken? My apologies. One of my students must’ve knocked it over. Would you like me to get it fixed?

VICTORIA No, no. There’s no need. I actually like it this way. Being perfect made it rather dull, don’t you think? The cracks make it more interesting.

DR. NEWELL As you wish. Please, make yourself comfortable. Would you like one of my assistants to bring you coffee or tea?

VICTORIA Oh, I’m fine, thank you. Coffee and tea, coffee and tea. I must admit I’m getting sick of coffee and tea. You’d think that our culture, with all its visionaries,

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would create more unique beverages from time to time. Did you know that the Chinese have edible bird’s nest drinks? I had one a couple years ago. Delicious!

DR. NEWELL You’ve always been the one to try new things. Esla has taken after you. She greatly admires you.

VICTORIA Well, I’ve certainly tried to encourage her when she’s needed encouragement. I reckon it’s hard for a girl to spend half her childhood without a mother. In our society, it’s so easy to get lost.

DR. NEWELL I’m afraid Esla has recently gotten lost. Did she tell you about her whereabouts in Greenwich Village?

VICTORIA Hmmm. We talked extensively when I arrived. Perhaps she did mention it.

DR. NEWELL

(taking the newspaper out of his desk)

This is an advertisement for the Bohemian Theatre, with her name listed next to the position of costume designer. I should have seen it before. She wears their costumes, she shares their wildness. I’ve done research on these people.

Dormot O’Connor, Irish. Thomas Volkov, Russian. Aiko Tanaka, Japanese. Samuel Friedman, Hebrew. My great-great-great-grandfather John Newell, the Puritan minister who settled in America three hundred years ago, would be horrified to see his name thrown among those of inferior pedigrees.

VICTORIA I never knew you to be so critical.

DR. NEWELL It’s simply a matter of science. How can I, leader of the American Eugenics Movement, allow my own daughter to act so foolishly? Have I failed so much as a father, Victoria? Tell me honestly.

VICTORIA You haven’t failed at all. Young people nowadays are more open-minded. They like trying many things, seeing what fits them.

DR. NEWELL Being a Newell is not something she can take off.

VICTORIA I know. All the same, you have to give her some space to figure things out on her own. How can she take pride in her family name if everything she’s become is constantly being examined in the mirror of science?

DR. NEWELL I suppose you’re right. She must learn her place in the world without me standing over her. Thank you for your advice.

VICTORIA My pleasure.

DR. NEWELL A fine hat you have there. I think I still have one of the hats you made when we were children.

VICTORIA Oh, how sweet of you to keep it! You must show me sometime.

DR. NEWELL I certainly will. There are only a few things in the world I feel the necessity the keep--the gifts from family. I’ve always tried to be a family man like Father.

VICTORIA I’m sure he would be proud of you.

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DR. NEWELL Nonsense. He was never proud of me and never will be.

VICTORIA Are you ever going to tell them?

DR. NEWELL Lower your voice, Victoria.

VICTORIA Well?

DR. NEWELL I’m not planning to, no.

VICTORIA You should. It would be good to get that weight off you.

DR. NEWELL The problem is the weight I don’t have.

VICTORIA Right. I hope you don’t mind me asking--Did you tell Gertrude?

DR. NEWELL I almost did, the day the fever worsened and I knew it would be the end. But when I saw her in that bed, I didn’t...

VICTORIA I understand.

DR. NEWELL Excuse me, Victoria. I have a meeting in a minute.

VICTORIA Of course.

Exit Victoria. Dr. Newell grabs an envelope from the corner of his desk and writes something on it. Then he takes several bills from his wallet and stuffs them inside the envelope.

DR. NEWELL Orville, I need you to run an errand for me. Go out to the harbor and buy four tickets to Paris. Then send them to this address.

ORVILLE BLACKOUT

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Right away, sir.

Gabriella Martinez

Photography Florida Virtual School Orlando, FL

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ENCLOSED Digital photography 2021

Caitlyn Mason

Creative Nonfiction Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

The Overcomer I got glasses when I was ten years old. Before that, I didn’t know that leaves could be seen individually. I didn’t know that it was possible to read every road sign on the drive to school, or to glimpse someone else’s smile from across the room. I had become used to living in a half-developed world of my own creation, blissfully unaware that anything was missing.

Growing up disabled is like living with blurred vision. You don’t question the things you do or the things you need, because you’ve never known anything else. Just as one may assume everyone has to squint at stop signs, disabled kids assume that everyone moves through life the same way we do.

No one talks like me in this movie, I used to think, perhaps the writers just did something wrong. A lot of people talk like me, right?

Eventually, though, someone comes along to tell you what you are. They give you their sharpest, harshest pair of glasses, and it becomes clear that you were the wrong one all along.

I have a speech and language disability that prevents me from audibly saying what I want to say. I would like to assure you that “my disability does not define me,” or that I’ve “overcome” it, but that would be lying. The hope of transcending disability is an idea which I have removed from myself entirely, not out of hopelessness, but out of acceptance.

After ten years of attending speech therapy, I quit. I told my therapist that I was done with people trying to fix me, and I walked out of her office. Even at the age of thirteen, I had grown tired of being the dependent variable, manipulated according to others’ convenience. My self-improvement deemed necessary even by insurance companies, I had a whole world whispering in my ear that the only way I could succeed as a disabled person was if I pretended not to be one at all. From a young age, I was taught not to be myself, because the world would not be ready to digest someone like me. I would be chewed up and spit out, and somehow, that burden became mine.

I was bombarded with stories of famous people who “overcame” their stutters to become who the world knew them to be. Speech therapists love to show you articles like that, making a vision board for your future life. These stories are meant to teach people like me that stutterers can do anything, so long as we “put in the work.”

The more stories like this you read as a disabled person, the more it seems as if the path to success can begin only with fixing yourself. You realize that the world does not know Joe Biden as a stutterer, but as the President. Marilyn Monroe was not disabled; She was beautiful, and in the minds of many, those things cannot coexist.

I suppose I’m happy for the people who “overcame” their stutter, who speak of it as a childhood relic, like a too-small t-shirt from your first concert. But for many of us, the “work hard, stop stuttering” paradigm is out of reach.

After a decade of speech therapy, I can’t get through a conversation without stuttering. You cannot tell me that this is because I didn’t do enough, or because I didn’t have the motivation. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be an Overcomer. I would pray to God to make me “normal,” yelling at my mother for creating me the way she did. But I am not an Overcomer, and I am not a failure for that. It is not the job of a sixteen-year-old girl to whittle herself down just so the world will consider taking her under its wing.

You can call me entitled, as many adults do. The funny thing is, I agree. I do, in this case, feel entitled. I feel entitled to the same respect the world gives every other human being, and I shouldn’t have to fight for it. I should not have to prove that I am an Overcomer, or that I have transcended the limits of

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my disability. I do not exist to make people feel empowered or inspired.

As a kid, I didn’t particularly hate my disability. I hated being disabled. And that was not the fault of one person, or one remark. It was the product of years of growing up without representation, without respect, and without understanding. My hatred for my identity as a disabled person came from the adults who tapped their feet impatiently when I spoke, or those who told me that I would never get a job when I grew up. So when I call myself an Overcomer, just know that the only thing I have truly overcome are people’s opinions.

I know many people who wake up in the morning and thank God that they do not live the way we do, and for that, they are grateful. They write tragic novels convincing society that disabled people would sooner die than live a modified life. They speed-walk triathlons every year to cure autism, taking photos in their best blue shirts. They do all this to convince themselves that they are our allies, that our lives are only worth living if they are in the picture.

To many, disabled people are nothing more than self-improvement projects, vessels whom you pity and mine gratitude from.

So yes, I am entitled. Disabled people are entitled, and we have earned the right to be. We are entitled to accommodations in spaces of learning and work. We are entitled to quit speech therapy, to grow tired of people manufacturing unrecognizable versions of ourselves. We are entitled to the same experiences, the same opportunities, the same life, and the same world as abled people.

We are entitled to live unaltered and unfiltered, moving through the world only as ourselves, nothing more and nothing less.

Samuel McIntosh

Photography Riverdale Country School Bronx, NY

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West 42nd Street, New York, 2021 Digital photograph 2021

Cameryn McNeil

Visual Arts Henrico High School Richmond, VA

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Reflection Digital 2021

Devon Meenaghan

Design Arts Brentwood School Los Angeles, CA

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Wearing Your Shame Canva 2021

Karolina Montalvo

Creative Nonfiction South Carolina Governor’s School For The Arts And Humanities Greenville, SC

A Life of Sunday Morning Masses My mother told me she invited her sister’s priest to the house to talk. I imagine he was only a couple inches taller than my five-foot-two mother. And maybe he had a receding hairline from all those times he pressed his forehead while he confessed his sins.

I imagine they stood around the kitchen table, and he unloaded a sage stick and a tall Virgin Mary candle from his Dollar Tree bag. Then, from his satchel, he took out a wooden rosary and a plastic spray bottle of holy water brought all the way from the Vatican. “Blessed by the Pope himself,” he said.

When I was seven years old, I stared at the stained glass windows during Sunday morning mass. Sometimes, if people filled the pews, our family of six would flock to the chairs by the windows with a limited view of the altar. I ran my fingers across the cold candy-colored pieces of glass. If I was lucky, I found a bubble underneath the surface, trapped in time.

When I turned ten, I started to pay attention to the homilies and sermons.

One time, the priest lectured about marriage. He raised his arms in their green, gaping sleeves and quoted Ephesians 5: 22-23.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.

I felt my sisters next to me wince. I knew that the priest was wrong, but it was harder to believe that the Bible was wrong, the Church was wrong.

After they had some fruit on the back porch, my mother and the priest began the sanctification. She lit the end of the sage stick while he lit the candle. They would start in the kitchen, then trail through the whole house, wandering through the halls until they reached the basement.

The priest squeezed and rolled the beads of his rosary while they chanted prayers: Hail Mary’s, Our Father’s, and Glory Be’s. In his other hand, he held the candle tightly.

Meanwhile, my mother on tiptoe gently waved the smoking sage, the smell of incense landing on her hair. Then she sprayed the doors and walls, leaving behind trails of holy water drops that dried by morning. They did this over and over.

In 2014, my parents wanted to put me in the Christian school down the road from our house. When we met the principal, he told us that it was a Baptist school, and we wondered why Christian only meant Protestant.

But my parents enrolled me anyway, so I coasted by and kept my religion to myself. Little by little, my doubts about Catholicism grew. At the dinner table, I bombarded my parents with my accusatory questions: Why do we have to take the Eucharist? Why ruin the potential for good leavened bread? Why do we pray to all those saints? How can we keep track? Isn’t it wrong to worship Mary?

My parents did not sign me up for a second year.

The following summer, they Googled: “Catholic schools nearby.” The closest one was fifteen minutes away, but at least they found a school that would provide their Doubting Thomas with a Catholic education.

On their way to the basement staircase, the priest stopped and instinctively touched my mother’s hand. He asked her if a boy once lived in this house. But she withheld her answer to hear more.

“Siento el espíritu de un niño,” he told her.

I sense the spirit of a boy.

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And she said that the boy’s name was Daniel.

The first time I saw my 5th grade teacher was the first time I saw a nun.

I was talking to my parents in the gymnasium on orientation day when she walked through the doors, her black headdress floating behind her, where I thought her hair should have been. Instead, it was tucked underneath, not a strand peeking out. Except for the headdress, she was a petite woman all in white.

“She’s like an angel,” my father said.

From where I stood, I could tell that she had the brightest blue eyes, as if she looked at the sky so much, wondering about heaven, that it painted her pupils. Then, a wandering five-yearold boy crossed her path, and she bent down to wave and smiled at him.

But it wasn’t long before I realized that the Sisters were more tyrants than angels. They allowed no chatter in their classrooms. They only accepted white or black socks that covered our ankles. And whenever we walked to the gymnasium for PE or to the cafeteria for lunch, they settled for nothing less than a neat straight line of students.

One morning, I walked by Sister Mary waving goodbyes to the parents in the carpool. She looked me up and down. Then she asked whether I was planning on buying a longer uniform skirt.

“Just because you don’t want to look like a… you know,” she said with a sour squint.

I chuckled, not because I was confused. I smiled in spite of understanding what was unsaid. And I tugged my skirt hard.

That day, I told myself that Sisters were actually like the 5th grade mean girls. Just with hidden hair and wooden rosaries swinging from their hips.

Before our family moved into the house, a Catholic family of three lived there. Two parents and a sixteen-year-old boy named Daniel. One summer afternoon, the parents gave us a house tour.

They showed us the main bedroom for my parents, the upstairs bedrooms with floral wallpaper for me and my sisters, the kitchen, the attic, the basement, the porch, but not the living room with closed double doors. After the tour, while the adults talked real estate in the kitchen, I wandered off, creeping into the forbidden room. There inside, a boy slept in a hospital bed, entwined with wires. I thought that he didn’t sleep like most kids do, sprawled across their beds with dangled arms. Except for his moving chest, he lay perfectly still with his arms by his side, like a soldier finally at ease.

Four years later, still chugging on the track to Catholic success, my parents enrolled me in the only Catholic high school in town. This time, there were no nuns, but the rules and conformity and expectations remained.

Once a month, a teacher would tell us to kneel on the coarse classroom carpet, as if we were about to pray. Instead, they pulled out their credit card and placed them above our reddened knees. If the hem of a skirt did not touch the edge of the credit card, the skirt was too short, and we were “strongly advised” to buy another.

But, like before, I coasted by. This was not my first Catholic rodeo.

My mother told me that once, at a high school party, Daniel had too many drinks and fell from a balcony. He broke his spine and was now in a coma. Because the Catholic Church is against euthanasia, his parents decided to keep him breathing through a

tube in the biggest room on the first floor. After we moved in, we called it the living room.

In all my religion classes, the teachers pretended to be priests. They praised the saints and warned us against the Seven Deadly Sins. Sometimes, they tried to recruit us for the clergy.

“Clergymen and women are like endangered species,” they told us with raised brows.

And “real men become priests,” they told the boys earnestly.

During Catholic Schools Week, they printed our yearbook photos, glued them to the hallways, and dressed our photos with pieces of black and white construction paper so that we looked like child priests and nuns. When I passed by, my stomach dropped. I had never wanted to imagine myself as a part of that world.

Five months after Daniel’s accident, his parents decided that it was time to move on. They bought a smaller house in a neighborhood with more trees. They packed their things. They unplugged his wires. And they waited at his bedside until the beeping slowed to one long whine. Daniel died in our house. Maybe he never left.

In my second year at the Catholic high school, an alumni posted a video on Facebook about his years as an altar boy. He was sexually abused by a priest who wasn’t ours, but he accused the school’s financial manager, who would frequently give him rides to the church where he served, of knowing. Of keeping secret what shuffled behind the doors of the sacristy. With only the wooden Jesus on the wall watching.

Was the Catholic Church showing its true colors, like the colors of the stained glass windows?

Daniel, when my mother told me that you were a spirit in our house, I didn’t know what to think. Now, I barely have privacy, believing you might be watching. When the stairs creak, I think it is you wandering around. I don’t understand why you are here and not in heaven or hell. Is our house your purgatory?

I want to know about your entrance into the afterlife and whether you discovered the secrets of our religion. Is all the trouble of the Catholic Church worth it in the end?

But I will never know because of the line between life and death. So I guess I must continue with the Sunday morning masses, one after the other, stained window by window.

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Eli Nachimson

Spoken Word Harkham-GAON Academy Los Angeles, CA

Are You There Hashem, It’s Me [Don’t Share My Name With The Feds] God, in talmud, sages give this law, no mesirah, snitching on one of our own, your people, your prefix, your suffix, your miracle, your disaster who principled aimless students, unlost the daughters from houses of pitbulls chained to neighbor’s fences barking into night, synchronized with girls’ whimpers. In those walls, they uncategorized, body too feeble for femme fatale; eyes too sunken for damsel in distress.

God, when faithless girls sit at desks disaster comes, tells each daughter he’s seen it all before: immodest mourning for elegyless tragedy, her calloused palms that rise at him, at sky and heavens, asking him to forgive for her tears soaking siddur, mar messages to God. He is a disaster, after all, so he tells daughters he accepts apologies for you, God. Shoved acceptance down daughters’ throats until it tastes like bacon, like a calf in its mother’s milk, except disaster isn’t her calf to mother.

God, you say no snitching, but when is it bigger sin to keep secrets? In this story, who is Moses, your disciple, your prodigy, your legacy, your shelter-worthy bearer of prophecy? And who is Korach; for who will earth open beneath feet and ground consume them, swallowing treif disasters in a single sour gulp?

God, what is the land of milk and honey when his milk body goes so sour he feeds daughters his spoils coated in stolen honey? This disaster, he sprinted to this false sanctity, told them he’s holy as Temple Mount. To fools, fire of sacrilegious beings glimmer just like gold. False gold god hiding he is disaster choking on sins he gave daughters. Fools offer him loyalty upon altar. He drinks it down like water, hoping deceit will inebriate until amnesia, but daughters immortalize his memory.

God, in the Talmud on soul’s time to rebirth, our sages say men who sin with bodies will exist as ashes beneath shoe soles after death.

God, what happens before scorching, when bodies pre-charring still bring fires that evaporates daughter’s waters, leaves them with a drought in place of sorrow, leaves them witness to destruction from unfinished disaster?

God, grant your people wisdom to decipher her requiem from betrayal. notes on jewish terminology: talmud - jewish commentary by sages, also known as gemara mesirah - the jewish law that forbids one jew turn in another jew to non-rabbinic authority

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Marley Noel

Play or Script Harper Middle College High School Charlotte, NC

To Those Who Yearn to Touch the Moon INT. DAKOTA’S CAR - NIGHT Ten and two. DAKOTA JOHNSON (27), A straight-edged woman, as if she only moves in ninety degree increments, grips the steering wheel. She sits, a bit peeved, parked in front of a pitifully average office building marked “Treox”, under the florescent glow of street lights.

A few seconds of silence pass before the passenger side door swings open and RYLIE SPRING (25) slides into the passenger seat. She’s more fluid, softer. She shuts the door, taking up her seat like incense smoke.

There’s an aged tension in this car.

Is something wrong?

DAKOTA

RYLIE No. I just couldn’t be there anymore.

Dakota pulls off.

INT. DAKOTA’S CAR - NIGHT - MOVING - CONTINUOUS Rylie gazes out of the window, her eyes occasionally hopping along the tree line but with the majority of her attention on the full moon glowing in the sky.

DAKOTA They’re not gonna want you around much longer if you keep ducking out like this.

Rylie breaks her gaze for a second to glance tiresomely at Dakota. Without answer, she looks back at the sky. In contrast to her demeanor, her fingers twitch restlessly on the door handle.

A beat.

RYLIE Why do you think the moon follows us?

What do you mean?

DAKOTA

RYLIE Like when we drive. Why do you think it follows us?

DAKOTA … Rylie, that doesn’t make any-RYLIE Please, I just need you to consider...

Dakota rolls her eyes already pushing the thought out of her mind. Rylie clocks this but, disappointed, she continues.

RYLIE My mom used to say it was because I had an invisible rope tied to my finger that was lassoed around the moon. It was attached to me. I was for the moon and the moon was for me she’d say.

DAKOTA God, with your head so far up in the clouds it’s insane that you can still breathe.

Rylie ignores her.

RYLIE I used to try to cut it. The rope I mean. Mostly just to see how far

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the moon could float away. I kinda felt bad for holding it hostage like that, you know?

Rylie looks at Dakota through the reflection of the glass.

RYLIE No one deserves that.

The car slows to a stop next to a 16 wheeler that blocks Rylie’s view. She finally turns to look at Dakota.

RYLIE You weren’t always like this, Dakota.

Like what? … Rigid.

Rigid?

DAKOTA RYLIE DAKOTA

RYLIE Like, you couldn’t have-- I mean didn’t you ever-She struggles with whether to spit these thoughts out, RYLIE Did you really dream of banking?

A beat.

I...

DAKOTA

She reflects. Her words coated in a thin layer of melancholy.

DAKOTA I dreamt of safety and stability and worriless nights. I dreamt of full bellies and little feet slapping against real wood floors. Real wood and fresh air. Banking makes those dreams attainable. So yes, in a way, I dreamt of banking.

RYLIE Oh... Is that why you only dance when banking permits these days?

Dakota’s eyes cut over to Rylie, but her temper is held.

DAKOTA Look, Treox is good for you.

RYLIE Going there every day felt like swallowing sand.

Dakota’s eyebrows meet for a moment of confusion. The car starts moving again.

RYLIE I mean, our mothers risked their lives and their bodies for us to be uniquely us. If they wanted machines they would’ve laid down and pushed cogs from between their legs.

Rylie looks back at the moon.

RYLIE Yet here we are. Trading pointe shoes for kitten heels.-DAKOTA At least kitten heels don’t break.

There’s a tense silence but they hear each other loud and clear.

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RYLIE (forced out) I have an audition tomorrow.

DAKOTA

When?

RYLIE

Four.

DAKOTA I have work. I know you do too.

Rylie’s fingers pick at the door handle. She looks down. (meekly)

... No, I don’t.

RYLIE

A beat. Dakota narrows her eyes, processing, then jerks her head towards Rylie before remembering she’s driving.

DAKOTA (in disbelief) No. You didn’t.

RYLIE (ignoring her) I’ve finally realized what my mom meant about the moon.

DAKOTA Will you can it about the moon?! This is the seventh job you’ve quit this year!

RYLIE I’m not meant for these jobs.

DAKOTA I did a lot to squeeze you in there!

RYLIE I’m sorry you felt the need to do that.

DAKOTA Rylie you need to get out of this fantasy land you live in! It’s ridiculous! You are twenty-five! Twenty-five! Get your head in the game!

Rylie grows more defensive.

That sounds like hell.

RYLIE

DAKOTA Oh, you haven’t seen hell yet! That was a good job!

That job wasn’t me--

RYLIE

DAKOTA What does that matter?!

Can you listen?!

RYLIE

DAKOTA A career in dance is a career in poverty!

Listen to me--

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RYLIE

DAKOTA You can’t keep living like this. You have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes you can either be happy or LIVE! RYLIE

Listen!-Grow the fuck up!

DAKOTA

Swiftly, Rylie grabs the emergency break and yanks it. The car skids for a second but, luckily, it stops. Rylie jumps out of the car and runs across the street.

What the hell!?

DAKOTA

EXT. TWO WAY STREET - NIGHT - CONTINUOUS Rylie stops at the edge of the road and reaches out to the moon.

Rylie!

(stern)

DAKOTA

Dakota storms out of the car and marches around to the back.

DAKOTA Get back in the car! Come on there’re cars coming.

Rylie ignores her. (sotto) I can’t believe this.

DAKOTA

A low rumble in the distance catches Dakota’s attention. She looks down the street. The rumble grows louder as a 16 wheeler barrels toward them. Dakota whips her head back over to Rylie who still gazes at the moon.

DAKOTA Rylie! Rylie get out of the road, please!

Rylie continues to ignore her.

Rylie!

DAKOTA (concerned)

The truck shows no signs of slowing down, and Rylie no sign of moving.

DAKOTA Rylie get the hell out of the road!

The truck is feet away now. Dakota ducks behind her car, she can’t watch. She’s painfully aware of the weight of the truck as it shakes the ground below her, powering by.

Then, silence.

Dakota fights herself to look up. She peaks across the street.

Rylie still stands.

Shock and relief fall over Dakota. Rylie finally turns around, hypnotized by her moon, dress still blowing from the several tons of steel that just missed her by inches.

RYLIE I wish you’d believe me when I say I just know I can touch it.

Cars continue to whiz by as Rylie turns back around and stares on, blissfully unaware.

THE END

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FADE OUT.

Tess O’Brien

Short Story Blind Brook High School Rye Brook, NY

How to Write Artistically About the Sex You Are Uninterested in Having i. Exposition. Or: Foreplay You have a mother and not much else. She is a teacher at an all boys school. On Fridays, she comes home shaking her head; kneels down to your height, grasps your chin in her hand. “Anna,” she says. “Never make room in your life for a man. When the right one comes along, he will fit.” ii. Foreshadow. Or: The Red Flag You read the word voluptuous in a book you steal from your mother’s study. It is atop the tallest bookshelf, out of reach, until it isn’t—falling to your feet with a satisfying whumf.

The cover is cardboard, colorful, unsettling in a way you cannot describe. There are two people, you see, two faces, but they are tangled. From a distance, the pale skin and red lips could be the sky amidst a setting sun. iii. Character Motivation. Or: What Is It You Want?

In sixth grade, some of the girls you know have boyfriends.

You notice this like you notice the leaves changing the second week of September: out of the corner of your eye. One of the girls hooks her arm in her boy’s as they walk to recess. You remember lying about loving him in second grade. It must be that, you reason.

It must be a lie.

During English, you read a poet called Rilke. You piston your knee under your desk in time with his words. You must change your life, you must change your life, you must you must you must.

The boy you lied about all those years ago is in your class. He has not been with the girl in weeks. Your peers laugh at the poem’s mention of breasts and hips and thighs, of dazzling. While the teacher is floundering the boy looks at you, as if to laugh together. iv. Conflict. Or: Normal People Fight Your aunt is getting married. This displeases your mother.

“To a dog,” she tells you. “A fucking pig.” Your aunt’s fiancé, as far as you can tell, is neither. He is tall and brown-haired and smiles at your jokes, even though they are not funny.

At the reception, you ask your mother what your father looked like. “Lost,” she says, and leaves you alone to dance.

You find the book again. It is not hard to do, after the first time. You are taller now. You stuff it under your shirt, the smooth, cool cover rubbing against your belly. You read a chapter, then another. After a hundred pages, you jerk up, feeling as if you forgot to take the kettle off. It takes you another day to finish the book, sweating most of the way through. One part makes you clench your legs together.

That night, you write voluptuous on a blank sheet of lined paper. Beginning is the hardest part, but with that word at the top of the page, you find your way. v. Midpoint. Or: Halfway There You tell yourself you are going to write books. You imagine them with a cover as unsettling as that first one, your name in a big bold font, bigger even than the title. You imagine another girl picking it up and tearing it apart, page by page. You imagine her clenching her legs together.

At thirteen, you show your English teacher the first chapter. She will like it—it is long, and marvelous, and you tried so hard. She bites her lip.

Later, you are called to the principal’s office. It’s about your writing. While the principal is waving her hands, talking around why you are there in the first place, you plot the next scene of your book in your head.

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vi. Rising Action. Or: Crescendo All you do is write. You write during school, in a notebook underneath your desk. You write the second you get home, drawing crooked lines on printer paper. You read every other second you have. Your grades in math suffer.

You learned somewhere that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. This is ridiculous—you have been writing for what feels like eighty million years, and most days you barely feel better than you were when you started.

You find other people who like to write. Kids your age (how is it that you are already fourteen? Fifteen?), and adults, sometimes. One of your teachers tells you he wanted to be an author as a child, except he speaks as if he never actually gave up on that dream. When people ask you what you want to be, you have an answer. vii. Part Two. Or: Déjà Vu In eleventh grade, some of the girls you know have boyfriends. You see a couple as you sit in the library, cursor blinking in front of you. You haven’t used paper for your writing in a long time, but you miss the solidity of a pencil in your hand. The couple leans into each other, like planets on a path towards collision.

You grind your teeth at them. You write a story where a boy and a girl are trapped in a library, and they realize they’re in love with each other. They kiss and hold hands and have sex, and you wonder if the girl should kill the boy. You try to edit the story at home, but your mother interrupts, calling you down for dinner.

Later, you decide. You will finish it later. viii. Antagonist. Or: Competition There is a girl that is better than you. You enter competitions and see her name, shining in first place. She is a year younger. This bothers you. It bothers you more when you read one of her winning pieces—it is about a girl and her boyfriend and the noises he makes when he climaxes. She uses words like voluptuous. The next sex scene you write out of spite. You characterize mercilessly. She groans because she has never been loved before. He finishes first because he has, too many times. It is bad and dishonest. You delete the document before you can read it a second time.

Your mother comes home with a ring on her finger. It is her boss’s, the dean of the school. “Isn’t this exciting?” she asks.

She does not sound excited. Blankly, you ask if she is marrying him because he asked, or marrying him because he fits. This does not go over well.

Back at school, you watch a girl wipe her mouth as she leaves the bathroom, boyfriend in tow. The next time you write, you try to imagine what it feels like to love somebody. You remember Rilke.

You get a text from a boy, the boy from second grade, the boy you lied about. He’s with another girl now, but he wants to tell you he loved you first. ix. Know What You Write. Or: A Safari You take an afternoon off. Your mother catches you staring at your wall one day, and hands you fifty dollars. She tells you to go shopping. She quit her job after marrying the dean—the money must be his.

There is a strip mall fifteen minutes from your school. You see a few familiar faces, distantly milling about. You avoid them.

This trip is only for you.

One of the stores is having a sale. Six white thongs for twenty-five dollars. A saleswoman comes over while you are

fingering the fabric. She hovers over your shoulder: “That would look great with your skin tone. And so comfortable.” This is not what you wanted to hear.

Yet you buy them: six identical pieces of sheer lace. When you put them on at home, the curvature of your thighs, pink and creamy, could look like the flesh of a pomegranate. Your freckles, the seeds. You do not like the idea of being compared to fruit but you take a picture of yourself anyway—straight backed at the edge of your bed, nothing but fabric and skin. x. Climax. Or: What Should Be The End You graduate, but you do not stop writing.

The boy from second grade grew up to be boring and unassuming and perfectly normal. Your hands stall over your keyboard. Before, you thought of him because there was no avoiding the magnitude of your falsehood. You continue now… Why do you continue now?

Each of his features have long since blended together, an oil spill. If you saw him on the street, you would not recognize him. Sometimes, he takes on the face of your uncle, or the dean.

Sometimes he bears no face at all. xi. Epilogue There are truths you do not know how to face. For instance: the dean is not kind to your mother. For instance: you have never been a good writer. For instance: the girls you knew, the girls who had boyfriends, were not lying, had never been lying. The liar was always you.

Occasionally, you see the name of that writer who you competed with in high school. She appears on jacket covers, in magazines. You ponder what it would be like to meet her. If you would hate her, but then grow to feel something, know something.

Love her like people do in poems.

Probably not. You have never known how to do that.

The day after you move out, you write a story that is wholly your own. It is about a couple. They have a habit of holding each other every night, because you remember wondering what it felt like to be held. There is a quiet, grotesque love between them.

Not once do they ever have sex.

You send it to your mother. You do not know why, but she calls you. She says, “Anna.”

You listen to your mother breathe on the other end of the phone.

Abruptly, you ask, “What if no one fits?” For the first time, you realize how exhausted you’ve been. Of the lie you told yourself first in second grade, and then every day, every moment. Until now.

“Not a man?” Your mother asks carefully.

“No. Nobody.”

“Then…” She sighs. “You are my daughter, you know. I used to feel the same thing.”

You sit together quietly. You find the book; stolen when you moved out. See the painted cover, the tangled bodies.

It will unsettle you, like it did the first time.

Love, you decide, is easier on paper.

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Eliza O’Keefe

Short Story Walnut Hills High School Cincinnati, OH

Traders The boy was maybe eleven or twelve, sitting in the dirt on the side of the highway. When Annie slowed down to get a better look, he lifted his head, poked his narrow white fingers through the sleeves of his sweatshirt, and began to push himself off the ground. He carried nothing, and his body was thin and sagging.

But his face in her window was broad and puffy, with weeping volcanoes of acne clustered on his forehead and chin.

And some short bristly dark hairs shooting up between his eyebrows, also on his neck.

“Lost?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Running away.”

His voice was deep, which jolted her. Deep, and with a reedy adolescent buzz in the throat.

She asked his age.

“Fifteen.”

So she had guessed wrong, and maybe dangerously.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m trying to get to Nashville, but I’ll go as far as you’ll take me.”

This was somewhere in Virginia. Small-town hell, as far as Annie could see. Peeling signs accosted you in any direction, having to do with heaven or abortions or the First Baptist Church.

The last house she had passed had been about a quarter of a mile back, with a festive wreath on the front door and low smoke hanging around the roof. The sun was going down, light breaking like a yolk through the gray tree stalks. Here and there an orange leaf, a wiry birds’ nest.

All of it charmed her, filled her with a buoyant gratitude and security. Her grandmother had died. A generosity and openness of spirit ran vertically through her body. Even the sight of the trailers, the stiff righteous church spires, became pleasurable.

She thought of dictators dying, or presidents. For a little while everyone is frantic. Then comes the communal mourning, hardly distinguishable from celebration. When she received the call from her aunt last week, she was released, or shunted forward, into a new section of her life. The change was the biggest change that can happen to any person: she did not have money before, and she had it now. Or would have it.

At the funeral, in north Georgia, she would pair a black skirt with black tights and answer questions about her life with satisfaction, with the knowledge that soon enough it would not be her life anymore. Her grandmother’s obituary had already come out in the local paper. Someone sent a photograph of it to the family group chat. The obituary was careful to mention her contributions to various charities and universities, as well as her “reassuring smile” and “sharp wit”—though the picture they used showed her grandmother with a cane, a wispy gray cap of hair, and no smile in sight.

Everyone chimed in, in virtuous agreement. Yes! The reassuring smile, the famously sharp academic wit. And everyone had a special memory of her to share—a memory that somehow did not involve any mortal insult or uncaring slight or fierce pinch on the arm.

Now the boy leaned past the barrier of her window and asked for a ride. She told him to wait a minute and fished around for her cell phone, pinned between the driver’s seat and the driver’s-side door. The screen displayed four missed calls from her mother, but a symbol in the top-left corner read ‘No Service’ beside a row of empty gray boxes. There would be no use in calling for help. And would he hurt her? He was the one who needed help.

Sitting in a pile by the side of the highway like an old coat that someone had discarded.

But she could not mistake that for harmlessness.

She searched for some tell, some reveal. In his eyes? (No expression to be found.) In his clothing?

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“What are you running away from?”

“My mother,” he said, without visible rearrangement of his face.

For another moment she examined him. All this charity, this new compassion for the world, had to go somewhere. She could think of it extending towards him, absolving her of prior cruelties.

The lock on the passenger door was broken; it could not be opened from the outside. She was forced instead to lean across the front seat and unlock it by hand, an unsubtle gesture. He landed on the seat—landed, did not sit. He moved with a certain looseness in his joints, as though the screws holding him together had become rusted or weak.

His name was Milo. “I can’t take you to Nashville,” she said, “that’s too far out of my way. But I can get you close.”

Annie had a boyfriend in her junior year of high school.

When she felt his damp fingers fumbling for hers while they walked side by side down the hallway, her whole body became cold and stiff, as if she were dead, and she hated him viciously. She was brisk and irritable, refusing him things. Not only kissing and touching, but basic liberties, like looking her in the eye.

One after another, she can begin to pay off her debts.

Milo tells her about the couple who picked him up. The man in the polo shirt, and the woman in the gold dress.

This requires context. Two weeks ago, on his birthday, he received a card from his father. He didn’t have the card now—he’d lost it. He was getting to that.

“By the way,” he asked Annie, pulling his hoodie strings back and forth, “how old are you?”

“Guess!”

“Twenty-five. Thirty.”

“Close. I’m nineteen.”

“Where do you go to college?”

Adjusting her position in the lane, flicking her headlights on, she said, “I’m taking a gap year.”

“A gap year,” he replied in amazement. “Where are you going after that?”

She told him and he nodded, pretending to be impressed.

The reality of the situation was that the gap year could easily—if not for this latest stroke of luck, more tactfully called fate—have turned into a gap decade, a gap century. No luxurious backpacking around Europe included, just job applications and long night shifts, after which a filmy mold seemed to have grown over her skin. And the feeling that if her life continued in this direction she would not even be ordinary—she would be less than ordinary, and pitied. This was not the kind of thing she would tell the perfect stranger beside her, though it must be easier after all to make revelations to strangers.

Case in point. Milo went on explaining. This card was unusual for two reasons. One, it came around the time of his birthday, not one to three months after, which was the generally anticipated window.

Two, it contained an invitation. No need to show her the card itself, which was a typical glittery store-bought card, because he had got the handwritten message inside memorized: Dear Milo, How amazing that you are fifteen! I remember the day you were born, I was at work in Bob Ormsby’s old place (remember?) and I got the call from your mother in the taxi, rushed outta there, etc., etc. . . I would love to see you soon. Talk to your mother. If you want to hear the band we have been posting recordings on YouTube! Love, Dad. As he recited the note, he withdrew his hands into his sleeves, forming paws, and tugged the hoodie strings tight around his neck. Anyway. You can guess what his mother said about that.

“She wouldn’t let you go?” Annie guessed.

His parents had been divorced since he was six. They parted as friends, though his mother got full custody due to some factors he wasn’t sure of—probably just selfishness. Consequently, he had not seen his father since then, except, very rarely, in video calls. And his mother’s feelings about his father had become infected with a soft rot, so she did not allow Milo to visit him.

Even going so far as to say he was not wanted there—in Nashville, where his father was living now, though in varying places, according to his return addresses.

“He invited me,” said Milo, bewildered.

His mother had the audacity to kiss the top of his head when she responded, “I don’t think he really expects you to come.”

That was the final straw. He began to pack a bag. Leaving was easy. His mother was often away at work—she was a lawyer.

He left a note, but did not mention that he would be hitchhiking, which he had chosen because it seemed both the cheapest and the most romantic option. He would not go so far as to steal from his own mother, though he hated her. Hated her.

Annie thought of her missed calls.

“Will you ever go back?”

He would go back, once she managed to contact him in contrition and admitted that she had been wrong about his father.

Speaking authoritatively, he added, “Or maybe I’ll end up living with him now. Who knows.”

Who knows, Annie thought in return, having herself ended up with her father, after a separation that was not nearly so civilized. He—Milo—considered himself unlucky. As a matter of fact, her father did too. It had been one of those situations where everyone comes out miserable. Her mother, with a liver gouged and fibrous from drinking, cut off from her own mother’s money and then from Annie. Every so often Annie received a postcard—a Western scene usually, an orange canyon or expansive pine forest.

Or a solicitous text message: I would love to fly up and see you, if I could afford it!

And her father meanwhile seemed to feel that she was an intruder in his life. Shuttling her down to what was called the ‘estate’—really an apartment complex with a kitchen staff and live-in gardener—every summer so that she could finish ingratiating herself into her grandmother’s will. This was the first time she had made the trip on her own, driving her father’s car.

Years ago, after a strip-mall bathroom break, she stood beside the open door of the same car, clutching a bag of potato chips, howling, “You don’t love me, you don’t love me, that’s why you make me stay with her.”

He claimed wearily that he did love her, but every aspect of her seemed to weary him. That was why he was so set on getting her college paid for, or at least her getting her own start in the world. Why else would he tolerate, even brave, so many encounters with his mother-in-law? (Though technically they had never been in-laws at all.)

“I don’t need you living with me any longer than you have to.”

Before the funeral, she had still been living with him. But of course that had not been real life. And in a literal sense she would continue living with him, sleeping in the same bedroom and dredging her own fine brown hairs out of the sink drain twice a week. When she returned, she would eat breakfast in his kitchen every morning and probably go on working—tutoring and concocting assorted coffee beverages and laboring in kitchens and whatnot. But the work would be pleasant, because she did not need it, and she would have grown a protective membrane around herself. He wouldn’t be able to pierce her.

Even Milo’s skin was raw; he was open to attack.

He had waited on the edge of the city—he was from a kind of suburb of Columbus, right in the middle of Ohio, did he forget to mention that?—carrying his backpack, trying to flag down potential rides. A few cars slowed, analyzed him, and passed on. He had prepared a story the way you might prepare for a job interview, balancing his resumé, but the man who stopped didn’t ask for any credentials. He wore a red polo shirt; he was young, with dense hair growing on his forearms. His girlfriend was wearing thick

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mascara and a dress that squeezed her into a slender tube. Milo’s request seemed to amuse, and to gratify, both of them.

“Going south?”

That was that.

Just as you are suspicious of people who walk down the street and greet everybody, you must be equally suspicious of those willing to pick up hitchhikers. Annie understood this fundamentally. Milo had thanked them and settled in the backseat, sliding his headphones over his ears. He thought at first that they might be father and daughter, or brother and sister. They had the same heavy, slack faces. Then he saw the woman begin to rub her hand up and down the man’s bare forearm, raising and flattening the copious hairs. He recognized it immediately—that was love.

He knew for sure it was love when the couple started to fight. The fight was about money.

“Isn’t it always about money?”

“Not always,” said Milo. The man seemed to be withholding something that the woman was asking for. References were made to another man. Someone they were meeting? Milo kept his headphones on, not wanting to look curious. Threats began. The woman opened the door of the car and attempted to throw herself out onto the highway. Then the man reached over the center console and struck her—not in the face but on the neck, across the rigid yet tender portion of her throat.

Milo had asked then to be let out.

“I’ll let you out,” said the man, “if you leave the phone. The phone and the backpack. Otherwise you stay right here.”

The woman was making a long high noise, spitting into her lap.

It had occurred to Milo that if his mother was tracking his phone—and, being crazy, she would—it might have been wiser not to bring it. But now, in danger of either abduction or abandonment, he wished simply that he had chosen a different car.

So his cell phone, his change of clothes, two hundred dollars in allowance, and his father’s birthday card within its torn white envelope were all speeding on towards wherever the couple had been going.

“Then you showed up, like an oasis in the desert.”

“You didn’t learn any lessons?”

“What lessons?” he said. “What could you do to me?”

They watched the sky darken from blue to dark blue.

“I’ll take you to Nashville,” she said. “It’s not too far from where I’m going.”

“Really? You really will?”

“We’ll have to find somewhere to spend the night, but I was going to do that anyway.”

“Thanks!”

“No problem. Absolutely.”

So this is how people who can afford to be generous sound—constantly diminishing their own gestures.

“Well, where were you going in the first place?”

“Georgia. It’s a family thing. My grandmother died, actually.

Don’t say sorry—it’s good news.”

His face was tenderly appalled. She understood that he wouldn’t grasp why it was good news, even if she explained it to him: he had not been raised on the same stuff as her.

“I can’t believe I didn’t ask why you were driving all this way.”

“You should start asking people more questions.”

She thinks: The valley of the shadow of death. As I drive through the valley of the shadow of death—this valley being northern Tennessee, the towering neon chain-store signs taking on the role of the shadow, and the general miasma that settles over such places equaling death. But she had no shepherd to lead her through the valley—here her sleepy brain lost grip on the metaphor, and she scolded herself for being dramatic.

Milo’s mouth had fallen open, his spidery hands folded neatly in his lap, and he moved his lips and tongue thoughtfully, dreaming. To keep herself company, she turned on the radio. A man was describing a conflict with his wife. She—the wife of the

man calling in to the radio show—insisted that the word ‘realtor’ contained three syllables. Real-i-tor.

Ridiculous.

Then a dictionary was procured and indeed this pronunciation counted too. The hosts of the show fell into a kind of bemused mumbling and joking. One said, “Imagine she asks for a divorce over this.”

Annie turned the dashboard dial until she heard a silencing click and looked out the front windshield at the flash of the dividing lines on the highway, the green signs advertising exits. At the next exit, she entered the ramp and continued on under traffic lights, passing by a procession of basic commercial facilities: restaurants, gas stations, a motel, a vast home-supplies store.

She turned into the parking lot of the motel, parked the car, and got out. Shivering under the cold white beam of a floodlight, she crossed the dark asphalt into the lobby.

He was still asleep when she came back. Outside the car, she could see only his fluffy head pushed up against the window.

She tapped on the laminated glass. She spoke to him. When he began to stretch and rub his eyes, her newly softened heart gave a metaphorical twist.

She had to tell him. She would tell him tomorrow. She must figure out how to say it without upsetting him. He is imagining a gleaming new future brought about by this one change, as if it were that easy to slip the yoke of the powers enforcing your own life.

“Are we here?” he asked.

“You’re in 206, I’m in 209. I already paid, don’t worry.”

A room of her own. A gentle freeze seeped under the door.

An ecstatic couple could be heard through the thin walls.

Annie unlocked her phone and lay on the bed scrolling through Instagram until the taste of other lives became unbearable. She had another missed call, but deleted the notification. Pulling back the duvet, she found a black smeared spot in the center of the mattress—a tiny spider, crumpled between the sheets. She fell asleep fully clothed, hunched and contracted. Towards the end of the night she dreamed that the white knobby radiator in the corner finally shuddered on and began to drench the room in heat.

When she traveled to Georgia with her father, they stayed in the houses of various relatives. Her mother had been there at one point. She remembered sharing a twin bed, waking up with their heads on the same pillow and on her mother’s breath the same old terribly sweet smell as always. Or maybe she was thinking of some other time. Her mother coveted her in those early days after the separation, presenting her with dolls and elaborate packs of gel pens. She felt this covetousness, like a pressure or warmth.

Stays with her grandmother each summer lasted anywhere between three and eight weeks—two, if she was lucky. She read picture books and did not go outside much.

Her grandmother enjoyed being read to, though Annie never understood why anyone would enjoy being read to on antique furniture that grows stiffer as you sit on it. She also enjoyed being cooked for—though sometimes the food was knocked over—and telling stories about the days when she taught graduate students and had lots of bohemian friends.

“Bohemian?” asked Annie.

“That means they were crossdressers.”

Annie was compared to her mother frequently, with distaste.

“You’ll end up roadkill on some highway outside Las Vegas if you talk like that. Just like your mother.”

Her grandmother used strange implements. Encyclopedias, Tolstoy collections, the hard edges of jigsaw puzzle boxes. Annie learned to count bruises before they appeared, digging her thumb into the inside of her elbow. Gifts followed. Tins of stale cookies, little pieces of jewelry inlaid with false diamonds or emeralds.

But who would get the real diamonds on the real silver chains? She was too young then to know where money comes

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from. She thought it was something you were born with, like blue eyes, and could not give out to other people. Why else did her father argue with the landlord every month, while her grandmother hired a maid?

“What happened?” her aunt asked once, having appeared in town to take her grandmother out to lunch. “Look at your arm. Did she do that to you?”

Annie nodded.

“Well, just wait it out is my advice. You’ll be grateful you did, sooner or later.”

Soon, she thought. And finally, that last summer, the photocopied will emerged from a bottom drawer, signed and dated.

“Don’t tell anyone,” her grandmother said. “But what would they do if they knew?” The idea delighted her.

Grateful. Annie was grateful now. Never again to know exactly how much money was in her wallet, down to the dime, to the cent. Never to spend another night in a leaking motel room, on sheets both dry and damp.

Though she could not forget the feeling of standing over a pan of hot oil—the bubbles popping against her skin—or the greasy smog of a city bus.

She woke up in a small lake of her own sweat, as if a fever had broken in the night. Her back was slimy. She did not move for several minutes, trying to keep her skin from making contact with the inside of her sweater. Then she got up and went to take a shower, sitting on the edge of the bathtub with her legs stretched out over the bathroom floor so that her feet would not have to touch the brown mildewed ring.

After that the inside of the bathroom was humid, faintly uterine. Her skin felt spongy, like if she pressed it, more liquid would come out. She looked in the bathroom mirror, combing her hair with her fingers. None of her features were visible in the foggy glass, just shapes and colors.

And she had not prepared what she would say to Milo, whose mother must now be trying desperately to contact him. Or had already called the police.

They ate breakfast in the restaurant on the ground floor of the motel. The only other diners in residence were a mother and fat, reddened baby in a far booth.

“Order anything you want,” she told him. “I’ll pay.”

“Did you sleep all right?”

“Did you?”

“Good dreams.”

He removed a miniature cup of creamer from the center basket, peeled off the lid, and poured it into his mouth.

“Actually, I’m a little nervous.”

“I’d be nervous, too.”

“It’s just been such a long time.”

Nine years, her mind supplied.

“Could you write down his address for me?”

He tugged a napkin free of the vertical stack in the basket while she went hunting for a pen.

Their food came: pancakes, eggs, bacon, black coffee, orange soda. She drank her coffee and watched him eat. His sweatshirt had a toothpaste stain on the chest.

“I never felt like my dad was interested in me,” she proposed cautiously.

“No? I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know if I said this, but my parents aren’t together anymore, either. I don’t think he wanted to get custody of me. He had to.”

Not a flicker of recognition on Milo’s round face.

“But if my mother could have—if she had been in a place where she could have taken care of me, he would have let her. Do you get it?”

Chewing, he shook his head. “So is it hard for you that I’m going to see my dad?”

The earnest familiarity with which he said my dad sent a sudden cool spike of rage through her. In the full morning light, he seemed larger, more male, and unclean.

“No—Milo, what do you think will happen once we get to Nashville? How will he react?”

“I’ll explain what’s going on. He’ll understand. I don’t know.

I thought he could blow up an air mattress for me and we’d talk some things out. We’ll do all the stuff we’ve missed out on.” He considered his plate. “I’ll meet his band.”

It was nearly pornographic, it made her squirm.

“Christ,” she said. “Okay.”

“What?”

“You don’t think he’ll be surprised to see you?”

“He’s my dad. He invited me.”

He so stubbornly refused to be helped that she could not even get at the rush of goodwill for helping him.

“You don’t think he’ll act happy, but he’ll really be a little uncomfortable? You don’t think he’ll call your mom?”

“He wanted me to come.”

“Did he mean it?”

“He said it.”

Now she was gaining steam. “He didn’t expect you to do it.

Trust me. He wouldn’t think you were this—this naïve.”

He opened and closed his mouth. Something in her body swelled and pushed against her.

“I’ll tell you what will happen. He might take it for one night, okay. Two nights. And then you’re just some nuisance. You’re just some kid he doesn’t want around. What do you know about him? Maybe he has a girlfriend, maybe he’s married. The point is, he’s got a whole life you’re not in. He won’t say get lost, but that’s what he’ll mean. Get lost.”

He shook his head. Weakly he formed the words, “My dad . . .”

“This is one place where I know what I’m talking about.”

The soda toppled. That luminous orange liquid slid out across the table. The chair was shoved back with a tearing screech. Across the restaurant, the mother turned to look at them, hoisting and jiggling the enormous baby under her breast.

“I don’t want to feel responsible if you get hurt,” she said.

“Going around, assuming everyone loves you, just because they felt bad for you. They don’t.”

He was striding away, but where would he go?

“They definitely don’t!” she called to his back.

All the rest of the way to Nashville he would not speak to her.

But was she wrong?

She was probably right.

Sitting in traffic, watching images on billboards move, she began to feel sorry. At least he was making an effort, which was more than she could say. She whose mother lay awake every night, wondering where her daughter was and what she was doing at that moment. This had been recounted in a voicemail message shortly after her grandmother was hospitalized. For a long time she had made a practice of ignoring her mother’s calls, which had all come to contain some request. Some request, obscured by affectionate terms, and easy to fall for if you allowed yourself.

Some people have rough pasts and grow up into rough people. Others find inside themselves a warm capacity, a forgiveness. Her life from here on was an up-and-up arc. She could forget the occasional strike on the arm or the cheek.

She had given the waitress at the motel restaurant a fortypercent tip, as a trade for the spilled drink, marinating the dishes and silverware in a sticky film. It occurred to her now that a similar exchange could be made.

Pulling up to a white block of apartments in East Nashville, yellow awnings over the shaded lobby door, she reached into the glove box and retrieved her wallet. In a celebratory mood, she had gone to an ATM before she left for the funeral. Now she extracted with her thumb, index, and middle finger all the cash she had remaining: four hundred twenty-eight dollars, sixty cents. She began separating it into what she needed and what she could give up. Milo was already turning to exit the car.

“Wait,” she said, with a high tone of nobility. “Hold out your hand.”

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He extended his fingers, palm up. Into this strange, pinched hand, she deposited the money. Uncertainly, as if expecting her to snatch it back, he closed his fist around it and brought the fist into his pocket.

“For anything you need,” she said. “Good luck.”

So they were even.

When her mother calls again, on a happy tide of selflessness, she answers.

“Have you been ignoring me?”

“I was driving,” she says pleasantly. Now she is taking a break, sitting on a parking block and spreading cream cheese across a bagel with a plastic knife.

“You’ve been driving. For a week and a half? Are you there yet?”

“At the funeral? No.” She chews, swallows. “It’s not until tomorrow. Were you invited?”

Silence. Just as well.

“Well, Mom, what can you expect? Were you there for her at all?”

Silence again. Her mother asks, “But who was there for me?”

This response is so babyish, so predicted and worn, that she feels only a cavernous sympathy. Electing not to answer, she instead gets to work unscrewing the cap on a bottle of orange juice. Her mouth is sticky, chewed-up bread is packed into her molars.

“Sweetie, has anyone been in touch with you about the will?”

“I’ve seen it,” she says. “Why?” “Well—is it good? Is it what you expected?”

She takes a sip of the juice, swirling it around inside her mouth, saturating her cheeks, then her gums, then the back of her throat. After a time, she says, “More than what I expected, honestly.”

“More? And was I—” Better just come out and say it.

Afterwards, her mother says, “Well, when did you see it?”

“In the summer.”

“So could it have changed?”

“I doubt it has changed.”

“Did you know your grandmother? Do you know any member of your family?”

Her mother sounds resigned, almost sick of herself, when she continues, “Anyway, if I’m not getting anything, sweetie—” She shakes her head.

“—you don’t think you could help? Baby, you can’t even help me a little bit?”

“That’s why you called? Are you serious?”

Though she knew before she answered the phone. And hoping, hoping, had still picked up.

“So you want it all to yourself. It’s nice to know what kind of kid I have.”

The mass has become dislodged from her teeth and she swallows it swiftly.

“I don’t even have the money now. I won’t for a while.

It’s going to be months before the attorney can even contact everyone.”

And even then, who can guarantee that it hasn’t changed?

Her grandmother picked favorites and cast them off just as quickly. A bait-and-switch. A smooth trick played at the last minute.

Meanness runs in a circle in this family, she thinks. In and out. Passed between people as if we are playing catch with it.

What has she left Milo with?

Three hundred sixty dollars, all because she wounded him.

A steady anxiety begins to creep up on her. Her last few hundred dollars—excluding eighty saved for the trip home—now in the pocket of a lawyer’s son from a city suburb.

And time before the funeral to turn around and get it back, which is what she realizes now she must do. She still has the address written on the napkin, crinkled in her pocket.

Then what?

Sorry, she will say. I need it. I made a mistake.

And she has nothing else to give him. So he’ll just have to believe her when she says: I’m sorry. And even if he doesn’t forgive her, she’ll still be sorry.

She hangs up the phone, watching shadows cross the front bumper of the car. She has a sense of something being stopped in its tracks.

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Aiko Offner

Creative Nonfiction Harvard-Westlake School Studio City, CA

Holes My ear piercing holes are infected. They have been since I got them pierced last October. It has been a full year, and the only time they weren’t infected was the six weeks after I got them pierced, which is typically when ear piercing holes are most likely to get infected. At that time, though, I never changed them, cleaned them twice a day, sometimes lugging my body up at 12 am after Grey’s Anatomying because I had forgotten to dab around the thick piercing with a hydrogen-peroxide covered q-tip.

The other day, I realized that nipples are also holes. And apparently, we have more than one hole on each nipple, which is a bit of a wonky thought considering the fact that they don’t even really look like holes to begin with. Which makes me wonder how or if people with nipple piercings breastfeed? They do - although it sometimes can cause problems for both the mother and the baby, it is entirely possible. Anything is possible? There are so many nerves in the nipple, as my first hookup once said smugly to me, so nipple piercings terrify me, but belly button piercings don’t hurt as much. My friend in fifth grade whose mom had a belly button piercing once told me that they don’t actually pierce the belly button, they take the skin above it and then pierce through the fold that it makes over the belly button.

Our belly buttons are also holes. Or were. They were holes that enabled us to stay alive, before we started to cling to our mother’s holes. When my mother was born, my grandmother’s breast milk didn’t have many nutrients. My mother would be so hungry, drinking and drinking and not getting any energy, that my grandmother’s nipples would be bloody and cracked. Thinking about that makes me wince. It disgusts me how reliant we are on our mothers’ holes from the beginning of our lives. Or maybe it is beautiful.

In the space where one day there may be a baby of my own, there is currently a Tasmanian devil with a baseball bat pounding on the wall of my uterus. Which leads to another hole, which has a tampon shoved up it and then more in case blood still comes oozing out.

It is weird to me that the mother doesn’t feel pain when the umbilical cord is cut and also that babies can be pushed out of vaginas. According to Google, there are no nerve endings in the umbilical cord so there is no pain on either end. According to Romper.com, it is like getting a haircut. I wonder what Google knows about being a mother and I wonder what Romper knows about getting a haircut.

I also can’t imagine that babies can be pushed out of uterus holes because there is currently a tampon in my uterus hole and a devil wearing Prada stomping around in red heels throwing pots of coffee around my uterus, and I cannot imagine how those are unrelated. I also cannot imagine how one sleeps with an actual child inside their body because I sleep on my side with my leg bent in a right angle, rolled over so far that the right side of my face is smushed into itself and I am actually sleeping on my stomach, but I will tell everyone I sleep on my side. I don’t know how I will sleep on my side when I have a baby in my uterus.

That is, if I have babies. That is a very big assumption throughout this thought process, as my period is so irregular I have already looked into adoption in case I am an antique womanfailure and infertile (I am also sixteen). I would like to adopt a baby that is racially similar to me, as in Japanese, so that the stories I end up telling them will be related to them in a broader sense and will place them in some identity greater than themselves.

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However, I don’t want to take a baby from Japan’s baby-dwindling society so I don’t think I will get a Japanese baby. In a worldly and cultured and 21st century global economy kinda view it does not matter where a baby is from, the love they receive is really what matters, but I don’t know if the love the baby will receive would be enough to compensate for the questions I would not be able to answer.

Actually, in many many cases, I think love fills that void perfectly because love shapes a person more than a birthplace.

I just don’t know if the love a baby receives from me would be enough.

There was a baby we prayed for but never came. It left a hole in my mom, and in all our lives too. I would sit in my dad’s lap before going to sleep back when I slept when it was still light out, and we’d pray, which in our family meant listing a list of things that we hoped would happen or remain true to an unspecified God. Amidst I hope Aunt Emily stays healthy and happy and I hope we stay healthy and happy we would pray for The Egg. I forget when we stopped praying for The Egg but we did, at some point. My mother is a 5’4 Japanese woman who came to this country alone, and something about her often cutting remarks and quiet gaze makes her appear strong, even to a stranger. I seem to associate strength with winning, so I can’t imagine her having lost anything.

The Egg never came, so I grew up an only child and did ballet and played piano and was pampered. When I was four, I moved to a new house with a bedroom that has two beds. My parents both say that the second one, wedged up against the right corner of the room, the pink bed sheets unchanged and always matching my pink walls, was meant for my grandma if she ever visited.

I sleep next to the empty bed every night after I tuck my six-month-old Australian Shepherd into her crate. Carrying her fluffy body around my parent’s room, I sometimes recall praying for The Egg on the king-sized bed that they share, and then having my dad get out of his bed to walk me to mine.

But let’s get back to the topic of holes. I just counted, and I think we have fifteen holes in our bodies, including each eye and nostril separately and the belly button hole, and assuming that on average, each person has around two holes per nipple. That is a lot of holes. Whenever I get into very cold bodies of water, such as an ice bath or a pool, I always lower myself in by level of hole. I first stand, where no holes are in contact with the cold water, then my legs hold my half-weightless body in a weird squat position, lowering my body to about the belly button hole, at which point there are a number of holes now in the water, and then by that point I am basically at my boob holes anyways (which are the most sensitive holes) and I just duck into the water. And then, if the water is really really cold, I feel a hundred little goosebumps emerge on my legs, sprouting previously invisible stubble.

According to Google this is from muscle clenching which causes hair follicles to rise, which leads me to wonder, are pores holes?

I had a friend who used to pop every pimple she got, even the premature ones. She’d stand in front of the school bathroom mirror with grimy hands, digging her dirty brown nails into her fair skin and would make red blotches even redder.

She was actually my best friend, one of the only friends I had ever chosen. We met in a science classroom during seventh grade orientation, and I still remember her sitting towards the side of the classroom, dirty blonde hair falling over her shoulders and face hidden beneath her glasses. I remember thinking she

was pretty, the type of pretty that might shine through if she got her braces off and had posture that didn’t make it look like she wanted to crawl into herself. The teacher told us to pick partners and our eyes locked after recognizing the fear of being alone in each other’s eyes; we nodded from across the room, and became partners.

We became lane buddies during swim practice, sat together at lunch, and prepped each other for tests and auditions.

We became the irritating duo, lost in our laughter at inside jokes littered around the world, bending over at one of us impersonating a bird pecking at a flower or the shrugging emoji.

We continued to choose each other, and I chose her to go to Universal Studios with me along with two other friends for my birthday that year. The two other friends turned out to not really be good friends, making me hold their half-filled cups of butterbeer while waiting in line for the Jurassic Park ride. They laughed when I asked them to hold their own crap, which doesn’t really seem like a big deal, but it kind of felt like I was just holding their trash, so it kind of was a big deal to me at the time.

I remember my friend being upset afterwards, and even years later, when we’d pass the other two, now acquaintances, in the halls, she’d whisper loudly, “Remember when they treated you like shit at Universal Studios?”

When school got cancelled in the spring of freshman year, we FaceTimed almost every day, and the black hole time wasted in my two-bed bedroom was somewhat salvaged by her humor.

She was the type to laugh at everything, things I wouldn’t think to laugh at and things I didn’t think you could laugh at.

She was not laughing when she called me from her desk and her warmly lit room suddenly shone bright against her fair skin. She kept looking down at her hands, then back at me, a floating head against my pink walls, and finally said, “I have something to tell you.” Her eyes were filled to the brim with tears and the look in her eyes made me say, “you’re going to boarding school” and she said, “yeah”. We both started crying.

Now, whenever I lean into the mirror to squeeze out the pus from the pores in my nose (because popping premature pimples is a bit much for me - I have a very low pain tolerance) I think of her. I think she was maybe the second hole in my life.

I am confused as to why people want to close their pore holes. Because according to Google, they allow for sweat and oil to escape through the skin, cooling our internal and external temperature and excreting toxins. So I didn’t understand when I carpooled home with a friend on the way back from Japanese school, and I told her that I dunk my face in ice cold water every morning to wake myself up and she said, “Oh that’s good, cold water closes your pores.” I asked what opened them and, naturally, she replied, “warm water”.

I did not tell her I actually wash my face with warm water right after, which is neither good for my pores nor the environment, but then I wondered, why do we want to close our pores? I looked this up online only to find recommendations for many toners and creams, and even a suggestion to shove foundation INTO my pores to reduce the “hole” look and I thought, could it be because we do not want to be seen with holes all over our face?

Which I think is very valid, because no one wants to look like a gaping hole, but dare I say, tiny little holes across our face, isn’t that just what we are?

I did not cry while telling my mom my friend was moving away. She put the cutting knife down and looked at me with truly sorrowful eyes, and said, “I’m sorry, that’s really sad”. I shook my head and said it’s fine in an attempted non-teenager way; in a mature, this-is-how-life-goes kind of way. I had seen it coming, I guess, the school retreat she missed in the fall, and the lunches she spent alone at the lockers, hunching over her laptop and appearing more and more uncomfortable as she refused to meet my eyes when I asked her to sit with me.

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When I told my dad, who came home later for dinner, tears slid from my eye holes and I could not control them. My dad asked, “Why are you crying?” My mom and I gave him a nasty look, and I said, “My best friend’s moving away”. His posture deflated, and he nodded profusely as he rubbed my back.

To be honest, I didn’t quite know why I was crying either.

It felt like a scene out of a movie, a sappy friendship movie or whatever the Babysitters Club became after the first four books.

I made friendships like a picky octopus my seventh grade year, first grasping at everyone, then slowly pulling in or pushing away. I was alone in a new school of fish I perceived as sharks; so terrified of being swept into the wrong crowd, I loosened my tentacles at just a hint of a jealous eye or a gossipy side conversation. I would cancel plans and sit at other tables, sporadically at first, but then, by the time they realized how far off I had sailed, the void I left in their lives was filled with other people. Many of the holes I make in other lives are shallow; a little dip in the ground that can easily be filled with flowers or herbs, more glamorous than the 5’7 weed that I am, and was, at 13.

Maybe because of my own barriers, I thought I wasn’t capable of having a friend-shaped hole in me. Maybe I thought I didn’t deserve it. Sitting at the kitchen table, my head in my hands and tears sliding down the side of my face and my dad’s warm hand on my back, I realized I had cared for her the way I always thought I would care for a sister.

I slid it in there rather subtly, but I know you had a brief whoa, this kid was 5’7 at age 13?! moment in your mind. Actually, I was 5’7 at age 10, already sprouting acne on my face. My skin shone red as a tomato, as I tried to calm my acne-ridden pores with a topical cream, in turn making them more susceptible to sunburn. Being the bratty and stubborn tween that I was, I refused to wear sunscreen to school because that was just #lame. So I looked like a tomato head stuck on a 5’7 body, slouching around school in leggings and crop tops, trying to fit in.

And on the topic of gross holes I actually just looked down to my bulging bloated bursting stomach and I realized there is sand or dirt in my belly button, which is quite disconcerting.

Where does that come from? According to Google, that is dirt, bacteria, fungus, and germs. According to Google, that can cause an infection. According to Google, belly button discharge is a thing.

Google has no compassion for my now murdered appetite.

Which begs the question, do you wash your belly button? I once read that Khloe Kardashian has a phobia of belly buttons, like is deathly afraid of belly buttons, and when she has to clean them she puts on gloves and screams in the shower. I think that begs for a low grade porno.

But I am not in a state to be mocking Khloe Kardashian, because she takes the time and energy to stick a finger and swirl it around her belly button (I imagine) and I am one of those disgusting humans who doesn’t regularly clean their belly button.

However, I want to make the case that my neglect of my belly button doesn’t come out of a neglect for personal hygiene, but rather ignorance of how to clean my belly button. According to Google, you use a q-tip and then rub the inside of the belly button and all its gross little folds and then rinse it with water. Which begs the question, do I use the same alcohol that I use for my ear piercing hole infections?

Which leads me to think, maybe cleaning my ear piercing holes and my belly button hole is similar to when I push yellow studs that remind me of cacti out of my nose pores, and don’t stop until I look like Rudolph and the entire level of the mirror at my height is fogged up. Which leads me to think, maybe that is the same, in theory, as wanting to close my pores or diminish the pores on my face, because ultimately, I think I am under the assumption that if I purify my holes I will stop obsessing over them, and they will become an inconspicuous part of myself.

Which probably leads you to think, my holes are inconspicuous and they would remain inconspicuous if I didn’t write a whole

essay about them, which leads me to think, well doesn’t that mean they should be conspicuous?

Maybe we try to hide our holes to compensate for the fact that we are made up of tiny little holes. We come into this world from a hole we leave in our mother with our own set of holes. We then live until we die, gaining friend-sized holes and partner-sized holes and parent-sized holes and then leaving them in others as well. At a certain point maybe we reproduce our own hole-creator, half us and half someone else, who will live and grow holes and we will hold them as they crumple in them at times, and they may hold us as our own holes begin to shrivel. At which point we will be lowered into an us-sized hole, where we complete the Earth and stuff in the hole in the world, as if we were never a hole ourselves.

Once we close all our pores and our pore in the Earth, maybe, just maybe, if we are good enough people, some people won’t close the us-shaped hole in them and we will live through the holes they keep open.

I think we stay up at night fearing we won’t leave holes in the people around us. I think I stay up at night fearing I won’t leave a hole in the people around me. I think I am writing this piece because I fear I won’t leave a hole in the world.

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Chinonye Omeirondi

Short Story Cypress High School Cypress, CA

Chiamaka, Chisimdi The day Chiamaka disappeared, her father left the house in precisely three pieces. The first piece left at sunset, when the world, consumed by endless night, became his sworn enemy. A cowardly enemy at that, who only struck among shadows and darkness, never in broad daylight, never man-to-man. This piece was primarily made of a violent mixture of anger and animosity, and in its wake, it was determined to strike back at the world around it, leaving broken china and shattered bottles on kitchen tiles — birthing millions more bits of pieces. The second piece escaped through an open window well into the evening, when the house was lit by too many lights. Every room and hallway were illuminated in bright yellow, every room except Chiamaka’s of course, as if cheap light bulbs could replicate the sun that was Chiamaka’s presence. They couldn’t, so this piece was made of despair, the kind that punches gaping holes through fragile sanity, so he made sure to save a few bottles. That way, he could fill up each hole with alcohol as they opened, like depressants can hold a man’s mind together, like red wine can circulate a body and call itself blood. The last piece left through the front door with jangling keys two hours before midnight. They didn’t stop their tinkling jingle until their jagged metal was shoved in the ignition and overpowered by the rumbling engine, who cried like newborns about blame and shame and such. This piece was made of fear, the strangling kind, so the engine cried until the Nissan Altima pulled out of the driveway and sped down the road, windows down, gasping for air.

Chiamaka’s mother remained in the house to pick up the broken china and glass that her husband left behind. She never did, for she too was shattered, in millions more bits of pieces than china and glass, but she kept her pieces neat. She used a broom and swept her pieces across bright hallways and cluttered kitchen using Chiamaka’s bed as a dustbin. She wrapped her pieces in Chiamaka’s violet covers and fading scent, all as she whimpered to God to bring her daughter back, that He couldn’t take her yet, not yet. * Seventeen years before Chiamaka disappeared, she was plucked from Nigeria before coherent speech could roll off her tongue in one piece. Speech fell from her newly formed lips like vomit often did, in smooth, repulsive chunks that stained bibs and the backs of patterned dresses — a loud, sleepless speech that forced her mother to spend nights begging God for silence.

In those long nights, her mother also begged God for a sign, and in a fit of tired tears beside a sleeping Chiamaka, she raised her heavy head to the sky and knotted her fingers in tight desperation.

Oh Lord, how must I bring forth this child in your glory? The Lord’s answer came in the form of a ragged woman who reached her dirty hands into Chiamaka’s stroller, only scared off by Chiamaka’s tired mother, chasing away raggedness at the sound of her child’s loud, chunky speech. She returned home to her kind husband and his kinder mother and convinced him that they must leave this place for America, that the people in Nigeria have no shame, that this is no place to raise a child. Chiamaka’s father was easily swayed, so that year, they ripped Chiamaka from the arms of her grandmother and put her on an aircraft heading for a land of freedom and opportunity. Her grandmother cried and cried like in the days when her womb flushed out children like water, mourned Chiamaka like she had died and left her hollow. She was not fond of America and sweet promises. * Eleven years before Chiamaka disappeared, her punches came in two pieces, one to the eye and one to the nose. And Wyatt deserved it, she told her principal. Wyatt, a little white boy missing one of his front teeth, told Chiamaka that she couldn’t play

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basketball because she was a girl, and that being black didn’t help her any. Then Little White Wyatt put his hands on her, his grimy little hands, his dirt-under-chewed-fingernails hands, and pushed her off the court with a force that manifested in Chiamaka’s stomach as a heavy brick. The brick was made of humiliation and disgust, and it swam in her stomach, doing so many backflips it made her sick. Wyatt’s little white friends laughed at her with open mouths, jolting tongues, and the brick did spins in stomach acid.

Chiamaka, a girl with too much anger at seven years, rightful anger, carved her fists into sharp-edged bricks and aimed one at his ugly, ocean-blue eye, and the other at his stupid little nose. Wyatt fell to the ground, crying out, and Chiamaka followed, releasing her bricks. Wyatt fought back and fought dirty. They remained in their tangle of fists, rolling and grunting at the halfway line until a teacher broke them up. By the end of their struggle, Chiamaka had lost a couple braids and a chunk of skin by her eyebrow. The braids roasted on the pavement like eels over fire. Wyatt’s little white friends picked them up with disgusted fingers and played Hot Potato.

The principal gave Chiamaka a three-day suspension.

Wyatt lost three days of morning and lunch recess. Chiamaka’s father argued, saying that the boy pushed her, and that his daughter must be in school to learn. The principal put a hand up.

“She attacked him,” she said.

The Nissan Altima was parked over angry lines of blue.

During the drive home, Chiamaka’s father spoke wisdom. “Stop fighting with boys. Are you a boy?”

“No.” “No. You are a lady. Act like a lady.”

“Yes Daddy.” Chiamaka refused to cry.

“And the next time someone insults you by calling you Black, tell them that you are not Black. You are Nigerian. Igbo. You came from a rich country, lots of oil, lots of intelligence. Not like these American Blacks. You hear?” Chiamaka heard. She watches her father run a yellow. “I am spanking you when we get home.”

That night, her mother clutches Chiamaka’s skull under cheap light bulbs and begs God to deliver her from violence and anger. * Five years before Chiamaka disappeared, her body was cut in three pieces — breast, waist, and ass. Chiamaka juggled with her pieces like afro-circus, so new and shiny, turning them this way in yellow light and that way in school bathrooms. She inspected them, finding which angle looked good with flash and filter, which piece of flesh looked hot in message box. Chiamaka was not satisfied with her product. There was no customer service, no return-by-mail; she tried to fix it herself. Chiamaka highlighted pieces in hot pink and black cherry and periwinkle and fuchsia, lips big and red like Sambo, big enough to swallow watermelons whole, spit out the seeds, red enough to take dirty slaps, because her mother and father didn’t bring her to America to become a prostitute.

The same mother and father cried devil, cried what has my child become? when Chiamaka discarded those pieces.

Chiamaka concluded that the pieces didn’t fit. They were too soft and curved, too vulnerable. She wanted something rigid and sharp-edged, something straight and flat like heavy bricks.

Chiamaka acted on this desire in the only bathroom that locked.

She wrapped her pieces in bandages, ankara, and duct tape. She bound and bound until she saw brick, flat brick, and gazed in the mirror. She struck a pose, model-like and seductive, smiling at her fresh sharpness, body like knives. Chiamaka wanted sharper, so she brought moving blades to scalp and ran from hairline to nape.

Her mother’s banging on the bathroom door fell in tune with braids on tile, a strange song, only completed with motherly screams and

demands, certain that a ragged woman is using moving blades on her daughter.

When the bathroom door finally opened, Chiamaka had successfully carved herself into one piece, one brown brick, and she was content with her sculpture. She stepped out of the bathroom with glossy eyes. They remained that way when her mother shook her, patted down her brick, crying where is your breast? where is my daughter? Her mother grieved when she met her shaved head, clutching her skull like prayer, begging and pleading with Chiamaka to put it back, to grab the hair from the trash bin and reattach it to her scalp. She mourned Chiamaka’s lost hair like it was her own, crying tears that Chiamaka found selfish.

Her father watched from afar and shook his head.

“Chiamaka,” he said, “what have you done? You want to become a man?” He spoke as if his heart was wounded.

“Become a man? Tufiakwa. God forbid.” Her mother snapped both fingers. “Over my dead body.”

Her parents stared at her, awaiting a response, but Chiamaka didn’t answer. She knew the answer was no, not at all, but she didn’t feel like peeling open her lips for words. She knew her speech would come out loud and chunky, and she liked watching her new sharpness speak for itself. It cut her parents in ways that Chiamaka could never reach. * Three years before Chiamaka disappeared, she was caught in bed with a piece unwelcome. Chiamaka herself was already made of pieces unwelcome, brick-sharp pieces like binding cloth and piercings and hair so short it spiked like stubble. Her parents whispered among themselves, never to her face, that she was becoming an akata, acting like these American Blacks who don’t know where they belong, disgracing her parents, even saying nigga like them. Chiamaka heard all of their whispers, the sharp inflexion of the T in akata was too hard to miss, whether laced with disgust or jealousy or hatred it cut all the same, jagged edged and quick.

Chiamaka’s pieces, sharper than akata, flattened and made from fired clay, received upturned noses and questioning eyes, especially from those who’d loved her curves, who received them wrapped in bows and filters. The only one who embraced Chiamaka’s sharpness was her friend Molly, a tall and thin Indian girl that Chiamaka’s parents idolized for her respectable descent.

Her father loved to talk about how similar the Indians and the Igbos were, in both intelligence and custom, and he was happy that Chiamaka made a friend like Molly, rather than those akata that she followed around. So when Chiamaka’s mother found the two entangled in limbs and nakedness on Chiamaka’s violet covers, she went mad. The noise that clawed its way from her throat was that of one who’d been betrayed by God and her child alike. Betrayed by God for claiming to hear her anguished prayers, her whispers of the night, yet refusing to use His glory to stop Chiamaka from committing an abomination, to stop Chiamaka from becoming an abomination. Betrayed by her child for acting against the body she spent nine months forming in the womb.

Her father came running after hearing screams of Chineke! and Chinekemeh! He found a spectacle — his wife beating his daughter’s naked body, beating her in the name of Jesus, and Molly watching from a safe distance, visibly shaking in nothing but nude underwear. * A year before Chiamaka disappeared, she and her parents arrived at their first therapy appointment in two pieces.

Chiamaka, now driving a beat-up car, arrived sharply on time. She insisted that the therapist, a kind, wrinkled woman with a smooth European accent that Chiamaka couldn’t identify, to please wait for her parents, that they were on their way. They sat on lavender leather that chilled Chiamaka through her favorite pair of jeans, and waited. Her mother and father arrived African time late, as if two hundred dollars per session wasn’t being torn from their wallets, and they arrived wearing their Sunday best and Sunday smiles. Her father was dressed like Naija Big Man, in black pants, a black top with elegant gold patterning running down the chest, and glasses that he didn’t need. Her mother wore a dress made

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from red and yellow ankara that flowed from her back like a golden river, a matching headscarf, and bright red lipstick, lips big and red like Sambo. She carried sunglasses in her wig like a Nollywood movie star. Chiamaka’s parents beamed when the therapist, Ms. Enache, called them beautiful. They took their lavender seats beside Chiamaka and pursed their lips like proud children.

Ms. Enache went straight to the point. She wanted them to discuss what was breaking the family apart. She turned to Chiamaka, the child. “Chiamaka, how about you go first?”

“Chisimdi.” A whisper.

“What was that?” The parents leaned forward in their seats, straining to hear chunky speech.

“Not Chiamaka, Chisimdi. I’ve changed my name to Chisimdi.” Chisimdi’s voice reverberated through the room, hanging suspended in air until her movie star mother clipped its wings.

“Say gini?” She pulled on her ear like it would lead her to answers. “Change your name? The one your late grandma gave you? Hey! This girl wants to finish me o.” She wiped imaginary dust from her palms.

Naija Big Man removed his glasses and entwined his fingers. “Chiamaka, why would you change your name? Are you trying to hurt us? Leave us behind? Because when you do things like this, it hurts.”

Chisimdi took a deep breath. “I changed it beca—” “Do you know why your grandma gave you that name?”

Her mother cut her off. “Chiamaka means God is beautiful. She named you Chiamaka because when you were born, you had fair skin. She thought you would be beautiful. And look at you now, parading yourself like a man.” She gestured her hand at her bricklike appearance. “Your grandma would turn in her grave.”

Ms. Enache silently took notes.

“It’s a lie!” Chisimdi’s voice came out loud and chunky like baby vomit. “Chiamaka is a lie. God is not beautiful.”

“Chiamaka! How can you say that!”

“Stop calling me Chiamaka!” she snapped. The anger that her mother failed to deliver from Chisimdi’s fighting body through prayer etched the lines of her face, pulling it into a frown. The world was silent. “If God is beautiful, then why is the world that he created an ugly place? What beautiful God would watch His children hate each other and kill each other and fuck up their minds?” Her speech fell fast, chunky. “What beautiful God would make me like this Mom? Do you think I want to be an abomination? Ehn? Answer me!”

Her father stood and shouted back at Chisimdi, sweat tracing the Big Man fabric around his armpits, because that is no way to talk to your mother, and that is no way to talk about God. Ms. Enache took more notes as Chisimdi’s mother sobbed into her ankara — she couldn’t answer the question.

Chisimdi’s speech was sleepless. “My name is Chisimdi because Chisimdi is who I am! If you won’t accept that, then so be it!” Tears carved paths down Chisimdi’s face, sharp as knives.

Anger and strife fatigued her.

The crying mother rose from lavender and announced her analysis of her astray child. She told her that that thing she lives with, that thing named Molly, is brainwashing her and leading her to hellfire. As long as that thing is calling her daughter Chisimdi with that sinful mouth of hers, then the name Chisimdi will never leave her lips, for the Lord is her witness. * Five months before Chisimdi disappeared, Molly called Chisimdi’s former home, shaking harder than she did when discovered under violet sheets — her heart had been cracked to pieces. Molly called and called, hands trembling like Parkinson’s over the keypad, and she cried each time her call wasn’t picked up, only stopping when vomit came with her tears.

Chisimdi had tried tasting death with pills that were bitter and round and curved at the edges. Her parents had no daughter named Chisimdi, it seemed. * The day Chisimdi disappeared, she realized she had to crumble her adopted name into a thousand pieces. She did it

with sharp teeth, crunching the curved m into jagged bits before swallowing, cutting the horrid roundness from the S before pushing it around with forked tongue, flattening the C with molars and bandages and ankara — mixed together her name tasted terrible. Chisimdi had to down it with heavy bricks and red lipstick, and when it finally passed through her esophagus, her name did backflips and spins in stomach acid. She closed her eyes hoping the nausea would go away, but she was so fatigued from strife and anger that her eyelids became heavier than bricks and dirty slaps, so they remained closed until that thing who gave her love found her buried under names and little white kids, but she couldn’t dig her out because Chisimdi was too far under. That thing became pieces, and when more was learned of Chisimdi and her unfortunate name, more pieces emerged. One piece left at sunset, one escaped through a window, another piece gasped for air, and one groveled and pleaded under violet, and their plea ended in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Chisimdi /Chí-sị̀-mụ́-dị̀/ Origin: Igbo Gender: m/f Meaning: God said I should live

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Isabelle Orr

Play or Script Georgetown Day School Washington, DC

Make It One Curtain up on a simple stage decorated only by inconspicuous black wooden boxes. Down center stage a few of these boxes have been arranged in a slight zig-zag, with spaces in between for someone to slip through, but also enough of a dividing line that the two different sides of the stage are distinct.

HANNAH sits on a sole black box stage right, a burgundy leather-bound book in her hands. She has on a pair of army green cargo pants and a black V-neck, her dark brown hair pulled to the side in a fishtail braid. She sticks her tongue out as she reads.

SEO-YEON stands behind a stack of three black boxes stage left, drumming her hands anxiously on the surface of the highest one. She wears a silver Venetian-style mask and flowing gray robes. Any possibly-exposed skin is covered with gray cloth (ie. gloves, socks, a turtleneck).

Until her first line, she cycles between multiple anxious ticks, clearly lost in her own head.

GRAY GIRL sits on the centermost black box from the dividing zig-zag, staring forward with entirely blank eyes. She wears a gray tank top, gray jeans, and gray sneakers. On the floor, beside her feet, rest three different Korean Hahoe masks.

HANNAH

(Zoning out, eyes still on her book as she speaks to herself) I’ve always been an American.

(Looking up) B sut an American with not only one, but two sides of her family filled with demanding Koreans expecting the world.

(Resentful) You see(Standing up and beginning to pace as she speaks) Every hope, every dream, every... everything has always been stacked on my successes. Me. (Jamming her pointer finger into her chest with each “my”) My accomplishments. My sacrifices. My life. My adhering to that bullshit lifestyle where happiness is always exchanged for economic fertilities.

(With a bitter laugh) Half of them would barely know what that means!

She stops in her tracks, no longer pacing. Taking a deep breath, now to the audience: HANNAH

Ok.

(Groaning; then, explanatory) Look... I grew up eating bulgogi nearly every mealtime, hearing stories of all the Korean plants you could see walking around our little suburban neighborhood, and occasionally being forced to trace hangul characters in the loose dirt of our backyard to make my father happy. But, Korea was a story, a fairytale.

(Groaning, sitting back down on her black box) And an over-told one at that.

HANNAH sprawls herself over the box, as if she is laying down, with only her back supported.

She stares up blankly.

HANNAH

(As if talking to the ceiling) I’ve always been told how lucky I was. If my grandmother didn’t escape when she did, I would have been born a baby destined to die.

(Rolling to the side, sitting up on her box and now speaking to the audience) See, she been born into what is now called North Korea. She was ten when Korea was occupied. She was ten when she had to take her younger brother and run across the border, with guns, and dogs, and screams. My grandmother was ten when she had to keep running, never looking back, until she sailed across the world and landed in America.

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(Shaking her head; almost empathetic for once) From brutalized to scrutinized.

(Snapping back to her usual composure) But, here I am!

(Drumming her fingers on her thighs) However I got to this point, to this life, doesn’t matter. I identify as an American! Hell, I’m practically just another white girl, through and through. Korea isn’t a part of me. I’m not Korean.

(Folding arms) And I am fine with that.

HANNAH drums her foot on the ground, shaking her leg up and down.

SEO YEON COME IN!

(Abrupt)

GRAY GIRL puts on a new mask: Sonpi, a mask traditionally used for the high ranking scholar filled with disdain. She stands up.

GRAY GIRL

(To SEO YEON, coldly) Kid’s almost ready to see you... Extra Tutoring Time ends in 10.

SEO YEON Alright.

(Turning, wringing her hands and not looking at GRAY GIRL)

GRAY GIRL You want to tell me what the hell happened out there?

SEO YEON I-I don’t know. I-just don’t.

(Shaking her head) (Turning back around; looking at GRAY GIRL)

GRAY GIRL

(Scoffing) Well then, what are you going to say to that kid?

(Pause; to grab SEO YEON’s attention) Empress.

(After a pause; louder this time) Empress!

SEO YEON

(Snapping) Just give me a second!

(Calmer) Please.

GRAY GIRL

(Blunt and unfeeling) You’ve got a few million people in this base who are currently explaining to their kids why New Columbus’ Empress just fell apart because a CHILD asked a question... and the best you can do is tell me to give you time?!

(Spitting) He questioned the fiber of our very existence! That child stood up in front of everyone in this Sector and demanded difference. He demanded unique identity.

(Yelling) YOU DON’T HAVE TIME! CAN’T YOU SEE? There is a threat to the very fabric of our society. You have to fix this. Now. SEO YEON

(A dangerous calm; slowly approaching GRAY GIRL, taking a step with each sentence) I know. I know how easy it is for the public to divide. I know how quickly mobs can congregate. I know how simple it is for authority to crumble. I know what this world was like before. I know, believe me, Supervisor, I know.

(Stopping) But if you ever question my ability to pick up the pieces-to pick up the

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scraps of a shattered land and make it into something beautiful-then it is you have not been listening to my sermons. And it is you who shall pay the price.

GRAY GIRL

(Stiffly) Well I just hope you didn’t use all of your speech-giving skills up on me.

Update me on the situation.

SEO YEON Now, out.

(Nodding curtly; waving hand)

GRAY GIRL nods back, bowing slightly and walking over to sit back on her central box. She removes the mask and puts on Chuji, a mask of the winged lion, the protector. It is the only mask where the mouth and chin are visible, so when it is on, GRAY GIRL uses her mouth as a form of greater expression and vulnerability.

GRAY GIRL Hello.

How are you?

SEO YEON I-

(Standing up and bowing slightly; then, with the mannerisms of a little boy who is young but wise) (Sitting down on the floor, cross-legged)

(Startled)

(Walking towards GRAY GIRL and kneeling down so their faces are at the same height) What did you say?

GRAY GIRL I asked you how you were. Do you wanna sit with me? Your knees must hurt from so much pacing.

SEO YEON I don’t pace.

(Nearly offended)

GRAY GIRL Pacing is authoritative.

(Smiling) I like it.

SEO YEON pauses, then smiles. She sits down on the floor beside GRAY GIRL, almost hesitantly.

SEO YEON I’m not well.

GRAY GIRL Hm? SEO YEON To answer your question. I am not well.

GRAY GIRL I think I knew that. You were distressed. Angry with me.

SEO YEON I was.

I still am.

(Kindly, somehow)

GRAY GIRL

(Truly puzzled) Because I interrupted your sermon?

SEO YEON

(Sighing, looking away and off into the distance) No. Because you challenged that which we teach.

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GRAY GIRL I was just asking questions. I didn’t understand what you were saying, a-about...

(Words slurred together, as if it is just one big word that this boy doesn’t understand the meaning of) Iranian diversity Mexican woman judged SEO YEON

(Laughing softly) Those are a lot of words, kid.

GRAY GIRL You told us we were fortunate. Because we wear the same things and eat the same thingsSEO YEON

(Nearly zoning out) -and you told me that having different personalities wasn’t enough. You told me that there was nothing for you to be proud of. Nothing to bring joy to your identity.

GRAY GIRL

(Frowning) I didn’t say that. I don’t know what that all means-

SEO YEON

(Suddenly) Do you know anyone who remembers the bombing?

(After GRAY GIRL shakes her head) Do you know why they chose me to be… Empress?

(Now completely lost in thought; as if GRAY GIRL is not right next to her) Do you know why I chose gray as our color?

GRAY GIRL Because it was your favorite?

SEO YEON What?

(Snapping back to reality)

GRAY GIRL I speculated. I guessed that you chose gray because... you liked it?

SEO YEON

(Briefly chuckling; sorrowful) I chose it because it was all I saw when the bombs struck.

(Bittersweet) I uh, I remember my grandmother was in town. My brother and I were sitting by the fireplace, doing homework.

(Laughs quietly) I had this brutal English paper due and so my dad was trying to help, just sorta screaming random eloquent words at me from the kitchen.

(Almost whispering; smiling) And my mom was making dinner... just kneading dough and humming Cat Stevens.

GRAY GIRL

(Innocently bewildered) I don’t understand-

SEO YEON And all I remember after that(Voice quivering) -was just gray. The bombing made everything just...

(Near sobbing) Gray.

GRAY GIRL I am sorry.

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(Understanding the simplicity, yet ginormous weight of his words)

SEO YEON No.

(Voice rasping)

(Aggressively swiping at her tears; shaking her head rapidly) No, I am thankful. Thankful I got to see the hatred that sprouts from difference. Thankful I was able to see how(Spluttering) -how dangerous different identities could be.

(Turning to GRAY GIRL; desperate) Don’t you see? You are lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. You never knew the divisions of America, never knew the brutality of infighting.

(With an almost crazed laugh) You probably never even knew we bombed ourselves! The Second Civil War, hah! It was us! We(Incredulous) -we hated each other so much. We were just... dying to have a reason to destroy each other.

(Coming to a depressing revelation; with a monotone and dead eyes) We became everything that our country was meant to save us from.

(Spitting) The Divided fucking States of America.

GRAY GIRL stands, face void of emotion once again, and walks back to her box. She removes her mask. HANNAH stirs, having reached the end of her book. She runs a hand through her hair and shuts her book with the other.

HANNAH

(Unfeeling) My grandmother says that uh, not having access to your first language is like not having access to your body, your soul, your very being...

(Pursing her lips; shrugging) I think I can use that for this essay, yeah?

(Flipping through the book; skimming the pages) I mean, it’d get me an A, that’s for damn sure.

(Yelling offstage while still looking at the pages) HEY DAD! What’s the fanciest possible B.S. word for “self” you can think of?

SEO YEON looks up, truly seeing the other side of the stage for the first time. Her face is in shock, all her features wilting as she stares at HANNAH who nods at an inaudible response and begins to write in the margins of her book.

SEO YEON IGRAY GIRL puts on her final mask: Kaksi, the goddess and young bride. She stands in a hurry, all of her body language screams “pure panic” as she does a 360 scan of the room.

GRAY GIRL

(Screeching) HANNAH BABY WHERE ARE YOU?

HANNAH shoots upwards, locking eyes with GRAY GIRL. SEO YEON watches with despair, but no one seems to see her.

HANNAH

(Cupping her hands; yells) Mama I’m outside!

GRAY GIRL HANNAH! HANNAH

(Seeming not to hear nor see HANNAH; sobbing)

I’M SAFE! MAMA STOP SEARCHING FOR ME-

GRAY GIRL

(Wailing; shaking her head as she reiterates:) BABY WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE

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Suddenly: a flash of blinding white from every stage light. We hear a shrill ringing. As the white lights dim slowly to gray, GRAY GIRL throws up an arm in front of her face trying to protect herself.

HANNAH

No. NO!

(Lunging forward)

GRAY GIRL crumples to the floor, HANNAH barely catching her in time. She rocks back and forth, tears streaming down her face as looks at GRAY GIRL and mummers quietly to her.

Meanwhile, SEO YEON breathes shakily, curling up into a ball on the floor. She rocks back and forth.

SEO YEON I have made life better.

(Unbelieving) I have made everything better.

Suddenly, HANNAH sees the other side of the stage for the first time. She furrows her brows, first lost and then horrified at what she sees. HANNAH stands up, shaking. As she does, GRAY GIRL gets up too, removing her mask. HANNAH crosses the stage, now on the left side. GRAY GIRL resumes her seated position in the middle HANNAH

(Whispering; staring at SEO YEON in horror) What have I done? What have I... become?

(Louder) What have(With disgust) You know that isn’t true. You know it isn’t “better”.

SEO YEON

(Staring right back at HANNAH; a fearsome stand-off) I have made a better world. A better people.

HANNAH You. Are. Lying.

(Raw with emotion) (Practically hissing)

SEO YEON

(As if attempting to convince herself) No more attacking the girl who wears a hijab. No more beliefs based in faith do we rob!

No more shooters barging into a synagogue. No more mentions of a present-day Holocaust.

No more KKK parades, no more lynchings. No more women hiding rape, unflinching.

No more courts taking the white man’s side. No more glory in destroying a woman’s life.

No more presidents normalizing lives full of hate. No more oppressors assuring us‚ Everything’s great…

NO MOREShe stops abruptly, as if searching for more justifications to rattle off. As she falters, she begins to tremble, collapsing to the floor. HANNAH’s face softens as she steps forward, reaching her hand to rest lightly on SEO YEON’s back.

HANNAH

(Quieter and kind) I used to hate the name Seo Yeon, you know? I-I couldn’t even fathom it: walking into school and hearing that... idiotic name Halmoni suggested!?

(Shutting her eyes) I guess I still do.

(After a few seconds, her eyes open and bore into SEO YEON’s crumpled body) But not as much as you hate the memory of being Hannah. Of being me.

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SEO YEON

(Rising slowly; looking and sounding completely exhausted as she mutters:) Now you’re the one who lies.

(Scoffing) I-I think I actually miss it.

(Hesitant at first; growing more and more passionate) I miss the taste of bulgogi marinated for hours on end, and sitting around a table larger than life eating mandu. I miss those plants around the neighborhood that I could say with pride, originated from Korea. I miss that feminism club at school... that one with the Rice Kripsies and free tampons, you know? I miss my girlfriend, with her ridiculous little button maker and those crocheted rainbow scarves. I miss kissing her like crazy right on the porch exactly as my uncle got home, just to make him flip out! I miss my fat rolls and hip dips, the bumps on my arms I could run my fingers over during class. I miss how I felt on the days I wore that sage green sundress to school, with my crazy winged eyeliner! I miss- I miss...

HANNAH

...being you?

SEO YEON Yeah. I guess so.

(Hands falling to sides; defeated)

SEO YEON begins to smile to herself, albeit slowly and gradually. GRAY GIRL puts back on the Sonpi mask, resumes her earlier character of a Supervisor. She stands.

SEO YEON

(Filled with clarity, pacing while speaking concisely to herself; now ignoring HANNAH and talking to GRAY GIRL) I want to begin drafting a revision of our current rules and regulations. I want to begin drafting a new way of life, one where we will not suppress individual identity.

GRAY GIRL Ridiculous. There will be chaos... pure and utter chaos if we re-introduce diversity to this world.

HANNAH stands up. Now she speaks in sync with SEO YEON. SEO YEON Perhaps. But it will be real.

HANNAH

Perhaps. But it will be real.

GRAY GIRL

(Scoffing) Reality is no pleasant thing.

SEO YEON/HANNAH Then let us make it one.

Blackout.

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Asen Kim Ou

Design Arts Cate School Carpinteria, CA

231

Graphene Module House Rhino, Keyshot, Adobe Photoshop 2021

Ashley Park

Visual Arts Half Hollow Hills West High School Dix Hills, NY

232

Translucent Plaster on styrofoam board, sandpaper, gauze with plaster, white acrylic paint 2021

Daniel Park

Design Arts Wellesley High School Wellesley, MA

233

Beehive Modular Design Rhino, Lumion, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and SketchUp 2021

Kristen Park

Poetry High Technology High School Lincroft, NJ

Foraging i.

I scrape off skin like I peel my own walls, drooping inward. Wonder if I can subtract time like I do millimeters. I do not understand the sounds that form inside my mother’s throat, like fragments of a sonata that ride the Yangtze, sculpted for an instrument I cannot play. This is where I drown in an ocean of delicate ink strokes and stripped tones seven thousand miles distant. Bubbles sear my earlobes with onyx, like ink stone.

But to discover is to swim across battlefields, across mounds of pruned earth.

There are stories, left behind like weary furniture that an ancestor may have gifted for a child to finally hear, stolen dawn pouring into dry, cupped palms. ii.

One weekend, I melt hell money for you, trace fingertips along your marble name, your first silence. Today I fling rice onto grass, burn paper clothing and glistening paper yuanbao1, a most fruitless attempt at closing the everything between us—width of an atmosphere, breadth of a family tree. Sound cannot travel when my charred tongue doesn’t dance like it should, when it forces out garbled remains of crushed embers. Hold out your hands, clasp the smoke I unravel from crimson wax, as incense tugs on my coat like etchings, like clay memories that stretch far into heaven, the distance between us, centuries. Here, where smoke extends backward, I grasp at milky vowels, go hungry for things I’ve never tasted. iii.

Pressing my face to the damp soil, I try to uproot the tattered things. You are scattered across land which does not understand—it forgets time like diluted photographs, traces your footsteps in salty dirt. Until distance finds them covered with chipped bones and ripped sinew, a silk road leading to nowhere. Segments break off like shattering nanoseconds, like gaps bored into stone. When I plunge an arm into the earth, I find your thin red thread, taut like stubborn skin. And when I follow its direction, I will walk in semi circles until I discover where you came from, where you crossed the borders carved into mud like smears of blood on paper boats. iv.

Threads of a loom tangle like the bird’s-eye view of every place I’ve been, every broken duty to rummage through these swaying paintings dipped in memoirs.

You are a capsule sunk deep and melded with land, the sweet steel. Perhaps to know myself is to devour sustenance, the reasons why my empty feet have brought me precisely right here. I reel in lifelines with nothing attached as I fish for history, for imprints of you, traces of me. In this way, perhaps I will never know myself. So instead I cleave to the rest, marvel at the crevices, the wrinkled persimmons dripping sweat with the consequence of a life, kiss every one of them like ribs that never touch.

1

yuanbao = a type of currency used in ancient China

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Haibun for my birthplace across the river When reaching for the other ocean, we slipped under cellophane skyscrapers. I draped myself in moonlit crumbs of the bronze goddess’s presence. The D Train: how we sailed away to the mountains, so far that we could taste the sea. Here, a shared existence gilded in two tangled continents. I have watched the old man tumble into existence, here. I once grew shorelines with the smoke on the curves of my jaw, rumbling seawater in my belly of marbles. When we craved the velocity of that steel convoy, you were sculpted from our bitter skins. * We stood there like ships ready for the tide, constricted distance into this gash of dregs. We sang from our apartment buildings, intertwined like the trembling sea. I still dream of these songs. Ink in my RNA, the spiraled tattoo—within this pocket of a land, this country within the city that was never ours. Here, your scent wafted over slim streets and I gouged sticky rice, filled my stomach with the steam. Your shimmering glass boat, running down the rim of the Hudson. It was here when the storekeeper smiled as I wandered. The city floods again, she said to me, squinting into the whites of my eyes. You are lost, I think. Will you come to the riverbank with me? But I only walked past, stood there in the formlessness. Soon there was the rain—scrubbing me away, daring like the girl I would have been. Perhaps if I had stayed. * Where do I go when I can no longer feel you near my body? Farther out, there was a boat sleeping on the glistening river. Farther out, stars and the gravity of drought. The tide dragged me through dirt. You, still humming with the aftertaste of our toned vowels. I can still hear it.

Someday I think I’ll become a body in the crest of your mountainsside. This body of yours, her voice echoes from the shore. But I can’t remember who she is. Look. When was the last time you felt so ceaseless? River melting on my feet. I was gone before I realized how to love. And now, still I touch our glass bubble as the girl who never lost. Who forever carries a tattoo on her back.

The girl who still kisses the rich smoke across an impossible bridge of steel. So far away that I could still miss you if I could.

Descending through rain Glass names burning with cadence Lips slick with our scent

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Alize Perez

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Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

Dear Diary Drawing: Digital / digital collage, lace, notebook paper, stickers, wire, dyed stuffing, glitter, organza, magazine cutout 2021

Sohum Phadke

Photography Homestead Senior High School Cupertino, CA

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Losing our Son Digital 2021

Felicity Phelan

Play or Script Harvard-Westlake School Studio City, CA

Men of Letters A Play in One Act

Cast of Characters Galileo: Astronomer, nearing seventy. Earnest and highly intelligent, though being held prisoner for the past few months has introducedsome gloom and harshness to his personality.

The Father: Priest, fifties. A mentor and philosopher at his core, as well as an overall pleasant and jovial person.

Scene Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, Rome.

Time Summer of 1633, the last day of Galileo’s trial.

ACT I Scene 1 SETTING: The cell beneath the Palace of the Inquisition is made of rough-hewn stone. There is a brass chamber pot in one corner and a Bible on the floor near the center of the room.

AT RISE: GALILEO shivers on the floor against the far wall, his ragged blanket providing little protection from the cold.

FATHER

(From offstage comes the heavy clank of a metal door.

THE FATHER steps into the cell, carrying a basket.

GALILEO does not look up.) (approaching) Not hungry, Galileo?

(GALILEO sits up, groggy and confused.)

GALILEO FATHER GALILEO

They usually just bring the food and leave.

Today’s your lucky day then, isn’t it? (snorts) That’s an interesting synonym for last.

(THE FATHER pulls a round half loaf of bread from the basket and offers it to GALILEO.)

FATHER

Forget about the trial for a moment. Break bread with me.

GALILEO

Forget about the trial, he says. (catching himself; taking the bread; then, meekly) Forgive me, I forget myself. Thank you, Father. For the food and for the company.

FATHER

Of course! Let it never be said that the Inquisition was inhospitable.

(GALILEO looks to see if he is joking. THE FATHER produces the other half loaf from his basket, then takes a seat.)

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FATHER

I was there for all the arguments, you know. I’m sure I was just another face in the balcony to you, but I was there.

GALILEO How’d I do?

(after a pause)

FATHER

Admirably. You defended yourself with sincerity and conviction without being patronizing or snide -- which, with an intellect like yours, I’m sure you could have been. I wasn’t converted to a heliocentrist, but I was certainly impressed.

GALILEO FATHER

But you’re not the one making the decision, are you?

Well, you know what the priestly answer to that is.

(GALILEO shakes his head. THE FATHER leans in conspiratorially and points a finger skyward.)

FATHER GALILEO FATHER GALILEO time?

There’s only one decision that matters.

Any read on what that decision is?

Are you asking me to make the Lord’s call for Him, Galileo?

Father, if I’m gonna burn in damnation, can you at least tell me ahead of (Pause. THE FATHER sighs.)

FATHER

Why not burden ourselves with a friendlier topic? You used to be a professor, no?

GALILEO

Yeah. University of Pisa, then moved to Padua. Went on sabbatical to Florence in the nineties. Mathematics, physics, astronomy. Kids were incredibly sharp. Figured out problems before I did, sometimes. I loved it. (dawning realization) I’m never gonna do it again.

FATHER

Why so dour? And so prematurely! The trial’s still got another day, Galileo.

You don’t know they’re going to kill you. Unless you’re a psychic in addition to a heretic.

GALILEO

We both know they’re going to kill me. And even if I’m not dead or rotting in a dungeon somewhere, no university will hire a lecturer with four months of prison time and a brand on his forehead. I’d be lucky if the Archbishop of Siena lets me squat in his basement.

FATHER

I hear the Cathedral in Siena has a lovely basement.

(GALILEO does not laugh. There is a silence.)

FATHER GALILEO

You’re a smart man, Galileo.

And yet I’m in a cell while a dozen idiots stumble into the Venice canals every week.

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FATHER

That’s exactly what I’m saying. You had to have known when you made your discovery -- or, when the Devil enticed you into your delusion, I suppose they’d have me say -- you had to have known that the Church wouldn’t like it. That no one would like it. Why didn’t you just...keep your mouth shut?

GALILEO

If a scholar of Hebrew discovered a translation error in Leviticus, wouldn’t His Holiness want to know?

FATHER

Sure, but you’re not talking about Moses saying thee instead of thou.

You’re talking about the fundamental make-up of the universe. You’re saying some numbers you added and a picture you saw in a spyglass allow you to know more than God. I mean, that sounds like the hubris of man if I’ve ever seen it.

GALILEO

Well, it’s as you say, Father. It’s a big declaration. It’s not the kind of chance you take unless you’re absolutely sure of it. And I was sure of it. Am. And certainly after day five of stale bread and sleeping on the floor you’re kicking yourself for not having just bitten your tongue about it, but it was all right there. Parallax, the moons of Jupiter, phases of Venus. Things I had seen with my own eyes. The earth isn’t the center -- it can’t be. I know it.

(There is silence. THE FATHER nods slowly.)

FATHER

And what if you get to your trial today and you’re standing in front of the Inquisitor, and he says, “Alright, Galileo, I’ve made my decision. We’re going to let you go.

No brand, no basement. We’ll even give you your old job back. And tons of money, too, to say we’re sorry. All you have to do is say that you were wrong. That you misread the data, or your telescope was crooked, or you forgot to carry a one in your calculation. That it isn’t true, and the sun isn’t the center of the universe, and that you don’t know.” (beat) What would you do then?

GALILEO I don’t know.

FATHER

(bleakly, after thinking)

Well, perhaps we’ll find out soon enough.

(There is a pause.)

GALILEO FATHER

I was going to be a priest when I was younger.

That would have saved us a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?

GALILEO

I ended up studying medicine instead. But I was still a devout man, and I often wondered if I wouldn’t have been happier in the clergy. And then I had a daughter. Virginia. And when I held her for the first time, I realized it was something I couldn’t stand to miss. So science was the right choice. (beat) Even if it ends with my head in a basket.

(THE FATHER chuckles.)

GALILEO FATHER

Oh, indeed, thank you. Quite the risible image.

No, it’s -- I’ve often thought that I have the mind and proclivities of a scientist. That it’s what I’d be doing if I weren’t in the priesthood. Nothing as blasphemous as you, of course. But maybe taxonomy. Something with insects. (another chuckle) Imagine that. You taking confessions and carting food to prisoners, and me dropping stones off the Tower of Pisa.

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(GALILEO laughs slightly. The two men sit in comfortable silence.)

FATHER

I can’t give you last rites until you’re actually sentenced to execution, but are there any lingering doubts or wonders a theologian can assist with?

(GALILEO seems to weigh something in his head before speaking.)

GALILEO

Do you want to see something?

(THE FATHER gives a hum of assent. GALILEO rises, walks to the edge of the room and, standing on his tiptoes, reaches up and prys a loose stone from a hole in the ceiling. The morning sun beams in. THE FATHER rises to his feet.)

FATHER

That is something. (moving to get a closer look) Did you find this? Or dig it yourself? And when?

GALILEO

The former. About a month into the trial. It broke off one night; woke me up while I was sleeping. And I just...didn’t tell anyone.

FATHER

And why would you?

(THE FATHER stands directly under the hole, looking up and around at it, then turns to face GALILEO. Something’s not clicking.)

FATHER GALILEO

FATHER

You could’ve fit through there. If you starved yourself.

Maybe. But then what? Be a fugitive? Flee to Holland? Never publish again? (beat) Leave my children wondering what became of me? (beat, shorter) No. Better to face things here and now.

What was it for, then? If not escape.

(GALILEO shrugs, then moves to stand in the light. THE FATHER moves to give him space but does not step out completely.)

GALILEO

(looking up) At night, I would sleep with it over my head and look out at the sky. At its vastness. I would think about how even if they killed me, even if they killed everyone I taught or worked with, and even if they burned the notes and graphs and treatises, the stars wouldn’t change. And that someone -- maybe years or decades or centuries from now -- that someone could come along and see the same things I had seen, right in front of them.

(GALILEO is still looking up. THE FATHER is looking at him.

From offstage, the same direction as the door, a voice is heard. Both men give a start.)

VOICE

The sentencing commences, Father.

(GALILEO’s face falls. He begins to walk towards the door.)

FATHER

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Ask the Inquisitor to hold one minute, please.

(GALILEO freezes, turns around.)

VOICE

Yes, Father.

FATHER

(stepping away from the light and gathering his basket) Galileo, are you familiar with the Church’s ongoing debate over the Greek philosophers? The virtuous pagans?

GALILEO

I am not.

FATHER

It concerns the classical philosophers. You know -- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Great men, inarguably. Astounding contributions to politics, morality, humanity. And yet they predate Christ. They were, by necessity, non-Christians. (beat) Naturally, as nonbelievers, these men can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But it doesn’t sit well with us to have them burning alongside thieves and murderers, does it? (beat) So some within the Church have proposed this idea of “limbo.” It’s not Hell; it’s not torture. It’s the best we can give them. (beat) Of course, there’s not actually any mention of this “limbo” in -(GALILEO picks the book off the floor and hands it to THE FATHER as he nears.)

FATHER

-- in the Bible, so one man’s guess is as good as any other’s. Perhaps they are in Heaven. Again, it’s -(the same skyward point from the beginning of the conversation) -- not my call.

(GALILEO and THE FATHER face each other.)

FATHER

All this to say, Galileo, they’re somewhere. And if you walk down the hall to your sentencing and it is the axe that awaits you, just remember that you could end up in the same “somewhere.” I hope you get to meet Aristotle. You can spit in his face and tell him he’s wrong about how the universe works. (beat) Though for what little it’s worth, I pray you get that opportunity years down the line, and not today.

GALILEO

(bowing his head slightly) God bless you, Father.

(GALILEO turns and exits. The door slams. THE FATHER stands for a moment, gazing towards the door, then turns and walks back over to the light. He looks up.)

FATHER (BLACKOUT) (END OF ACT)

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And you.

Deeya Prakash

Creative Nonfiction Sycamore High School Cincinnati, OH

Wings of Womanhood My feet were bare the day my father hit me.

I was seven years old, the rush of youth coloring my cheeks as I ran around the dining hall, my skirt flapping behind me. My mother gave me a stern look as she saw it fly up, as my Dora the Explorer underwear made an appearance at the oh-so-important wedding of her boss. I giggled, my black Mary Janes tossed to the side, buckles undone and gleaming in the chandelier’s glow. I loved weddings in grand ballrooms. I had plenty of room to fly.

The boys were running. I wanted to chase them. I was faster. So I kept going, fingertips buoyed by the paprika in the air and the longing stares of the girls in the crowd, the boys coming closer and closer and closer until I grabbed one by the collar and we both tumbled to the floor.

This was my first mistake.

There is a scar on my chin from that day, and as I fought back tears in a heap on the ground, the boy that I was chasing wailed for his mother like a little girl. I licked my finger to staunch the bleeding on my face and skipped toward my father, his eyes widened in shock. The crease in his brow got closer and closer as my toes carried me into his gaping expression.

“You’re breaking the rules,” it told me.

Mistake number two came when I was sitting on the plush sofas in the hotel lounge, my coat bound tightly across my shoulders as the frost from outside crept underneath the doors of the lobby and clawed its way up my spine. My legs dangled off the cushions, as my mother shoved the shoes onto my squirming toes, panic and shame coursing through my veins and refusing to let me sit still. My father had gone to get the car, and the ghosts of his footprints littered the floor as I watched him leave through the revolving door. The strands of my mother’s hair had been curled that evening, and they bounced like the beating of my heart as she fiddled and shoved until the clasps were snapped onto my feet. She spared me a mildly irritated glance as she rose from her position and I adjusted my legs.

“Sit properly,” my mother muttered, her plastered smile peeling at the sides. I glanced down at my legs. Huh? I slid farther down on the sofa. She scowled.

“Properly. No manspreading,” she seethed, swatting at my legs. I frowned. My father had arrived by now. I heard his horn honk distinctly through the glass door.

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting back up. My legs were dangling again, and I glanced down at skinny legs over squirming toes tucked neatly into the inky leather of my shoes, distracted by their shine.

My father strutted back through the door, spying the groom in the corner. My eyes followed him across the lobby as he tousled the groom’s hair and wrapped him in an embrace, his hearty laugh echoing across the room as my mother once again urged me.

“Deeya, sit like a girl,” she whisper-screamed, the sound harsh yet volume low. She said it as if I knew exactly what she was talking about, as if this was a skill that I had mastered since birth.

And yet, I did nothing.

How do you sit like a girl?

I thought about putting my hands in my lap, fanning my skirt out in a halo around me. Maybe I had to bend my knees a little, like the curtsies the Disney princesses did. Or maybe I had to tuck my legs underneath me so it didn’t look like I had legs at all.

Like a mermaid.

But none of those options seemed right.

My father had come near me now, and I watched him fold his arms, viewing the scene playing out in front of him. His face was a stone, his eyes opaque. I looked up at him in a plea for help,

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ready for him to grab my hand and lead me to the car. Instead, I was met with a lightning bolt to the face, a strike across my cheek so hard I felt the vibrations down to my toes.

I felt myself unconsciously cross my leg over the other, shiny shoes scraping my skin.

I forgot to cry out, and my eyes swam with shame and shock as I searched his face for an apology. He had hit me, and my mother had taught me that you never hit someone. And if you do, you have to apologize. Instantly. At least that’s what the rules say.

I was met with a cold stare as he snapped his fingers. I was on my feet, and then we were leaving.

“We. Have. Rules.” he managed through clenched teeth.

That’s what I thought, too.

No more words were exchanged as we rode home, my pride stinging as I cradled my face in my hands.

I remember licking my finger and scrubbing at the crusted blood on my chin, droplets beading and dripping on my shoes. They no longer shined.

I outgrew those shoes next month.

I became a girl four years later.

By eleven years old, I had constructed the foundation of what it meant to be female, forcing myself into tighter shoes with dull straps and cloudy surfaces.

By eleven years old, I began mastering the art of the girl. *** Society knocked on our door that night and quietly slipped a package on our porch, running away before the light touched its face. My parents sliced open the box, unfolding the scroll that lay inside.

“How to be a girl,” it read.

A never-ending list of rules scrawled in pristine handwriting lay open in their hands, and I watched from my spot behind their door frame, hidden in the shadows as the list illuminated their faces.

My family loved rules.

I knew then that they were going to make me trace the regulations with my finger until it was rubbed raw, until the ink had stained it black as the rules kept going. Down, down, down.

I was studying the rules one day, my hair cascading around me in swirly loops and blocking some of the words. I debated brushing them away, wary of what the next rule would read. Was it as absurd as the one before it, telling me to repaint my nails every three weeks, lest they look shabby?

I kind of liked chipped nail polish.

My thoughts were interrupted by a rustle, and my eyes flitted to my father, his cheeks pink from the cold. My parents had just returned from the mall, and I watched him fish out a bright blue box from a large shopping bag, the receipt falling to the floor in the process. Inside, lay two gray sneakers, a half-size too small.

The day before middle school, I finished every rule. My mother let me wear my new shoes for the first time. They were snug.

My parents watched me leave proudly. They had done it.

They had followed the rules; I had disappeared. Gone were the days of chasing boys in wedding halls and Mary Janes in hotel lobbies.

Gone were the days of real smiles, real laughs. Of innocence in the form of honey. Of sweet, sweet bliss. *** I walked into middle school with a vat of knowledge so vast that it threatened to spill over. I stepped into history class and greeted the teacher. I recited the rules in my head as I walked, the smell of new footwear wafting up to my nose.

Number 1: Smile.

I smiled as he smiled back, gaze lingering on my face before quickly looking back at his papers. I slid into my desk.

Number 2: Accept anything from another person with a smile, pointed downwards at the ground. Smiles in the face are too bright.

I accepted the notebooks he gave me later meekly, eyes down. But still smiling. His fingertips brushed my shoulder as he moved past me, and I smiled once more. My hands threatened to swat at his fingers. I sat on them so they wouldn’t fly away.

Number 3: Don’t smile too calmly, though. Show your happiness clearly.

He made a joke. I laughed. Flashed another smile. His grin widened as he swallowed my validation of his humor, and I laughed once more, fueling his fire.

Number 4: Smile frequently. A girl’s face is too precious to be seen in any other way.

I was nervous. It was the first day of middle school. But I smiled for forty-eight minutes until the bell indicated that it was time to restart. My teacher gave me a high five on the way out. His hands were scratchy. I smiled once again.

The gray shoes tore the summer before freshman year.

My parents bought me a new pair, this one black with blue lines etched into the surface. I tried them on. I could barely feel my toes.

I sat in the bustling cafeteria as the rules came back to my mind, the staring eyes absurdly obvious as I crept past the tables and sat hastily next to my friends.

Number 26. Cross your legs when you sit. You don’t want someone to get ideas.

I felt my legs cross under the table, feet numb. I accidentally jostled a friend’s lunchbox, and it fell as her Goldfish spilled on the floor. The whole cafeteria was looking at me, some doing more looking than others.

Number 27. Wear modest yet feminine clothing. You don’t want someone to get ideas.

I tugged at my cardigan, letting it slide over my t-shirt.

I pulled it so tightly that it cinched at my waist. I tried not to suffocate. Some of the gazes dropped, others staying until I swiveled my body to the side. It was getting easier to breathe now, but I let my cardigan stay taut.

Number 28. Wear enough makeup to look attractive, but not too much. You don’t want someone to get ideas.

My shaking palms moved to my face as I contemplated the color I had splashed on in a rush this morning. Was it enough? Was it more than enough? I heard the rules making snide remarks in my mind, and I tried not to crumble underneath them.

You don’t want someone to get ideas. *** By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I didn’t even need the rules. I knew how to be a girl with an undying certainty.

My feet had lost all feeling as my shoes stayed on, taking me to the gym, to the pool, to the courtroom. The annual mock trial tournament had been a success, and my shoes carried me to the bus as I held the trophy firmly in my frozen hands.

My advisor pulled me aside before I could enter.

“You were a little harsh in there today. Maybe tone it down?” he asked too loudly, eyes glaring at me over his spectacles.

“Harsh?” I asked. “Isn’t that how a lawyer is supposed to act?” I asked politely, my breath puffing in front of me. He shook his head slowly, as if this was a common fact that everyone knew.

As if I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Just try not to be too much in there. You can’t overpower everyone else,” he boomed, pointing at my teammate. Josh turned around and grinned at me, pretending to hoist an imaginary trophy as he ran toward us, the afternoon sun shining off his freshly ironed suit. My teammate.

I nodded and apologized to my advisor, handing Josh the trophy.

For that’s what the rules say to do.

We will apologize to you profusely even when we have done nothing wrong, tucking a strand of our hair behind our heads and bowing them subconsciously to appeal to your superiority complex. No, we do not realize we are doing it, and if you are decent enough to insist that we stop apologizing so much, we will

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apologize for our over-apologizing, so please, do not bother. Allow us to repent our sins.

We will agree with you over and over even if your views are blurry, nod our heads until our necks threaten to snap under the weight of false presumption. We gasp in just the right places and click our tongues as you recount your stories until you fall asleep and we are privileged enough to have our own opinions, until the sanctuary of our dreams allows us to knock on their doors and be welcomed with open arms.

Please, don’t worry. We are easy targets. We are helpless and timid and unimposing and calm. Allow yourself to yell at us in public and shame us for something we have absolutely nothing to do with. We can take it, and at the end of the day, we probably deserved it.

We will still smile, still laugh. You will break us and yet we will remain upright.

We are glass dolls, accustomed to picking up sharp pieces from the floor and reassembling ourselves time and time again. *** It is junior year, and I am arguing with somebody over basic rights in America. He is screaming something about political rights.

I am politely stating something about human rights. He still does not understand, painting false pictures with his slanderous words of liberty and freedom when he is the only one of us who has ever experienced those two precious terms. My voice is drowned out by his shouting, and I raise my voice in hopes to be heard.

My argument is strong. I am correct. I want to scream.

But I remember I am a girl. I feel the tug of my shoes, the pull of the rules trying to take me under.

I bite my tongue as he speaks over me. But I know he is wrong.

My shoes are too tight now. It hurts.

I briefly consider the idea of taking them off.

Of course, I had entertained the idea before. But the thought of erasing a part of my identity I had so furiously carved into my persona seemed appalling to me. Frightening, even. For who would I be if I wasn’t a girl?

As if on cue, I hear something snap. I look down, and the laces have come undone, the shoes hanging limply open as blood rushes to my feet.

I am free.

I forget to smile. I forget to breathe. I scream at someone for the first time in my life, and meet the horror in his face with a flaming stare and molten eyes. Inside, I am panicking. Rules are crumbling around me as the scar on my chin throbs with warning and disappointment.

The flavor of broken rules stings my tongue.

I recall the back of the list, a rule scribbled nonchalantly and tucked in the corner, meant for the eyes of the curious and the minds of the yearning.

Number 2,000,000: Become a woman.

There are no further instructions, and for a large part of my life, I had no idea what to do with it.

It is now that I understand that I have to make my own rules. Three simple words, scrawled on a light pink post-it and tucked into my daily planner.

Number 1: Run Number 2: Chase Number 3: Fly I pull the shoes off me and burn them.

Freedom? I want to ask.

I hear my own voice for the first time, a soft murmur above the din of the world.

Freedom, I say.

The boy I am arguing with is forgotten as I spread my wings.

I will no longer smile for you. I will no longer cover up. I will no longer apologize. I will no longer hear you out, agree with you, or take your blame.

Up, up, up I go. I will run, chase, and fly.

I am a woman now. I will not yell to be heard—I will whisper, and if you need to move closer to hear me, then so be it.

I will display my opinions freely and openly, and you will agree or disagree with me and I will not care. I will chase you, and you will not outrun me. I am faster.

And I will sit any damn way I want to.

I admire my scar in the mirror as I look at myself. Truly look. And when I tilt my head just the right way, I can almost see my seven-year-old self staring back at me, eyes full of wonder and unmolded perfection. She doesn’t recognize me, but I recognize her.

My hands are limp at my sides. I lift them tentatively, curling my aching fingertips. I can feel the lingering paprika that stained them so long ago, the gazes of hundreds of girls branded in memory.

I wave, fingers stiff yet strong. She waves back. We don’t smile.

My bare feet lead me to the skies.

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Isabella Pla

Design Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

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Upcycled Denim Jacket details Denim Jacket, two pairs of jeans and wire 2020

Michelle Qiao

Short Story Leland High San Jose, CA

Gloria N’se names her doll Gloria for her long, black, glorious hair.

She had seen the name in one of her picture books. She wishes she had hair like her doll, which looks like her mother, Nü’ren, whose belly has been ballooning bigger and bigger until N’se can lay beside her to trace a finger along pale blue veins.

Her doll has a pocket sewn in her stomach in which to pour more and more rice until it looks like she has her own little baby too. N’se pats her mother’s real baby and then gently cradles Gloria’s baby of rice. Sometimes, she takes a pillow, puts it under her dress, and peers into the mirror, laughing. How silly she looks, she thinks to herself. When she shows her mother, Nü’ren pulls the pillow out and tells her that she mustn’t be in such a hurry to finish her name.

Nü means woman. N’se is incomplete. The ü is added after she has her first child. Then, N’se will become Nü’se.

Even the name N’se feels foreign between her teeth, for not long ago, she had been called Se and only Se. She had seen the pictures, and the diagrams, of course – nothing was more important in a young child’s education. But this was different from the pictures and the diagrams. The described pain was sharper, the described smell more acidic, the described blood much deeper and more forceful in color.

N’se had come to her on a school trip. Their class had gone to the rural farmland East of the city to help work in the fields.

This was to help them remain connected to the idea of class unity, the idea of being one with the proletariat. Se brought Gloria.

Gloria’s belly was met with a chorus of oo’s and aah’s, and Se was proud of her mother and her doll. On the train, Se had followed the grain fields into the distance with her eyes, thinking of the way each kernel would be split from its stem, harvested into the hollows of thick rusted silos, the remaining plant now worthless to the farmers, who would rip them from their roots in the gray soil and leave the hills a graveyard until the next lunar year began in February, liangyüiven.

Se was acutely aware of the presence of Gōng’bo, who sat a row behind her across the aisle, thumb wrestling with the boy beside him, making wild bets and asserting that the other would lose. She appreciated the way his nose hooked up at the end, and how his eyebrows were perpetually creased in laughter. Beside her sat Qi – now also N’Qi – who was a girl easily frightened but whom Se nevertheless liked.

At the station, Gōng’bo handed Se her bag from the luggage carrier, smiled at her, then ran away.

They would sleep in an old building of wood and concrete half a mile from a field of pear trees, helping to pick them under the supervision of a farmer. During the day, the alcoholic fumes of rotting pith and flesh attracted a troop of juvenile macaque monkeys, all male, who inhaled them and screeched drunkenly, throwing handfuls of the stuff at each other and into the air. They defecated where they pleased, and a misplaced footfall sent a streak of mud-like feces onto Se’s white socks. She sighed, and leaning on Qi’s shoulder, shook off her shoe and began climbing the steel ladder to the top of the tree.

It was here that she felt the foreign presence of something trickling down her left leg. Frowning, she scratched her calf, flinging a drop of red onto Qi’s hand, who was steadying the ladder from below. Qi screamed.

N’se had rushed down and asked to go to the bathroom.

The farmer told her to wait. Leaving before time was called was disrespectful. She began to cry, and peeved, he told her to hold out her palm, slapping it quickly with a ruler ten times.

N’se clung to Qi’s arm until they returned to camp, where their female teacher petted her head and gave her a thick cotton cloth to soak up the blood. She was told to wash it every eight

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hours, wring it out, and put it back on. Huddled in their shared sleeping bag, N’se was doubled over, curled up like a baby. Many of the girls in their class had already gotten it. Qi asked her what it felt like.

“I don’t know.”

“Does it really hurt?”

“Yes.” “Is it really that bad?”

“My head hurts, and my back hurts too.”

The whites of Qi’s eyes seemed to expand in the dark.

“They said it wouldn’t be so bad. With pain medication, it won’t be so bad, will it?”

The bag was becoming damp with sweat. N’se did not reply.

In the morning, Gōng’bo rushed into their tent with his usual teasing games. The smell stopped him. He frowned, held his nose, and made a retching movement. His eyebrows lost their laughter. N’se withered and tried to hide her face in her hair.

In the meal room at lunch, her teacher rapped on the table with her knuckles to call everyone to attention.

“Se will not be returning for the semester. Welcome our new classmate, N’se. From now on, you will address her as such.”

Heads turned to face her.

“N’se, please stand.”

N’se obeyed. The teacher clapped. Everyone else clapped with her. Afterward, she was given a small piece of vanilla cake and a marker to relabel her name on all her things. Her teacher told her to leave a space between the N and the apostrophe for the ü that would come later. For a moment, she was happy. But the pain in her abdomen made her wonder if there was anything in this world to be happy about, made her think of her humiliation at the farmer’s spanking, at the expression of pure disgust on Gōng’bo’s face.

She hid these thoughts and thanked her teacher. When she returned home to her mother Nü’ren, she began to cry.

Nü’ren already did not have much room on her lap, so she held her child to her side. N’se pushed her forehead against her mother’s armpit, and her mother let her stay there for a very long time, after which they washed the cotton cloth and replaced it with a clean one.

“My name was once Re. Re as in Ablaze.”

N’se had not thought of her mother as once being a little girl.

“Why is your name Nü’ren and not Nü’re then?”

“That is something you will find out when it is time for me to die.”

N’se had not thought of her mother as a person who would one day die. Nü’ren seemed to sense this and closed her eyes.

“Do not worry, my child, it is natural. All of this is what nature intended. And what really can we do to change nature?”

N’se asked her mother about the pills that would stop the bleeding until she would need it, but her mother quickly shook her head, saying that she knew of a childhood friend who had taken those pills and was never able to finish her name. N’se looks at the blank space now written on the bottom right corner of all her folders and books and shudders. They did not tell her father of any of this, and when he caught a glimpse of blood in the toilet, N’se was embarrassed and glad he did not ask.

This was the first time of what would be many of its kind.

That is to say, the presence of the cotton cloth became a monthly ritual. Now, the pain was a fact of life.

On xinkielö, the sixth day of the week, N’se rides a great steel ferry across the misted waterfront to her tutoring class. The waters are a deep salted yellow, and, pushed up against the metal railing by the sharp crowd behind her, she can make out currents of silt colliding with the rusted hull. The men on the boat stand with their shoulders tucked into their chests, heads bent, clothes

awkwardly loose on their thin bodies. N’se wonders how so many fields of grain are still not enough. Her father would have answered her question in a single word, imperialism. When these men feel the need, they urinate from the side of the boat. Everyone coughs and spits. N’se follows suit, reaching deep in her throat, forcing up a mouthful, spitting the sick into the water. She pulls her bag closer to her back, taking comfort in feeling the edge of her textbooks cut into her spine. Her father would have said, yes, we are all equal, but equal in what? We are still equally hungry, equally suffering. Her mother would have laughed at him.

These thoughts would not be allowed at school or any extracurricular or supplementary learning activities. At school, N’se dutifully completes problems in geometry and advanced chemistry. She is taught the biology of the human body and instructed on the political perfection achieved by the new government and the faults of the imperial dynasties that came before it.

In a school district of nearly four hundred thousand students, zero point two percent are permitted to enter university.

Her parents had been part of that two percent, in the marginal amount of class mobility the new revolutionary society allowed.

They had given N’se a home larger by five square meters and enough money to buy a bicycle for her to ride to school. Her classmates’ families slept and worked and ate in a room that could only hold a twin bed and took the bus. N’se knew that her parents had paid in their youth to provide for her these comforts.

After marriage and pregnancy, women are given a choice: to continue to work, at equal hours and equal pay with men, or become a stay-at-home mother and receive a state pension.

Nü’ren’s mother advised her to leave her work.

“It was never truly equal. Your father gets the same pay as I do. What about the three meals a day on the table? What about feeding you from my own breast, the months of unpaid leave, the state of weakness my body was in after your birth? How can we compete? No. I have been strict on your studies not so that you can have a well-paying job. Right now, the best job you can get, even if you sell your heart and liver to the spirit devils in the hills, is in a factory. I have been strict on your studies so that you can find a husband with a job. My dear, do not be so demanding of yourself. Rest at home.”

And so Nü’ren chose the latter, and her thoughts festered within the confines of the four walls of their one-room home, day and night, day and night. Once, when N’se had come to her with a question on her calculus work, and her mother had ripped it from her hands in a fit and thrown it in the garbage bin by the sink, telling her that the heavenly emperor had already determined it was her fate to rot in hell, telling her there was no use trying to escape.

N’se knew how to act when her mother had fits like these.

She would become very quiet and small and slowly pet her arm.

That night, she stole from the bed like a mouse and took out the pages by their edges, and finished the problems squatting outside by the light of the streetlamp.

Trips to the hospital increase in frequency. N’se sits Gloria on the same table as her mother and mirrors the doctor’s movements, prodding here and there. When the doctor presses her mother’s skin with a steel tool, N’se slips a cotton swab from the shelf and pokes Gloria in the same way.

As her mother becomes fatter and fatter, N’se notices her own body becoming thinner. She feels a hollowness between her ribs more often than before. She understands that her country does not own part of its land, which is given for European occupation. Her school, on the curve of the Bund, lies in this occupied district. So, when her teacher announces a white woman would be visiting, N’se felt glad at the prospect, hoping that this woman would bring food.

The young, pale woman told the roomful of children she was on a mission to fulfill the white man’s burden.

“A burden to do what?” voices chime in.

“To save your souls.”

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“Save our souls from what?”

“Sin.” “How are you going to do that?”

“By guiding you into the loving arms of God and salvation.”

When a boy informs her that they pray to their own gods, the woman bursts into tears and embraces him, saying that the truth, the real truth, would be revealed to them soon; she said that because of their poor condition, this truth had been stolen from them as infants. The class takes turns introducing themselves.

When N’se comes up to the front of the line, she takes the time to explain to her the custom of their names, hoping that this woman will take a liking to her courtesy. She informs the woman that her name is N’se, but will soon be complete as Nü’se when she becomes pregnant. The woman is horrified and again begins to weep. She takes N’se by the shoulders and tells her that no girl should feel incomplete without bearing a child. She vows to address her as Nü’se and nothing lesser.

The white woman says Nü’se like noose. N’se asks what a noose is and the woman looks at her with her eyes wide and does not answer. When she flips through her copy of the English dictionary, she finds the definition.

A loop with a running knot, tightening as the rope is pulled and typically used to trap beasts and hang people.

Her lips open in alarm. No, this would not do. She would refuse. She would not be called an instrument of death, no, that would bring bad luck. When she complains to her family, her mother tells her to remain cool and unbothered. Nü’ren begins to say something more but does not have time to finish her lecture as her mother’s body is overcome with a wave of nausea and she hobbles away to heave up torrents of yellow vomit into the toilet. When she returns, she has taken a piece of rope from the cabinet under the bathroom sink. She quietly shows N’se how to tie a noose, how it lies harmless and slack without pressure. N’se recoils at the sight of this loop held tightly in her mother’s hands.

Her father frowns and pulls it loose.

N’se brushes away her mother’s words of restraint and during lunch period the next day, she confronts the woman, whose name she has learned is Mrs. Stephanie.

“Nü’se, my dear.”

“My name is N’se.”

Mrs. Stephanie bends down and pulls her in, knuckles gripped tightly on her shoulders.

“Poor child, soon, all will be made clear in the name of the Lord.”

“What is the Lord?”

“He will give you the passage to eternal life in heaven.”

N’se recoils.

“When I die, I will become three separate souls, one will go to the grave, one will go to the Ten Courts of Judgement to be reborn, and one will remain with my family. And the Buddha will watch over them.”

“Nü’se, these are the Devil’s tales.”

“Which devil?”

“There is only one devil.”

N’se looks down before opening her mouth.

“My mother says differently.”

Mrs. Stephanie tightens her hold.

“Your mother is having a baby, yes?”

N’se nods. She glances through the door.

“You need to go home and convince them to follow God’s word.”

“Why?” “Aren’t you afraid? If the birth goes badly, they will go to hell.”

N’se pauses. She had known that her mother would one day die but she had not thought of the suffering that comes after.

“You, my dear, can help them. You can save them, Nü’se.”

“Miss Stephanie, I do not like it when you call me a noose.”

“Missus Stephanie,” the woman corrects.

“Missus Stephanie, please do not call me a noose.”

N’se clutches her doll tightly behind her back. Mrs. Stephanie notices.

“Nü’se, is that your doll? Give her to me.”

N’se gives the woman her doll.

“What is her name?”

“Her name is Gloria. I saw it in a book, once.”

Mrs. Stephanie hands N’se back her doll.

“When class begins, I have something wonderful to show you and your class, Nü’se.”

When N’se returns to the classroom at the bell, she finds books placed on every other desk. The class weakly falls into place.

Mrs. Stephanie informs them that these are hymn books and that they would be singing The Gloria. Her eyes glow. In a clean, clear voice, she begins to sing.

We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you, we give you thanks for your great glory, Lord God, heavenly King, O God, almighty Father.

Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer; you are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.

In the days that follow, N’se wonders why there are so many hymns for the father until she learns that the Father is God. Mrs. Stephanie extends the invitation of baptism at the end of the week. N’se thinks long and hard about the subject of rebirth. If she told Mrs. Stephanie she would go through with it, the Buddha Rulai Fo would surely be displeased. If she did not, the Christian God would be angry. She was afraid of choosing wrongly.

She was afraid to tell her mother. She was afraid to not tell her mother. There seemed to be an eternity of suffering or pleasure for not only her own soul but for the very souls of her family at stake.

Her mother again tells her to ignore this woman. N’se does not know if she can trust her mother anymore, who has become more and more distracted as the days pass. On her worst days, she had gotten up, tied a noose in her sleep, a habit for which the doctors gave her a series of little white pills that made her expressionless and numb.

But before N’se could decide whether or not to be reborn, the day of birth of her brother comes.

In the hospital, as her father is three floors down calmly penciling deeper into registration letters, her mother is stuck full of needles. N’se watches as the doctor makes a note on her mother’s medical chart and places it on the countertop, which sits on a raised platform. She attempts to peer over but cannot reach. She asks her mother to tell her what the doctor is writing but Nü’ren gently shakes her head and motions her down into a chair by the door. N’se timidly examines her mother’s drugged expression and falls silent.

The doctor takes Gloria from N’se and demonstrates the procedure. He will perform a cesarean section, he tells her. He flattens Gloria down on a sheet of wax paper. His thick fingers pull the edge of a razor blade across the fabric of her stomach. With the heel of his shoes, he hooks the garbage disposal bin next to the table, flips Gloria over by the leg, and spills her insides out. A few grains of rice remain lodged in her face, raised bumps, ugly blemishes. He turns the doll completely inside out and scrapes these away. When she is empty he folds her back and sews up the cavity that split her open.

When the time comes, N’se is afraid to let go of her mother’s cold hands. A nurse pulls her fingers away and then Nü’ren is wheeled through the doors.

There is no one left in the room. She again notices her mother’s chart in a folder on the doctor’s desk, and curiosity

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overcomes her. She lifts herself onto her tiptoes, steps on the stool, and sits kneeling on the cool countertop.

She recognizes her own name, her birth weight, the eight hours of labor it took to send her lungs into breath marked in darkened bars. There is a faded red approval stamp on the top right corner.

She flips past, then sees a name, Te, from two years past.

This name is slashed away on the eighth week of pregnancy.

Another page over, and the slashes disappear. There is again an approval stamp on the top right corner, this time clear and freshly saturated. Written in the column was the name Gōng’we. Gōng as in male. Gōng as in her new brother.

Her father is still downstairs. N’se wanders into the hall to find her mother to ask about her unborn sister, Te. She asks a nurse where her mother is, who points her into the surgical room, telling her she is brave and good for wanting to watch.

Her mother had been laid on the operating table. A hand pulls a curtain to cover her face, separating her head from her body. The doctor is stripping away her hospital gown to reveal her stomach. He applies a pale cream. Two nurses assist him. In the fluorescent light, N’se can imagine it as a pulsating orb, some deep-sea organism with skin the color of robin’s egg. She glances at the clock above the door.

When N’se looks back, the severing has begun.

She throws her head down and retches in a movement so violent it is as if her heart has emptied between her teeth.

The thirty fingers orbiting her mother’s exposed stomach are burning an incision into her skin with a hot electric knife. Two streaks of blood are flowing out, tracing what would be her pelvic bone down her femurs, two streaks of bright red liquid flushing in streams of red thread. N’se shakes her body back and forth, back and forth. There is something runny and yellow staining her thin blouse, staining her lips, staining Gloria. She clutches the doll close.

She smells her mother’s burning muscle. She looks away but sees the smoke rising to the ceiling. She is suddenly aware that she is inhaling her mother’s flesh and again retches.

Her mother’s belly is not opening. The layers of fat are foaming white, like pads of cotton, stretching under the surgeon’s pliers.

He pulls at the tissue as if he is ripping apart a slab of pork. N’se stops breathing when it becomes horrifyingly clear that the inside of her mother looks like a pair of smiling, laughing lips heaving up a whole, peeled grapefruit, the pith, so similar to that in the orchard, splitting open in chunks. It is at this point that the doctor abandons his tools, hooking each index finger around a lip and pulling at the hole, tearing at the hole, wrenching at the hole, and she wants nothing more than to run to this man killing her mother and make him stop.

Again, N’se retches. The doctor does not turn to look at her.

The nurses laugh.

“Girl, come and watch. It will be good for you.”

So N’se raises her head. The fissure in her mother is now three palms wide. The nurses hold the gap open with wide, plastic hooks. She looks again and sees that the flap of skin has been opened horizontally and that there is something living, alive, moving inside of the sack of fat and sinew. Thirty bluegloved fingers are now pulling up something soft and grey, a thick, rounded mass, slick with blood, a parasite, dug from the flesh of its host. When the doctor throws this mass onto the metal tray with a greased thud, she sees that it is the placenta, slashed from the walls of her mother’s womb. The knife again starts to whir. N’se does not know how there can be so much to cut away in a single person. She looks at Gloria, gutted so easily, and wishes it would be over just as quickly. The blood begins to pool and a thin clear tube drinks thirstily from the basin of skin.

Then, she sees it. The coil of what looks like a white eel. Through this tangle that N’se would later learn to be the umbilical cord she first sees her brother’s small grotesque hand. The flesh of this baby is so bloodless and clay-like that she thinks he is dead, but before she can begin to mourn, there is a sudden bubbling and a struggle for breath.

The operation continues for another twenty-five minutes.

All the layers of her mother’s body are pulled into the open air, slit open. She had ceased to be a face and instead was an amassment of the pinkness of the internal human body. The doctor sutures. He has become a seamstress. He pulls the needle in and out, in and out.

Many hours later, Nü’ren wakes with her head on a clean pillow and her abdomen on a sheet steeped in red and sees her daughter N’se in a pool of sick on the floor, eyes still open, rolled white and to the back of her head.

When they return home, her father rocks Gōng’we on his knees, singing to him, tugging at his cheeks. Her mother sits and watches. When he offers to hand her the baby she refuses. N’se pets her brother’s soft hair and asks her mother about the name she saw slashed away on the papers, her dead sister, Te. Nü’ren grows pale and looks at her son with an expression N’se cannot quite decipher.

“They would not allow her. One girl and one boy for a family.”

When N’se attempts to feed her mother she refuses, then asks her to pull the blinds and leave her in bed. Nü’ren begins to cry in a fit of tears, saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth.

N’se is reminded of the mouth on her mother’s belly and runs to the bathroom to retch. N’se knows how to act when her mother has fits like these. She becomes very quiet and small and slowly pets her arm.

On an afternoon colder than most, three weeks after her brother was born, N’se opens the door and finds Nü’ren hanging by a rope tied to the curtains. Her brother cries in the crib beside her, watching his mother suspended by the neck, watching her hair, so long and dark and beautiful, tremble against her body.

N’se screams, runs to clutch her brother to her chest, and flees down the hall and out of sight.

In the anger that follows, N’se gives Gloria a noose. She takes a thread and ties it around Gloria’s neck. She hangs her like this on the door handle of her mother’s room, and Gloria swings, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. In a sudden shiver of regret, N’se unties the loop and attempts to smooth out the skin of the doll’s face. She is about to run to her mother to ask her to iron out the fabric when the full eternity of what has happened floods in.

N’se weeps through the night. Her panic has not yet subsided when the coroner’s report comes the next morning. Her mother is pronounced dead.

Not long afterward, Nü’ren is placed into her casket and lowered into her grave in the marsh outside of the city. This is her true motherland, with horizons the foreign man has never seen, with foxweeds free from the long arm of empire, with muds that disregard all whispers of restraint.

N’se could not help herself. She had pulled away from her father’s arms, run to the coffin and opened it, a deep animal desire to look upon her mother’s face for a final moment and etch the image deep into her mind. When she sees her mother’s bloated eyelids, her yellowed cheekbones, her exposed teeth, N’se throws the lid down and flees, whimpering in small inhales and wringing her hands until they are raw. She is ashamed to be so afraid.

Her father is now haggard, wanting rain to wash away the mud that now remains uncleaned under his fingernails. As is custom, he asks her to take on the ü in her name, take on her mother’s role.

“This is the only way,” he says.

“But why?”

He cannot give her an answer.

But N’se has already made her decision. Far sooner than she dreamed she ever would, she takes out her books and begins to complete her name before realizing she no longer has any need for them. Now, it is her turn to place them in the garbage bin. She picks up her brother, for whom she now feels more pity than anger.

That night, she decides to open her mother’s letter. Nü’se does not read it until late that night, and when she handles the paper like a dragon’s pearl.

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My child, This is something we do not speak of, something that is not taught in your books for superstitious fears of speaking into reality, something I used to pray would never happen to you while you were still young. They call women who kill themselves after giving birth victims of postpartum depression, but my child, this sadness has been with me much longer. Do not blame yourself.

Do not blame your brother. I do not know whether there will be an afterlife, but I am not worried. I will join your sister, my mother.

When you became N’se, you asked me about my own name. When I die, my name will be stripped to its bare state on my tombstone. Nü’ren will become Re again. Woman will become Ablaze again.

When a daughter’s mother dies, the most burdensome of bonds is broken. A letter of my name is given through death to help you remember. N’se, before you were born, I took months thinking of a name that would be good enough for you. I named you so that one day, when I die, and either you have born a child or taken my role, Se would become N’se would become Nü’se will become Nü’sen.

Nü’se became Nü’sen. Nü’sen, Woman God.

Michelle Qiao

Poetry Leland High San Jose, CA

Magnetism

W

N When we giggle together, the monsoo follows, and the prairie fire bellows. She clutches a murmur in her voice box, tells me spit it out. they put cheese in hwuéndén but won’t eat intestines? It is my covenant to her to never fake a smile, never lie, never leave home after thirty past ten. But w E invented the compass you know, we invented the idea of there and here and where is home, and if you go far enough West you’ll end up East anyway. Hear your lips break movement into crooked tooth, look, peel back my mouth like so, I have faulty incisors, too. Come, my baby. Let me shepherd your palm.

Us wild women, we sing through the twilight, bellow around the fire, stamp our mud-fur feet into the red dust of crumbled bone. Yelp with us, see the light burn ghosts into the walls. Let me cut you a piece, for although you are far, Nüwa made us of the same clay, slaughtered her tortoise to prop up the moon. And when you look under your ribs, see the same stomach that burned through mammoth with acid, see the hands that mended the sky, we let our bodies rot beneath you, let you step over our throats in the grave, so come, my baby, let me kiss your palm. We invented the compass you know, we invented the idea of there and here and where is home.

When she’s in the kitchen playing with knives I can tell by the way she closes her eyes that she’s imagining what home would have tasted like, its bite, its glucose, its swallow.

She fed it to me so that I could slip my way from the womb, bury her by the bay and swim up current, long-bodied, poison-toothed, the promise of storms and the pulsing sense of more. But I don’t blame Wu Zetian for her filicide anymore because today I cut out my intestines waist down and I ate hwuéndén at some fusion restaurant on West street by the five-thousand-year-old isteria. Their bellies held cream and their skin slicked syrup but I smiled and said deliciou S

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Moon’s still stuck in Mother’s throat Tonight the moon is an opioid, speckled, round, cream. Here, I hold tight to this tablet that yoked my motherland, bring it down, hold it toward you.

Swallow it. No? Inhale the smoke. It’s hidden in the gloaming mist at the hairdresser. He’s spraying me with God knows what when he asks my mother how are you?

She parts her lips but slop comes out so the man’s eyes vomit something sticky. And then when she goes to the counter to pay the pupils spew out this pale acid. And how he looks at her like wet sick, like there’s a porcelain bathtub drain gurgling against her windpipe. And how my mother sees my face flush so after we get home, after she gently brushes the split ends from the nape of my neck and lint-rolls my clothes, she sits awake till past the flowers have shrunken listening to English for Dummies and whispering the words under her breath in the murk. Hhoow air yoo? Hoow air yeu. Eye-a am-ah arr-light. Eye-a am-a arrlite.

Awlreght. And the funny thing is the moon is still right there with her, past the streetlamps, watch it shine through the shingles, stuck on the roof of her mouth, and it is the culprit, it is the thing that smells of wet sick, it is the thing that’s plugged like porcelain bathtub drain gurgling against her windpipe, followed us there follows us home.

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Michelle Qiao

Spoken Word Leland High San Jose, CA

Mynah Bird You bought your persimmons from a man who keeps a Mynah Bird in a cage. You had never seen a Mynah before, so you stood and stared. A dish of green water bubbles beneath its feet. It eats a dead Fly. Mynah opens its beak and speaks. It gurgles words from its voice box like a Peking opera singer.

Hello? Hello? Hello? Mynah Bird! Mynah Bird!

Mynah! Mynah! Ring ring! Ring! Ring! like a phone and then it laughs, the laugh of a woman, nasal and cottony, and then it screams, black feathers ringed crown-like around a pearly neck. And the man takes a broom Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring! and strikes the hanging Mynah cage Hello? Hello? I love you! I love you! until the bird falls against the wires and screams. He hands you your fruit. You ask if it’s dead and if it’s going to be okay and he says yes, it’s a damn bird. And then you ask him why he won’t let it go if he doesn’t like to hear it speak and he says I own it, it’s mine and you can’t argue so you just take the fruit andLeave, but every now and then you want to go back and knock the cage off its hook, bend open the wires, scoop up the body, throw it to the streets, say fly away, you stupid bird, go but it can only repeat in words it has already heard so you teach it to say let me go, hallelujah, set me free. It laughs, and then it screams. Hello? Hello? Mynah! Mynah! Mynah! It’s just a damn bird. Damn bird. I own it, I own it, I own it, it’s mine.

Hallelujah! Go! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

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Autobiography in Triptych I was a surprise baby. Call me a miracle baby, a remarkable baby, but baby, I know I was my parents’ accident slipped through the cracks. To help this baby learn her A-B-Cs, to help this baby understand the new world around her, I have written her an abecedarian.

Abacus // bones know that I have no right to call this home, know that goddess Guanyin Brings // a belly full of grandmother’s bent feet every time I eat Caesar // salad in a booth instead of home-birthed soup. Go Down // through the wood, down East, // and you will find Yours Faithfully // sitting and Gnashing // away at china-doll hands by a stream. My porcelain thumbprint and Her // stories of the Buddha, we have burned down Icarus // given him Jewels. // and the sun. You should Know // that Wu Zetian killed her sons like Medea did hers, mere Lambs // to them really, lineage can Molt-away// soon enough. You have never been to Nanjing Naked. // Never seen the skeletons in the gutters. Here, smoke this Opium // and you will know the dead. Walk through rice Paddies // know that they are rooted Quietly // but alive. Don’t lie. You Rape. Rape // of Nanjing and my belly swells. I prayed to you, Stupidly, // ate caesar salad in a booth. You Then // cover my eyes with pale civilized hands Unbutton // my mother, unbutton my tongue. Pull back your eyes, pull down Vixen-hide-Boxers. // Rebellion, Boxer Rebellion and I sat up, came alive. You Wallowing, // pig, can’t you see? You’re Xanthine-drunk, // peel back my blouse, bind back my feet You. // Take me fully, yellow peril, shotgun-barrel kind of Zodiac // rhythm, sing it with me, Abecedarian Born Chink

But before you look away, here, take my grandmother by the skin and peel. She has ribs, you know, beneath all these ribosomes. Dislocate the thigh before stripping away the breast. You see, her proletariat revolution shot the proletariat but I remain a vessel for the women and the children within. They took the last chicken so here, boil saltwater, call it soup. Pray to the little red book, not the Buddha. Red starred soldiers bomb your neighbor’s porch so you run to the streets pig boned where mothers jump from buildings with their babies in their arms because there is a fate more violent than the impact their bodies will make when they reach the pavement.

Poverty, she has bones. That is to say, my parents sent their miracle baby away because they were poor, and English became as foreign to me as their faces. To help this baby learn her A-B-Cs, to help her understand the world around her, I have written an abecedarian. Abacus brings Caesar down East, faithfully gnashing her Icarus jewels. Know lambs molt-away naked. Opium paddies quietly rape. Rape stupidly, then unbutton vixen-hide boxers. Wallowing, xanthinedrunk, you zodiac chink.

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Michelle Qiao

Novel Leland High San Jose, CA

Red Thread Little Bird’s Pig Feet Niao’er, Little Bird, thinks her feet are like pigs.

Fat ankles, thick at the heel, unshapely. Or at least that is what her Amah, her grandmother, says.

“Look at them,” she says, waving an arm, slapping her palm back onto her knees. “We should have begun at four––no, earlier.

Three.” Sitting pin-straight on the swooping curves of redwood boughs, her weight scoops a trough in the silk cushions padded beneath.

“Yes, Amah.”

“You see your friend, that girl, what is her name–” “Yue. Her name is Yue.” “Yes, her. Her mother had me over to see their lotus flowers.”

Bird winces and curls her toes until the nails dig into the underside of her skin. Amah’s voice rolls heavy off her throat, pouring from her crooked teeth, hot tea from a ceramic spout. A voice that reminds Bird of rice caddies and black beaded flies–but also, one that makes her ears prick up, makes her cower.

“This mother takes me into their courtyard and points at the flowers. She tells me to look. But all the while, she has her daughter parade, side to side, left to right.”

“And then this woman looks up, as if only just now noticing these antics, and says to me, Look at how beautiful Yue has become. Look at how small her feet are, how arched, like a dancer. And I look. And the worst part is that what she says is true.

Now you, Niao’er, my granddaughter, walk in with those pig feet of yours, and I am ashamed.”

The edges of Amah’s eyes flush pink. “Niao’er, look at my feet.”

She obeys.

“When my mother first bound them, I was three. She bent down in front of me, took off her claws, and did it herself.”

What Bird knows her grandmother means by claws are fingernail guards worn by China’s old rich to make their hands look like the claws of a dragon. Once, Bird had asked her grandmother why she did not wear claws as her mother did. Amah had puffed up, cheeks ruddy, capillaries dangerously expanding under her translucent skin, and Bird had scurried from the room before the brunt of the scolding. What she also knows is that Amah was not really, truly three when her mother bound her feet for the first time. Amah, like all in her generation, adds a year to their solar calendar age, counts the year in a mother’s womb, alive, but not quite so. For it is in our mother’s womb, not on the coldness of the birthing bed, that we are truly assigned our fate.

“Niao’er, look at my feet. Look at how the bones bend and arch. Look at your grandmother, who sits in this chair, all day in the heat, without your mother to fan away the humidity. Niao’er, tell me. Have you ever seen me run?”

Bird shakes her head.

“No.” Amah sinks back, her neck rising, falling, rising, falling.

Amah closes her eyes.

The truth of the matter was that when Bird’s mother had been told to bind her daughter’s feet, she disobeyed.

She made a show of ordering a servant to go fetch the cotton ribbons, the waxed thread.

She sat, facing Amah, both women stoically rocking in their yoke back chairs, one thin and long-faced, the other an oak stump, heavy and squat. She watches the servant take Bird’s feet, first the right, then the left, watches the little girl squirm in her seat.

But that night, when the swallows had roosted, soft bellies smothered against the trembling pink skin of their chicks, Bird’s

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mother stole from her bed, slid open the mahogany screen, its bottom frame pushing against the stone floors, tsk, tsk, tsk.

She crawls into bed with her baby, shakes her awake. She takes off her claws and takes off the harsh strips of cloth. She unbinds Bird’s feet. If Amah ever found out this was the reason Yue’s heel bones were bent slimmer, she would have called down the heavens to curse her daughter-in-law. Would have.

So now, thanks to her dead mother, Bird walks with her pig feet. And she loves them.

Yours Faithfully, Mia Someone wheels him in front of the computer.

“Ah-gong?”

His head lolls forward. Eyes tilt. He looks at me but does not respond.

“Ah-gong. It’s me.”

“Yes, I know who you are.”

“Ah-gong, I’m so happy.”

“You’re Mia. Mi-mi.”

“Yes, that’s what you called me.”

“Yifei is still alive, you know. I’m meeting him this week, I’ve bought him some chicken.”

“Ah-gong, the doctor will help you.”

“This Saturday, yes, we’ve set it all up.”

“Don’t worry, you will be okay.”

“That is to say there are three more days.”

“No, there will be more.”

“There is no going back. There are three more days.”

“No. You will be okay.”

“There are three more days.”

“Ah-gong, I have already asked the Buddha to take care of you. You will be okay.”

“There are three more days. There are four more days.

There are two more days. It does not matter.”

“Ah-gong, can you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes, I can still hear you, mi-mi.”

“You’re going to be okay, yes? You have me, Mia, mi-mi, and I’m going to come soon, and I care for you so much, and together, we are going to help you together, and you will get better, and we will be okay, okay? Okay? Okay?”

“I’m meeting Yifei on Saturday. Mi-mi, do you want to come?”

“Ah-gong.”

“Yes, you should come. I want you to come. You would like him, I know you would. I want you to come with me. Where is my bus pass?”

He turns to the woman next to him. She looks through the screen at me sadly, pats his arm, assures him she will get him his bus pass.

“I need to get another one for mi-mi, she is my granddaughter you know, she is going to come with me to meet him.”

I close my eyes and make myself sit. I notice the slits on his wrists are still pink. I wonder if he remembers cutting them.

Boar and Sow The sheep are sheared in Autumn for their wool, and the boars are butchered before the thaw of Spring for their flesh.

Bird is not allowed to watch. But she presses her ear against the walls, listens to the squealing, the last drunken barrel for escape, the hacking, hacking, hacking, the conversation of the workmen, the slim pieces of fat and rib stolen from the body and into their

pockets. The sows are given time until their litters are born, given time to milk them. And as their young begin to wander into the yard, digging snout into rich Earth, teeth finding morsels of weedroot and dandelion, the sows too have their bellies cut open, boiled in chili oil, drenched in thick, brown sauces that disappear down the human throat.

Her two brothers are forced to take part in these killings, led to the yard by their cook, made to gouge out eyes and skewer tongues. Yang, the oldest, would trek out across the courtyard in early morning. He would wake Min, who had once sworn with his head buried into his elbows against eating pork ever again. He had declared with gusto to Bird that he would run away, and become a monk, and live in a Buddhist temple, be celibate, and pious, and never have to touch the blood of pigs again. Bird teases him, says he can’t keep that promise for three hours––and that night, he breaks it, letting his lips touch pork without remorse.

At dinnertime, there is a rule. Only after Bird’s father has picked up his chopsticks and taken his first bite are his children allowed to sit and eat. Amah scoops out the marrow of the pig spine. She first places a piece onto her son Chau Lu’s plate, then two for her grandsons Chau Yang and Chau Min, and lastly, one for Bird. Amah does not put any on her own. When Min tries to give her a morsel, she scolds him, telling him her lifetime is already past ripe, dropped from the branch, eaten by ants and beetles and hungry turtles. She tells him he is like a newborn chick of the white-throated crane watching, beak sharp, nearby. She says she is happy to feed her body to the ants and the beetles because they will be eaten by fish that one day will be eaten by him.

Min chews, smacks his lips, stops to think. “Then what about the turtle? Who eats her?”

Bird’s father makes an irritated noise from his teeth, a short exhale that drops from his esophagus and thuds onto the floorboards. They fall silent.

That night, Bird thinks of this turtle dreamed to immortality by Min. She imagines that it will grow to be onehundred-and-one years old, feeding on orange rind and mosquito juice, watching from the shade of the French oaks, slow, unmoving, lethargic. And then when the time comes, this turtle will shrivel back into its shell and disappear. And her father, not this spirit of him from the past that sits three seats away from her at the table, will find the shell and carve Bird a sonnet on the underbelly with a steel-tipped knife. He will set it into the river to rush past the beetle and fish and crane and she will find it on the riverbend.

She will read it and imagine the turtle now reincarnated as a dragon, a scarlet one. The dragon lives in the Jade emperor’s heaven. The dragon will visit her mother and will cry tears so scarlet they bloom in Camellias where they land, cry them into the clouds, cry so hard it rains, it pours, it thunders.

Zodiac Here, the apartment hallway carpets smell of damp snow on salted boots and laundry detergent spilling in turrets from the quarter-run machines in the downstairs basement. In the night, it is quiet except for the wind out back, throwing around the rusted blue playset swings like metal rag dolls–in the late morning, once the blizzard cools, the frozen chains will be held by little mittened hands.

It is a Sunday, and I know the cathedral bells are ringing downtown, but here, neighbors file with cold hollow cheeks into a church three blocks down that has a wooden staircase that creaks under every rubber sole. I remember stepping in there twice, the heat inside hitting my face, warming the blood under my eyelids. I hid the jade Buddha around my neck. Once for an Easter Egg hunt. The other for a book drive. My father once took me to take some home. Pages yellowed, spent the last three decades beneath the hardened earth on a wood-smell bookshelf next to a striped velvet couch.

There is a plaza fifteen minutes down the freeway.

We leave home five minutes early to hack off the ice on our windshields. My father drives me to the general store in his green sedan with a dent by the trunk and a scratch down the front. I

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pick out my first piggy bank, a pink one with white polka dots. In line, the old woman in front of us with wispy curls and a wavering smile gives me a nickel from her purse to put inside. I take the coin from her hand, notice the way her knuckles jut out from beneath her folding skin, still cold from the chill outside. I smile at her, say thank you. But at the countertop, when my father opens his mouth and the syllables march out misshapen and slurred, the cashier looks down, purses his lips, gives us back the pig with the nickel jingling inside and I know we are still the other.

My mother tells me I was born with a tail––a monkey’s tail.

The doctor’s gloved hands cut a surgical incision right above the base of my spine, threw the flesh on the table beside my umbilical cord. Sheng Xiao––two thousand years of cyclical divination, ten celestial stems of cyclical definitions assigned at birth. I was cast as a hen, clucking through the base of my throat, chicken-coop warmth and wire, feather-stitched breast. I cheated, washed from my mother’s belly seventeen days too early, grew a monkey’s tail instead of a bird’s heavy red comb. I like to imagine the ink on my ticket to mortality smudging in my palms, my jingsheng running around grand-central-soul, stepping on the wrong train, turning wide-eyed to face a car-full of psyches all sitting doll-like, pristine, exactly where and when they should have been.

Over a landline phone, my father tells me stories to feel closer to me across the Pacific sea. The Monkey King’s temper stormed the heavenly palace, flung the Jade Emperor trembling under his kitchen table, elbows crooked and cradling a great crowned head. To punish the mischievous monkey, the Buddha cupped him under a mountain for five hundred years, sent him on a Journey to the West with the monk Tang Sheng to retrieve holy texts from the temples of India. My father nicknamed me Monkey King, gave me his gold-plated baton, a velcro-tie tail, and his collar to dress up for Halloween. So, I put them on and went door to door in the Midwestern snow with my best friend–dressed as the yellow M&M–holding up my plastic orange bucket and whispering trick-or-treat on bizarre porches with skeleton lawns. Monkey Mia. Monkey mi-mi.

I went home at nine sharp, where my mother took one look and threw the candy away. I stole down the stairs that night, tail still tied around my waist, and dug through the stickiness of the trash can for my hard-earned treasures. I ate under my covers.

Each sticky-sweet bite rebellion, each sticky-sweet swallow full of guilt. At three in the morning, I bolted up in bed and threw up on my carpet.

I walked down the stairs with acid burning the nasal cavities in my skull and stood by my mother’s bedside. I tapped her shoulder and started to cry. She didn’t wake at first–calm and breathing, I watched her face, watched her eyes slowly open, look into mine. I stood. And waited.

But her scolding never came. I waited as she flicked on the kitchen lights, tore off a roll of paper towels, walked to my room, bent down, and started scrubbing. The taste had made its way into the cracks in my gums. She helped me brush my teeth. She picked me up, put me back onto the mattress. She patted my hair. She closed the door behind her.

We feel most misunderstood by the people we love most because for there to be betrayal, there has to be affection first.

Your tongue knows sugar before it can judge the chemical taste of motor oil, has to know savory before bus leather and cigarette ash. My mother tells me unforgiveness is a sin. I tell her I don’t believe in divine law but I believe in humanity. My mother tells me to separate the good and the bad. I ask her how when each of his atoms is entangled, each quantum ounce of his DNA lives heavy in my own body, each ounce on some days I want to syringe from my cells, watch the strands hang limp on the tips of my fingers, watch them ribbon down the porcelain bathtub drain. I am a carbon copy, cranium to phalanges, the zipping electric signals in my amygdala snared in the same wavelength so much so there is no separation, no individuality, no singularity, only him and me, him and me, me and her, me and her.

There was an exhibit at the downtown science museum that let children measure the volume of blood they held in their

bodies. This plastic tub in front of the scale would fill with a reddye liquid, and I would get on and off and on and off just to see it drain through the metal tube at the base.

I had so much of it. The blood. On the elevator to the parking lot, my mother repeated my thoughts. She said to me, You have so much blood.

And all of it theirs. All of it mine. All of it theirs.

Mud The pigs walk out into the wetness, heave themselves into the puddles of earth and rain, skin painted thick brown, droplets carving craters in the mud on their backs. On days like these, Bird lays beneath the pavilion roof, stomach curved comfortably against the smell of hay, twisting bits and pieces in her hands, watching them. She thinks they look like round little mud moons with ears poking out from behind.

In the very beginning, there was the Earth and the Moon and the willows and the wind, but there was no woman to give birth to man. The goddess Nüwa came down from the heavens and created her. She scooped palmfuls of red mud from the banks of the Yangtze, pulled out four limbs, rounded her thumb over top for a head, placed two pebbles for eyes, dug her fingernail into its mouth. And when Nüwa set it down, it was alive.

She watched the thing stumble around her ankles and decided to make another. And another. And another. When her own two hands became too slow for her liking, she took a coil of rope, dipping its threads into the mud, flinging it out towards the shore– and when these droplets of silt landed, their feet rooted into the sand, sprouting nerves and soul and bone. She taught them how to sing and dance, how to beat their hands on drums like the thunder above, how to skewer pointed metal through fur like lightning.

So these were Nüwa’s children, and they followed their mother to war with the God of Water, Gong Gong. When he lost, he climbed to the top of the Mountain BuZhou and cracked his skull on the summit in suicide, breaking the four pillars that held up the heavens, and sending the sky crashing down onto the earth, letting loose a great flood.

Bird looks at the muddy pigs and imagines their flesh being washed away by Gong Gong’s last act of revenge, how their black eyes would trace the flood from the cracking sky, the impact that water, so soft lapping in their trough, could make against their bodies.

Myopic Funny, the things you inherit.

“It’s a spectrum,” Dr. Burnstein says. He doesn’t have glasses. His irises are blue. Mine are what Ellie calls like, a soupy, beef chili color, but in the nicest way possible ever, and I only said that because mocha and chocolate are overused and what my dad calls proof you’re not adopted, congratulations, you’re Chinese. I made him stay home this time, him and my mom both, it would be worse with them in the room, all worried, and better if I just go home and tell them I’m fine.

Dr. Burnstein, and in my head, because he looks like that muppet from Sesame Street, Dr. Bert, pulls a laminated chart from his desk. Points to one end.

“This is what we call NLP, no light perception. No light, just black.”

He looks up at me, so calm. It’s not him in the chair. It’s not him who chose to inherit eyes like a soupy, beef chili color, but in the nicest way possible ever, and I only said that because mocha and chocolate are overused. I don’t know how to react so I just nod and try to smile but I can’t manage to pull my lips up over my teeth because how the hell am I supposed to smile and why am I trying in the first place.

“Good news.”

It’s not him sitting here. It’s not him who chose to inherit eyes that give you proof you’re not adopted, congratulations.

“You’re going to be over here.” He slides his finger across, gives the sheet a slight tap tap tap. It wobbles. “That’s my best

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prediction. For the time being. Your vision, as of today, leads us to believe that it will deteriorate until, in a few months to a year, you will most likely be classified as legally blind.”

I pretend to clear my throat so I can put my face in my sleeve but then I make this horrible choking sound that’s even worse than just outright crying so I give up but then I feel something wet on my upper lip and I think it’s snot so I raise my sleeve again and before I can tell I’m crying, which probably isn’t good, because don’t tears stress out your vision more, don’t they make your eyes get worse?

“But don’t let that term scare you.”

He swivels in his chair, adjusts the height, but I think he presses the wrong lever and he just ends up shooting up, his kneecaps hitting the metal underbelly of the desk with a loud thunk. And out of all the times and places, I start to laugh. Not a quick exhale from the chest, but that laugh that takes control of your body, contorts your torso until you’re curled up, elbows out and kicking, head lolling backward, and your ribcage doesn’t feel big enough to fit all the funny things in this room, all the funny things in this room couldn’t fit in a whale. I like to think these are Dr. Bernstein’s worst appointments, that he thinks of these appointments with patients like me losing their vision to be the equalizer for the medical bill that goes in his pocket. My parents are paying for this. My parents are paying for this. His discomfort is worth his check, I imagine him telling himself on the drive back home. His discomfort is worth his check.

He lets me laugh myself empty, puts the sheet away, rolls his way across the room to a poster with a gigantic cross-section of an eyeball. Funny how round they are. Like two little gumballs stuck front and center in human headquarters. Mission control.

The cameras on the rover. We’re just little robots, that’s all, and I’m laughing again and he waits for me to be done again and he clears his throat again and points to the poster, again.

“Mia, these are your retinas.”

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, shut up. Shut. Up.” “I know this is a lot to process.”

In my mind, I begin to yell.

You know they’ve given me the same crap every time?

How my cornea is curved, so the light won’t focus, but it’s completely normal, affects thirty percent of the American population, were you going to tell me that? And how it’s hereditary? And I can’t do anything about it? And how is it not my fault? But maybe it is, from watching too much TV and texting too much and not going out and watching trees every day because they’re green and that’s supposed to cure me from being blind?

And how I probably got it from my grandfather, who’s the only other person in my family who even wears glasses? And how you think it’s going to slow down? But it never does?

He seems to be able to read my mind and stays silent.

After a while, I calm down and it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. He says, you’re at the brink. You’re already living with it. And at some point, you’ll pass the benchmark, and that’s it. That’s all it is, really, a benchmark. A benchmark. You’ll still wear contacts, we’ll keep giving you contacts, they’ll work perfect for you. But they’ll cost more, so give your parents this form and let them know, okay?

He leans further back in his chair. He’s a tall man, Dr. Bernstein. His wedding pictures hang framed on the wall. There are pictures of his kids too–babies, then those babies as adults. One wears glasses. I wonder if his father took them for free from the office.

I’m trying to wipe my eyes with my sleeves but they’re all wet, with my tears or my snot or my spit I can’t even tell anymore.

So Dr. Bernstein starts to hand me a tissue. And then he stops. And reconsiders. And gives me the whole box.

Short Tall Fat Thin On Saturdays, Bird’s father, Chau Lu, goes into Shanghai to play card games in its clubs. Bird is not allowed to go. She has only

set foot in the city two times in her life–once when her mother took her to get a dress tailored, and the last, to go to the temple, Jing’an Shi. Saturday evening, they get the news of the week from him. To Amah, the city is a place of vice. She does not care for politics.

“The Kuomintang and the Gongchandang, the warlords, the Japanese and the white man, they fight, it will always be the laobaixing, the ordinary people, who suffer the most.”

Bird played these scenes out in her head like an opera.

There was a short-skinny man, Chiang Kai Shek, at the head of the nationalists. There was a tall-fat man, Mao Zedong, in charge of the communists. She would make figurines in the mud and pretend to make them fight.

When Chau Lu came home, he looked down at the messes she had made. He sighed, and went to sit at his desk, wrote some letters, went alone to bed.

Bird’s brothers have a tutor, Wong Shigong, or Mr. Wong.

She doesn’t go to their lessons. Bird spends her time waiting on Amah and feeding the chickens and scrubbing the pavement.

Mr. Wong was smart. He walked like a smart person, ate like one, talked like one. He knew how to calculate how heavy the entire world was. He knew about history and the planets and places called Haiti and the Belgian Congo.

“China is not the center of the world,” he muttered once, in one of their short conversations. “There is no center on the surface of a spherical object.”

“But it is in the name. China, Zhong Guo, the middle kingdom. The heavens said so.”

“Ah, and here is where fact and religion mix, tricky substance indeed.”

“So who is right?”

“It depends on what you want to believe.”

Mr. Wong taught her brother lots of what he knew. The maid, Luolan, was a young slender sickly thing, not much older than Bird. Sometimes, she would take over Bird’s cleaning or knitting or embroidering so that she could go sit in the back of the study, listen to Mr. Wong lecture.

He said a lot of things about the imperial system, Daoists, Buddhists, Christians. He told them that under the old emperor, he would not be speaking of Western sciences or medicine, only of Eastern medicine. He also said that if the Chinese explorer Zheng He, who arrived in the Americas seventy years before Christopher Columbus, had more of a knack for raping and colonizing, the whole world would be learning Eastern practices and language instead of Western ones.

“You should remember this name. Wu Zetian. China’s only female emperor. Tang dynasty. She created keju, the imperial civil service examination.”

“You mean empress?”

“No. She was emperor. Do you know what she did?”

Bird shook her head no.

“She suffocated her own infant son. She killed her pregnant niece. She killed two other concubines by having their four limbs chopped off and the rest of their bodies thrown into a vat of wine, sealed shut.”

Bird thought of her own mother and wondered if she would do such a thing.

“But during her reign, women had the freedom to divorce, to serve in government, to own property. She built temples, widened trade, made the West respect her, and they made her and China rich with their desire for silks and jade and spice. She carved a giant Buddha into the rock of the Dragon Door caves, in the likeness of her own face. She carved herself as the Buddha, can you imagine that?”

Bird does not know what to say.

“What do you think? Do you like her?”

“I do not know.”

“Her tombstone was left blank.”

Many months later, Bird recalls this conversation on Wu Zetian. The troops that marched past the streets were what she

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hated most in what seemed like a new life. The lot of them looked like a pack of vicious dogs and scared, withered children at the same time. They squatted, smoking, on street corners. They wore padded jackets and square trousers, and caps on their heads.

They always had a fleck of foam on the corner of their mouth or a peeling scab at the temple. Their skin was dark and coarse. Their guns they wore strapped to their backs, the thick butt of the stock jostling their thighs as they walked, the barrel pointing up at God. Bird did not speak to them; she was afraid. They could very well shoot her, and there would be no one, no laws, no court to convict murder. The mirage of the dashing young soldier, sacrificing himself for the good of the country had all but dissipated long ago. What was left were these men, who knew they would lose, and had no hope of anything other than losing. No matter what her father said, no matter what anyone wanted, the Qin, the Song, the Han were dead and gone.

She wondered what Wu Zetian in her nameless tomb would think of what her people had become.

Skinny Rain Complete bull.

God hates me. He really does, doesn’t he? Doesn’t he? And then I reach up and notice my bobby pin on the right side by my temple has fallen out of my hair. And then I want to start jumping up and down with my feet still on the ground, you know, how babies do, their little bodies bouncing and burbling and weeping until their mothers pick them up, except I can’t really move, and I start seeing stars, not American flag in the wind stars but the kind of stars that really look more like opium poppies had a baby and I’ve eaten it and now I’m dying kind of stars. And then things start to go black, God, maybe it’s finally happening, I’m finally going blind, all the way, pitch black, no more of this blur. And better, maybe I’ll just be dead before I can even get on this plane, I’ll beat him to it, I’ll beat him to the grave, I’ll never see him again, maybe it serves him right. But just as I’m about to give in, everything starts coming back, reeling into focus. And I can’t decide which is worse.

Thunder usually makes me warm, that fog that envelops you, that sound of water hitting the rooftop that buzzes down your eardrums until you can’t hear your own thoughts. I looked over at the woman whose voice just echoed over the speakers, with her blonde curls, and that little blue hat they give to people who work at these gate desks. I imagined bleaching my hair to be like hers.

I’d have to do my eyebrows to match. I could shave it all off so my forehead would wrap over the back of my head, run through my body like a strip of tape, orbit back around, meeting itself, consuming itself, cyclical like the moon.

I was suddenly aware that someone was getting very close behind me, so close that I could feel his breath down my neck, and that was what stirred movement into my legs–I couldn’t bend down with him behind me like that so I shuffled sideways, kicked my bag over a few feet, scooped it away with my torso contorted to hide myself.

Did I imagine that? Was he not really that close, or maybe just trying to get a better look at the flight numbers above me?

God, this meant I was a narcissist. Or maybe he was trying to get a better look at me, see if I was worth kidnapping or whatever else they do to seventeen-year-old girls here. Don’t make me come find you. They’ll make a movie about me, like a new Liam Neeson.

Chinese Liam Neeson. Chinese Liam Neeson saves daughter from human traffickers, whoever makes that movie will make a lot of money. You should write that movie, before someone else does.

Chinese Liam Neeson. It’ll be like rush hour, I’ll be like Jackie Chan.

This morning, he said it again. Only without the bit about those kidnapping movies where the girl gets taken and her dad has to come find her. Don’t make me come get you. Be careful. And then this afternoon, after he drove me here, I think he started to cry but when I leaned over he looked away.

My brother gave me twenty bucks, told me to buy him those jelly things, you know, at that grocery store, with the

different fruit flavors. And I told him I’ll try but no promises, you little jerk. And then I gave him the money back and told him I’ll get them for free, and my dad made him hug me. My mom’s coming too, a month later, but she still cried and we went shopping and I bought her a piece of cheesecake, blackberry, her favorite, and she tucked me into bed every night the last few days. Maybe that’s weird, I don’t know.

I’ve barely sat down at the gate before I know I want a coke. I need a coke. I can hear Ellie’s voice in my head, no, don’t, we need beach pictures this summer, you’re coming back before the end of summer right? right? and I know you want to rush, right? they literally only have skinny girls so you know they only let in skinny people, not to sound mean but it’s the truth, I mean you’re already so skinny, like that’s great, but you know the skinnier the better but I really don’t want to listen to her voice right now even if it’s only in my head so I get up to go to the convenience store anyways and I get a regular coke. Not even diet. Regular. Just because.

I’m standing at the counter when he walks in. He’s got these beat up sneakers and he’s the kind of tall that collapses into itself. And I don’t even think he looks that cute but somehow my body goes into overdrive, I think of the stain on my sleeve, the way my necklaces are probably all tangled and backward right now, but then I notice the shirt I’m wearing is the shirt that shrank in the dryer, and I don’t want anything showing, so I hunch up and mesh my arms in front but then I think, this is my body and it isn’t for you and I don’t have to hide at all. And when it’s time to pay my phone doesn’t scan right or something so I have to pay in quarters from the bottom of my bag. A tampon falls out the front pocket when I’m digging and I shove it back in as fast as I can so the boy–who’s now shuffling through packs of gum–won’t see it. I apologize to no one in particular. About the quarters. Or the tampon. I don’t know. The cashier is this woman in her forties but she’s got these great eyebrows, I’m mapping in my mind the way she’s drawn them on, the arch perpendicular to the edge of her irises. She’s staring at my hair. Or something in my hair.

What is she looking at? Is there something in my hair?

Please tell me there isn’t. And I can’t reach up there now or else she’ll notice. But I can’t just leave it there.

And sitting back in my seat, drinking a can of Coke, the armrest jutting into the gap between my lower ribs, that’s when it happened. I started to cry. Quiet, so no one can tell, but I know everyone can tell, because this one little girl is staring with her Barbie’s arm in her mouth and her mom is trying to turn her away but she keeps looking back at me. I try to hide my face in my sleeves and I run my fingers through my hair and suck the snot back up my nose. My life is going to shit and all I care about is whether strangers at the airport think I’m pretty. And I know I’m going to have to sleep here anyway and it’s only seven but it’s not like I’ve got better things to do. His face is the wallpaper on my lock screen, and I clutch it tight to my chest. I think of all the things he has lost to his mind and all of the things I will make him recover, dragging memory after memory from the very depths of the human psyche even if it leaves my palms cut and bleeding from the line. As I drift into sleep, I think of all the things I will say and leave unsaid when I meet him again.

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Reina Quinonez

Design Arts The High School of Art and Design New York, NY

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Provocative Nature Knit rayon, power mesh, Adobe Photoshop, original print: acrylic paint, mushrooms 2020

Neda Rahimi

Photography Carroll High School Fort Wayne, IN

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Stained- Piece 1 Digital photography and sewing 2021

Gaia Rajan Simple Machines At eleven, I stole a lisp from my parents—slipped past silent seams of brick, past slouching yards and surveilling fields, past the stray dog still wearing its owner’s collar, past the trappings of dead animals and the splintering lanterns in perfect hunting lodges, past the people and their economies of sweat and the gym called Manifest Your Destiny into the speech classroom’s projector spotlight. There’s more steel in English than you would believe. In my textbooks, men invented new machines to turn people into ghosts, to sheathe all senses in fresh blood. The woman in speech class asked all who hadn’t broken their mouths yet to circle the nouns. Mark the verbs. Buck the horse. Stolen accent evidence of stagnancy. A cycle of innovation: pulley into crank into guillotine.

The inventions grew more beautiful, more deadly: artful casket, gorgeous cage. I learned how to speak so they could ruin me, an imitation of a voice. All of this is progress. I excelled in speech class, my mouth rinsed out clean with white heat, controlled vocabularies of so much blood. On days I can’t speak, this is where I go: interrogation room, gunmetal smile. Grateful machines. The coldest tongues.

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Poetry Phillips Academy - Andover Andover, MA

Kashvi Ramani

Spoken Word Academies of Loudoun Leesburg, VA

My Dodda in a Day When the clouds part, my grandmother is on the move. Her locks flap in the wind, she hides the flaps on her skin. She always finds a way to burrow inside herself, to position her limbs in the shadows of the sun. She runs faster each time reality catches up.

India rises from its trout-lipped slumber and her basket is already filled with buds. Jasmine sugarcoats her already-strained smile (she’ll have to fix that by noon) and prepares to string itself on garlands. Dodda works its milky color to a lather and scrubs until a bumpy rash of rose envelops her brown. Not cream; she will try again tomorrow.

At 11, she bustles down flights of stairs, kneading dough until the salt that drips from her face is enough seasoning, until the blood that washes over her hands hides the henna, flavors dough with sindoor. So she sweeps a mark across her forehead and prays. Clasps her hands, asks for a new face.

The clock finally chimes 12 and she dons four tiffins of lunch and a crimson sari to wash out the weakness. Her feet are quick. Her husband’s are quicker. When he’s through, her wavering teeth—more ocean than stronghold—attack her own hands over and over and recrudesce in waves over and over and3 PM and she practices teetering spoons on her palms to prepare for the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her daughter-in-law is growing grayer and frailer (men like a little meat on the bones—more cooking for Dodda). Her niece, who once painted the solar system on her eyelids, let her planets get lost on earth (the ones who aren’t pretty need to be smart —Dodda can’t marry them off right away). And her daughter who runs at the same time as she does every morning to connect with the life she once had (she shuffles through a gated neighborhood in neon Adidas while Dodda turns around to watch for hungry eyes in sandals that peel at the heels).

The nightjar sings in tune with her landline. Quiet, subliminal darkness unfolds the cloak of nighttime. 13,000 miles away we are greeting the sun. We prattle about carnivals and tank tops, about new friends and opportunities, about technology, about goals. “Dodda, when will you come to see us?” “Soon, bungaru, soon.” Then she tucks herself in with a blanket that steams like rice and dreams her wishes into our realities.

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The News The news came mixed in brownie batter.

In the oil of garlic knots, sizzling at the touch.

Tossed in the salad like secrets two years old, Tucked in the caramelized sunset orange of a Hi-C, Coated with an extra layer of bubbles as protection.

My ninth birthday was all giggles and giddiness; My family by my side, arcade coins itching to be cashed in in my pocket, My favorite restaurant.

My dad’s glance to my mom, And my heart shriveled to a nectarine pit, Dropped to the pits of my stomach.

“Marrow,” “Two weeks,” “Incurable.”

I haven’t been to the restaurant since.

My heart stayed solitary all through winter.

No food to accompany it; I picked at my plate.

His departures cycled with the seasons, Cycled without reason.

He was gone for three months once.

When we heard a faint rap at the door, my eyes lit up like Christmas lights.

He left the next week, taking my mother with him.

“Your sister needs you to be brave.”

So I was.

They always presume I am two years older than I am.

The repetitive surprise, laced with disdain.

The six letter word they call me far too often“Mature” is too familiar a frequency, But “mature” is just “suffer” smothered.

“Grown-up” trails out before “too fast” can speak.

Even burns out.

It might be seasoned with a little determination And garnished with three stems of hope, But nothing lasts forever, So in place I wrote a letter.

“Dear Ramani”, it starts (not Dad - mature means first name basis).

I wish you told me before you did.

I wish you wouldn’t carry the storm clouds with shaky hands, And fingers that freeze over with emptied pill bottles.

I wish your once glinting smile of promises wasn’t crumpled in the pages of hospital bills.

I wish mine didn’t crumple along with yours.

I wish the leaves didn’t fall when you leave.

Even when you’re here, you’re gone; When you’re gone, I wish I didn’t have to worry you’d be gone forever, I wish that “10 years cancer-free” wasn’t tacked on to maximum.

I wish the “in” faded from incurable.

I wish Gold could Stay.

I wish I didn’t have to scrutinize every obituary I pass, Praying I didn’t see your last name printed by “cancer victim.”

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Norah Rami

Spoken Word Clements High School Sugar Land, TX

Epigenetics My DNA is but fragments of my mother and father and their father and mother.

A puzzle thrown into a blender And spread out upon the kitchen table To make something anew.

A mosaic of broken history, Recycled pieces of paper Upon which my diary of ancestry is written, And I am just another entry.

To one day become but a fragment, an echo In the body of my descendants.

Reduced to my goofy grin, passive aggressive comments or The random urge to cloud watch on sunny days When there are millions of other things that need to get done.

But have you seen the way the clouds tell a story, Weave in and out of the bright azure, I often wonder what they look like to those above.

My greatest granddaughter claims these idiosyncrasies as her own As she does not know me beyond a gene in her body.

And I claim these idiosyncrasies as my own As I do know who came before me.

These smilers, aggravators, cloud-watchers.

Who they are but me?

Our environment edits our inheritance in order to create our epigenome.

Or, the way in which our DNA presents itself in order to make use of the situation.

A sample case is malnutrition In which your DNA methylates itself to increase fat retention to prevent starvation.

What I have learned of my history comes from mistranslated stories and textbooks by an outsider.

My DNA does not offer its memories But I have attempted to trace my lineage.

I am a descendant of the survivors of the Bengal Famine, A British attempt of increasing exports By preventing farmers from growing food.

The indigo ran red with the blood of 30 million that year.

I am a descendent of the trauma of colonization.

Recent studies have found that the epigenome can be inherited Meaning familial environmental disruptors cause generational changes.

What I have learned of my inheritance comes in the form of this flesh.

My DNA does not forget the memories it has hidden from me.

The legacy of which I have inherited, that courses through my blood stream.

The famine changed the very essence of my forefathers’ existence.

They have bestowed their genetic response to starvation upon me.

Guarding me from within, My chromosomes, a gift.

This flesh of survival, this meat on my bones was the key to my ancestor’s legacy.

The only reason for my existence.

Yet, I find myself abhorring every inch of what allows me to be alive.

Post-colonial Eurocentrism has left me rejecting The millions of women within me, My mother’s reincarnated into this flesh Who have loved me in the way of survival.

I have spent so long trying to scrub myself clean of my history, But my body does not forget the plight of my ancestries.

It attempts to protect me even against my own hand of destruction.

I take up space because I carry a long heavy history.

To disappear as I have spent so long hoping Would disrespect all that worked to place me here, The long line of genetics And the stories it carries.

The million of women within me, And the million i have yet to come.

My effort to love my body is an effort to worship my ancestry.

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Ode to the Woman, not Womb When you made abortion a Class A felony, I cried.

To the dirges of women Lining up every coat hanger in their closet Just in case.

When you placed a bounty upon my body And turned the world into hunters My preservation was more dangerous than my destruction It was decided then that a blastocyst had more worth than me Until it turns into a woman of its own When second-degree rape, a sentence with a maximum of 20 years, Was made to seem less severe than abortion, I saw all boys grow fangs overnight, baring them with every smile there is no prayer that protects me from being prey I see wolves everywhere.

Was that your intent? to protect rape by law?

I now wear this lamb’s skin as if just borrowing it for today.

When they passed the heartbeat bills in Texas Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama Mississippi, Kentucky, And Louisiana, I hid my heart under my palm, I pledge allegiance to the late night talks with my girls over ice cream, To the out of tune Karaoke of friday nights To the tambour of my little sister’s laughter To The small of my back where I feel legions of women holding me up, the support of generations I pledge allegiance to this flag with stripes of my blood that I will never own And to this Republic (an Agenda where I was not left a seat at the table Your Nation Under Your God (not mine) with Liberty and justice taking a fall When Texas, my home state, passed a bill to strip away my flesh There is no home for me here if only a prison.

I wondered if you’re pro-life ever included my own We in the South have the history of drowning the people who keep this land afloat When America reminded me that my body is ...

I stared at my bedroom ceiling to dream of a new flag Cataloguing my existence America, you broken song, You teach me that to be women is to be bound, To be an object, a cartridge left out to dry in the undying sun It is to be cattle branded and herded I am scared. hiding in this skin you can peel away By stealing our bodies You have begun to unravel my future This was never about abortion Your bill was to rewrite the definition of womanhood into something you break with a gavel Spill our blood on your congress floor and wipe us away

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But let me tell you to be woman is to be fire, bubbling in our souls fighting to stay above the flood that you have created you cannot drown us in this intolerance our life will not be defined in the hands of a man my body is not a commodity you can regulate I should not need to persuade you as for why I deserve my own flesh I will not act as if these words are borrowed We are not nameless our body is not yours to keep.

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Isabella Ramírez

Spoken Word Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

skating (but only around the perversions of men) so i’m at the roller rink. it’s 2017 and Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas beats beneath polyurethane wheels as my 4 and 7-year-old cousins get their skates laced up by my aunt, who brags about her past as a derby girl and how she’ll skate laps around us, literally. we’ve left our brothers and fathers at home because it is girls only up in here and this is our ladies night. i don’t know how to skate very well, but i reserve my aunt’s hand holding for my cousins and stay alone near the rink’s ledge until a 15-year-old boy mistakes me for the wall when he comes up behind me and grabs me by the breasts. he doesn’t let go until i’m falling to the ground from trying to break his grip. by the time i’ve realized what’s happened my aunt’s arguing with a police officer while i’m holding my cousins, shaking i’m only 13 years old, and all i can think, even in this moment when i want to boil my body to relieve the phantom feeling of his hands on my chest, is how grateful i am that it was me. that it wasn’t them — that my cousins get to live another day as children. they’re 4 and 7 years old, and i feel guilty i’ve made them leave. that night, my youngest cousin learned what sexual assault meant before she learned how to read. the thing about being a woman surrounded by rape-culture is that it’s not a matter of if, but when. i’m 17 years old now and i’ve been catcalled, followed, honked at, touched, violated the men in my family love to say not all men, but why is it all women then? why do we insist on sending our daughters to college with pepper spray and a rape whistle? why do we pass around sexual assault like a family heirloom — from our grandmothers to our mothers to our aunts to our sisters to me to me please do not make me pass this to my cousins but it’s too late. my aunt sends me screenshots of messages from a boy in my cousin’s third grade class calling her baby, saying i love you, asking if he can smell her underwear when can we stop teaching our 8-year-old girls

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to cope with the fact that men will talk to them this way for the rest of their lives. that day, i resented the fact that my cousin had ever learned to read and the fact that there are girls who will never learn, baby girls who babble through teething and swollen gums and have death become their nursery rhyme, like 10-month-old Zara Scruggs who could barely mouth the word “dad” before she was fatally raped by her father who had just learned to walk and was everything a baby girl should be — happy and curious and beautiful and innocent — baby girls shouldn’t die on hospital beds in blood-soaked diapers yet Zara did, and somehow i still don’t know if she would have been better off if she had survived. i don’t need to be at a roller rink to know being a woman means i am constantly skating around the perversions of men. my cousins now know this too. i can only hope they’ll never feel what it’s like to be too young to fight back but be told that a boy’s too young to be charged. i can only long for the days girls don’t need to be stripped of their childhoods to become women because that day, i’ll take my cousins roller skating again.

the A(ssimilation)merican Dream the DMV was not where i had expected i would be unpacking my Latinidad 1, but there i was at ten years old trying to tell the clerk my ethnicity when my father squeezes my arm and tells me “we don’t look Hispanic.” you can imagine my confusion as i looked at my very-much-Hispanic-looking Papá 2 and didn’t know why he wanted to hide that his furrowed brows were like the Andes, sharp and prominent among forehead wrinkles that ran deep like Río Guayas3. even as he spoke to me, his accent was somewhere between the thickness of Amazonian trees and the rain trickling on their leaves, depending on the word. in that moment, he was the equator splitting me into two hemispheres of Ecuatoriana y Americana4 pushing me to stay north.

one without the fear of la migra10, the difficulty of getting papers but the ease of deportation, one without the detention centers only 27 miles from our home, one without the shame in my identity, one without the hiding and lying and wishing for something more, one without the need to conceal my pride because i am prouder than proud and my family is too. all we ask is for a life where we don’t need to hide at the DMV, one where we can blast merengue11 on rooftops and yell our best gritos12 and not care if we look too chonga13 or not. and if the gringos14 think we’re being too loud, i’ll have no problem telling mi familia15 we’re not being loud enough.

up until that point, i had thought my whole life that most of the shame of being Latina would come from others. but when i realized my family could only pack as much culture as they could fit into their luggage to make it safely to America, i understood why they left pieces of themselves stowed away on shelves in Guayaquil. i understood that the reason my father wanted to hide at the DMV was the same reason Mamá5 hated living in Miami for more than just morning traffic, why she didn’t buy me my first pair of gold hoops until i was thirteen. why she told me red lipstick was a statement only if used with modesty — why my skin was the most Latina thing i was allowed to wear. it’s why i learned chonga 6 was the worst thing i could be because being from el pueblo7 was a greater insult to our lineage than any of our attempts at assimilation. when our proximity to whiteness becomes our safety, it’s no wonder my family shelters behind light skin and eurocentrism. we have learned that the American Dream doesn’t apply to indios y indias8, so we become our own conquistadors and strip ourselves of our indigeneity, spit it into test tube DNA kits so only 23 and me knows we’re mestizo8. we would give up gold if it meant a normal life in America — one without the green card jokes, the demands to “speak English” and “go back to your country,” the questions of “where are you from” and “no, where are you really from,”

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Latinx identity Dad 3 A river in Guayaquil, Ecuador 4 Ecuadorian and American 5 Mom 6 A derogatory term used to describe the “stereotypical” Latina woman 7 The village, usually used to describe low-income neighborhoods 8 Indigenous peoples 9 Mixed race, specifically European and indigenous 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 11 A Dominican style of music and dance 12 Screams 13 Refer to footnote 6 14 Non-Hispanic Americans 15 Family 1

2

Avani Ranka

Spoken Word Del Norte High San Diego, CA

Planets Are you a planet? Please answer me because I need to know.

I need to know. There’s so much I need to know from you.

Are you happy?

Are you safe? Are you gone but not erased?

I need to know why you have left me with this hurt that strikes deeper than my soul.

This hurt that confines my lungs with the force of a black hole until I can no longer breathe.

I can’t remember the last time I could breathe.

So I need to know. There’s so much I need to know.

So tell me, are you a planet? A body made of nothing but matter and hope, held together by gravity?

Are you orbiting a star like you used to orbit me?

Do rings and moons encircle you instead of my arms?

Do dust storms and cyclones rage over your surface like the anger I never let go?

Do you watch over me from your place in our ever-expanding universe or do you ignore me like how I wish I had never done to you?

Missed calls, forgotten messages, and now all I have left of your voice is fading memories and old voice-mails.

I’m scared, that’s nothing new.

But for once I’m not scared for me, I’m scared for you.

I don’t know what happens, where we’re from or where we go and you’ve finally found the one place where I cannot follow.

I am sorry.

I am so so sorry.

So tell me, are you a planet? Because I’ve heard that when our bodies go limp our lives leave through our throats.

We are what we think and do, we do and think what we know, we know from what we feel.

What we feel is how we live and that lives in our throats as the laughter and the love and the sorrow and the pain.

It stains, but we can never bring ourselves to fix it.

So please tell me you are a planet.

Tell me you are held by your galaxy and loved by space itself.

Tell me your body has grown to the size of your heart so every life form can learn of your love, no longer confined

by Earth’s gravity.

Tell me the stars dance for you the way I never got to and every asteroid brings you water and the beginnings of life.

Tell me you are happy.

I’ve heard that when our bodies go limp, when our lives leave through our throats, we become space and dust and stars.

I don’t believe that.

I don’t want to believe that because you are too big and too small to become space or dust or stars.

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But you would never ignore me and you would never forget, no matter how much I deserved it.

Please.

I need to know.

Problem Child If you can’t already tell, I am the problem child.

It is a title I wear with pride for it is mine just like it has always been.

Exhibit A. When I was 3 I went to preschool and refused to drink my milk.

No teacher would let me out to play, so I stayed in our classroom and solved puzzles.

My bhaiya* demanded I be released from captivity.

He climbed a table to gain height and make a point but was only given a forceful invite to join me.

When our mother came to rescue us, barely holding back laughter at this ridiculous trouble we had found, a teacher told her that I was a bad influence.

Exhibit B, the reason I learned to read was spite.

My father used to read me bedtime stories, the same rotation of books every night until his patience took flight and instead of Barbie and Clifford he created tales of Bageshree and her Big Red Cat. I wasn’t happy with the change so I disbanded our arrangement and learned to coax letters from memorized tomes like they were raindrops waiting in the storm clouds to come home.

I don’t participate in class, in the past I’ve jumped off stairs to see if I could fly, so many times I’ve made people cry and wasn’t sorry.

I’m the antisocial hermit who always stays home, I’ve broken too many bones, my blackmail folder has only grown.

Blackmail is just for family and they have dirt on me too.

They say I’m the one who can never understand unless it’s a problem that I helped expand, my prideful hands hate letting go of control, I know that I talk too much to listen.

But what you will never know is I avoid drinking dairy because my brother is allergic and my father is vegan.

What you will never know is I was the first in my class to learn to read.

What you will never know is if I speak in school there is always something wrong with what I say or a rule that I break so I won’t speak up. I’m learning life is more than knowing and I wish that were enough.

What you will never know is my siblings were made to fly while I wonder why I am grounded, but I will proudly watch them soar nonetheless.

What you will never know is I will fight every last soul if you threaten those I call mine and how dare you assume I will be sorry.

What you will never know is home is where I know everyone is out of harm’s way, I do my best to keep my family from feeling too much pain.

What you will never know is I am good for more than just trouble and I swear I understand, so let me stay here with you, I can listen and let go, but you will not believe me so over there I will land.

What you will never know is my love language is food and my room is a maze, there’s too much to do but I never meant to let it stain.

I’m mean because I’m the mean one, the no-fear one, the just-breathe-I’m-here one.

I’m the scared little girl with too big hands and a too small heart who once wanted to change the world.

I think I’ll settle for keeping mine safe.

I embarrassed my brother on his birthday with a cake that had “17 years-old, still crazy” curling across the frosting in green.

My room is a mess ‘cause I can’t keep it clean, I will fight everyone over everything since I guess I’m just mean.

If you can’t already tell, I am the problem child.

It is a title I must wear with pride for it is mine just like it has always been.

I am mean.

*Older brother in Hindi

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Xander Ratledge

Photography Avon Old Farms School Avon, CT

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Piece 6 Digital / iPhone 2020

Matthew Rebecchini

Visual Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

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The Desire to Let Go Pencil and acrylic paint on paper 2020

Clarise Reichley

Creative Nonfiction Denver School of the Arts Denver, CO

To Make Light: A Recipe After eighteen months of solitude you are back in the world.

You wake in darkness and watch the dawn illuminate the headstones across the street. This the cemetery where each evening you are awed by apple trees (their fruit picked by none, rotting on the boughs). The magical time of summer solstice is separating into darkness and you, who celebrated your seventeenth birthday with the locust, wish to return to the soil.

Your life is now varying levels of reintegration, as in collecting the disparate parts of yourself into digestible forms: classmate, friend, daughter; as in reacquainting yourself with a society you’ve realized you would rather live outside of.

After the first week of such a return, you recognize the purgatory of your new existence, and are bowed into apathy. With the embodiment of something you’ve dreamed of for four years— the end of high school, the beginning of the rest of your life—you realize the total breadth of your unpreparedness.

This is when it appears to you—the recipe book for joy.

Ingredients (Thrift stores, bookshops, and gardens are perfect foraging places for these ingredients.)

1 pair of lilac-colored glasses 1 copy of The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, preferably purchased secondhand 1 tin of Barry’s Tea (Lyons Tea will also do) 1 pen (your favorite) and a notebook Optional additions are: a dear friend and/or a companionable cat Preparation Step One: Position the lilac-colored glasses over your eyes so that which is mundane may be elevated into holiness.

Step Two: Brew yourself a cuppa.

Step Three: Open your copy of The Book of Delights to a random page and read the contents out loud three times.

Step Four: Gather all sources of your despair into a corner of your body (I recommend the spleen) and understand you will always bear burrs and thorns and scabs within yourself. This acceptance frees you into greater presence.

Step Five: Most important of all: unzip the tender muscle of your heart until all is open and there is no division between you and the flawed, flailing, ending world.

Step Six: Begin to worship the small things.

For instance: the damp wind that blows off lakes.

For instance: waking up with the sun.

For instance: limes.

(All this is to say: resign yourself to delight.)

Step Seven: Your attunement to pleasure will soon grow so great you’ll feel it in your body, a corporeal premonition. Until every day—nay, every hour—you are filled with such mounting ecstasies.

It’ll be difficult to keep these ecstasies contained inside yourself, so your fingers will itch to write and your mouth will long to speak of these delights. Don’t hold them in—you’ll combust! Instead, use your pen and paper to immortalize all that delights you.

For instance: I’ve dedicated an entire orange Moleskine to this capture of joy.

Sunday September 12 reads: Delight: the synchronicity of books This is an ode to the book that first appeared in the pages of an indie magazine held in my unsuspecting hands; the book that then appeared in my local bookstore where it sat nestled among admired others. This book praised by kindred spirits, called something close to magic.

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And so, in my delight (at living in a world where I’ve yet to read all the books) I bought it and took it home and introduced it to my bookshelf. And that evening, before bed, I cracked it open, and began to read of all the wonders of the world.

Sunday September 5 reads: Delight: at the end of my fourteen mile bike ride As I neared the end of my adventure, through city streets known and unknown, I looked down to the sidewalk and witnessed this truth graffitied with humble devotion: I love you always.

Saturday August 28 reads: Delight: true north Let me name the delight of being able to navigate myself from an inner knowing through the city streets, neighborhoods, parks where I’ve grown up. This internalized map is defined by inconsequential landmarks: the Little Free Library that introduced me to Rubyfruit Jungle, the park where I roller skated in the fall; the corner where I fell and skinned my knee (the scar remains).

A landscape that is also my personhood, collected into a parcel by the stealthy fingers of nostalgia.

Sunday August 29 reads: Delight: blue umbrellas against the blue sky Today, my dear friend, who is a barista at a neighborhood café, treated me to a dulce de leche crêpe and an orange-juicerosewater concoction. After exchanging quick pleasantries with her, I sat down beneath the shade of a magnificent royal-blue umbrella and convened with the world, immersed in a jumble of pink geraniums. I sat there marveling and pulled out my notebook to capture all this vibrancy. And at that precise moment of pen meeting paper my crêpe was brought forth (topped with vanilla ice cream; delight) and I dove into deliciousness.

My first bite: a medley of cream, nutella, caramel, strawberry, vanilla. And then washed down with the airy tang of orange and rose. This I devoured, savored, with my eyes turned towards the fresh, scrubbed-clean blue sky.

And then my beloved friend came to join me and we marveled at all the twists of the universe that brought us into each other’s lives. And by the time her break was over, my plate was empty and we were content.

school

Wednesday September 8 reads: Delight: watching the magpies roost on the roof of my

As I sit with my flat-tired bike leaned against a tree, reading, I look skyward and see the nightly ritual unfolding (this the ritual of birds going to roost in the heavenly air of dusk, reminding me of my own inner exhaustion, and also my own inner freedoms).

Thursday September 2 reads: Delight: walking by the lake in the blue film of twilight After a nourishing dinner, with a full belly, we went towards the twilight. Companion to cottonwood trees, we walked in an elliptical twist around the green, slatey lake until we had walked straight into the maw of night.

Wednesday September 22 reads: Delight: the moonrise outside my window Today I received a postcard from Ireland, and in it my mama waxed poetic on the glory of the moon. She wrote of her skylight flooded by the half-glow of the waxing gibbous and how she awoke at three am immersed in the shine. This I read as the

silver rays of the full moon peered curiously into the honeycomb of my bedroom. A fortnight between our observations, the turn and wobble of this fragile planet constantly pulling her out of my sight.

Yet even across the miles we are connected by the same things.

And this makes my heart sing.

Thursday August 26 reads: Delight: clouds When you grow up in a land without sea, you must learn how to make do with the sky. And I am learning to recognize the different inflections of light that burrow in the edges of a thunderhead. Oh the delight of changing light, for the flux is constant, inescapable.

There are two clouds I’ve come to know like one might demarcate swells and white caps in the ocean.

First, the clouds of the rolling deep—lovers of space who vacuum and pull until they are stretched out and wispy, in the same archaic manner of fossils I happen upon on the shore.

Then there are the flat clouds that bespeak wasteland— sucking all the light for themselves and giving none in return.

These voids hold promise of corn, peaches, and winter wheat.

These clouds are the beginning and end of possibility (but mostly the beginning).

I remember learning how during the Dust Bowl farmers were so desperate for water they paid traveling pyrotechnicians to detonate bombs in their own worn-thin clouds in hopes of shaking forth the rain—like meager pennies from a piggy bank. This concept has always fascinated me for, at first glance, it appears hopelessly logical. Yes, dynamite simulates thunder, which carries a downpour.

Now, as I think again of this desperation, I realize soft things cannot be bombed open.

Friday September 10 reads: Delight: of communal euphoria and sweat and smoke in the Ogden Theater We wrap ourselves down the block like some snake, all of us one body. We enter into the half-light, filled with murmurs. We elbow our way to a spot near the stage and watch as guitars are tuned, smoke is blown from foreign mouths, drinks are sipped and left behind.

All of us reemerging, some of us more cautious than others.

And for the first time in a long time, I understand the sick power of crowds: how you can do anything when everyone is doing everything. And I delight in this liberation. And I dance, here in this cavern we fill to bursting. A new intimacy of shared space, sharp edges: breath that was just pumped into their damp lungs is now pumped into my equally-damp lungs. Different realities become one reality.

And the music starts and we collect ourselves into the singular joy of singing and jumping. Our ankles ache and we don’t care and this not-caring is wonderful.

My body can’t contain this joy. My ears ring for hours.

Tuesday September 21 reads: Delight: steam rising, frost sitting, and me, living in a Mary Oliver poem This all observed on my morning bike ride in the frigid prefall temperatures. Meanwhile, I am bundled into sweatiness until the cold is another delusion. And I’m realizing this is the most alive I’ve felt in months. The cool, I mean, it makes me feel alive.

Notes A gratitude practice has always evaded me. Not because I don’t have things to be grateful for, more because I have so much

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to be grateful for and attempting to distill everything down into a list feels ingenuine and falsely economical.

After stumbling upon The Book of Delights by Ross Gay the week before my senior year began, I was able to weather the disappointment and melodrama and lack of motivation that characterized my first week, my second week, and my third week of school. By writing daily delights I was able to reconnect with the pleasures of being human without also compromising the challenges and pitfalls.

Grappling with past isolation and present reintegration has sown both solace and discord. I’m realizing there is a paradox held within my delight; it is a reality rooted in the knowledge of despair.

Samantha Reineke

Play or Script Independence High School Ashburn, VA

Debate FADE IN: 1 INT. NICHOLAS’S BEDROOM - NIGHT Nicholas and Darwin are looking down at the body of Chase, who is slumped on the bed, lifeless. There’s a spilled bowl of peanuts on his lap.

Nick, get the epi-pen.

DARWIN

Nicholas frantically searches around the room for Chase’s epi-pen.

Where’s the epi-pen?

NICHOLAS

Darwin doesn’t respond. He’s still staring at Chase’s body with a blank expression.

NICHOLAS Darwin, where’s the goddamn epi-pen, I can’t find it.

DARWIN It’s in his backpack, front pocket.

Darwin tears the room apart searching for Chase’s backpack with the epi-pen inside.

DARWIN Check the bathroom counter.

Nicholas jogs across the room to his bathroom and finds Chase’s black backpack. He unzips it and finds the epi-pen Found it!

Quick, stick it in.

NICHOLAS DARWIN

NICHOLAS Stick it in? Is there like an angle I’m supposed to approach it from or an arteryDARWIN He’s in anaphylactic shock, Nick, just stick it in already!

Nicholas firmly sticks the epi-pen into Chase’s thigh, breathing heavily.

There’s a pause.

Did it work?

DARWIN

NICHOLAS I don’t know, I’m not a doctor Nicholas moves closer to Chase, poking him to see if he moves.

DARWIN Well? Did you find his pulse or something?

NICHOLAS (Yelling) Why don’t you do it, you’re the one who did this!

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DARWIN I don’t know how to check a pulse, I failed my CPR certification test twice Nicholas, what makes you think I know how toNICHOLAS Google it! Just google it!

Darwin hastily turns on the computer on his nightstand and searches “How to find a pulse”.

He then gets up from the computer and hovers above Chase, placing two fingers on the corpses’ wrist in an attempt to find his pulse.

I can’t find it.

DARWIN

NICHOLAS What do you mean you can’t find it?

I think he’s dead.

DARWIN

Nicholas looks mortified. He lies down on the bed and there’s a close up on his face.

He’s dead.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION)

2 EXT. PLAYGROUND - DAYTIME

CUT TO:

It cuts to a playground, as Chase, Darwin, and Nicholas sit on the mulch. Chase is a couple feet away, sitting alone, while the other two eat ice cream cones with peanuts on top.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION) He’s dead because of a stupid peanut allergy.

3 INT. KITCHEN TABLE - LUNCH

CUT TO:

Chase, Darwin, and Nicholas are all sitting at the kitchen table. Chase is eating a salad, but Darwin and Nicholas are both eating bowls full of peanuts NICHOLAS (NARRATION) A nut killed him. A nut.

4 INT. NICHOLAS’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

CUT TO:

In a flashback, Nicholas and Darwin are laughing while Chase joyfully eats a peanut, smiling.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION) He had never tried one before. He said he just got a rash. I mean he passes out from fear, what if he just passed out.

It cuts to Chase’s face, drooling white spit, sitting up.

5 INT NICHOLAS’S BEDROOM It cuts back to Nicholas’s face.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION) I don’t think he passed out.

Nicholas sits up and turns to Darwin.

NICHOLAS Okay, we need a plan. We need to dispose of the body.

DARWIN Did you listen to what I was saying? We don’t even know whether he’s definitively dead or not. We need to take him to the hospital.

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CUT TO:

NICHOLAS The hospital? Are you mental? If anyone finds out what we did, it’s over. We’d go to jail.

DARWIN Well, Nicholas, what do you suppose we do then, toss his body off a bridge?

NICHOLAS That’s not the only way it can be disposed of.

FADE IN:

6 EXT. BIKE TUNNEL - NIGHT

In a hypothetical scenario, Darwin and Nicholas are struggling to carry a body bag through the bike tunnel. Chase’s body starts falling out of the bag, and they panic.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION) We could bury him in the woods.

7 EXT. DARK FOREST - NIGHT

CROSS-CUT:

Darwin shines a flashlight in Chase’s face, while Nicholas shovels dirt onto the body.

CUT TO:

8 INT. NICHOLAS’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Cut back to Nicholas’s bedroom. Darwin is sitting in the chair across from Nicholas and Chase on the bed.

DARWIN We aren’t burying him in the woods, he’s our friend NICHOLAS Our friend that’s dead in your room DARWIN We don’t even know he’s dead. What if I just suck at taking a pulse?

What if he’s passed out?

NICHOLAS Okay let’s think of this logically. We know his parents are out of town for the week. They went to Jamaica and left him at homeDARWIN Because they thought he’d be racist NICHOLAS Yeah, he’s a little racist, but I think more in an anti-pc way, like South Park.

Racist is racist, man.

DARWIN

There’s a short pause.

NICHOLAS Just listen to me, okay. Racist or not, he’s dead and we’ve got to get rid of him. Since his parents are gone, we can sneak into his room, put him on his bed, and maybe sprinkle some peanuts on top of him, I don’t know.

That’s a horrible idea.

DARWIN

NICHOLAS Well do you have any other ideas, Mr. judgmental?

(Zoom in on Darwin’s face)

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9 EXT. OUTSIDE OF CHASE’S HOUSE - NIGHT Darwin and Nicholas are dragging Chase’s body to his front door.

You got the keys?

CUT TO:

DARWIN

NICHOLAS Yeah, I got them out of his backpack.

DARWIN You know that we’re going to have to figure this out, right? This is an extremely temporary solution. Like, what happens in a week when they find him?

NICHOLAS We’ll figure it out, but for now, let’s make this as smooth as possible.

CUT TO: 10 INT. STAIRWAY - NIGHT They drag his body up the stairs, it’s not smooth at all.

11 INT. CHASE’S BEDROOM - NIGHT Darwin and Nicholas drop chase in his bed, sprinkling peanuts around his body.

NICHOLAS Just in case anyone finds him before we can come up with a better solution.

12 EXT. OUTSIDE CHASE’S HOUSE - NIGHT Darwin and Nicholas are standing outside of the house with blank expressions.

DARWIN What do we do now?

NICHOLAS We don’t come back. Neither of us step foot in this house until we need to move the body.

DARWIN We don’t mention this to anyone. It stays between us.

Agreed.

NICHOLAS

There’s a short pause.

Hey Nicholas?

Yeah?

We just killed a man.

DARWIN NICHOLAS

DARWIN

*smooth transition into the car with Bella* CUT TO: 13 INT. CAR INTERIOR - DAYTIME There’s a smooth transition, with Darwin and Nicholas with the same expressions, except for the location. They’re in Bella’s mom’s car, going to debate practice. All three of them are wearing their debate uniforms.

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BELLA Okay, I think that for our argument, we should go with an antiwhaling approach. People like whales. People care about whales.

I mean Brad’s going to be there so we have to bring our A game.

Like, what can he do to topEveryone is silent. Bella looks annoyed.

BELLA If you two keep staring into space, I will pee in your cereal. I will PEE in your Honey Nut Cheerios, your captain crunch, and your Cocoa Puffs, do you hear me?! I didn’t even want to be in a summer debate league, but guess who brought me here They both turn towards her.

BELLA You two. You two forced me into this summer debate league thing because you “didn’t want to be the only ones doing it” but guess what, you have each other, you have Chase. I’m the only girl, the only one.

BELLA You know what one of them said to me?

She pauses for a reply, but they’re silent.

BELLA They said “Wow, for someone with boobs, you’re an amazing speaker.” That’s what they said. My nickname is boobs now. My nickname is boobs. That’s my nickname and now you two are staring off into space like you goddamn killed someone.

There’s a pause. The car stops and Bella comedically scoots her way across one of the boys and exits through the car door.

BELLA I’m leaving. Thanks for the ride, mom!

The camera lingers on the boys for a bit. They’re still in shock. Darwin and Nicholas sit in the car for a moment, and then both get out at the same time.

14 INT. DEBATE PRACTICE ROOM - DAYTIME

CUT TO:

The scene opens with a close up on Brad.

BRAD Now, my competitors may argue that the source of human collapse is environmental, however that’s not the case. Think whaling, global warming micro plastics, fracking.

Cut to an angry Bella, then back to Brad.

BRAD Who caused that? We did. The source of human collapse isn’t environmental, it’s man-made. Humanity exploits the working class, it overpopulates the earth with cows for us to slaughter, leading to massive amounts of ethanol being released into our atmosphere. We drill the earth, dump our waste into the oceans, and hoard natural resources, just in the name of corporate greed.

The environment is not to blame. It’s us. That’s my time, thank you.

The room applauds right before an announcer moves to the front, instructing the members to fill out the competition forms on their clipboards.

ANNOUNCER Please take this time to fill out your competition forms. As a reminder, your choices are Bradley Stotch and those other three kids, their names are listed on the form.

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She lazily points at Nicholas, Bella, and Darwin. Bella turns to Nicholas.

BELLA (Whispering) I hate Brad, with his smug face and his little “oh my competitors” like shut up, no one wants to hear what you have to say.

NICHOLAS (Whispering) Then why are you choosing him as the winner?

(Whispering) Because he’s good at it. I have a moral code, Nicholas, even if he is a smug little idiot.

It cuts to everyone preparing for the next round, Darwin and Nicholas are together in a corner, while Bella is standing by herself.

Neil has a microphone and clipboard. He taps Bella on the shoulder.

NEIL Hey boobs, chase is outside and wants to see you. He’s got a nasty rash on his arm, don’t touch it.

NEIL *Whispering* Or you might get Chlamydia.

Neil walks away.

BELLA Why does everyone keep calling me that?

It cuts to Darwin and Nicholas talking, but Bella and Chase are visible in the background. What they’re saying is not audible, but she’s looking at his arm, which has a horrible rash. Although the dialogue is not recorded, Bella laughs and points at Darwin and Nicholas. It’s inferred that Chase is pulling a prank on the two, faking his own death.

Simultaneously, Darwin and Nicholas are becoming increasingly paranoid.

DARWIN Have you checked on the body?

NICHOLAS Are you crazy? What if I accidentally left DNA evidence? We can’t implicate ourselves more than we already have.

DARWIN We? Based on that scenario, it sounds like you’d be the one in Guantanamo, not me.

NICHOLAS So you’d just let me take the fall?

DARWIN I mean, why would both of us go to prison?

NICHOLAS Because you’re just as involved in this whole crapfest as I am.

DARWIN Look, all I’m saying is that you’re the one who can deal with dropping the soap and becoming someone’s lover. I’m delicate.

NICHOLAS And you’re saying I’m not? Dude, I’m lanky. I’d die in prison. You look at me and think “Oh, who turned Gumby into a real boy?”

DARWIN Neither of us are going to prison, so pipe down, okay.

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There’s a brief pause. Bella hugs Chase in the background as he exits.

Bella heads toward Nicholas and Darwin with a mischievous look on her face, but is abruptly stopped by Brad.

Bella.

Brad.

BRAD BELLA

BRAD How does it feel to be completely pathetic?

BELLA I don’t know, maybe ask your little band of misfits who do all the research while you slurp off your step-uncle.

BRAD Haha, very funny, look you’re the one who bombed the natural disaster debate.

BELLA I did not! Our presentation was great.

She’s cut off by a flashback of the debate.

15 INT. DEBATE ROOM - EARLIER THAT DAY

CUT TO:

Nicholas, Darwin, and Bella stand together at the podium, Darwin obviously reading from a script. Bella looks displeased, while Nicholas is just standing there, nodding.

DARWIN (Awkwardly) The effects of whaling are not good for the environment. Yeah.

Bella sighs. A single clap from the audience echoes.

16 INT. DEBATE ROOM - PRESENT

CUT TO:

It cuts back to Brad and Bella, resuming mid-conversation.

BRAD Mmhm, keep telling yourself that. We both know I’m winning.

BELLA (Whispering) At least I’m not built on daddy’s money.

BRAD (Whispering) Huh, well at least I don’t have to wear a 3x men’s blazer because I’m insecure.

There’s a pause.

Bella starts breathing heavily and lunges at him. He drops to the ground. Bella attempts to strangle him. Darwin and Nicholas hear the commotion and pull her off.

CUT TO: 17 EXT. PLAYGROUND - AFTERNOON Darwin, Bella, and Nicholas are sitting at the edge of the playground. Bella is fidgeting with mulch. Everyone is momentarily silent until Darwin speaks.

DARWIN Nicholas, who told us that we would ruin the competition?

Bella.

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NICHOLAS

DARWIN And who got us disqualified by strangling Brad?

Bella.

NICHOLAS

Bella starts to cry. She angrily throws her blazer at Darwin, and then storms off.

Darwin and Nicholas both look at each other in guilt.

What’s her problem?

DARWIN

NICHOLAS I think it’s Chase. She has to plan everything now that he’s gone.

DARWIN Do you think she knows he’s… gone gone?

NICHOLAS I don’t think so. He’s not really… reliable.

Chase is visible in the background, climbing the monkey bars.

DARWIN Yeah, remember in ninth grade when he climbed the monkey bars and had a gnarly fall?

Chase then comedically falls off of the monkey bars.

NICHOLAS Yeah, and then he stood up with that gross gash on his face and scared the crap out of James Arora.

Chase walks with his eyes closed and arms out like a zombie from behind Darwin and Nicholas, trying to scare them, but ends up running headfirst into a pole and dropping to the ground.

DARWIN Ha, I remember that was the only thing we talked about for the whole year.

There’s a sad pause.

NICHOLAS Do you feel guilty? Even a little bit?

DARWIN Of course I do. I mean, I’m the one who’s going to have to hide the body before his parents come back. Do you know how hard that is on me?

NICHOLAS I thought we were doing that together.

DARWIN It’s like you said, only one of us needs to be implicated. I’m the only one that can do it.

NICHOLAS You’re the only one? You always do this, you act like the victim.

DARWIN I act like the victim? You whine about me being selfishYou are selfish!

NICHOLAS

Darwin turns to Nicholas, gritting his teeth.

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DARWIN (Shouting) Don’t interrupt me.

Nicholas’s breathing is heavy. He’s visibly scared. Darwin notices this and pulls back.

NICHOLAS You’re screwed without me. If I turn you in, you’re done.

DARWIN I’m done? I can’t believe we’re back to this, we agreed from the beginning that we don’t talkNICHOLAS And what if I do? What if I deserve it? We’re both guilty. Eventually one of us is going to crack. You know that. I know it too.

DARWIN So what do we do? Do we kill each other? Is that what you’re suggesting?

Yeah. I am.

NICHOLAS

For the first time, Nicholas looks completely confident in his words. It’s almost terrifying.

Okay.

DARWIN

Darwin takes a moment to let his nerves settle while we see Chase in the background slowly rise to his feet and limp away, oblivious to what’s happening in the foreground.

DARWIN Tonight, 11 PM. Chase’s backyard. We bring weapons, tools, things we can find in our sheds. Whoever survives has to keep the secret.

The other gets to die innocent.

Nicholas reluctantly nods.

Deal.

NICHOLAS

The scene ends with a close-up on Nicholas’s face, easing into a smooth transition transporting him from the playground’s edge to his bedroom.

18 INT. NICHOLAS’S BEDROOM - EVENING Nicholas is sitting on his bed, surrounded by various tools.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION) I really don’t know how to feel.

He lays down, staring at the ceiling fan.

NICHOLAS (NARRATION) I thought that guilt was a sensation that fades over time, but I just feel worse. If he dies, I’ve just killed another man and if I die… I die.

I won’t win either way.

There’s a montage of him suiting up. He tapes pillows and cushions to his body, wears a bandana, and looks menacingly into the mirror.

He then comically drops to the floor and keels.

NICHOLAS I am confident, I am capable, and I am not like my father. Let’s do this.

He checks the time on his watch. It’s now midnight. Nicholas nods.

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19 EXT. CHASE’S BACKYARD - MIDNIGHT It cuts to Chase’s backyard, where Nicholas and Darwin are facing each other. Chase’s pack porch is shown in the background, with their various tools laid out. Chase is visible in the background, laughing from within the house, shown in a window.

Nicholas and Darwin stare at each other sternly, preparing for battle.

We’re doing this?

We’re doing this.

NICHOLAS DARWIN NICHOLAS

Okay.

DARWIN On the count of three, we charge.

Nicholas nods One… two… three.

DARWIN

Nicholas and Darwin let out loud battle cries and charge.

20 EXT. CHASE’S BACK PORCH - MIDNIGHT It cuts to both boys covered in scratches and wounds. Although the audience didn’t see the battle, it can be inferred that they both gave up or surrendered.

There’s tension between the two, but Darwin breaks the silence.

DARWIN I’m sorry, this is all my fault.

NICHOLAS No, it’s our fault, we got involved in this whole mess together, we’ll deal with it together, come hell or high water.

DARWIN You know his sister’s inside? She didn’t go on vacation, Nick.

NICHOLAS

What?

DARWIN She’s been here the whole time. I guess she was out when we came in, but her car was always in the driveway. I saw her asleep on the couch just a couple minutes ago.

So that means-

NICHOLAS

DARWIN (Smiling) He’s not dead, Nick. She would have said something.

NICHOLAS (Subtly laughing) That dipwad. He faked it.

Yup.

DARWIN

They sit there in silence for a moment, but they both smile.

DARWIN Come on, let’s go inside. He must be laughing his ass off.

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Nicholas and Darwin both stand up and head towards the back door, grinning.

Suddenly, Chase comes through the back door laughing. He had been watching them through the window.

CHASE (Laughing) You guys are so gullible, I can’t believe thChase is hit by Darwin with the back of a shovel. He drops to the floor. The credits start to roll on top of the final scene playing out.

DARWIN Oh my god, oh my god.

What did you do?

NICHOLAS

DARWIN He startled me and I justNICHOLAS You bashed his face in. You bashed his goddamn face in.

I’m sorry.

DARWIN

Darwin drops to the ground and starts to cry, while Nicholas paces back and forth.

I’m so sorry.

NICHOLAS FADE OUT: The End

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Mea Richards

Photography Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH

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Home (piece 5 of 5) Silver gelatin photograph 2021

Olufela Rodriguez

Visual Arts Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH

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The Other Side of Extensive Consumption India ink, matboard 2020

Camila Salinas

Visual Arts Lebanon Trail High School Frisco, TX

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Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind Acrylic paint 2021

London San Luis

Visual Arts Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

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Cogitate at Night in the Bathroom 20 Yards Away From Her Bedroom Door Acrylic paint on wood panel 2021

Grace Schlett

Poetry Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

The Three Graces (I) Our mother wakes us up every morning singing. Her voice circles us gently as all six of our eyes crack open. The first thing I typically see is my mother’s bed-hair pressed to her face. I like to compare it to an unwrapped shroud. It is my favorite version of her. In the morning she is not beautiful, not powerful, not anything except our mother. In unison, my sisters and I all say good morning. Out of the space where two hems meet, she will reply. Today, this does not happen. Today, my brother-in-law Helios tiptoes into the room cast entirely in gold. He sees me blink open and beckons me out of bed. My other two sisters are still asleep, their bodies moving with their breath under their flowered sheets. In their sleep, neither smile. It’s the only time I ever see them that way. I slip out of bed, my mind drifting out the window to where the weary night birds call out for sleep. Helios’s soft voice touches the air and warms it: come, I’m making breakfast, let’s let your sisters be. I drift after him. In the kitchen, he cracks two eggs. Yesterday, when we arrived at the venue where we were performing, the sun was pushing down on the tree line in the middle of our farm town until it burst, its orangey yolk emptying out over the blue in the sky: our spotlight. On the pan, the egg yolk spreads. Helios swears. How was last night? Last night was as crowded as a city, in the eyes of the root-legged Trump supporters. They’d all stopped their hunting and gathering to come and watch. Some people say the women kept stripping down to nothing, that they spun until the part of them that was themselves and the part of them that was us became indistinguishable. I could not see— we, too, were spinning. The real difference between us and them is that those girls walk with coin-tossed strides like they coined the walk themselves. We walk because we’re told

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we have to. I tell this to Helios, who has turned his attention to the window. Let’s go on a car ride while we wait for your sisters to wake up. In the car, I watch the night peel backwards, our car undoing the clasps of sky to reveal the chest of morning. We drive into the heart of town, past the stage we played on. My chest tells me I am unhappy so I giggle a lot, marveling at the place where they tore us all apart. Helios laughs too, love aimed at me and the backside of the world.

The Three Graces (II)

The Three Graces (III)

I lay open-eyed, thumbing the flower on my nightstand that opened

My mother weaved

as soon as my eyes did, staring at the stupid words my mother drew on the mirror above my bed the night before—Always be authentically you! No -thing is as it should be. My mother is absent and one of my sisters is too. The other yawns beside me, so the birds sing louder and the bees double their output of honey. I stare at the mirror longer until my reaction looks more real than I do. I could have loved the uke. How it lilts like the crowd did last night, like how I could under my mother’s palm of pride, but I was never allowed to play the songs I wanted. So I sat in the car on the way to the concert, thinking about where I would be

through traffic, swearing at every light that winked red. We couldn’t have been late—my mother is never late. But still, my words struck noiselessly against the leather back of her seat. I clutch this. Only this. As our music spun our town away, I let my eyes spill out over the crowd in search of my mother. People cheered like there was nothing like us anywhere. I searched for a familiar scowl, or smile, but found none. She left us. The arms in the audience flapped like wings, faces no more familiar to me than the birds outside my window. My mother is in the car, driving far away from me. She desperately wants to cry but she, like us, was never

if I had control over my own life. On the outside, maybe. On my way to see the three town prodigies play

taught how. I broke away from the circle, from the stage, from my sisters, and the whole town started frowning—

and sing. I would have been one of the faceless townspeople who turned against the three girls they barely knew, but knew

bearing down on me, begging us not to stop, teeth bared at what they wanted most. I lift myself up and away. I am last to wake.

they needed. I would not have been turned against. I would have gotten ready with friends—smeared on my own lipstick, did up my own hair. In this life, I would smile not because I was told to, but because I belonged to myself. Instead, I got ready with my sisters and my mother. My friends fell away years ago, replaced by burnt hair and face powder, long nights practicing the same three tunes. Mother says we only need each other. Next to me, my sisters were silent. Car rides usually are. They looked beautiful, so I cut my cheeks in half, tucking them under my teeth. I flashed a smile to every car that passed ours, and saw them smile back. Mother, I said. Look at how happy I can make them. I drop my eyes from the mirror, smelling eggs in the other room.

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Maria Fernanda Serra Almeida Leite

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Photography Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

de perto Digital photography 2021

Lucas Sewell

Photography Ladue Horton Watkins High School Saint Louis, MO

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Back Film 2021

Nalani Sexton

Photography The Chicago Academy for the Arts Chicago, IL

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Alas Rotas: Self as Frida Kahlo Digital 2020

Ashley Shan

Photography Greenhill School Addison, TX

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Healing Period Digital photography 2021

Evy Shen

Poetry Statesboro High School Statesboro, GA

The gravity of forgiving

home in motions

These days, our conversations rim an Eulerian path.

We run until we run out of labyrinths to dream in, half the cities still unspoken. After you left, conveyor skies filched

the shrinking cross sections of memory

and pulverized them to pale stars I prayed before. To alter the spiral of language. To

brave the distance, clutch these wax wings of faith. The times you loved me a knife

and I loved back, the touch-starved apex,

newborn wrists drawn in refuge.

Say what you will— This leftover hunger is enough to split ends.

On the way to Northside, all I glean

from the level crossing is infinity railroaded into extinction. Dyad of train and track.

& I expect this is us.

Two arrows trying to reconcile without collapsing in the refuse. The same horizon in lure.

Remind me again how to flee this burning.

Remind me but it’s all the same scene.

One of us in stone. The other bowed like hyacinth in the dense shudders of night. This inescapable circuit of aching

we escape by falling.

after Grace Q. Song

where waters bloom promises of land & lemon halves sprout horns to exorcise mosquitoes where on the school bus we are the bycatch of some insult sounding like chimes where living room walls scabbed with childhood flake like identities too [itchy / familiar / foreign] where the orchestra of insects stitch close day-wounds & every night we’re moon-turned restless in absence where we burrow in the same silence between stale arguments clenching where we become ambigrams, reconcile flaws where we iron our [bed sheets / postures / America -creased names] until they unfurl into early fog & call it repentance where we exist only in the lion hills of summer or maybe exist in every season but the summer where we sleep at the wrong time to the wrong song too [tired / awake / sick] to care but who’s to say what’s better, that orientation from disorientation the blurring / of a scratchboard dawn / with the breakfast pulse / sirens bleeding / under covers / sweeping hand of paralysis / slippery-splinter of a heartbeat / two mothers / too lost / flight repeated out of its motion / how we will be scared regardless.

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Isha Sidibay

Visual Arts Academy of the Arts at Henry Snyder High School Jersey City, NJ

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Birthday Multimedia (paper-cut with gouache and colored pencil) 2020

Owen Simon

Photography The St. Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX

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Untitled Digital photography 2021

Daniel Slater

Short Story The Dalton School New York, NY

A Letter For Satan The demons all stared upwards as the trapdoor in the ceiling of Hell opened for the first and only time of the year, and a deluge of unopened envelopes fluttered down towards the ground. They kept falling, and then, just as it seemed as if they had stopped, more letters came crashing down towards the underworld. Barry, awestruck, continued to stare at the ceiling long after the last letter had completed its descent. His fellow demons proceeded to go back to their business as usual, but Barry knew that there would be a meeting later that day to discuss the letters.

He looked at the mountain of envelopes for a little while longer before getting back to work. After all, it was December 24th, and there was a lot to get done.

Every year, children from all over the world wrote letters to Santa. But some kids’ letters never quite made it to the North Pole--specifically, the dyslexic kids, who instead of addressing their letters to SANTA had actually mistakenly sent them to SATAN. Thus, through a simple typo, Hell received millions of letters each holiday season.

After a busy morning of torture and paperwork, Barry briskly walked to the meeting centre. To his delight, he was handed a complimentary devil dog--a favorite dessert amongst the demons-- as he entered. The room was almost full, but he still managed to get a seat next to his best friend Xanthar, whom he had known since they were young hellspawn.

Just as Barry sat down, Zamaroth, the head demon, started to speak. “As you are all aware, the letters arrived today.” This was met with hollers from the crowd. “Satan has requested that, as usual, we bring them all to him so he can burn, crumple and destroy children’s dreams and cause cries of anguish and agony.

Any volunteers?”

No one said anything. It really was rather bothersome to haul all of those letters all the way across Hell. Being a demon was not a particularly easy job--between long nights at the fire pit and early mornings cleaning up the Valley of Human Appendages--so it did not seem entirely fair to have this extra work. After a few more minutes of silence, one demon from the back of the room blurted out, “Let’s make Barry do it!“ An uproarious shout of approval arose from the rest of the congregation. Xanthar pushed Barry forward, an action which was met with chants of “Barry! Barry!”.

“Why me?” protested Barry. The others exchanged knowing glances.

“Because you’re the worst demon here!” a pudgy demon named Yormak hollered from the front of the room. “And not in the good way!”

“Yeah,” a snot-covered, spiky demon agreed, “you barely know how to torture people!”

“I can torture people!” Barry responded defensively.

“Dude,” Xanthar whispered to him just loud enough so that people could hear, “the last time you tried to torture someone, he laughed at you because you couldn’t figure out how to turn on the grill for his organs.” This was met with a collective cackle from the others.

“Then it’s settled,” Zamaroth announced. “Barry’ll go deliver the letters to Satan.”

That afternoon, Barry took a cart and loaded up all of the improperly addressed letters onto it. There were thousands upon thousands of them, in all shapes and sizes. After what felt like an eternity (it was hard to be sure, given the lack of clocks in Hell), the cart was stacked so high that it groaned under the weight of children’s Christmas wishes. Barry set off to see Satan.

The journey to Satan’s abode was arduous, and, in addition to the bumpy roads, yawning potholes, and horrendous traffic (it was always rush hour in Hell), it also happened to be street

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cleaning day. As a result, the strenuous process was exacerbated by a seemingly never-ending search for a parking spot within walking distance of the house. After Barry circled the block a couple dozen times, a space finally opened up on Satan’s street. Barry wasn’t an expert parallel parker by any means, but eventually, to his relief, he was able to fit into the spot snugly.

By the time Barry knocked on the door of Satan’s surprisingly modest-looking townhouse, he was thoroughly exhausted. He heard a distant shout from inside the house.

“Junior, can you get it?”

Five seconds later, Barry was greeted at the door by Satan Junior, a young, bored-looking demon who had his father’s horns and his mother’s nose. He was wearing a Metallica t-shirt, which Barry thought was overkill for the son of the Devil.

“I’m here to see your father,” Barry explained. “I have the letters,” Satan Junior snorted, rolled his eyes, and ran back upstairs to get his father. Soon after, Satan arrived downstairs, dressed in a bathrobe and holding a toothbrush.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Barry. I have some of your mail.”

With a heavy sigh, Satan beckoned him inside, and Barry grabbed one overflowing bag from the heaping pile. He followed Satan through the living room, which was adorned with fuzzy furniture and countless family photos of Satan, Martha, and the kids, past the dining room, with its ornately decorated table and human heads hanging on the wall, and into the office.

“So what happens to the letters?” Barry asked.

“I have a chute for them. Right here, see? It goes straight to the incinerator!” Satan announced gleefully.

“But what about these poor children?” Barry was confused, “How are they going to get their Christmas gifts?”

“They’re not!” Satan cackled, “Picture their sad, miserable, little faces when they find out Santa isn’t coming this year! Think of the delicious, salty tears rolling down their cheeks!”

“But Satan,” Barry questioned, “don’t you feel a little bit...bad?”

“Do I feel bad? I’m a demon--you’re a demon! We’re supposed to feel bad!”

Barry stared at Satan. He knew that they were demons and that being mean was kind of their thing. Punishing sinners? Sure.

But innocent kids? It just seemed cruel.

“Well, thanks so much for delivering these scrumptious scraps of disappointment and despair,” Satan said. “Leave the cart by the road. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Feeling awful, Barry left the bag of letters in the middle of the room. Then suddenly, almost impulsively, he grabbed an envelope from the bag and snuck it into his pocket.

“Thanks, Satan. Have a good night!” The door slammed shut behind him, and he started on the long journey home.

It wasn’t until he was inside his house that Barry felt safe enough to pull the envelope out of his pocket. After all, it was treason to help a human. He tore open the envelope to find a neatly folded, albeit extremely poorly spelled letter from a kid named Jeremy. As he read it, Barry realized that Jeremy was not so unlike himself. Jeremy’s friends bullied him, made him feel like he didn’t belong, and left him feeling useless. Barry thought about his own life, and how he wished for a sudden change, something to turn things around. Maybe this was it. If he could help Jeremy by making sure his Christmas hopes were delivered, then maybe, just maybe, he too would feel a sense of fulfillment. Unfortunately, he couldn’t really make out any of the items on the list; due to Jeremy’s dyslexia, nothing was spelled correctly. The only item Barry could read was: DOG. Barry imagined a warm, small, furry buddy who would lick his nose and love him unconditionally.

He longed for a friend like that in his own life, and knew it was

impossible. But not for Jeremy. And so Barry decided, for the first time in his demonic existence, to try making a human’s life better.

Though Barry was quite enthusiastic about his plan, he hadn’t considered one small problem: where would he find a dog?

There was a general rule in the underworld that joyous things were prohibited, and Satan was strongly against the idea of having adorable puppies frolicking through the streets of Hell. They did, however, have hellhounds--ferocious beasts with fearsomely pointy teeth, sharp claws, and bloodshot eyes. Barry himself had a hellhound named Fido who he loved like family, as it was the closest thing to family he had ever known. And even if he didn’t love Fido (a love he had to keep secret, or else he would be ousted), there was no way he could give a vicious hellhound to a defenseless eight-year-old. Besides, there was only one place he could successfully acquire a normal dog: up in the realm of the humans.

With no time to lose, Barry quickly packed a suitcase with some human items from the flaming trash pits. After all, he was going to have to present himself as a human, since a demon couldn’t just walk into an animal shelter, let alone adopt a puppy.

Throwing on a top hat and a child’s wizard costume (surprisingly, demons are quite short), he left his house and walked towards the Gates of Hell. He scribbled his name and ID number on the signout sheet, and hurried out of the realm of damnation and into the unknown.

He emerged in Cleveland, the closest human equivalent to Hell, and set off in search of a dog. After spending what felt like hours (well, about forty minutes; demons don’t have a great sense of time) wandering around the city, he eventually found an open animal shelter. He entered, and approached the front desk, where a tall, bony woman with a pointy nose and an equally pointy mole on her chin was waiting.

“Hi. I’m here to adopt a dog,” Barry said nervously--he wasn’t sure how the process worked.

“Wonderful! If you come to the back with me, you’ll see we have a bunch of cuties!” Barry followed her through a glass door, and found himself amidst a plethora of dogs in cages, yapping loudly.

“So what kind of dog are you looking for?” the woman enquired. Barry hadn’t given this much thought. He’d just assumed that all dogs were the same. He tried to play it cool.

“Um...one without...flippers?”

The mole-chinned woman started to laugh, but, looking at his face and realizing he was serious, stifled it back. “Take your pick!”

As soon as Barry stepped into the room, however, the dogs whimpered and crowded into the far corner of their cages. The closer he got, the further they retreated.

“This is weird,” the woman said. “They seem to be afraid of you.”

“Why would they be afraid?”

“Pardon me if I’m being rude,” she stammered, “but maybe they don’t like your smell?”

Barry sniffed at his underarms. Brimstone and sulfur. That meant that he still had his demon scent. The canines didn’t want anything to do with him because he, quite literally, smelled like something had just died. He wasn’t going to have any luck getting one of these puppies. He decided he would shower first and then come back. He left the pound and tried to find a place he could wash off.

As he wandered once more through the streets of Cleveland, Barry realized that he had lost track of the time. He saw a man walking on the street, staring at his phone, and decided to ask him.

“11 o’clock” the man said without looking up from his phone.

“What?!” Barry began to panic. There was only one more hour until Christmas--how was he supposed to shower, get a dog, and make it to Jeremy’s house before midnight? With deep disappointment, he realized that he failed in his mission to do good, just as he always failed at doing bad. Dejected, he returned to the Gate, and, frowning, went back to Hell.

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Once there, however, amidst the mockery of the other demons, the boring routine, and the crushing loneliness, Barry suddenly realized that he could still get Jeremy a dog... of sorts.

He ran back to his house, and grabbed Fido. The hellhound was purebred, and its eternally damp fur was black as ash, while its sharp, talon-like claws--all twelve of them--had just been sharpened at the groomer. Barry didn’t want to let Jeremy down.

He couldn’t let Jeremy down. He took his “dog” and quickly returned to the overworld.

Back in Cleveland, hellhound under one arm, letter in hand, he ran towards Jeremy’s house. It wasn’t far, but Barry knew he was running out of time. Just a few minutes before midnight, he arrived at the address. It was a quaint brownstone, with Christmas decorations adorning the door. Barry searched for a spare key to the house, and eventually found one under the doormat. He opened the door, tied a red ribbon with a festive bow around Fido’s neck, and pushed the hellhound inside the house. As the door slammed shut, he heard the chime of Christmas bells echoing through the city.

Barry watched through the window with giddy anticipation as Jeremy excitedly stomped down the stairs. He had done it! He had made a child’s Christmas wish come true! And just in time.

His heart warmed a few degrees more when Jeremy finally noticed the hellhound laying under a brightly lit Christmas tree, adorned with countless colorful ornaments. The boy ran back upstairs-- with joy, Barry thought, until he saw that Jeremy’s parents had come back down with him to the living room, with confused expressions on their faces. They clearly had no clue how the “dog” had gotten there.

“Um, Jeremy?” Barry could hear the boy’s father say through the window, “What exactly did you ask Santa for?”

“I just asked for God to bless us all. But this is cool too, I guess.”

Barry froze. GOD? Not DOG? His heart sank as he suddenly recalled that Jeremy was dyslexic.

That’s when he heard the screams from inside. He turned back to the window to find the house in disarray, and the hellhound violently rampaging through the room, growling loudly and clawing at the unsuspecting family inside. Barry watched in horror as the hellhound pounced on Jeremy. He covered his eyes, but too late to avoid the sight of blood spurting on the window, painting it bright red.

He had failed. He had tried so desperately to help Jeremy, and, as he always seemed to do, ended up causing more harm than anything else. Feeling dispirited, depressed, and utterly defeated, Barry trudged through the damp Cleveland streets, and ducked back through the Gates into the darkness.

In the morning, waking up in his hot, cramped house, wanting nothing more than to sit alone and cry, Barry got out of bed and unenthusiastically got ready for work. As he slumped through the bustling streets of Hell, he was surprised to see Yormak running up to him. The demon slapped him on the back and hollered, “Nice one, Barry! Didn’t know you had it in you!”

Confused, Barry mumbled a “Thank you?” and continued on his route to the Evisceration Zone--his station for the day--until he bumped into Xanthar near the Wall of Tongues.

“Hey, Barry! That was some stunt you pulled!” his friend cried out heartily.

“What are you talking about?”

“What do you think, dummy? Everyone heard about what you did in Cleveland! We’re all super impressed.”

“Impressed?” Barry repeated, dumbfounded.

“Yeah! You totally ruined that kid’s Christmas. And after getting his hopes up, too!”

Barry opened his mouth to interrupt Xanthar, but he continued.

“So a bunch of us were heading to a party tonight. You in?”

“A party?” Barry had no idea that there were parties in Hell.

He had never been invited to one.

“I’m going to take that as a yes. Everyone’s going to be so excited you’re there! Anyways, I’m late for work, I have a

disembowelment in five minutes.” Xanthar ran off in the other direction.

Barry finally had what he wanted: he was a part of something. The other demons actually wanted to be friends with him, and the taunting and jokes were over. But he had failed! He had promised himself that he would make Jeremy’s Christmas cheerful, and instead he ended up making it... not that. Still, it wasn’t too late. Next year, he would steal another letter, and make sure he did it right. He couldn’t let anyone know. Not now, not ever. But, feeling like his existence was finally back on track, Barry decided to blow off work and hurry back home. After all, he had a party to prepare for.

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Grace Q. Song

Poetry Great Neck South High School Great Neck, NY

PARASITE

FANTASY

You are so good, so terrible to me.

Please listen to Schubert and take your medicine.

Standing by the bathroom window, I count three honeybees and one hummingbird.

My eyes are clear. Contact lenses hum in their case. Yesterday, I hunted you down in Hayao Miyazaki films and animal documentaries.

I walked through my house, looking for something you could eat. Said, I have six eggs, a three-legged chair, and an old flute. I mean I am so lonely, so wary of men.

We passed our days in tradition, like the movies, where there is always a love story in a war, a romantic defiance on the chessboard of death.

But in this story, you exhaust me like August and the news.

Everything I witness is yours.

I hate the way you lure confessions out of my mouth, the way you tiptoe under my skin and stuff my heart into a feast.

Dear poem, take your god, your lovers, and go.

after Shelley Puhak that the toilet never choked and the balloons never fled. that I always found the last piece of the puzzle. that I caught the train by its collar and parking had the ease of sliding into a dress. that I witnessed small births, smaller breaths: the yarrow and snapdragon, hibiscus blooming at the stroke of spring. that I wrote more. that I wrote fearlessly. that I hid myself in a poem and returned as a good human. that I conquered every loss and buried every war. that I woke to a body without pain. that no one flinched at my touch, and I loved with all the doors unlocked.

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Sara Sonnenblick

Photography Posnack School Davie, FL

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Denial Digital photography 2021

Kira Sotos

Photography Madison West High School Madison, WI

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One girl, one pair of earrings, ten decades: 1910 Digital photography 2021

Steve Stevens

Photography Wauwatosa East High School Wauwatosa, WI

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october, an elegy Digital photography 2020

Esther Sun

Poetry Los Gatos High School Los Gatos, CA

Interlude while waiting for someone else to love

My grandfather dies on my last night in Iowa

July’s feathers in my skirts and sheets. My hands, dumb with clay questions they don’t know how to shape, write every love song into elegy. As the wind loses its form passing through door screens, night presses me to his chest. His name is Boaz. His name is Jacob.

His name is God. I forge sleep from midsummer’s hours: solitude a hammer gleaming by my side. The space around me a hearth unfamiliar with heat. All I want is to hold and be held tightly, for you to never touch another the way the months pull each other close. Through June, crickets whispered, the desk fan turned. Twigs snapped outside my window, each sound frost-like and slender.

Beyond me, the highway sang with a voice like fire.

and though I spent the summer learning to write poems so I can write that these hours feel like a pot of tea burning too long on the stove — it still doesn’t feel like mercy. On the plane I dream we all go out to dinner one last time. Noodles and red bean soup for dessert. My uncles talking about job markets, my brother with earbuds in, my grandfather listening quietly.

When we return to his house the new wife steps inside but my grandfather stands in the dark on the sidewalk, July lying in petals at his feet, watching our car pull away and sink into the road’s quiet current. Each time we left I wondered if it would be the last time I saw him. Each time I burned the sight of him into memory: one arm behind his back, the other raised in a wave — memory not as in remember, but memorize.

As it turns out, I can’t remember which dinner was the last or if it was dinner at all — I can only see his silhouette, dim windows at his back, the minutes stepping over themselves like piano notes, the night rippling around him.

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Ekansh Tambe

Photography The St. Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX

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Piece 2 (Colombia-Peru Border) Digital photography 2019

Cheyenne Terborg

Creative Nonfiction California Connections Academy San Juan Capistrano, CA

Junk Drawer I think there are still grains of sand embedded in my scalp, even though it’s been weeks since we left the beach. When I’m nervous, I dig through my hair and try to find them. It’s a bad habit, I know, but I really can’t help it. In the back of my closet I found a dusty black sweater I haven’t worn in years, and I thought maybe I should wash it, but then I saw the white threads of dog hair clinging to its surface, so I put it back. A year after the dog died, and I’m still finding clumps of fur behind my desk and in my food. I let them be. His medicine sits on a shelf somewhere, and I haven’t found the nerve to get rid of it.

There are candy wrappers in a box on my desk that I insist on saving in case I want to make an art project out of them one day. Maybe this is that art project. The two halves of a broken pencil are also buried somewhere in the box, because I told myself I’d glue them back together eventually. My old favorite jeans are now two sizes too small for me, but I can’t donate them yet because I was wearing them the last time I saw my grandmother alive and they remind me of her.

My mother is the opposite. When she’s stressed she cleans the house and discards everything that’s not of immediate use to her. She says it gives her a sense of control, but really I think she might be trying to avoid getting too attached to anything. I used to watch her try and throw away my old clothes without me knowing.

We would play this game where I would pretend not to notice the lumpy trash bag by the door, silently waiting for my moment to open it up and retrieve my childhood relics. It happened enough for her to confront me about it, and she decided that the best thing to do would be to give me a junk drawer -- my own place to be as shamelessly sentimental as I wanted. The only rule was that I had to go through it whenever it filled up.

In the beginning, it was nearly impossible to distinguish between what I wanted to keep and what I could part with. After all, it wasn’t my fault that I had an almost uncanny ability to attach emotion to the inanimate. The first time I went through the drawer, I found the exact sheet of math homework where I finally figured out how to do synthetic division after hours of mental exasperation. It wasn’t just a piece of paper. It was a symbol of personal victory. But I thought about my mom, all that she had lost and all that she had willingly surrendered, and it dawned on me that maybe I didn’t need to keep everything in order to keep every memory. In fact, I felt a sense of relief after decluttering, because I knew I wouldn’t have enough room for the new if I was too busy trying to lug around the old.

Recently, I caught my mom in the midst of one of her cleaning spells, her eyes welled over with tears. She was going through a bin full of snow globes, and she explained that her mother had given her one every year for Christmas. Then she said she was going to throw them away. When I asked why, she shrugged, and said that she couldn’t justify keeping them around if they were just going to sit in storage.

At that moment, I realized the difference between what to keep and what to get rid of. When I die, I’m going to leave behind a lot of stray objects that won’t be important for my loved ones to have. The candy wrappers and the math homework and the old jeans won’t do anything but haunt the ones who come after me, who will struggle to decide what I would want them to cherish. But there will be a few deliberate objects that will serve as a tangible reminder of not just my presence, but of the way I loved those

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around me. I told my mom that we should start displaying her snow globes. She agreed. Maybe sometimes the best way to let go is to hold on.

Cielo Valenzuela-Lara

Poetry California School of the Arts – San Gabriel Valley Duarte, CA

La Cocina Chapina (A Guatemalan Kitchen) *translations in italics*

Scattered spices in different baggies in the cabinet above the stove.

Pots and pans in the oven and around the kitchen counter.

Three different types of sponges in the sink, A drawer with plastic bags, A drawer with tupperware, Chiles from my grandmother’s garden held in a small black bowl set out especially for my mother to enjoy.

The refrigerator is stocked like the grocery store.

Frijoles negros cocinandos con huevos estrealldos con tomate, hot dogs y tortillas (Cooked black beans with eggs sunny side up with tomato, hot dogs and tortillas) Memories of Guatemala bleeding into our morning conversation over a cup of cafecito (coffee) y pan dulce (and sweet bread) when I stay over.

When my grandma comes over she brings me Platanos rellenos con frijoles, (fried plantains filled with beans) longaniza con pan francés (sausage with bread) and I realized, my grandmother feeds me too much.

When she asks me if I want seconds she piles her love in the form of a plate covered with arroz y carne. (a plate covered with rice and meat.)

Foods she didn’t have the privilege to afford as a child.

My family savors the food we’ve been blessed with; we’re filled with the care she plated us.

I forget to thank her for all she has in the kitchen, I forget to thank her for all her stories that she’s shared, I forget to thank her for being a superhero.

My grandmother’s kitchen is unique.

It’s covered in fine china and silverware from thrift stores always restored to perfect condition.

My grandmother’s kitchen is home.

It’s the one I’ve always known.

Now my mother’s kitchen resembles that of her mother’s.

The same drawer with plastic bags, The same bowl of chiles, The same cabinet with tupperware.

The days my mom and I feel homesick we eat frijoles negros con platanos (black beans with plantains) Or pishtones con frijoles con huevos y queso fresco (or tortillas with beans with eggs and cheese) When I’m older, I hope to invite the country my sangre (my blood) comes from into my home.

I hope to let my culture live in every crevice of my kitchen.

I hope to repeat history in my kitchen.

Make every recipe my mom wrote down in a book for me.

I hope to make my own home feel like my grandmother’s kitchen.

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A Recipe for Honesty Bubble my honesty in the cauldron My grandmother calls a pot.

Turn my truth into red pozole That I desperately want to be green.

Here is the recipe to my honesty: Pour 4 quarts of water into the pot.

Sprinkle my words along with it, Resembling spilled ink from my bottled mouth.

Let the water’s molecules heat up; Put 2 pounds of pork shoulder, With quarters of a large onion and 8 cloves of garlic, With a pinch of salt to taste.

Let the ingredients soak into flavor, The same way my sadness infects my poems, Even if that wasn’t the point.

Open 3 cans of hominy, Drained and rinsed In my anxiety that drips from my eyes.

I overthink everything.

I overthink my friendships, my work, The way I try to make everything perfect When nothing can never be.

I am my mother’s daughter.

I want everything to be in my control.

So I followed my mom’s recipe for red pozole Because I need to share something I think is perfect.

Spice things up!

Clean and seed 5 guajillo peppers.

Cut them open, familiarize the texture On your fingertips.

Cut them open, the same way I dissect my anger.

Anger at myself for not speaking a little louder, Anger at my body for craving love that I couldn’t give myself.

Anger at my dad for our miscommunication; My anger never left me.

My newly discovered hurt settling at the top Like grease from pozole that’s sat too long in the fridge It’s like I finished a bag of hot cheetos, the anger stains red On my fingers, no matter how many times I wash my hands I try to get it off, but I can’t.

It’s still red.

Red. Red. The pozole will be red.

Add 5 ancho peppers, And another 6 garlic cloves, These actually stay for the food, Not just to add flavor.

Add an onion the same size of my pride.

Pride of being a woman, Pride of being a latina, Pride of being bisexual, Pride of being alive, And top it off with a ½ tsp of dry oregano, And 2 tb of vegetable oil.

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The pozole is coming together.

It’s starting to turn into the color Of my jealousy.

My cheeks and the spot on my forehead Flare red and I heat up like a furnace When I start to think I’m jealous because I’m not enough.

The polozle is never enough for all the people in The living room.

I worry about the people in the living room More than myself.

Make sure they’re fed and warm, Make sure they are happy, Even if I have the gut wrenching Feeling that I have so much work to do.

But still, I’ll be happy when I eat.

We’re almost there!

The last steps, cut up the polozle’s accessories, We got even more onions, Cabbage, radishes, and limes.

Garnish the bowl with comfort until your Body is warm and filled with honesty.

Paul Valois

Photography The St. Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX

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Emergence Digital photography 2020

Amina Walker

Visual Arts Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

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Piece 1: Quilted Gloves Embroidery thread and fabric 2021

Olivia Walker

Visual Arts Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

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Stranger In My Mirror Digital installation 2021

Alison Wan

Visual Arts Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Alexandria, VA

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Memories Graphite 2021

Amy Wang

Novel Westview High School San Diego, CA

Suns and Daughters Prologue With one hand she reaches for the pregnancy test, with the other, she dials her mother’s number. Three digits in, her hand stills on the telephone. She does not know whether to feel hope or fear or nothing at all — things are too far gone for her to give up now.

At the same time, a part of her — small and battered and shoved into one of the dark desk drawers of her consciousness, stiff with age after so much time tucked away — feels that it really would be unconscionable to keep it, now that everything is so unbearably, irreparably fucked. *** Jiaojiao’s mother’s period came three weeks late once, when Jiaojiao was four. At the time she did not know what a period was, and so when she woke up one night to the sound of her mother Weiling’s body hitting the slat-wood of the door, she thought there was something birthing itself from the night.

Getting up from her bed, she slid down the hallway, following the smell of blood, fists tight in the pockets of her shirtdress.

The air heaved with the tang of iron — stepping forward into the light of the bathroom, she saw her mother kneeling in the corner of the room, her face as blanched as her wedding porcelain.

This was before they had moved to the bigger apartment, so it was just the two of them and one or two cockroaches who listened to the wet-spit sound of Weiling’s body miscarrying into the shower drain. Go to sleep, her mother had whispered when she saw Jiaojiao’s ghost-white face in the chink of the door. I’ll be better tomorrow. The next morning, Jiaojiao had watched her mother make breakfast like nothing had happened, her hands as clean as they had been the day before.

Now, she looks at her own hands and wonders if she had as much fortitude as her mother did, when it came to matters of the flesh. She has saddled herself with this debt of blood and growing bone without realizing that she had no way to pay it — the certainty of her indecision scares her, sending her back into the body of a daughter. chapter 1.

Jiaojiao has only ever heard the abridged version of her mother’s life story, because Weiling refuses to visit the past with all the vehemence of someone who has been deeply, irreparably wronged by time. Most of what she does know is gleaned from an offhand comment here and there, so she has only a patchwork idea of what her mother’s childhood was like. As far as she knows, Weiling’s family was too big to take care of her, so she had to take care of them. Her father was a farmer, who grew mostly millet and tea, and her mother was the daughter of a man who had been deemed “bourgeois” in the Cultural Revolution and had been sent to the countryside for educational reform. Weiling’s mother was the kind of woman who never realized the effort it took to live the rural life. Because of this, as the oldest of three girls, she had been in charge of many of the motherly duties, on the mornings when her mother had not been able to get out of bed because of her aching bones, a prelude to the arthritis that she would suffer later.

Weiling had been the one who had to wake up early, when the sun was still a seed pearl in the sky, eating at the horizon.

She was the one who mended her father’s trousers and stitched the hems of work shirts for her brothers and sisters, her hands roughening as she grew up.

Her parents had considered pulling her out of school at many conjunctions — like when her father’s plow broke in the field and they needed someone else to make money, but she had always been able to convince them not to. College had been her ticket out of the town, and out from under her family’s thumb.

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*** When Jiaojiao was thirteen, Weiling brought her back to her hometown to stay for a fortnight in the country.

“I want her to see where we came from,” was Weiling’s reasoning, and so the two of them rode a taxi to see Weiling’s mother, who lived in the cramped second story of a three-block apartment building with Weiling’s two younger sisters, one of whom was engaged to a drunkard.

Jiaojiao had not looked forward to this visit with much delight. When Weiling buckled her seat belt, she had kicked her ruffle-socked foot in a single burst of indignation, which Weiling interpreted as a sign of her daughter’s growing rebellion. This interpretation meant that Jiaojiao had to be punished for her perceived insolence, something Weiling accomplished by ignoring Jiaojiao for about three-fourths of the hour-long drive.

It was only after they left the outer limits of the city that she finally relented. When the car crossed a bridge between two flat shores, Weiling pointed to the high bluff below them. Jiaojiao stared down at the beach and saw the whispered adulation of rivergrass, shivering in the breeze.

“It was on that very bank,” Weiling told her, “that I saw a woman drown her newborn daughter.”

For nights after that, Jiaojiao saw running water in her dreams. Skipping through rice fields with fistfuls of young millet in her hands, Jiaojiao watched as ghost children played on the banks of the stream, rosy fingers dying the river red. When she woke up, the orange dawn bleeding against the horizon scared her into hysterics. Her sobs woke the whole household, and Weiling’s mother stood resentfully on the threshold of the bedroom as Weiling cradled Jiaojiao to her chest and rubbed her back, hushing her as she sobbed.

“What a difficult child your daughter is,” Weiling’s mother had said. She looked grey in the light of the morning, washed of color and waiting to be filled again. “When I woke up I thought the world was ending because of how loudly she cried.”

Jiaojiao had clung to her mother, refusing to let anyone else hold her.

Weiling declared her trip home a failure and brought Jiaojiao back, only mildly resentful of the ruckus she’d raised. She was almost tender with her daughter; she brushed through Jiaojiao’s knotted hair with a halting gentleness, parsing each looped hair out with a brush, unbuttoning each tangle into sandpaper strands against the back of her hand. For once, it seemed that Weiling did not blame her. The two of them were silent on the train ride home, and when the food cart rattled down the aisle, Weiling bought a small paper bowl of noodles for them to share, despite the frightful economics of eating out.

In this way, her mother was inexplicable. She was always either sheltering Jiaojiao under her wings, or pushing her out into the storm on hot gusts of air that changed with the weather.

“I hate that town,” Weiling had said later, when Jiaojiao was older and asked about meeting her maternal grandparents again. “I would only go if there was a son there for me to raise.”

Years later, she said the same thing to Jiaojiao again.

“I’ll only go to America if there is a son there for me to raise,” Weiling had said.

Her tone was one of accusation. The words burnt with new life but Jiaojiao stayed silent, long having gotten used to the familiar syllables of the same tirade. Weiling’s nails pressed slivered moons into Jiaojiao’s palms, and the two of them sat together, bleeding color back and forth against the dying hum of the air conditioning. chapter 2 All through the check-in process at the airport, she stymies herself with a variety of different thoughts on the issue at

hand. Her head whirls, and she cannot help but see her mother in every older woman who brushes past her, the lines of their faces settling into those of Weiling.

“I’m going back to visit family,” she says to the TSA agent, when the woman asks her what her purpose for returning is.

“Parents getting old, and all that.”

The TSA lady seems to accept this, and yet this statement does not ring quite true.

Weiling should be more than family to her, more than just a parent getting old. Their relationship is more complicated than that of simple filial piety, and yet Jiaojiao does not know how to articulate this, so she does not. I should’ve said I was going to see my mother, she thinks to herself, isn’t that what I’m really doing anyways?

As she has articulated before during therapy,she is vaguely aware that these worries of hers are somewhat irrational. Yet she cannot help but be suffused with guilt at he runconscious rejection of association. This train of thought leads her down an unpleasant avenue of feelings. First comes the self-doubt, which is thick and cloying and suffused with the watery smell of orchid blossoms, a scent that reminds Jiaojiao of her mother’s favorite perfume. I am not a good daughter, she thinks to herself, half guilty and half willful at the thought. But she was not a good mother either, she says to herself, and in that way we owe each other equally.

Sitting down in the boarding area to gather her thoughts and make sure she had all of her carry-on luggage, Jiaojiao let herself sink into a quagmire of uncertainty again. And what if mom doesn’t want to come back? She thinks. And what if she gets mad at me for asking? And what if she and dad start arguing about it again?

In a way, this is how she copes — when she lets herself stew over an issue, it often resolves itself, and somehow this makes her feel like the worry itself is a productive thing, that her own trailing concern somehow impacts the problems that plague her.

In this case, however, Jiaojiao feels deeply uneasy, and the unease itself is too heavy to lift with her usual methods. If her mother does not agree to come to America with her, it will be a full year before she has enough paid leave off to try again. If her mother does not agree to come to America with her, it is likely that Jiaojiao will never be able to convince her, and that means neither of her parents will be with her for her thirtieth birthday. The idea of this fills her with dread, though even to herself she cannot fully explain the reasons why.

Unlike her, Andrew was not so worried about this, or so he had said when he dropped her off at the front of the loading area.

“It’s okay if she won’t listen,” he had reassured, his hands stretched over the steering wheel with all the calm comfort of someone who is in his natural habitat. “You know how stubborn your mother is, so don’t blame yourself if things don’t go the way you’ve planned.”

It was evident that he believed everything he was saying, but the certainty of his words unsettled her for reasons she could not explain.

“But it’s not like she’s a bad mother, she’s always wanted the best for me,” Jiaojiao argued, half-exasperated with herself for defending her mother to her husband when personally she agreed with his words. “That’s just how she is, you know. And I can never do anything about it.”

Even to her, this last sentence feels unnecessary, like absolution for a sin she’s not sure she committed. Andrew had raised one eyebrow and said nothing more, though the look on his face had been more than enough to signal his tacit disapproval.

Jiaojiao sighs at the memory, raising a hand to rub out the furrows of her forehead. The rest of the airplane passengers hum around her, like a chatter of white noise of which she can only hear snippets.

She has always been caught in this way, running back and forth between Weiling and Andrew, arguing against each one in turn in defense of the other. The idea of this cycle is as offputting as it is realistic, and characteristically, she hides from

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what she does not want to see. As the plane lifts off, bereft of its characteristic turbulence, she drains her discomfort from her thoughts, trying to empty her mind of the drama of her thoughts so that they drip as if through a sieve instead of overflowing all over her hands.

I’m so tired, she concludes finally. I hope I’ll be at least well-rested when I get to Beijing. *** On the plane, Jiaojiao admits to herself that her relationship with her mother is at best, tenuous, as much as the truth of that rankles with her. This is a conclusion she has only recently come to — now that she is a few thousand feet off the ground, her problems feel heartbreakingly small, as if magnified by distance until they fill her consciousness unbearably. She sighs, feeling the cold air of the airplane cabin scrape against the back of her throat. She is not even in China yet, but already she feels ungrounded, untethered in a way that is both frightening and deeply familiar.

As Jiaojiao settles into her seat she takes care to tuck a packet of tissues into the mesh pouch of the backrest in front of her. She’s not neurotic, but her obsession with being prepared for everything borders on irrational. If she were up to being psychoanalyzed, it is likely that her therapist would have waxed poetic on all of the insecurities of her childhood pushing through the cracks of her psyche, but unfortunately, Jiaojiao is nothing but hungry and cranky. She neglected to buy food at the shops near the terminal, and now she is suffering for it, her stomach throwing up waves of grumbling discomfort in protest.

The woman next to her is chugging down a bottle of Diet Coke, and the silence that descends upon any pair of people sitting alone on a metal contraption halfway up the sky falls down into their laps. Jiajiao takes a moment to look at the woman’s face, which is sallow in the light of the cabin. She feels almost tender, a half-hearted kind of protectiveness fills her chest. The woman reminds Jiaojiao of her mother — she exhibits the same kind of exhaustion, as if there are invisible grocery bags hooked to her arm joints, dragging down her elbows with every movement of her body.

Jiaojiao looks away and sighs again, louder this time. To her side, a woman across the aisle lifts up a small child into her arms, bending her head down to coo at her daughter. The scene reminds Jiaojiao of how, when she was still too young to pick the truth out of a story, Weiling had whispered folktales into her ears at night.

For a moment, her eyes mist over. She grew up fed on the wet warmth of folktales, ones about the moon fairy Chang’e and the kitchen god and the woman who loved her husband so much she flooded the great wall with her tears when she realized he had died building it. Now, when she tries to remember these stories, her brain draws her back to her old bedroom, the hushed whisper of her mother’s voice washing up against the walls.

“A daughter is her mother’s greatest joy, and her greatest sorrow,” Weiling had often said to her, and at the time Jiaojiao thought that these words were meant more in show than to reflect reality.

Weiling had often done this, this kind of performing.

Sometimes, after a fight, Weiling would wax poetic about the troubled push-and-pull between her and Jiaojiao, the difficulties of being a mother, reciting her woes over the muffled hum of the stereo, the high-pitched whine of the road below the apartment window, letting her words fall just within Jiaojiao’s reach hearing, as if they were a kind of second-hand admonition. Even now, Jiaojiao does not know who her mother was saying it for, whether Weiling meant it as a criticism of herself because she had failed as a daughter, or as an open-mouthed lament to the sky, for being so unlucky to have the bad fortune of raising a child who was so rebellious.

“Even though we shared the same body once, my daughter has always tried to leave me behind.” Weiling shook her head at Jiaojiao’s apparent unfilial-ness, all the ways she had failed to be the model daughter, the little girl sticking close to her mother’s skirts.

In this way, Weiling imparted her motherly advice to her daughter, sprinkling in Chinese proverbs alongside her own made-

up allegories of admonition. At first Jiaojiao was uncomfortable with being referred to in the third person. I’m right here, she wanted to tell her mother. I’m here, in front of you, can’t you see me? Over time, she got used to her mother’s habits. She tuned out Weiling’s words as if they were just another kind of white noise, something else to adapt to within the sandpaper machinery of the city.

She has always wanted a close maternal bond, but after moving to America and abandoning most of her mother’s teachings back in the old country, there is very little common ground between the two of them, though whether this is by choice or not she has yet to figure out. This is the conclusion that Jiaojiao comes to from the relative safety and comfort of the economy plane seat, where she has enough room to reflect on the events leading up to this moment in her life.

Two hours earlier, Andrew had dropped her off at the airport for her 11:30pm flight, waving a pre-emptive goodbye with a cheerfulness that irritated her. The air smelled of exhaust and a derivative of jet fuel — Jiaojiao felt almost dizzy as she stepped onto the curb. She felt stone-heavy, bereft of the familiar comforts that accompany anyone who is smart enough to stay at home instead of venturing off on a foolhardy mission to do right by their mothers who probably do not even love them.

Jiaojiao flinches at the idea of her own place in this image, as someone two rows ahead drops their carry-on duffel bag in the middle of loading it into the overhead storage bin. Everything is unbearably loud now, but it was worse when she got to the airport. The drop-off zone had been busy with the red and white headlights of various buses and vans, and Jiaojiao felt immediately overwhelmed.

Annoyed, she had scowled at Andrew. He smiled at the people around them, as if unaware of her dissatisfaction. This had irked her further — still, she felt guilty immediately afterwards when he idled the car and helped her lift her suitcase from the trunk, but she is not thick-skinned enough to tell him so. For a moment, she ignores this memory in favor of other thoughts about what she’ll need to do when she sees her mother.

Jiaojiao shakes her head, trying to clear it. In her mother’s presence she always felt like a disobedient schoolgirl. She is the one who carries the memories of my youth, Jiaojiao thinks to herself. She cannot decide whether this is a good or bad thing all the way up to and through the boarding gate of her connecting flight from New York to Beijing, but as soon as she settles into the seat, she slips into a kind of half slumber.

But the thought is still winding through her head when she gets off the plane at Beijing National Airport.

Jiaojiao’s aunt, her xiaoyi, is the one that comes to pick her up. She is holding a yellow cardboard sign with Jiaojiao’s Chinese name stenciled on it in blocky yellow letters. Jiaojiao sees her aunt before her aunt sees her, and for a moment she holds back in the stream of people, searching her maternal aunt’s face for signs of change. Her xiaoyi looks faded in the dust of the airport entrance, her hands wringing the life out of each other as she scans the crowd for Jiaojiao’s face. It has been three years since Jiaojiao last saw this aunt in person, but it feels ten times longer. *** In the taxi that her xiaoyi calls for the two of them, it is the driver who breaks the silence first.

“A few days ago, there was a little girl who had an argument with her mother and jumped into the lake because she was angry. She didn’t realize that her dress was too heavy to swim in, and so she drowned. When she was salvaged, her whole body was swollen. Her mother was lying next to the lake, crying until she passed out,” The driver sighs, his eyes flicking back towards Jiaojiao and her aunt, who sit in the backseat. “The little girl is pitiful, and her family is also pitiful.”

Jiaojiao says nothing. She feels almost drowsy—as the driver resumes talking, filling the silence with inane talk about young people and social media and the importance of filial piety, the light flashes through the dusty windows of the cab. She feels it cradle her cheeks, as if her body and mind had been washed

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and sublimated into something new, the rice-meal of her body softening into silt.

A sudden melancholy washes over her shoulders — the driver’s words remind her of her own fights with her mother, a woman whose will is so strong Jiaojiao has battered herself against it for twenty years and never broken through.

I am not even sure I miss her, Jiaojiao thinks, then mentally slaps herself for being so pessimistic. This is not how you should be thinking about the woman who raised you, she says to herself.

And yet she cannot help herself. She has never been able to help herself.

Ashley Wang In Which My Mother Asks When the Hell I’m Getting Baptized All our arguments take place at traffic lights, float the border between breath & steel. How intersections always form the most dangerous geometries. Red neon throwing passenger’s mouths ajar. Last Sunday, the lights decided to flirt with physics, tore apart a pair of brakes: my mother’s Lexus barreled down Robinson Road & granted a wild boar flight. It trotted out from nowhere, skin coated with smoke. Silver fur shredding fire onto pavement. We were on the way back from church, sun still scraping onto the sky.

The car radio crackled, bones waiting to strike a path out. That week another batch of Sunday school graduates dipped in a bathtub, melted away their faces in white bouquets. & the congregation snapped to attention, tears spilling through pockets. I grew up fisting prayers into tongue for my mother’s pride, gouged a newborn wound in my leg for every confession. My body turned open testimony. My body just enough. Perfect image of a girl more girl than others, pores gripping onto survival. So I keep saying maybe, maybe, another day. Eyes ahead like the boar before the crash. And I sever a family tree, axe the thread between lineage and future Thanksgivings. My jaw flickers, milkwhite teeth spewing alternate creation myths: in another life, I outrun the questions. In another life, the boar strikes against our windshield again & again, flinging at a god’s embrace.

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Poetry The Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, NJ

Driving Hazards Before my driver’s license test, my mother gifts me a list of hidden dangers—a boar’s body on the road, deflating into asphalt like expired rubber; deer scooping out weeds by the mouthful; lungs possessed by signal lights at hairpin turns.

She leaves out the most crucial warning. The story where the night heaves and we’re driving past the closed curtains in condos on a suburban street, and she forgets, again, how to parallel park. The air in her Lexus so full of confessions as everything rises: the temperature, our tension headaches, tempers appearing as fast as the traffic light’s neon. We begin our routine, the flow of hot exhalations & broken logic, words thrown against each other like lawn darts. For an hour, we dismantle promises, reach for metaphors as escape hatches.

I am labeled with insolence and a lack of empathy; she with neediness. We both blame this on the other.

We are well-versed in street corners and their capacity for implosion, spend half our lives pulling excuses from roadside signage and still, fail at everything we try. We are never good enough. I have grown to see language as an animal to be tamed, cross-bred as all the different dialects we wield. And now I’ve failed again: the creature bounding from my teeth as I pull on the latch of the door, body furling against the car’s steel chassis like a flag. This story’s omission was intentional, I’m sure. My mother refuses to say it, how this story is the story of every car ride. How the condos could also be Route 17 could also be the cracks along the Wegmans parking lot. And maybe this act of driving is merely love of another kind: trust in acceleration and leather seats, even with a crash in sight.

Ray Wang

Design Arts Taipei American School Taipei City, TW

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Canyon Library Rhino 5, 6 V-Ray, Adobe Photoshop 2021

Grace Warren-Page

Poetry South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Greenville, SC

Still Life of a Naked Woman in a Top Hat after Alice Neel’s painting ‘Kitty Pearson’

some say you kill field mice with only your fingernails & string them up by their pink feet to hang from the edge of your window & some say right before the sun comes up, you crawl out of bed without stretching, golden eyes with slitted pupils to hunt mice & wheels of Dutch gouda & loaves of Amish bread & crates of plump mushroom caps & heads of purple cabbages & from here, you look hungry & last winter your nose bled because of the cold & seeped into fibers of your favorite baby-blue dress, the one embroidered with daisies and coiled vines along the sleeves & once you knew it was ruined you never tried to soak it in vinegar and lavender oil, like your mother used to do, because you hate wasting time on unsavable things & i remember the autumn my brother poured vinegar into my cat’s litter box to show her she was unwanted & to never come back & now you are here, sitting on a quilt made from scraps of winter coats & you only wear a lilac-colored top hat & some say that’s where you hide caramel chews, saltwater taffy & a knife & you go topless & one breast is slightly larger than the other & it reminds me of the time a man first told me to not wear V-necks because it gives off the wrong impression & i was only twelve & it was my school uniform so i wore a sweater all summer long & kitty pearson, i wish you could show me how you crawl & hunt & i wish you could get my damn cat back, because i know that only you can & now i sit on the edge of my bed, naked, with a top hat on & i open my window & i slouch & i look at my small hands & it feels good to be unsavable, but the feeling doesn’t last & i put my clothes back on & my shirt is not a V-neck & i watch as field mice squeeze into my room from the crack in the door & i am hungry & i want to get on my hands & knees & hunt

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In Arizona I Watch My Mother Pick Up a Dead Roadrunner by Its Feet to place head-first in a grocery bag. sweat drips off her forehead & onto the feathers.

I watch from the passenger-side window.

I hadn’t cried like this since last winter at 12:33 PM when I wrote a letter to mother, “dear mom, what now?”

The bird had been dead for days— I couldn’t shake that death-smell: rotting carcass, burnt grass, dried blood. she ties the bag to the rear windshield-wiper, the body sinks to the bottom of the bag & dangles there like how a forgotten picnic blanket, sloppy with dirt & heavy with raindrops, is stuffed into a sack & drooped over a child’s shoulder as she walks home. mother calls the bird “geococcyx californianus.” she’s a scientist & creatures excite her. as we drive through the Petrified Forest National Park with a dead roadrunner flapping against the car, humidity & flies swarm around crammed, sticky bodies because she rolled the windows down. at night, I help scoop pickled peaches into the sink & fill glass jars with formaldehyde. father, gather us around the stone in the front lawn. tell us the story again—how you shot your dog, after a orange van ran over its legs, your dad watched from the front porch, nodding. you cried. pull out a sharp knife & the grocery bag, position the limp roadrunner on the rock. my little sister gags at the sight of maggots tangled in white-tipped feathers.

I didn’t watch. my mother keeps the fresh head of the bird in the jar, she screws on the lid & I watch the head bobble in the fluid. this family preserves roadkill; this family preserves death. if only the roadrunner ran a little faster, I would be able to shake this death-smell.

I sit in the front yard on a blanket wet with dew, but not too heavy that my frail arms can’t haul & drag all of this mess back home.

I dig my toes into topsoil, looking for shards of roadrunner’s beak.

I push my nose into shriveled grass until I’m not sick anymore.

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Grace Warren-Page

Short Story South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Greenville, SC

Things She Understood About Us Jodi Crowe, my neighbor from across the gravel road, sat on the edge of our bright yellow couch, her feet planted flat on the floor, tensing the tendons in her legs and curling her toes into the carpet. She was the oldest woman in the park. She had long white hair growing from her chin like whiskers growing from the cheeks of an old house cat, her eyes were very small, and Donnie said she would probably die soon.

She often stayed with Grandma and me when Mom disappeared. It was late, too late for Jodi Crowe to safely slide into her fuzzy pink slippers and scuffle over to our trailer holding a flashlight, but she was here anyway. She always came over when I needed her. Her hair was box-dyed dark auburn, cut in a boyish style, her tortoise shell glasses were too big for her face, the bridge too wide for her slender nose.

Once, she told me the only thing that doesn’t change when your face starts to age and your breasts begin to sag and the skin around your elbows thins and the blood in your veins run purple, is your nose. I overheard the nurses whispering to Mom once, in the hallway of the doctor’s office, saying if I wasn’t careful, I wouldn’t live to be old and wrinkly. It had to do with the urges of a mother that are passed to her daughter. I was bound to die young, just like everyone in our town, the kind of death where everyone in the park crowds around my casket placing bets on what truly killed me.

It was like that in the park. Sometimes Donnie and Veronica would sit on their porches in their rocking chairs after their night shifts on Wednesday and talk about the deaths in the newspaper. Sometimes, when the obituaries were particularly shocking, they would both stand and lean over their porch railings to look into each other’s eyes, like endearment or sadness was being exchanged. But that was not the case. They never really sounded surprised when some kid from our county died from shooting up with some exotic drug or got killed going 60 in a 30 because they were drunk and fell asleep at the wheel. There was no escaping their conversations. The pink walls of my room were paper-thin, so instead of putting a pillow over my head and hiding under my covers, I just stared at my ceiling, listening to everything they said.

One night, I heard Donnie say something like, “Oh, won’t you look at that.” I could hear him tapping the newspaper. “The boy that used to work at the gas station on Old Pine Road, the one that needed a haircut, yeah, he died last night.”

“He was a cute one, always let me buy cases of beer without showing my ID or anything, even though he probably thought I looked 19.” Veronica paused, looking at the picture of the boy in her newspaper. “I do look 19, don’t I?” Veronica did not look 19. Her face looked old and stubborn even though she was 26, Mom looked the same way: exhausted and alone. Everyone in the park shared the same lines in their foreheads and the same down-turned eyes. I used to think it was premature aging, but Jodi told me it was about the flesh of a person and how it reacts to living somewhere like here, and how you can’t fight how your body reflects what you feel on the inside.

“Do they know what happened to him?” Veronica said.

“Nah, they didn’t write about it.” Donnie was thinking of a clever story to craft about the boy’s death, it’s what they always did. “If he’s anything like his daddy, he probably had too much to drink one night and then started some fight. A guy at the bar probably punched him to death because he said something about his girlfriend’s legs.” Donnie paused and took a swig of gin. “Or looked at her funny.”

“Well, I’m gonna guess he was robbed at the gas station.

Robbers with ski masks came in and held a gun to his face telling him to pop the register open. Then, put a bullet between his eyes.

All for some money. What a shame.” Veronica sighed. It was a

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sarcastic, playful sigh, like she found herself, and the story she created about the boy, amusing.

I heard them talk about kids dying all the time, and after a while, I didn’t mind it too much. In the morning, I saw the clippings from the newspaper, wet with dew, crumpled in the middle of the gravel. I remember seeing the boy’s name. I wondered about dying, wondered when I’d die. It seemed like just a thing that happened. It didn’t seem like something to worry about or even think of. People died all the time.

So that night, when I saw Jodi Crowe on my couch, I didn’t allow myself to feel worried. I stood there in one of my Grandma’s big tee-shirts that smelled of hairspray and sweet dryer sheets.

I stood there staring at Jodi Crowe’s nose, waiting for her to acknowledge me, to tell me why she was here so late at night. Her mascara was not runny and she was not rocking back and forth staring out the window and she was not sobbing until she couldn’t breathe and she was not drinking from the silver flask she kept on her waistband, so I knew nothing terrible had happened. All I knew was that Grandma and Mom were not there, in the trailer, with me, and that Jodi would stay with me for a while, for as long as I needed.

After a minute or two of me standing beside the yellow couch, Jodi Crowe looked up at me and said, “Your Grandma tripped over a truck hitch. She sprained her left foot pretty bad.

She slipped in mud and dislocated one of her back bones. It can be fixed with a brace and a couple painkillers.”

“Where is she now?”

“Oh, well, they got her up at the hospital with her foot dangling from the ceiling in a weird-looking sling. They said she would have to stay there for a bit. So I’ll come over in the mornings and nights. If you don’t see Grandma’s car in her parking slot this afternoon, come over to my house.”

Jodi slowly shuffled to the kitchen. She didn’t even flip on the lights because the night sky was starless and clear and the moonlight was enough for her to see. It came through a little dusty window, illuminating the small slab of wood Grandma put over the cracked countertops since she couldn’t afford to buy the speckled granite the landlord showed us. Donnie had gotten us the piece of wood from the scrap pile at his job, he said it wasn’t a big deal. Jodi made a pot of coffee, decaf. She took little sips and didn’t flinch when the hot liquid touched her tongue, she said it was her old age. She didn’t feel things like she used to. I could hear the heavy hum of the refrigerator and the buzz of gnats swarming around the green bowl of week-old bananas. I hated bananas, thought they were too sweet and tasted too much like rum and vanilla once they were dark yellow. Grandma had bought them for Mom because she loved the way they turned from green to yellow to brown to black.

I thought about Mom again. This wasn’t the first time Grandma had run after her. Grandma tried to follow her when she ran off, tried to find where Mom hid the weeks she disappeared, to locate the place Mom would rather be than with us—than with me. She never found her or where she was going. Mom worked late or stayed out, but when she came home, she would sleep or smoke or cry with her door closed or heat up canned soup in the microwave, just to leave the bowl in there for hours. She never really talked to me, but Grandma said it was because she was shy and never felt like herself—all loopy and tired. I wish I could have seen what she was like when she was feeling like herself. Maybe she felt like herself before coming here, to the trailer park, with me. We moved in with Grandma before I knew how to talk. We had no other place to go.

Jodi took a couple more sips of her coffee, “You know,” she looked at me pursing her lips and sighed, “We’re a family. All of

us,” she swallowed slowly. “Me, you, Donnie, Veronica – hell - even Roger.” I could see the corner of her mouth raise in a slight smile.

“That’s how this park works, we don’t got no one else.” She must have said this because it was late and people are honest when they’re tired. She might have said it to comfort me in a way, my eyes probably looked lonely and frightened, but I didn’t feel any different. But there was also a part of me that knew she was right, we were a family. They were all I had.

I helped Jodi Crowe up to her feet and collected blankets, some clothes out of Grandma’s hamper and the bottom drawer of her dresser, a sleeve of saltines, a granola bar, her favorite socks, a handful of hard candies, and a pair of slippers. I packed everything in a bag. I told her to stay on the couch while I gathered all of Grandma’s things because I heard her coughing real bad earlier that afternoon. Jodi Crowe slept on the yellow couch that night, and while I laid in my bed, I thought about her old body curled and nestled into the cushions and how her frail muscles must strain and how if she just died there I would have to get someone to help me scoop her up. I thought about how I would be left alone and how I would have to get a job and quit school, but that didn’t seem too bad. That morning, Jodi Crowe went to the hospital to visit Grandma and give her the bag we packed. Even though Mom and Grandma were gone, nothing felt different. Everything felt the same as it always did.

The one thing Jodi Crowe failed to tell me that night was that Mom had disappeared, this time for good. Like, really disappeared—no one could find her. Nothing slowed Mom down when she ran away from something, truly ran, the kind of run where you never intend on coming back. I knew this because she would sometimes say that I processed something she did, something the others, even Grandma, didn’t possess. Even though I was here, in the trailer park, no act of kindness could hide the fact that I hated the park and seeing how they all lived. I wanted to live long enough to leave, and if that meant running and leaving everything behind, like Mom, I would.

I knew things about Mom. When she acted dizzy or when she slurred her words or when she blinked slowly, she was being the person she had to be for things in her life to make sense to her. That was something she couldn’t run away from, even for me.

I knew that even if she ran far, far from here, she would never get rid of the urges, she would never ‘get clean’ like Donnie said. * Jodi stayed the next night too, and then went home in the morning to check on her two dogs. That afternoon, as I walked home from school, I looked for Grandma’s car, again, in the small slot next to our trailer, but it was empty. I assumed she was still in the hospital all bandaged up with ice packs covering her back bones and ankles. I went over to Jodi Crowe’s house like I did when my house was empty. I bought two candy bars, one for me and one for Jodi, from the dingy vending machine with the money I collected from washing dishes.

I knew Jodi’s death would be an inconvenience, here, in the park, because the landlord would come down, throw away all of Jodi’s things, her blue waffle maker, her collection of gnomes with red, pointy hats, her cookie jar that looked like a bulldog with an eye popping out, and her wooden pipe she carved when she was young, when her hands didn’t shake. The landlord would load everything up on a box truck to be driven to the dump. He would take pictures of the blue trailer and would list it as a longterm rental and someone would move all of their stuff into her home and we would all have to watch. I sure as hell wouldn’t do their dishes. The landlord would see our park and tell us he was charging extra fees for the peeling paint and the overgrown lawns and the damage the dogs must be doing to Jodi Crowe’s trailer. I visited Jodi a couple times a month because I felt pity for her, and what her death would do to us. I didn’t want her to feel guilty.

We sat outside on her back deck, on a metal bench covered with moist, purple cushions that smelled of rich soil. We didn’t say much. I faced her. Trying not to look in her eyes. Instead, I looked at the dark orange fungus protruding from the bark of a tall tree growing in the middle of her small, fenced-in backyard. It was the

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kind of tree I would see anywhere, which comforted me—Grandma would tell me to do this—to find something and focus on it when I was too overwhelmed with feelings. I gave her the candy bar. I broke it up into pieces for her. I watched her raise the chocolate to her lips, biting off small chunks, chewing with her eyes closed. She smiled and I watched as she did. Something halted my breathing, and made me feel sick.

Then, I remembered how she would wave to me in the morning before I walked to the bus stop, how she would talk to her son on the phone asking him to come visit, even though he never would, and how she would sift through the gravel to pick up the dog’s shit with a little plastic baggy. I remembered how she always came to the trailer when Grandma and Mom were off somewhere else and how she made me oatmeal and grits in the morning. Then, I let myself look at her, like, really look at her. Not to examine her moles or thin hair or nose. I let myself look at her for a moment just so I could admit to myself: I would miss her. I would miss her when she died and I wouldn’t be able to read about her in the newspaper. It would feel too real. Then I thought that maybe she had been a mother to me.

I stayed for a moment, telling myself I would visit Jodi more often when Grandma got back from the hospital, even though I probably wouldn’t. I wouldn’t visit because I knew I couldn’t help but actually feel tenderness in my heart for her. I knew she wouldn’t run away from this park, that is what hurt me most, she would die here. Donnie would find her and would call the ambulance and we would all gather around the trailer and take the things we could use for ourselves.

Jodi gripped the handle of her heinous, hot pink mug and said, “Hey kid, look at me.” She placed her fingers under my chin and raised my head to face hers, “I am old and tired and I got flabby skin around my neck and arms.” She didn’t break her gaze or her firm grip around my jaw. “I’m gonna die soon, we both know that, and guess what? I could have left this place but I didn’t.” She pulled me closer to her face and leaned in, “Do you really want to end up like me?” She sounded angry, not at me, but with herself.

“Maybe staying here, and not making it out, isn’t the worst thing.”

She said nothing, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, the dogs came running to the deck, shook the mud off their tails and paws, and sat at her ankles, one at each. She looked at me and then to the sky for a few seconds, licked her lips real slow and sloppy, tapped on my knee, and said, “Hun, you’re gonna leave,” she continued to pat my knee and then pointed to the gates of the park. “Hun, you’re going to find something that makes sense to you, more than this shit of a place, here. You’re gonna look back and say, ‘wow, that park was truly something,’ and then you will move on and figure out that life can truly be special and pleasant.”

I thought about leaving, how if I did, I would never come back.

Jodi Crowe nudged me with her elbow, “When you’re out of here, don’t you ever forget us. And even if you try, you won’t be able to, because there is some stuff in life you can’t run from and one of those things is family.” Jodi smiled one of her half smiles, the kind of smile that broke me a little. I reached down to one of her dogs. He was panting and I could feel each breath ripple through his wet, fur coat. Energy ran from my fingertips and pulsed through my body. I stayed there on the porch for a while. I couldn’t bring myself to leave her.

Katherine Wei Yellow Redefined Where the snug sun is skin tight like a shoe, where yolk sizzles on sidewalks, unsubdued, Arizona isn’t aware of how it sears and steams.

Yet sixteen years I’ve lived here, and for sixteen years, I’ve survived.

In this state, I’m taught to love the shade, where chiaroscuro echoes like a chorus, and colors crouch in a corner, too afraid, to the point where darkness won’t fade.

Before my parents came to the USA, they passed down a color called yellow, conveyed as cold and cutthroat.

Note that this yellow isn’t in line with the perpetual sunshine of the state I populate.

This yellow is what Google defines as cowardly and wimpy and weak.

In history, I’m taught that yellow is immoral.

Yellow-dog contract says yellow is overbearing.

Yellow fever says yellow is sickening.

Yellow journalism says yellow is exaggerating.

In history, I’m taught to hate yellow.

Even in ordinary scenes, society sees yellow in screams, that yellow stoplight yells slow down, that Snapchat’s yellow logo yells see me, that McDonald’s yellow arches yell eat me.

In society, I’m taught to not yell like yellow.

Yet, here I am yelling.

I’m ashamed to have wished for white to wash over my flesh.

And I’m ashamed to have shut the harsh reality to a shush.

But I am not ashamed of yellow.

Because yellow is the emoji that smiles back, the lightbulb that brightens up the night, the pencil that scribbles the day away, the largest star in the sky guiding with light.

Yellow is warmth, and Yellow is hope, and Yellow is power, and Yellow I reclaim.

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Spoken Word Basis Chandler Chandler, AZ

Recalculating I found salvation in snacking: the crackle of a crème brûlée, sip of a sizzling soda, bite in a crisp apple.

Taste was heavenly for me.

That was until three digital digits embodied in a bathroom scale bought my body like a bag, sold my soul just like that.

You see, I’m familiar with the format of formulas.

Factors and fractions I’m fond of, so a network of numbers has never numbed me, but this particular integer felt so burdening.

I began to wonder how will the volume of water I drink increase my weight?

How will the geometric shape of my face change based on what I just ate?

How will the circumference of my thigh expand?

How will the trajectory of the fat on my arms advance?

How will the surface area of my stomach proliferate?

When will all these questions abate?

And, eating me from inside out, deriding me with jeers and jibes, sneers and scorn, with jagged edges and a jarring presence, these numbers justified a disgusted sigh, and just when I deconstructed my diet I hear the thoughts in my head finally go quiet.

Eventually when the number on the scale became more bearable, I barely felt repaired.

My desire to devour consumed me just when I stopped consuming.

I began to question why I animated inanimate numbers, why I gave power to some figures that needed someone else to figure them out, why I lost myself counting some digits that didn’t count anywhere else.

I realized it’s impractical to focus only on the mathematical aspect of my weight.

I realized when my point of view adjusted, my weight finally became fully entrusted.

Back then, invalidating that value was of no avail, but, now, now, I’m recalculating my weight, using a new scale.

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Jacqueline Wheeler

Visual Arts Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Dallas, TX

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Window to the Soul Colored pencils 2021

Brea’ Williams

Visual Arts George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Baltimore, MD

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Am I Too Much or Not Enough?

Gouache and graphite 2021

Caroline Wu

Creative Nonfiction Upper Arlington High School Upper Arlington, OH

From the Mothers I’ve Known Look both ways before crossing the street.

Here I am, Ma, waiting for the school bus. I’m still young and soft, a cartilage creature. Nothing is definite yet, my skeleton is closer to three hundred bones than a permanent two hundred six.

You made me look left, right, left again before crossing the street. You warned me about the little girl who got ironed into a pancake and had to be peeled off the road with a snowplow.

When I’m on the bus, I look back and wave at you. The world is not yet level. Everything on the boulevard — fire hydrants, lampposts, mailboxes — is absorbed into your gravity.

This is the first year you are a stay-at-home mother. I’ve always wondered what you do at home alone, if you might be like a reverse toy, staying completely still while no one is looking. I worry that someday I’ll come home and you might have forgotten how to move. I’ll tug on your fossilized arm and it’ll snap off in my hands; I won’t know how to put you back together.

I don’t remember when you stopped waving at me, when you stopped waiting at the sidewalk for the bus to drive away. I’ve forgotten a lot of things, Ma, like the fourth-grader who threw up on the first day of school or the girl who always tripped in the lunch line. All I remember is that one day on the bus I looked back, and you were gone. I keep looking across streets trying to find you.

Don’t talk to strangers.

Before Thanksgiving break, Ms. Fulton takes the class outside and has us practice yelling this is not my mom, this is not my dad. Our pre-pubescent voices bounce dully against soggy mulch and plastic playgrounds. The curriculum requires us to learn how to treat everyone as a stranger.

Auntie Lin lives across from the Dairy Queen gas station.

She quit her job after having her second son, who is not very bright and has a tendency to microwave metal forks. Ma met Auntie Lin at a PTA meeting, where Auntie said she could boil cicada shells into medicine for my allergies. I hid her husband’s cigarettes as payment. Uncle Lin got his doctorate in Shenyang but works as a lab technician getting a fifth of the salary he would in China. His tongue stutters over English syllables, but works quick enough when he’s yelling at his wife.

Ma tells me about how Uncle Lin throws things after too many after work Tsingtao beers, and how Auntie Lin screams that yes, yes she will call the police if he throws that plate. Ma says I’m not to speak to Uncle Lin, and I wonder if all men become strangers after dark. Ma warns me about boys whose tongues are dipped in honey but forked at the tips.

It snows on Thanksgiving, and Auntie Lin sticks out her tongue to catch snowflakes while Uncle smokes on the porch. He’s chewing sunflower seeds, and the shells fall like blooming bullets into the snowbanks. Uncle must have found his cigarettes from behind the toilet.

The almost winter air burns my nose and overpowers the sting of smoke. Auntie and Uncle made up, which they always do. In the daylight, Uncle is easier to love. Ma says it’s going to be Christmas soon, and the grown-ups won’t argue as long as there are presents under the tree.

Don’t talk about people behind their back.

My grandma, Lao Lao, tells me that Ma didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mother. Lao Lao can’t read or write, but her daughter was top of her class, rank one. Lao Lao says Ma could have been something great, like an astronaut or a restaurant manager. She tells me that Ma got a job offer from Microsoft and an invitation to Bill Gates’s house for champagne, but turned it all down to take care of me.

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Here’s what I know for a fact: when Ma came to America she worked three jobs so Ba could get his degree and she made twenty thousand more than Ba for years. There was, actually, a party at Bill Gates’s house for new Microsoft employees. This is also true: the year all my skin peeled off and we spent every other day in the doctor’s office, Ma quit her job so Ba wouldn’t have to.

In Longhua, the aunties think I can’t understand Mandarin.

Lao Lao says I talk too much, so I eat bowl after bowl of cherries to occupy my mouth.

The walls are thin here, and I can hear everything the aunties whisper in the kitchen. Ma is napping beside me and my ear is pressed against the plaster. I keep biting my tongue while chewing, as though I’m being punished for eavesdropping.

Someone whispers, Lazy woman. Spend all husband’s money. Just sit all day.

There’s laughter and the pop of oil in the wok. I shovel cherries into my mouth, suffocating my tongue. For a second, I’ve forgotten how to swallow and choke on a cherry pit. All that barely-wrapped cyanide burns inside my throat.

When no one’s watching, I spit inside the aunties’ shoes. I only feel a little bad.

If you ever get lost, stay exactly where you are until someone finds you.

Our local Lutheran minister’s wife was the leader of our Girl Scout troop. The first thing she taught us: stay still if you get lost. If you keep moving, people won’t know where to look for you.

Auntie Lin thinks she can stay alive by staying still, by making herself small. I think Auntie Lin has spent her whole life kneeling, first for her husband, and then for Jesus after hearing that God could make her husband stop drinking.

I can’t stop thinking about all the women I know that stopped moving. Auntie Lin, who never got her driver’s license and once waited two hours for Uncle to pick her up from Walmart. My great-grandmother, Tai Lao Lao, who died with feet the size of a six-year-old’s after her father broke and bound them in the middle of the night. Lao Lao, who spent every day of her youth harvesting goji in a one-mile-wide village, getting bullied by her sisters-in-law.

Women who disappeared into shadows cast by their own stillness.

Lao Lao got so mad she started talking to the pigs.

Sometimes, Ma gets so mad she starts talking to me. She tells me to never stop moving, that her dreams were precious, and mine will be too someday.

In sixth grade, Ma gets me six ratty training bras from Target and my friends fall in love three times a week.

This is the final year Ma is a stay-at-home mother, and she wants to paint the walls white to give the illusion of a bigger house.

At the paint store, Ma gets lost in all the same shades of ivory while the franchise manager tells me I’m pretty. I am twelve and no boy has ever called me pretty before. I’m hypnotized as the manager squeezes my arm — you’re pretty, you’re pretty, you’re pretty. I am counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three and waiting like the minister’s wife told me to, but no one finds me or notices.

I don’t eat dinner that night or breakfast the morning after and realize it makes me feel weightless enough to drift away. Years later, I’ll fall into the same pattern when I feel so heavy I can’t move. I will finally learn how to weaponize beauty. Years later, I’ll be scared that I’ll betray myself again by staying still.

Look both ways before crossing the street (II).

Ma’s spent days inside the closet now, or at least it feels like it. I snuck in once when she wasn’t at home and saw piles

of textbooks. Ma’s journals were in there too, filled with foreign pictograms and her high school panoramics.

It’s been storming recently, and when Ma and I go outside our faces are superimposed on the puddles. I’d never looked too closely before and got startled by how I’m beginning to look more and more like her. It’s in the way our mouths are indecisive, how we settle into winces when we try to smile. My foot landed in the puddle and broke the reflection.

I must not have been paying attention before, because suddenly I become the one standing on the sidewalk while Ma drives away. I cross the street (left, right, left again) and wave. Ma’s destination is not drinks at the Gates mansion, and it never will be.

Her career will never reach the same heights as before. A cramped cubicle at the local university is enough now.

I’ve gotten taller, either that or the world has straightened slightly. It’s enough that our eyes now meet in the car’s rearview mirror. Maybe we’re finally strong enough to resist the gravity of others.

You’ll understand when you grow up.

I’m sixteen, Ma, and I suppose a real woman now, even though I’m still a size 32AA and two whole inches shorter than you. You still can’t ever remember my friends’ names, like Emily who is only my friend every other week, and Jenny who I met at the peanut-free table.

Everything is different now, though. I’m old enough to think for myself, but my head is still reeling — you get what you get and don’t throw a fit, treat others the way you want to be treated. All these lessons are both right and wrong. I’ve learned everything, but also nothing at all.

I think I’m starting to realize there is more than one way to move. Like how Auntie Lin got her Class B Ohio driver’s license last month and drove through West Virginia, where she could feel big again standing on the mountains. Or Tai Lao Lao, who hobbled across that spit of land on her little feet for ninety-three years. Lao Lao, who meditates with crystals to find peace, and just learned to read during quarantine.

I can’t promise much Ma, but I’m moving too. I’m moving.

Lao Lao: maternal grandmother Tai Lao Lao: maternal great-grandmother Longhua: county in China’s Hebei province

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Lina Wu

Visual Arts Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Houston, TX

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Mirror Mixed media collage 2021

Catherine Xie

Short Story Weston High School Weston, CT

Czerny The ghost of Czerny has been following me to the bathroom.

Well, not just the bathroom. He follows me everywhere: at school, at home, on the open street. In those places he always stays five steps away, soundlessly drifting behind me. But the bastard needs to have me in his line of sight, so at school — in the C Wing Lavatory — he’s forced to shuffle into the stall with me. He backs up against the door and stares resolutely upwards. It’s the only time he won’t meet my eyes, which means it’s the only time I’ll let myself really look at him.

That’s how I’ve been spending my lunch breaks: on the toilet. With the scratchy linen skirts of my uniform bunched up to my chest, my bare knees almost brushing his. Staring at a boyish white man up to his neck in velvet frills, cheeks ruddy in the Shanghai heat. I know, of course, that his plummy flush isn’t actually from the sultry air. He also didn’t die a vibrant youth. He only looks like this because it’s how I remember him — glossy and over-saturated on the cover of a new Handel edition score. * When I was a child and the studio was still confined to the studio room, I wanted to learn to play the piano. Mami had laughed when I told her, shaking her head and probably remembering my baba1.

“Alright then,” she said, “if you’re really set on this, we’ll do it properly.”

She signed me up for lessons that very weekend, bribing all her WeChat bénéficiaires until I landed with an ancient crone with skin like a pickled vegetable. Old Pu lao shi2. She let her favorite students call her Putao. Grape. After the classes where she smacked me with her bamboo back scratcher, I liked to call her Putaogan behind her back. Raisin.

Mami bought everything Putaogan told her to buy. A big boxy metronome, with a tick that pissed her off even more than it did me. Fresh-cut scores, the only books I ever got to peel out of saran wrap.

She caught me penning in the fingerings on the music once, the way Putaogan had taught me.

“Stop it,” Mami snapped. “What if we need to sell those later?”

But she never did. She didn’t even sell the cherrywood upright a client had gifted her, even though it would’ve covered rent for months. When the moving men came, she just sighed and told them to cram it into the back of the studio.

The studio — at least back then — was really just a small indoor balcony, one of many uniform terraces jutting out the side of the apartment. The walls of the room were built with glass panels, with the top opening up to windows. There was an old tripod stick Mami wedged diagonally out those windows, and on summer days she hung our laundry on it. Our shirts and pants and underwear would flutter in the wind, blocking our view of the concrete complex beyond.

She paved the fake marble tiles with newspaper and set her easel and cushion on the ground. The clinks of paintbrushes tapping a glass jar and the slight crinkle from Mami shifting in her seat broke up my metronome’s numb ticking.

I was feeling particularly vindictive one day when five bars in a Mozart rondo had not stuck after a whole afternoon. The notes kept running away from my memory, and I foolishly wished that I was a prodigy. Bending backward over the bench, I kicked my feet up so that my slippers slapped against the underbelly of the piano.

“How did Mozart die?” I asked.

“Oh, I remember this,” Mami said. “Baba loved prattling on about his trivia.”

She was silent for a moment. “Young. He died young.

And poor.”

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“Oh.” I pondered this and smoothed out the pages of my score. “What about Beethoven?”

“He died old. But miserable, and deaf.”

“Chopin?”

“Young and sickly.”

“Was there anyone that was happy?” I sucked my breath into my stomach, slowly letting the air slip out of my teeth.

“Yes,” she replied, “Czerny.”

“The guy who wrote all the finger exercises?” They were the worst, even worse than Mozart rondos that would not stick.

They made you dizzy as you went up, the same chords clanging around in your head as you waited for a climax that would not come.

“Yeah. He seemed quite happy, for a genius. He died old, and cushy too. Made a lot of money off those etudes.”

Mami huffed. “There’s an old joke about him Baba used to tell.

Something about him being a hand chiropractor, drumming up business.”

“Wasn’t there anyone else?”

“There must have been.” I waited for more, but Mami knocked over her palette, and any answer she might have had slipped away with her paints. * When I step into my home now, the newspapers have spread all the way to the shoe rack. I loosen my tie and slip off my Mary Janes. Czerny shuts the door behind me.

The apartment has always been small, but these days, covered wall to wall to floor with communist headlines, it’s suffocating. The endless sesame seed text swims in my eyes.

Sometimes if I forget to brace myself, I’m shocked with ants swarming before me, building their own kingdoms in my living room. The first time that happened the horde had stopped, turned, and charged, their bodies rolling in waves across the floorboards.

“Mami?” I call. No reply, just the whirring of the overhead fan. “Mami?”

I wince at a sharp prick in my foot. I bend down and pull a spike from my sock, holding it to the light.

It’s a fish bone. The sliver is thick at the base, but it curves wickedly to a point. It’s either from the spine of a snapper or from the fin bones of a carp. There’s blood running down the back groove from where it has pierced my heel.

I cradle the bone in my palm. It’s too handsome to have been tossed away. I should rinse it under the sink and give it back to Mami.

Behind me, Czerny makes a throaty murmur. I turn around.

His mouth hasn’t moved — it’s still stuck in the same cherub smile — but his watery eyes seem needy. The murmurs get harsher, more urgent.

I pad over to him, the crunch of paper deafeningly loud.

With his brogues floating a foot off the ground his face is too high up for me to reach. I hoist myself up on the kitchen countertop until our noses are almost touching. My fingers brush his face, and as they linger over his mouth I can feel the absence of his breath.

I slip the bone, spike first, between his pink and parted lips.

It settles under his tongue, so I know he’ll keep my secret.

The dinner table, just like every other surface in this horror house, is wrapped up like a homeless virgin. But today, the monstrosity on top of it seems almost finished.

It’s a sprawling menagerie, with fowl and fauna encased in palatial cages. The details are baroque — the intricate grooves swirl in a decadently pious manner. The songbirds don’t twitter but they do rock back and forth, soothing and synchronized.

But what should be harmonious and natural is ruined by how the menagerie is bleach-white, the organisms brittle and

stilted. And that’s because it’s made entirely of bones. Fish bones.

The swooping bars on the bird cages are pieced together with tilapia ribs, the leaves on the vines fins from a salmon. The beaks on the birds have been ripped off from a cod’s jaw and dyed rust red, the only pop of color in the ghoulish scene.

Only the Stygian brook seems incomplete, which means it’s almost gala season.

Czerny barrels forward, slamming his body into the masterpiece. He passes through, glitching just like all the other times he tried.

It’s the one thing he can’t touch.

There’s a soft grunt, and I duck down to find a mammoth cocoon underneath the table. Out from the swaddle of newspapers peeks a fan of seaweed hair. There are flakes of dried glue dusting the gleaming black silk. I bend down to pick at them.

“Mami,” I whisper, “you left the taxidermy salts next to the tomatoes again.”

She stops snoring, but she doesn’t unfurl from her fetal pose.

“I’m just missing a few pieces, baobei.”3 Her voice is muffled. “Almost done.” As she wriggles the paper strains until it almost tears, jutting out like a mother’s womb being kicked by her baby. I imagine she is gesturing in the direction of the sink, where there are four snappers that must be cleaned for dinner.

I head back to the kitchen, leaving her in her rotting chrysalis. Czerny has been rummaging around the drawers, looking for the big scissors. When he finds them he hands them to me, picks up a snapper, and stabs his blade into its creamy belly. * The last gala season ended the night before the plum rains broke, before the stifling mix of mist and smog cleared up for a vengeful sun. I was trudging along the Huangpu River’s bay, my arms around Mami as she crumpled into me, piss drunk.

The Huangpu river cuts through Shanghai like a lover between two brothers. To her east is Pudong, the elder brother with his skyscrapers and glittering lights, sinfully bright and alluring. To her west is Puxi, who is now just as bright. But for a generation he had been left behind, so he carries the scars of the families and farmers who starved to death during the Cultural Revolution.

Mami was excited for the gala that night because it was her first one on the coveted side of the river. She had borrowed a couture gown from a friend, because surely everyone would be wearing couture up in the penthouse loft. The dress had a green top encrusted with veins of crystal, and it unfolded into pale pink swathes that brushed the floor. She looked like an upside-down rose.

When we showed up everyone was in shades of black and grey, crisp slacks that draped their forms, featherlight. Before the ceremony started Mami had hurried to the powder room, and when she came back her lips were white and chapped, with red lipstick still stuck in the cracks.

During the showing there was champagne, whisked around not by butler-ey caterers but by little children, all with the same aggressive bowl-cuts. I overheard that they were part of an antichild labor campaign, but the idea seemed hilariously off-color.

When I told Mami she hadn’t chuckled. She just grabbed her fourth drink from a waist-high platter and tipped it down her throat. She visited every exhibition that night except for her own. Finally, when the amber ichor had dribbled past her smudged lips and onto her petals, I knew that I had to take the browning blossom home.

On the way back we passed Huangpu, and I thought the mist would clear her head. I looked across the river, past the carnival ships and Loch Ness monsters below, and I saw a golden palace. It was dwarfed by the office buildings encircling it, but the ambrosia yellow was too luminous to be overshadowed.

Capping the top were fantastical Russian domes, the tips swirling like meringues wrapped in artisanal leaf. Inside should’ve been a golden tsar sitting on his golden throne, but instead there were scores of street vendor aunties, washing off the grime from a hard day’s work. They go in to rub off their suds, the pellets of dirt turning to ingots once they hit the bathwater.

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Suddenly, Mami awoke with a hiccup.

“Let me up,” she groaned. Her movements were sluggish and her eyes bleary. In a burst of energy she dragged me towards the water’s edge, until both of us were bathed in the honeyed light.

She cupped my face in her burning hands.

“Baobei,” she said. “Treasure.”

“Mami?” She was too far gone.

“Breathtaking,” she murmured. “Breathtakingly surrealist.”

She snatched her hands away, and clambered onto the railing. The wind pulled her dress towards Puxi.

“The judges called my work ‘breathtakingly surrealist.’” Her voice was hoarse — she was shouting.

“Surrealist! Goddamn surrealist. I’m not a fucking surrealist, I’m fucking transcendental, and they —” Mami had tipped too far. As she fell into the river, the skirt of her gown billowed up behind her like the wings of an egret — as if trying to brake her descent. When she hit the water she shattered the reflection of the golden palace, splintering it into shards of rippling glass.

For a while, I just stared. As if I were the one who was piss drunk, the one who was terrified to walk into my own exhibition. I stared at the plumes of her dress in the water, and it was only until they were almost gone that I scrambled down to pull at them — to pull her back up. Her head surfaced like a buoy, her moon face pale and vacant. Her limbs slack and lifeless. I laid her sopping head down on the grass to check for a concussion.

And that was when Czerny appeared: clambering up behind her, his silks untouched by the grimy river, his smile portrait perfect.

Baba means father in Mandarin Chinese.

Lao shi means teacher.

3 Baobei means baby.

1

2

Alice Yang

Visual Arts Ripon High School Ripon, WI

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The Chinese Suburbans Acrylic on canvas 2020

Karen Yang

Short Story West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South West Windsor, NJ

Chicken Feet You’re still scared of her, so you ask her out to the first restaurant that comes to your mind: Lucky Dragon. You’ve been here a thousand times because it’s the only Chinese restaurant in town and Ma craves “home food” every weekend. A twominute drive from your house and boom! You arrive at the beige, rotting plaster columned America Luxury strip mall. There, next to a greasy McDonald’s and a Sears with a fifty percent discount sign for half the year and a seventy five percent the rest, Lucky Dragon’s broken sign reads “Luck Drag N” much to your dismay.

Surprisingly, she says yes. You tell yourself you’re not surprised but it’s obvious. In school, she’s the blonde ice queen ruling over everyone, forever entwined with built, towering football players— right now, it’s Andy White, the college frat boy wannabe, and the best quarterback Montmery High has ever seen— and the Saturday parties in someone’s dimly lit, CBD scented basement, stolen Budweiser in full flow and Pitbull pulseing all night. On the other hand, you’re the quiet nerd, Science Olympiad sessions on Friday nights, endless symphonies on the violin, and forever lost behind a colossal chemistry textbook.

Like the characters in the beginnings of the New York Times best sellers that shadow you in the school library during lunch, where you eat Ma’s stinky tofu whose stench even the Best YA Novel in a Billion Years can’t hide, you and she were never meant to be. *** November 17th. 9:42 am. AP Chemistry, Room 302.

You remember the first time you saw her. Her blond hair looked like the sun.

“New seats everyone! This will be your lab partner, for …”

Mr. Mendez squints at his attendance sheet, “probably the rest of the year, so be friendly and get started on the lab!”

She glances up at you. “Well, you’re smart.” Thankfully, you’re Asian is left unsaid. “Can you do the lab? I kind of have an issue right now.” Her eyes glaze like glass, a delicate membrane sheen. She doesn’t elaborate, her crimson mouth a quivering line.

“Hey, uh, what’s up? Why are you crying?” Your voice comes out reedy, too high pitched. It radiates confusion and unfamiliarity; other than Ma at Ye Ye’s funeral, you’ve never seen a girl cry. But, to be honest, you’ve never really seen a girl up close.

They’ve always been as hazy as an unfocused microscope.

“My boyfriend broke up with me,” she says, chewing on her lip, gloss shimmering under the harsh fluorescent lights. You glance around. Andy isn’t here, his hefty dimensions of a body useless when trying to conquer AP Chem – after all, his brain isn’t nearly as big as his muscles. How should you respond?

Your mind scrambles to think but comes up with nothing.

After all, studying can only do so much for your negligent love life.

Then you think of him.

In addition to being a Harvard graduate, Brian, your older brother, got all the good genes: the smooth, slick, Bruce Lee swagger that attracts girls like flies to honey. He left you nothing but noodle arms, nervous tics, and vocal cords that wobble every nanosecond.

Nonetheless, you’ve spent all your life following his footsteps; join Science Olympiad, man first violin in orchestra, study every waking hour, and then some more. Take the APs, get into an Ivy League — you’ve memorized this formula forwards and backward, even as you forget what a sober Ba, now a shell of a functioning father, looks like. Brian’s supposed advice has also found a niche in your brain, wedged in between the formula for calculating the energy of a wave and Ma’s worn wavelengths of love.

Navigate it towards something you know, little bro. Right.

You like science.

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In-your-head-Brian responds. Remember when Mr. Mendez made that horrible joke about the chemistry between two people?

You inwardly nod. Let's do a chemistry experiment: Reactant 1: tears. Reactant 2: comfort. Product: don’t embarrass yourself. But how? You test the waters.

“Tha—that sounds rough.” Your voice quavers again.

In-your-head-Brian monologues. Alright, let’s add in some more coolness, kid. You reply: Coolness? Like when you add ice to a chem lab? In-your-head-Brian rolls his eyes. Oh, man. Why do you always think in scientific terms? You're such a nerd, even compared to me. You mentally shrug. Whatever. Ice, coolness, blah, blah, blah. Just some more confidence. As if from another planet, you know what to say, your voice bubbling.

“Well, I think you’re too good for him.” You notice her staring at you, brow wrinkled.

She probably didn’t expect that. In all honesty, you didn’t either.

“Wow. Thanks. That’s actually really nice.” She waves at the microscope. “Can you get started while I finish something up?”

Sweetly, without waiting for your reply, she spins around, her gold strands of hair ever shining. You turn on the microscope, the light illuminating your flaming face. Product achieved. *** November 20th. 6:41 pm. Interior of the Lucky Dragon Restaurant.

She shows up ten minutes late, Louis Vuitton purse in hand, looking beautifully misplaced. You pay close attention to her outfit and burn her sparkly magenta dress into your retina. Even in the dim smear of light from the Sears logo, she radiates like Sirius A, the brightest star in the whole universe.

Inside, she grimaces at the haphazard fold out tables, but oohs and aahs at the tacky red lanterns up above when she notices you watching her. After sitting down, she studies the menu closely. Questions after questions arrive, like an AP test on How to Answer Obvious Questions without Upsetting Anyone: “What's Beef and Broccoli?”

“It’s exactly that. Beef with broccoli.”

She looks taken back at your sarcastic humor, your abruptness. You’re a little pissed; after all, she came ten minutes late. Brian drones in your head: Chill it, man. Ba’s crazy punctuality rule only exists at school and home. That’s true. In all honesty, Ba never followed the rule himself either; it was a miracle if he came home before one in the morning.

She asks again, “Chicken low man?”

“I don’t know, some noodle thing.”

Finally, she shuts the menu and stretches.

“Let’s try something adventurous!” Her mouth says adventurous; her eyes scream exotic.

“Sure,” you say, noting any dishes you haven’t explained.

“How does General Tso’s chicken sound?”

She pouts (pouts!) like Marilyn Monroe. “General Tso?” She pronounces Tso like So, like SO WHAT, YOU PIECE OF CRAP, YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT. In-your-head-Brian agrees. What happened to that coolness, kid? “I was thinking…” She taps the menu. “Chicken feet?” *** November 18th. 9:12 am. AP Chemistry, Room 302.

On the day after your experiment, Mr. Mendez is absent, and the substitute asks for everyone to work on the lab. When you arrive, she glances up.

“Hey,” she says. “I promise I’ll help on the lab today — if you’ll do one thing for me.”

You grow cold; does she want you to beat up Andy? Andy’s rife with muscles that Human Anatomy 101 didn’t even bother

discussing; your bony body doesn’t stand a chance. You’ve seen him in gym class, running faster than the speed of light, hitting softballs into the ceiling until they become hard and gravity defying. “Tell me where you’re from.”

You furrow your brow. It’s the classic question, parodies found on every facet of the Earth: “Where are you from?”

Boringville, USA. “No, like where are you really from?” um, China.

“Really? I thought you were Korean, but now that you’ve said it, I guess you are Chinese.” Thanks. I guess.

In-your-head-Brian appears again. Cool, okay? Remember yesterday? Cool.

“What do you mean? Like America,” you gulp, “or China?”

“China. Duh.” She smirks, the leer of a cat pawing with a frightened mouse. “America is boring. Tell me about China.”

You weren’t expecting this question. “It’s weird to discuss this here.”

“What’s so weird about it?” She asks, tilting her head, genuine bemusement splashed across her face.

You realize that it isn’t weird for her. In a classroom filled with white lab coats and a near equal number of white people, your foreignness stands out, a peasant crow in a herd of elegant swans. In a school filled with the children of glossy white Life magazine models, your black hair and coal eyes burn, the smoky end of a crisp Camel cigarette. The tendency to trip on your words, your parents’ halfhearted English occupies every element in your body, your identity.

“I don’t know. China’s big.” Too big and filled with countless people trying to claw their way out to mei guo, Beautiful Country, thinking that a better life exists. Only once they arrive will they realize that it only is the same routine of struggle in shinier, whiter buildings. *** November 20th. 7:02 pm. Interior of the Lucky Dragon Restaurant.

The feet come with the claws down, thank God. Set in a wooden basket, you watch her lift the top off, her face a cloudy outline from the steam.

“I’ve never had chicken feet.” She fingers her chopsticks, stroking them the way you’ve seen her touch Andy’s back. The wooden splinters probably dig into her pearl hands.

“Neither have I.” She doesn’t respond. You look up from your plate. “What?”

“You’ve never had chicken feet?” She asks. “Never?”

You nod. Why is she so surprised? You never order true Chinese “delicacies” — not the ones Ma enjoys, not the Fish Head Stew, the Beef Tripe Tendon that jiggles with fat, and a culture that you’ll never understand. That you don’t want to understand — embracing it would make you stand out even more, the sole drowning spider in a sea of snow. Embracing it would make you smell like Ba’s favorite shaojiu, acrid Chinese alcohol perfuming hallways. Embracing it would make you the outcast of The (White) American Story, forever relegated to the margins where no one ever wants to be.

“Really?” She stretches out “really” until it sounds like reaaaaaalllllyyyyy, until it sounds like you’ve done something wrong. *** November 19th. 9:01 am. AP Chemistry, Room 302.

As if everything were in a movie, Mr. Mendez is absent for the fourth day in a row. She tries again, right after the bell. “Come on, just tell me about China. It’s not even that big of a deal.” You sigh and take a peek at her. She’s smiling, quietly. For once, she’s not on her phone.

“Okay, fine. Well, what do you want to know?”

She thinks for a second. “Your favorite memory there. No, your favorite place to visit.”

She scrunches her golden eyebrow. “No! Both.”

You hide a laugh at her eagerness and answer her question.

“The Great Wall of China was pretty cool. It was hot though — I think we went at one hundred something degrees.”

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“For real? Sheesh. What did y’all do?”

“To be honest, I don’t remember. Ran around, terrorized Mom and Dad. You know.”

She giggles, a foreign sound both to you and to the classroom. Everyone looks up. She’s laughing and Andy isn’t the one making her laugh? That was new. They zone in on you, analyzing. They’ll whisper after class but for once, it won’t be about whether anyone had the chance to cheat off your paper and use your answers. Oddly enough, you smile at the change.

“That sounds dope though. I wish I could travel.” She looks up to the ceiling, past the harsh lights, the doomed suburbia, the ethnic labels. “I wish I could travel, try something new, different, never seen before. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I’m sick of the same-old, same-old.” As she says this, she looks into your eyes. You think: Andy? Me? Different? In-yourhead-Brian wolf whistles. On cue, the bell rings.

“See you tomorrow. That was fun.” She laughs again, and your heart, unknowingly, is sucked into her black hole.

Huh. Maybe you just did something there, little brother. *** November 20th. 7:32 pm. Interior of the Lucky Dragon Restaurant.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work out.” She says this with one hand in her hair and the other one slyly under the table, on her phone.

“Why did you come with me then?” Your voice trembles, a mere whisper above the havoc from nearby tables wrestling with oil slicked noodles. She puts her chopsticks down.

“Because you were nice. You were different. You were...”

Her voice is flat, her eyes trained on the road outside the window.

Hunting. Searching. “New. I mean, look, I’ve tried a lot of things tonight. But Andy and I aren’t over yet.”

On cue, her phone glows with Andy’s text. “Still. This was really, really fun.” Her eyes, once swirling galaxies when you told her about the Great Wall, look like dull ponds of mud — or even worse, the murky house special sauce sitting next to the chicken feet, untouched and growing cold.

You snort. Fun? You’ll pay twenty-six dollars for chicken feet leftovers. Fun? You’ll pay with your father’s soul to explain inadequate Chinglish and overlook a reliance on drink. Fun? You’ll pay a lifetime to play the sidekick, the ethnic lover who will never make it past the first date. *** November 20th. 9:39 am. AP Chemistry, Room 302.

Some otherworldly force has kept Mr. Mendez out of Room 302 for yet another day. You abandon all pretense of working on the lab, focusing on her as if she were your Harvard admittance letter that will —hopefully — come next year.

“So. About last time.” She says, spinning her phone on the table. It lights up, her wallpaper a picture of her and Andy. She shuts it off immediately. “Can you tell me more?”

Where did you leave off? In-your-head-Brian comes to the rescue — Just lay on the Chinese stuff, man. The Great Wall, terracotta warriors. Anything to get her to look at you like that again.

You oblige, describe the heat on the Great Wall, the vendor selling overpriced knock off sodas at the entrance. She asks for a taste of the faux Fanta and you give her a sip, watching her savor the sweetness and the artificial memory.

You paint a picture of the terracotta warriors, solemn in their stance and filling the air with the musky scent of time. You illustrate The Forbidden City in its intricate splendor, golden roofs and jeweled jade galore, the statues of bronzed lions standing over centuries of war, slaughter, fanfare.

Skip the confrontations with Ba that happen at the peak of the Great Wall, where you swear you will never be like your old man — backward, Chinese, tangled in the web of some drunken past.

Ignore the feeling of inadequateness when the tour guide at the terracotta warriors speaks to you in Chinese but you can do nothing with your thick, sticky tongue. The rusty Chinese, choked in your throat, fights and claws, only to die with the “uh huh, yeah” you mutter in his direction.

Gloss over the confusion at the Forbidden City’s restaurant, where you asked for iced water instead of the sewagecolored tea. The waitress looked over in confusion. You want bing?

Ice in your water? Ma tried to laugh her uncertainty away — “no, no, he’ll have cha, foolish American boy” — and when she leaves, try to convince you that true Chinese people only drink century old tea leaves; why not try the lü cha anyway?

Too soon, class is over. You leave with her, rushing into the crowded hallway. She nearly trips and, in that process, breaks the facade of perfection you have attributed to her entire being.

It’s this little act that convinces you that you have a chance.

The words tumble out before you even know it, your brain a half second behind your mouth. Maybe it’s a sign, a sign that you should have listened to Ba’s advice to duo xiang yi xiang; think a little more, even as he failed to follow his own words. Regardless, you should’ve considered how this would all unfold. Nevertheless, here it was. “Will you go to the Lucky Dragon with me?” *** November 20th. 7:46 pm. Interior of the Lucky Dragon Restaurant.

When the waiter comes and sets down two fortune cookies, she sees her ride. Andy’s driving.

“I’ve got to go.” She tips her head towards the car, grabs her bag. “I’ll see you in chem, alright?”

You nod mutely. She will just ignore you from now on. You’ve served your purpose, given her a taste of the other. She’s seen that the flavor isn’t quite right, and that the stench is too strong. The gap between China and America is unbridgeable, forever determined by foreign language, foreign food, and foreign ideals.

You know she won’t ever truly see you. She’ll only see a shy boy, sitting in Lucky Dragon radiating exoticism. Next to him is a pile of cold chicken feet that he doesn’t know how to eat.

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Esther Yeon

338

Design Arts Seoul Foreign School Seoul, KR

POLLUTED BEAUTY Various discarded fabrics, wood, dried flowers and plants, gas mask, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator 2021

Natalie Zhang

Design Arts Weston High School Weston, MA

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Five Senses Poetry Anthology Adobe Creative Suite, Procreate 2021

Elizabeth Zheng

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Visual Arts Upper Dublin High School Fort Washington, PA

flesh&bone Digital art 2021

About YoungArts

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Applications are adjudicated through a rigorous blind process by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists. All YoungArts award winners receive financial awards and the chance to learn from notable artists such as Debbie Allen, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Germane Barnes, Wynton Marsalis, Salman Rushdie and Mickalene Thomas.

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Past YoungArts award winners include Daniel Arsham, Terence Blanchard, Camille A. Brown, Timothée Chalamet, Viola Davis, Amanda Gorman, Judith Hill, Jennifer Koh, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Andrew Rannells, Desmond Richardson and Hunter Schafer.

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Notable Winners

U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts YoungArts Guest Artist

*

†

Doug Aitken

Daniel Arsham

Hernan Bas

Terence Blanchard

Doug Blush

Camille A. Brown

Timothée Chalamet

Gerald Clayton

Viola Davis

Allegra Goodman

Amanda Gorman

Judith Hill

Jennifer Koh

Sarah Lamb

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Jason Moran

Eric Owens

Billy Porter

Andrew Rannells

Desmond Richardson

1997 Theater †

1986 Dance*†

Elizabeth Roe

Hunter Schafer

Kerry Washington

Chris Young

1986 Visual Arts†

1984 Film†

1983 Theater

1994 Classical Music*

1988 Voice†

2000 Classical Music*†

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1999 Visual Arts†

1997 Dance*†

1985 Writing *

1998 Dance*†

1987 Theater

2017 Design Arts

1996 Photography, Visual Arts

2013 Theater

2015 & 2016 Writing

1999 Theater †

1994 Theater †

1980 Classical Music†

2002 Jazz*†

2002 Voice†

1993 Jazz†

2003 Voice*†

Guest Artists Derrick Adams

Diana Al-Hadid

Debbie Allen

Paola Antonelli

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Ron Carter

Michelle Dorrance

Lisa Fischer

Frank Gehry

Jonathan Groff

Bill T. Jones

Naeem Khan

Wynton Marsalis

Bobby McFerrin

Dr. Joan Morgan

José Parlá

Rosie Perez

Eugene Richards

Sir Salman Rushdie

Paula Scher

Jeanine Tesori

Mickalene Thomas

Carrie Mae Weems

Jeffrey Zeigler

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2022 Guest Artists

To learn more about the 2022 Guest Artists, please visit youngarts.org/national-youngarts-week.

Chip Abbott Dance Coach

Devin Caserta Visual Arts Discipline Coordinator, 2006 Visual Arts

Vanessa Garcia Writing National Selection Panel

Lemon Andersen Writing Guest Artist

Christopher Castellani Writing National Selection Panel Chair, 1990 & 1992 Writing

Dawn Gardega Design Arts Discipline Coordinator

Natalya Antonova Classical Music Guest Artist Amadi Azikiwe Classical Music Guest Artist Leticia Bajuyo Visual Arts National Selection Panel Lillian Barbeito Dance Guest Artist Germane Barnes Design Arts Guest Artist Torya Beard Process Intensive Creative Team Angela Myles Beeching Jazz Guest Artist Ignacio Berroa Jazz Guest Artist Darren Biggart Process Intensive Creative Team Richard Blanco Writing Guest Artist Corinne May Botz Photography National Selection Panel Chair, 1995 Photography & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts Kimberley Browning Film National Selection Panel Chair Kate Burton Theater Guest Artist Daveed Buzaglo Voice Discipline Coordinator, 2012 Voice Nicole Cabell Voice Guest Artist George Cables Jazz Guest Artist Shari Carpenter Film Guest Artist Elinor Carucci Photography National Selection Panel Ayodele Casel Process Intensive Creative Team

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Robert Chambers Visual Arts National Selection Panel Victoria Collado Writing Guest Artist Len Cook Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Nicole Cooley Writing National Selection Panel, 1984 Writing & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts Lucia Cuba Design Arts National Selection Panel Marshall Davis, Jr. Dance Coach Patricia Delgado Dance Guest Artist Rick Delgado Film National Selection Panel, 1992 Visual Arts Kenny Easter Dance Coach Clinton Edward Dance Discipline Coordinator

Nikki Giovanni AON Digital Commission Creative Team Rudi Goblen Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Thurmon Green Voice Discipline Assistant, 2008 Film Gino Grenek Dance Coach d. Sabela Grimes Dance Coach Luke Guidici Film Guest Artist La Tanya Hall Voice National Selection Panel Chair Sam Hamashima Theater Discipline Assistant, 2014 Theater Stephen McKinley Henderson Theater Guest Artist Rosie Herrera Dance National Selection Panel Robert Hill Dance National Selection Panel

Dave Eggar Interdisciplinary Guest Artist, 1987 Classical Music & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

David Hilliard Photography Guest Artist

Nona Faustine Photography Guest Artist

Jay Holben Film Guest Artist

Raja Feather Kelly Process Intensive Guest Artist

MaryAnn Hu Theater National Selection Panel

Peter Jay Fernandez Theater National Selection Panel

Chuck Hudson Voice Guest Artist

Jason Ferrante Voice National Selection Panel

Marika Hughes Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Naomi Fisher Interdisciplinary Guest Artist, 1994 Visual Arts

Javon Jackson Jazz National Selection Panel Chair & AON Digital Commission Creative Team, 1983 Jazz

Jake Fridkis Classical Music Guest Artist Tia Fuller Jazz Guest Artist

Catherine Jimenez Photography National Selection Panel Loni Johnson Visual Arts National Selection Panel Chair

Lucy Jones Design Arts Guest Artist

Nicola O’Hara Dance Coach

Becca Stevens Voice Guest Artist

Tanya Kalmanovitch Classical Music National Selection Panel

Jacob Olmedo Design Arts Guest Artist

DeLanna Studi Closing Keynote Guest Speaker

Alitash Kebede Visual Arts Guest Artist

Ana Lía Orézzoli Design Arts Guest Artist

Grace Talusan Writing National Selection Panel

Yashua Klos Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Ariel Osterweis Process Intensive Guest Artist

Dr. Nadhi Thekkek Dance Coach

Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum Classical Music Guest Artist, 1997 Classical Music

Michael Pohorly Film Guest Artist

Demondrae Thurman Classical Music National Selection Panel

Lisa Kron Process Intensive Guest Artist

Marcus Quiniones Voice Guest Artist

Jordan Tiberio Photography Discipline Coordinator, 2011 Photography

Joan Lader Theater and Voice Coach

JeanCarlo Ramirez Film Discipline Coordinator, 2012 Film

Pascal Le Boeuf Classical Music National Selection Panel, 2004 Classical Music & Jazz

Christian Reátegui Jazz Discipline Coordinator

Peter Lerman Process Intensive Creative Team Lydia Liebman Voice Guest Artist Yvonne Lin Design Arts National Selection Panel Marina Lomazov Classical Music National Selection Panel Chair Chris Low Film National Selection Panel Jeremy Manasia Jazz National Selection Panel Johnathan McCullough Voice Guest Artist, 2010 Voice Raul Midón Voice Guest Artist Aaron Miller Classical Music Discipline Assistant, 1998 Classical Music Kenneth Noel Mitchell Theater National Selection Panel Chair

Christell Roach Writing Discipline Coordinator, 2015 Writing Nikki Rollason Classical Music Guest Artist Catherine Russell Voice Guest Artist Chris Sampson Voice National Selection Panel Antwaun Sargent Photography Guest Artist Marlon Saunders Voice Guest Artist Raphael Sbarge Film Guest Artist Reid Schlegel Design Arts Guest Artist Gerard Schwarz Classical Music Guest Artist Vernon Scott Dance National Selection Panel Chair

Paul Moakley Photography Guest Artist

Jean Shin Visual Arts Guest Artist, YoungArts Trustee, 1990 Winner in Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Jessie Montgomery Classical Music Guest Artist

Vic Shuttee Writing Discipline Assistant, 2011 Writing

Dr. Joan Morgan Writing Guest Artist , YoungArts Trustee

Patrick L. Smith Jazz Guest Artist

Nicole Mujica Theater Discipline Coordinator

Yusha-Marie Sorzano Interdisciplinary Guest Artist, 2000 Dance

Elizabeth Nonemaker Classical Music Discipline Coordinator, 2008 Classical Music

Risa Steinberg Dance Coach

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Carlos Arturo Torres Design Arts Guest Artist Chat Travieso Design Arts National Selection Panel Chair, 2003 Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts Anna Tsouhlarakis Visual Arts Guest Artist Marie Vickles Curator and Guest Artist Daniel Watts Theater Guest Artist, 2000 Dance Tom Williams Jazz National Selection Panel, 1980 Jazz Dan Wilson Voice Guest Artist Jules Wood Dance Discipline Assistant, 2010 Writing Stacie Aamon Yeldell Consultant, Guest Speaker Stephanie Yung Design Arts Guest Artist Mario Zambrano Interdisciplinary Guest Artist, 1994 Dance & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts List as of 3/15/2022

Special Thanks to Educators

YoungArts would like to acknowledge the following educators, named by the 2022 award winners. We can only do the work we do to identify, recognize and award outstanding students in the arts with the support and effort of educators, teachers, instructors, coaches, homeschoolers and arts practitioners.

Richard Aaron Soyeon Ahn Neela Amaravadi Ning An Andrew Anderson Chris Anderson Tucker Antell Bill Anthony Toby Appel Angela Apte Leah Arsenault-Barrick Kyle Athayde Jim Aveni Janet Averett Lilit Babayan Luzvic Backstrom David Badgley Ben Bagby Don Bailey Darci Balkom Brett Banducci XiaoJin Bao Brad Barfield Amy Barston Dr. Jonathan Bass Itzel Basualdo Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins Phillip Beatty Martin Beaver Martin Bejerano Jean Marc Bekaldi Danielle Belen Dan Bell Lisa Bell Guinea Bennet-Price Guinea Bennett-Price Alex Berko Alvaro Bermudez Sibbi Bernhardsson Brandon Berrett Beth Bigler John Black Tema Blackstone Daniel Blake Kevin Blancq Leanne Block Hans Boepple Michael Boitz Linda Bon Chandler Booth Jamel Booth Mark Boschen Banyon Boyd Hope Boykin Jeffrey Bradetich Whitney Bradshaw Irina Briskin Leonid Briskin Giselle Brodsky Alrick Brown Christine Marie Brown Brenda Bufalino Kelly Burke Scott Burns

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James Burton III Billy Buss Sarah cadungug Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello Jennifer Calhoun Nigel Campbell Semaj Campbell Todd Campbell Beth Canterbury Walker Caplan Ronald Cappon Molly Carr Ben Case Leo Castaneda Carolyn Castellano Gilbert Castellanos Rosiland Cauthen Brittany Cavallero Edelmiro Cavazos Carolynn Cecilia Shana Chandler Eric Chang Lynn Chang Isabelle Chapuis Hung-Kuan Chen Jennifer Cheng Yuanan Cheng David Chernyavsky Joseph Chisholm Catherine Cho Rufus Choi Wook Choi Yona Chong Amy Christman Chu Chu William Church Tanisha Cidel Paul Cigan Emily Cinquemani Richard Cionco Ingrid Clarfield James Clark Nicole Clark-Springer Bruce Claypool Sarah Cline Scott Cmiel Olivia Cole Carla Collins Paul Contos Joey Contreras Catherine Cooper John Corigliano Gabriel Coss Lisa Cotie Bing Cox Robert Cross Kerry Crotty Dylan Croy Nicole Croy Emily Curnutte Rebecca Curtis Joe D'Aleo Franco D'Alessandro Wanda Dagen

Melissa Darcey Chanel DaSilva Marat Daukayev Derrick Davis Joshua Davis Paul Davis Steven Espada Dawson Susan Deaver Bob Deboo Brian Delgado Nick Diberardino Thomas Dickinson Michael Dillow Andrew Dixon Brent Dodson Brian Dokko Rina Dokshitsky Eric Domuret Stephanie Dorian-Smith Robert Dorries Christopher Dorsey Genevieve Dowdy Christopher Doyle Christina Dragone David Duarte Catherine Dunn Dwayne Dunn Chris Earl Steve Earle Tricia Ebarvia Laura Edwards Dave Eggar Taylor Eigsti Venessa Eisenman Nathan Eklund Ryan Ellis Reena Esmail Ral Estevenz Julianna Evans Joanna Fan Craig Faniani Daniel Felsenfeld John Fiaeta Kevin Fitz-Gerald Kevin Fitzgerald Elizabeth Flaisig Gregory Fletcher Lea Floden Michaela Florio Jean-Michel Fonteneau Lisa Forkish Sonja Foster Sara Fowler Carrol Frangipane Kelly Frederick Asha French Kenneth Freudigman John Frost Natsuki Fukasawa Margaret Funkhouser Robert Gage Beth Garcia Jose Garcia Tom Garling

Marie Gaschler Jim Gasior Daniel Gee Cordova Aneta Genova Roderick George Ruth Gerson Sarah Gibson Jenny Gifford Hector Gil Yehuda Gilad James Giles Fauna Gille Joseph Gilman Elana Gizzi Melissa Glosmanova Timothy Glover Cassandra Gnehm Patrick Goeser Gila Goldstein Jennifer Golonka Juliana Gondek Mark Gonder Pepe Gonzalez Angela Goodling Scott Gould Todd Gowers Anthony Gozzo Elizabeth Gray Danny Green Zachary Greenberg Clive Greensmith Katie Greve Lawrence Grey Anita Griffin Henry Gronnier Lena Grozman Ana Guigui Katherine Gullo Suzanna Guzman Alex Hahn Casey Hall Julia Hall Dave Hammond Eric Hankin Erin Hannon Amanda Hardy Greg Harris Kelvin Harrison Mark Hart Kathleen Harte-Gilsenan Melissa Hasebrook Deshawn Hawthorne Sihao He Steve Hearn Hayden Helms Michele Hemmings Tyler Henderson Jess Hendricks Rebekah Hess Amy Heumann Madison Hicks Lluvia Higuera Efrain Hinojosa Jen Hirsh

Monica Hoenig Linda Holland Diron Holloway Tonya Holloway Doug Holzapfel Julie Hom-Mondell Darla Hoover Kaitlyn Hopkins Alice Hopper Peter Horvath Meredith Hotard Suzanne Houston Laura Howard Anne Howarth Andre Huang Brenda Huang Yi-Fang Huang Kim Huber Jane Huffman Nathan Hughes Jeffe Huls Jeffe Huls Douglas Humpherys Mathew Hune Scott Hunt Brooke Iadevito Jennifer Ievolo Eduardo Iglesias Jodi Improta Carmen Intorre, Jr. Maksim Ivanov Ko Iwasaki Lisa Jablonski - Clark Robin Jankowski Brendan Jennings Hans Jensen Heather Johnson Jasminn Johnson Katherine Jolly Courtney Jones Robyn Judge Chizuru Jurman Juli Juteau Diana Kahn Courtney Kaiser-Sandler Uma Karkala Olya Katsman Masao Kawasaki Alan Kay Kathleen Keady Mark Kellogg Nina Kelly Jayme Kelmigian Joseph Kemper Tom Kendall Kevin Kenner Wes Kenney Jean-Marie Kent Jim Ketch Nadir Khashimov Clara Minhye Kim Kyeong Hwa Kim Myung Kim Sarah Kim

YongMin Kim Leanna Kirchoff Tom Kirinsky Saleemah Knight Lili Kobielski Jonathan Koh Sarah Koo Karen Kosoglad Thomas Kotcheff Kenneth Kreuzer Steven Kronauer Ian Krouse Leonard Krubsack Dmitri Kulev Jennifer Kulev Ashley Kurasz Dina Kuznetsova Toliver Minji Kwon Joan Kwuon Jeanai La Vita Kimberly Lababit Cori Laemmel Andrea LaMaina Marty Lamar Jade Lambert-Smith Rao Lan Adam Larson Davis Law Beth LeBlanc Jean Lee Jennifer Lee Mike Lee Minhae Lee Sang Mee Lee Yu Jeong Lee Heather Lescaille Michael Lewin Chunfeng Li Chien-Kwan Lin Chiu-Tze Lin Mingjia Liu Catherine LivengoodLewellen Lee Lobenhofer Damian Long Molly Long Frank Lopez Chelsea Lorlano Carolyn Lovett Peter Mack Mike Mahany Krys Malcolm Belc Jon Manasse Sharon Mann Cherilyn Marroco Pamela Martchev Kathleen Martin Alex Martinez Andrew Martz Luca Masala Karen Mata Liza Mata Brendan Mathews Lisa Matsko Hamilton Laura Matula Rebeca Mauleon Susan McCain Erin McCarthy John McCarthy Brice McCasland Drew McClellan

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Jamond McCoy Joe McDonough Andrew McGinn Matt McKagan Megan McKay Keenan McKenzie Rich Medd Joe Medina Nathan Medley Shipra Mehrotra Tiffany Melanson Ricardo Melendez Emilio Mesa Christopher Michel Greg Mills Valdine Mishkin Joshua Mishrikey Kristy Modia Steven Moeckel Naima Moffet-Warden William Molineaux Ernesto Montes Amanda Montiglio Yong Hi Moon Stephannie Moore RJ Morel Amber Morris David Morris Ryan Morris Steven Mortier Susan Moses Bob Mosier Brent Mounger Pina Mozzani Laurie Muñiz Olivier Munoz Madurai Muralidaran Dimitri Murrath Victoria Mushkatkol Oleksander Mycyk Guy Myers Jon Nakamatsu Jose Antonio Naranjo Jospeh Nardino Lewis Nash Polina Nazaykinskaya Ayako Neidich Tyler Nelson Ira Nepus Gayle Nicholls-Ali Meredith Niekamp Craig Nies Aki Nishiguchi Jeffrey Norris Lorraine Nubar Yvonne O'Dea Richard Oatts Karen Olivo Derrick Ortega Aaron Orullian Laura Osgood Brown Karyn Overstreet Alexandra Pacheco-Garcia HaeSun Paik Francisco Pais Cardoso Min Park Linda Parr Indrani Parthasarathy Eric Patterson Cathy Payne Douglas Peck

Michael Pellera Madeline Pena Ricardo Pena Erin Pender Levine Raul Perdomo Manny Peres Angelia Perkins Brian Peter Maitland Peters Greg Petito Dane Philipsen Damani Phillips Eric Pierce Kiley Piercy Christian Pincock Jonathan Pinson Cristina Pinton Cristina Pla-Guzman Kyle Pleasant Zwi Plesser Nina Polonsky Jaqueline Porter Shweta Prachande Joey Prescott Martin Quinn Errol Rackipov Matti Raekallio Alan Rafferty Hema Rajagopalan Krithika Rajagopalan Lavanya Rajagopalan Justin Ramos John Rangel Gudrun Raschen Krystal Read Martha Reed Sarah Reich Michael Remy Igor Resnianski Rosa Reyes David Rhee Tom Riccobono Brittany Rigdon Douglas Rioth Angel Rivera Vidal Rivera Bethany Robinson Brannon Rockwell-Charland Melinda Rodriguez Beth Rohde Peter Rosheger Alan Rossi Claire Roszkowski Susan Rourke Barbara Rowes Tomasz Rzeczycki Kathleen Sadoff Michael Sakash Elias Salazar Liana Salinas Alicia Sanders Cynthia Sanner Nabila Santa-Cristo Bijayini Satpathy David Scalise Millicent Scarlett Jake Schaefer Oliver Schlaffer Matthew Schlomer Daniel Schnelle Michael Schwartz

Astrid Schween Audra Scott Stephen Scott Mary Scurlock Lee Secard Matt Seifert Leanne Self Alan Semerdjian Jared Sessink Ann Setzer Eddie Severn Lauren Sevian Divya Shanker Susan Shaw Amy Shepherd Kathleen Sherman Ory Shihor Jenny Shin Raena Shirali Theresa Shovlin Jeff Siegfried Hoover Silas Leah Silva Matthew Silva Celeste Simone Carol Sindell Inesa Sinkevych Jayne Sleder Rachel Sligh Matt Slocum Mark Small Elaine Smith-Purcell Benjamin Smolen Warren Sneed Natasha Snitkovsky Lyndall Soden Giovanna Sorondo Yusha-Marie Sorzano Manuel Sosa Adama Sow Cathy Spence Chris Sprouse Sreeliji Sreedharan Sujatha Srinivasan Anupama Srivastava Jeffrey Stafford Nancy Stagnitta Leah Stahl Kim Steinhauer Jeannine Stemmer Eric Stomberg Quinn Strassel Benjamin Stuart Akila Subramanyam Kristen Summers Ben Sutin Ricky Sweum Judith Switek John Syzygy Alexander-Rameses Taite Naoko Tanaka Emily Thomas Phillip Thomas Christopher Thompson Lucy Thurber Teresa Tierney Maura Tighe Ryan Tilby Julius Tolentino Nick Toscano Phyllis Treigle

Michele Trisler Jayce Tromsness Mala Tsantilas I-Yun Tu Brooks Turner Turner Franklin Turner Catherine Underwood Almita Vamos Roland Vamos Cynthia Van Maanen Lacey Van Reeth Sharon Van Valin Jaime Vander Velde George Variames Molly Vaughan Helena Vesterman Debra Viles Peter Vinograde Mark Vogel David Waddell John Walcutt Lisa Waldstein Katherine Walker Mary Walkley Grace Wallace Jordan Walsh Michele Walsh Sooka Wang Sylvia Wang Jessica Ward Jacquelynn Ware Carolyn Warner Christine Warner Eugene Watanabe Gigi Watson Dongsheng Wei Zhao Wei Angela Wellman Autumn West Tom Whaley Evelyn White Heidi Whitus Craig Wich Deborah Williams Patrick Williams Carol Wincenc Teresa Winner Blume Brice Winston Alex Wintz Jessica Wolf Josh Wood Linda Wood Rollo Jesse Woolery Slawomir Wozniak Angela Wright Stella Xu Sandy Yamamoto Ariel Yang Jason Yantzer Nicole Yarling Nicholaus Yee Joobin Yi Yohan Yi David Zerkel Jun Zhan Lily Zhang Kai Chi Zhu Dann Zinn David Zobell Veda Zuponcic

2021-2022 Supporters

We are grateful to the many supporters who make our programs possible, and we are delighted to recognize the donors who have generously contributed $40,000 or more as we celebrate YoungArts’ 40th anniversary.

Micky & Madeleine Arison Family Foundation Jeffrey Davis & Michael Miller Agnes Gund

Sarah Arison & Thomas Wilhelm Jay Franke & David Herro Michi & Charles Jigarjian / 7G Foundation

Sidney and Florence Stern Family Foundation Sandra & Tony Tamer

Bruce & Ellie Taub

Tracey Corwin

Jill Braufman & Daniel Nir David Dechman & Michel Mercure

Natalie Diggins & Oren Michels Gillian Hearst / Leslie & Hearst Corporation Jason Kraus

Steven & Oxana Marks

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Derrick Adams Doug Blush* Hampton Carney Linda Coll Brian Cullinan Kristy Edmunds Bernardo Fort-Brescia Jay Franke* Danielle Garno, Esq. Rosie Gordon-Wallace Michi Matter Jigarjian Jason Kraus Steven Marks, Esq. Lauren Matthiesen Michael McElroy* Dr. Joan Morgan John J. O’Neil, Esq. Glenda Pedroso Victoria Rogers Jean Shin* Zuzanna Szadkowski* Sandra Tamer Joseph M. Thompson Maurice M. Zarmati Trustees Emeritus

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Staff Executive Office

Advancement

Operations

Rebekah Lanae Lengel Deputy Director 2000 Writing

Angela Goding Senior Director of Advancement

Gary Blake Event Engineer

Sarah Watson Gray Director of Institutional Giving

Jared De Freitas IT Director

Alyssa Krop-Brandfon Director of Advancement Operations

Candia Joseph Accountant

Lauren Nesslein Advancement Operations Manager

Jennifer McShane Interim Facilities Director

Jeri Rayon Director of Advancement

Ozzie Ortega Chief Engineer

Dee Dee Sides Vice President of Advancement

Natalie Padró-Smith Events and Operations Associate

Strategic Communications

Michael Rahaman IT Manager

Dave Adams Director of Communications

Tanya Reid Vice President of Finance

Jazmyn Beauchan Digital Communications Manager

Antonio Rivera Engineer

Faelan Blair Digital Archives Specialist

Claudio Sampaio IT Manager

Lisa Leone Creative Producer

Lee Cohen Hare Creative Director

Chris Williams Director of Finance

Luisa Múnera Associate Curator

Nick DaCosta Strategic Communications Coordinator

Lauren Snelling Artistic Director

Heike Dempster Associate Director of Public Relations and Outreach

Josybel Martinez Senior Director of People and Culture Donna Lane Downey Executive Assistant Britney Tokumoto HR Coordinator

Artistic Programs Roberta Behrendt Fliss Director of Productions Joey Butler Programs Manager Zayra Campos Programs Coordinator Kelley Kessell Artist Community and Data Manager 2012 Theater, Voice & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Ty Taylor Manager of Operations and Archival Media Jennifer Toth Manager of Winner Programs Claire Traeger Associate Director of Artistic Programs Neidra Ward Associate Director of Winner Programs

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Hamza Lamrani Education Outreach and Recruitment Manager Leslie Reed Project Coordinator

Presenters Every year we work with past award winners and members of the YoungArts community to help promote the competition and opportunities for artists in schools, teen programs, community organizations and non-traditional classroom settings.

Priscilla Aleman 2009 Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts SHENEQUA 2011 Visual Arts Eddie Brown 1998 Theater Eli Dreyfuss 2016 Photography Megan Gillespie 2004 Voice Kierra Gray 2018 Voice Thurmon Green 2008 Film Mara Jill Herman 2003 Theater Deborah Magdalena Alanna Morris-Van Tassel 2003 Dance Ayane Nakajima 2019 Classical Music Michelle F. Patrick 1993 Theater David Potters 2010 Voice Vic Shuttee 2011 Writing Cristina Trabada 2016 Film Roxanne Young 2006 Dance

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Make a celebratory gift to support young artists across the country!

Our 40th anniversary is a celebration of the 20,000-strong community of artists YoungArts has supported since 1981. This season, we continue our commitment to put artists at the center of everything we do, encouraging the creative process and sharing the extraordinary work of YoungArts award winners across generations through programs in person, virtually and with partners nationwide.

To contribute online, visit youngarts.org/donate.

For more information or to make a gift by phone, please contact Director of Advancement Jeri Rayon at 305.377.1140 x 1804 or jrayon@youngarts.org.

Mail payments to: YoungArts 2100 Biscayne Blvd.

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The National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists