2023 Anthology and Catalogue: Select Works by YoungArts Honorable Mention and Merit Winners by YoungArts

Anthology + Catalogue

Select works by the 2023 YoungArts Honorable Mention and Merit award winners

YoungArts

Anthology + Catalogue

3 YoungArts

Select works by the 2023 Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing

2023 National YoungArts Week T-Shirt Designed by Kelley Lu (2021 Design Arts)

Acknowledgments

We are thrilled to welcome you to this Anthology + Catalogue, comprising works by the 2023 YoungArts Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing. An affirmation of the caliber of their expressions, these editions are often the first opportunity for young artists to see their work published and represent a bold step toward a professional future in the arts.

Our work is a continuous process that depends upon the knowledge and commitment of a vast network of guest artists, teachers and educators. We are grateful for the many partnerships and artists who have helped inspire this next generation of artists. We extend our gratitude to Anthology Editor, Jordan Levin.

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.

Table of Contents Select works by 2023 Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing Brianna Acevedo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Gryphon Alhonti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Emily Allison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Marie Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Ognyen Atanaskovich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Aubrey Barb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Marcos Barrera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Clio Barrett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Colin Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Rho Bloom-Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Jake Bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Skye Bowdon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Mar Bradley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Juna Brothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Lauren Buck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Marcus Bui . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Clementina Cardana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Disha Catt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Ramona Chae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 David Chen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Renee Chen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Emelia Ciccolini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Nia Simone Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 Paula Contreras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Aruna Das . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Ayamila Daterra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Isabel Davison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Navin Desai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Brandon Dowty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Mackenzie Duan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Kimberley Dunn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Neva Ensminger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Paul Fauller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Camille Faustino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Uma Freitag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Naomi Gage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Charlotte Gagliardi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 SydneyBlu Garcia-Yao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Nathaniel Garza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Chavely Gomez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Charles Green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Piper Greene. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Brian Guan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Charlotte Hagen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Christine Han . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Olive Harrington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Deirdre Hickey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Atticus Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Dion Hines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Irene Ho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Claire Hong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Hannah Hong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Joanne Hong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Jenny Hu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Corine Huang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Kaylie Hudson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Caitlyn Iaccino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Madhalasa Iyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Arihant Jain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Shnayjaah Jeanty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Fiona Jin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Annie Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Myra Kamal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Andrew Kang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Ari Karlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Marissa Kelley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Alexis Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Erin Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Jin Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Darius King . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Isabelle Kong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Sherice Kong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Evelyn Joonhee Koo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Sophia Lam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Carolyn Lau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 Olivia Le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Addison Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Ariana Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Sophia Leng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Marielle Lerner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Hahmini Lewis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Lauren Lin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Daniel Liu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Sophia Liu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Eboni Louigarde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Sofia Lucas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Thy Luong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 Mohini Mahajan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Katerina Malabarba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Emily Maremont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Lilly Marquardt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247

About YoungArts

Ollie McCrary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Sophia Medina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Lyat Melese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Hayward Metcalf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 Lilly Mitrani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257 Nicole Molina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Karolina Montalvo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Carlota Montero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 MaCayla Moody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 Krish Mysoor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Claire Nam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 Zora Nooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 Alicia Nordmeyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .277 Samaya Norman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 Ashley Olszewski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Enrique Oropeza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 Thomas Pace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Nikita Pai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 Mulan Pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Adhya Parna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 Christina Poulin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 Tara Prakash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Michelle Qiao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Avani Ranka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 Soren Rasmussen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Gabriela Rey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 Kaydance Rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 Georgia Rigby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Arysmel Rodriguez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Maria Rosales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 Zaida Ross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 Isabella Rotker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 Camila Salinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Andawen Sauder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327 Maria Fernanda Serra Almeida Leite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 Tatiana Solano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 Maggie Su. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333 Dilara Sümbül . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 Lakshmi Sunder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Lindsay Susten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Camryn Sydnor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Phoebe Trask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Navi Trotman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 Isabela Vallar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 Jacklyn Vandermel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 Amy Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 Ashley Wang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Cheungwan Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 Emma Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Kylie Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 Sophie Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Vivian Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Wenqian Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Elise Webb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Margaret Whitten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Patiance Wiley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364 Chloe Wong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 Peijin Wu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .376 Jacqueline Xiong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Madison Xu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Grace Yan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Daniel Yim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 Sheerea Yu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Anya Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 Natalie Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Sophia Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

About YoungArts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 Notable Winners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 Guest Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 Special Thanks to Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 YoungArts Supporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

YoungArts Anthology + Catalogue

Select Works

by the 2023 Honorable Mention and Merit award winners in Design Arts, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing

Brianna Acevedo

and

film photography 2022

Photography Homeschool Miami, FL La Fe Black

white

Gryphon Alhonti

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

INT. GARAGE - MORNING

TITLE CARD: AUSTIN, TEXAS.

CIRCUIT OF THE AMERICAS. ROUND 20.

It’s the twentieth race of the Formula 1 2022 season and the second of the three United States Grands Prix. Ferrari is toe to toe with Mercedes for the constructor’s championship and Ferrari’s Farris Lawrence is six points behind Mercedes’ Eero Heikkinen, the reigning world champion and top contender for the driver’s championship. Elias Becker, Farris’ teammate, follows closely behind at third.

Farris is the first American to race in Formula 1 in quite some time. After suffering a bout of appendicitis, he was unable to race during the Miami Grand Prix, and so today’s race will be his first American race.

The pit crew is rushing around Ferrari’s sector of the pit lane more so than usual, a flurry of red and yellow buzzing about the garage door opening. In the middle of it, ANTONIO (50, Ferrari Team Principal & former Formula 1 driver) has a pair of headphones around his constantly craning neck.

NEIL

I’m sorry sir, but I don’t think we have it.

NEIL (23, Ferrari engineer) has his headphones on his head and a clipboard in his hand. He’s been given the largely avoided job of being Antonio’s punching bag for the day.

ANTONIO

What do you mean? Where the hell is that tire? (stressed, hand on his forehead)

It’s an 18-inch rubber disk. How the hell do we lose that?

NEIL (to himself)

I’d argue it’s a lot more than that...

At the center of the garage is a bright red Ferrari F1-75 with a white fin, yellow overhead camera—and three tires.

The tires each have a yellow stripe on them, signifying they are MEDIUM COMPOUND tires, save for the left rear, which is noticeably bare. The car is lifted on a jack, making the naked axle stick out like a sore thumb.

LUCIA (32, Ferrari Principal Strategy Engineer & general voice of reason) intervenes, sick of Antonio’s complaints and ready to do her job. This is a common occurrence, unfortunately.

LUCIA

He’s just going to have to start on the hards.

ANTONIO

He can’t start on the hards.

LUCIA

Why not?

ANTONIO

This is COTA and he’s starting P3— if we want even a fighting chance against Heikkinen, his tires have to warm up quickly to overtake and last long enough to create a gap. Not to mention that everyone else is starting on the mediums too—our entire strategy will crumble.

LUCIA

No, it won’t. Let’s say Farris does fall behind, okay? By lap 12, most teams will be making their first stop and everyone else will be on the hard compound anyway—yes, tire deg is high, and qualifying proved that quickly enough, but he’s an aggressive enough driver to make up positions once the tire playing field is leveled.

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

Houston, TX

Not to overstep, but he started on mediums in Zandvoort while everyone else was on softs and we did just fine—even got a podium.

(to Neil)

ANTONIO

He started and finished P3 in Zandvoort. That’s fifteen points. I don’t want fifteen points.

Antonio doesn’t want to admit that Lucia might be right—and so he avoids addressing her point at all.

LUCIA

I’m sorry Antonio, but what exactly are you hoping for here?

ANTONIO

A win.

LUCIA

Oh my God. You’re kidding, right?

ANTONIO

No, Lucia. I’m not. It’s his home race. He’s starting in the second row. He should win.

LUCIA

Look around, Antonio—it’s the hards or no race. If he finishes P2 and gets the eighteen points, that’s only seven points less than P1. He’s still going to be the second-place contender for the championship either way. Do you really want to risk all of this for seven points?

Neil can’t help but step in.

NEIL

Also...there are three US Grands Prix this year...even if he doesn’t win this one, he’ll still have Vegas.

To say that Neil’s words went in one ear and out the other would imply they even reached Antonio at all.

ANTONIO

Lucia, look at me and tell me you want to be the team that cost your driver a home race because you lost a tire.

EXT. GRANDSTANDS - MORNING

Amid a crowd of people dressed in red and yellow, a single man stands out in an ordinary jean jacket and white t-shirt. He looks to be about fifty, hands in his pockets, looking around.

EXT. TRACK - CONTINUOUS

FARRIS LAWRENCE (24, American Ferrari driver) is kneeling on the ground with his flaming red suit unzipped and tied around his waist. There is a little boy in front of him wearing a red hat with a bold white ‘29’ on the bill—Farris leaves his autograph just below it.

FARRIS

Now don’t lose that, alright? If I play my cards right, you just might be able to sell it for a lot of money one day.

BOY

I’d never sell this. I started karting because of you!

FARRIS (laughing)

Really? Have you won any races yet?

BOY

No... but I will!

The boy’s father, just off to the side, laughs along with Farris. It’s a nice moment.

NEIL

Farris looks up and waves at the crowd. Some cheered, others didn’t notice—it’s still early. As he is surveying the crowd, the sore thumb in the jean jacket catches his eye, just close enough to recognize his face. It can’t be—but it is.

Farris’ entire demeanor changes. He lowers his hat and chin, turning back to face the boy and his father. He puts on a show smile.

FATHER

Thanks, man. I really appreciate this. He really does look up to you.

FARRIS

Yeah, no worries. Keep an eye on him, he’s got the energy.

FATHER (laughing)

I will. Good luck today—bring it home.

FARRIS

I’ll try my best.

Waving off, Farris walks off the track and starts making his way to the pit lane.

INT. GARAGE - MORNING

After a slow walk to and through the pit lane with several stops and conversations along the way, Farris enters the garage with a refillable water bottle in his hand and a lot on his mind.

Already preoccupied, the sight of the car’s current tire-less state doesn’t take any weight off.

FARRIS

What’s going on? Why does the car only have three tires on? It should be ready by now.

Lucia sighs, rubbing her forehead.

LUCIA

I’m sorry Farris, but it seems the left rear has gone missing, and we can’t find a replacement.

FARRIS

What?

ANTONIO

—But we will. You’re starting on the mediums, and we’ll do two stops, like we discussed. Mediums, then two stints on the hard compound.

FARRIS

(not quite yelling, but angry)

How the hell do you lose a tire...a whole tire?

Farris sighs loudly, then runs his hand through his hair, taking his cap off in the process.

FARRIS (CONT’D)

(looking off)

I can’t lose this race.

LUCIA

You won’t. The hards are ready to go. Once Antonio stops arguing and lets me do my job, we’ll get those on and have the car on the grid in no time.

FARRIS

(still not quite present— to himself)

I can’t finish lower than second, either. (turning towards the trio)

Where’s Elias?

ANTONIO

You’re going to win. Don’t worry about Elias, he’s starting on the mediums too.

Lucia is not happy.

FARRIS

No, I mean I need to talk to him.

NEIL (timid)

I think he’s up in his room getting ready...

FARRIS

Okay..

(takes a moment to think, not meeting anyone’s gaze) Okay.

He heads off deeper into the garage and up a pair of stairs in the back.

INT. HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS

At the end of the hallway, there are two doors beside each other. One has a large ‘FL29’ decal and the one to its right bears an ‘EB87’. Farris stands in front of the latter and knocks.

ELIAS (O.S.) (from inside the room)

Come in!

Farris opens the door and walks in—

INT. ELIAS’S ROOM - CONTINUOUS

The room is well-lit and on the smaller side. There are various pieces of art and letters scattered about the walls in a haphazard manner—they’re going to be packed up soon anyway.

ELIAS BECKER (24, German Ferrari driver) is sitting on a couch with his race suit tied around his waist, similar to Farris. He’s tying his shoes and his cap sits beside him. Farris shuts the door and leans against the doorframe.

ELIAS

Hey man. You ready?

Yeah... yeah.

FARRIS

Elias picks up on his reserved tone and pauses to take a look at Farris.

ELIAS

Doesn’t sound like it. What’s up?

FARRIS

Have you been down to the garage recently?

ELIAS (back to tying his shoes) No, why?

A beat.

FARRIS

Well, as of right now, my car is down there with three mediums on.

ELIAS (stops)

..Three? You’re kidding.

FARRIS

Nope. They lost the left rear, apparently.

ELIAS

How do you lose a tire? Aren’t they heavily monitored?

FARRIS

That’s what I said. Antonio says it’ll be fine and that we’re both starting on the mediums, but I’m not sure how likely that is. I’m not entirely sure what I’m gonna do.

ELIAS

Yeah, I’m with you. But don’t let that get in your head, alright? If anything, they’ll take the mediums off mine and put them on yours.

You’re starting ahead anyway.

Elias is used to this—for the majority of the season, Ferrari’s general strategy has been to utilize and maximize Farris’ aggressive driving style and Elias’ defensive skills. Farris carves the way for Elias to get behind him and Elias helps create a gap between them and whoever is behind. In essence: Farris gets them to the front, Elias makes sure they stay there.

Unfortunately, this strategy largely means that Farris ends up scoring more points than Elias and thus becomes the team’s priority. Being the second driver isn’t always fun—but sometimes that’s the price you pay to be on a top team, or at least that’s what Elias tells himself.

FARRIS

It’s not the tires.

Elias finishes tying his left shoe and leans back. Farris continues standing where he is, one foot up and leaning against the doorframe.

A beat.

My dad’s here.

What?

FARRIS (CONT’D)

ELIAS

FARRIS

Yeah, I know...I’m not entirely sure how to feel about it.

ELIAS

Where is he? Did you talk to him?

FARRIS

(shaking his head)

Nah, I just saw him in the grandstands. (beat)

If he wanted to talk to me, he could’ve asked any of the marshals or... anyone, really. I’d rather not go where I’m not wanted.

ELIAS

Well, if he’s here today, maybe he wants to change that. When was the last time you talked to him?

Farris takes a moment to think. He opts to ignore the question.

FARRIS

I have to win this race, Elias. Elias doesn’t miss the question dodging. He switches tones.

ELIAS

(trying to lighten the mood)

You will. I’ll make sure I’m the only car in your rearview mirrors, alright? That’s my job.

Farris isn’t swayed.

FARRIS

I don’t think he’s ever seen me race before.

ELIAS

...Really? Not even karting?

FARRIS

No, he always dropped me off and left. His first race can’t be the one I lose.

The room is quiet, and Farris’ words settle into the open space—a beat.

FARRIS (CONT’D)

Sometimes I hear radio replays and I catch myself off guard by how much I sound like him.

Having finished getting ready, Elias puts his cap on, stands up, and meets Farris’ gaze.

ELIAS

Don’t make this about him, Farris. If anything, it’s about what you’ve been able to accomplish despite him. (beat)

ELIAS (CONT’D)

You’ll win the race today—on mediums or hards—and you’ll do it not because he’s watching or because he’s worth impressing. You’ll do it because you’re the best damn driver on the grid. Farris smiles. This is why they make such a great team.

FARRIS

Thanks man, I needed that.

ELIAS

All I did was help clear up some of the fog. (clapping Farris’ shoulder)

Now go down there and tell Antonio to take his head out of the clouds and get that car into starting position.

FARRIS (chuckles)

I will.

INT. GARAGE - MORNING

Farris enters the garage with a mission. Operating under pressure is nothing new to him, and he’s handling it the best and only way he knows how— just get in the car and drive.

The car is still up in the air and Antonio, Lucia, and Neil are crowded around a wall of screens along with several other engineers and the pit crew. They’re whispering furiously— Farris comes up from behind and interrupts them.

FARRIS

Does Elias have a full medium set?

Lucia and Antonio look at each other.

LUCIA

Yes, his car is all set and ready to go.

FARRIS

Alright. Take these mediums off and put on the full set of hards.

ANTONIO

Son—

LUCIA (to crew) You heard him.

ANTONIO (to Lucia & crew)

Now just you wait! (to Farris)

There’s still time.

FARRIS

No, there isn’t. And you know it. That car needed to be on the grid ten minutes ago. Now get those tires on my car.

Antonio is hesitant but would rather not get in Farris’ head. He really needs him to win this race.

EXT. TRACK - AFTERNOON

Classic rock echoes over the speakers as the crowds chatter in the distance.

All twenty cars are present on the grid in starting positions with each driver waiting at the wheel. Each car’s tires are individually enveloped in a protective, heated blanket.

EXT. GRANDSTANDS - CONTINUOUS

The aforementioned sore thumb—Farris’ father—is still sitting awkwardly in the grandstands. He’s never been to or even watched a Grand Prix before and he’s not exactly sure how this all works. Looking around, he can’t help but notice all the people around him in red and yellow Ferrari shirts and caps, most of which are clad with ‘29’ or ‘87’.

A voice is echoing across the grandstands as all eyes shift to the drivers on the grid—DAVID JOHNSON (52, British sports commentator) is speaking to his co-commentator and analyst, BRUCE HERRINGTON (37, British) and announcing all of the starting positions.

DAVID (V.O.)

—and that leaves both Ferraris on the second row with Lawrence starting at third and Becker at fourth. Just ahead of them are Jefferson and Heikkinen—the two Mercedes’—at second and first, respectively.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, Bruce, but this is the first time since 2015 that the United States has had one of their own on the grid— Alexander Rossi, right?

EXT. TRACK/GRID - CONTINUOUS

Farris is sitting in his car with his visor up. The operator ZOOMS IN on him as Bruce and David discuss his predecessor. Farris is focused, his eyes narrow and set ahead.

A graphic span the top of the screen: FORMATION LAP. In a procession led by two silver Mercedes cars, the grid of cars slowly breaks into a roll through the track.

BRUCE (V.O.)

You are not mistaken! Rossi finished P12 out of twelve—there were eight retirements during that race! Another interesting thing to note is that while there are technically three home races for Lawrence this season, this is the closest to his actual home. The Ferrari driver was born and raised in Webster, Texas—just three hours away.

EXT. DIRT TRACK - FLASHBACK

A YOUNG MAN (early 20s, race car driver) is in a go-kart driving in a figure eight around a dirt track.

It’s Farris’ father—years before Farris was ever born. Although the majority of his face is obstructed by his helmet, there’s an unmistakable Lawrence glow in his eyes. The dirt sprays beneath his wheels as he snakes around each turn with grace and agility, and the sun beams down on him in a golden haze.

EXT. GRANDSTANDS - PRESENT

The crowd CHEERS at the mention of Farris, their homestate hero—the grandstands are PACKED. Hoards of people in red and yellow merchandise fill the gaps, with many raising flags and wearing cowboy hats.

DAVID (V.O.)

2015 was one for the books, I’m sure.

To your hometown point, I’ll admit the crowd did seem a little put off on Saturday when Lawrence qualified third, but I think it’s safe to say that the sullen feeling is long gone!

BRUCE (V.O.)

Yes! I’m not sure if the viewers at home can hear it, but there has been music playing throughout the stadium all morning.

EXT. GENERAL ADMISSION - CONTINUOUS

A lawn lined with foldable chairs and people in cowboy hats stands idly and excitedly chattering about, itching for the race to begin. The crowds cover every square inch.

BRUCE (V.O.) (CONT’D)

Springsteen, Journey, Guns ‘N Roses-all-American rock! Spirits are high in Austin, Texas as the crowd cheers on their red, white, and blue maverick: Farris Lawrence.

EXT. TRACK/GRID - CONTINUOUS

Farris’ blue helmet stands out among the abundance of red of the car. The forehead and crown of the helmet are adorned with the white outline of a longhorn’s horns design—an ode to the Texas state animal and his aforementioned nickname.

ANTONIO (V.O.)

(on team radio)

Alright Farris, I just spoke to Elias and he’s good to go. Ready to race?

FARRIS (V.O.)

(team radio)

As I’ll ever be.

Having made it back to the start/finish straight, each car takes its place on the staggard painted grid. The Circuit of the Americas is a counterclockwise track—left turns all around. Heikkinen’s P1 position leads with his teammate in P2 diagonally behind him. This means his spot on the grid is going to lead him to the outside of Turn 1, and thus allows for it to be easily overtaken.

One final car parks into position, and then a row of lights above the track turns on one by one, then all turn off at once—it has begun.

DAVID (V.O.)

In comes the last Williams in P20— and it’s lights out and away we go!

Each car reacts in time, all rushing and crowding to make up positions. Heikkinen, Jefferson, Farris, and Elias all get a good start with Jefferson covering Heikkinen on the inside of Turn 1 to prevent Farris from overtaking early on.

INT. F1-75 CAR - CONTINUOUS

Silence.

Farris’ eyes are steady and focused, unblinking through his visor. His steering wheel flashes with various colors and buttons, illuminating his face through his helmet. He’s trying to be gentle with his tires—he has to make them last as long as he can.

A sight in his rearview mirror—Elias. Making a decision, Farris allows Elias the chance to overtake him. He knows Elias will give the position back.

EXT. TRACK - CONTINUOUS

Return to sound.

DAVID (V.O.)

—It’s a ferocious start for Jefferson, having to defend against one angry Lawrence just into Turn 1. He clearly wants to overtake, but he knows he can’t run his tires this early on. Why is it that P1 directly leads into the outside of the turn and not the inside? That’s something I never understood about this track—

Interrupting him is the slight brushing of Jefferson’s rear right tire with Becker’s front left, causing both drivers to run off track. Jefferson continues to spin to the right, eventually crashing into the barriers. Elias spins twice but doesn’t crash—he’s still in this race.

BRUCE (V.O.)

OH! Not even into Turn 2 and it’s looking like we’re going to have a Safety Car! Jefferson and Becker collide, causing the Merc to DNF— but it seems Becker’s just fine!

Farris knows what to do. Speeding up just the slightest bit cements his spot in P2.

FARRIS (V.O.)

(radio)

Is Elias okay?

LUCIA (V.O.) (radio)

He’s alright—just some front wing damage.

TRANSITION TO END OF RACE — LAP 53/56.

Farris is currently leading the race at P1, but he’s been wheel to wheel with Heikkinen on several occasions: the Mercedes driver forcing him into cutting a corner, issues with the Drag Reduction System, and each of them receiving a five second time penalty—one for forcing another driver off the track and one for speeding in the pit lane, respectively. Farris is now on the hard compound tires that he’s been working with for roughly thirteen laps.

INT. F1-75 CAR - MID-RACE

Farris is sitting in his car, hands on the wheel, going roughly 200 kmh. He’s maneuvering through the turns quickly and masterfully, a flurry of red, black, yellow, and white.

FARRIS (V.O.) (radio)

How do the tires look?

LUCIA (V.O.) (radio)

They’re good. Three laps to go—keep pushing.

EXT. GRANDSTANDS - CONTINUOUS

Farris’s father stands, watching his son dominate the track like it’s the easiest thing in the world. The fatherson resemblance is uncanny.

EXT. DIRT TRACK - FLASHBACK

A sign at the entrance reveals the name of the track: the CAVERIN MOTOR SPEEDWAY. The sign is weathered and rusted, but the words are still legible.

The blue go-kart is still making its way through the figure eight with a dusty black ‘57’ painted on the side at the center of a white circle. The tires of the young man’s kart dig into the dirt, spraying it around and CUTTING TO—

EXT. COTA - PRESENT

Farris’ rear tires sparking after swinging out of Turn 17.

DAVID (V.O.)

Lawrence continues to lead the race away from Heikkinen, and let me tell you Bruce, that man is driving like his life depends on it.

BRUCE (V.O.)

Well David, in a way, it does. The championship gap between them is tight, and Lawrence needs every point he can get to win it. The same can be said for Heikkinen— these are two men who cannot help but want the same thing. It’s just a matter of who’s good enough to get it.

Tension builds underneath the sound of the crowds cheering. Then, a voice echoes above all the noise, drowning it all out.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Icarus fell on the first morning of autumn.

EXT. CAVERIN MOTOR SPEEDWAY - FLASHBACK

Just out of the intersection of the figure eight, Farris’ father speeds through the turn. There’s no one else on the track but him—he’s just having some fun.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Back then, the sun was a friend. Its beams caressed the orange leaves, the brown and rich earth like a fingertip to the chin.

Then, through the dust and the summer sun, the wheels beneath the kart LOCK UP. Farris’ father drags through the dirt, spinning in circles.

Tension continues to build, the violins melting into the sun of the crash.

EXT. COTA - PRESENT

Farris and Heikkinen are wheel to wheel, the flaring red Ferrari just inches ahead of the silver Mercedes. Everything seems to have slowed down.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

That morning, a new light emerged from beneath the November harvest— a sharp laser piercing through the air from inside the barn.

Out of Turn 19, Farris is forced to take the outside of the turn and Heikkinen takes the inside—he’s going to pass Farris once they make it past the apex of the turn. With just a lap to go, Farris cannot lose like this.

Shoving Heikkinen into the turn, Heikkinen FIGHTS BACK and stands his ground, forcing their tires to make contact.

Farris is airborne—his tires hit the edge of Heikkinen’s and rolled above them.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

In the quiet of the trees, the sound of the wind billowing ruffles across the hills, creeping out into the world—unnoticed and insignificant.

It’s not about the race anymore.

EXT. CAVERIN MOTOR SPEEDWAY - FLASHBACK

Farris’ father SPINS out of the end of the end of the track, a blur of golden dirt and sun—

EXT. COTA - PRESENT

Farris’ car FLIPS and begins to scrape across the track upside down, only to hit the edge of the track and take one final flip out right ahead of the grandstands.

EXT. CAVERIN MOTOR SPEEDWAY - FLASHBACK

His car is upside down.

CLOSE UP OF: Farris’ father’s eyes, glowing in fear and adrenaline.

CUT TO—

EXT. COTA - PRESENT

CLOSE UP OF: Farris’ closed eyes. It’s dark and his head is tucked firmly between his shoulders. The halo—a wishbone- shaped carbon fiber rod doming above the cockpit—saved his life.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

The very beams that once brushed his skin now sizzled his wings to a crisp, and Icarus was left a mess of wax and scabs harrowing through the sky.

EXT. CAVERIN MOTOR SPEEDWAY - FLASHBACK

Farris’ father’s eyes close.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Over the hills and trees, a faint and far splash echoes across the landscape, unheard.

EXT. GRANDSTANDS - PRESENT

Farris’ car lays in the grass, upside down. It has crashed directly in front of the grandstands his father stands in.

CLOSE UP OF: his father’s face, pale and afraid.

CUT TO—

INT. F1-75 CAR - CONTINUOUS

Farris’ eyes open. He’s alive.

Emily Allison

when i was a crow -

i drink your blood like rum shots when you’re spilling out on the side of the road & we’re naked & you’re lost— you pushed back my skin & ate me from the bottom up the sky’s the limit but there’s fingerprints in my core, there’s bite marks up my thighs.

i hit you with my car because i’d rather you dead than without me. i’ll carve you like a pumpkin— let me get my outline / let me get my knife.

sinew tangling, looping between my teeth, your veins my floss. i sucked until my lips were tender with exhaustion, until every thick tendon was doused in red, had grazed the inside of my cheek, been explored with the bumps on my tongue.

Poetry The Fine Arts Center Greenville, SC

Marie Anderson

SCENE ONE INT. TEVIN’S PIZZA SHOP - LATE DAY

We are in MR. TEVIN’S pizza shop. It is a small shop with only a few tables to eat at. We see IMANI, 17, wiping down the tables in the front of the shop. We see SOULCHILD, 16, on his phone behind the counter. They are wearing all black clothes and white aprons. Soulchild’s boyfriend, JJ, 16, is walking up to the shop. Imani can see him through the front windows.

IMANI

(to Soulchild)

Your boyfriend’s here, Soulchild.

Soulchild looks up from his phone and smiles at his JJ as he walks through the door. Soulchild leans on the counter.

SOULCHILD (to JJ, soft)

JJ does the same.

Hey.

JJ (to Soulchild, soft)

Hi.

They kiss. Imani turns around and sees them.

IMANI

You guys are disgusting. My favorite part of summer is not having to see school couples making out everywhere, and now I can’t even have that.

JJ walks to Imani and bows.

Soulchild and JJ services, ruining single’s summers since 2020.

JJ comes up from his bow and smiles. Imani rolls her eyes.

SOULCHILD

Imani, we need to get you a boyfriend.

IMANI

Have you seen the guys around here? I’m good.

JJ and Soulchild look at each other.

What about you and Ryan? We’ve seen you guys— Imani cuts JJ off and scrunches up her face.

IMANI

We’re not talking about this.

He obviously likes you, and you like him so what’s the—

IMANI

I’m going to the kitchen.

Soulchild laughs.

Play or Script

4th OF JULY

The Appomattox Regional Governor’s School for the Arts And Technology Petersburg, VA

JJ waves at her as she turns away.

Happy 4th of July!

Imani stops, turns around slowly, and makes a confused face at Soulchild, and Soulchild nods his head in response. JJ notices and is confused.

JJ (CONT’D)

What? What is that?

SOULCHILD

She’s asking me if you’re seriously saying, “Happy 4th of July!”

IMANI

I’m not trying to be mean; I just didn’t take you as that kind of guy.

JJ crosses his arms.

What kind of guy am I, exactly? Because I thought I was the nice guy who was just wishing you a happy holiday.

Soulchild takes a deep breath, realizing JJ’s wording mistake. Imani points at JJ.

IMANI

That. That. You’re the type of guy that would see today as a holiday, and me and Soul aren’t.

JJ faces Soulchild; his arms are still crossed. His face has no expression, but Soulchild knows that isn’t good.

SOULCHILD

(trying to be nice)

It doesn’t really make any sense for Black people to celebrate the 4th of July...or to go around wishing people a happy one. Like what does that even mean when you’re Black?

I’m also American, and it’s just one day to get together with family. You guys wish people a Happy Thanksgiving, even though that has bad origins.

(to Soulchild)

You came to my house and were happy eating turkey and watching football.

IMANI

Okay, but that’s different.

How?

IMANI

Thanksgiving became about doing stuff with your family, but today is about freedom.

Today is about family, too. I was at his grandmother’s cookout today with our families, and it felt nice getting to be around everyone. (to Soulchild) But you wouldn’t know because you refused to go.

SOULCHILD

I’m working.

You took this shift to get out of going.

23 SOULCHILD

Bye.

IMANI

JJ, either way you put it, 4th of July isn’t a holiday for us. Sure, you can have your cookout, but don’t walk around saying “Happy 4th of July” like...like we weren’t enslaved when they made this holiday and like we still aren’t hurting.

I’m not hurting anyone, though.

IMANI

But people are still hurting. Police brutality, racial bias in the medical field, the pay gap. The list goes on.

But I didn’t do those things. I’m not a cop. I’m not a doctor or someone’s boss. Me saying, “Happy 4th of July” isn’t hurting them.

IMANI

Maybe it is. Maybe not knowing enough about it to care, a sort of blissful ignorance hurts them.

Blissful ignorance? Are you serious? Over four words? Now, I’m ignorant.

JJ looks to Soul. Soul is staring out the window and doesn’t say anything.

JJ (CONT’D) Soul?

SOULCHILD

JJ, you know how I feel about this.

Yeah, I do. I’ve heard you rant about it for hours, but you’ve never said anything like this before.

JJ waits for Soul’s response. Mr. Tevin walks to the front, wiping flour off his hands. Mr. Tevin is a short man in his 40s. He’s wearing all black and a white apron. He has a gold Africa necklace on.

MR. TEVIN

Imani, can you get started on the dishes?

Imani nods and heads to the back.

MR. TEVIN (CONT’D) (to JJ) JJ! How you been?

Mr. Tevin pats JJ on the back. JJ looks at Soulchild as he speaks.

Hey, Mr. Tevin. Happy 4th of July!

SOULCHILD (to JJ, annoyed) He doesn’t care about the 4th of July.

JJ (to Soulchild) I’m just being nice.

JJ looks at Mr. Tevin.

JJ (CONT’D) (to Mr. Tevin)

I can’t complain. I’ve been eating at his grandma’s cookout all day.

MR. TEVIN

Don’t tell me you didn’t save room for my pizza of the day.

Mr. Tevin proudly references the board with a pizza drawn on it.

MR. TEVIN (CONT’D) (New York accent)

The four chedda bout it pizza. (normal accent)

It has four types of cheddar on it.

I always got room for your pizza. I’ll take one pizza of the day and one Hawaiian.

Soulchild gets the slices. Mr. Tevin leans on the counter trying to look cool.

MR. TEVIN (rambly)

So, your aunt was at the cook–? Your aunt she’s—? How’s your aunt doing?

JJ and Soulchild look at each other. Soulchild holds back laughter.

She’s good.

MR. TEVIN

She hasn’t come through in a minute.

Yeah, she’s been really busy so…

MR. TEVIN

That’s wassup. That’s wassup. Well, tell her if she needa break for some...food to stop by.

Alright, Mr. Tevin.

Mr. Tevin walks out, and Soulchild busts out laughing.

SOULCHILD

You gon be calling him Uncle Tevin soon.

JJ mocks Soulchild’s laughing and stops abruptly.

You’re not funny.

JJ pays Soulchild for the pizza.

SOULCHILD

I’m a little funny. Just a little.

Can we go? It’s already past 7:30.

SOULCHILD

Hang on.

Soulchild goes to the back and comes back quickly.

SOULCHILD (CONT’D)

Let’s go.

SCENE TWO EXT. STREET - LATE DAY

JJ and Soulchild walk out of the shop and head down French Street. The street is lined with restaurants and different shops. They are walking on the sidewalk. JJ is holding slices of pizza. The sun is setting.

Is Musiq hanging out with us tonight?

SOULCHILD

Nah, he’s with some girl. Asia? I don’t know.

You’re not going to hang out with them?

SOULCHILD

Why would I?

To serenade her like y’all used to do in elementary school for all the girls Musiq liked.

SOULCHILD

So, you think you got jokes? I haven’t done that in years, JJ.

If I do remember correctly...the last time y’all, did it was four years ago when we were in seventh grade. For..um... what was her name? Tasha...something?

Soulchild sucks his teeth.

Whatever.

SOULCHILD

JJ stops walking and hands the pizza to Soulchild. JJ starts snapping, poorly dancing, and singing “Just Friends (Sunny)” by Musiq Soulchild.

JJ (singing dramatically)

I’m not trying to pressure you Just can’t stop thinkin’ bout you You ain’t even really gotta be my girlfriend.

Soulchild pushes JJ, making him stop dancing.

SOULCHILD (playful) Shut up, JJ.

JJ starts laughing.

I thought I sounded good. I got the steps going after a minute. You wouldn’t go out with me if I sang that to you?

Soulchild thinks for a minute, stroking his chin.

SOULCHILD

Mmmmmm..no.

No?

JJ leans slightly toward Soulchild.

No.

Soulchild leans slightly toward JJ.

Uh uh?

JJ leans slightly more toward Soulchild.

SOULCHILD

Soulchild leans slightly more toward JJ.

JJ (soft)

Consider it?

JJ leans even more toward Soulchild, their faces practically touching.

SOULCHILD (soft)

They kiss.

I might.

SOULCHILD (CONT’D)

I would, actually. If you never bring up me and Musiq “serenading” girls ever again.

They start walking again.

Ever? I don’t know if I could do that. I gotta remind you of your roots from time to time.

SOULCHILD

That is not my roots.

Soul, it’s how you got your name. Those are your roots.

SOULCHILD

I don’t know my roots? Says the guy who learned about Juneteenth from an ABC sitcom, but tells everyone he comes across (mocking)

Happy July 4th!

Blackish has been Emmy nominated for Outstanding Comedy many times, so I feel no shame watching the Johnson family.

SOULCHILD

But did they ever win?

JJ takes the pizza plate back and takes a bite out of one of the slices.

SCENE THREE

EXT. STREET - LATE DAY

Soulchild and JJ are still walking. The stores and restaurants are behind them. They’ve made it to their neighborhood now. Most houses are varying new two-story homes. It’s getting dark, and streetlights are on. Soulchild grabs a piece of pizza from JJ’s plate, takes a big bite, and sets it back on the plate.

That’s my pizza!

SOULCHILD (mouth full of pizza)

It’s good.

It’s mine. I’m hungry.

JJ takes a few long strides to cross the street. Soulchild follows after him, but a car cuts him off.

SOULCHILD

What happened to pedestrians first?

27 SOULCHILD Uh uh.

JJ (mocking jokingly)

What happened to not eating my pizza?

Soulchild rolls his eyes and looks upset. JJ takes notice.

JJ (CONT’D)

I was just kidding. I didn’t mean to–.

SOULCHILD

How was Grandma’s cookout?

JJ Soul, I’m–.

SOULCHILD (persistent)

How was it?

It was super boring without you there, but I had some hot dogs, so it was alright. Rickey said he was gonna go out and get some fireworks, so if we hurry back, we can probably still see them.

SOULCHILD

How many hot dogs did you eat? Twelve?

It wasn’t twelve. I had one.

SOULCHILD One?

Okay, two.

Two?

SOULCHILD

Fine, three. I had three.

Three?

SOULCHILD

I ate four hot dogs! Is that what you wanna hear? Who goes to a cookout and doesn’t eat?

SOULCHILD

If you already ate, then I should eat one of your slices.

Soulchild takes a slice of pizza. JJ continues to eat the other.

Your mom was having a good time bragging about you. (high pitched voice)

My son got a job over with Tevin, and he volunteers at the soup kitchen. Oh, he also gives swimming lessons at the pool…

SOULCHILD

What can I say? I am very impressive.

You are, but you could take one day off from work to celebrate with your amazing super cool super-hot boyfriend.

Soulchild stops because he notices his shoes have come untied. He bends down to tie them.

SOULCHILD

Like I’ve said before, celebrating a holiday for white people isn’t my thing.

Okay, whatever, but you could at least hurry up so we can watch the fireworks.

Soulchild begins to tie his shoes very slowly.

SOULCHILD

Mmhm.

JJ rolls his eyes. JJ folds up the plate and shoves it in his back pocket. Soulchild gets up.

It’s summer, Soul. We don’t have to work all of the time. I wanna have fun. I wanna hang out with you. Who cares if it’s July 4th or August 27th?

SOULCHILD

You never work, JJ.

I work. I worked at...

SOULCHILD

You’ve never had a job!

That’s not the point, Soul! There’s nothing wrong with having fun.

SOULCHILD

Whatever.

No. Not “whatever”. Why are you being like this today? You ditch hanging out with me to work all day. Then, I come to walk home with you, and you let Imani call me ignorant. I ask you for something so simple, watching fireworks with me, and you don’t want to.

SOULCHILD (harsh)

I don’t want to keep talking about this.

Why not?

SOULCHILD

Because I don’t want to, JJ. Okay? Leave it alone.

But why? Is it me? Did I do something? This can’t be over a stupid day.

SOULCHILD

You’re right. Today is stupid. This holiday is such a stupid thing, and you look stupid celebrating it.

So, you think I’m ignorant, too?

SOULCHILD

JJ, you’re not even listening to me.

Yes, I am. (mocking Soulchild)

4th of July is stupid. If you’re Black, you can’t celebrate! I’d rather work instead of just ignoring what day it is and spend time with JJ because he doesn’t know or care about anything.

SOULCHILD

I’m trying to have a real conversation with you.

So am I. I’m telling you; I don’t care about the 4th of July. Is it hypocritical? Yes. But is it also a day to get together and have fun? Yes! I don’t wanna argue with you anymore, Soul. It’s just one day.

SOULCHILD (soft)

It’s not. You’re not listening to me.

JJ (stern)

I wanna see the fireworks.

Soulchild sits on the curb of the sidewalk. JJ stands over Soulchild about to go off, but Soulchild speaks first.

SOULCHILD

You’re not listening to me, JJ. It’s more than family. It’s more than cookouts. It’s more than just a fun day. It’s more than stupid fireworks! Just listen to me!

Soulchild looks up at JJ. We can see and hear red and yellow fireworks going off in the distance. END.

Nigerian-American Dreams

inspired

by Tara Ballard “Animum Adverte”

1. The person, of Nigerian immigrant heritage, is entirely disposable.

1.1 The person, of Nigerian immigrant heritage, is raised to further and protect the system which subjugates them.

1.2 The person, of Nigerian immigrant heritage, is raised to hate themselves.

1.2.1 They are told there is no such thing as a they, only he or she.

1.2.1.1 They are told that, loving who they love, is a sin.

1.3 The person, of Nigerian immigrant heritage, is raised to believe the Catholic Church and all its teachings are undeniably true.

1.4 The person, of Nigerian immigrant heritage, is raised to be conservative.

2. The person goes to Catholic School.

2.1 The person learns that their name is funny to white people.

2.2 The person learns about God and believes in it.

2.2.1 Well not really, but they don’t know religion is a choice, yet.

2.3 The person is accused of something they didn’t do, and learns a lesson for life, they will never be believed over white people.

2.4 The person doesn’t get that they are too different, too dark, too much to deal with.

2.5 The person wears a dress to school for opposite day, and all their classmates ask if they’re gay, but the person doesn’t know what gay means.

2.5.1 They’re ignorant by design. Their parents have been keeping that kind of content away from them, fearing it’d make them gay.

3. The person has a crush on a boy anyway, and doesn’t tell their parents.

4. They grow up, get over their old crush, and start high school.

4.1 They’re introduced to so many new ideas all at once, terms like transgender, non-binary, pansexual, and bisexual, become a part of their vocabulary.

4.1.1 They find the language to express themselves.

5. As they continue growing, they start to realize they don’t believe in anything their parents taught them.

5.1 They question why their parents thought it was wrong to be gay.

5.2 They question what it means to live in a body, if their gender can really be decided by one piece of flesh.

5.3 They start going by new pronouns on the internet, testing out how they feel.

6. Soon, they’re sure they aren’t a boy, at least not entirely.

6.1 They don’t tell anyone out of fear.

6.1.1 They learn to live through the internet.

7. They graduate from high school, and come to realize, they will eventually have to tell their parents something, about their identity, about their life.

7.1 At a barber shop, a man assumes they like women, saying they need a fresh cut to attract girls.

7.1.1 It bothers them, but they know it’s easier to say nothing.

7.2 They’ve said nothing for most of their life anyways.

7.3 They said nothing when their mother asked who they were taking to prom.

7.4 They said nothing when their mother tried to get them to date some random Nigerian girl they’d never met, but was a friend of a friend’s daughter.

7.5 They said nothing, and now they say nothing.

8. Sometimes they have dreams where they have different parents.

8.1 Parents who would accept them no matter what.

8.1.1 In their dreams, they tell their parents about every boy they’ve loved.

8.2 In their dreams, all their parents have to say is we love you.

9. Their dreams don’t last long enough.

9.1 And none of their dreams are coming true.

10. I am a first generation American of Nigerian heritage.

10.1 My dreams of acceptance, of love, of freedom, none of them are coming true.

31 Anonymous Creative Nonfiction

Ognyen Atanaskovich

____________

Digital photography 2022

Photography Miami Arts Charter School Miami, FL

(Bombing)

Aubrey Barb

2022

Photography

Carroll High School Fort Wayne, IN Paper Thin Scanner

Marcos Barrera

Photography City High / Middle School Grand Rapids, MI Tino Black and white film photography 2022

Clio Barrett

PERSONAL STATEMENT

When the common application asks you to write an all encompassing essay, you begin to question how well writing knows you.

How well you know writing.

How do you condense yourself into a word count, stuff your lungs, fold your chest, both your feet into the openings within each letter, how do you convince the invisible looming force that is the college board, the faceless adjudicator that is the admissions officer, that your brain deserves to be placed in a glass jar suspended in all the juices of learning, preserved like marble statue on their banner?

How do you explain your intelligence should be hand fed dining hall buffets and the sugar cookies of liberal art English classes, professor’s attention like vintage wines, like a seed begging to be quenched by a tenured man’s lecture, an egg warmed under the feathered belly of chalkboards and dissertations, place my head on a podium in front of a mic, kiss my mind but not pet it like the nose of a lap dog or maybe lap dogs, my cerebrum could be your lap dog

it would run circles for a bone, I’d roll over and bury myself within my learning, let me pay for my learning, let me unlearn the mud and dirt of uneducation, bathe me in caffeine addiction, let me prove to you I deserve to be trained, to be taught, let me demonstrate interest, like demonstrated need. Oh to glue my nose to the stained glass windows of your library or the floor of your mediocre dorm rooms my dad would even pay you, I would break open my own mouth and take out a loan just to pay you, satiate the zeros, the commas, the decimal points, one for each freckle on my mothers right arm. If money isn’t enough I will give you my body, every torn cuticle and back tooth, every song that has been stuck in this head, every word I have ever thought about stuffing in my personal statement.

This is my personal statement.

What happens when I have no more to give? How do I prove myself then?

What happens to the children that were never given anything to give in the first place. Must we beg for our rebirth? What price must we produce to label ourselves scholars?

Must we auction off our organs?

What if I was never taught this teaching was an option? What if my mind was never preened to begin with, never shown it deserves a jar or the prospect of suspension within liquid, what if we were taught out of that, what if we were pushed to hold tight to our own heads, to feed ourselves and keep our own bodies, shed our fur and shake the hands of the men who should beg for our intellect

Let the bleached colleges that preach diversity ask the rainbow kids to bless their floors, to paint their ceilings

give us shovels to dig up all the jars, all the stolen wit, pick axes to reshape the marble, allow our parents to rein habit their own sweat instead of drowning in it, paying both for nests and incubations as they relinquish their own birds.

This is my personal statement.

Let it stay suspended within your college campus, let it decorate your banners, let it blow like fall wind against the doors of your fine institution, let it sooth you but let it chill you too.

Spoken Word Edward R Murrow High School Brooklyn, NY

Colin Bloom

Design Arts

East

Cardboard and tissue paper 2020

Fieldston School Bronx, NY

Harlem New York Public Library Proposal

Rho Bloom-Wang

Jiangsu, 1944

& when I open my eyes we are leaving. Fleeing east to greet the bleeding dusk, gone as its tendrils crawl forth. You are lucky & we move in blankets of bees how can one mass hold a million jolts? Two million breaths but not my mother’s & not the sister’s whose name I wear & still we ripple into the outskirts. Bodies— I guess that’s what we became when they forced pork down my mother’s closed throat. Your brothers & sisters weren’t lucky like you & we are leaving again, so I try to close my eyes but end up pressing the wind into lotus petals. I seal boxes of books that can never be read because you need to hurry & I wonder how that soldier aimed so slick his bullet danced through my uncle’s one cheek & clean out the other & somehow I know we are not going back. I untwist the waves from my hair. Miss the days I won’t remember. Wish my aunt would take me but no, no paper can buy back a revolution. This time when the harvest moon rises I know we really are leaving. I have a ticket past the shore as if the bodies aren’t dangling underside the train & off the rails & there now we are leaving fast skimming toward sea away from a sun so red I close my eyes.

Poetry Winchester Thurston School Pittsburgh, PA

Jake Bond

Untitled V Digital photography 2022

Photography Saint Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX

Skye Bowdon

EVERYTHING TO GIVE FLOWERS FOR HEAD CREDIT SEQUENCE

INT. MYSTERIOUS ROOM - NIGHT

An OFF PITCHED WHISTLE can be heard in a dark room. The only things illuminated are a pair of LEATHER GLOVED HANDS, electric hair clippers, and the DECAPITATED HEAD of a woman with LONG DARK HAIR and an expressionless face.

The gloved hands mold the woman’s face, opening her eyelids to reveal her DARK EYES, relaxing her cheeks, and dragging down the corners of her mouth.

The whistling stops. The hands turn on the hair clippers. The buzzing sound is deafening.

Long strands of hair fall to the ground. LAST CREDIT APPEARS THEN FADES.

INT. FLOWER SHOP - DAY

MELLI - aged eight - opens the purple store front door. Her hair sits at her waist, and her white skirt drags on the green floor.

Above her, a series of chimes go off as the door hits a string of bells and hanging plastic insects.

Melli rocks from her heels to her toes while the bugs swing back and forth.

Everything is too bright.

Further inside, shelves of disembodied brown and grey HUMAN HEADS line the walls.

The heads are hollowed out, bald, and filled with various VIBRANT flowers- red, yellow, green, purple, blue.

Labels below the heads detail the flower species they contain and a small card describing their meaning. The shop is long and expands far down one large aisle.

Light on her feet, Melli wanders around the shop humming a soft tune beneath her breath.

She is the only one there except for the SHOP OWNER who lurks behind the cash register watching her. He is a lengthy man with small features reminiscent of a millipede. He wears a long orange apron.

Melli’s hum meets an abrupt stop when out of the corner of her eye, she spots a WOMAN’S HEAD exploding with yellow flowers on the bottom shelf.

The woman’s face holds an aloof expression. Her BLUE eyes gaze up as if she is trying to see the flowers within her. Her cheeks are pinched in at the sides making her lips wrinkled and puckered yet slightly agape.

Staring at the head transfixed, Melli kneels to its level as if she is about to pray, but instead, she runs her fingers along the concaves of the face then down the bridge of the crooked long nose.

For a moment, the head’s eyes seem to roll back into its skull.

Melli traces circles around the eyes and one large circle around the lips. Then, she mirrors the same actions on her own face.

There is a SIGN beneath the head reading: CHRYSANTHEMUMS - For friendship and good wishes.

A smile, lemon-rind-bright, spreads across Melli’s face. She gives herself a satisfactory nod and picks a singular flower from the head.

BLACKOUT.

Play or Script New Mexico School for the Arts

Santa Fe, NM

The sun weathered muted yellow school bus drops off kids in a dirt patch right outside of a small neighborhood. Melli is already off the bus waiting. She holds something behind her back.

A scrawny LITTLE BOY hops down the steps and bolts past her.

MELLI

Hold on, wait for me!

The boy looks behind him and slows down, but he does not stop.

LITTLE BOY

Better catch up!

Melli starts sprinting with the chrysanthemum still in hand. A few petals fall on the dusty path leaving a bright trail behind her. She catches up to the boy, and they double over panting.

LITTLE BOY (CONT’D)

What’s with the flower?

Melli looks over at the boy who is now distracted by an ant carrying a dead moth over a rock. An ant hill waits on the other side of the rock, but the ant keeps having to stop because the moth is too heavy in its mouth.

When the ant begins to move again, the moth’s body is dragged against the rough stone making a microscopic scraping sound.

MELLI

(Hushed tone)

Um, it’s for you.

The boy makes eye contact with Melli.

Oh... cool.

LITTLE BOY

Melli hands the flower to the boy who tosses it back and forth in his sweaty hands.

MELLI

Do you like it?

LITTLE BOY

Did you pick it yourself?

MELLI

No, flowers like that don’t grow around here.

The boy holds the flower up to the cloud covered sky. His hands are small, sweaty, and stained with brown marker. Dirt hides beneath his bitten nails.

LITTLE BOY

It looks like the sun.

The flower droops slightly against its dreary background.

MELLI

Yeah, I guess it does.

They pass small old houses, old cars, and old creaking swing sets. The boy begins plucking slender petals off the flower. With each pluck, he dramatically tosses the petals to the ground.

LITTLE BOY

(Mockingly high pitched)

Love me, love me not, love me, love me not.

As the boy plucks the last few petals, Melli tries to catch them before they fall, but a sudden gust of dirt and wind blows them out of her hand. She turns away from the wind as the boy attempts to shield himself from it.

Melli’s long hair covers her face, and the two kids become drenched in dirt. Finally, the wind passes. Melli and the boy try unsuccessfully to dust the dirt off themselves.

40 EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD

DIRT PATH- DAY

The boy lifts his head to see his house across the street. A perfect full teeth smile gleams across his face.

The house is just as run down as the rest of them, chipping paint, a crooked roof, a fence with missing posts, and dead rosebushes that line the crumbling flagstone footpath.

Melli looks at the boy who has already begun to walk across the street.

MELLI

Where did the stem go?

The boy doesn’t turn around.

What?

LITTLE BOY

Melli pauses for a moment preparing herself to say something.

MELLI

Can I come over?

The boy unlatches the lock to his fence.

LITTLE BOY

I think your flower blew away.

Beside the rock, the poor ant is now curled up into a little black ball. Its mouth is gone.

The boy walks up the creaky wooden steps to his front door and waves goodbye to Melli. She droops like the chrysanthemum against the sky.

The boy steps inside his house with his back towards Melli, then abruptly shuts the door. She walks the rest of the way to her house alone.

INT. MOM’S HOUSE - DAY

When Melli walks through the door, her MOM is sitting down on a cracked brown leather couch with her feet propped up on the glass coffee table as she flips through channels on the television. Most of them are static. Melli crouches down by the welcome mat to untie her shoes.

MOM

How was school honey?

MELLI

One shoe is off.

It was fine.

MELLI’S MOM

Learn anything?

Both shoes are off. She places them beside the door.

MELLI

Yeah.

MOM

Well, that’s nice honey. I had a great day. Some lady won some money on that show. What’s it called again?

The T.V screen goes completely black, but a small message floats around the screen reading, NO SIGNAL.

MELLI

The Wheel of Fortune?

Melli’s mom flips over the remote, takes out the batteries, and clicks them back in. To her disappointment, there is still no signal.

What was that baby?

Nothing important.

INT. MELLI’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

MELLI

Everything in the room is dark except for the faint outline of Melli asleep on her back illuminated in a reddishorange glow coming from the blood red moon outside her window.

She sits up with her eyes slightly open. In slow small movements, she pushes away her covers and gets out of bed. For a moment, she fixes her hair and adjusts her pajamas as if she were looking into a mirror then cracks her neck in every direction.

Melli walks over to her closet and opens the door.

MELLI (Getting louder each time)

Mom... mom... mom

The slight purr of a heater and the sound of crickets can be heard. Silence.

MELLI (CONT’D)

(Yelling)

Mom!

Melli walks into her closet and shuts the door before pressing herself into the tight corner holding her knees to her chest for dear life.

She bangs her head against her knees.

The reddish-orange glow fades. Everything is dark.

INT. MOM’S BATHROOM - DAY

Melli’s mom stands by her vanity applying a BRIGHT RED LIPSTICK while staring at herself in the mirror.

A bright florescent light beams down on her making the highlights and shadows of her face extreme and artificial. After one coat of lipstick, she presses her chapped lips together, then puckers them to apply another layer. After four or so layers, the lipstick begins to clump becoming a red mess of lipstick, dried skin, and saliva.

Melli enters the bathroom and watches her mom watch herself in the mirror.

MOM

How did you sleep baby?

MELLI

Okay.

Melli’s mom smiles into the mirror, her teeth are caked with lipstick. She turns on her faucet, cups water in her hands, and brings it up to her lips.

She takes a mouth-full of water and swishes it around. When she spits it out, the water looks like blood.

MOM

Oh good, I had nightmares.

BLACKOUT.

INT. FLOWER SHOP - DAY

Melli - aged 45- Drags the balls of her feet on the green floor as she slugs around the shop. The hem of her long tunic style brown dress covers her heels.

Her gaze is down, but every so often, she glances behind her only to find the perky flowers staring back at her from all directions.

MOM

SHOP OWNER

Do you need any help?

(O.S)

Melli turns around and straightens out. The shop owner’s small, crooked smile makes her take a step back.

MELLI

I’m just looking around.

SHOP OWNER

No, you’re looking for something specific.

MELLI

I Well -

SHOP OWNER

You look like a little girl who used to come around here. Same face, but you’re a little thin.

MELLI

Well, this is my first time here. It just looked so... colorful.

SHOP OWNER

I’ll let you look around.

When the shop owner moves, Melli is immediately drawn towards the head behind him.

The head is plastered with dirt so thick, Melli can barely make out that it’s the head of a LITTLE BOY. His eyes are wide and joyful. He has a big yellow teeth smile.

The flowers that spill over the top look almost as if they are growing out of soil. The flowers themselves are little white caps; multiple hanging down each stem.

The SIGN beneath them reads:

LILLY OF THE VALLEY - Return to happiness.

Melli attempts to wipe the dirt off the boy’s face. She first tries with the sleeve of her shirt and then with her hands, but regardless of how much she wipes away, there are just more layers underneath. The boy’s smile seems to grow wider.

Melli collects the dirt that piled on the ground and presses it into her face. Then, she picks one stem of Lilly’s out of the head.

BLACKOUT.

INT. MOM’S KITCHEN - DAY

Holding her stem of valley lilies, Melli walks into her kitchen to see her mom repeatedly hitting her head against the wooden table covered in a GINGHAM TABLECLOTH.

Her mother’s clothes are mismatched, random, and wrinkled. Her shoulder length hair is soaked in grease.

Dirty napkins, rotting food, and ripped-open food wrappers litter every surface.

Melli gets a garbage bag from under the sink and begins to throw the trash away. Her movements are gentle and quiet. When she is done, she ties the trash bag shut and places it to the side.

She then wipes her hands on her dress and opens a wooden cabinet full of dusty glass plates. She takes one down and brushes it off with the sleeve of her shirt.

Over to the side of the counter, she opens a bread box. Out scurries a small cockroach from its tin cave. Melli takes out two slices of white bread and puts them on the plate.

Finally, she rinses off a butterknife in the sink and cuts two pads of butter from the dish on the counter. There is a faint scraping as she spreads the butter on the bread.

Plate in hand, she walks over the table and sits in the chair beside her mom. When her mom raises her head, Melli puts her hand on her forehead before she slams it back down on the table.

to the side

She hears

man’s voice

of her.

Melli’s mom lifts her head, looks at Melli, and attempts to form her lips into a slight smile. It doesn’t work. Melli pushes the plate of bread closer to her mother.

MELLI (CONT’D)

Please try to eat with me. Her mom stares at the plate without moving a muscle.

Melli takes a deep breath and picks up a piece of bread holding it to her mom’s lips. Her mother takes a bite. Melli then takes a bite of her own bread.

She continues to feed her mom then herself until both pieces of bread are gone.

Melli gets up from the table, fills a mason jar with water, puts the valley lilies in the makeshift vase, and places it on the table.

The cockroach has found a new place to rest in the shadow beneath the cabinet.

Her mother rests her head on the table taking long drawn-out breaths.

EXT. MOM’S DRIVEWAY - DAY

Melli’s WIFE waits in her tan car as Melli walks out of her mom’s house.

The dirt driveway is full of dead bushes and tumbleweeds. Goat-heads stick to the bottom of Melli’s black shoes.

She gets in the car.

INT. CAR - DAY

Melli’s wife turns down the radio. The music is now a constant low hum.

MELLI

It’s hot in here.

WIFE Is it?

MELLI (softly)

Yeah.

WIFE

I could turn on the air conditioner.

MELLI (Shaking voice)

It’s broken.

Melli rests her head in her hands.

WIFE (whispers)

I’m sorry.

MELLI For what.

WIFE

I know you’re not okay.

Melli turns red, begins to shake then breaks into sobs.

Her wife unclicks her seat belt and awkwardly leans across the center console to wrap her arms around Melli. Melli relaxes into her chest.

44 MELLI

Mom.

Melli and her wife sit together on a dingy wooden porch swing that creak while slightly rocking.

Melli’s wife traces circles into the back of Melli’s hand while she looks up at the sky.

Her bright blue eyes gleam against the brownish grey clouds. Melli watches the ground.

WIFE

You don’t have to feel bad.

Melli fixates on a praying mantis as it slowly roams around a bush.

WIFE (CONT’D)

Hello?

The praying mantis stands still.

Above it, a bee looks for something to pollinate.

With its claws waiting in the air, the mantis begins to delicately rock as the bee buzzes closer.

WIFE (CONT’D)

It’s okay you cried.

MELLI

Love, I don’t want to talk about it.

WIFE

So, are we just going to ignore it?

Melli squeezes her wife’s hand and tries on a fake smile.

MELLI

I’m not ignoring anything.

WIFE

Don’t lie to me. (beat)

Melli’s fake smile fades.

How is your mom?

WIFE (CONT’D)

Melli takes her hand away, stands up, and begins to walk away without even looking at her.

MELLI

I’m not lying.

In one swift motion, the praying mantis catches the bee. It brings the helpless creature to its mouth and slowly consumes it.

The wife drops her head.

BLACKOUT.

INT. FLOWER SHOP - DAY

Melli -aged 75- enters shop. Her face has sunken into itself, and the skin around her cheeks droop down like melted wax. The dark purple circles around her eyes make her look eternally tired.

With careful steps, she takes long breaths holding each one at the top until she becomes lightheaded and is forced to exhale.

The lights in the store are white and glaring. Melli repetitively closes and opens her eyes as if she is trying to squeeze a headache out of her head.

She stops walking as florescent colors flash around her like the edge of a slashing blade.

Something, or someone is whispering. The sound surrounds her, but the words are inaudible.

45 EXT. PORCH SWING - DAY

Melli frantically tries to look around, but the noise comes to a halt.

She begins to walk again, but there are footsteps trailing behind her. She turns around, sees the shop owner, and screams.

The shop owner stands still and smiles so wide, his mouth barely fits on his face.

SHOP OWNER

Are you okay ma’am?

Melli can hardly hear him over the sound of her own quick struggling breaths.

MELLI

I was just, uh, looking around.

SHOP OWNER

Sure, you are.

Melli looks past the shop owner’s shoulder.

MELLI

I’m looking for a funeral.

SHOP OWNER

Do you know what their favorite flower was?

Melli squints.

MELLI

Is this shop new? It seems... bright.

SHOP OWNER

Did they have a favorite color?

Melli concentrates on the head of an OLD WOMAN with a long-wrinkled face and red flowers.

MELLI

She could never pick one, but I think she liked red.

SHOP OWNER

Well, there is plenty of that here. I’ll just let you have a look.

Melli continues to stare at the head, but when she refocuses to respond to the shop owner, he is already across the shop dragging his feet as he walks.

She looks back to the head of flowers she was fixated on and walks closer.

The head’s mouth hangs open as water puddles on it’s grey tongue. The head’s teeth, lips, and entire bottom half of face are bright red.

The glowing red flowers inside have pitch black centers. The sign beneath it reads:

POPPIES: ETERNAL SLEEP

Melli reaches out to the head and drags her bitten nails across its red chin. The red gets beneath her nails. White streaks of skin are exposed where the red was scraped off.

She continues to scratch the face until all of the red is gone, but the skin beneath becomes irritated, and red all over again.

She then drags her nails across her own face in one long motion.

Her nails are too short to break skin, but eight bright red lines run down her face.

She picks one poppy out of the head. Then she picks another, and another, and another. All of the poppies begin to look like fire within her hands, and she treats them as such.

She drops the flowers, and all of the poppies fall to her feet but one.

The petals look like little dying flames on the ground. She begins to cry hysterically. BLACKOUT.

The church is long and dark. From the entrance, Melli and the casket she stands next to look small and insignificant at the front of the church.

Closer up, almost everything is black including Melli’s dress, the lighting, and the empty church pews. Inside the casket, Melli’s wife lays dead with her grey hands at her sides. A white sheet covers her body, and a black scarf obscures her face.

There is no priest.

Poppy in hand, Melli looks down at her wife. Or rather, the covered body where her wife should be.

BEGIN FLASHBACK:

INT. MORGUE- DAY

A STRANGER’S hand gently closes Melli’s wife’s eyes as she lays on a sterile white sheet atop a hard bed.

Melli’s deep breathing from the flower shop scene can be heard.

END FLASHBACK.

INT. CHURCH- DAY

Melli tucks the poppy beneath the corner of the black scarf covering her wife’s head.

MELLI (Crying) Where did you go? Where did you go? Where did you go?

Silence.

MELLI (CONT’D) (Getting quieter each time) I’m not okay, I’m not okay, I’m not-

Melli falls to her knees.

MELLI (CONT’D) (Whisper) Okay.

Silence.

The green poppy stem peaks out from under the scarf. Melli kneels at the side of the casket. The church is empty.

Inaudible whispering begins. Melli attempts to cover her ears, but the sound fills her mind as the whispering becomes increasingly louder.

Melli walks over to one of the church pews leaving the casket open.

She sits down, the whispering stops, and the church pew creaks. Melli looks over to the casket.

MELLI (CONT’D)

Do you know where you are?

MELLI (CONT’D)

Do you know what was whispering?

MELLI (CONT’D) Was it you?

INT. CHURCH - DAY

MELLI (CONT’D)

The same thing happened in a dream. Maybe-

MELLI (CONT’D) it wasn’t a dream.

MELLI (CONT’D)

I don’t know where I was.

MELLI (CONT’D)

I think I’m becoming paranoid.

MELLI (CONT’D) Love?

MELLI (CONT’D)

I don’t know where everyone is.

The whispering starts again. Melli hits her hands against her ears.

MELLI (CONT’D) (Yelling)

Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?

Melli attempts to drown out the whispering with a scream, but everything only gets louder.

EXT. PORCH SWING - DAY

Crows caw on a white tree as Melli sits alone. Her long-sleeved black shirt flows onto her long black skirt which hangs down the swing and puddles on the ground.

She cries but does not cover her face. Instead, she wraps her arms around herself and slowly rocks. Back and forth, back and forth.

The tears stream down her face and slowly drip down her neck.

Her breath trembles, and she occasionally chokes on the air. She sounds like another crow.

The crows fly onto a new tree. Their wings are loud against the wind; the sky is still grey.

Melli holds herself tighter and rubs her shoulders as if she were cold.

The crows settle in another tree, and finally, still holding herself, she calms her breath to a steady slow inhale and exhale.

Mar Bradley

riverbed rise

Tomás got her name from her grandmother’s dream. Or it was from the nice man who helped her father reach the hospital when her mother gave birth, or it was because of her aunt’s dear dead friend. Anytime she’d tried to ascertain where her name might’ve come from—from anyone in her family— a different answer seemed to arise. Most often, the agreed upon truth was that she had arrived in the world, and the name had bestowed itself upon her, without warning or cohesive explanation. It was an adopted name of a doubtful apostle and an ancient gospel writer, an old Catholic name, one derived from Spanish scripture translation: Tomás, a name that meant twin.

Where her extended family was full of cousins and multiple siblings, Tomás was born the first and only child to her mother and father. She was born quiet, her mother would tell her, born with open eyes and refusing to scream or cry.

“Your father’s mother,” her mother insisted wryly for years, on the topic of the same grandmother that had dreamt her name, “wanted to take you down to the Rio Grande for baptism, said the pushing waters would wake you right up to yell.”

Her father denied this, with something of a grin, as if it was a larger joke, set up long before Tomás was even named, and her grandmother staunchly refused to comment on the matter. Tomás, despite her birth, was not a quiet child, as all would attest; she shrieked and chattered and was obsessed for several years with a variety of old movie monologues, reciting lines when she saw fit. There was always something a little odd about her, cataloged in report card notes and the testaments of her parents, friends’ parents, the cashier at the local grocer. She was always a little off kilter, smiled a little crooked, always seemed a step out of tune with the world around her. And though she lost her fervor for speaking in her teens, the oddness never faded. A gleam, a worry—a twin, alone without any other.

I formation

Tomás spent most of her young years in the garden with her grandmother, particularly during the weekends and summers when her parents were working and she had little else to do. Sometimes her grandmother would demand they both rise before dawn so that they’d beat the sun to the garden. Whenever Tomás tried to complain about the hours, her grandmother would shush her, insisting it was necessary to avoid the weight of the hotter Julys. But Tomás always suspected it was also a forced sort of bonding, just the two of them outdoors to watch as the sky turned pink in silence. Her grandmother had helped with the work initially, but as soon as she had deemed Tomás fully capable, she began to direct Tomás from her seat on the porch, speaking to her loudly about very little and everything else.

Tomás knew that garden better than she knew anything else—knew the smell of the dirt and how it always wedged up beneath her fingernails, knew the family of frogs that lived in the half-upturned brick by the stairs. Knew where the sweet potatoes would inevitably reappear, splitting the earth in the yard’s eastern corner to disrupt whatever else had been planted that season. This garden was where she grew best, nestled between the summer rains and the crape myrtle her father refused to have trimmed, as he claimed it would never return if cut.

One late summer month when Tomás was twelve, her grandmother woke up past noon, and they did not go out into the garden until the sun was heavy in the sky, taking on an almost hazy orange. That day, her sweat stung hotly on the nape of her neck, and the residual taste of lime from her recent lunch sat heavy on the back of her tongue. Her grandmother didn’t speak much once they were out in the garden, just watched the sky. No

directions were shouted out, and she didn’t even yell when Tomás stopped working and came to sit by her. Her eyes were focused far off, studying something Tomás searched for but couldn’t find. Instead, Tomás watched as a ladybug began to travel up her grandmother’s hand, the slow red dot skittering higher and higher, her grandmother unmoving all the while.

“Tomás…”

“Hm?”

The sentence wasn’t continued. A few yards over, Tomás heard a door open, then slam shut, a holler about the heat just barely audible. Her parents were at work, and the house felt too quiet, even from out on the back porch. She pushed back in her chair, tipping it carefully until her head knocked against the siding with a dull thud, toes barely keeping contact with the ground.

“I didn’t want your name to be Tomás. I dreamed it—” a small, shuddery shrug “—maybe. But I didn’t want it to be your name, at least your first. I always thought you’d be named Messiah.”

“Messiah?” Tomás didn’t say it sounded ridiculous, though her grandmother must’ve known she thought so from her tone. Still, she didn’t raise her arm to slap Tomás’s head. There was not even a reprimanding look thrown her way. The ladybug continued its path upwards, undisturbed.

“Yes. It was your grandfather’s middle name, an important one. He always...”

Her grandmother trailed off. Tomás hadn’t ever known her grandfather. She tilted forward until her feet pressed flat against the deck, and the wood groaned at the change in weight. Tomás didn’t prompt her grandmother to remember, just surveyed the pot of angelonia near her feet, still in full bloom. Really, she should move it off the porch soon so it would get more direct sun.

“It would’ve been a good name for you. Would’ve fit,” her grandmother then added after a stretch of silence.

“Really?”

Tomás let her head fall to the side. The ladybug had reached her grandmother’s face, and it crossed slowly over her cheek into the curve of her eye socket, slowing down just at the corner of her lashes. Her grandmother nodded slightly, then sighed, closing her eyes; at the movement of her eyelid, the ladybug finally took flight, fluttering out from the porch and towards a high horizon. A harsh beam of sun interrupted Tomás’ tracking of it, and she shielded her eyes with irritation. From next door, the sound of a lawnmower roared to life, and Tomás grimaced. That was enough for her.

“Well, you’ll have to tell me some other time,” she said. Then she stood, patted her grandmother’s hand, and returned inside to the solemn quiet.

II forward motion

For the first two years of high school, Tomás walked home from the bus stop with the same kind-of-friend, who lived about half a mile east of her. They never walked together in the morning—Tomás guessed that he carpooled with his older brother, who attended the same school—but they always ended up together in the afternoons, sometimes making small talk, sometimes in amicable silence. He was shorter than her by maybe an inch or two, and they both tended to wear the same pair of shoes, black Converses beaten to hell and stained with mud. He’d sewn a small patch onto the heel of his left sneaker, a pale denim star probably cut from old jeans. His name was Mitch. That, in total, was about all Tomás knew about him, despite the months and months they had walked home together every school day afternoon, careless beneath the always boiling sun.

Short Story Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Houston, TX

“Do you have plans for after senior year?”

Tomás tripped slightly over her feet. They were five minutes into their fifteen-minute walk, nearing the Shell gas station. She had been considering asking if he wanted to stop to pick up drinks; it was truly a hellish May day. Maybe a Gatorade, maybe an iced tea—sweet.

“Not really.” Maybe. Sort of. “Maybe go off to college. Maybe go to work, I’m not sure. It’d be nice to travel a bit, even just in state.” A moment. “Why?”

“Well, my brother’s leaving for college soon. Made me think about it. I just have short term plans.”

“What kind?”

They’d accidentally fallen into the same rhythm of step, right feet hitting the pavement, left ones moving forward in symphony.

“I want to go down farther south to near the border, work in a park or conservatory maybe. My brother and I used to go with our aunts down to Rio Gran’ on trips, camping or just day wandering. I always just liked the area.”

“Can’t wait to get out of Amarillo?”

“Shit, of course.”

They stopped at a corner, waiting for the light to change. A shiny sedan screeched by, making a hard turn to the right, and they both flinched back from the curb. The green Corolla turned half-way from the parking lot into the same lane and laid on the horn. Mitch pressed the crosswalk button, though they both knew it never worked.

“It’s funny, my grandmother always wanted to go down to the Rio Grande with me. Allegedly for a baptism to make me speak. I was a quiet baby.”

“Did she ever follow through with that threat?”

“Never had the right time. But maybe it’s a good idea.”

“A second baptism?”

She smiled a bit. The light turned, and Tomás set out first, Mitch matching her stride again without effort. They were now about two minutes from the gas station. Tomás didn’t think she’d have the courage to ask to go get drinks.

“No? I don’t know? I’m not all that sure. It just feels like the place to go, to honor her memory, figure something out.”

“It sounds like a good trip.” Thirty more feet. Around the next corner was the gas station. “Do you want to stop to get a snack at the Shell? My treat.” This was unfamiliar. She blinked at him. But not unwelcome.

“Sure. I just want an iced tea though, this heat is shit.”

“Sweet?”

“Yeah.”

They turned the corner, went in, and swiftly selected two sweet iced teas and a bag of Cheetos, bringing them to the register without discussion. Mitch paid with a twenty. His wallet seemed full. Cash and receipts. She wondered if he collected the receipts, eventually putting them in some sort of catalog or scrap book to mark the passage of time.

“And it’s also because my grandmother named me.” Mitch took his change, Tomás took the bag.

“I’ve wondered how you ended up Tomás.”

They left the store, and the corner where they usually split was in sight, marked by a bare signpost and wild sunflowers. Someone had stolen one of the street signs a little while back, and Tomás had taken the other not long after. It was stashed beneath her bed.

“It’s funny that way; I only found out in middle school that she didn’t want me to be named Tomás. She had a dream before I was born, and I was Tomás in it, but she didn’t want me named that!”

Mitch laughed at her played up outrage. Tomás kicked a stray pebble hard and watched it skitter into the grass.

“Well then what the hell did she want your name to be?” he asked.

“It was a little weird.”

They’d slowed down then, and Tomás didn’t really want to end the conversation.

Absently, she took her tea out of the bag and handed the rest to him, which he took with a funny expression.

“Well you can’t leave me hanging,” he said.

They stopped at the deserted signpost, marking the split from Melay to Jackson.

Dandelions had sprung up near the ever-present wild sunflowers, and Tomás had the incredible intense urge to pick one and disperse the seeds with a wish, then felt embarrassed for it.

“It was Messiah. We’re not even all that religious—it was something to do with a family name or another one of her dreams, I think. Strange, right?”

Mitch didn’t say anything. They stood together, just looking at the little patch of wilderness, until she felt his gaze shift to the side of her head. She didn’t meet his eyes, but she opened her mouth again. The air tasted heavy, ozone thick like an oncoming storm; it would rain soon. The sky would crack open to soak the sidewalk and make the children playing in the streets shriek. Make the plants hold up their bone-dry petals in prayer.

“Too strange?” Tomás asked.

“Nah.” A pause. “It’s just similar to earlier, with that weird connect. ‘Cause my name’s Mitch, you know? A ‘man in God’s orbit’? My mom always liked to remind me of that when I got rowdy about Sunday school, but I’d never put much stock in the whole meaning before now.”

She crouched and pulled up a dandelion, then stood to look at Mitch at last. There wasn’t anything really to say. Messiah and Mitch, Mitch and Messiah. A boy she’d never known. She caught her rising ‘before now?’ behind her teeth and swallowed it.

“Weird.” It was her judgment, and he shrugged, turning to continue down Jackson. “Goodbye Messiah,” he said, over his shoulder like an afterthought.

“Goodbye Mitch,” she replied.

Tomás walked home and slept the weekend away.

When she got off the bus the following Monday, Mitch didn’t come along to walk home; he wasn’t there at all, on the bus or at the stop. Two weeks later, when she built up the courage to ask his brother where he might’ve gone, he’d given her a grave look, eyes pink and exhausted.

“He went down to that damned river—” he told her, in the A-staircase by the library, where couples usually came to make out “—and took everything with him.”

III chrysalis

There was a conversation between Tomás and her father that occurred somewhere in between the morning and the night, on a day close to the end of her senior year. It happened in their kitchen, the back door open to let the slight breeze in. Through it could be seen the half-overgrown garden, gone wild since her grandmother’s death and Tomás’ teen years; it was spring at that point, and she could just smell the opening flowers. The applelike scent of the angelonia on the porch was distinct, seemingly an early bloomer this year. None of this was all that strange—her father had switched to working a later shift a while back, and they were both restless people where her mother slept soundly.

“Coffee?”

Her dad stood over the pot. Tomás was perched on a stool by the door, rocking slightly in an awkward fashion. She nodded. He had already begun the preparations for two people and poured the beans in, securing the top and checking the water before pressing start. A loud grinding echoed for a moment, then was silenced. Her father grimaced faintly and sighed, pulling out a chair to sit down.

“Always afraid I’ll wake your mom up with that one of these days, never want to find out how she’d kill me then.”

“We’ve got a good track record now. Hopefully that luck will go a little longer.”

“Oh, I hope so, I’ve only disrupted her sleep one time like this.” A moment. Tomás watched as the water began to boil through the machine’s clear plastic side. “Your mom and I were so hopeful that you might get her heavy-sleeper genes, but even

as a baby you didn’t sleep much. I’d take care of you when you cried at night, bring you onto the porch, to that rocking chair your grandfather made, and try to rock you to calmness.” He smiled fondly at the memory.

“Did you rock yourself to sleep too?”

“Of course. Your grandmother had moved in with us only a little before you were born, you know, because of your grandfather’s passing and to help with you. Too many times I’d wake up to her scolding me for sleeping out in the cold or rain with you in my arms. She was very particular about you as a baby.”

“She always wanted me close, that’s for sure.”

Her dad snorted in agreement, sinking down into his chair. Outside, an owl cried, and they both quieted for a minute, hoping to hear another call. There’d been screech owls in the area recently, according to the neighbors, but this was the first time Tomás had heard them so clearly.

“What did my grandmother dream about? That week before I was born?” she asked.

He didn’t answer for a moment. As it stretched, she thought he wouldn’t and was ready to change the topic to something lighter. Maybe the damnable heat again.

“She never told me.”

“Really?”

“No, she told your mother. It was a woman’s tale, that’s what she said to me, not something I was ever privy to. I know only what your mom has shared of it.”

“And what was that?”

Her father gnawed on his lip.

“That you would be named Tomás, and that you would be a lonely child until someone was found. It all sounded silly at the time. Then you were born silent but alive, and it felt like your grandmother was some kind of prophet.”

“Grandma… She once told me that she wanted me to be named Messiah. Why not that?” He sighed, rubbing at his face.

“Why ask this now, Tomás? Why now?”

The kitchen had become heady with the coffee smell, thick in a way that almost gave Tomás a headache. Jasmine blooming and brewing coffee and a faint whiff of lemon cleaner from wiping down the counters after dinner.

“I don’t know. I had a friend, I guess—no I was with my grandmother…” Tomás leaned back against the wall. Her father looked like his mother in this light, eerie and still. “I don’t know.”

The wind rustled in, and they held eye contact for a long moment.

“We wanted—we tried for another kid,” her father told her abruptly. “Your mother and I… We never told you, because it was a sore spot, but we wanted a second kid. Wanted for you to have a sibling because maybe, if you weren’t a twin, you could still be a companion. Not be so quiet and alone. But it never worked. We just… we just couldn’t make it happen.”

He looked away from her. Ashamed? Maybe, Tomás thought, this is where she cried in his arms, where she told him of Mitch and Messiah and the street sign under her bed. Of the angelonia and her last moments with her grandmother and her half-formed plans. Maybe that would comfort them both in some strange way. But she didn’t know where to start or end or what to say to either of her parents really, to assuage this new-old fear.

“I don’t know,” Tomás repeated, and she didn’t, really. “I want to run away. I want to find something. I want to sleep, Dad.” Quieter. Knowing he’ll know this, by blood, in the same way her grandmother had. “I want to sleep and I want to understand and I want to feel whole. I want to be whole so badly it aches.”

The coffee machine let out a beep to tell them it was ready. They said no more on the matter.

IV twin

An estrangement, that’s the word she decided on at some point, an estranged child. An estranged sibling, a never-known unknown. Tomás didn’t know why July 15th was the day she left, but it was. On that morning, she woke up and went out into the

garden before the sun broke over the horizon, and she sat on the porch’s top step until the sky was stained bright with light and color. Later on, her mother came out to check on her, and Tomás said goodbye to her with a tight hug, then went in to say goodbye to her father, who awoke to kiss her forehead gently. Then she packed a bag and left.

It took seven hours to drive from Amarillo to the border, and another hour of driving along the river to find a quiet place to stop. It was a beautiful summer day, sun golden above, and the riverbanks grew green and thick. She left her car on, and through the open door played a random radio station; a Spanish announcer picked up from some nearby station faded into an old salsa song she was vaguely familiar with. A steady breeze blew, tangling her hair, and Tomás stood on the banks of the Rio Grande and looked out to find something.

The river ran a dark blue-brown color, fast and muddy as it went by. The grass grew tall enough to brush her thighs, and it was littered with wildflowers, rich in bloom and smell. The wind kissed the nape of her neck. Normally, willows didn’t grow this far south, but on the bank stood the broken trunk of one, destroyed by what must have been a semi-recent storm. Across the river stood another willow, younger and just beginning to weep.

“A twin,” she said vaguely. Her ears rang and sang as she approached the stump. It might’ve made sense, might’ve matched or not; when she was younger, her whole family would do their best to spread wildflower seeds everywhere so that, no matter the over mowing of the neighborhood lawns, they’d always find beauty sprouting up from the streets. A twin, she thought the tree to be. An estranged twin, separated from the other by the force of the world.

The rough-soft bark scraped her palms. She lifted herself up and climbed into the hollow trunk, settling down at its base. Above, the sky seemed like a bright blue marble. Tomás. That was her name, and to be honest it was one she had always loved regardless of its implication. She liked the way it sounded coming out of other people’s mouths, she liked the lift of the ‘á’, liked the slight confusion it caused upon introduction. Tomás curled tight around herself, nestling further into the base of the tree.

Tomás: a twin, a prophecy, a promise, she guessed; something she was always meant to live up to or fulfill. One day, her roots will grow long and burrow across the river to meet her other, one day she will grow tall and strong and stand joined. Hand in hand: finally in a pair and understood.

“Yeah, kinda funny, ain’t it?” Her voice sounded rough and choked, as if she was on the verge of tears. Strained and thin in a way she’d heard in many others but never really from herself. A great wind passed, light with distant song, calling, quieting, speaking to her gently. And, eighteen long years after her silent birth, in the safety of her willow trunk home, Tomás burrowed her head in her hands and finally began to cry.

Cavewomen

Kate had given up. She had tried to avoid the emergency room, a place where everything was fundamentally disordered. But it was too late. Here she was, sweating in her dark bedroom, with such a heavy weight on her chest. She thought of stones blooming in her lungs, pebbles rattling in her breath, for which there was little room for anymore. She took the subway to the emergency room.

In the summers, the subway stations were humid and stuffy, but she still shivered as the trains rushed by, the hot air blowing in her face. The nonexistent ventilation did little to help her ailing lungs. One of these days she’d take a car again.

Every time she got on the subway, Kate would search the faces in it for some impalpable feature, something that could sew all of the holes in her pockets so she could keep whatever it is she’s lost. Subway people were a special kind of people. They looked so desolate: they all had lives above ground, places to go, but they were sitting here, rushing about underground tracks. Kate’s subway car was nearly empty in the wee hours of the morning, except for a middle-aged woman with thinning hair wearing a rumpled blouse and pantyhose that made her look older than she was. Her hair was teased up to appear more voluminous, and silver roots were just beginning to emerge from her dyed brown strands. The woman was texting on her cell phone in the inefficient way that old people texted, with one finger typing every letter. Who was she writing to at this hour? How did she become what she was then, sitting at the end of the subway car at three in the morning, writing a message? Kate discreetly watched the woman put her phone in her purse and lean back into her seat, looking through the window at the blur of the passing subway tunnels. She found herself wondering if the woman was having an affair, and then she got upset with herself that she couldn’t think of another reason the woman was in the subway at this hour. As she got up to leave, the woman looked at Kate briefly and her eyes flashed with something that looked like recognition, but it could have been a figment of her feverish daze.

The emergency department was swarming with desperate people. A man with his eyes closed held a bloodied towel to his palm. A baby screamed in his mother’s arms. The mother had stopped trying to console him fifteen minutes before. Kate managed to get a bed because she told the nurse that she had one-and-a-half lungs and she’d been hospitalized for pneumonia before.

The nurse told her she should have come in sooner. They put a tube under her nose and her chest felt less like a rusty car being crushed in a junkyard. They took an X-ray of her lungs and the doctor came in and showed her the scan. The insides had small, hazy white areas that looked like clouds or maybe stones like Kate had thought.

“You need surgery to drain the fluid in your lungs,” the doctor told her, gently. “Okay,” she whispered. What about the stones? Will they stay there?

“Do you have someone we can call?”

Kate was silent. The doctor was about to repeat the question when she said yes.

When Julia got the call, she was boiling water for pasta. She put the phone on speaker and salted the water. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Julia Michaelson?”

“Yes.”

“This is Kelly Richards calling from New York Presbyterian. Kate Brooks listed you as her emergency contact.”

Julia didn’t say anything. She put the lid on the pot. “Hello?”

“Sorry, yes. Is she okay?” This was the third time she had gotten the call.

“She has pneumonia, and she’s currently in surgery. She wanted you to know.”

Julia shut her eyes and thought about the color green, which was positioned opposite red on the color wheel. Kate had green eyes.

“Okay. Okay. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll…be there.” She hung up the phone and thought about the first time she saw Kate in the hospital—everything about her was bruised or unconscious or ripped or gone.

Julia bit her lip and stopped herself. She focused on finding her keys to drive to the hospital to see her ex-girlfriend and not crash her car. Did she seriously not have someone else she could call by now? She almost forgot to turn off the stove before she left.

When the anesthesiologist held the mask over her face and told Kate to count back from ten, she thought about caves instead. They had put an IV in her arm that was dripping saline— salt water—directly into her bloodstream, like caves dripping mineral water to form stalactites over thousands of years. Cave systems could extend thousands of miles, Kate had learned that somewhere. Her lungs were merely caverns: empty spaces full of air. The air traveled differently in the caves, whistling and screaming. She wanted to visit the cave north of her apartment; she hadn’t gone since before the crash. She couldn’t now, because the anesthesia worked faster than she expected.

Julia watched Kate sleep for a long time. It had been two years since she had last seen her, and she looked remarkably older, like time was a tangible thing that tugged at the skin under her eyes. A highway of wires and tubes crisscrossed her body, an interstate guiding her away from wherever she was trying to go. Things were so different this third time. The crash and that awful first call where that man called it an accident (when it wasn’t, it was a crash) were four years gone. Their relationship was four years gone, and yet she was sitting here.

The chair by Kate’s bed could recline, so Julia laid as far back as she could. She could hear the bustle and breath of a working hospital, the living part. Hospitals were a little microcosm, a watery blister of living and dying. She much preferred them at night, when the fluorescent lights were dimmed and all the visitors had left. There wasn’t a monotonous beeping sound from the machines like in the movies; vital signs monitors had evolved to be silent unless someone was actively dying. If she wanted to, she could watch the monitor, the graphs showing little mountains and valleys of the blood pumping through Kate. Julia could feel all the little lines and numbers and signs, like they were tunneling through her skin, chanting another language but meaning the same thing: she was alive.

The first time Kate could remain conscious for more than a few seconds, she saw Julia sitting next to her bed. She shouldn’t have been so surprised, but she was. There was a nebulous sort of pain in her side, ostensibly from the chest tube the surgeon said she would put in. She heard the hiss of machines and oxygen flowing into her lungs through the plastic mask over her nose and mouth.

“How do you feel?” Julia asked. She had noticed Kate was awake.

“Kind of bad, but that’s to be expected.” Kate gave her a small smile.

“Do you want me to ask the nurse for more pain medication?”

Juna Brothers Short Story Davis Senior High School Davis, CA

“No, I’m okay,” Kate was so sure. She looked down to examine the fresh laceration on her side. It was weird to think about. Someone cut a hole in her side and stuck a tube in her lung. There was a little bag hanging to the side of the bed attached to the tube from her chest. It had a brown liquid in it. Gross. Kate looked away. She decided to view it as a purification—ridding the body and mind of disease and destruction. It was a release.

“Did you know Margaret Clitherow was pressed to death?” she asked. Jesus, she was awful at starting conversations.

“Who?”

“She was this Roman Catholic woman who gave priests a place to hide, which was illegal at the time. So they arrested her. And she wouldn’t plead guilty so the guards paid four beggars to strip her naked and put a handkerchief over her eyes and lay on this sharp rock and they put the door—the door from her house— over her and put all these rocks on it until the weight of it all broke her back and she died.”

Julia looked at her for a while. “No, I didn’t know that,” she said quietly. “That’s horrible.”

“And two centuries later the pope decided that she had gone to heaven. And they made her a saint and a martyr.” Kate was looking out the window at the other buildings. “And…and that’s all I could think about when I was pinned under the car after the crash. I was thinking I can’t be a martyr.”

“I thought you said you weren’t religious. That was just your parents.”

“You don’t have to be a martyr for your religious beliefs. It’s just that you’re killed because of some belief that you have. So I would have been a martyr because I was driving to your house and I thought it was okay that we were lesbians. And I don’t think God was punishing me, I think the universe was. Because I almost died.”

“Kate, it was a drunk driver. It wasn’t because you’re a lesbian.”

“No,” Kate was tired. “You don’t get it. Margaret was crushed under her door. I was almost crushed under my car. And she was hiding priests, like I was hiding you. Hiding priests isn’t objectively wrong, but she was objectively killed because of it. Like it’s not necessarily wrong to be a lesbian, but I almost died because of it. And I want to stay living.”

Julia’s mouth opened a little but she didn’t say anything. Kate looked down at her hands. “And when the paramedics came and used the jaws of life—that’s the tool they use to cut people out of cars—to get me out, I just—I knew I couldn’t be a lesbian anymore. Like it was a warning.”

“You can’t just stop being a lesbian. It’s not something you can control.”

“I can stop dating women. I can marry a man. I can have a baby.”

“But…you made them call me,” Julia said. Her vigilant chest seized up to stop her from crying. “And if the universe didn’t want you to see me again, it would have given you other people who you can call to be with you when you’re in the hospital.”

“I didn’t want you to come so we could get back together, I wanted you to come so I could tell you this, so you would know.”

“Then why did you ask for me the last time you got sick?”

“I was going to tell you, and then I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” she sighed at her hands. “Because I was tired.” Julia left the room. She was so sick of Kate.

Julia didn’t come back the next day, or the day after that when Kate was discharged from the hospital. Kate had thought she would have, but she supposed it was better for her if Julia left for good. When she was discharged from the hospital, she bought some white chrysanthemums and put them in a vase on her kitchen table. The flowers were supposed to symbolize truth, but they were used in funerals as a symbol of death in some countries. Kate knew this, and she knew Julia did as well, even if she wasn’t coming back. It was a strange feeling to reckon with. She thought it best to distance herself from her ex-girlfriend,

who only came when bad things happened (times when Kate was close to death). Maybe then she would be able to live.

Kate went to bed alone, like she always did. She thought about the last time her mother told her good night, how it must have happened, yet she can’t remember anything about that last night. One night her mother was there, and the next she was gone, along with the family car.

Kate’s father had been very upset after that. He had told her that Kate’s mother left them to go to New York City to live with her secret boyfriend. Kate didn’t care if that was true or not. She kept her mother’s coat in a box in her closet, along with a picture of her wearing the coat.

Sometimes she wondered what her mother would have thought of Julia if she had met her. Kate didn’t even know what she thought about Julia. She wished Julia hadn’t left her grasping blindly at the air behind her. She knew she should have explained the whole martyr thing better; Julia didn’t get it. She should have mentioned that the word “martyr” comes from a Greek word meaning “witness.” Maybe then Julia would have understood, then she would have stayed.

Before she slipped into the void of sleep, Kate decided to visit the cave the next day. She would pay a lot of money to take an Uber and she would survive the ride.

“So we’re going to the Pottersville Caves?” The Uber driver looked like he was hoping Kate would say no.

“Yeah, I know it’s really far,” Kate said. Her phone was telling her it would take nearly four hours if they left now.

“No, no, it’s okay. I was just confirming. I don’t want to take the wrong person two hundred miles north, you know?” The man chuckled.

Kate laughed awkwardly and sat in the back seat. The car smelled strongly of air freshener. She felt sick. The man, whose name on the Uber app was Darren, looked about five years older than she was, with a picture of a grinning little girl sitting on the dashboard. Darren started driving and tried to make conversation.

“So what are you going to do at the caves?” he asked.

“I just want to walk around—” Kate could feel her heart beating in her face. “I’m so sorry, I have a hard time in cars. Can we just not talk?” Kate knew this was rude, but she really just needed to make it through four hours in this car without passing out.

“Oh sure. Whatever you want. Do you want music?” Darren did not seem upset.

“No, thank you,” Kate told him. She could only trust a driver if there were zero distractions, including music and talking. They drove the whole four hours in silence, just the hum of the air and the car and the GPS lady. Kate looked directly ahead and had to periodically force her body to relax because someone had told her once that the more relaxed a person is during a crash, the more likely it is that they’ll survive. She tried to distract herself by watching the scenery through the window, which was admittedly gorgeous—lush trees and rocky hills—but she kept noticing how quickly the trees and hills passed by (which made her think about the speed of the car and the force of the impact) and then she would get worried again. Her body had yet to forget the panic of the crash, the crunching of the windows and the brief moment of weightlessness before everything fell. She wished Julia was there in the car with her, like she had been that first time she left the hospital, holding Kate so tightly and whispering soothing words into her hair. But no matter how much Kate wished Julia was there and that she hadn’t gotten so upset after they talked in the hospital, Julia was gone and Kate had started to doubt she would ever return. As such, Kate spent the majority of the drive with her eyes screwed shut and taking short, shallow breaths with her mouth to avoid the sickly scent of the air freshener. Darren probably thought she was either sleeping weirdly or just a weird woman, but she was doing what she had to do to make it out of that car with no new wounds.

“Ma’am?” Darren asked quietly. Kate opened her eyes. The car was parked.

“Yes, are we here?” Kate looked around. It certainly looked

that way. The parking lot was gravel and surrounded by so many trees. Darren nodded.

“Thank you so much,” Kate smiled out of relief. “I’m so sorry about how I get in cars. I just…have a really hard time with them.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve had much worse customers than you.”

Darren was so nice, Kate thought. She hoped that girl on his dashboard knew how nice Darren was. She smiled and thanked him again, then collected her backpack and left the car, finally breathing the fresh air through her nose. Darren drove off back to the city, the car kicking up a little dust as he left. Kate pulled out her phone and rated him five stars. Then she went to the visitor’s center and bought admission for herself for a solo tour of the caves, which required her to sign two liability waivers and certify that she knew proper caving techniques, and that she would return from the caves by 5 p.m., or rescue services would be called. She was given a helmet with a headlamp and neon orange bodysuit to wear over her hiking clothes, which would make her more visible in case she had to be rescued. The man giving her the equipment was very serious.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he told Kate. “If you can barely squeeze yourself in one way, you’re definitely not squeezing out the other way. Small people like you always think they can fit places they can’t.”

Kate nodded and put the equipment on and thanked the man. She followed a path through a labyrinth of green trees and humid air before arriving at the mouth of the cave, marked only by a weathered sign. It was quaint, if caves can be quaint, with mosses growing on it. She rubbed the rock at the entrance and closed her eyes. A long time ago, before the crash, before Julia, she had visited this cave. Kate did not like to dwell on things, but that’s what she spent most of her time doing anyway, as she entered this cave for the second time. It was much colder inside, probably because of the many feet of rock insulating it. Turning on her headlamp and venturing deeper, she walked on a slight downward slope. The walls turned a little this way and that, but there was no branching, no choices to make. Everything just beckoned her further. Kate did not worry about getting lost. She could see a shrinking dot of light behind her from the mouth of the cave. That would take her back. The walls sounded wet; there was water dripping somewhere. She walked until the tunnels started thinning out and her arms began to brush the rock at her sides.

She turned off her headlamp and sighed, listening to the deafening echo of her breath. The only light was that little star from the entrance, but even that could have been her imagination at this point. She laid on the cave floor, studded with all kinds of oddly-shaped stones jutting into her spine. The ground was damp and housed little puddles in its crevices. She wished Julia was there so she could talk to her, but the cave walls were so wet that maybe they could hold her words for a little while.

“When I was younger, I read this folktale about a king who had three daughters and they all had to tell him how much they loved him,” Kate’s voice was ricocheting off the walls. “The first two daughters tell him everything he wants to hear: that they love him more than their kingdom and all the jewels that exist. Stupid stuff. And then the third daughter says she loves him like salt. And the king has her taken to the forest and killed,” She stopped and swallowed. “And I realized that I love you like salt. Like salt-of-theearth, salt-in-the-wound, healing. Like healing. Like preservation.” She caught her breath and felt the air rushing around her in that little cave made of so many rocks. Above her, pebbles rumbled.

Lauren Buck

Photography Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH The Love We Give: 1 of 5 35mm film, silver gelatin print 2022

Marcus Bui

Photography Bard High School Early College New York, NY Quiet Arise Digital photography 2022

Clementina Cardana

Design Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

Luce Cotton fabric, thread, hook and eyes, zipper, metal wire, and battery powered lights 2022

Disha Catt

CHRYSANTHEMUMS

RANI

(The stage is completely dark, except for a spotlight, where there is a yellow classroom chair. Upstage, a window is very dimly lit. Enter RANI, a 16-year-old Indian girl with no Indian accent, sitting in the chair.)

Everything always starts with a boy or a kiss. In all the stories, in all the movies, the girl has the most angelic kiss known to any human...and experiences the fateful, earth-shattering crash of the crush. Exiled to a fruitless garden, we are left, dry and naked, our thoughts melting off our flesh. Because of a love. A boy. A friend. This story, starts with both the boy and the earth-shattering crash of a kiss...

(The tables are pushed together. On top of the tables sits a 5th grade RANI and ULYANA. YOUNG ULYANA, is braiding the hair of YOUNG RANI, who has a faint Indian accent. YOUNG ULYANA is eating a chocolate bar. They start laughing about something.)

RANI

... and ends with a friendship forever changed.

YOUNG RANI

What was your mother doing?

YOUNG ULYANA

Well, she was in the bathroom and she pulled out these little cotton tubes meant to go up your...you know...

YOUNG RANI

I really don’t know.

YOUNG ULYANA

Yes, you do! I don’t want to say the word. It’s gross.

YOUNG RANI

Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so you’re just going to have to say it.

YOUNG ULYANA

The vagina.

What’s that?

It’s a hole up your butt!

It’s not.

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

From now on, we’re going to bleed for five days straight every single month!

YOUNG RANI

Are we going to die?

YOUNG ULYANA

My mom said we wouldn’t if we drank a lot of water and ate spinach.

YOUNG RANI

Ugh, I’d rather die.

Play or Script

Juanita High School Kirkland, WA

It’s perfect.

You’re...perfect.

(YOUNG ULYANA ties the end of the braid.)

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA (very self consciously)

YOUNG RANI (pointing at the chocolate on YOUNG ULYANA’s cheek)

You have something on your cheek.

RANI (at the young friends)

She did have something on her cheek. I knew because my eyes constantly tracked her face as if it were a sun.

(YOUNG RANI lifts her finger to rub at the chocolate smear on YOUNG ULYANA’s face. It is very innocent, but also shy. Afraid.)

RANI

Her skin soft. My touch aiml essly rubbed the remnants of chocolate from her skin--I could feel the lights shift.

(The lights shift slightly.)

RANI (towards the audience)

My friend was beautiful. She was loving. She cared for me, and I, I--I lo--I miss her.

(YOUNG ULYANA stares at YOUNG RANI.)

Is the fall going to shatter me?

No.

Sorry—

I’m in love with Colin Moskowitz.

What?

RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI (jerks her hand away)

YOUNG ULYANA (abruptly, turning away from YOUNG RANI)

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

Colin. In Ms. Gemma’s 5th grade class. I think I’m in love with him.

YOUNG RANI

How?

I have a crush on him.

YOUNG ULYANA (whispers in YOUNG RANI’s ear)

(YOUNG ULYANA EXITS. The lights on the tables dim. YOUNG RANI gets off the table and walks to the center of the stage.)

YOUNG RANI

Colin Moskowitz?

59 YOUNG ULYANA

Same.

RANI (back in light)

Ulyana Kalashnik was my best friend. She was my only friend.

(RANI walks upstage and the stage lights up.)

RANI

I present to you, esteemed audience, Ms. Walker’s 3rd Grade Lunch!

(A swarm of kids enter the stage, all with lunch pails in their hands. They unlock the tables and spread them out, eating food from their lunchboxes. YOUNG RANI sits alone at a far table. YOUNG ULYANA sits at a packed table close by, with no lunch. From her lunchbox, YOUNG RANI eats a roti with a spicy curry. GIRL #1, GIRL #2, and GIRL #3 walk past YOUNG RANI. RANI walks back to the yellow chair.)

GIRL #1

Oh my goodness, what is that smell?

Ugh, it smells like turd!

It’s that Mexican girl!

GIRL #2 (animatedly waving her hands)

GIRL #3 (turning to YOUNG RANI)

GIRL #1

I heard she doesn’t speak a word of English.

GIRL #3

Does she speak Spanish?

Fluent Spanish.

GIRL #2

(The girls leave. YOUNG ULYANA looks at YOUNG RANI and walks to her table.)

YOUNG ULYANA (sitting down opposite YOUNG RANI)

So. You speak fluent Spanish? That’s pretty cool.

YOUNG RANI (in a thick Indian accent)

I’m Indian.

Oh. So, do you speak fluent Indian?

No.

Oh.

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

You don’t need to sit here. I know my food smells.

YOUNG ULYANA

It smells good. Can I have a bite? My dad forgot to pack me lunch.

(YOUNG RANI rips a piece of the roti, dips it in the curry and hands it to YOUNG ULYANA.)

Delicious!

Do you not usually eat?

YOUNG ULYANA (eating the roti)

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

I do! I swear I do, it’s just that my dad is constantly working and my mom’s sick, so they forget sometimes.

YOUNG RANI

I can pack extra if you want.

I wouldn’t want to bother you.

You wouldn’t. My mom loves to cook.

She’s really good.

I’ll tell her that.

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

So, what do you speak if you don’t speak Indian?

YOUNG RANI

I speak English.

You have an accent.

No, you have an accent.

Not where I’m from.

Where are you from?

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

Andhra Pradesh. And by the way? I speak Telugu.

(A spotlight glows on RANI. The kids unlock the tables and push them back together.

YOUNG RANI and YOUNG ALICE exit together.)

RANI

Life is a series of vignettes. Certain memories come to light, plastered to church paneled, stained glass, soldered together with metal intent. These sparse moments of blistered motivation push us into the spotlight, forcing us to move forward, never looking back to confront choices we never thought we’d make.

(The stage is bathed in warm tones: red, orange, yellow.)

RANI(CONT.)

But what happens if you step out of the light?

(RANI stands up from her chair (and the spotlight) and walks to the pushed together tables. YOUNG RANI enters from the opposite side of the stage. She has a black eye.)

YOUNG RANI

What just happened?

You tell me.

I didn’t do anything.

YOUNG RANI

RANI

Saying that means you totally did something.

YOUNG RANI

I didn’t, I swear I didn’t...he just...came at me.

RANI

Why?

YOUNG RANI

I don’t understand. I don’t understand anymore.

(RANI touches YOUNG RANI’s black eye. YOUNG RANI winces.)

RANI

It doesn’t look that bad. Trust me. It’ll fade away in a few weeks and you’ll barely remember what it looked like.

YOUNG RANI

What about us? Will we fade away?

RANI

Of course not. We’ll stick around for a bit longer than that.

YOUNG RANI

No. Once the bruise mends, will the wounds in my relationship with her heal?

RANI

In your not-so-distant future, you’ll feel the ghost of her hand as she holds another’s, but you’ll look down and find that you brushed up against some stranger’s dress. At first, you’ll pretend you don’t know what her skin feels like, or how her voice bellows when she cries, and then you won’t need to pretend because you really don’t know anymore. So no, your wounds won’t heal because that requires stitches, and when two hands won’t work together to thread a needle, you end up with shredded skin, broken hearts, and stray needles waiting to be stepped on.

YOUNG RANI

And loneliness.

That’s the best part isn’t it.

I wouldn’t know.

You’ll know. You will know.

RANI

YOUNG RANI

RANI

(YOUNG RANI leaves the stage. RANI stares after her. YOUNG ULYANA walks onstage with SANJANA. SANJANA is carrying a stool, while YOUNG ULYANA is carrying a plate with a sandwich. They set the stool on the side of the table, and YOUNG ULYANA sits on it, eating her sandwich.)

RANI

Do you know what makes loneliness fond for the heart?

YOUNG ULYANA

Memories?

Yes.

SANJANA

62 RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

Well, I do have some memories before my mom was sick. She would garden a lot; back then, our yard was filled with flowers. She studied horticulture in college.

SANJANA

That’s a big word.

YOUNG ULYANA

I know. My mom made me learn how to spell it as soon as I could. H-O-R-T-I-C-U-L-T-U-R-E. See? I spell it whenever I feel scared.

SANJANA

Good job! Have you ever thought of becoming a professional speller when you grow up?

YOUNG ULYANA

No way. I want to become a botanist, just like my mom would have before she...couldn’t. When I grow up, I’ll fill my house with her purple chrysanthemums, and I’ll make sure they never come close to dying.

(YOUNG RANI runs onto the stage. She does not have a black eye. She looks distraught.)

YOUNG RANI

Ma! Ma!

Yes, kanna

SANJANA

YOUNG RANI

Yanna’s dad is here. He says they need to leave.

YOUNG ULYANA

Why? I just got here.

I don’t know, but he doesn’t look good.

YOUNG RANI

SANJANA

Rani kanna, why don’t you pack up Ulyana’s backpack. (to YOUNG ULYANA) Let’s go talk to your Dad, okay?

(YOUNG ULYANA and SANJANA exit one way, while YOUNG RANI exits the other.)

RANI

When I went downstairs to give Ulyana her backpack, she was gone. Instead, I found Amma sitting by the door, her eyes closed.

(The lights become dark, and RANI crosses to the center of the stage. A spotlight shines on her.)

RANI(CONT.)

I saw her three weeks later, at the funeral. Colin Moskowitz was there. Me, Ulyana, and Colin Moskowitz, except, I wasn’t really there at all. When Ulyana cried, she took Colin’s hand; when she recited her eulogy, she reached for him. The body on the bier was not the ghost, I was. The casket contained stony death, its face resembling a mocking image of Ulyana’s slumbering mother. Ulyana buried her face in the crook of Colin’s neck. I felt useless.

(YOUNG RANI enters onstage with a backpack. She wears black, and holds a small bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums in one hand. YOUNG ULYANA walks in from the opposite side and notices YOUNG RANI.)

YOUNG RANI

Sorry I didn’t mean to intrude—

No, you didn’t.

YOUNG ULYANA

(Beat.)

YOUNG RANI

I have your backpack. From three weeks ago.

YOUNG ULYANA

You can have it.

It’s your stuff.

Well, I don’t want it. I want no part of it.

Ulyanna—

Don’t say you’re sorry. Please.

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

I won’t. (Pause.)

YOUNG RANI

Tell me what I can do.

Bring back my mother.

I can’t.

Then bring back my father.

He’s sitting outside.

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

No, he’s with my mom. They’re both drowning in dirt, but only my father’s gasping for air. He’s a ghost.

YOUNG RANI

I don’t understand.

Good.

I want to understand.

Understanding is a curse.

YOUNG ULYANA

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

(YOUNG RANI walks to YOUNG ULYANA and holds out the chrysanthemums.)

YOUNG RANI

Let me break it.

It’s unbreakable.

That’s stupid; this is stupid—

YOUNG ULYANA (ignores the flowers)

YOUNG RANI

YOUNG ULYANA

Are you calling my mom’s death stupid?

NO! Of course not, I’m saying that this distance is stupid--

(YOUNG ULYANA rushes to YOUNG RANI and kisses her, innocently, a mere peck. YOUNG RANI is dazed and confused, immediately breaking off the kiss. YOUNG COLIN, a 5th grade boy, enters the stage.)

YOUNG RANI(CONT.)

Yana-

Stop kissing her you Curry-muncher!

YOUNG COLIN

(YOUNG COLIN rushes to YOUNG RANI and punches her in the eye. YOUNG RANI yelps in pain, dropping the flowers and rushing offstage. YOUNG ULYANA walks to the dropped flowers and stares at them. YOUNG COLIN walks around her and puts his hand on her shoulder.)

YOUNG COLIN(CONT.)

Are you okay? Did that Curry hurt you?

(YOUNG ULYANNA ignores YOUNG COLIN, kneeling down to pick up the dropped chrysanthemums. Lights fade to black. They exit.)

RANI

You’re pulling too hard, Ma!

SANJANA

I wouldn’t have to be pulling this hard if you just brushed your hair!

RANI

I do! I’m not a slob!

(The lights switch on. Infront of the tables, RANI sits on a stool with SANJANA brushing her hair.)

SANJANA

Your hair would not have this many knots if you brushed it.

RANI

I brush my hair Amma!

SANJANA

It doesn’t look like it. I’ll get the noonae [oil].

RANI

NO, Ma please—

Quiet.

SANJANA

(SANJANA turns around to grab a bottle of coconut oil from the table. She squirts some in her palm, and starts massaging RANI’s head. RANI closes her eyes.)

Ma?

Yes kanna?

RANI

SANJANA

YOUNG RANI

Can I get on birth control?

Are you having sex?

No, Ma—

You’re not allowed to have sex.

RANI

(SANJANA stops massaging RANI’s scalp.)

SANJANA

RANI

SANJANA

(SANJANA starts massaging RANI’s scalp again.)

Until when?

Never.

Ma!

RANI

SANJANA

RANI

SANJANA

Then why do you want to get birth control? You’re 16! I didn’t even get my first period until I was 16!

RANI

I’ve done some research, and well, you know how irregular my period is, and I’ve heard—

SANJANA

--you’ve heard?

RANI

I’ve read that birth control helps to regulate menstrual cycles. Besides, all the girls at school are on it and they say it helps.

SANJANA

Does Yana say it helps?

(SANJANA starts braiding RANI’s hair.)

RANI

You know we stopped being friends after her mom’s funeral.

SANJANA

You’re both older now. Whatever it is that happened, you should make up.

RANI

It’s not happening Ma.

SANJANA

Make it happen. She desperately needed a friend back then, kanna. She needed you. She didn’t have many people to trust.

RANI

Well trust me, she has more than enough people now. She’s popular.

SANJANA

Popularity is irrelevant.

Popularity is intimidating.

RANI

SANJANA

It might be intimidating for her as well. Being surrounded by many people doesn’t necessarily mean you are safe or cared for or loved. God, I remember her face the day her mother died and her father picked her up. It was as if her face scrunched up into a tangle of thorns; she was pale all over. You stick by her Rani, even if things are not the same. Don’t think about it. Just go march up to her and talk to her.

Ma, we are talking about the possibility of birth control, not the absurd decision of confronting a friend after six years of estrangement and a field of social norms separating us.

SANJANA

Rani, we can talk to your doctor about the birth control. But kanna, people tend to push you away when truly, they need you the most. Being a friend, being a lover, means traversing that field of tumbleweeds and forgetme-nots that separate us from our person on the other side. Social norms be damned!

(SANJANA finishes tying RANI’s braid and EXITS the stage. An ensemble of highschoolers walk on and push the tables off-stage. A set of lockers appear upstage. RANI crosses downstage to the side, as ULYANA enters with COLIN next to the lockers. All the highschoolers stare at them while RANI looks everywhere except them. ULYANA and COLIN share a kiss and talk next to the lockers. ENTER OLDER GIRL #1, #2, and #3 downstage on the opposite side of RANI.)

OLDER GIRL #1

Oh my god. Are Colin Moskowitz and Ulyana Kalashnik kissing in front of the entire school?

OLDER GIRL #2

Ugh, it’s so gross. I don’t want any of that in front of my eyes.

OLDER GIRL #3

I heard that she and Colin had sex at Jaden’s party last night.

OLDER GIRL #2

She’s such a slut.

Yeah, but she’s pretty.

OLDER GIRL #1

OLDER GIRL #3

God, everyone hates her. Should we ask her to join our homecoming group?

OLDER GIRL #1

Um, yes.

Hey girl.

Hey, what’s up?

(The OLDER GIRLS walk up to ULYANA as COLIN exits. RANI watches nervously.)

OLDER GIRL #1

ULYANA

OLDER GIRL #3

Your hair is so pretty today! Did you do something to it?

ULYANA

Thank you but no, I didn’t—

Well, we wanted to ask you if…

OLDER GIRL #1

(Their conversation lulls out. RANI turns around and looks at them nervously.)

Fuck it.

RANI

(RANI walks to ULYANA and the OLDER GIRLS, stopping abruptly, but defiantly.)

RANI

RANI (CONT.)

Why did you stop talking to me in the 5th grade. (pause.)

RANI (CONT.)

You kissed me, your boyfriend punched me, and then you stopped talking to me. Why?

OTHER GIRL #3

This seems like a private conversation.

(The OTHER GIRLS exit the stage, whispering to each other.)

ULYANA

Rani—hi—I—I—we haven’t talked in a while.

RANI

Yeah. Why?

ULYANA

I, um. People change, I changed. It didn’t feel right to continue our friendship.

RANI

We were 11. You don’t change that much in a span of three weeks.

ULYANA

My mom died Rani. She died!

You kissed me.

RANI

ULYANA

And you made everything about you. I know you were mad when I brought Colin to the funeral. You had no right. You were radiating jealousy and judgement, and it was chaffing! There was no place for your selfinvolvement at my mom’s funeral, Rani.

RANI

Yes, I was jealous, and I’m sorry. But I loved you. I loved you more than I thought I could at that age, and you kissed me, crashing into my world. And then you ran away, and I was left all alone in a gaping crater the shape of your body, realizing I was bruised all over because you used me as a pillow to cushion your fall.

ULYANA

You’re being dramatic.

I lost a friend; I lost a love! I miss her.

RANI

(A bang erupts from off-stage. The mangled scream of a student can be heard. The lights shake on and off, bathing the stage in a dark red.)

ULYANA

What’s happening?

(OLDER GIRL #1 runs onstage, looks behind her, and gets shot in the heart, crumpling to the ground. Everything is rather silent except for her startled grunt.)

We need to hide.

Where?

RANI

ULYANA

(RANI looks around until she glances at ULYANA’s locker.)

The locker. Open your locker!

RANI

What are we going to do?

(ULYANA opens her locker and squeezes into the back. RANI tries to fit but she can’t.)

ULYANA

(RANI frantically tries to open the other lockers nearby.)

They aren’t opening.

RANI

ULYANA

(trying to get out of the locker)

There’s a bathroom down the hall we could hide in—

RANI

No, stay. I’m sure there’s another open locker.

ULYANA

You won’t make it, I’ll come with you—

I’ll make it. Don’t leave.

Promise?

Promise.

RANI

ULYANA

RANI

(The two girls look at each other, and all pretenses of estrangement are gone. They share a hug, and then the sound of a gunshot wrenches them apart. RANI silently closes the locker door and runs across the stage. The stage is silent, but ULYANA’s deep breathing can be heard. A shot can be heard. And then another.)

ULYANA

(ULYANA keeps spelling as more shots are heard. A boy runs onstage and crumples when a bullet hits him. The audience can still hear ULYANA’s spelling. Another girl runs onstage and gets shot. Three bodies are on the floor. Silence is heard for many seconds. Then, the lockers move off, and the stage transforms into a road. A traffic light is seen above, and traffic noises can be heard. A crowd of highschoolers wearing orange clothes and holding anti-gun violence signs, march down the road. A car is heard whooshing by and honking support. On one side of the stage is RANI. She wears white, not orange. On the other is ULYANA who holds COLIN’s hand.)

RANI (to the audience)

Tell me. How will the suffocating children escape their prisons of dirt?

ULYANA

They’ll claw their way out, alone and broke. Thoughts and prayers do nothing. It’s a joke.

COLIN

Thoughts and prayers are a way of showing support. It’s a nice gesture. (ULYANA wrenches her hand from his grasp.)

H-O-R-T-I-C-U-L-T-U-R-E-H-O-R-T-I-C-U-L-T-U-R-E-H-O-R-T-I-C…

ULYANA

Nice gestures don’t get you anywhere. What are their parents going to do now that their children have been snatched away? Are thoughts and prayers alleviating their pain? Showing support would mean changing gun legislation, increasing security at schools, creating accessibility to mental health facilities; reputable actions instead of mindless droning. It feels useless. I feel useless.

COLIN

We can’t do any of that. But my thoughts and prayer go out to their families—

ULYANA

Fuck that—just—fuck it!!

Calm down—

COLIN

ULYANA

Don’t tell me to calm down! People died, Colin! Friends died. They. Are. Dead. I can’t be calm right now.

(RANDOM STUDENT walks up to them. Her outfit is orange, festive, and trendy.)

RANDOM STUDENT

Do you guys want to pose for a picture? You guys are so cute together, and a photo would help us gain a lot of traction.

COLIN

Sure. (to ULYANA) Smile!

Are you fucking joking me?

No?

ULYANA

COLIN AND RANDOM STUDENT (confused)

ULYANA

We are at a march to honor those that died during the school shooting, and you want me to smile? Someone pried open our doors and killed our classmates. And now, you want me to smile

COLIN

It’s just a photo Ulyana. It’s not that deep—

ULYANA

But it is! While we were walking here, I saw a group of kids playing jenga on the sidewalk. Jenga! People are making Tik Toks, like, “oh look, I’m such an upstart citizen; I’m at a march and I’m having such a great time, didly, didly.” This march feels like an aesthetic. It feels like I’m a doll, propped for the perfect photo. God, I don’t know how to act anymore. Do we have a right to smile? Do we have a right to play games on the sidewalk like we’re children, like we don’t have a grotesque world splayed out in front of us? I don’t know what to wear anymore. I wake up in the morning and I want to throw on a dress and then I think, well, they won’t get to wear clothes anymore, or push snooze on their alarm clocks, or lick raw cake batter. So how can I not think, Colin, that it doesn’t get deeper than this? That our friends, kids, are buried deep within this earth, and that, hell, why am I not with them?

COLIN (Wrapping his arms around ULYANA)

We survived, Ulyana. It’s over, so we should be happy. Celebrate!

ULYANA (jumping away from COLIN)

Fuck you. This isn’t the end of some zombie apocalypse. This isn’t something to celebrate; surviving is no reason to celebrate. Hell, we shouldn’t need to have to celebrate staying alive. This never should have happened, and nothing short of time travel can change that.

COLIN (reaching for ULYANA)

Yana—

ULYANA

Just get away from me Colin. Get the hell away from me!

(ULYANA rushes into the center and looks to both sides of the crowd. No one is paying attention. She starts to sob and wipes at her eyes. The crowd starts to part, the students crowding onto the sidewalks, emphatically chanting ‘END GUN VIOLENCE.’ ULYANA is alone on the road. RANI is hidden in the crowd. The crowd is bathed in red and green lights from the stop sign.)

RANI

As tides of red and green light misted their bones, Moses parted the crowded sea into indifference and resolve. The bones of the students splintered from their calves, their flesh peeling from their eye sockets, melting into biers that, in some other reality, where they were the apple of the bullet’s eye, they would have filled.

(ULYANA turns to look at RANI. RANI’s eyes widen.)

ULYANA

Rani?

(RANI vanishes into the crowd, exiting the stage. ULYANA still peers into the crowd for her.)

ULYANA

Rani? Rani!

(ULYANA can’t spot RANI, so she exits to find you. The crowd exits on each side of the stage, and the traffic lights and road disappear. A single gravestone lies in the center of the stage. RANI kneels on her knees in front of it in prayer, closing her eyes. Enter ULYANA, in a graduation cap and gown. She holds a bouquet of yellow and purple chrysanthemums, and a tiffin box.)

ULYANA

Rani.

RANI (jumps up from the grave) Hi.

ULYANA

You’re here.

Where else would I be?

Anywhere but here.

RANI

ULYANA

RANI

You know me Ulyana. I keep things unexpected. You can never anticipate anything with me.

ULYANA (giggles)

Of course.

RANI

Remember the choir concert at the old folks’ home?

ULYANA

Of course, I remember the choir concert! You decided to de-pants yourself to distract the kids from noticing the grandpa going into cardiac arrest.

RANI

See? That’s just another example of me being quick on my feet. I’m just that sharp-witted.

You mean impulsive.

Never.

RANI

ULYANA

That day when you confronted me was impulsive. (pause.)

RANI

We never finished our conversation that day, did we?

ULYANA

No, we didn’t.

(pause.)

RANI

Congratulations on graduating. I see you’ve finally escaped the hellscape that is high school.

ULYANA

Thanks. Your mom made me a whole feast to celebrate. (holding up the tiffin box)

It’s filled with roti and aloo gobi.

Delicious.

RANI

(ULYANA smiles.)

RANI (CONT.)

Do you see her often?

ULYANA

Every Saturday since the shooting. I’ve never missed a day in the first year.

RANI

Thank you for keeping my Amma company. I’m so sorry for the burden.

ULYANA

It’s nothing really. I walk to your house at 10 in the morning sharp. It’s a ritual. The sun is already taunting me from the sky, and yet I always feel so pale and cold. Your mother welcomes me with a cup of hot chai and we sit on your bed. We sort through boxes of your clothing every day; we still haven’t got through half of it. Sanjana pulls out an old cardigan of yours and she cries, and I weep alongside her. Mostly, we just talk about you, about what colleges you would apply to, what new dishes Sanjana could have made for you, about the first party we could have gone to together. I mostly think about the wasted time; I want to kiss you one more time, no, I want to give you a real kiss, a kiss that tastes of dreams that could have changed the world, families that could have birthed dynasties, volcanos that constantly erupt with love. I want the simple things, like getting in trouble for texting in you in class, skipping school on a sunny day to get slushies at the gas station, having Indian food with your mother on a Sunday night. I want birthdays and Saturdays and picnic and long evenings where the stars will never leave, because the night is at our beck and call. And now everything is unfulfilled, and I stand at your grave. The breeze bites me, its welcoming hand carrying your familiar and yet so distant scent. And I hate that I see you everywhere and that I rehearse conversations with you. I hate that I fill in the blanks of our interrupted conversation, and I despise that it was you who confronted me about our estrangement. I love your courage and your impulsiveness, and I recall all your moments as if they were mine. I ran straight here after graduation. The whole ordeal felt hollow and meaningless. The principal called up my name, “Ulyana Kalashnik,” in this big imploding voice that felt like a bomb, and I trudged up those fucking steps. They keep four seats empty at every assembly. One for Simone Blacke. One for Kyle Gervais. One for Olivia Truly. And one for you. But I could see you sitting there, just as you are now, and for just a single second, I convinced myself it was real.

(ULYANA walks closer to RANI)

I won’t ever leave you.

Do you promise?

RANI

ULYANA

Do you mean it this time?

I do. I really do.

(ULYANA hands the bouquet of flowers to RANI. They stare at each other and share a hug. Their last hug. ULYANA exits, and RANI, with one more glance to the audience, exits the other way.)

73 RANI I do.

ULYANA

RANI

Ramona Chae

Visual Arts Skyline High School

Dreamland Ink on paper 2021

Salt Lake City, UT

David Chen

Self

Red. Self. Life. Family. Ritual. Memory. Tradition. Culture.

I begin life with my self in a restaurant. I’ve struggled for a long time on what to call it. I used to call it Chinese, but it’s not quite Chinese. It’s not like the 皮蛋瘦肉粥1 my father makes on Sunday mornings—our one day off from the restaurant. But it’s not quite American either, at least not enough for Kari with a K, a former cashier. She always ran next door to G. B. Schneider’s Local Bar and Grill for a half-pound hamburger and crinkle-cut fries after her shift, despite my mother always offering to cook her dinner. Recently, I’ve conceded to calling it Chinese Takeout. I decided it’s not worth stressing over. Chinese Takeout gets the point across, and people know what I’m talking about—General Tso’s chicken, cream cheese wontons, and the like.

I’ve filled almost every role in this restaurant—the son of 老板2 and 老板娘, 3 油锅, 4 打包,5 and as of getting my driver’s license about eight months ago, 外卖 6 The little boy who had to climb onto the counter in order to take customers’ orders and could barely string together a sentence of understandable English turned into a teenager who ran the 前台7 all by himself. The only role I haven’t filled yet is 厨师, 8 and that’s only because I’m afraid I’d burn the restaurant down if it got too busy. I have to admit, I’m pretty clumsy.

Despite my clumsiness, however, I’ve actually never had a serious injury. It was mainly just minor burns here and there from rogue drops of flying oil. I always had the liberty of going slow and being careful. I’ve always had time. My parents, on the other hand, are decorated with them.

Discolored patches of skin that didn’t quite heal right and current blisters covered in a thick coating of clear, Walgreens-brand burn ointment crawl up their forearms. Their hands are too often covered in scrapes and bruises, and calluses are an everpresent feature. The tempo of the restaurant doesn’t allow them to slow down. Orders after orders after orders ensure the four woks always twisted and flipped and turned, churning out garlic chicken and broccoli with beef at a consistent rate. The rest of the restaurant work—cleaning, washing, tallying sales at the end of the day, prepping the green peppers and yellow jumbo onions and all the other produce that came on Mondays and Thursdays in Sysco trucks as tall as the restaurant itself—occupies the rest of their time.

When I was little, about nine or ten, we used to play Jenga as a family on Saturday nights. I was quite good at it, if I do say so myself. Something about the blocks just made sense. On other nights, if my parents had more energy, we played Angry Birds in real life. We have a claw machine at the restaurant, and I staked a claim on all the plushies that customers forgot to take home. I had them all—Red, Chuck, and Bomb—and even a few pigs, but Chuck was always my favorite. We would take turns trying to knock the pigs off the pillows I had propped them up on with the birds. Younger me had a blast, but as I grew up, Jenga and Angry Birds soon disappeared. I busied myself with schoolwork so that I could be a good son to my parents, and my parents worked late every day so that they could be good parents to me. We moved to a bigger house, and in our efforts to be good enough for each other, we didn’t notice that the space between us grew bigger too.

To be honest, my parents and I don’t really do anything together anymore. They have their 12-hour workdays at the restaurant where, by the end, all sights, sounds, and smells become one blurry sensation; I have a never-ending list of college applications

and essays and readings to complete. When my mother calls every other day, we talk for five minutes before I say I have lots of work to do and she says that’s okay, I just wanted to hear your voice. We don’t have time. Not for each other, not for ourselves. We don’t have enough time. I wonder, when did this happen?

I’m scared. I’m scared that one day, I won’t have time to say 再见 9

My mother’s always been a strong woman. She’s loud, not afraid to get into conflicts, and always says what’s on her mind. Even so, she always lets my father make the big household decisions. We used to celebrate Chinese New Year at the restaurant with all the restaurant employees, closing an hour early to clean for the day just past and cook for the night to come. My sister and brother-in-law trudged through the snow to get to the back door, carrying goodies they’d brought with them from the Twin Cities in large cardboard boxes. I always looked forward to seeing them. We puzzled together Tables #9 and #10—the two closest to the kitchen—and brought out an array of stir-fried noodles and saucy rice cakes and steamed clam soup and all the other things my parents thought were too Chinese to put on the menu. The festivities began with a clink of their Heinekens, the restaurant’s ceiling light flickering and illuminating the red paper lanterns that hung between the ceiling boards. My father sipped his beer and smacked his lips, gutsy and boisterous, and leaned back. His arm settled neatly on the back of my mother’s chair. Next to him, my mother sewed ripped clothes and peeled shrimp for the table, knees tucked together and back straight. Her delicate fingers wove around the shells to separate them from the meat. Skin from soul. Spirit from body. The restaurant always got rowdy after that—clicking beer bottles, drunken conversations, wide-mouthed laughter. My mother never drank.

I never knew which parent I was like more. The restaurant cooks would always grab my arm, staining my shirt with even more grease, and comment about the muscle I was gaining. That I was getting taller. Bigger. Stronger, like my father. I didn’t know if that was what I wanted. But what about my mother? I wanted that too. I wanted to be both taller and shorter, bigger and smaller, stronger and weaker, masculine and feminine, father and mother.

Orange. Discovery. Exploration. Perfection.

I would say I knew pretty young, but I guess that wouldn’t be the full story. In kindergarten, before my parents sent me to China to live with my aunt and uncle for two years, there was my best friend, Bella. My mother thought she was gorgeous—pale smooth skin like porcelain, wavy blonde hair that shimmered in the sunlight at the kindergarten drop off. Do you like her? You should marry her, she joked. My father preached about grandchildren and passing on the surname and family line, about the perfect family with a loving wife, two kids, and a big house with a big backyard. The true American Dream. Even then, I felt something was wrong. What if I wanted to marry someone blond?

As an act of pre-teenage rebellion, I snuck my first phone into my bed past bedtime every single night and browsed the internet to my heart’s fullest desire. I sought comfort and connection in Minecraft Youtubers and DIY Challenge videos, attempting to fill the space between me and my parents. I felt part of something better— worlds where you could be anything you wanted. I was instantly hooked. Even so, I may have stumbled upon some things that weren’t quite appropriate for a ten-year-old. In my defense, I didn’t know what I was doing.

Creative Nonfiction Phillips Exeter Academy Exeter, NH

I tapped the screen to enter incognito mode for the first time. Frantic typing. The weighted blanket, draped over my entire body, was hot and heavy on every stretch of my skin. The dull streetlamps illuminated a small fraction of the outdoors—a dusting of snow against sky amid the blizzard. Minnesota winters were always cold, but at that moment, I wished I could leap out my window. I learned lots of words on those nights. Gay. Straight. Lesbian. Bisexual. Homosexual and homophobic. Of course, words on a webpage never relate to experiences and real life. The only gay person I knew in life was Matt, another former cashier at the restaurant, and all I knew was I didn’t want to be talked about like he was—in hushed voices, as if he was a “bad person.” What if “bad things” happened to “bad people” like Matt? What if “bad things” happened to “bad people” like me?

So even though I’m not religious, I prayed. Every single night, I hoped and prayed that I was straight. In school, I looked down whenever I talked to my male friends, refusing to look them in the eye. I feared that if I looked, I would be trapped. I faced the metal grids of the lockers and pretended to look in between the empty spaces. Then I saw him, and the façade I had built up all came crashing down. When I realized I couldn’t make myself straight, I cried. But I wasn’t one to give up. I tried to make myself bisexual. I thought about what my parents saw, what others saw. What made girls so attractive?

I just wanted to give my father grandkids. I just wanted to pass on the family line. I just wanted to make my father happy. But I knew I couldn’t. It was either family, or family, to love who I wanted, or to love my parents—I could pick one. I couldn’t decide. I knew I could never decide, so I reinforced the barrier between me and my parents. I prayed that when the time to make the decision came, it would hurt less if I didn’t care.

Yellow. Sun. Radiance. Joy. Music. Rhythm. Beauty. New ideas.

Two days after my middle school graduation, Eugene Lee Yang uploaded his coming out video, Eugene Lee Yang - I’m Gay. The beauty was in the joy, the pure radiance on his face. In each beat and pulse of the music. In the billowing of his floor-length sleeves, in the embroidery on silk. In the sweat and tears. I watched it through again, then again, then allowed myself to cry. The video became the soundtrack of that summer before freshman year, and even now, I watch it again every so often, allowing myself to feel the rhythm of the music just the way Eugene did.

The only summer reading I did for Exeter10 was that summer. I sat by the drink cooler at the restaurant and flipped through Richard Blanco’s The Prince of Los Cocuyos , accompanied by the soundtrack of Eugene’s video through my earbuds and dreading the ten summer math problems for that day I had yet to finish. The air conditioner whirled and blew cold, cold air, still needing to be repaired by my father the next day, and customers filing through the open door brought a wave of sweltering heat. In The Prince of Los Cocuyos , Blanco writes, “Do I dare disturb the universe? Dare to kiss him, feel his stubble against my palm, the fine hairs of his chest through my fingers?” Back then, Exeter meant endless possibilities, a utopia where every Exonian was brave and unabashedly them. To me, it symbolized a place where I could be, and would be, brave enough. Do I truly dare disturb the universe?

Green. Envy. Nature. Growth. History. Breath.

One week within my arrival on Exeter’s campus, I had to make a decision—be brave enough, or not. This would determine which me, which self, lived at Exter for the next four years. I wanted to be brave enough, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Maybe the big red block letters that Exeter was written in all over campus were a warning. I promised myself—give it a month. If you feel good after a month, be brave. Be brave enough.

Two weeks in, the school administration required all proctors on campus to lead an “identity exercise” in the dorm. The idea was simple, and well-intended—they taped notecards with identities like “race” or “socioeconomic class” onto the beige walls, and passed out a stack of post-its for us to respond with how we identified. Once everyone had written out their responses, we would split up into small groups to discuss. While waiting for the proctors to gather students around the dorm, Ewald, I scrolled through Instagram in one of the comfy cushioned armchairs in the common room. The big red block letters that spelled out Ewald screamed in warning. To the side, two proctors talked in quiet whispers.

“Should we even have this one?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I just- I just think it’s probably not for the best.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just change it.”

As the residents of Ewald Hall congregated, one of the proctors stood up on the chair to introduce the exercise, then added, “We also had one about sexuality, but the moment someone writes ‘gay,’ we all know it’s going downhill, so we’re just going to change that to favorite musician. Ok?”

A laugh erupted in Ewald’s common room, followed by nods, and the already tight space, crammed with 36 boys, closed in even tighter. I strained to pull air through my nostrils and into my lungs, and felt the heaviness sink into my chest. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I don’t want to talk about Taylor Swift. It just would have been nice if we talked about sexuality too. It would have been nice if Exeter was different from home, if Exeter didn’t speak of Matt like “bad people” just like they did back home, if Exeter wouldn’t speak of me just like they would back home. But alas, finding the safe, sacred temple that Exeter symbolized razed, I took from the wreckage and reinforced the self I decided on within the first week. In the end, I chose not to be brave enough. I envied that others chose to be brave enough, as if they were purposely parading around me the sole thing I did not dare to have. I just knew then I’d never be brave enough.

Blue.

Serenity. Peace. Acceptance. Being.

For the next two years, I stuck to my choice. I tried to hide, and I worried that I wasn’t hiding it well enough. I worried and stressed about every speculation about my sexuality, fearing my voice was too high, my facial features too soft, my body too curvy, my self too feminine. When I told someone for the first time, I couldn’t even say the words, and to be honest, I still find it hard. At the end of my sophomore year, I took the first step and told a senior a few weeks before graduation. I struggled with that decision for months, and the entire process was brutal, to say the least. To give some context, I told him via a TikTok song. Definitely not my proudest moment. I told myself: he was an Ewaldian, and he meant a lot to me. I trusted him. I wanted him to know. Right? I knew that wasn’t true. At least, it wasn’t the final reason that convinced me, the one I kept to only myself. He’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. No way he can mess up your life, even if he tries. Right?

With his acceptance and support, I felt braver. I felt brave enough to tell more people. To the people who knew, I talked about it more than I’ve ever talked about it. I felt a little bit freer, and I was a little bit more at peace with my self—the suppressed self that emerged. I began going through my days more as me. Still, there was now a separation of selves that was hard to manage—there was me, and there was me. I tried even harder to swallow my higher voice and constantly examined my every movement to make sure I could continue hiding around people who didn’t know. Even then, I was still confused. I wanted to be masculine too, at

least in a way that I could define for myself—partially because I didn’t want to fall into the stereotype, but largely because it’s true. In the fight to find one part of my self, I pushed away the other. I wanted to be masculine and feminine, mother and father.

Mostly, though, things were okay. I was okay. I will be okay. The wall was not gone, but the blood-red bricks started to crumble. Purple. Self. Spirit.

It hasn’t gotten easier. I’ve vowed no more incognito modes, but I also haven’t told anyone directly since last year. Do I have to? I stopped focusing on my actions and just was. Do people notice? I still glance in the mirror and deepen my voice. Where do I stand now—scared or brave enough, masculine or feminine, in or out, me or me? Dare I let it all go? Dare I just exist? Dare I be?

Will I have to say goodbye? To my parents, to my friends, to Exeter, to my self? Will I ever have to separate spirit from body? Do I have to make a choice? Should I hope and pray like I once did?

Family. Discovery. Radiance. Growth. Serenity. Spirit. Self.

For now, I’ll keep trying to sew together the gap my parents and I built, so that one day, I’ll be by their side to say 再见 For now, I’ll keep getting to know my self. For now, I’ll keep rewatching Eugene’s video and rereading The Prince of Los Cocuyos, and keep reminding myself to dare disturb the universe. For now, I can grow and change, we can grow and change, Exeter can grow and change. For now, I am okay.

translations and notes 1. century egg congee with pork 2. boss 3. literally, lady boss; a female boss or the boss’ wife 4. literally, fryer; fryer operator 5. literally, packing; food packer 6. literally, delivery; delivery driver 7. front desk 8. cook 9. goodbye 10. Exeter refers to Phillips Exeter Academy, the name of the boarding school I attend.

Renee Chen

The Mannequin Chapter One

I wasn’t there when they shot Luke.

I only learned about it later on, from one of the officers who had been there, at the park with him.

They told me that he hadn’t fought back. He had a Glock with him at the time, the pistol dangling by the side of his waist in his duty belt, but he didn’t fire it, didn’t even take it out. He just stood there, staring at the gunman and the little girl in a yellow dress beside him, when the gunman screamed and aimed at him.

They told me that the first thing he said when he woke up in the hospital, half conscious and still dozing on and off, was whether the girl was safe now.

That evening, he died in the hospital room.

When Luke and I were young, we used to ride our bikes down to a bookstore at the alley behind our school. It was a tiny shop, with walls painted in juniper green and a red-framed glass door, a farce of tackling colors and nonconformity.

In summer afternoons when we were out of school, we would sit cross-legged behind its only shelf of comic books, whispering among ourselves as we flipped through panels of flying superheroes and their combats with villains. It was a perfect spot that we had found a few Christmas breaks before, hidden behind the zigzags of Shakespeare and Dickens, where the eye could not possibly reach from the counter.

The July we turned nine years old, we got caught by one of the customers. He was holding Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs and studying the book we were reading for a moment when he spoke up. “Steve Rogers would be disappointed,” he told us, lightly. We looked up from the book at him.

The man must have been in his early twenties.

He was draped in an army jacket above his gray button down, his cheekbones knobby and jutting out in a way that made his skin look tight. He glanced over at the old bookstore owner who was dusting the glass door. Our eyes traced him as he walked over to pay for the novel. The storekeeper gave him a pat on the shoulder.

“Patrolling?” He asked.

“Nah, day off,” he said, smiling, his dimples and freckles blending into one.

The storekeeper let out a laugh. The officer gave him a salute, and walked out of the shop.

Behind the shelf of books, our refuge, Luke and I sat still on the floor, the comic book we were reading on the ground. It was open to a page with Captain America giving Hitler a cuff on the face. Above him was a text box that read JUSTICE.

Luke and I were born on the same date on a Wednesday in July. Upon birth, he was welcomed into a family in Tribeca, one of the most well-off neighborhoods in lower Manhattan, as an only child. My mother, on the other hand, gave birth to me when she already had five children, all of whom were placed in foster care upon the death of my father.

Most of my childhood was spent with Luke, whose father had kindly taken me in the winter I turned three years old. At our graduation ceremony at the police academy, a friend had come up to Luke and me and studied our respective faces. Luke’s hat was dotted with pieces of confetti, one resting still on his elvish ear. She stared at me for a moment.

“I’ve always wondered about this,” she finally told us, her hands held up as if in surrender. “Don’t take me rude, but I’m just wondering—are the two of you brothers?”

Luke and I exchanged a glance.

“I was adopted by his family,” I explained to her, Luke’s elbow on my shoulder. It was the first time I had told anyone the truth about my relationship with him, or rather, my nonrelationship with him.

“Oh,” she said, lips parted.

“But yes,” Luke told her, “Noah and I are brothers.”

As children, Luke and I would read J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan aloud, lying on our stomachs on his bed as we set up our own play based on the novel. All afternoon, he would be Captain Hook and I would be Peter Pan, the two of us chasing each other around our room with paper swords. When the book had turned ragged and we had, more or less, memorized all the pages in it, we drew our own maps of Neverland and hung them on the wall of our room.

“Never grow up,” he would say, holding his hand out as a fist. And I would fist bump him back, our hands midair as the sun set behind us, the lights of the city caught on the window. ***

For a long time, the only coins Luke and I recognized were dimes.

It was what we carried down each sidewalk and alley, a few dimes each in our denim pockets, the price of a subway token. With those coins, the entire city was within our grasp; Central Park, Bronx Zoo, Shea Stadium, and Kennedy Airport, all accessible to us.

In the summer, we spent afternoons at Rockaway Beach like dead skin. We carved microcosms out of castles and mazes out of sand, cut ourselves with empty beer cans and Coca Cola bottle caps. We taught each other how to swim, how to stay afloat when you splay your limbs out under overcast skies, squirt water at a target meters away, hold your breath for thirty seconds, forty, fifty, until the world fractured into infinitesimal dots and all you could hear was the heartbeat throbbing within your throat. Softly, like rain pattering down.

Chapter Two

My memories of my father are vague, fractured pieces that cannot be pieced together to form a more holistic image. The truth is, all I remember about him is that his voice was resonant, deep and vibratory, like slow guitar songs that have been forgotten by people too soon and left to fade on cassette tapes. My older brother Jack was the one who gave me most of my information about him, his stories a pool of biased realities and fabrications.

Jack was three years older than me, his hair long and mustardy and parted in the middle. He had angular, long limbs, but his face was one that could be found on a cereal box. Blue eyes; black, fragile eyelashes; bubblegum lips.

“You know, he could fold three paper planes in a minute,” Jack told me one night at the park in front of his house, him shirtless and me in a salmon-pink turtleneck. He was folding the cover of a Times magazine into a plane as I watched the paper slink up and down in his calloused palms. “He was all hairy too. His chest and everything,” he said. “Oh—and muscular.” I closed my eyes to picture my father’s visceral attractiveness and giant weight.

Novel

Taipei Fuhsing Private School Taipei City, Taiwan

***

“Here.” Jack handed me the paper plane. He was drunk and just a little stoned, like he was almost every day. I took the paper and slid it into my breast pocket. I enjoyed basking in his presence, listening to the deluge of his musings and masochistic jokes, even when he rolled joints against my face.

“So?” Jack asked, reaching for his sleeveless white shirt on the handrail behind us. “What do you think about the foster family?”

I watched him hop onto the vinyl belt swing in front of us, then swing himself back and forth, lightly, swaying a little from left to right. I sat down on the other swing and leaned back. “It’s nice, I guess,” I said. He rose, then slinked down again beside me.

“Hey, you know what mannequins are?”

“Mannequins?” I lifted myself up in the swing, lurching ahead.

“Yeah, the figurines—in ‘The After Hours?’ Twilight Zone ?”

“Oh,” I said. I remember watching the episode’s rerun with Jack, perching before the television on the kitchen counter at his house. On the show, mannequins take turns every month to live among the humans, but some of them would forget that they were mannequins, like the protagonist Marsha White. “What about it?”

“I was wondering what it would be like if it’s true,” Jack said. “I mean—if it is, I wouldn’t be able to tell, would I? Who’s human and who’s not around us.”

“You might be one yourself,” I huffed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was thinking about that too.”

The air was silent for a moment, and darkness shrouded the two of us, chugging us down like cheap booze.

In 1963, Eddie Lee Mays became the last person subjected to capital punishment in New York. Mays had been electrocuted for first-degree murder, the broadcast said in the living room. Luke sat still by my side. I never told him that my father had died the same way Mays did.

At night, after Luke fell asleep, I would sneak out of our bedroom into the living room, and sit cross-legged on the rug to read the stack of newspapers on the dining table. It was a habit, an inclination I didn’t even know I had picked up, reading all the articles I could find on my father, attacks that called him sadistic. Perhaps I was only trying to find one reporter who didn’t attack him, a story in the papers that would recognize him as a father of five children, a man who could fold three paper planes in a single minute.

Yet, the more I read, the more I was assured of the fact that he was maleficent, like the comic characters whom Captain America would always defeat. He was one of the villains who were half the size of the superhero, frail and frightened of their shields and suits, the blows and cuffs they used to kill people, all in the name of justice. ***

In the sixth grade, I once found a photo of my father in the newspapers, him in a leopard-spotted jacket. He had dense eyebrows, black hair in curls down his head, part of it combed nicely to the right side of his oblong-shaped face. For nights, after I had cut it out and stored it between my pages of the Peter Pan novel, I would stare at his smile, try to fathom its rigidness.

But what really stuck with me was the birthmark on his brow, a port wine stain, like Gorbachev had, but much tinier, shaped like a splintered heart, the two halves a little away from each other. When I realized that my own birthmark, an ovate adjacent to my left eye, looked more or less like half a heart, I grew my bangs long.

Chapter Three

The year Luke and I turned eleven, we stopped playing Peter Pan.

A Black man had raped a woman at a bar in Manhattan, just a few streets from where we were living. The day after the man was imprisoned, junior high students at our school cornered

his son in the boy’s bathroom. The boy walked out with gory halos around his nose and eye. He was one of our classmates.

“Don’t you think it’s actually weird?” I told Luke one evening, lying on the floor by my bed with Barrie’s book on my chest.

“Yeah?” He asked, looking down from the swiveling chair.

“Wendy was twelve or thirteen,” I said. “And Peter Pan was asking her to be his mom.”

He laughed at that. He rose from the chair and sat down next to me, his arms folded. “And Captain Hook too,” I went on, my hands splayed out. “Why was he so obsessed with trying to murder Peter? He’s just a kid, and Hook’s an adult! And then there’re the mermaids. They sing songs to seduce passersby and then drown their victims. Why would anyone ever write that into a children’s book?”

Luke shrugged, and shot my arm with a rubber band. I threw the book at him. “Maybe Barrie was just trying to be realistic,” he said and turned towards the wall behind us, crayon drawings of flying whales, maps of Neverland showered in glints of violet and sapphire glitter.

“You know,” he said, standing up from the floor, “in the novel, there are no nights in Neverland. No stars, ever. Because it’s always daytime there.”

The two of us were silent for a moment. We looked out of the window in front of us. Flashing billboards lit up the skyscrapers that enveloped the city, their blinking neon lights shadowed by the darkness above. I sat still on the rug, listening to the screeching of car tires on the streets beneath me. ***

For my thirteenth birthday gift, Jack gave me a pack of MDMA. We were talking to each other in front of my house at the time, my hand clutching the door knob.

“Enjoy,” he had said, tucking his hand into the pocket of his jeans, taking out three more packs of the drug. “If you want more, just tell me.”

“What is this?” I asked him, sniffing the bag. I shook it next to my ear, and the things within collided crisply.

“Rip it open,” he told me, and crossed his arms.

I tore the white package open. Inside were tablets in different colors. “Medicine?” I asked him.

“Better,” he assured me, leaning close and whispering into my ear. “Ecstasy.”

“It’s—drugs?”

“That’s right,” he said, nodding. I frowned. “I don’t want drugs.”

“Oh,” he said, “don’t be afraid of it. It’s like candy. Only that the effects are stronger. You know, the happiness.”

“I don’t want drugs,” I told him again, handing the bag back to him. He scoffed.

“You know,” he said, looking up at the door behind me again, “this place has made you sissy.”

“Whatever you say, Jack,” I told him. “I’m not going to do it.” He snatched the bag back. “Are you Peter Pan?” He asked me. “What?” I was still sniffing my hands.

“I said, are you Peter Pan?” He told me, staring me in the eye. His overgrown hair was dotted with dandruff. “Because you never grow up!”

The first time Luke and I saw the Unisphere, the circle of water foundations from around the globe, we were at the World’s Fair in New York at the center of a dozen exhibits, Sinclair Oil’s Dinoland, the Hall of Science, and the Panorama of the city’s five boroughs. We had screamed our way down the Swiss sky ride, the two of us trying to throw each other’s shoes off the cable car. We’d raced to the New York State Pavilion and exhibits where models based on society’s visions for the future were showcased.

“If we have Picturephones in the future,” Luke declared, scowling at the loudhailer-shaped devices that had flashing screens showing people’s faces, “I’ll give you all my superballs.”

***

“If we have undersea resorts in the future, I’ll give you all of my comic books,” I swore.

“If we can build an international space station,” he said, “I’ll give you my entire Hot Wheels collection.”

At the Wonder World musical, we watched a man wearing a rocket outfit fly up into the air until he was many feet above the Unisphere. From below, he looked tiny, a dot against the sapphire sky. Unlike birds, he had no wings; instead two pipe-like propellers protruded from his suit.

“What do you think?” I asked Luke, the two of us gazing up at the sky.

“I don’t know,” he said, after a pause. “When they told me that a man was going to fly up into the air, I was thinking about Iron Man.”

I laughed. He didn’t.

“I thought it was going to be a superhero show,” he went on, “but it’s just a man who looks as scared and human as the rest of us on the ground.”

I looked up at the man in the jetpack again, and the two of us stayed silent for a long time.

When I told Jack that I was going to be a police officer after high school, he laughed aloud. It was Christmas Eve, and the two of us were sitting at a bar near midnight. The lights around us cast off iridescent hums and reminded me of a kaleidoscope. He gulped down the beer in front of him. I took another sip of my glass of water.

“Why though?” He asked me after the busboy had left. The wooden chandelier lights above us shook as the door of the restaurant opened and three teenagers hurried in. The snow outside was growing into a storm.

“I just thought that it would be nice,” I tried to explain, not having the words for it. “You know the feeling when you just know, so definitely and more than ever, that it’s the right thing and the thing you want to do? Just that it’s in your guts?”

He coughed. I didn’t know whether it was from the coldness of the air or just that he had choked while I was talking.

“It’s for justice,” I continued. “To defend it, and validate its existence.” My grip tightened around the cup in my hands, the coolness of the glass emanating onto my skin. “To tell the world that it’s not just some abstruse ideal lying between our minds and dreams. But something that doesn’t have to collide with reality. Something that can be true.”

When we left the bar, he closed the door behind us, and we stepped out into the snow, the weight of the white drapes dragging the sky down, like clothes on a clothesline.

I tucked my hands into the pockets of my overcoat, and he patted my shoulder. “There’s no justice, Noah,” he told me. The two of us stood still next to each other.

His face darkened under the shadow of the night. “And I doubt there’ll ever be.”

***

Emelia Ciccolini

Visual Arts

clear

2021

Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI Sisters Copper pipes welded together with found objects and sewn onto

plastic

Nia Simone Clark

Visual Arts George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Baltimore,

Makeshift Coronation Compressed and vine charcoal 2021

Paula Contreras

Photography Alliance William & Carol Ouchi High School Los Angeles, CA Breakfast Digital photography 2022

Aruna Das

Visiting My Ghosts

“A defining moment that is neither beginning nor end, partition continues to influence how the peoples and states of postcolonial South Asia envisage their past, present, and future.”

a project that I had initially found idiotic and which had left me with no ideas. At my teacher’s recommendation, I considered what had resonated most with me about the epic: the importance of storytelling to the Ancient Greeks, and the Underworld scene, where Odysseus goes to meet his dead.

PROLOGUE

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — it was August 15, 1947. An eight-year-old boy wandered away from the festivities to the window. Two cars were speeding down the same narrow Calcutta1 street in opposite directions. It was clear one of them would have to give way. The cars stopped. Car doors opened and slammed shut. The two men squared off. And then embraced. For today, South Asia, in bondage for two hundred years, was finally free and trivial things like road rage could be ignored.

But all was not well. For it was out of blood that the new republics of Pakistan and India had been formed, the subcontinent fractured in two based on religion. The callous sweep of the Radcliffe Line, drawn by a British civil servant who had never bothered to see the territory he was dividing, ensured that tomorrow, people would find their kitchens were in one country and their bedrooms in another.

The boy’s Muslim neighbors had left Calcutta for East Bengal a few months ago in anticipation of the Partition of India, and refugees, both Muslim and Hindu, had flooded in from East Bengal, the state that would now be known as East Pakistan. Hastily erected tents covered the major public squares and housed these new emigrants.

Firecrackers interrupted the boy’s musings. They were everywhere; they lit up the sky and demanded attention, ripping the sky apart like bullets. BANG. BANG. BANG.

Odysseus is privileged to meet his dead, to reunite with friends and family members who had died because of events relating to the Trojan War. But, even in the magical Greek world, death is final and robs you of things taken for granted during life. Heartbreakingly, Odysseus is unable to embrace Anticlea, his deceased mother. Despite this, Odysseus learns a lot from his ghosts; they pass on their stories to him. Anticlea teaches her son to consider the suffering of others. She expresses sympathy for her daughter-in-law, telling her son that Penelope’s life is “an endless hardship like your own” (11.209). Finally, she instructs him to inform Penelope, his wife, of all that he has learned. This moment emphasizes the power of the oral tradition: humans can learn from the experiences of those before them when the stories are kept alive.

I realized that the Trojan War was a cultural trauma for Homer’s Ancient Greeks and, through The Odyssey, we see how it touched the lives of everyone in the Mediterranean — even people, like Telemachus and Pisistratus, who were too young to remember the war itself. And Homer and the Greeks, recognizing that, made a concerted effort to face the war and to learn from it. So, suddenly, it was easy for me to figure out modernday parallels to The Odyssey because my family — really, everyone from the Indian subcontinent — has their own trauma: the 1947 Partition of India.

Colonial India won independence from the British in August 1947. At the same time, it was divided by religion into two separate countries: India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim). The decision to form two nations instead of one is largely seen as the result of divisions amongst India’s elite. The Radcliffe Line, which served as the official boundary between the two countries, was drawn up by British lawyers who had no experience in the field and were given no time to conduct any surveys. The sloppy partition forced at least ten million to find new homes and the mass migrations led to violence which, in turn, led to the deaths of an estimated one million people. My ancestors were impacted in a variety of ways and degrees. Some of them were uprooted from their homes, others had to give up ancestral properties, and others, while not directly affected, had to live in the turbulent and often violent environment of India in 1947 and the following decades. The states of Bengal, where my family is all from, and Punjab were particularly hard hit as they were each split into two along Hindu and Muslim lines by Partition. Many were forced to migrate — my maternal grandparents met as a result of that migration.

Three times I rushed towards her, desperate to hold her, three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away like a shadow, dissolving like a dream, and each time the grief cut to the heart, sharper, yes, … My noble mother answered me at once:

“My son, … you must long for the daylight. Go, quickly." Remember all these things so one day you can tell them to your wife. (The Odyssey, 11.246-256) ***

Lying on my bed, I fiddled with my mom’s phone, running my finger along the cracks on her screen and the scotch tape she’d used to cover them up. My tenth-grade English teacher had instructed us to find modern-day parallels to The Odyssey,

But the sheer brutality of that event means that those who witnessed Partition often did not talk about it. And so those stories, from which we could learn so much, are lost.

All of my great-grandparents, who were adults when Partition happened, are now deceased — though I knew some of them, I was then too young to think of asking them about Partition. My grandparents were alive during Partition but they were children and remember only fragments. They were only told fragments. Still, they preserve the stories of their parents and their parent’s parents.

That’s why I was lying on my bed with my mother’s phone (my mother’s phone because she has a special plan that makes calling abroad affordable and my bed because my grandmother can make even short stories very long), about to call my dida, or my maternal grandmother. 2 I found myself uncharacteristically

Creative Nonfiction Hunter College High School New York, NY

***

— Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University, and recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

***

1. Calcutta, now Kolkata, is a city in West Bengal, India. 2. While all South Asians are affected to some degree by Partition, my maternal family was much more affected than my paternal family because they had to emigrate.

nervous. “Hello,” came her voice, tinny over the phone. For the first time ever I said, “Could you tell me about Partition?” There was a silence. Then she began to speak.

“Gangs of killers set whole villages aflame, hacking to death men and children and the aged while carrying off young women to be raped. Some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed partition’s brutalities were worse: pregnant women had their breasts cut off and babies hacked out of their bellies; infants were found literally roasted on spits.”

— Nisid Hajari, author of Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition and winner of the 2016 Colby Award

A month before the surrender of Nazi Germany in WWII, Monika and Prabhat welcomed their first child into the world. Now that their daughter was born, they began making preparations to leave Calcutta, West Bengal. Prabhat, who worked as a statistician for the British Raj, had accepted a post in East Bengal.3 Monika gave up her job as a schoolteacher, but it was okay because she had always been a little scared of her students. They made the trip by rail, Monika, Prabhat, and their infant, a bundle of cloth and flailing arms.

Less than two years later, they made the same journey back. The British Raj was coming to an end. As a government servant, Prabhat, unlike many, had been offered a choice: he could choose to either work for the government of India or the government of Pakistan. Since he had chosen India, he had to leave the state of East Bengal, which would soon become East Pakistan, governed by the Pakistani government.4 Prabhat’s second youngest brother — there were eight siblings — was there to pick them up from Sealdah Station in Calcutta. Decades later, Monika would remember the emptiness of the station compared to the bustling platform other migrants would face just a few months later. She’d tell her daughter that friends spoke of crowds of refugees so thick that there was no space to place even a foot.

Prabhat’s brother took a piece of luggage in his hand and led Monika and Prabhat to the cab. Monika stilled. For the driver was very clearly Muslim. Prabhat started moving towards the car, oblivious of her fear.

During their time in East Bengal, Monika had often been left at home — alone except for her infant daughter — while her husband patrolled the streets of the town where they lived.5 Because he was a government official, Prabhat was offered a gun, which he refused. A strong believer in non-violence, he always wore homespun cotton instead of British factory produced cloth in support of Mahatma Gandhi’s boycott of British goods. At the same time, he worked for the British Raj and, as a government servant, he was expected to keep order. Reluctantly, he accepted a stick. He spoke very little of what he saw during his nightly patrols and even less of what he possibly did. Monika sat in the house and thought of her neighbors, her friends, who had hidden in their houses for weeks as violence between Hindus and Muslims flared.

She thought of those friends, of that violence now as she stared at the Muslim cab driver. And he stared back. Monika knew that she looked Hindu and that her husband looked Hindu and that her brother-in-law looked Hindu. She began fidgeting with the hem of her sari.

Her brother-in-law made a move, as if to say something, but the cab driver got in first. “Madam,” he said quietly, “I can see that you are afraid. I am Muslim. But I am also driving you to a Hindu neighborhood. Imagine how scared I am.”

Abashed and reminded of the other side’s humanity, Monika got into the cab. The ride was eventless and Monika told this story often to her children.

“Partition memory is particularly pliable. Within it, the act of

forgetting, either inevitably or purposefully, seems to play as much a part as remembering itself.”

Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

Dida, aged two, was too young to actually remember Partition; her accounts are pieced together from family stories. I have only heard one eyewitness account; an elderly friend of my dida’s — who later died of a broken heart — once told me that August 15th was a bittersweet night, filled with rejoicing, and fireworks, and an instance where two strangers overcame road rage together, and a deep deep sadness that their country was broken. That the British had won.

My maternal grandfather, the oldest of my grandparents, would have been five and should have remembered something. But I have never met him, and now he’s dead. Ma learned the stories from her paternal grandfather, a man of few words. After Partition, the family had elected to remain in East Pakistan — even though they were Hindu and it was overwhelmingly Muslim — because they had always lived there. The last major violence between Hindus and Muslims had occurred in 1946, before independence, so they thought things had settled down. Then, said Ma’s grandfather, “One day, I came home and saw that, in the middle of our town, all the Muslims were slaughtering the Hindus and all the Hindus were sitting there crying. So we left.” And that was all he would ever say about the matter.

So Ma’s grandfather, his brothers, his wife, his wife’s sisters, and his three children — my Ma’s father and aunts — either walked, sailed, or rode a train out of Barisal, East Pakistan. At some point and somehow, they reached Calcutta. They had no papers and they left their land and home. I think they brought some books and some money, though not enough. The move was never supposed to be permanent. Still, they never went back.

They were issued refugee passes at Sealdah Station. Maybe they lived in a refugee camp for a bit. Eventually, they got a house. Ma’s grandfather was a doctor. He built up a practice and pharmacy through five years of hard work. Both got burned to the ground. Ma says he never recovered.

When I was doing my project on The Odyssey, I did some research. In 1950, a series of riots had gripped East Pakistan. It was alleged that a Muslim woman had been raped in the Indian city of Calcutta. In response, Muslim mobs raped, pillaged, abducted, and killed Hindus. The Barisal district was one of the hardest hit. Hindu passengers trying to leave Barisal for Dhaka were slaughtered. Those who sheltered at police stations were torched or had their heads chopped off. 1950 was the year Ma’s paternal family left Pakistan. ***

“... a Bengali engineer educated in England [noted] the time [a 14-year old Muslim boy] took to die on his Rolex wristwatch, and [wondered] how tough the life of a Muslim bastard was.”

— Nirad C. Chaudhuri -CBE, late Indian author and scholar

Perhaps the most revealing story I heard about Partition was about my dida’s Muslim best friend — Nadira — and her family. Nadira’s mother and father had both gone to declare which state they would become a part of in 1946. There had been no need for discussion because the choice between India and Pakistan was obvious.

A couple of months later, Nadira’s father turned to his wife and said, “We should probably start packing.”

“Whatever for?” asked Nadira’s mother, astounded.

3. Using the classic tool of divide and conquer, the British had divided the region and people of Bengal into two states based on religion: East Bengal (Muslim) and West Bengal (Hindu).

4. In 1971, East Pakistan broke away from Pakistan and became Bangladesh.

5 The growing Indian nationalist movement had been accompanied by a swell in communal violence.

***

Carefully and speaking slowly, Nadira’s father replied, “Because we’re moving there.” As it turned out, Nadira’s mother had elected to be an Indian citizen, because India had always been their home. Nadira’s father had elected to be a Pakistani citizen because they were Muslim and it would be safer for them. It was too late to change the paperwork now.

Nadira’s father lived in East Pakistan for several years before he could get an Indian visa, if I remember correctly. They split up their children, some living with their mother, some living with their father. I believe the family cats remained in India. Getting an Indian visa was difficult because Pakistan and India hated each other. Even now, when applying for an Indian visa, you must indicate whether your parents or your grandparents are Pakistani. But eventually, the Rezwan family was reunited. It was a more or less happy ending. Which is nice.

perspectives. He also depicts his fictional self in a very intimate and uncensored way.

I wanted to see if I could rework my virtual museum exhibit into a series of loosely connected stories, told in a similar way. At the heart of O’Brien’s work is the question of how to get civilians to understand an incredibly traumatic event: his wartime experience. But, in his quest, O’Brien is also trying to understand his own experience as a soldier. This piece is both me, someone affected but not involved in Partition, trying to understand this incredibly traumatic experience, but also me hoping to do so in a format that is accessible to people who are not directly affected.

“The wounds will take decades to heal, centuries to overcome the trauma.”

Gulzar, Two

EPILOGUE

“You must never talk about Partition with a Pakistani individual if you want to remain their friend,” my mother told me when I was seven. “We have many friends from Pakistan, but throughout our friendship, we have very carefully never ever ever talked about It. Talking about It results in arguments.”

Actually, we never really talked about It in our own household. Partly because It was never really talked about in my parents’ households, or even their parents’ households. There is a lot of shame, and a lot of pain, that I only unearthed while researching that tenth-grade school project.

When my dida was going to graduate school, her father, Prabhat, took her aside: “You’re going to be in school with boys now. You might even fall in love.” Dida blushed. “That’s fine — you can have a boyfriend.6 Just make sure that he isn’t Muslim. Because I remember Partition, and no group was capable of inflicting as much violence and suffering as Muslims.”

Dida only ever told me this story once. She was deeply uncomfortable, certainly not defending her father, who she adored, but not directly criticizing him. I was both appalled and confused. My great-grandfather was incredibly liberal: he was okay with his daughter dating, he believed that women should have the same education and rights as men, he didn’t believe in corporal punishment, and he taught his children to never make assumptions about others. And yet he was Islamophobic. I also wonder at his selective vision. For every Hindu butchered by a Muslim, there was a Muslim butchered by a Hindu. But it’s an ugly truth in our family history.

For my Odyssey project in tenth grade, I created a virtual museum exhibit exploring what I knew about Partition. I had audio clips of family stories, maps, and quotes from noted historians in hopes that my audience, like the readers of The Odyssey, could learn from the stories of others. But I left out any mention of my great-grandfather’s Islamophobia.

Part of it was editing. I only used two audio clips: one about the Muslim cab driver, and the other about the exodus from Barisal. But that could have also been an excuse to self-censor.

I wanted to revisit my Odyssey project this year, especially after reading the Tim O'Brien Vietnam War novel The Things They Carried. In some ways, The Things They Carried also reminded me of The Odyssey: it makes use of epithets, like Ted Lavender who was scared; is non-linear; and starts in medias res. I loved the way that O’Brien played with perspective, style, and voice from chapter to chapter. Sometimes he added layers of nuance by repeating some of the same stories from different

In this piece, I wrote different parts from different perspectives to try and capture some of that complexity. Some stories are told from a third person perspective, others first. The pieces are intentionally fragmented, because that’s how the stories were passed down. Sometimes I add seemingly insignificant details to humanize these strangers. Because the stories I know would not give the whole story by any means, I have also interspersed quotes from experts on Partition. There is a need for honest stories about conflict, so we can learn about the need for empathy and understanding. People aren’t black or white, be they Trojan or Greek, Hindu or Muslim, American or Vietnamese.

***

6 This was highly progressive behavior at the time.

Ayamila Daterra

Photography Berkeley High School Berkeley, CA Charcoal Digital photography 2022

When The Sky Turned Blue

CHAPTER ONE

Moni

My name is Moni. In Sanskrit it means silent. And that is what I was.

I don’t know if my mother knew that when she named me. She walks through life with face and mind covered. On days when I caught her eye, it burned with such a mad intensity I feared for myself almost more than I did when my father came home. Almost.

When I was younger, I knew little girls with fraying clothes and tired eyes that would snake through the tangled masses of plastic and fabric that made up our walls. They would take my hand to pull me to a world where there was no hunger or work - it was all in our little minds, of course, but it was good; for a while. I knew a girl named Sonia, and together in our naiveté, we would spend all our stolen minutes together, pretending to be the ladies in the Bollywood movies we used to watch on the ratty couch in the guest room of a long-gone old man we worked for.

I lived in a slum in the city of Lucknow. I had a sister that I feared for and a grandmother and mother that I feared. On faraway days when my father would rage over the wrongness of his life through alcohol breath, I would run away and hide with Sonia. Sonia had just a bit more money than me, and in my mind, Sonia had the best life you could get as a girl in the slums. Her father was present, her mother was gentle, and no one paid mind to her.

At least that’s what I thought. Sonia may tell a different story. And there are parts of my story that will never be told. The secret, ugly bits, even uglier than the trash by the roads or the filth that spews from my grandmother’s mouth.

Anyhow. Sonia always smiled and laughed, and snuck me food when she noticed my stomach getting too swollen or my face getting sallow. I saw her as a person who carried a bit of the sun and the hidden blue sky in her heart. I carried only fear within me. Even though my body has grown unrecognizable since I last saw her, my voice is still quiet and my insides still churn with bitterness and shame.

It was cleaning day. Normally domestic work was done by girls younger than me, as the rest are married, but I was an exception. Lucknow is a big city, and I’ve heard that it is beautiful in some places (like Shri Dadich’s apartment or the grand temples that I am not allowed to visit) but that does not mean that girls are not getting married young. Or is it young? Yesterday, the girl next door got married and tears streamed down her blank face as they pulled her down the streets. She was younger than me. Eleven. I know that if I was to get married, I would not cry. Tears do not solve anything. Words do not solve anything. And I am silent anyhow.

I stepped out of my home. It was early morning, and the streets were packed with hundreds of people who bustled through the slums with sharp laughs and tired eyes. I imagined that if I could see the sun behind the perpetual clouds it would be rising, and I wondered if it would be beautiful. My nose wrinkled, involuntarily, at the decaying smell of rats and rot. I should be used to it by now, I thought. The little girls begging by the roads. Hunger and hands. I was not.

Stop hoping.

I knew where it came from, all this useless hope. Sonia. She would smile when it got bad. She would tell me chinta mat karo. It will get better. My mind was not foolish enough to believe her, but my heart did. And anyhow, it didn’t get better. Not for Sonia.

A boy ran by, chased by his friend, brushing my shoulder as he went.

“Didi.” Big sister. Little-girl-hands reached up and tapped my elbow. “Didi! We have to go.”

I smiled down at my sister. Her name is Laxmi, and she is as beautiful as the goddess she was named after, with long black hair and large eyes. Just as beautiful as Sonia, but without the light in her eyes.

I grabbed her hand, and together we walked through the streets. Black sludge fell on my feet from a rickety plasticcovered structure where an old woman sat on a chair, fabric thrown across her face. Her snores added to the ruckus of the sounds that made up the slum: yelling fathers, drunk laughter, hopeless merchants who cut fabric from your clothes and tried to resell it, constant chatter, all punctuated by the shrill delighted screams of children. A man leered from the open entrance to his home and I pulled my sister closer. We kept our heads down and walked swiftly, as usual.

Go go go, I told myself. We let go of each other’s hands to walk around a man who was sprawled out on the ground, dirtcaked in his hair. Is he sleeping or dead? I didn’t want to know. My sister stared at him with undisguised fascination. I pulled her along, making an impatient noise in the back of my throat. I don’t want to be late.

I don’t have an obsession with the world outside the slums as Sonia had. I’m never going to live there, so why would I hurt myself by thinking about it?

In order to leave the slums, we had to go through a tunnel, and that was my least favorite part of my walk to work. The tunnel smelled like feces. A scaly-tailed rat scuttered over Laxmi’s sandal, and Laxmi looked at her feet, flinching, while I stifled a giggle. The one thing that Sonia and Laxmi had in common was their vanity. I hurried her through the fetid tunnel and we emerged, blinking in the new bright white world. I felt like I could breathe again. It was an everyday relief to leave the slums and walk down the cracked streets of the old whitewashed city of Lucknow.

It was just a little quieter.

I was thirteen years old. (“Moni, the shame you bring upon me by being unmarriable. You are thirteen years old. I had a child by then!”)

I am old to not be married. I would be young to be married. But Sonia -

I was so tired. It was real morning time; now it wasn’t just the domestic workers waking up. The sun had risen, and I could hear merchants bartering and bicycle bells ringing. A cow stumbled by. She wore her greasy coat like a layer of tight-fitting skin. She is sacred, but to an outsider, it would look as if being sacred doesn’t mean a thing.

How I sometimes wished I was an outsider.

Then Laxmi tugged the fabric of my dress, right above my waist.

“Look. Ma,” she whispered. Her whispering would be annoying if I didn’t do it all the time.

“Ma?” I looked in the direction she nodded to. Why would she be out this early? Right now she would be making breakfast or stealing fabric and food from the markets But I knew this was her. The purple ghunghat she always wore was pulled over her face, blocking the world from even her eyes. I still wonder how she sees. Maybe she doesn’t.

Ma was hurrying along on the other side of the street with an air of guilty pride, joints sliding over each other unevenly, bones brittle and obvious. Strange. But unimportant compared to the fact that we were going to be late.

“We’re going to be late.” I started walking with renewed

88 Isabel

Novel Agoura High School

Davison

Agoura Hills, CA

vigor, pulling the silently protesting Laxmi behind me. I looked at a dusty window reflection of me and Laxmi as we hurried by hand and hand: one tall, bony, short-haired girl wearing a blue saree as a skirt and a little girl wearing faded pink with string braided into her hair. We both shared stick straight hair and thin, light lips. Laxmi’s wide eyes and wide bones helped mask the fact that she was starving. My bones did not.

From outside, Babi Didi’s house looked like any other on her street. White and airy and tall. She had two levels with separate bedrooms for each person and while her walls were cracked and crumbling in some places, they were real, not just made out of fabric and the occasional scrap of tin.

Shri Alik, Babi Didi’s husband, yelled politely at a person across the street who had turned his music up too loud.

We entered Babi Didi’s home through the back door. We didn’t even have a door. A harried woman opened the door for us and rushed us in, then ascended the peeling staircase with haste. This was where Laxmi and I parted ways - she went up to clean the bathrooms and kill the cockroaches, and I went to the kitchens to hunt for bugs between food and clean plates. I have been working for Babi Didi since I was seven years old. She has grown worse with age.

Inside there was yelling. I caught the word chinaal. Whore. Drawn out wails.

The kitchen was hot. The day was cloudy as usual, but the oven was open, and the kerosene smell burned my nose. What is worse? Feces or kerosene?

Mud was tracked into the kitchen, and the big footprints showed me that it was Shri Aalik. I grabbed a ratty towel from the shelf and turned the knob on the sink, sludgy and dark water coursing out. I took the bar of dwindling soap and let it run under the water and over the towel, then I got on my knees to clean the mud, staining my saree in the process. Dadi will be angry. My grandmother will find any excuse to be angry.

Upstairs the loud words continued. I wondered if my sister was okay. Laxmi is normally beloved by all adults. In my mind, that is notBreathe.

Laxmi is beloved by adults, but I wouldn’t put it past Babi Didi to break the trend.

Hours passed by. At least I thought. I knew hours from hearing them around after my grandmother had yelled (in a strange display of defiance to her beloved son) to my father that he had been out “for hours” but I was not quite sure what exactly they were. I didn’t understand Time either. The big circular thing called the clock was supposed to show the time, but the two sticks that went round and round confused me. Maybe one day somebody will teach me.

Gods, stop thinking like that!

I started looking for some cinnamon to try to get rid of the ants that trickle in from cracks in the walls and the small pantry. Babi Didi taught me about cinnamon. The ants liked to crawl all over me like I was just a kitchen fixture.

I picked up the broken glass from a beer bottle that was thrown on the ground, and a large piece got lodged in my palm. I pulled it out and winced as red, red blood gushed onto my skirt.

Dhatt terre. Dadi will be even angrier.

I didn’t know what to do with blood, so I pressed my palm against my muddy skirt and kept on going.

While I scrubbed the dishes from the morning’s meal, I noticed that my upper arms were studded with a couple of circular pink raised bumps. They itched. Ringworm. I looked around frantically for something to cover my arms with and then I took the muddy towels (the job ended up taking two) and twisted them around my arms, praying that Babi Didi wouldn’t come into the kitchen. The yells upstairs softened, and I could hear the sound of footsteps on the staircase.

Wow, perfect timing. A hint of fear crept down my neck. Above me, Babi Didi’s grating voice was shouting directions upstairs to Laxmi. The thumping on the stairs stopped and the heavy breathing that accompanies Babi Didi wherever she goes

entered my ears, faint. I cowered into the bucket of soapy water and chipped dishes. Please be going to the living room.

Babi Didi’s heavy face poked through the fabrics that separate the kitchen from the rest of the house. I shuddered. She frowned at me, causing her sagging skin to sag even more. Her eyes were loose and unfocused, and suddenly I realized that it wasn’t her voice that was screaming to the person above. I ducked my head down.

“Girl! What are you doing with those muddy towels on your arms?”

“I-I…” My throat closed up. Don’t make me say anything! Don’t you know I’m silent?

Looking down, I mumbled through my hair. “I was cold.” I had seen this happen before. Last time someone who worked here had ringworm on their arms, Babi Didi kicked them out of the house. I had always seen that worker as someone cool, collected, and compliant, but I heard she killed herself rather than to come back to her husband without money.

“That’s ridiculous. This room is as hot as narak .” She strode toward me and pulled the dirty towels off my arms, a look of disgust on her face. “The dirt is going to spread all the germs.” What does she mean, spread germs? What are germs? And how can you spread them?

“Sorry,” I whispered.

Babi Didi grunted. “Clean these up.” Then her eyes caught my arm. The pink bumps scratched bloody.

“What are these?” She demanded. “Ringworm?”

“No no no, Babi Didi. I-I fell...” I trailed off at the look on her face.

“You know no infected person is allowed in this house! I can’t afford the treatment for it, and if I catch it it’ll never go away!” Spittle fell from her mouth and landed in my hair. The heat of the kitchen seemed to intensify, and I could feel myself slipping away in horror. “Are you trying to ruin me? Get out! Now!”

I dropped the soap and brush I was using to scrub the dishes and ran. I slipped over soapy water that was splashed on the floor, narrowly avoiding falling by grabbing the edge of the countertop. Regaining my footing I dodged through the fabric that separates the kitchen from the rest of the house. I fumbled with the doorknob and opened the door that leads to the white outside. I tripped over the doorway and slammed onto the ground. I heard the bang of the door closing behind me. I lay there shaking, forcing tears to not fall from my eyes. What am I going to do now?

CHAPTER TWO

Kalima

The doctor was from out of town. Two towns over, in fact, bribed out of his house for money that could have sustained us for weeks.

I was sitting on my mattress, eyes hazy through the fever that had been going for days. My body was weak, but I’d like to say my spirit wasn’t. My father watched the doctor as he sat on the rug by the mattress. The doctor was sitting on one knee next to me. I watched his polished-with-his-sleeve-cuff stethoscope swing back and forth, eyes flicking, as he twisted uncomfortably at the news he was about to give. It had been a long time since something somewhat shiny was before me, and I wanted to touch it.

“Can I touch your stethoscope?”

He looked at me with surprise, surprised that I was talking to him, (a girl especially. Ha.) surprised that I am so lively and bright despite my sickness, surprised at my boldness.

“Of - of course.”

Stiff-armed I reached forward and took it off his neck. One side of it was warm and the other was cool. I pressed it against my forehead. I was almost surprised that steam didn’t hiss at its touch on my fevered self.

My father was still staring intensely at the doctor. “Well?” he asked.

The doctor slowly turned his head around. “I think your daughter has polio.”

Silence. Not a common thing in our household. I was always loud, either laughing or angry. Father was the same. Mother smiled occasionally from the big corner cushion. If I ever make enough money I will buy us all cushions. Soft ones, with velvet padding like Shrimati Parvati’s saree.

But right now it was silent. I don’t like the silence. I didn’t like the fear on my father’s face.

“Baba, what is polio?” This was a gentle question. Perhaps the only thing I have done gently. Because an exclamation will snap his head up, and he will give me his fear with just a glance

I cannot have fear.

I simply can’t.

The doctor saved my father from responding. “Polio is an infectious viral disease that affects the central nervous system and can cause temporary or permanent paralysis.” He sounded rehearsed. As if he had known that I would have it before he saw me. Silence again. My father turned his face to the floor, body limp.

“What is paralysis?” I asked. And what is infectious and what is viral and what is the central nervous system?

“The loss of ability to move and sometimes feel, normally in your limbs. It’s usually caused by disease but it also can be caused by injuries to your spine or -”

“No!” I stood up, feeling a wave of dizziness hit my head. I tried to ignore it as I looked at my body. The doctor stood up too. I flipped my hands over and flexed my fingers. What if I can never move them again? “No!”

The doctor looked at my father, probably expecting him to reprimand me for my outburst.

Father didn’t. I wished he would. His silence cut like a knife, gnawing its way into my heart.

“Are you saying I will never get to move again?” I practically screeched it. I knew, even in my cloudy mind, that my noise has crossed boundaries, boundaries that even father must uphold. The doctor’s anxious pity was now transforming into anger at my uncivilized attitude.

The doctor stepped back and continued loudly. “I would say your legs would be the ones affected.” He seemed to wish it was my mouth too.

But I lost him at legs. My breaths were coming in and out quick and shallow. I looked around our home. Will I ever get to walk through here again? The purple fabric that hangs from wood to make the walls, the tiny statue of Shiva (the nicest thing we owned), the food box, rotting in a corner, father on the floor, the unwelcome doctor, missing mother-

It is my eleventh birthday. The end of laughing peace. My mother bustles around me with a strange hopefulness in her eyes. Father smiles at her. He is quick to temper, quick to humor, gentle in his character. Outside the doorway, the world collapses in everyday chaos. Inside I get to take a pinch of jeera to sweeten her day.

I ran past the doctor, past my father, tripping over my own tiredness, the cramps, and stiffness. My mind was taking the reins of my body and running free with it, no matter how much my body protested.

I ran through the doorway and outside. The midday sun shone pathetically through the perpetual clouds. I felt like screaming. I screamed. I was barely conscious of myself.

I tried to cross the street but stepped back as a truck flew by, the dirt-filled wind twisting my limited amount of hair, leaving behind a trail of exhaust. The man driving yelled at me. I yelled back as everything started to blur.

People called from the streets. A peeling sign fell down from above a broken merchant’s door. I stumbled over cracks and strewn trash. A pain seized hold of my right leg, but I pushed the sensation down again. I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to go.

What am I going to do now? What will happen when I come home without a job? I looked up at the sky as if praying for the gods to give me assistance. What do the gods care about me, anyhow? If they cared then this suffering wouldn’t exist.

I cursed my thoughts.

Sonia would be mad. She always told me that gods do not exist in the physical world, but the spiritual one. She would tuck her hair behind her ears and lecture me that hating something is bad karma. Everything was karma to Sonia. Smiling was good karma. Crying was bad karma. “There’s no need to despair if you know that you have good karma. When you despair you insult the gods. Your divine destiny is planned out by the gods. The only thing that disrupts destiny is our own self.” In the back of my mind, I screamed: but what if my destiny is to end up like my mother?

I stood up and tried to brush the dirt off my skirt, but I didn’t try very hard. The dirt and blood clung stubbornly to the torn material. I then tried to wipe the tears off my face but I got blood stained across my cheekbones instead.

How bad can this day get?

A bright yellow flower floated serenely in the wind as if it came from a meadow in the heavens. How could the wind carry something like that? It bobbed toward me, and I reached out to grab it, but then it swerved suddenly and landed in the street. I heard the whirring of the engine of a truck, and a strange panic seized my heart. Without thinking I darted to the street, grabbing the flower before the truck could reach it. Just a leaf was left behind. I stepped back onto the lawn, and watched the truck roll over the remaining leaf, leaving it a steaming black.

I held the flower close to my heart, tucking the cool stem under my black top. It was beautiful. It had five wide silky petals, all bright yellow, but where the petals met it faded to a brilliant pink. Sonia would love this. So would grandmother. But for different reasons.

“Isn’t today just the best day?” Sonia’s eyes are light brown, so light that on the brightest days they seem moss green. Her eyes are almost always looking up, in that dreamy, unfocused way of hers. Until she gets angry.

I look at her. “No,” I say quietly. As usual.

“Well, I think it’s a great day.” I look down at Sonia’s hands. They are covered in flaming red welts.

“Okay,” I say softly.

We sit in silence, watching life in the slums go by. The only one we know. “What a strange world,” I say.

“You and your silly thoughts!” A hysterical laugh bubbles from Sonia’s mouth.

Then she grips my arm, the fingernails that weren’t broken digging into my skin.

“Don’t be a bitter girl.” Flame ricochets through Sonia’s light, light eyes. I jerk back, feeling my grandmother’s wrinkled hands instead of Sonia’s inflamed ones. “Enjoy this while it lasts.”

Stunned silence. It is almost as if gentle Sonia can’t believe that she had laid hands on me. She lets go of me to slowly get up and wipe off the dirt where her skirt had touched the ground. Silence settles over us. Then it’s interrupted by Sonia’s shaky sigh.

“Wanna play a game? Let’s think about all the good things.” Tiny little tears fill her nine-year-old eyes.

CHAPTER THREE

Kalima

“Kalima!” I heard my name being called into the hazy night. Night in the countryside is dark and smoky. Just like my mind. I barely knew where I was. I was curled in a ball in a patch of indented dirt, legs aching miserably. Stop being so pathetic, Kalima.

Moni

Thank the gods you told her that. Sometimes I worry that she thinks she can give up.`

I stood up with a great amount of difficulty, swaying on my feet, and pushed the two voices from my head. It has always been like that for me. Well, not always, but close to always. I guess I got lonely a lot when I was a child. All the girls were afraid of me, and the boys would tease me. They would say, “Kalima, just because you look like a boy doesn’t mean you can act like one!” I wouldn’t let them bring me down - I couldn’t. But I never really had a close friend. I suppose that’s why I’m so close with my father.

But in a way, I hate him. It’s hard to explain.

And I just don’t feel like it.

I heard father calling me again. I felt like crying. I never really cry. But I never normally get polio either. I supposed I should go home.

Sighing, I started over the mounds of trash that line our roads, wishing for a breeze to cool me down. I heard that in some places, the countryside is the beautiful part. Well, not here. I don’t have an issue with that. Beauty fades. But sometimes when I take on the role of an outsider just visiting, our village looks so horrible that it hurts my eyes. And my heart.

Okay Kalima, get a move on.

I trudged across the road, feeling my right leg starting to seize up, building on top of the pain it sent when I was running. I wondered, with a sudden attack of unfamiliar anxiety, if my legs are already beginning to paralyze.

When I near my mother, twisted silence burns into my ears. I can feel the silent accusations, the silent hatred that stabs cold ice into my heart. Father laughs at something that he sees on the cracked television that can only run two channels (the news and cricket). I tear my eyes away from my mother and look at it too. A man has just scored and is doing a celebratory dance that looks close to the sight of a beheaded chicken flopping about a room. I laugh. Father turns to smile at me.

“Have I taught you how to play cricket, alima?” I shake my head. “No.”

“Come on.” He stands up, and I beam with delight. “I don’t know if you know this, but I was quite good when I was younger. The old bones may still work.”

I laugh harder as I leave the house into the gasolinesmelling air of the green-lined countryside. I hear my mother exhale with frustration.

“I bet you my young bones will work better than yours! ”

By the time I got home I was absolutely burning up, and my father had found some naan. Something about the warmth of it made me think it was a gift from a pitying neighbor. He smiled at me. A smile had never been more fake.

“You made quite the fuss.”

I looked at him and felt an unwelcome sparkle beginning to develop in my eye. That’s exactly what he would say. He knew exactly how to blow over pain as if there was nothing there, all just a game. I should be mad at him for changing this tragedy to a thing to laugh at, but instead, I felt relieved.

“I did not,” I said indignantly. Playing along. Playing along as I collapsed onto my mattress, kicking my sheets off, my hair wet with sweat.

He laughed, looking away as he sat on the chair. He threw some bread at me. I could just see his profile in the waning light of the neighbor’s lantern that glowed from the cracks in the walls. He had a hooked nose and black hair that was pushed away from his center part. I grabbed the bread with some difficulty from its landing spot.

“Even a pig to a slaughter wouldn’t make that much noise.” He was still not looking straight at me.

I fidgeted with my skirt and hesitated, playing out the words I wanted to say on the tip of my tongue.

“Did you - did you call ma?” I looked at him, fixing my eyes intensely on his cheekbone, hoping to the gods that he would say yes, that it’s all good. But instead, he said,

“The store was closed.” That was a lie, of course. I nodded, squeezing my fingernails into my palms. “So you’ll tell her tomorrow?” He still looked away!

“No, I think I’ll just tell her when she gets home. In person, you know?” His speech was getting mangled, and my brain was clouding. My leg started hurting again. A wave of unwanted fear rolled through my stomach.

“Okay. Okay. But when is she coming home?”

He snapped his head up. “I don’t know! Shut up, child!”

The lantern light turned down from next door. I sat there in the darkness, breathing and staring into the silence. The ugly silence.

Moni

The sun was at its highest when my sister finally emerged from the house. Her little face was flushed and her arms had red welts. I recoiled from it but didn’t say anything. Instead, I took her hand.

“What happened?” Laxmi asked, her voice hoarse and barely distinguishable. But her voice is never distinguishable. I smiled at her. I was sick of smiling when everything was wrong, and I was starting to remind myself of Sonia. “She didn’t want me to work because of the ringworm on my arms.” That was probably one of the longest sentences I have said in a long time. Quiet as we walked home. I wondered if she was wondering why some red spots on my arms were a reason to throw me out if the new red welts on her arms weren’t. In the heat of the day, the sweat and unfallen tears and blood clung stubbornly to every bit of my revealed skin, and I realized that the flower I had tucked underneath my shirt was probably getting squished and sweaty. I pulled it out and straightened the crumpled petals. I tapped Laxmi’s shoulder. She looked up, and her eyes lit up at the sight of the flower.

I smiled, and this time it was for real. Laxmi plucked it from my hands and slid the stem into her braid, face shining. The funny part about Laxmi liking the flower so much was that she had a strange love of the morbid and macabre, but I suppose the miraculous beauty of the flower was undeniable.

When we arrived - leaving the city into my home, the loudness, the darkness - my mother was gone (of course) out searching for food or money or anything. Father was gone and I wondered where he was until I was shocked with the remembrance that I hadn’t seen him in two years.

Only grandmother was home, snoring in the corner, chin tucked so she didn’t hit the ceiling. The old woman’s scarred hands rested on her lap. I stared at her scars, the veins that popped through her sagging dry skin, the ill folded fabric that made up her clothes, her ratty hair, her chest that rose and fell with her sharp, biting breath. The horrible, dark part of me wished that her swift breaths would be cut short. The other part of me, the part made of Sonia and orange flowers, slipped tiny tears into my stomach.

I can feel her watching me like I am prey. I am speaking to Sonia, detailing ambitions and brightness. She can see something in me that she fears. Gentle fire. Not the forceful kind, but the type that simmers and sustains. The type that won’t fizzle out with the beliefs of childhood. The type that will grow into a forest fire, consuming everything she knows in the ashes of change.

“Moni,” she extends a crooked finger. “Come here.” Her nails are like knives. Her hands are like chakrams.

Grandmother snorted awake, and opened a bleary eye, focusing on the sight of me, standing, fingers clenched tight around one another. She scowled. “Moni, get me some food.” I shared an apologetic glance with Laxmi, sorry to leave her alone with grandmother.

As I left, I could hear the angry words flung at my sister for the welts on her arms. What did you do to get a beating?

Useless child, a disappointment to her elders! I felt relieved - with considerable guilt - that I was leaving my grandmother behind.

***

The first order of business was to actually find some food. Normally Babi Didi would give me a wooden bowl of steaming lentils to bring home. Every day I would bring the bowl back and forth, from her house to mine, and it was one of my greatest treasures and a source of pride. Then a couple of days ago Babi Didi said she didn’t have enough time or money to make me the lentils as payment anymore, so she took change from her husband’s pockets and gave that to me instead. I did not tell her that I didn’t understand money, nor that I believed that it was not enough to get food anyhow. I didn’t tell her that my mother and my grandmother didn’t understand money. I didn’t tell her about my father’s nonexistence.

For the last three days, I had barely eaten. Yesterday after getting out of work, I walked up to a man selling food on the streets and reached out my hands, head down, with the coins in them. He snatched them away and threw some bread crusts at me. I had felt a sort of relief in the back of my mind that I was just receiving bread crusts. I just didn’t feel like I was deserving of anything more. “Ow!”

I slammed into a girl I barely noticed, careening awkwardly away from her after the split-second sight of her face. She was wearing a clean pink dress with a white headscarf. In fact, she was so clean that the sight of her was completely dazzling, standing like a sparkling goddess against the dusk-tinted sky. The even more shocking part of her, though, was that she held a black cell phone in her hand. No girls had cell phones around here. Not in the slums. Not in my world. Only in Shri Aarzoo’s fabric shop. This girl, with her clean pink and white dress and her beautiful upturned face, seemed to be in the wrong place.

Navin Desai

When I Was First Told

One.

I was eight when I was first told that my culture looked like throw-up. It was the day after Holi, the Indian Festival of Colors, And I wore to school that day the same shirt I wore yesterday. It was stained with a blend of blue, green, red, purple, and all the colors of the rainbow Of guiltless joy that I felt surrounding me boundingly the day before yet

I step into the classroom.

A kid looks at my left shoulder

And I look with him.

“Is that throw up?!”

He says guttingly

As it bounces off of Every Single Wall

And into my body

It resounds as my heart

Pounds twice fold.

With every beat that gets faster, I feel a fist pounding into a country 8,000 miles behind my back, With every beat that gets faster, I feel my cultural embrace Jose grip like a tipping iceberg slowly drowning in the water that’s its home.

I tell him that it’s paint - it was just a mistake because Now saying it was powder from the Holi festival seemed equivalent to saying that it was the Throw-up he accused it of being.

Two.

I was eight when I was first told my lunch looked rotten. My Nani made me two pieces ofthepla: flour, spices, and mcthi leaves cooked to a crunch that, at the same time melts like soft felt so delicately in your mouth.

I always wanted tocat my thepla garam [“hot” in Gujurati], but for lunch, it would have to cool down under the chilling breeze of the outside world.

I open my lunchbox.

I unbuckle the clasps of my transparent container and sec a girl look down.

“Ew,”

She says echoingly.

“Do you actually eat that?”

Her words penetrate my nostrils before the aroma of thepla ever reaches my nose and I start laughing

Because I expect laughing because I guess my culture’s become a joke

But no-

Her face was painted with pure disgust

And now my food turns to a browning rust that never grew before. I can see it start decomposing, The brownish-green colors start transposing What was once a snack that reminded me of India into a snack that reminded me of India.

I tell her that I was forced to bring it to school. The lid of my container remained shut for the rest of lunch. I was glad to be suffocating the part of me that I never again wanted to keep.

Spoken Word Georgetown Day School Washington, DC

Three.

I was eight when I was first told to embrace who I was.

I informed my parents that I no longer wanted to wear my kurta for the Diwali assembly, That I no longer wanted Indian food for lunch, That I no longer wanted to embrace the culture of country whose air I never breathed In a country where all breath was the notes of the star spangled banner

And the sky was painted with white And blue And red

The colors my friends bled

That I thought I didn’t.

And I was right.

Now, I realize I didn’t only bleed blue and red, but I also bled The green of mangroves and the Orange of sweet mangoes and the Brown of cinnamon

And this seven-continent world I’m in Runs through my veins so there’s Nothing I should ever abstain

From showing it.

Brandon Dowty

Adriel’s Tomb 1

The azure-blue sky spanned the warm island. Puffy white clouds dotted the horizon, swimming lazily through the air. White-sand beaches roped around the edge of the vibrant green interior of the island, tall palms rising from the soft, fertile soil high into the air, casting cool, long shadows across the beach. Twice-raked fields sat at the edge of the inner forest, the chirps of small animals and insects fluttering from within, escaping the dense wall of greenery that separated the center of Eris Island from its flatter, clear edges. Not far from the fields, the dirt newly upturned, sat the single structure built upon the isle, sturdily set on foundations of stone, with a smoke-laden chimney extending up from its peak.

Paul looked up from his book, the bright midday sun warming his legs, and watched as along the horizon, through the faint shadows of other islands in the archipelago, a boat sped along, its sail unfurled, speeding ever closer to Eris. Paul looked to his hands, recently cleaned from the morning’s work in the fields, growing what he hoped would be the last crop for some time. He looked back to his book, a journal left in the house from when he inherited it and the ownership of the island from his parents. He pored over the cleanly-written script once more, his understanding lessening with each read. He sighed, closing the book. “I guess I’ll have to give up soon,” he said to himself. “There isn’t much left to go over, and…” he paused once more, looking out toward the horizon. “They’ve been gone so long. Maybe it’s time to move on.”

Paul placed the book gently on the table beside him, standing up from the old, rickety chair at the edge of the porch and stretching lazily. He slowly rolled his neck, squinting as the bright light of the far-off sun filled his vision for a moment, leaving bright-orange afterimages. The faded, sun-bleached cover of the book, entitled Basics on the Ruins of the Monolith, all but disappeared in the light shadow of the overhang. He stepped out into the long, hot grass beyond, kicking off his shoes and walking slowly to the edge of the beach, the grass and soil gradually turning to sand as Paul approached the cold, gently lapping waves of the ocean. The boat, its dark, wet wooden hull contrasting with the bright sky and deep blue water, came into full view, Paul stepping back as the wake behind it came closer, and the boy at its helm tugged at the rope connecting the mast to the deck of the boat. It turned, the deck becoming submerged in water for a moment, while the boy wrestled with the long, white rope. The boat finally leveled off, but too late, as it careened into the sandy banks of Eris, kicking up a plume of sand that extended nearly as high as the palms. Paul ran forward, the searing heat of the sand no bother to him, as the boy rose from the sand-coated boat, grinning. “How’s that for a landing!” he cried. “I almost didn’t make it that time!”

Paul sighed, pointing up at the boy, his sandy-colored hair and olive complexion speckled with droplets of salty ocean water and newly added grains of sand. His bright blue eyes shone in the sunlight, his arms muscular from years of fishing. “You really could have wrecked the boat, Adrian.” Paul called, climbing the side and plunging into the shoulder-deep water beyond. “And it’s not like we’d be able to wait until next down season for the trading ships to come by.”

Adrian laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I rode in on the wind, I guess I thought I would have had an easier time getting it to stop.”

Paul groaned as they pushed the small boat upwards, its sail half-covered in water, drooping from its initial proud position. “And we’ll have to wash the sail too.” Paul said.

“I’ll handle it.” Adrian offered. “My mess. My cleanup.” Paul nodded as they shoved the boat back onto land. “Grab the sides.” Adrian said.

“I know.” Paul responded, curling his fingers over the rim of their small boat. He pulled, the boat turning easily, with little resistance. It rested against on the sand, the sail aimed pointing upwards towards the bright, beating sun.

“I figure that’ll be dry by sundown.” Adrian said. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

Paul heeded his younger brother, returning to their house and grabbing the book from the table on the porch. He traveled up the stairs just left of the front door, entering his room on the left. Books lined each wall, some stacks just two high and others upwards of six. Each one was a work left behind by their parents, though not all were written by them. Some included accounts of the far eastern reaches of Aquarius, histories of early humanity, and, what Paul was most interested in, their parents’ accounts of the Monolith, a nearby ruin from an age long past. Maps of Aquarius spread across the walls of the room, directly across from Paul’s small, cloth-sheet-covered bed. A grouping of small islands denoted the Cradle, south of the kingdom of Caelum; east of that great central kingdom, the foggy peaks and unknown eastern edges of Aquarius were far less defined. He stepped over a stray quill, the ink dry on its tip, placing the faded book on a stack at the front of the three-book-long rows of piles. He picked another, far less faded, book to study next. I s’pose this is the last one for today.

He opened the book, one of the first research books his father had written, nearly twenty-five years ago. Smeared illustrations in ink spread across some pages, while dense cursive filled others. After months of studying the array of notes left behind, Paul was accustomed to the complex handwriting. He opened the cover, hearing the creak and crease of the old pages as he did so, and began to read.

A great terminal of rock and iron stands at the center… unintelligible script etched upon it… great metal blades, arranged in a circular pattern… stagnant waters… three faded symbols… could they be related? No way deeper in… relations to the Spire… Caelum counterparts have yet to enter…

Paul murmured the words to himself as he read, the light streaming in through the frosted windows dimming. He looked up from the journal, nearly finished reading through. He sighed. “Symbols, metal blades, and the Spire. None of it makes sense.”

There must be little more for me to find in this book. I should move on to the next. Maybe tomorrow.

He looked towards the many stacks of books once more. One remained neatly stacked, while the others were in disarray, unevenly stacked against one another.

Maybe not…

Paul shook his head, gently opening the door to his room, descending the stairs just beyond and exiting back onto the warmly sunlit porch. The boat lay beached at the far end of the shore, Adrian laying out a litany of small sea creatures along a wooden board. The sun drew closer to the horizon, though hues of orange and yellow had yet to overtake the azure of the afternoon. Three doorfish were splayed out across the board, their wet, sopping tendrils not yet dried from the sunlight. Their eyes looked upwards towards the sun, as if in fear of the surface world above, longing for the water they had once known. A single, much larger sparkshark, its electric tendencies mitigated by the release from water and skillful drying by Adrian, lay with a spear-wound through its abdomen. “Wow, Adrian. This is… quite the catch.” Paul murmured, approaching the sparkshark’s gray-and-green skin cautiously. “How far’d you go to find this stuff?”

Novel

Hardin Valley Academy Knoxville, TN

Adrian thought. “Close to thirteen miles west. ‘Course, that’s only if my judgment’s right.”

“Which it rarely is.” Paul said.

Adrian shrugged. “What can I say? The deeper waters to the south would offer a larger bounty, but I wouldn’t want to make you worry!”

He rounded the wooden board’s edge, his hand sliding against the sharp edges. Adrian elbowed Paul’s shoulder, and he stepped back, holding it. “Sorry.” Adrian muttered.

Adrian looked toward the catch. “Anyways. Look, these guys are going to be drying out here for a while. They won’t be ready for a meal any time today. And, you know, the winds do seem to be blowing the right way…”

Paul sighed. He knew where it would go. “So you want to go to Telin.”

Adrian smiled. “Exactly! And I’ll let you pick the restaurant.”

Paul considered it for a moment, the breeze blowing through the tall palms behind him and down through his deep black hair. “I don’t know, Adrian. There’s plenty of food here besides the new catch.”

Adrian knocked his palm against the wood, making an over-exaggerated expression towards the sky. “C’mon, man! What’ve I gotta do to convince you?”

“There is that nice place over on the boardwalk.” Paul mused. “But hey! Don’t get any ideas.”

“It’s less than thirty minutes with this wind-speed. The bountiers will be there, too, y’know. Could see some kind of new sea creature…” Adrian persuaded

“Is the boat safe to use?” Paul asked.

Adrian smiled, knowing he had cracked. “As safe as it’ll ever be.” Paul groaned. “Fine, we’ll go to Telin.”

Adrian laughed. “Yeah!”

Adrian held out his fist to Paul. He responded in kind, bumping Adrian’s fist with his own. “Give me ten minutes.” Paul said. “Then I’ll be ready.”

Eight minutes later Paul found himself on the beach once more, this time with thin sandals covering his feet, Adrian already atop the boat. He lay in wait, the rope to unfurl the sail in hand , gazing at their two-story home. “Let’s go already!” Adrian called, waving to Paul from the top of the substantial deck.

Paul waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there.”

He waded through the knee-deep water and climbed the three-step ladder on the boat’s side from onto the deck. Water dripped from his sandals onto the deck, and Adrian grinned, pulling the white rope down. The sail unfurled, its face, now dry, ready to catch the wind once more. Paul sat at the seat beside the helm as Adrian turned the sail toward the wind. Suddenly, the boat shoved off, the light breeze tugging them along into the ocean. Paul watched as Eris gradually shrank into a small dot on the horizon, and another group of islands on the Cradle’s archipelago came into view. The wind picked up, pulling them along faster and leaving a frothing wake in their midst. The smell of the salty sea air became prevalent as they sailed away from the tropical-floral smells of Eris. Adrian walked to the front of the boat and spread his arms against the wind. He sighed triumphantly. “Don’t you just love this?” Adrian asked.

Paul shrugged. “It’s alright, I s’pose.”

“Just alright?” Adrian scoffed. “This must be one of the best feelings known to man! The ocean winds, the slowly-cooling temperatures, the sounds of the water parting in our wake…”

“I get it.” Paul said. “I do like the breeze, at least. Just not… the bumps.”

“What are you talking about?” Adrian cried sarcastically. “There aren’t any bumps on this ride! It’s the smoothest boat out there. At least, that’s what the guy who sold it to me said.”

“Right.” Paul affirmed. “And just how many times, exactly, have you tipped the thing over trying to land?”

Adrian waved away the comment. “It’s a lack of experience, it has nothing to do with the boat.”

Paul chuckled. “Sure it does.”

“I mean, I respect what you’ve got going on with all of

those books, but… I could just never spend hours reading like you do. What is it about them that’s so interesting?” Adrian asked.

Paul thought. “I guess… it’s really one of the last ties we have to our parents, isn’t it?

"That and the island. With a lot of it, I feel that Father’s handwriting brings back the few memories I have of them. The things they did, accounts they’ve written… all of it feels like they’re still here, in a sense.”

Adrian stayed silent, watching the waves pass by as the boat hurtled through the open ocean towards the far-off islands. He watched the water ahead as it parted for the hull of the ship, the deep waters beneath them gradually shifting to a shallower elevation. Within ten minutes, they were surrounded by overhanging palms once more, the waters a vibrant green as the roots of nearby patches of watergrass floated by. Shadows moved underneath the boat as its speed slowed, the palms and land now surrounding them catching much of the wind. “Not too much further now.” Adrian said, one foot resting on the railing.

Paul watched carefully as the evening assault of bugs descended upon them. “I hope so.” Paul muttered.

As their boat wandered down the canal connecting the ocean and the inner island, Paul watched the shacks and retreats of inland fishermen, many of them hailing from Telin, pass by. The canal curved, Adrian using the rope to turn both the sail and the boat itself as the shoreline shifted north. The boat tilted, turning harshly at Adrian’s discretion, Paul gripping the wooden railing. “Keep it steady, would you?” Paul asked, his knuckles white.

Adrian struggled to pull the boat back. “I’ve got it under control, Brother. Nothing to worry about.”

As they sailed closer to the other side of the island, the inland route far shorter than sailing around the coast, docks and better kept houses began to appear. The dense forests beyond thinned, and the plains that separated the forests from Telin became visible. Soon after, so did the docks for common boats, a small port half a mile from the town itself where smaller ships could dock. Adrian, carefully this time, turned the boat into a free slot, jumping to the front of the boat and tying the rope to a small metal pole at the center of the dock’s rim. The boat knocked gently against the stone dock, and Paul carefully stepped onto the platform, delighted to once more be on solid ground. “See? That wasn’t so bad.” Adrian said.

Paul looked back to the calm waters, banking not far from the dock into a sandy beach. A dirt path led from the dock and over the verdant grassy hills beyond, leading to the coastal plains where Telin was built. Sand mixed with dirt into a speckled soil, grass poking through the mixture. Paul’s sandals crunched against the ground as he walked along, watching a trader, pulling along a lone cart, heading down another path towards Telin. “C’mon, Paul. It’s almost sundown.” Adrian said, jogging up the path, occasionally turning back occasionally turning around to check on his brother.

Paul sped up, catching up with Adrian at the peak of the hill. He leaned against the tall willow at the top, its branches dropping nearly to the ground. “Look at that! Just in time.” Adrian said, gesturing towards the ocean beyond. Many ships were sailing into port, many bearing the symbol of the bountier guild. “If we get there now, we can see them bringing in their bounties.”

Paul shrugged, but Adrian was already running down the hill, steadying himself with his arms as he ran towards Telin, gleaming in the distance.

No walls surrounded Telin, though a litany of smaller, segmented barriers protected certain sections of the town. No buildings rose above three stories; they all had a short, flat structure, built in accordance with the boardwalk, the rest of Telin adhering to its most famous aspect. Roads from three directions led into the town, connecting the few insignificant inner settlements of the island together. Adrian ran down the hill, Paul

following close behind. Paul’s sandals crunched softly against the speckled soil, Adrian waiting for him at the head of the path leading in from the port. “We should be able to see them coming in if we hurry.” Adrian said. “Let’s go!”

The sand-and-dirt mixture soon turned to softer soil, Paul’s sandals no longer crunching with each step. The bright, white stone buildings that defined Telin came closer as the dirt became a paved street, round stones filled with powdered, ground-down stone combining into a nearly smooth road. The calm of the coastal plains subsided into background chatter, Adrian straining to hear the conversations they passed as he pulled Paul towards the ocean-facing side of the town.

The great white sails of the bountier ships towered over Telin, reaching higher than any other structure. Paul and Adrian raced down the center of the street, weaving between carts and celebrons, Adrian nearly caught underfoot by one of the bluehorned stallions. “Ah! Sorry ‘bout that” he called to the carriagedriver who sat behind the tethered beasts. The driver grumbled, his rough beard and loose clothing flowing in the cool breeze.

Paul pulled him to the side, rushing away from the carriages that plodded through the streets. “Running in the middle of the street is getting us nowhere. Let’s just go through an alley.” Paul said.

Far less noise there, too.

Adrian shrugged. “Alright. I guess a detour wouldn’t take too long.”

“Not long enough to miss the bountiers.” Paul assured Adrian, beginning to cross the sidewalk, skirting other people near the brothers.

Adrian rushed past, leading once more, leaving Paul to keep up. He surveyed the alley ahead, focusing on the paths between buildings leading left, where the glow of the setting sun remained constant. Paul stepped around sacks of garbage, left to rot by those living within. “This was a terrible idea.” Paul muttered, plugging his nose.

“Yeah, this really is better than walking the streets.” Adrian teased. “Next, you’ll have us swim the canal instead of sail!”

Paul sighed. “Let’s just get back to the street.”

Adrian rounded a corner, the late-afternoon sunlight creating a warm, glowing cone in the alley. Paul shielded his eyes as he ran to keep up with Adrian, his feet sore against his sandals. Adrian waited at the corner, his arms crossed. “Try to keep up,” he said.

“You’re the one who wants to watch them.” Paul answered, gesturing towards the cleared street ahead.

“Heh, you’ve got that right.”

Adrian turned on his right heel, using the intricately engraved corner of the orange-sun-lit building as a handhold to begin running down the street once more. The docks were empty this time of day, save for the bountier ships docking from a long day’s work. Paul finally reached Adrian’s side, as his brother stopped at the center of the street, watching intently as the bountiers marched by.

The first to disembark from the massive, wooden vessels carried what looked to be a kraken, though Paul knew it was different. Throughout his study of their parents’ notes and records, he had encountered many sea creatures among the studies of the Cradle, specifically the small section of the archipelago which Telin and Eris shared. “Paul, look! I had no idea there was anything that big around here.” Adrian said, pointing excitedly toward the large catch.

“That looks like the… Forienic Gensiris. It was in one of the books I read. They must have gone far to find that one.” Paul explained.

“And look, here comes another.”

From a ship further down the docks, the second of three that had come to port, a woman disembarked, carrying an adult sparkshark in one arm, which Adrian realized was at least three times as big as the one he had caught earlier. In her other arm, a sack carrying an assortment of different aquatic life from around the area. Others joined the march down the coastal street towards the bountier complex in Telin, one of the largest buildings

in town. “And from there, they’ll be sold to the people in order to keep the economy running.” Adrian said.

“You think those are bounties, or guild-commissioned marks?” Paul asked, watching the tall, stocky bountiers walk towards their base.

Adrian thought. “Some of the bigger ones would have been requested by certain restaurants or butchers, but the smaller catches are probably guild-commissioned assignments to fill out the general needs of the people. If only you’d let me register, we’d be making some more money.”

“It’s far too dangerous out there. One day, you’ll take on something that you simply can’t handle, and then… I’ll lose you, too.” Paul looked behind Adrian as he heard a crash, a metal can clattering to the middle of the street. Two guards, wearing the bright-white uniforms of Telin’s independent guard-force, held a man by the wrists, leading him toward the ocean. He writhed and screamed as they forced him forward and onto the dock, where a small boat lay in wait. “I’ve got months left! Months!” he screamed, his eyes darting across the few that stood to watch. “Please, I’m not Afflicted yet! I’ll leave on my own, just don’t send me out! I’ll go anywhere, I swear! Gordion, Apex City, the Chaos Chain, for Void’s sake! Just don’t send me out!”

“It’s nothing personal.” one of the guards said in a low tone. “It’s for the safety of all. I am sure you can understand.”

“Please, don’t do this…” he murmured, turning his gaze to Adrian.

Adrian swallowed loudly, his face showing incredible discomfort. Paul looked at the stoney ground beneath their feet, ignoring the pleading man being dragged out to sea. As he was loaded onto the boat with nothing but a broken paddle, the front of his chest was revealed, where a large, red-tinted sigil was etched into his skin.

Paul turned slowly, unable to watch the proceedings, and began to walk down the seaside street. “Let’s get out of here.” he said.

Adrian followed, watching the gentle sea collide with the sturdy foundation of Telin’s outer streets. Paul studied his options, savoring the chance to pick the venue. Adrian looked up as they passed the bountier complex, his eyes transfixed on the tallest levels. “Up there’s the regional headmaster.” Adrian said, taking his mind off the thought of the pleading man. “You think I’ll get to meet him someday?”

Paul smiled. “I’m sure you will. Hmm…” he craned his neck, looking once more down the long strip of restaurants and bars. I’d rather have something without alcohol today…

“We’ll go to Mulgan’s.” Paul decided, leading the way down the street once more. The sun lowered further into the sea, the water glowing a brilliant shade of orange as the sky darkened to cooler colors.

The cleanly-painted yellow sign, each letter in the script perfectly calligraphed, was bolted above the doors to the restaurant. Paul swung open the door, pulling it back just before it hit the polished walls inside. He led Adrian to a table at the back, dimly lit by the remaining sunlight and an array of oil-lights stacked atop one another at the center of the restaurant. Paul basked in the interior warmth of the place, watching as a server approached from the kitchen, steam escaping through the door. “What will you have today, sirs?” he asked on reaching the brothers’ table.

Paul tapped his menu. “I’ll do the… doorfish piatéla.”

Adrian looked at the bare, white ceiling above them. “Um… what do you recommend?” he asked the waiter.

“The sparking pínakas is particularly exceptional this time of year.” the waiter answered. Adrian nodded. “Then I’ll go with that one.”

The waiter smiled. “Excellent choices. That will be twentyseven cobs.”

Paul fished through his pocket to find the sack that held their money. Counting out each coin deliberately, he handed the sum to the waiter a moment later. “Thank you,” he said, bowing as he turned and strode back toward the kitchen.

“There’s not that many choices.” Paul said. “You really

needed a recommendation?” Adrian shrugged. “I dunno. This just isn’t my type of venue, you know?”

“So what is your ideal restaurant?”

Adrian leaned back in the sturdy wooden chair. “Somewhere with some action. It’s always more interesting when there’s shady stuff going on.”

“Like the bar we went to last month. Where you got your hands on some hard whiskey and started a fight. You do know that stuff isn’t good for you, right?” Paul remembered. “I mean, with how many people were concerned that we were there in the first place…”

Adrian groaned. “You’re not still talking about that, are you? Look, now I know that maybe I’m not ready for the hard stuff. Dad wouldn’t let us have any, but I figured fifteen was old enough.”

“In any case,” Paul said. “You should be more careful around that stuff. It was pretty tough to carry you back to the boat that time.”

“That time?” Adrian asked. “Name one other time that I’ve done anything remotely that bad.”

Paul smiled. “Okay. What about the time you tried to sneak into the bountiers’ building and one of them smacked you in the head? Or the time you jumped over the butcher’s counter and fell on your head? Or the time you climbed up on top of our house and jumped off to prove that sand could break your fall?”

Adrian sighed. “Fine. I admit, I’ve had a few incidents.”

“More than a few.”

“More than a few.” Adrian agreed.

“And don’t forget nearly crashing the boat and losing an entire catch.” Paul said.

Adrian waved his hand in a dismissive manner. “Oh, they were all under the deck. They would’ve been salvageable even if I’d actually crashed it.”

“By the way, how are you feeling? You hit the water pretty hard, right?”

“My head hurts a bit, but other than that, I’m fine.” Adrian said, feeling the center of his forehead, obscured by long strands of hair. “Here especially.”

“You’re lucky more didn’t go wrong.” Paul said. “But you probably just hit your head on the boat, huh?”

Adrian nodded. “Yeah, probably.”

The two of them enjoyed their meal, afterwards walking along the edge of the town once more, looking into the now-dark sky above, gleaming stars sparkling across the heavens. The bountier ships idled in the harbor, the lights of the complex acting as a beacon as the rest of Telin became dark. The streets were empty, a cool wind blowing through the streets and alleys. Adrian stopped, sitting at the edge of the harbor, his legs dangling over the edge, reaching towards the calm ocean waters below. Paul followed suit, and they looked out over the bare sea, no islands in sight. “Have you ever thought about going to the mainland?”

Paul turned. “What?”

“Y’know, we go to Caelum and see what’s out there.” Adrian said. “See the wonders of the world.”

“Not really. Who would look after our house?”

Adrian laughed. “You have the chance to see the world and you’re concerned about our house? We have nothing of value. Not to anyone except us.”

“Well… I…” Paul sighed, gripping the edge of the street. “What if we… get the plague?”

Adrian frowned. “I hadn’t thought about that. Other than those guys the sentries put out to sea, I’ve never seen an Afflicted person before.”

“I’ve read about it. What it does to people. It’s been around for at least a couple of decades now, and there’s no sign of a cure. The pin-like pain is the first stage, then the mark, then… the slow and agonizing transformation.” Paul explained, his voice getting smaller as he did so. He paused, his body still as his eyes flitted from one point on the horizon to another. “Has… your head hurt before today?” he asked.

“Huh. Now that I think about it, it has been since

yesterday, not just after the boat.” Adrian murmured. “What about it? I think I just have a headache.”

“Pull up your hair.” Paul ordered, climbing back onto the street, Adrian following suit. “Why?” Adrian asked. “What’s wrong?”

Paul stepped forward, grabbing Adrian’s long hair and pulling it back, revealing a small, intricate mark upon his forehead, the skin between the darkened lines a pale mixture of black-blues and sickly grays. The mark crested at his hairline, coalescing into a point, before spiraling into multiple angular lines that formed rounded triangles.

Paul gasped, his eyes filled with recognition. “We have to get you home now.”

Paul spread a stack of diagrams across the floor, Adrian sitting at the center of the room. Candles illuminated the floor, the ceiling draped in deep shadow, faint starlight filtering through the window. “Now,” Paul began. “Our parents explored a ruin called the Monolith back in the day. I’ve pored over their notes and accounts quite a few times, but I’ve never found anything interesting in it. Albeit, I was looking for details about them…”

Adrian waited for Paul to begin again. “While I was studying the books, I came across three symbols. It seems that Father thought they had some connection to the ruins, but he dismissed them, as no other mention of them remained. Look at them.”

Paul displayed the symbols, one a shade of blue, shaped like an intricate finned animal, though with no features; an orange symbol with flamelike qualities , and a black symbol, inked as deep as possible, the intricate lines and crest at the peak bearing a prominence over the others. “Look. Look at the black one.” Paul said.

“Oh.”

It was identical to the mark on Adrian’s forehead.

“The marks, the symptoms… this is the plague, isn’t it?” Adrian asked.

Paul nodded. “I think so. But our parents found symbols in the Monolith. This one is exactly the same as yours.” He frantically tapped his finger against the weathered page.

“Okay… so…”

Paul sighed. “Don’t you get it? These are connected! The plague and the ruins! Those who came before!” he began to pace, uncaring stepping over the diagrams laid out across the room. “And… and you have it. The results are all over the place. It could end up being anything. Transformations, people no longer looking human, horrifying abilities, untold grotesque features! What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?!”

Adrian stood, grabbing both of Paul’s shoulders. “Paul, calm down. Think, did they say anything else about the ruins, this… Monolith?”

“Hold on, let me check.” Paul said, dropping to his knees and sifting through the stacks of books. “Details, structures, mechanical contraptions, scripts. Those are what I have. Wait a second, here’s one more. Aha! Regional features.”

Paul opened the book, a folded paper falling from its pages. He unfurled the page, displaying a map of the region known as the eastern Cradle in full color, the ocean a vibrant blue, verdant greens denoting the tropical islands, and a single gray block rising out of the jungle on a large island, labeled the Monolith with black text. “Look here.” Paul said, pointing to the Monolith. “Over here, this is the shape of the island Telin is on. Judging by its location, this one is most likely Eris. The beach has the same shape. Then here, two islands over, is the Monolith.”

Adrian nodded. “Okay… do you think it’ll help at all?”

“With your affliction? Ah… maybe. There could be other things there, but it could be extremely dangerous. I don’t think it would be a good idea to go.” Paul said.

“C’mon, Paul. I’ve got a crossbow. What could go wrong?”

Adrian asked. “Wouldn’t your spear be better?”

Adrian shook his head. “Nah. I’m only good with that in the water. On land, I’m about as good as you are at making friends.”

Paul frowned. “Sorry.” Adrian said. “Whatever.” Paul muttered. “We aren’t going.”

“Look, Paul. I don’t know what will happen to me in the future, what I could turn into.

What I do know is that the Monolith could hold some knowledge we don’t have.” Adrian pleaded. “Come on, let’s just go.”

“Do you really think they missed something? And you… you could get hurt. I won’t allow it.” Paul said.

Adrian sighed. “Please! If anything could give us a reason to believe there’s hope, it’s the Monolith.”

Hope…

Paul stepped back. “You know what? Fine. We’ll go, and we’ll find that there’s nothing there to look at, that our parents scoured every inch of that place, that there is absolutely nothing for us to find. They detailed all of it, but if… if it’ll make you happy, then we’ll go.”

Adrian nodded. “Tomorrow morning, then?” “Tomorrow morning.”

Mackenzie Duan

On the Glock 17, 9mm

On Sunday my father takes my brother to the shooting range. The bodies he ruptures are orange, unknown, thumbprint small. When they stutter, I imagine the bullets as comets fizzling out of an octave sky. Holes flexed around the shape of stillness, marked like tree rings. My father shows him a photo of the muzzle flash, says: this is the sun you grow into, as the rivers embrace oil spill, as the time capsules decay to dirt. Know there exists an orange sun for every son, that there are wildfires we only hear of. Break a fever and burst it orange, open. O, bullet. Teach us how to plant our hearts like flags on solid ground.

100

Poetry Dougherty Valley High School San Ramon, CA

Kimberley Dunn

forbidden fruit

so no, i could not hear her cries; her flowers scorched my willful eyes and flourish despite my mordant blinds; i prayed a million-thousand times, and still amidst the afterlife, my clipped hair burns like leaves of time. and yes, her roots grazed down my throat, and trickled through my stomach moat; my heart, a rune, she’d have wrote; of which her hatred she’d emote.

instead, i pruned her olive suit and rather planted forbidden fruit, of which but adulterates aspired to loot.

in fact, with her own folds of skin, i sewed myself a coat akin to shades of sweetest orange gin, and wrapped it ‘round my mortal sin, a heart that beat to my chagrin.

what, years of mourning, of which she’d spend wishing her arms would soon extend? no, a fortnight at most, then she’d transcend, and her death she would at last contend.

o’ wait, what comes, her fickle arm? alas, she has but cripple’s charm, and i, she could not think to harm; starved, but a harvested forbidden farm?

o’ gods, shrunken arms still filled of fruit, her ribs but starved since our dispute, sod eyes twinkling as though astute; for her state, my greed’s to impute.

please wake, for ‘tis but a succubus, o’ but my coat ignites her covetousness.

my friend, the fruit was but a jest; o ‘it is all I won’t ingest, for self-indulgence of which i detest.

yes, intestines, poison, brains of pigs, aged ears and tongues, for rotten figs, all of which I declare them mine; for you, my agony’s the glacé of wine.

sweet mercy, dear, before my corruption, your fruit was drear; alas, her intentions are crystal clear, red fruit, i swallowed, now revered.

but no, she could not hear my cries; for her arms, my mouth they’d pried, and forced down her fruit, of which I despised; i screamed a million-thousand times, and still amidst the afterlife, my aching heart commit the most heinous of crimes.

again, her roots grazed down my throat, and trickled through my stomach moat; my heart, a rune, she finally wrote; of which her love she could now emote.

101

Spoken Word Florida Virtual School Orlando, FL

Neva Ensminger

Stage 2, or Autonomy

Alternate Trait: Shame and Doubt

Basic Virtue: Will

Ages: 18 months - 3 years

Pivotal Event: First Steps

In the second stage of development, the child, now a toddler, begins to undergo rapid muscle maturation, allowing her to experiment with two new social modalities: to hold on, and to let go. The child who successfully completes the second stage learns what is appropriate information to retain, and when it is time to move on. It is within these two modalities that she will learn to exercise control over her own body, and to make decisions that she is proud of. In this stage, if the child fails to choose autonomy over shame and doubt, she risks establishing a pattern in which she is unable to care for herself independently, even as an adult.

Take two square pills for the brain. Do four puffs of the blue inhalers, three from the green. Inhale a steady stream of air, hold for ten seconds then breathe out. Chew an orange pill for the lungs and a red one for the blood. Remember what the blood did to the lungs and hope it’s not a nebulizer day. Remember what the blood did to the sinuses and do a spray of the white bottle in each nostril. Remember what the blood did to the ear before anyone noticed there was something wrong with the blood and put five drops in the left ear. Try to go about the day. Let the brain resist the square pills. Be tired but not tired enough. Lie down, turn off the lights, and forget. Forget the body depends on chemicals to take care of itself. Forget the body used to work better six years ago. Forget the body entirely. No. That won’t work. Get up. Get up and grab the two white pills on the desk. Swallow them and tell the body it’s time to be like other bodies. Tell the body it’s time to sleep. ***

My therapist tells me that I should feel excited about my impending adulthood, that in seven and a half weeks I’ll feel so much freer knowing I won’t have to deal with anymore of the bullshit I’ve had to put up with for the past seventeen years. “Won’t it feel good,” she asks me, “to know you can go anywhere you want to, see anyone you want to see?” Though she’s right that I’ll have more choices soon, they all scare me too much for anything to actually change. ***

For the record, I think that Erik Erikson got it wrong when he said autonomy and shame and doubt exist on opposite sides of a spectrum. I don’t think that a child who learns independence necessarily frees herself from a lifetime of uncertainty and powerlessness. She may gain the ability to make her own decisions, but it is not inherently tied to a sense of pride in being able to do so. Just because she learns that her choices are her own, doesn’t mean that she has grown out of wishing that they weren’t.

***

Stand in the urgent care line and feel the mucus run down the back of the throat. Let the lungs grow weak trying to cough it back up again. Smell the infection in the air and know that the body has failed to protect itself again. Know that the blood is doing its best but not enough. Know that the blood never wanted to hurt the body, this is just the way it is. Listen to some insensitive prick

say to his wife that the masks have made everyone’s immune systems shit and fight the urge to scream that some bodies never had an immune system in the first place. Feel the face grow red and hot to the touch. Feel the bacteria multiply in the lungs, or the sinuses, or maybe the ear, and wait. Wait for a nurse to come to take the body away. Wait for the doctor to come and give a long speech about drug resistance and for the antibiotics he’ll prescribe anyway to kick in and for the last little bit of the brain’s patience to be wasted on the drive home. Wait so long that the body grows tired of itself. Let it feel rotted and wasteful and broken. Know the body will never change and the best, only, option the brain has is to accept that.

***

Sometimes, I tell people I love but who don’t know my family that I was born my mother’s daughter but that when she was alone and scared for her future and my health, I became her friend, the one who her taught her what to let go of and who held onto the things she thought weren’t useful anymore. I say that I was my father’s daughter, and that when he needed someone to cook dinner and weed the garden, I was his stand-in partner, but that I grew up and he wasn’t there and now we are strangers. I tell them my sister will always be my sister, but that I am her mother now, just as unwilling to accept the social intrusiveness of maternity as the first, only I am more determined not to fail at it. I want them to see that I have harnessed the instability of my childhood into not only an eternal source of anxiety and strife, but also enough self-control to become whatever they need me to be, even if that means being nothing to them at all.

Still in my dreams, my body is failing. You’d think since they’re my dreams created by my overactive visual cortex, my brain would come up with something better than an endless number of nightmares where I go to a hospital and a doctor decides it’s in my best interest to spend forever hooked up to an IV in a room that always smells half like disinfectant spray and half like Swiss Miss tapioca pudding. But no, at night I’m just as in control of my body as in the day, which is to say, not at all. ***

The problem with Erikson, is that his theory rests on assumptions and generalizations of what goes on both in the minds of children and in their homes. In the ideal world he’s created for his theory, everybody is a healthy body and all homes allow for the freedom of experimentation. Children are not born with predispositions for neurochemical imbalances that affect their mental health, and possibly whether or not they can successfully complete a stage. All infants are blank slates, and their parents are always in an emotional, financial, physical position to prioritize their socialemotional wellness. This is not the world we live in, and yet it is the world that Erikson bases his theory of who we should be on.

102

Creative Nonfiction

Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

***

Paul Fauller

103

Photography Burlington

Burlington,

Let Outside Color negative film 2022

High School

Camille Faustino

104

Visual Arts

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Jacksonville, FL

2022

A Small Family Reunion Acrylic paint and folded paper

Uma Freitag

105

Visual Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL Skin and Light Fabric scraps, canvas, gouache, safety pins and leaves 2022

Had We But World Enough

Ruth hears them before she sees them, the skid of tire rubber on asphalt, a brake squeaking, the exuberant sound of a woman’s voice upraised against her progeny: put that down, if you even think about, don’t you dare… Ruth stands up - too quickly, her wristwatch tells her, beeping a subtle admonishment against the underside of her wrist. Too fast. She is often the target of these despondent notifications, sad blurps and dismayed bzzt s. She concentrates on slowing her breathing and crosses the room, pressing her face to the cool window glass.

She sees the finger-smudged outline of a woman in jean shorts, her arms raised so the muscles in her biceps stand out; she’s got a mire of black hair turned to frizz in the heat, her voice is indistinct but carrying. Ruth wets her mouth; she can hear the sound of her boys in the den, the discreet violence they are enacting onscreen. The woman in the shorts is laughing, opening the car door.

A boy with a massive head of curls sprints out of the car, followed quickly by a little girl in cornrows, and Ruth feels a murmur of anxiety, echoing and perhaps superseding the soft chiding beep of the wristwatch: too fast, she thinks, and then, a half-beat later: be careful.

The woman is named Sal Nikita, and her two children, Arthur and Magnolia, Maggie for short, are nine and seven, respectively. She has no husband; her brown hand is bare of any ring, the fingers slim and refined and uninterrupted. This is not what makes the neighborhood uneasy; Ruth herself is a single mother, and she raises her boys just fine.

No, what disturbs is something else, something insidious and impossible to ignore: Sal lets her kids out of the house to play. Arthur and Maggie, the undersides of their tiny feet slapping against the asphalt, their fro’d heads bobbing and disappearing as they run, the bright rectangles of their t-shirts flaring in the duskArthur and Maggie play outside.

Initially, the neighborhood elects to politely ignore this. “Probably they don’t have their setup yet,” Ruth’s friend, Claire, says wisely. She’s busy cleaving a watermelon into fourths on the cool marble countertop, and the sun spills from the slatted windows, striping her face with bars of yellow and shadow.

Claire sets down the cleaver and reaches up to shut the blinds before going on: “When I moved, it took a few days for the Playset to ship. And took me about twice that to figure out all the cables!” She laughs, cutting the watermelon; her laugh shakes her arm, and Ruth watches the blade sink down into the granita slush of the watermelon. Claire’s incautious fingers hold the watermelon in place, pale with limpid crimson nails. Ruth echoes Claire’s laugh, belatedly.

It does not take a few days for the Playset to ship; this is because the Playset was never shipped, which Ruth finds out later, much later. Instead, Arthur and Maggie effervesce in the smoky heat of the summertime. The neighborhood echoes with the sound of their ringing laughter, their torrid feet. Sometimes they are seen and sometimes they are not; sometimes no one knows where they are and they are tunneling through the sweltering boroughs of the neighborhood in mid-July, clambering under hedgerows and over garden sheds, splashing in unused pools and running headlong down the untrafficked cul-de-sacs.

They have skateboards, these two kids, and tricycles, and scooters; they whip down the sidewalks, bump-bump-bump over the cracks, la-di-da, not a care in the world for their motherwho stands in the doorway sometimes, watching them fondly, but is most often in the house working, not paying them any mind. They resurface for dinner and lunch, mosquito-stung and sunburnt, turning their crinkly faces up to hers for inspection.

The neighborhood watches in horror. Some threaten to petition to have her removed.

Ruth is not among them. She watches as Maggie and Arthur run pell-mell down a suburban jungle of their own devising, imagining gutters for the moats of castles, cramming silver watering cans over their curls for helmets, and feels not disgust but a mingled throb of pity and fascination. Mostly she thinks about Sal, her smiling face, her strong legs moving beneath the frayed jean shorts.

Before Sal, Ruth was the only single mother in the neighborhood. No one said anything to make her uncomfortable, no one even implied anything untoward, but she always felt conspicuous during parent fundraisers, when the couples grouped together and talked smilingly, in low voices, and Ruth stood alone, a pamphlet clutched tightly in her sweating hands.

Sometimes they reprimanded each other, chided each other in lowered voices, and Ruth would feel a hot spike of envy, how even their anger seemed to carry within it a pulsing thread of intimacy. But now, she thinks, it will be different, although what she wants that to mean, she doesn’t know.

The first district wide PFCF meeting of the new school year takes place on a Wednesday. Ruth takes the morning off work, files into the auditorium with the other parents, holding her purse. Peripherally, she sees a head of dark curls.

Ruth turns so quickly her head spins. She cannot help the sudden burst of perverse exhilaration, a repressed laugh in her chest, as if she is a child seeing something absurd. Santa Claus at Halloween. Sal at the PFCF meeting, standing not two steps away from her. Swiftly, Ruth taps her on the shoulder. When Sal turns, smiling, Ruth says: “Hello, I’m Ruth. I don’t know if you recognize me, I live a few houses down…”

“Small world,” Sal says, ironically. Ruth smiles, although she is in fact embarrassed, and says: “I was wondering if you wanted me to show you around town, introduce you to a few people, get a drink, maybe… We could meet up some time this week.”

“Mommy playdate?” Sal says, playfully. “Sure, why not?” She walks away, taking a seat in the front row.

Ruth’s wristwatch is telling her that her heart rate is too fast, maybe she should sit down now. There is an open seat in the third row. She sits.

The PFCF meeting opens like most PFCF meetings do. Doug, the president, an enormous bearish man with wiry red hair, clears his throat and brings up the slideshow. His husband looks on fondly from the second row. “Welcome, all. I am proud to bring into motion the 15th successive year for our organization, Parents For Child Fitness.”

The topics of conversation are habitual: expanding the Playset station for recess, fixing recess time, organizing subsidized sessions with CFCs for low-income families. Time moves slowly, ponderously, filled with Doug’s impassioned voice and not much else.

“Excuse me?” Sal’s voice rings out. Those in the know wince. Doug pauses and looks inquiringly.

“Yeah, thanks. I was wondering…” Sal clears her throat. She’s still smiling, but her eyes have an abrupt clarity to them; her voice, when it comes, is swift and incisive. “What are CFCs?”

Doug falters. The auditorium is silent. He rallies, and says: “Of course, I apologize for any misunderstandings. Now, you shouldn’t be embarrassed about asking questions… I’m sure many of you had the same question!” He adds, heartily, swiveling to face the audience. They stare back at him incredulously.

“I wasn’t embarrassed,” Sal says, calmly. Ruth’s wristwatch is thrumming against her wrist, frantic, telling her that

106

Novel

School

Naomi Gage

Santa Monica High

Santa Monica, CA

her heart is beating too fast again; she realizes that she is digging into one wrist with her thumbnail. She feels like she is watching something gory and gripping, like she knows what will happen: a lion tearing into a fragile white bird, a gazelle falling behind the herd. “I just wanted to know what a CFC is.”

Doug stumbles: “Uh - Child Fitness Coordinator.” He cracks a grin, and adds: “Best job there is, in my opinion. Couldn’t have raised my boys without them.”

“Okay,” Sal says, “Okay. There’s only one thing I don’t understand.”

“And that is?”

“Why can’t the kids play outside?” Sal asks, and spines stiffen in every row. Rapidly, Doug clicks a few slides ahead, and says: “Because….”

They all know the risks, of course. The government sends newsletters out like clockwork every month, subject-lined with hair-raising words like DANGER and ACUTE RISK and RECENT ALARMING TRENDS. The body of the email contains reasoning clearly highlighted in brusque font, graphs and data all showing the same curves and spikes, the cartography of a fear that they have come to known like the smell of their children’s sleeping skin. It’s not only the child-snatchers. Children have been known - as Figure 2.1 clearly illustrates - to faint at temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of an average day on the block. If unattended to - and who has the time to follow their kids around outside? - this can lead to severe heat stroke. Before CFCs, thousands of children had to be hospitalized.

Doug flicks through the data quickly, mispronouncing the names of the medical research journals, and faces Sal triumphantly. There is a spontaneous burst of applause from the parents: he has done it, he has slain the beast of ignorance unhesitatingly, armed with his facts and figures, well done, really great.

Sal’s mouth is the color of an unwaxed plum normally; now her lips are white with force and tension. Ruth watches her, both afraid of and anticipating her response, which does not come; Sal sits quietly, her hands folded in her lap, and follows the rest of the slideshow with her eyes.

Afterwards, Ruth gets up from her seat with a feeling of relief. She thinks ahead, to getting in the car, driving to a house silent of the muted salvo of machine gun fire - the boys are at school, after all. Sinking into work, the reams of code she finds entrancingly penetrable.

There is a touch on her shoulder; Ruth turns. Sal is standing behind her. She is not smiling, she looks hard and daring, cutting through Ruth’s fluster like a ship through a crown of frothing spume. She says: “How about that drink now? My treat.”

Ruth cannot refuse, she was the one to initiate the prospect. So she nods, rather numbly. Sal is a fast walker; her legs take on the length of the auditorium in long strides, and Ruth hurries to keep up. They exit the auditorium, make for the parking lot. The heat is thick, physical, something to work against, and a haze of smoke turns the air the color of a glass ashtray. The buildings of the school are squat and unremarkable, the stucco grainy like cystic acne.

“Ugly, isn’t it,” Sal says, and her mouth is hard again, she is clicking her car keys.

Unbelievably, her car is parked next to Ruth’s, and Ruth wonders how she had not noticed it before: the dark red luster of the hood, the air freshener dangling from the mirror, all immediately recognizable. “Let’s get out of here. Meet you at mine?”

Sal peels out of the parking lot first, and Ruth follows. She feels small and forlorn, weaving through withdrawing tides of cars like a child following in her mother’s wake. Mommy playdate? Sure, why not? Ruth grips the steering wheel tighter, between two hands, and thinks that she will stay for fifteen minutes, they will have that drink, and then Ruth will leave.

Sal’s house is unexpected. Every surface is patterned or cozied; there are ghastly plaster lamps shaped like soda bottles or woman’s busts, turquoise calico curtains, fresh paint on the

walls in shades of honey melon, cantaloupe, mango. The effect is morbidly kitsch, like stepping into a 50’s dollhouse catalog, freakishly bright and somewhat off-putting. “You like?” Sal says, from the kitchen, her lithe hands salting the rim of a margarita glass. “The best part is - I didn’t do half of it. Previous owner left the décor - all I did was the paint, and that was nothing.” She nods at a charcuterie board, salami and hard cheeses and marcona almonds. “Help yourself.”

Sal’s dining room is sided by an enormous set of French doors, brocaded with gilt like something out of a castle. They open onto a lush yard, completely enclosed, mandevilla vines bristling over the slatted fence. Landmarks include a blue kiddie pool and a set of discarded hula hoops that lean with timorous hope against the garden hose. Ruth grips her margarita and nibbles on her cheese, which is shockingly good, all salt and cream, melting on the tongue.

The cheese gives her courage. She puts down her margarita and says: “Look, Sal - if you want your kids to play outside, and I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, why don’t you have them romp around in the backyard? You could keep your eye on them that way. Might ease minds.”

Sal laughs a muscled laugh and takes an almond between two fingers, rolling it back and forth. Ruth watches her, the almond held delicately between two thin fingers, the white teeth against the waxed plum of her mouth. “Kids get bored in small spaces,” Sal says. “They’d be scrambling for screens like the rest of their grade if I locked them in the yard.”

Ruth feels it like a physical wound, like the sudden snick of a blade unfolding. There is nothing more intensely personal than an attack, even oblique, even unintentional, on her boys, not even an insult against Ruth herself, because into her children she is supposed to put the best parts of herself, the most cherished, the most worth preserving.

Has she succeeded? Oh, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t have a damned clue, but she loves them, her immovable boys with their strawberry shampoo and their particular breakfasts, one will only have instant oatmeal, for the other it’s Pop-Tarts or bust, Pop-Tarts or he will delay all their mornings for an hour. They don’t smile at her much, her boys. Once, when her oldest won first place in a class competition: a shy grin as he told her the news. Another time, when the family dog Susie was found after a day of fruitless drone-search, their whoops and yells of exultation, throwing their hard bodies at her, clinging and clutching and caressing.

How could she not love them? They are all the more beloved for their caprices, the stubborn whims, their averted faces, because every smile she wins is victory at its sweetest, every submitted-to embrace is like touching the surface of the sun.

Why is she in this kitchen, with its honeydew walls and befrilled curtains, holding a sweating margarita that she does not even want to drink? Why is she talking to this woman, who does not even know Ruth, who doesn’t even know what a CFC is, for God’s sake?

“It’s perfectly normal for kids to play videogames,” Ruth says, her face feeling oddly tight, stretched out. “Half of the kids in Mike’s class log 14 hours daily…”

Sal’s face gives a physical twitch, contorting into an expression of involuntary disgust. “No thanks,” she says, still grimacing. “Not for my kids.”

“Everyone’s different,” Ruth says, smiling tightly. She finishes the margarita and puts it down. There is a moment of tension as both women stare at each other, Sal relaxed with her hands flat on the dining table, Ruth with her chin up, defensive. Then Ruth says: “I have to get back to work. This was so fun, let’s do it again sometime.”

“Yeah,” Sal says, letting her out. She leans on the doorframe, and her smile is crooked. “You bet.”

Her boys get home while she’s working, in the middle of navigating a particularly tricky bug in the code. She hears them

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thump their bags down and slump into the den, hears the nearinstant churr of the Playset firing up, the rapid gunfire on the screen. Ruth takes her hand off the mouse and massages her wrist. She stands up, pushes the chair in, and walks slowly to the den.

“Boys,” she says, and they don’t look at her. She doesn’t know if they can hear her; her youngest has headphones over his ears. Ruth feels a tension in her abdomen, her muscles clenching. She crosses the room and physically removes the headphones from his downy head- he looks up, crying out in startled outrage. “Boys.” She grips the headphones tighter. The Playsets are wireless now, there’s no cable to unplug. Ruth inhales, and says: “Have you done your homework yet?”

There’s a pause, and then hedged ye-es ’s. “No you haven’t,” Ruth says. “No playing until you finish your work, boys, come on. Get out of the den. Up, up.” She feels powerful, hustling her complaining boys out of the room with the couch and the screen, bidding them to make themselves of use. How easy is it, she wonders, how easy has it always been?

Later that night, her phone screen lights up with a call. It’s Jerry, the boys’ CFC. He’s a weedy man with a thin mustache like a bottlebrush, and she has only met him once in person. He was wearing a red shirt, and he had sweated through the armpits; his hair was frizzy and ridiculous. The image pops into her mind whenever she thinks of him.

She hits accept call, and pins the phone against her ear with one cocked shoulder. “Hey, Jerry. Is everything alright?”

“No, everything’s fine,” Jerry says, his voice reedy in her ears. “Just a small concern. The boys let me know that you had been restricting their Playset time. I wanted to check on that.”

“Oh, yes,” Ruth says. She is crouched over the robovacuum, which has been malfunctioning. She wedges her fingernail under the lid of the battery compartment, and lifts up. As she suspected, there is dust. “Yes. I wanted the boys to finish their homework before playing. And, I mean, do they really need to spend so long on the Playset?”

“Ruth,” Jerry says, and his tone is that of a man failing to be paternal. “You know the facts. Kids these days don’t get access to all the things we did. They can’t run outside or play in the streets. The two of us are speaking from a privileged perspective, because we were brought up back when there was real life to play in. These kids, the most important factor in forming social bonds is the time they spend on the Playset. They’re starting middle school next year, for crying out loud - right now, schoolwork isn’t the most important thing. Friendship is.”

“One of them is starting middle school,” Ruth corrects. “Mike is going into 9th grade next year.”

“That’s what I meant,” Jerry says, easily. “My point is: you want them to do their homework. Hey, I can understand that. Don’t we all? But don’t lose sight of what’s important to them.”

“Sure thing, Jerry,” Ruth says. She turns the robo-vaccum upside down with one hand and shakes it, trying to get rid of the dust. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great, great…” He clicks off. Ruth clicks the battery back into place, fits the cap back on, and the vacuum churrs to life. She watches it vanish down the hall, seemingly animated by a purpose of its own.

The next morning, she is woken by a series of knocks that escalate into the sound of a hand slamming against wood, palm flat, full force. The sounds of a desperate woman, she thinks, and gets up laboriously, putting on her robe, her slippers. She unlocks the door and opens it.

“Ruth,” Sal says, breathless. Her face is horrible, somehow both drawn and loose, tense and slack, her eyes holding within their darkness the symptoms of absolute catastrophe. She is frantic. “Have you seen my kids?”

“I - your kids?” Ruth fumbles, as if she doesn’t know what Sal is asking, although of course she does. A quiet horror pervades her, along with a sticky, insidious sense of triumph, I told you so and look, wasn’t I right? She quenches it firmly. Arthur and Maggie, their faces screwed up against the sun, Maggie’s tutu,

Arthur’s blue crocs. “Sal, what-”

“They didn’t come back for dinner last night,” Sal says, and it comes out as one long moan of grief. “They didn’t come back and I fell asleep waiting for them and I woke up and they’re still not here, I don’t know where they are…”

“Oh, Sal.” Ruth says. She is filled with compassion, compassion and relief. Her boys are fine, sleeping. “I’m sure we’ll find them.”

The drones are sent out mid-afternoon. They spiral through the sky, a cohesive phalanx of flying bots, eagle-eyed, missing nothing. They will remain airborne for months, sweeping through the neighborhood and in ever widening circles around it. After four months, a funeral is held. Ruth takes off work again to attend.

Sal is not wearing jean shorts; she wears a black pantsuit, blazer jacket firmly buttoned even in the oppressive heat of the church. She stares straight ahead as the minister speaks, and afterwards she turns, slow and infinitely weary, to accept condolences. When Ruth goes up to her, she clutches at Ruth’s hand with the strength of a tiger and says, barely audible: “Drink after?”

“Tea,” Ruth says, firmly. “My place.” Sal has never been inside her house before. But firsts are diminished, she thinks, during a time like this. How can firsts matter when two children have experienced their lasts?

“Nice place,” Sal says, quietly, once she’s inside. Ruth brews a pot of geranium tea, takes a carton of heavy cream from the fridge, along with a squeeze bottle of honey. She pours both liberally in each cup and hands one to Sal.

“I can’t think,” Sal says, her voice hoarse, eyes falling shut. She’s clutching the mug with both hands, holding it like a life preserver. “I can’t think about anything without…”

“It sounds like you need something to take your mind off of it,” Ruth says, gently. “Wanna watch some TV?”

Sal’s eyes flick open. They are a dark brown with notes of red and gold, like rust. “Yeah, why not.”

They watch some TV. They watch ANTM for two hours straight, and then Project Runway, and then a teen drama when Sal says she’s tired of reality TV, wants to watch some fiction. “This is nice,” Sal says, as the girl realizes she’s been in love with her best friend all along, “kind of sedative.”

Ruth pats her knee. She is startled to realize in herself a previously unknown depth of sympathy. “Whenever you want,” She says, “We can do this again.”

It is a decision she comes to regret, not months later but five minutes afterwards, when both are staring at the screen again and she is stricken by the possibility of Sal coming over whenever, while Ruth is in the middle of work, when the boys are home. Still, she reasons, it’s unlikely that Sal will take her up on it. Sal starts to come over often, not exactly whenever she wants but regularly, routinely: on Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings. They watch cooking shows and baking shows and shows where the point of it all requires a five-minute explanation. They talk while watching. Sal likes to rant, her voice an indefinite susurrus under the sound of the TV; she talks about the government agenda, the antitrust laws that the Playset corporation violates. Disconnected opinions that never quite manage to voice what Ruth knows lies beneath the surface. Conspiracy theorizing replacing grief, making it manageable. Sal blames the government for the loss of her children. But she will not say it out loud.

Sometimes Ruth’s boys, drawn by the sound of alien female voices, hover around the edges, entranced by the bikini clad girls of Love Island. Sal always stares at them, unselfconsciously, unblinkingly, as though she is not aware she is doing it, until Ruth, unnerved, tells the boys to scram, go get some homework done.

Sal has been attending PFCF sessions regularly, even more so than Ruth, who has had to stop taking off work. No one wants to tell her to leave, and there is no rule, after all, that only parents of current, living students may attend - but still, it unsettles people. “It’s like there’s a ghost there,” Claire confides to Ruth one

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day, “Some sort of spook or something. She never talks, not like the first time. Just sits and stares.”

Doug, the PFCF president, calls Ruth in one day after the session’s over. He beckons her with his massive hand, large as a baseball mitt, and she walks over, hitching her purse onto her shoulder. “Hey, Doug. Great slides today.”

“Thanks, thanks…” Doug trails off and leans in closer. They’re standing by the podium. “I wanted to have a quick word with you, about that friend of yours.”

“Sal,” Ruth says.

“That’s the one,” Doug nods. “Look, the whole PFCF sympathizes with her situation.

"It’s horrible, we understand that. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we’re trying to protect our kids from. But she’s got to stop coming to meetings, it’s been disturbing some of our parents.”

Ruth shifts on her feet. He has a point, she sees that, but she cannot help feel that he is being unfair to Sal in some way. She feels the righteous pleasure of defending the meek, the knowledge that she is doing the right thing, and she lets it flood her voice as she says: “Sal’s not a parent now?”

Doug blanches, but he’s always been quick to recover; he straightens, pops his knuckles, and dons an uneasy smile. “Well, of course she is. No, there’s no denying that. But parents whose children have, er, passed out of our hands generally don’t come to PFCF meetings. And, look, we miss Arthur and Maggie, too - we’re right there along with Sal, believe me.”

“You want me to offer her your condolences?” Ruth asks, her voice deliberately confused. “I’m sorry, if you wanted Sal to know, couldn’t you tell her yourself?”

Doug coughs, but his voice, when it comes, is steady. He is the orator of their group, the one who can bounce back from verbal deckings, he falters but never quits without making his point clear. It’s why he was voted PFCF president; it’s why Ruth voted for him, at least.

“What happened to Arthur and Maggie was a tragedy,” Doug says, and the change is subtle but obvious. He is calm now, relaxed, his voice is penetrative and clear. He sounds sympathetic and firmly in control of the situation. “And the real tragedy of it all, of course, is that it was totally preventable. Now, I’m not blaming her, that is not what I’m doing. But you can’t deny that if she’d let her kids on the Playset like the rest of us, they never would have gotten lost in the first place.” He pauses. “Ignorance is a danger to us all, Ruth.”

Ignorance, Ruth thinks. Sal casual in her kitchen, contemplative, saying kids get bored in small spaces . How many young mothers, hearing those words spoken so confidently, might do the same? Open their doors, let their kids run the neighborhood ragged. How many tragedies propagated from the seed of one grief?

There is a certain pleasure to be had in losing, in ceding gracefully: well, I did what I could. Ruth says, firmly, like it was never in question: “I’ll talk to her.”

“Good,” Doug says, smiling. “Good.”

It’s a Wednesday, so Sal knocks at her door before long. Ruth lets her in, like always. She is uncertain how to approach the topic, which is so massive and unspoken that she cannot even look at it directly without cringing away. Sal’s in a sweatshirt, her eyes tired, the skin underneath each lashline bruised and papery. In the dim yellow light of Ruth’s house, she can barely make out the words on Sal’s sweatshirt: MOMS AGAINST DRUG SEARCH, and wonders at it distantly. Sal’s kids are - were - in elementary school, hardly the place for randomized drug searches.

“What’s on the menu?” Sal nods at her, drifting in. “America’s Got Talent?”`

“Try Iron Chef,” Ruth says, closing the door and locking it. The boys are curled up on the sofa like rodents, each wedged in his separate corner, eyes fixed on the screen. Sal pauses, her eyes resting on them. Ruth feels a sudden surge of impatience and satisfaction, as if she’s caught Sal doing something she’s long denied.

She says, quietly: “Some of the parents have been wondering why you still come to PFCF meetings.”

“Some of the parents,” Sal repeats, eyes still fixed on Ruth’s boys. She says, her tone unchanging: “What the fuck does that mean.”

“Would you stop staring at them,” Ruth snaps, and that’s not what she meant to say; she doesn’t know what she meant to say. “I’m sorry, we’re all sorry about what happened to yours. But if you wanted to keep them safe, you shouldn’t have-”

“I shouldn’t have what,” Sal says, tonelessly.

More gently, Ruth says: “You should have kept them inside. But, look, Sal, take all the time you need, that’s fine, we understand.” Somewhere along the way, she notices, she’s started to use ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. She crosses her arms tight across her middle. “Just stop staring at my kids.”

Sal finally turns, facing Ruth, and says, flatly: “I don’t want your children.” Her eyes convey no emotion whatsoever, and Ruth knows she is telling the truth, knows the hot painful current that runs beneath: I want my own. Briefly Ruth experiences powerful emotion, transfigured by the image of Maggie and Arthur sprinting down the street, the colored shirts receding into the middle distance, their thin childish legs moving in a rhythm that no one would bother to decipher until it is far, far too late. They are beautiful. They are gone.

Ruth says, involuntarily: “What’s wrong with them?”

Sal casts a glance to the couch. Ruth’s boys have not heard the conversation, they are too busy staring at the screen, light bathing their face in bluish radiance. Their faces do not move; the surfaces of their unblinking eyes shine with the reflected movement of the chef onscreen. It is a ridiculous question, and Sal does not bother to answer it; she swings around, her movements jerky. Ruth moves back; for a hazy instant she thinks Sal will strike her. But no, Sal is reaching for the door, twisting, frustrated when it will not turn.

Ruth says, numbly: “It’s locked.”

“Yeah,” Sal says, finding the lock, turning it, wrenching the door open. “I got that, thanks.” She’s gone before Ruth can reply, moving as fast as her long legs will take her to the house across the street.

That night Ruth can’t sleep. She lies awake in her bed, thinking about Maggie and Arthur, thinking about the boys asleep in bed right now, their eyelids moving quick and restless with the force of their dreaming. How she longs to know what they are thinking, now most of all, this night more than the others: their friends, their troubles, their secret delights, their anxieties which are more impenetrable to Ruth than lines of blinking code, if they think of her, if they love her. What a silly question, she thinks. She sits up in bed. Of course they love her.

They must.

What’s this Playset about, anyway, Ruth wonders. There were never Playsets when Ruth was growing up - predecessors, sure, clunky Nintendos and Wiis. But never anything to equal the unsurpassed sleekness of the Playset interface, the symbiotic responsiveness of its functions.

Ruth pushes the covers aside, searches for her slippers in the dark. She feels her way into the hall, making her way blindly towards the den.

Halfway there, she pauses. There is, slender but plain, a line of light underneath the den’s door. Not the yellow glow of a lamp, or the dim profusion of a flashlight. She recognizes the blue glow of the Playset, striking, distinctive, a color to trigger fixation. So they are not in bed, after all.

The knot of the bathrobe digs into her stomach when she moves. Not towards the den - she feels a deep exhaustion at the thought of breaking up their play, their guilty defiance, eyes twitching away from her to the screen. Towards the front door.

Somehow she is not surprised to see Sal, thin and lonely in a gray sweatshirt and leggings, at the end of the block. She

109

is staring at the cratered moon, which shines like an apple someone’s taken a bite out of. Her hair is loose and long and frizzy, wreathing her shoulders.

“Nice night,” Ruth says, too loud. She has been trying to understand whether she needs to apologize. Now all her justifications fall away in the cool light of the moon: yes, she should apologize. She crosses over to where Sal stands, looking up at the sky.

“I can’t stop looking for them,” Sal says in response, monotone, like this is something you can tell anyone casually. “Like I think I’ll find them… Somewhere. Someday. The next block. The next house over.”

They both look over to Ruth’s house. The windows are all black, admitting nothing, except for the blue light shining from the den. Tonight, her boys are painfully visible to anyone walking by. Her lumpish, pale, beloved children, each utterly absorbed in his private universe, headphones plugged in, silencing the gunfire from outside ears. Controllers in hands. Eyes fixed to screens. Suddenly, Ruth is overwhelmed by a massive grief, a sadness so huge there is no room for anything else, as if everything she loves best has been shaken loose, as though life has too many faces to remember, and all faces malevolent.

“They’re so… stolid,” Ruth whispers, unable to help herself. It hurts to say, she feels a wincing prick of pain. She is hurting herself. With terrible gentleness, Sal says: “What did you expect? You raised them.”

Ruth nods as if she has not heard her clearly and stares vaguely into the distance, where Sal had been looking earlier: at the moon, at the night beyond the moon, the sky bleached gray by city lights. Sal lights a cigarette. After a while, Ruth goes back inside.

110

Charlotte Gagliardi

111

Progressions Recycled and secondhand fabrics, thread 2022

Design Arts Natick High School Natick, MA

SydneyBlu Garcia-Yao

Words

July 18th, 2013, seven

It’s time for dinner, and my grandmother slips a slim 水饺1 skin from the plastic, the silky wheat powder like snow against her tanned palms. Her hands are the texture of leather and the hardiness of rugged rope. I pick at the bits of fallen flour until my grandmother says something in Hakkanese I can’t understand. I assume she wants me to get up and attend to my mother, tired from a long day at work. I’ve gotten better at predicting what she says without words.

I greet my mother, and she replies in English, as always. She slips her heels off with a sigh before showering, hot steam evaporating the traces of work from her. Back in the kitchen, I watch my grandmother’s deft hands scoop meat into a small skin, almost like ice cream in a cone.

I’m bored; the long days of summer simmer slowly. There was nothing to do while my grandmother diced the meat and mushrooms into mush, carefully plastic wrapped to protect from flies. I’m tired of reading books: my only solace of English in this house of unknown dialects. In my head, when my mother speaks Hakkanese with her parents, I imagine random characters as subtitles, like in foreign films. The sound moves like a chain of words and alien marks on paper.

My mother makes me learn Chinese, but I don’t want to. Every time I write characters in practice books, I just forget them. She complains that she buys expensive books and I don’t use them, but Chinese is useless in America anyway. It’s too hard to learn. My mother tried to teach me, too, slowly writing characters in chalk above pinyin2, but I didn’t get it. It’s too hard. She gave up, too. It’s just a waste of time. I miss being in school, where everyone spoke English, and the teachers thought I was really smart. Here, I can’t understand anything.

I lean my chin against the edge of the counter and watch my grandmother intently as she crimps the edges of the dumplings. She looks at me as if she had something to say, but then looks back to the half-formed dumplings. Once, I insisted that I, too, wanted to fold the edges. When my grandmother cooked them, the filling spilled out, and I ate plain dumpling skins. I contemplate asking my grandmother about her cooking, in hopes that after she leaves, my delicious food will remain. I don’t have the words to ask. I detach myself from the counter to look for my mother.

My mother always tells me a story before bed of her life in China when she used to live with her grandmother—my greatgrandmother. She recounts how she climbed her neighbor’s trees to pick fruits because, otherwise, the heavy fruits would sag the branches before falling to bruise the tender flesh. My grandmother is the protagonist of many of her stories, and I imagine the woman who prepared every meal for the past two months acting out my mother’s descriptions. I picture my grandmother laboring in the field and caring for her younger siblings, working a full-time job and still waking up at six to get groceries.

When I’m about to fall asleep my imagination wanders, and I paint her past as a hero’s story, a retelling of the tales passed down from my mother in English. Maybe her rough hands and tanned skin were from when she was a military commander, or maybe she was an archer on horseback. Maybe her calloused hands and stoic

demeanor were from her past life when she was a dragon, when she breathed fire and owned the world.

I want to ask my grandmother so many questions, but she returns to China in a few days. I say nothing, and anticipate the return of English in our house.

I look to find my mother still in the shower.

July 18th, 2019, thirteen

We’re in Japan, and my grandfather declares that five days without Chinese food is entirely too long. We all go to eat at what my grandfather declares a Japanese-style Chinese restaurant—my grandfather refuses to call it Chinese food.

I order noodle soup, and my grandmother clasps her hands in her lap, the blue light from the lake outside reflecting off her yellow skin like she’s the moon, dark freckles like craters. I try to capture the moment, amidst my little cousin badgering her mother—my aunt—and my grandfather’s throaty, smoke-filled cough of a laugh. My grandmother smiles at my camera snap and her mouth stretches to form words but pauses. She returns to staring.

I want to know what she’s thinking. I wonder if I just like asking questions but not answering them. But I don’t have the words to ask because my grandmother speaks Hakkanese, and I speak English, so neither of us can speak Mandarin. We’re like two orbiting bodies that will never touch. I learned about orbits in science class back in America. Orbits vary; every year we get three million miles closer to the sun. But in six months, we are three million miles farther again. As soon as I see her, I’m already gone. The airport is just as familiar as their apartment in Guangzhou.

My mother explains that my grandmother knows little Mandarin because she grew up in our family’s hometown, about five hours from the city. There, the cactus trees still grow like ivy around the front of the house, and my great-grandmother now spends her days watching reruns on TV.

My aunts are talking, but I often tune out of the conversation. It’s a lot of effort for me to follow, rearranging the words in my head, rewriting the words they speak into English. Everytime I speak in Chinese, everyone has the same look of confusion as they decode my words. Jokes aren’t funny twenty seconds after the fact. Sometimes, when my mother isn’t around to translate, their puzzled looks never leave.

When I don’t try to understand, the words sound like a melody. Out of all my family, I love my grandmother’s Hakkanese the most. She sounds like a warrior, thick accent like music while my Mandarin sounds like the screech of my first attempt at the viola. It sounds like paper cutting your ear over and over. Everytime I speak, I am a baby playing on their first drum set, a child singing loudly out of tune. My mother repeats my poor tones back to me, and my ears hurt more. She says her ears hurt, too.

The waiter brings us plates of different dishes, and my grandmother slides the bowl near me, before pretending she hasn’t done so. I catch her, and she smiles secretly. But I don’t know the word for thank you in Hakkanese.

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Creative Nonfiction Harriton High School Bryn Mawr, PA

1. Boiled Dumpling 2. Hanyu Pinyin is the standard romanization system for Mandarin, taught primarily to young children.

My mother cooks white-fleshed fish in the kitchen, the fan set high to dissipate the strong smell. I set the table against the aroma of the crackling fish skin and ginger. My grandmother used to cook fish often that summer, but as a child I hated the work of finding and then spitting out the bones. Sometimes my grandmother would hunt out the bones for me with chopsticks, despite her poor eyesight.

My mother spits out the thin bones with ease while I can’t locate the one in my mouth. “I miss 奶奶3. She made the best fish.” I laugh. “Remember when you had to go somewhere overnight, so you left me at home and 奶奶 stayed with me the whole night?” My mother nods her head yes. “Jeez, I was so mad and scared or something that I woke her up like ten times, just because I was upset.” I may have been in America, but it felt like I was drowning in China.

“She couldn’t understand you, so you don’t have to feel bad,” my mother replies. “She probably thought you were having a nightmare or something.” I burst into laughter like the pomelos my grandmother used to peel, juice spraying instantly. My mother does not laugh with me. The laughter drains away like water after you unplug the bathtub: slowly, and then all at once.

4,” she says.

“What?” I ask. She explains:

My grandmother is in the hospital recovering from surgery for her back.

She fell down trying to chase after my five-year-old cousin.

The surgery has already happened.

At least, this is what I am told. No one tells me what happens until it’s happened. Sometimes not even then. My mother recently revealed that my grandmother woke up at five in the morning to make me fresh dumplings for breakfast, but I thought they were from the freezer.

“We’re calling her tonight.”

It feels like just yesterday my grandmother and I went to the market to buy jujubes. I crunched the sweet juices—a small trail down my chin—while my grandmother interrogated the fishmonger.

When the clock aligns with Guangzhou—only at night or early morning with the thirteen hour offset—we call my grandmother on Weibo. I wait through the dial tone to hear my grandmother’s voice, to see if her strength has recovered with her back, to see if she’s still 奶奶5, the 奶奶 who is a warrior, the protagonist in my mother’s stories.

She sits outside on the beige balcony, in our 17th floor apartment in Guangzhou, underwear hung up to dry next to her. Her skin is still the vibrant color between lychee and longan. “满子7!” she calls me, in Hakkanese. “宝贝6!” in Mandarin. She laughs like she always does, the only sound with the same meaning in every language. My cheeks heighten and fill as I smile brightly back.

My grandmother insists on walking around the house, to demonstrate her recovery. Normally, by now, I would have left already, after my mother makes me 打招呼8 to show respect. I don’t see the point in staying on the call because eight years later, the only improvement in my Chinese is, now, not only can my mother tell how bad my Chinese is, but I can too.

But none of that matters anymore. “你吃饭了吗9?” I ask.

She bursts into a smile once she understands, eyes crinkling into crescent moons. Her wrinkles wrap around her words as she enthusiastically nods, her bob shaking everywhere like jujube tree leaves in wind.

“

吃了10 !” My grandmother replies in heavily-accented Mandarin. We talk in a language that belongs to neither of us, but we share the blood in our veins that belongs to both of us.

“

明年来美国吧? 我想念你11 ,” I say.

She just smiles, her yellowed teeth showing, her wrinkles stretching taut, her perfectly black hair shifting, as she agrees with all her warrior’s might, and a hand gives a thumbs-up.

“得人锡!” she says in Hakkanese. I don’t know what that means, but I fill in the words for her. I’m in America, but I smell my grandfather’s smoke wafting off his clothes while he inspects his blackened teeth with a toothpick. The ground shakes with my cousin’s excited jumps, and my aunt soothes my crying baby cousin with a popsicle. She takes the green melon ice into her chubby hands, her palms not half the length of the stick. Her cheeks pout like soft rice cakes and my aunt, always reserved, cannot help but smile. My other aunt is washing dishes in the kitchen with the clang of porcelain bowls, and I am there, with my grandmother, asking her about all the stories she never got the chance to tell me as a kid.

And she starts at the beginning.

113 July 18th, 2021, fifteen

“奶奶摔跤了

3. Grandma 4 Grandma fell 5.. Grandma 6. My beloved child! 7. Sweetheart! 8. Say hello 9. Have you eaten? (A common greeting in China) 10. I ate! 11. Next year, come visit us in America, please? I miss you.

Nathaniel Garza

114

Visual Arts

Uno! Prismacolor and charcoal on mixed media paper 2021

Alamo Heights High School San Antonio, TX

Chavely Gomez

Allapattah!

Upcycled denim from jeans, zippers, buttons

115

Design Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

2021

Charles Green

Alliterative Allusion

Not gonna lie

Sometimes I'm lonely

By my lonesome, loathsome

Leery, lugubrious self

Lashing out at the lucidity

Of my luckless condition

Living as if life was a loan from God

And with every step my repentance, The interest

-ing way

The way we justify the things we do

The way we do them.

Back to God,

Though I appreciate the metaphor

Never really been about that life

About that death

About what's left

If the power ain't up in the sky, then where is it?

The power's in the people, The plants, the planters

This paradoxical powder keg known as life on earth

That's will, that's soul, that's power, this is the hour.

Our lives are what stand in the way, between eternal bliss and eternal damnation

Bringing hell on earth, bringing earth back to hell To hell with it

Truth is I wanna see a different a side of you

Never minding the fact that

I never minded when you would go ahead and speak that mind of yours

If you would

Would you be so kind as to fill me in as to just who you are

Teach me

How to make you smile

How to make you laugh

I wanna make that resting face of unamusement crack

Unamusement's not a word by the way

(I'm gettin' off track)

So let's get on track

Amtrak

How's that

Bet you thought this was about alliteration

Yeah, I did too

But now you're here to listen to the rambunctious ramblings of a rowdy teenager way in over his head

Speaking of my head it's spinning with ideas, By my lonesome, by myself

That's when I start to think

That the therapeutic oscillations in my noggin

Start knock knock knocking

When I start to realize

The stupidity you were talking I mean like what's your problem

Learn to read an article or two

To back up your prognosis

fo' you come to me

Want sumthin from me

Hogging me

Begging me

Holding me down, cause you're so scared

All of you so fearful

Too fearful

Afraid to live, Afraid to die

(Quote)

"Light is but a farewell gift from darkness to those on their way to die." -A video game

There is no life without pain

Without strife, without fear

Without death

Two sides, same coin, yin yang

Y'all tryna to take the pain out of living

I say bring it on Wassup danger

116

Spoken Word Nova High School Davie, FL

Piper Greene

My Father: A Playlist

“Foreplay/Longtime” - 7:48

A couple weeks ago, I rode in the car with my dad on the way home from a gathering with friends. “Foreplay/Longtime” by Boston played over the car speakers. It’s not uncommon for my father and me to keep silent for minutes on end, just listening to music. He drove while I looked out the window, listening to Tom Scholtz slam the keyboard, trying to picture his fingers frantically jumping from major to minor chords.

The distant whooshing of air outside the car nearly muted the soft cries coming from the driver’s seat; I looked over at my father and saw a tear roll down his cheek. It’s always unsettling to see a parent cry, to think they may be capable of weakness. I reached for his hand, mostly to have something to do. I looked out the window, my father crying as my town rolled by. The car was silent except for the music on the stereo, the air whipping past my window, and my father’s small sniffles. After a while, he sighed and wiped the tears from his face. A confused silence floated in the air before I asked him what made him emotional about the song. My father gave a deep sigh and a brief pause before explaining.

“I was around your age, probably, fifteen or sixteen, when my mother died,” he said. After his mother died, he told me, his father bought an RV and took my dad and his two brothers up to New Hampshire to see their grandparents. They only drove at night, and my dad and his brothers would take all the mattresses from the RV’s beds and put them on the floor, sleeping through the night. My dad had a Walkman that he took everywhere, and Boston had just come out with their first album. He listened to that album over and over again for two days straight, “Foreplay/Longtime” specifically.

My dad recalled lying on the mattresses in the back of the RV as they drove through New York City, the light from the buildings and street lights casting shadows on the ceiling of the car. “I remember listening to the album and wondering why my mother had to die.” The word die hung in the silence between us. I squeezed my dad’s hand.

I tried to imagine what it was like to lose a parent so young, what I would do if he were to leave my life. Tears began to form in my eyes as I thought about how his mother never got to see him graduate or get married. We both sat in the car crying as Sib Hashian pummeled the cymbals and Brad Delp began to wail:

It’s been such a long time

I think I should be goin’, yeah

It keeps on rollin’

“Three Hours to Paris” - 4:18

“Before your mother, Sheryl was the love of my life,” my father said as we listened to the album he had recorded after he finished at West Point Military Academy. After graduating, he was stationed in Dexheim, Germany and entered a new chapter of life, while abandoning an old one. As promising as his military career seemed, he left a lot back at West Point, including Sheryl. Sheryl was a few years younger than he was, and they met as cadets at West Point. They had dated on-and-off for a considerable time until my dad graduated. As he would later find out, she had been cheating on him with several different people while they were dating, giving him plenty of material to create a love-lorn rock album. The military wasn’t the most accommodating place for my dad’s pining for Sheryl, but music was. Music was a place where he didn’t have to be perfect or tough. Music was a way for him to say all the things he couldn’t tell anyone.

Raked Over the Flesh is dramatic and brooding in its lyrics, but fast and bright in its melodies. If there was ever an

equally dramatic and poetic narrative of a young man’s life, it would be the album he recorded in the spare bedroom of his apartment in Germany. Love songs, revenge anthems, breakup tunes: all recorded with a Rockman, a drum machine, a keyboard, a microphone, and an electric guitar. In today’s world of Voice Memos and GarageBand, the fact that he recorded it all on a cassette tape was cool and vintage to me. In the clear case where he stores the tape, there is a pink slip of paper with a doodle of Calvin and Hobbes on it, liner notes, and the lyrics to every song. The handwriting on the liner notes is the same slanting scrawl he used, years later, to write notes for my lunchbox. The same hands that played the guitar so many years ago were the same ones that held the steering wheel and drove me to school in the mornings. I listened to Raked Over the Flesh recently, and I get freaked out every time at this image: my father crouching over a mixer in the empty bedroom of his apartment in Germany, his brows furrowed in concentration, the same furrowed brows that taught me how to replace windshield wipers and help me with my math homework.

I have some favorites on the album, including a song called “Three Hours to Paris,” which he wrote about Sheryl. She and my dad had gotten in touch somehow and made plans to meet up in Paris. My dad booked a three hour train ride from Dexheim to the City of Light. “We spent the whole night in Paris,” he recalled sentimentally. “We ran around and saw the sights.”

Running around is indicative of a whole genre of activity, but I could tell by the way my dad talked about that time, he had high hopes for the meeting, that she might stop “running around” with other guys and get back with him. This didn’t happen, and “Three Hours to Paris” came into being.

“Three Hours to Paris” was one of the last songs added to the album and shortly after seeing Sheryl, he wrote the song and finished the album. He never saw Sheryl after that night in Paris. “I wrote this song as a final sentiment towards Sheryl,” he said. “I saw what a skank she was and realized that my hopes for that trip to Paris were ridiculous.”

Three hours to Paris

Hop, skip, jump

This tree of fester

Now a stump

“Welcome to New York” - 3:33

When I think of my dad as music, I think of Depeche Mode, Rush, Amy Mann, CAKE, the Presidents of the United States, and, oddly enough, Taylor Swift. It doesn’t have much to do with her actual music style. In fact, I think my father would rather get a root-canal than be subjected to one of her albums. But the memories I associate with her music have a lot to do with my dad.

When my sister and I were in elementary school, my dad drove us to school nearly every day. He put together a playlist on his little silver iPod of songs that we loved. We listened to it every morning. The playlist was a mix of joke songs (like “Hobo Baby,” “People Really Like Milk,” and “Everybody’s Got Their Underpants On.” To a seven year old, this is the peak of comedy) and some classic pop from the 2010s. He included the greats: Taylor Swift, Hannah Montana, Hillary Duff, Beyonce. He would much rather be listening to anything else, and he could have easily subjected us to some obscure indie rock, or even his own album. But he didn’t.

Instead, he compiled all of our favorite songs into a six hour and twenty-nine-minute playlist. What would normally be a quiet, short car ride turned into something my sister and I looked forward to. He would sing Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” with us, all three of us bopping around in our seats. The poor man knew all the words to “Shake It Off” and “You Belong With Me.” To this day, if I asked him, I’m sure he could recite the songs lyric for lyric. Looking

117

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

And time doesn’t wait for me

at it now, he probably danced and sang just to keep from losing his mind. Perhaps the acoustic guitar in her songs reminds me of my dad’s playing, or just the memories of driving to school listening to her music; whatever it is, I listen to these songs and think of my father.

Years later, when I turned thirteen, he helped me set up my first record player (by “helped me,” I mean I sat on my bed and watched him click and plug things into place.) He didn’t bat an eye when I said the first record I wanted to play was Taylor Swift. He showed me how to put the needle on the record without scratching it, and after a few moments of crackling, “Welcome to New York” began to play. I started jumping around and dancing. By the end of the tune my dad was singing and dancing around, too, smiling at how ecstatic I was. For someone with such a specific and old-school music taste to prance around the room with his daughter to Taylor Swift takes a level of composure and affection that most fathers may not have the patience for. He could have easily left me to dance alone, but instead decided to enjoy the moment with me.

He probably doesn’t remember that day, and even if he does, it’s no doubt a vague memory in the back of his mind. What he doesn’t know is that I will always remember us in my room, listening to “Welcome to New York,” both of us dancing. I have a tightly closed box of precious memories like this. Every time I hear a song from Boston’s first album or someone whips out a cassette tape or plays this Taylor Swift song, the lid of that box is lifted just a crack, these prized memories slipping out and playing in my mind before I tuck them gently back into their box. In the rare moments that the memory of him dancing with me to “Welcome to New York” makes its way out of the box, I laugh a little at the thought of him bouncing his bald head back and forth to the chorus: It’s a new soundtrack

118

I could dance to this beat The lights are so bright But they never blind me

Brian Guan

A door stands to the side of the stage; behind it, a disheveled studio apartment. Chinese adages of good fortitude line the walls; on a counter, a family portrait with a mother, a father, and a son. An African American woman, LAURA (mid-40s), stands before the door. Inhaling, she knocks.

No response. LAURA is visibly debating whether or not to knock again when FEI (early-50s) rushes to open the door. The two women stare at each other. LAURA lowers her hand awkwardly.

LAURA Hi.

FEI Who are you?

LAURA

I'm so sorry, I should have called earlier. Mrs. Ming, I'm-

FEI Oh. I know who you are. I see you on the TV.

LAURA Right.

FEI From the trial.

LAURA Right again. A beat. Neither woman knows what to say.

FEI Well, come on in. And take off your shoes. Please. LAURA does. Walking in, she looks around.

LAURA I like your apartment. Prime location. Your rent must be high.

FEI Not really. I'm, um, friends with landman. Keeps prices down.

LAURA You mean landlord?

FEI Hmm?

LAURA Sorry, I was just wondering if you meant-

FEI Right. Landlord. Sorry, my English is not great.

LAURA No, it's okay. I'm a real estate agent, so.

FEI Good money.

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Play or Script

Dublin High School Dublin, CA GOOD

LAURA Enough money.

She laughs awkwardly. No reciprocation. Both women are unsure of what to do next. In lieu of silence, LAURA walks over to the counter, picks up the photo.

LAURA Is this...

Him, implied, but she doesn't have the heart to finish her sentence.

FEI Yes.

LAURA Oh! And your husband. How sweet.

FEI Right.

LAURA Is he here now?

FEI Gone. Passed a few years back.

LAURA Oh. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed.

FEI Hmm?

LAURA And with- Oh God, I'm so sorry. That is... incredibly difficult.

FEI doesn't respond.

LAURA Ha. Look at me. Overstepping already. Let me start over.

FEI It's fine.

LAURA No, it's not, I'm-

FEI Fine.

FEI grabs a chair and sits down. LAURA follows suit.

LAURA I should have reached out earlier. I wanted to say that. It's just, with everyone going on, something felt off, and. Well. I'm sorry.

FEI You found where I live?

LAURA

(embarrassed)

Oh. Yeah. One of my friends is um, in the city government. That, and the publicity... It wasn't too hard, I guess.

FEI Hmm. And the public? What are they saying?

LAURA

Less, now that it's been a few weeks. That my son is responsible. That he's an addict. Have you been keeping up with the news?

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FEI No. Just the hearings. Everything else, I can't.

LAURA Me too. God, me too.

FEI You have a good lawyer.

LAURA Thanks. Beat.

FEI Verdict is soon.

LAURA It's definitely, uh. Yes

FEI Your son. How is he?

LAURA

As good as he can be. Which means bad, truthfully. I still don't think I can believe it, to be honest. Like, he had all these plans for the future, and now... well...

FEI

I know. Mine did, too.

LAURA Oh. Oh no, I didn't mean to imply

FEI No, you didn't.

LAURA Obviously, your situation is just. I mean, it's incomparable-

FEI That my son is dead? Yes, it is that. Incomparable. The two women stare at each other

LAURA

Listen, if you want to talk to my kid about anything. About that night, what happened. I'm positive he would be beyond happy to oblige you. I would... I would make sure of it.

FEI

LAURA

Thank you, but. Not necessary.

Are you sure? It wouldn't be any hassle, so-

FEI No. I couldn't. Not right now.

LAURA

Okay. Okay. I guess I just don't want you to think that your son, that Li... That Li was to blame, or that you could have stopped it, or that it was anyone's fault, because I know how-

FEI It was, though.

LAURA Sorry?

FEI

It was. His fault. He knew it was dangerous. He wasn't stupid. And he still did it.

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LAURA Yeah, but. Teenagers. Teenagers do idiotic things all the time-

FEI Li wasn't idiot.

LAURA (grasping at straws) No, I'm not saying that at all, it's just. I mean, we live in San Francisco. You can't blame him for not thinking in high school. Most people don't.

FEI Is that how you excuse your son?

Beat. LAURA registers this.

LAURA Excuse me?

FEI Nothing. Nothing. I'm sorry.

Uncomfortable silence.

FEI It's just. It's not how I raised him. Painkillers, for God's sake. Painkillers.

LAURA It's not that simple-

FEI

You know he got into Yale? A week before it happened. We went out to dinner, at the restaurant downtown where I used to work. Where he grew up. And I thought: this is what they were talking about. The American dream. We had made it.

She gulps.

Then. One week. I get call. Fentanyl overdose. He was with some kid, your son. And now he's gone.

LAURA God.

FEI I didn't even know they were friends. I went through his texts. Best friends. And he never told me.

LAURA I'm sorry.

FEI Did you know? That they knew each other?

LAURA Um, yeah. Yeah, Li came over sometimes.

FEI Hmm. It's funny. Like I didn't know him at all.

LAURA Don't say that.

FEI I just wish. That I could fix it. Or make someone fix it, I don't know.

She looks at Laura.

Hey. Does your son know who did it?

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LAURA What?

FEI

Does he know who sold it to them?

LAURA No.

She hesitates. Well, yes, actually, but he won't say. Says he doesn't want to hurt anyone else.

FEI He won't tell you.

LAURA No.

FEI (after a pause) Bullshit.

LAURA What?

FEI Bullshit. My child is dead and your son knows who did it, but he doesn't want to hurt anyone? Bullshit.

LAURA You're oversimplifying-

FEI No, I am not. It's the truth. Beat. FEI shakes her head. You wouldn't get it.

LAURA Really.

FEI It's different. Different cultures, you don't-

LAURA (picking up undertones) What's that supposed to mean?

FEI

I have no roots here. My husband and I, we came here alone. Li, he knew that. We pushed him so hard, and he struggled, I'm well aware, but. But I thought he understood. That it was so he could live better.

Maybe it's okay for you, that your son threw his life away, but Li. Li should have known better. Because of who he was. Now he is on TV because he died. Like I said, different.

LAURA You're wrong. I'm sorry, but you're wrong.

FEI Hard truths.

LAURA No. No.

LAURA (CONT.)

She breathes in, shuddering.

Do you know how hard I tried to get him to tell me? Who sold them the drugs? He says he doesn't want any more collateral damage, but. They were offering a plea deal. He could have taken it, but he won't say, so he's

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fully responsible. 18 years old. They're saying 5 years in prison, at least. For one instance of drug possession. It's unfathomable.

And what I know is that he won't make it through that system alive. My kid, black kids. He had a future. He had a future. I'm sorry for your loss, but your son was not better than mine. Don't you dare imply that.

Silence. The two women don't look at each other.

FEI (quietly)

I never said he was better.

LAURA I know.

FEI I never said...

LAURA

FEI

She doesn't finish her sentence. A beat, then LAURA coughs and stands up.

I should probably go. Our legal team, we're meeting early tomorrow. It was nice, um. Talking.

You too. Good luck with trial.

LAURA Thank you.

She starts to walk out. Before she gets to the door, FEI calls out quietly.

FEI Why did you come here, then?

LAURA pauses, then says, slowly:

LAURA

My son, um. That night I told him to sit down and I yelled, really dug into him for an hour, but he didn’t care. All he could talk about was your kid. How he didn’t know where he would be without him. How he had been the only one who’d listened.

And even with everything, I couldn’t stop thinking: if our places were different, I’d want to know that. That my son was a good person. A good friend.

She waits for a response: seemingly, nothing. She turns to go, then, suddenly-

FEI

He was good. A pause. LAURA looks at FEI.

He was good. Like you said. He was more than that, I think, he was-

He was smart. Not the smart that anyone can be. How I pretended to be, back home, when I was in school. And everyday I wish I had taken him there, back home, to China; I said I would but I never did. And he was funny, and he was kind, and he was so many other things but what I remember most is that he was good at singing.

Really good. When he was small I had him sing at work. I said it was for tips, but really I wanted to show him off. And I hate idea that everyone has gift, it’s so American, but I think singing… that was his. Paid for classes, too. But then he got older, and school got harder, and I stopped taking him. Told him it was waste of time because there is no money in singing. No future. I didn’t want him to hurt like I did. Like his father did.

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He was so…

She stops, unable to find any English words strong enough to convey her loss. In their place, she breaks down crying.

LAURA watches her for a second, then, momentarily hesitant, walks towards her and wraps her arms tightly around this other woman: the first time we see them touch.

FEI stiffens, then sinks into her, allowing herself to experience the grief she’s been holding back for the first time since losing her son. It’s jarring. It’s cathartic.

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But after that… after that I never heard him sing again. And it makes me so ashamed, because when you heard his voice, it was so…

Charlotte Hagen

Starforged

Nature never asked anything from anyone. No wonder Steren found it so easy to run into its embrace time and time again, the huge expanse of the forest eagerly waiting on his doorstep day after day. It never judged, it never questioned, and after enough years of speaking to people who did, the boy knew where he would rather be.

The sun-spotted trails formed by his own footsteps wound their way deep into the woods, far away from the sounds of any city, even farther than his own father ever managed to get. The leaves barely broke beneath his feet, his every movement deliberate as he crept among the trees. A bow hung at his side, expectant.

As soon as he learned to hunt, Steren had moved out of his house. Not in an official sense, but over time his wanderings led him to spend more nights in the forest than in his own home. His father didn’t seem to notice, age only bringing his business more renown. He could scarcely look up from his forge anymore, so the boy turned his attention to the woods.

Steren’s gaze landed on a dark animal shifting amongst the brambles. His eyes locked on, never leaving the creature as one arm seamlessly slipped into his quiver, nocked an arrow into his bow, and drew the string.

He supposed that he should have stayed around and been the kind of host all the soldiers and statesmen expected to find at the villa. He had tried for a while, but he had only so much patience for politics and policies completely foreign to him. These unexpected guests pestered him about his father’s work, about whether he knew trade secrets and was willing to give them away. They expected him to carry on his father’s work. It was usually after this seeming truth had been upended that they revealed how they really felt about him. To them he was untamed, uneducated, without allegiance to a particular city-state and only worth the time of day due to his father being the blacksmith he was.

The string was drawn taut, but Steren’s mind was only half focused on the task at hand. His eye was still on the creature, its dark fur highlighted by the strands of light peering through highreaching branches.

He didn’t appreciate the painstaking lengths his father went through to provide enough for the two of them. He knew this already. They were farther away from any kingdom’s land than they had any right to be, effectively placing them in a neutral zone. Word spread about Conleth, his father and the starmetal blacksmith himself, who would sell a sword to just about anyone regardless of political affiliation. Maybe it was a genius move. In Steren’s experience, it only drew sleazy, egotistical clients from across the land into their home.

“They all act that way regardless.” was the gruff reply his father had when Steren asked years ago, cementing itself into the boy’s perception of outsiders. The guests always spoke of level land bearing the weight of thousands of buildings, stacking on top of each other until they cut against the very sky. At one point it had dazzled Steren’s imagination, but where would he be now without the ground under his feet? In what world did men find something as natural as a blade of grass to be foreign, long paved over as if it were a blight on the land?

The forest was alive, and Steren could feel its heartbeat. He never understood why civilization, as it stood, chose to push back against nature at every turn. But it didn’t matter. His questions had only ever brought the suggestion that he attend school in one of these cities. These clients hoped to civilize him. They hoped to make his father choose sides.

No, Steren was now certainly losing focus. He shook his head, as if the racing thoughts would tumble out, and brought his bow back up. There were better times to worry about these things. He let the arrow fly.

It pierced the creature’s hide, and the loud wail of a bear broke through the trees. As she reared back, Steren soon realized she was much bigger than anything he could expect to kill. He half-expected her to flee, but instead the bear’s beady eyes turned in his direction as she stalked closer.

Steren was not one to be easily frightened, but his limbs ran cold and the bow hung useless at his side. He had chosen it as a kind of slight against his father, who had never infused bows with his starmetal. But the weapon wouldn’t do any good up close, and his makeshift knife was only ever used to carve into creatures after their fate had been sealed. The knife, too, was as plain as the stone it came from, nothing like his father’s work.

Steren had heard enough stories about starmetal to know its worth. Weapons forged by his father held a power no one could place, turning soldiers into heroes and elevating them from obscurity to legend. One could accomplish almost anything with a starmetal weapon, and despite the best efforts of every researcher in the city-states, no one was quite sure why. Not even Steren. That was between his father and the embers of his forge.

But starmetal had its own cost. As quickly as a man rose through the ranks, he would find himself falling from grace just as fast, as if the very material of the weapon had turned against him. Accusations often arose against Conleth, who defended the weapons’ inevitable fall as a natural cycle.

“Stars live by their fire. It is what fuels them. It’s what kills them.” The blacksmith had once said. “Why do you think I call it starmetal?” People never truly bought his words, but the fact that starmetal only had one practical use prevented them from complaining further.

Of all the times Steren had scoffed at that stupid name, of all the times he watched his father work without knowing anything about his process, it hadn’t occurred to him that he never wielded starmetal.

Now he could only wish he had something half as strong, falling back and clinging onto the nearest tree, the bear’s heaving breaths growing louder. She grew in size with each step, her raised dark fur painting her ever larger against the backdrop of the forest. Steren swallowed his own breath, the heat of hers rushing against his body. He was too close to run. Not naive enough to climb.

The bear appeared to trace his scent, moving closer and closer to where his feet stood. He had only a matter of seconds to act, which quickly wasted away before Steren had the chance to count them. The bear stood on her hind legs, a heavy paw scraping against Steren’s shoulder before it found its resting place above him. He couldn’t breathe. The tree groaned under the creature’s weight, even its sturdy base nearly too weak to support her.

The bear let out a heavy snort as she snuffed at the tree’s lower branches, and finally, miraculously, withdrew. Her long claws tore at Steren’s arm once more, and she padded away with only the slightest limp in her step. The wound didn’t sting until he took his first gasping breaths, parting with the tree and nearly collapsing to the ground with weak knees. He wasn’t the soldier his father was. Conleth had made sure of it.

The ambassadors, soldiers, and captains still lodged in the house barely acknowledged Steren’s return. He could nonetheless feel them staring at where the bear had slashed him, where his skin was stripped away as if it were bark on a tree. He dressed the wound dismissively, only occasionally catching someone’s eye. Sometimes it entertained him to know how uncomfortable they looked when he watched them back. Sometimes it frustrated him, fueling an ever-boiling anger that tugged at the back of his mind.

His father had been toiling away at the forge, shooing away onlookers and growing ever more paranoid of keeping his

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Short Story Mariemont High School

Cincinnati, OH

trade secrets. All the visitors wanted to get out of the forest, back to their lives and the city. All of them knew that if more than one man could make the starmetal weapons, they would be free that much faster. Before Steren began venturing into the woods, the visitors’ eyes usually turned to him to pick up his father’s trade. Now the men were taking it upon themselves to snoop and pry. Conleth pretended not to notice.

The blacksmith sent a footsoldier to retrieve his son, and watched the man scramble to try and absorb the details of his work before he too was whisked out of the area. Conleth then set a sword in his hand off to the side, dunking the sizzling steel in water.

“That’s not starmetal.” Steren noticed.

“I do the real work at night,” his father shrugged, rubbing a sore arm adorning a legion of battle scars. “Same as always. The guests have just grown more restless. Might as well make it seem like I’m being useful.”

At last he pulled the sword from the water, which Conleth turned over with an unimpressed eye.

“Don’t let the visitors get into your head.” He spoke.

Steren glanced away from the sword. “What do you mean?”

“I understand there are rumors going around.”

Steren took a deep breath, his hand reflexively running against the rough stone that made up the workshop’s walls. Its cool temperature contrasted with the blistering air rising into the sky.

“Not a single one holds any truth. I’m not sabotaging any armies, no one’s coming to invade our home, and you… you’re…” the blacksmith paused, “You aren’t anything like an ecstatic.”

Steren nodded, a strange sense of relief flooding through his system. He already knew this. He wasn’t sure why he needed to hear it.

There wasn’t a formal term for the ‘ecstatics’, at least none that he had grown up knowing. Their unnatural powers only served to harm anyone in their vicinity. A child could learn to bring up water from a well without a pail, and not too long later, wash away their entire village. A man could learn to drain the very energy of life from his presence and soon enough held entire swaths of land hostage to his poison. The colorful, cautionary tales captured Steren’s attention early in life and terrified him more with each passing day. These people had once numbered so many they could topple whole armies, wrench power from kings and generals, and fracture city-states beyond the point of no return.

Only one man and his curious discovery did much to fight back.

Steren didn’t ask much about the battles Conleth fought in, but he could see reflections of the past darkening his father’s eyes from time to time. The peculiar scars stretched across his body already told a half-finished story. One branched across his arm like a tree, on the other side the skin on his shoulder remained blotchy from bruising that hadn’t quite healed properly. The boy tried not to stare, tried not to ask, but the unanswered questions hung in the air, as active as ever.

He knew starmetal had saved the city-states. Rather than be heralded as a hero, his father retreated to the most remote place he could find. Steren could only guess why, hinted at in the wild gossip passed carelessly between guests. Conleth would have to give up the secret to his work. He would likely have to oversee the ‘new’ generation of ecstatics that city-states were so eager to train, as if they had not been on the brink of war just a decade or two ago. He would have to let Steren grow up in a world that couldn’t differentiate between friend and foe.

“You aren’t.” Conleth repeated firmly. “I would know.”

The stone underneath Steren’s hand nearly burned now with how cool it was, a chill traveling up his arm. He drew it back to his own body, rubbing the feeling back into his fingers.

An incident had occurred right before Steren’s last outing, when the most recent droves of visitors had just arrived. They spread themselves around the house as if they were entitled to the property. If Steren even dared to abandon his own room for long enough, it too would be taken over by these complete strangers. His frustrations with them boiled, the tug at the back of his mind turning into a violent pull towards hatred.

He had been arguing with one of the soldiers over something he couldn’t remember, certainly something petty. He didn’t back down, and he was thrown to the stone floor for it, threatened more seriously. But when the blows inevitably came, they stopped just as suddenly. Steren left the encounter with nothing but strange small cracks for scars, and the passing rumors that flew around his home just as fast as the visitors had settled in. At the very least they now gave him ample space every time he entered the room.

“Who wounded you?” His father asked, noticing the boy clutching at his freshly bandaged arm.

“What wounded me,” Steren corrected, stiffening his grip. “It was a bear. Blind, probably. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Take a better weapon with you the next time you go out.” Conleth suggested, returning to his busywork. “A simple knife won’t do you much good.”

Steren muttered a halfhearted agreement, recognizing the conversation was more or less over either way. He was grateful for its brevity, and grateful for the bandage covering its odd shape. As he left the forge and traveled back to the house, people didn’t stop him to ask what had been said, if his father was any closer to being finished, or if there was anything to expedite the process. He felt their eyes bore into his very soul, watching him as if he were the untamed creature they used to laugh at him for being.

Time stretched on agonizingly as Steren hid in his room. There was little to do but leaf through old tomes brought by past visitors to educate him, or trace the engravings of the forest and its animals carved into the walls. His house was a minefield of people who called him enemy, and the boy longed to leave the house again. But he neurotically checked his arm once the bleeding had stopped, tracing the strange shape with a growing paranoia.

The bear must have been blind, how else would she not see him? But didn’t his pulse pound through his chest? Was his breathing really that quiet? Steren could only let his mind wander as all else failed to entertain him. He thought of how many other times he had impossibly survived in the woods under the cover of leaves and roots and dirt. He was skilled, that was all there was to it. Nevermind his skin, stripped from his shoulder like bark, nevermind what the strangers said. His father was right. He had to be right. If he wasn’t, then where would that leave Steren when quiet finally fell upon the house once again?

No one wants to be an enemy in their own home. Steren had gotten used to playing the part every time his arrival was marked by wide eyes and whispers, but he couldn’t stand to think about what the blacksmith would say. If it was true, of course. The boy had to keep reminding himself of that. They were nothing but rumors. What finally pulled Steren away from his mind and back into the physical world was a loud clamor in the house’s main room. Most of the men had gone to bed by this point in the night, so he could only guess at what was happening. There wasn’t nearly enough alcohol to justify a party, and no one would dare risk playing field games while the nocturnal creatures of the woods howled and screeched.

One foot after the other, Steren crept down the stairwell, tracing figures moving in the dim light to the home’s cellar. Strange , he thought. He hadn’t been down there in months. The door lay ajar for the boy to invite himself in, warm light glowing at the bottom of the stone stairwell. He didn’t have to travel far before he could make out sound.

“Smuggled… didn’t even… finally…”

A few soldiers crowded around an open flour sack, its expected contents replaced with pieces of metal. Steren’s stomach dropped as he recognized the slight shimmer of starmetal inside.

“You couldn’t have grabbed a single weapon?” A different soldier asked, rather impatient.

“I assumed he took count. Better safe than sorry,” the first soldier replied, “Some of these are sharp enough to make do, in case anything happens. Researchers back in the city will have a better idea of what to do with them.”

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“We’re struggling enough against these mystic types rising out of the woodwork,” another chimed in, “Conleth has to understand that more than anyone.”

“But he won’t.” The first soldier weighed a broken blade in his hand. “He’s too blinded by his stupid son to see the danger right in front of him.”

“And his stupid son is clever enough to know when someone’s stepping out of line.” Steren finally raised his voice, crossing his arms at the base of the stairs. The soldiers, just four of them, stared at the boy with pale faces, their only exit obstructed.

Not a word was spoken, but Steren felt his ears roar with rushing blood. One of the soldiers stepped towards him, almost daring him to continue.

“My father is graciously letting all of you stay here while he finishes your weaponry,” he attempted. “If you want to keep things that way, I’d recommend you-”

His words were cut off as the soldier grabbed him and pushed him against the wall, knocking the breath out of his lungs. If she feared him, he couldn’t tell. Nothing but dull amusement flickered in her eyes.

“I don’t think we’ll have an issue,” she said cooly, “I doubt he’s as friendly to your type, however.”

“I’m not-” Steren’s protest, a pitiful gasp for air, was met with a swift kick. As he slid down the wall, his hand grasped ahold of it. For a moment he wished he hadn’t heard the sound, wished he had stayed upstairs, wished he could hide amidst the forest or his house’s walls where no one would judge and whisper and stare.

The soldier’s next blow felt significantly weaker. She yelped in pain, and when Steren dared to look back he was met with the terror-stricken faces of four warriors. The blow hadn’t been any weaker, he had just grown tougher. His hand slid up the wall with an unpleasant sound, stone meeting stone, and he faced the soldiers with an unimpressed look. Whatever terror he also felt was lost in the cool sensation of the rock that now covered his entire body.

“Try that again.” He said firmly, though his confidence was only surface-level. They backed away, and only then did he realize the limit of his strength. He couldn’t reach any of them without leaving the rock behind, dropping his second skin and leaving him vulnerable to people far more skilled in combat than he was.

“Fiend.” The first soldier pointed the starmetal blade’s jagged tip at Steren. “You should know what this does to creatures like you.” The blade quietly shimmered in his hand.

With barely a second thought Steren tore away from the wall, pushing the soldier closest to him in the process. Though the stone had melted away from his body, she took the blow as if he was as heavy as rock. As swiftly as he could, Steren grabbed and twisted the first soldier’s arm, sliding a foot under the man as he shifted in surprise. The jagged blade loosened in the soldier’s grasp, and the boy in his desperation grabbed for it. He didn’t care how sharp it was.

Something inside of Steren erupted upon contact with the blade. Blistering heat spread down his arms to his heart, his head buzzing as his surroundings became uncannily clear. The doubt and fear in his mind now crumbled in the face of this new power. Energy coursed through his very being. This was starmetal, this wonderful, terrible feeling that seemed to overpower Steren’s senses as it crept throughout his body. No wonder his father kept it secret for so long.

The soldiers shouted for help, and in an instant Steren found himself across the room. They attempted to pull out their weapons, which did nothing against the inflexible metal of the broken sword, and in turn Steren fought back without thought or mercy. He could hear the guests above being roused from their sleep, hear his father still slaving away at the forge, hear the crickets and wolves and owls of the forest chattering away.

His heart pounded as if threatening to break out of his ribs, the delicate dance of steel quickly taking a turn for the worse for the soldiers. He saw them attempt to grab for the blade he slashed at them with, as if they could wrench it from his hands

when he was this powerful. They had to have recognized it was a losing battle, but they refused to fall easily.

Steren soon rushed up the stairs, only to be met with their reinforcements, half-armed and half-awake. He tore through them just as easily, none of their blows landing where they needed to, while every blow of his hit the mark dead on. He weaved in and out of their ranks, bounding through the labyrinth of men that his house had become towards his own bedroom.

He slammed the door shut, locking it tight. He assumed they were at the door and about to tear it down at any moment, but he couldn’t quite be sure any of them would dare to follow. The blood coursing through his veins dulled any sound, and even with his heightened senses Steren found himself hearing both everything and nothing at all.

At last, reluctantly, he let go of the starmetal. He frantically bound it tightly in a piece of cloth, nearly shoving it into his travel bag before deciding to keep it in his grasp.

He slung the bag over his shoulder, opened the window, and clambered down to the ground. Fear gripped his mind, every breath uneven and shaky. He just needed to make it to the forest, away from everything, and then he could reassess the situation. Why he had this inexplicable power, what these men were trying to do to his father, where he would go next.

“Steren!” It all came to a screeching halt when the blacksmith called his name. “What are you doing out here?”

The boy didn’t reply. It was as if he forgot how to speak for a moment, the words failing to form in his mind, all the while gripping the cloaked blade as if it could slip away.

“There was a lot of yelling,” Conleth mentioned, “I was afraid they had taken their frustration out on you.”

“They stole your starmetal.”

“What?”

Steren found his voice, flat but angry. “They were going to bring it back to their cities. Study it. Even use it against you if you tried to fight back.”

It was the blacksmith’s turn to forget how to speak.

“So I fought back for you. I did what I had to,” a tremor shook his voice, “I’m not sure what happened in there, but I took the starmetal and I fought.”

“Because they attacked you?” Conleth asked.

“Only one of them,” Steren shook his head. “I don’t know what the rest would have done.”

Grave silence settled over the two. Conleth took note of the dark red streaks coating his son’s hair, clothes, everything , faintly illuminated by the moonlight. He could only wonder.

“They were right, you know,” Steren let out something between a sob and a laugh. “Guess my skin can turn into bark and stone now. Who knows what else.”

“Steren,” Conleth spoke, voice quiet as his eyes lingered on the bundle. “You should put that down.”

“What?” The boy tilted his head the slightest bit in disbelief.

“If that’s what I think it is,” he continued, “You should be careful. It corrupts you. You aren’t thinking right.”

“I’m thinking right for the first time in years.” Steren countered. “I’ve been around starmetal enough to know how to handle it.”

“Only I know how. Steren, you need to go back-”

“Back where? Where could I go?” He raised his voice. “You clearly aren’t taking this as seriously as I am!”

“I know exactly how serious this is.” The blacksmith’s voice was just as powerful, though it remained quiet. “But you cannot go around calling yourself an ecstatic just because some of our guests riled you up. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

Steren dared to unwrap the bundle, leaving the faintest glint of starmetal exposed to the air as he touched it. The power surged back through his body. He was in control of this weapon; he was sure of it. His father’s face blanched, watching Steren glimmer in the faint moonlight like the stars above.

“Steren,” he whispered.

Steren wrapped the cloth back around the starmetal. “See?”

128

“I don’t want to see you anywhere near the forge again.” Conleth looked distant. Though Steren expected it, the words didn’t sting any less.

“You must leave.”

“Then I will.” Steren said without much emotion. He felt Conleth’s eyes follow him until he was hidden deep within the forest’s embrace. Perhaps he expected his father to hesitate, for just a second. Steren vainly hoped he would call him back. But behind him lay a house thrown carelessly into complete disaster, with men from across the land wounded and dying at his hand. The starforge blacksmith had more important matters to attend to than the son who declared himself an enemy right before his eyes.

The forest was strangely quiet now. Steren hoped something, anything might distract him from the night’s events, but the slow realization burned itself into his mind: he had just become another tale for mothers to scare their children with, just by embracing this new aspect of himself he barely knew.

The starmetal blade almost seemed to hum with power now, beckoning Steren to take up arms once again. Look how much he could do with so little. What might he accomplish with training and time?

He wandered in a different direction than the one he usually took, farther away from the heart of the woods. At some point he knew he might run into a path, which might take him to a city. The boiling anger tugged at his mind. He wondered if the city’s citizens would be anything like the men who threatened and demeaned and harassed him.

The broken blade urged him onwards, to find fresh blood and conflict. He knew he could control it. He would just entertain it a little longer.

129

Christine

130

Han Design Arts Valley Christian High School San Jose, CA

2022

Choker! Sheep bone, fishing string, gold spray paint

Olive Harrington

131

Photography Lawrence

School Lawrence,

Osmosis Physical photo negative, tub of water, lightbox 2022

High

Deirdre Hickey

When Everything Was New

During the summer they opened all the windows and wind gushed through the apartment, oftentimes sending loose papers from the countertops onto the ground. Most apartments in the city were small, though theirs had a long hallway between the living room and the bedroom that made the whole setup appear much larger than it actually was. The couple, Nate and Dana, subleased the apartment from Dana’s work friend. At the beginning of the summer, they helped her carry her things to a small tractor trailer on the street below, trading their labor for the keys.

The first night they spent in the apartment, Dana and Nate blew up an air mattress and slept naked with all of the windows and balcony doors open. Dana woke up a few times during the night. She observed the way Nate’s body looked blue from the light outside, his skin bare and covered in faint goosebumps. She felt intrusive for looking at him like this, like she wasn’t supposed to be watching him, or even be in the apartment at all. There was little reason for her to feel like that. She had slept with him like this before, she had slept with others like this before.

His body was long and skinny, and his eyes twitched whenever a car on the street below honked its horn, or a skateboard flipped over the sidewalk. Dana thought these little moments were supposed to make life feel unreal and beautiful, the way a person felt at the start of things. But neither the newness of the apartment nor of the city charmed her. She felt like she had just closed a chapter of her life - young and making money wherever she could find it - and the next one was taking a long time to unravel. She waited for it emptily, hating the way that it felt to exist in between things. She thought that maybe Nate might help her in this regard, that he might pull her to the next chapter.

At the end of the summer, Nate turned twenty-five, and Dana had their friends over to drink. The night started off quiet, soft voices and laughter humming with a faint buzz. The sun went down and the streets got darker, the office building across the way lighting up with yellow boxes, one by one. The guests drank more, laughed loud with their stomachs, yelled their stories and fought fake fights. As fast as it began, it ended, and the guests left at mostly the same time. The countertop in their home was scattered with empty glasses and corks, dirty paper plates and a vegetable platter in which the carrots had begun to get a little bit white. Dana and Nate began to clean up the mess.

“Do you notice how everyone flirts with each other when they’re drunk?” Dana said.

“Isn’t that kind of the point of drinking?” Nate responded, half-smiling, like it was a punchline.

“I didn’t think it was,” she said.

“It’s inhibition,” he said. “What did you think a party was for?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Something else, or, not only that. It’s fun, it would be hard to be social for a long time without it.”

“Sure,” he said.

Dana suspected that in a few years she would have some sort of insight about this time in their lives, some understanding about why they had craved to be wanted by every person they knew. Dana noticed it in herself too, like there was a tiny voice inside her head that reminded her to smile and stare deeply at a man when he was talking to her, touching him faintly, in ways that Nate wouldn’t take offense to. Though sometimes she wished that he would take offense, even just slightly.

Nate looked back up and saw that Dana was still watching, and he turned off the sink and approached her as he dried off his hands on the thighs of his jeans. He began to kiss her slowly, his finger holding her chin up, falling into her because he was kind of

drunk. They were both kind of drunk, and the whole moment was sloppy and miscalculated. Dana thought about how this sort of thing was supposed to feel passionate or exciting, but most of the time, during sex, she wondered when it would be over. ***

When she was sixteen, Dana’s mother had died of ovarian cancer. Dana could never remember much from the months leading up to her death, except that her mother got sick and sicker, until the last day, when time suddenly warped itself into an entrapping sense of stillness, something impending and horrible tracing its nail along the fine plastic film of it all, waiting for the burst. Dana realized on that day that she had spent every moment leading up to this one refusing to acknowledge the inevitable.

The home that Dana grew up in was comfortable, dark wooden floors and deep red carpets running down the hallways and living room, the doors’ frames arched at the top. They had a large piano on one side of the living room, close to the window that looked out at the park. Dana’s mother played piano while Dana’s father cooked dinner, their home bright with concertos and onions. Dana liked to rest between them, sitting on the armchair equidistant from where they each stood. She listened to the oil and onions simmering in the pan and the deep crescendo of Albeniz, safe between them.

The night her mother passed, when she and her father returned from the hospital, they came home to a doorstep full of dinners. Dana heated up lasagna for her father, but he never came down from his bedroom, so she picked at the food with a fork until she felt like she could feel something in her stomach. Afterwards, she went to bed.

Two nights after the funeral, Dana returned to her boarding school. She walked through the campus to sign back in, and thought of the first time her mother and she had walked through the campus. Dana was twelve then, navigating an opportunity four years ahead of her, and she begged her mother to drive her to the open house. It was a three-hour ride. Along the way they stopped at gas stations and got peaches and strawberry Topo Chicos and taquitos. They ate with the top down, her mother’s long, box-bleached hair blowing in the wind like straw. Everything was new then. She could see the next phase of her life right in front of her, for the very first time. Dana felt alive in this, like the tall oaks that lined the road were created just for her to experience, that the sun and the wind and the warmth of it on her face were all for her. She felt full of everything, yet weightless and free, all at the same time.

Nate worked at a sports media company across the city, though he only went into the office twice a week. He sat on bouncy chairs and wore sweatpants, and most people in the office drank during the day, trying the different sponsored spiked seltzers as early as ten in the morning. Dana found this work setting to be almost unbelievable, despite the fact that this kind of office was not unusual. She herself had only had a full-time job for three years.

Dana also worked in social media, though she went in five days a week to the office in The Flatiron District. She did accounting for labels and podcasts for a large-scale music app. Most of the people in her office were older by a few years, and the people above her took trips with one another to Stockholm and Prague. The company had large conventions in Sweden. Her co-workers seemed extremely fun and lively, but she was never involved with

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Short

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

***

them the way that she wished to be. She overheard them talking about hotels and jazz rooms and cocktail lounges along the basin.

Whenever she’d come home from work, she would take long showers with Nate and tell him about how much she thought she would love northern Europe, the quaint colors and thin canals that separated one neighborhood from the other. She wanted to go, sometime soon. Nate usually had very little to say about this, but she would speak for hours about the music and the food and her co-workers, all of which contributed to that warm fizz of envy and also excitement. That feeling would remain inside of her for a day, eventually flattening away into nothing and returning as envy when she scrolled through the photos and videos her co-workers had taken, or when a story of one of the trips got brought up in the office.

“What’s up with you and Europe?” Nate asked one day, lacing a pair of new sneakers. They were in the living room, sitting on the sofa, and the television was on. She said that her mother was a doctor in music when Dana was growing up, and spent years as an Orchestra Director for the Northern New York Symphony. When her mother was a teenager, she studied music at a university in Berlin, where she met Dana’s father. He was a year older than her mother and was studying abroad at another school in the city, and their brief year of romance survived multiple years overseas and when her mother graduated, she returned to the States to be with her father. Dana told Nate that she had heard countless stories about her parents’ trips around Europe, about the German woman who left food outside the open window that her father slept against when it was humid during the night. The German woman sat on her front step most mornings waiting for Dana’s father to go to class, and she’d ask him why he was with the woman with small breasts. Dana wanted that life too, she told Nate. Something like her parents had. She always thought she would find her way to that life, and feel the wholeness of being alive she only knew briefly from the first months at the boarding school.

As they sat, Dana watched Nate mess around with his earlobe, like her mother always did. She found great comfort in never expressing the ways in which the two of them overlapped, instead keeping them to herself and saying little prayers.

“Europe would be nice,” he said. “But we don’t have any savings.” He stood up then, and sat closer to Dana. Nate wrapped his arm around Dana’s shoulder, and she kind of liked how his armpit smelled bad. What Dana really liked about Nate, though, was how little he knew about her mother. He had no memories or experiences to look back on, nothing to cling onto to make any sort of impression of the woman. Around him, she had no room to think about all the memories that seemed to compose her life before her mother passed, the life that she felt was completely over.

Dana’s father came to visit the week leading up to Thanksgiving. He slept in the spare bedroom and walked around the city alone for long stretches while the couple went to work. He himself hadn’t returned to the city since their move upstate when Dana was fifteen, but he had a reliable memory of where things were, or at least used to be, and how to get to them.

On Thanksgiving Day, Dana and Nate woke up early to grab some things from the store, before chaos ensued and early closing hours left them bare. They got ready in silence, trading their shared toothbrush, each using one side of a q-tip. Dana wore one of Nate’s windbreakers, and he took photos of her in two knitted scarves and the large jacket and a pair of bright yarn gloves. He liked to take photos of her looking childish, without makeup and her hair tied into two buns on either side of the nape of her neck.

When they returned with brown parchment bags full of ingredients, Dana’s father still had not woken up. The house was exactly as they left it; the fake candle in the bathroom flickering and reflected in the mirror, the living room blinds drawn closed and the four panel room divider closed in front of the hallway to the bedrooms. They unpacked the groceries quietly and dropped

a turkey in a pot of lukewarm water in the sink, still unsure of how they planned on cooking it.

They spent the rest of the morning waiting for the guest bedroom to open, then shut, and for Dana’s father to find them in the living room. Once it hit noon, they began cooking, thinking that the noises might wake him up gently. Nate sliced chives, then his finger, then threw away the chives that had blushed pink from the little droplets of blood.

“We could sell some things for extra money for the trip,” Nate said. “What about your necklace?” Dana stopped cutting the celery and looked up at Nate.

“You want me to sell my necklace?” she asked. “It would be enough,” Nate said.

“That was a gift. You gifted that to me,” Dana said, angry and staring at him harshly.

Nate looked up at her and shrugged, confused about her apparent agitation.

“There are other ways,” he said. Dana thought of her hotel in Amsterdam with the silver tray of mini bottles on the nightstand, how she was always tempted to start her morning with a shot of cinnamon whiskey dripping down her throat, the warmth in her stomach that would follow. She got scared of her mind whenever she thought like that.

Once it hit three in the afternoon, Dana knocked on the door of the guest room and called for her Dad quietly. No response followed, and she stared at her hand folded at the knuckle resting on the doorframe. She knocked again and called his name once more. It was silent for a few moments, and then he told her he would be out in a moment. She walked back to the kitchen and glanced at Nate who had heard the entire interaction. The cutting and simmering continued.

“I don’t understand why we would have to sell something in order to go,” Dana said.

“A trip to Europe is expensive,” Nate responded.

“But we have paychecks. It’s not like we don’t have paychecks,” she said. “And rent,” Nate responded.

“We have money left over. Every month. Hundreds of dollars that we use for stupid shit,” she said. “The stupidest shit I’ve ever seen.” She set the table and disappeared into the bedroom for some time, coming back into the kitchen to drink a glass of water when everything was done cooking.

Dana’s father never left the room, which they had not noticed until everything was completely ready and placed on the small wooden table. Dana knocked again and heard nothing, so she asked if he was alright, to which he said he was fine. The two ate without her father and then cleaned up without him. They fell asleep on the couch to a movie playing on TBS, their stomachs heavy with starchy foods.

The next morning, Nate dropped off Dana’s father at the airport on Long Island. When he returned, he told Dana that they exchanged barely any words the entire time, except for polite goodbyes in the departure lane. She was worried about her father, but also embarrassed that Nate had seen the oddity of his behavior as well.

A week after his visit, Dana’s father sent her an email titled “Alex Departi predicted his own Destiny!”

My daughter,

I was watching the news this morning after I brought out the garbage. It is Tuesday, do not forget!! (Sometimes when we forgot at the apartment on the West Side your mother would carry it to work and throw it over a dumpster behind that strip of restaurants on 72nd. Not sure if that would fly now… my days in the city are far behind me). Remember that actor from SNL we loved, who was in that skit about the meatloaf we played over and over until your mother banned us from it. Apparently, yesterday morning, he was on set for this movie he is filming in Utah, and he accidentally shot his co-star in the chest. A real gun was mistaken for a prop gun. The craziest part was that three years earlier, he had tweeted about how horrible it would be to accidentally kill somebody.

133

***

He predicted this. I don’t know much about him, but they are investigating. Any-aways. My flight home was good. I ate a bag of peanuts, and then my mouth started itching, and I thought, man this would be a horrible place to find out I was allergic to peanuts. Thank you for having me for the week. I enjoyed walking around the park. It was nice to see grass one last time, there is already snow up to our calves up here.

Dana exited out of her email and typed the comedian’s name into her search bar. A dozen different articles came up, and she stared at the paparazzi photos taken of the actor on the side of the road when he was told that the woman he had shot did not make it. He wore a polo shirt and he grabbed his short gray hair with his hand, pulling at his scalp to remind himself that he was alive. Dana was a sucker for signs, and hunches. She felt as if all people knew what their life would look like in some form. Dana wondered if the actor felt relieved, seeing his biggest fear play out. She wondered if that made him feel small. She wondered what her mother would’ve thought of it all. She forwarded the article to Nate who responded quickly. “Idiot,” he said.

When Nate got home from work that night, he didn’t look Dana in the eyes. He walked in and kissed her forehead, then showered after grabbing clean clothing from their bedroom. When he came out, he had shaved his face and was wearing a pair of Dana’s jogging pants that were too large for her.

Dana wondered if he was drunk, or high, or anything worth hiding. She stared at him until he stared back, but it took a few moments for him to realize and turn himself towards her.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, her head now tilted to the right, indicating concern. “Yep,” Nate said cheerfully and quickly, kissing her forehead before looking back at the television. Dana was instantly aggravated, believing that he was hiding something, no matter what it pertained to.

“Do you have something you want to tell me?” she asked. Nate looked at her concerned and stared at her chin. This made her self-conscious.

“No?” he asked, almost questioning. She felt sticky with anger, like she had moved her entire life into his and now he was pushing her back out after she had given up everything.

“Whatever,” Dana said, immediately pulling herself up and heading towards the kitchen, elbowing him hard in the chest. “It’s clear something is up. I’m not fucking stupid.” She went to the kitchen and made dinner only for herself, then showered and closed and locked their bedroom door behind her as she went to sleep. When she woke up to get ready for work, she walked to the living room and saw Nate sleeping on the couch, his face squished against the armrest. He looked pale and sick. Dana got ready and left without saying goodbye.

Dana started her commute by taking a short subway ride to the bus stop. She got onto the bus and noticed it was mostly empty, besides a woman in the back row whose face she could barely see. It was a thirty-minute drive to her office, and she began to think about Nate as soon as she sat down. She hated being mad at him for reasons like this, because she could never tell anyone about it. She didn’t know if he was really hiding something, or if he was just acting weird. Though why would he be acting weird, she thought, if he wasn’t hiding anything. Dana had zero idea what he could’ve been hiding, but she came up with several scenarios in her head. And it made her feel so much better, to know that he was bad for infinite reasons, and she was so good that he felt the need to hide it from her.

And maybe this was the start of Nate leaving her, she thought, and she would move to Sweden or the Netherlands, and she’d immerse herself in the Köttbullar and jazz music and drums and all of the things that he had never even thought about, never thought that she really wanted.

He knew so little about the things she cared about, the things that she found beautiful.

She realized she was completely unsure of what Nate might love about her.

Dana looked around the bus, at the thin blue carpet below her feet that was brown in most places. It was an ugly day outside, the trash piled on the curbs like bodies, the sky a gray sheet that seemed to separate human beings from the sun and the stars and the rest of the sky. She thought of how her mother found beautiful things everywhere, she even dreamed of beautiful things for Dana. She pointed out the ivy climbing up the brick walls of the boarding school, serenaded the home with Liszt and Tchaikovsky. She braided Dana’s hair the way that French people did, painted her nails burgundy and black and stole matching lipsticks from the drugstore down the road.

Sitting on the bus, barely seeing the outside world, Dana thought of how her mother fell in love in other countries, kissed men who took her on moped rides and drives through the countryside.

The bus made a stop and several people boarded. Dana thought of how it might’ve disappointed her mother to see her life now, the lull of romance, her father sleeping through the holidays, the plain apartment with white furniture and linens and the dirty bus where she spent every morning. She would’ve appreciated the travel potential of Dana’s job, but would’ve been let down by the technicalities of it all.

“Apply for an international position!” she might’ve said. “Relocate to France, or Ireland.” Dana felt relieved she would never have to explain to her mother why that wasn’t possible, that there were thousands of invisible strings that anchored Dana down to the things she knew; Nate, money, this city, this feeling

The bus stopped and went, and Dana’s head bobbed back and forth on her neck. If her mother would’ve said these things to Dana in high school, during her first year at the boarding school, Dana would have dreamed along with her, taking her mother’s words as the wisest she would ever hear from another person. Her life was most magical then, Dana thought, when she wrote long fiction stories in the campus loggia and read novels by Irish authors. When she wasted away the hours daydreaming about living abroad, somewhere where the coast was rocky and lined in seafoam. When her friends used long words to describe relationships as they walked to the coffee shop where they spent most afternoons, when she was at the start of things.

134

Best, Dad

Atticus Hill

Bullets Bodies and Backpacks, A Recollection

Dedicated to Courtlin Arrington and other victims of the Huffman Highschool Shooting

One gunshot sends the field into confusion, another only turns it to frenzy.

Lift off the bleachers, pulled by an unconscious force, and realize how you bolt alongside everyone else. See the stampede of bodies running to an unknown destination, one foot in front of another, one pair of legs following some other with no hesitation. Feel pure instinct pump through your veins as you sprint towards uncertainty.

One gunshot tears through flesh, another only pours salt in the wound.

Become aware of how long you’ve been running, half an hour, fifteen seconds, however long it takes to bound over to some small building and funnel into the eggshell shelter. Spend some more time trying to process the chaos around you, hearing huddled masses slipping whispers of a shooter from their lips like oily secrets. Feel the word constrict your throat.

One gunshot brings an end to a young life, another only brings one a bleeding shame.

Sit crouched and clammy in the dark room, so many bodies holding their breath the air freezes. Let thoughts flash in frames, crooked visions of a hooded figure kicking down the door, your mother seeing your name on a television screen, your family dressed in all black. Let fear lick the walls of your head like flames while nearby, a soul loosens her grip on a thorny world.

135

Spoken Word Alabama School of Fine Arts Birmingham, AL

Dion Hines

136

Visual Arts Ida B. Wells Apac (Academic and Performing Arts Complex) Jackson, MS

You Rip What You Sew Linoleum Relief Prints sewn together using embroidery thread with pieces of finger weaved thread

2021

137

Irene Ho Visual Arts Taipei American School Taipei, Taiwan

Watercolor

colored pencil on colored poster 2021

History of Hands

and

Claire Hong

The Art of Boxes

The day my grandmother died, I packed two boxes: one for things I would never use again, and another for all the things I would need for the funeral. The former I filled with my grandmother’s gifts, the snow globes and souvenirs I stuffed into my suitcase every summer. In the latter I put my formal black dress, a couple changes of clothes and my computer. It was a heavy kind of packing. It was stomps and shoves, thuds and creaks. I packed the boxes until every crevice was jammed with items, full but in an organized fashion. I packed until I could block out my mother’s sobs and the cacophony of the neighborhood crows with ease. It wasn’t until sunlight began to sneak into the room that my arms hung limply at my sides and I lay on the floor between my boxes- between worlds- and closed my eyes.

I turned sixteen the summer I saw my first dead body. My mother and I acknowledged it quietly - there was a sense of wrongness in celebrating life when both of us could only think of death. On the plane, they gave me a cake swimming in melted wax, already beginning to leak onto the paper plate. I tried to smile, and tell the tight-lipped woman I appreciated the gesture; I don’t think she ever heard me. So I smiled down at my plate, watching the vibrant colors muddle to spawn black blobs of hardening wax. It was fitting, somehow. I blew out the burnt candles and wished for life to start over again - hers or mine, I didn’t care. My wish never came true, though I have a feeling my mother wished for the same thing.

And yet I wished anyway. I wished the moment I saw my grandmother’s casket, a large metal box with an open glass top adorned with flowers. I wished when the service began, with a white-robed priest droning about peace in heaven and empty reassurances that withered in my ear. I wished when it ended and long lines of strangers offered condolences that I didn’t hear. I wished until I forgot what I was wishing for and wished to remember as I stared at the empty space, wondering if dead people could suffocate in those boxes.

My mother always said that my grandmother was innately strong, that she was blessed with strength from the gods. It was true; my grandmother was born in the year of the tiger, a gift from the gods themselves, who chose a tiger to plant the seed that would blossom into the nation of Korea. I used to ask her to tell me stories of her childhood and her usually silent lips would begin to whisper fairytales woven with her own.

My grandmother told stories of her town in the north, the plums the schoolchildren would steal in the spring, the cold winters where even five layers of clothing wasn’t enough to keep the cold from icing weak bones. She would whisper about the war, about her mother who sold trash to earn small bits of food, her older sister who received five chestnuts every day as food to feed all of the younger ones, her sister who rationed out the chestnuts piece by piece and starved day by day. And when my grandmother was old enough, she studied hard to escape the poverty, the homelessness, and the desperation of life on the streets. When I was younger I used to think her strength was her perseverance, of pushing through these circumstances. But now I realize that her strength came from making the best out of her circumstances. She had luck to push her the rest of the way.

My grandmother never told me that she loved me - perhaps the words were too foreign on her tongue, like they were on mine. But I can still feel the echoes of her soft voice drumming against my skin, like a familiar melody. Her stories were her own way of passing herself down to me, scrap by scrap, until she was satisfied that I would remember - remember her, her stories, and myself.

But despite her stories, my grandmother still remains a stranger, a shadowy presence that is recognizable, but not corporeal enough to have much effect. I was “too American,” as my mother

would chastise when I couldn’t unravel my tongue far enough to call my mother “Eomma” and my grandmother “Halmoni”. And while I didn’t mind trading my heritage for what I considered home, this produced a disconnect between my grandmother and me. I wasn’t interested in learning about my heritage and she didn’t seem interested in learning about my life. So whenever I went to Korea for the summer, I would immerse myself in maintaining my American image, perhaps lowering my barricades every once in a while to hear one of her stories. And when it was early August, I would go home and forget about my grandmother and her stories until June, when the cycle repeated itself.

But sometimes, I would jot down her stories the best I could, without the inflections in her voice, or the whispered softness, or the frequent pauses between stories. It wasn’t until later that my mother discovered my writing. It was purely accidental - I had been excited over the prose piece I had written the night before and printed out a copy, only to leave it at home on top of the printer. Of course, my mother discovered it after I had left for school. She didn’t talk about it that day, but I found the piece of paper the next morning covered in droplets of water that smeared the words into black orbs.

My grandmother was an artist - a writer, to be exact. It was one of the reasons she was so good at storytelling. She had the talent, but couldn’t keep her head swarming with fantasies and pretty phrases in the factories. When she married my grandfather, he disapproved of her scribbled poetry and crossed-out prose. My mother used to say her childhood was spent hiding these notebooks full of my grandmother’s writing so my grandfather wouldn’t burn them. My grandmother was a writer - and that was partly why my mother only visited her once a year. My grandmother didn’t have the time to raise my mother - she was always too busy expanding the worlds that lived in her mind. When my mother found my writing, it was like her world broke apart a second time.

The year before my grandmother was stuffed into a glass cage, I followed her to the small attic space above the apartment. It was the first time I had been alone in the house with her, as my mother was always in the kitchen tidying the plates, or reading a book on the couch. But she had gone out to eat lunch with a friend, and I was left alone in the house with my grandmother. In her usual silent manner, my grandmother had beckoned me over into the attic after my mother had left. It was strange to see her willing to communicate so openly. But with my mother’s words about politeness and respect ringing in my ears, I gathered up my shoes from the shoe rack and followed her up the stairs.

I was greeted with the sight of boxes. Hundreds of them. Absorbing the tight space around me, I maneuvered my way into the corner, dusting off my arms and curling up with my knees to my chest. My grandmother hadn’t been clear on what she had invited me into the attic to do, but I decided that I was content watching the process. So I watched my grandmother sit cross-legged in the middle of the floor, counting the boxes and beginning to sort the stacks of books, old magazines and letters, CDs, and pictures into the boxes.

And yet my eyes traveled the room in sync with my grandmother’s motions as she approached a small brown box ripped at the folds. As she tipped the lid towards her, I glimpsed small pink pieces of paper adorned with ancient stickers threatening to fall off. I tore my eyes away, but not fast enough.

“Halmoni!” a little girl shouts. “I missed you!”

Still firmly in her ‘all-things-pink’ phase, the little girl twirled

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Short Story

Homeschool Los Altos, CA

***

in her pink dress, letting go of the handle of her suitcase as she ran to her grandmother.

“Aigoo, I missed you too,” the grandmother says.

“Look, Halmoni - I wrote you another letter,” the girl says, proudly holding an envelope decorated with stickers on every edge, bright pink like the paper of the message.

With a smile, the grandmother reaches to take the little girl’s hand as they walk hand in hand, while the mother trails behind lugging the suitcases.

Shaking my head, I opened my eyes to see my grandmother bent over another box, checking the contents and sorting through the unorganized objects. Brushing aside small particles of dust from every object, my grandmother held each close enough to breathe in the musky scent of faded newspapers and dog-eared books.

The boxes surrounded my grandmother now, till there wasn’t any space to take a step. Carefully I dragged a box towards me, tilting the flap open until I saw the dust-covered objects. I saw organized stacks of pictures - pictures of people. I saw myself permanently inked into each memory as the pictures silently mocked the person I had become.

Hastily closing the lid, I shoved the box away, scrambling to my feet as I stared at my grandmother. Unbothered, my grandmother continued to slowly sort through each box, dusting off the covers and creating neat stacks within each box.

With her back towards me, she explained, “Twice I lost my life. The first you already know well - your grandfather took my writing, handed me a pair of chopsticks to cook with instead. And because I loved your grandfather, I was a good housewife. The house was always clean and dinner was ready before he came home. But I wasn’t good enough. Sometimes I would daydream about life with words, where seeds would be planted, blossoming into ripe fruit. That was the worst part - having fruit I couldn’t harvest. Sometimes he would catch me at the window, dreaming about a life I couldn’t have. I was too numb to even feel guilty about it. Your grandfather was a good man, but he never truly understood me.” She paused, dragging another box closer as she methodically began to organize its contents.

“Then, your mother was born and I felt joy again. Oh - how wonderful it was to feel! Your mother grew fast and I finally had two loves, two worlds. Then, you see, your grandfather trusted me enough to give me pen and paperquite possibly for grocery lists. But I would write for hours until my heart didn’t feel so heavy. Your mother was already grown by the time I tore my eyes from my writing. I know she is still bitter because of it. But you must understand that I loved her with all my heart and still do, even though she may not believe it.

“But you - you were so similar to my own self that I was merely curious at first. I gave you pieces of myself through stories and you soaked everything up so eagerly that I couldn’t stop myself from letting down my guard to embrace you with open arms. The first time your mother discovered your writing, she called me in tears. She read your story to me on the phone and with delight, I heard my story cycled through your own mind and onto paper. That was when I began to worry.

“There was always a part of me that dreaded the day you would change. A day when you would let go of my hands and block my words from your ears just like your mother. And so in preparation, I filled the attic with boxes, things that could open your eyes to protect myself from being broken a third time.” ***

The last time I hunted for the attic was after the funeral, when my mother and I, still dressed in funeral black, slipped into my grandmother’s apartment. It was past midnight by then, and

our slow march through the rooms didn’t lift our spirits. But I had begged my mother to visit one last time.

As we unpacked our suitcases and boxes, I retrieved the first box I had packed, the one with my grandmother’s gifts. While the box was a pale brown, the contents were a vivid mix of colors and patterns, though the colors became duller with every new item added to the collection.

I waited until my mother fell asleep before grabbing the box and searching for the attic door. Walking up the stairs, I paused, placing the box next to my feet like a peace offering. And as my eyes trailed upwards, I stared at the place the attic had been, a part of the wall that was without blemish, like nothing had ever been there. Leaving the box where the attic had been, I walked slowly down the stairs, questioning whether all of this had been a dream.

Or perhaps the attic is gone because I didn’t need it to see.

139

***

Claire Hong

she dreams american

my tongue stumbles under the weight of foreign syllables so i swallow my mother

tongue whole, open my mouth to cut the soft flesh of my tongue like halmoni’s1 kimchi/ brushed evenly with glistening sugar and sprinkled with the history of king sejong and his language/ marinated with the sharpness of the tears that rolled off of halmoni’s face dripping into the han river until her war-torn nation overflows with milk and honey-

i bring my peace offering to locate consonants where the soil is blessed/ transform my tongue from the garlic-covered 'son'2 to hand/ wiping the salty seaweed soup off of 'hae'3 to get a blinking sun/ the anatomy of my mouth contorts to fit bites of ‘because’, ‘i’, ‘am’ american with soot hair and stained eyes singed with the alienness permeating off my shoulders/ american but not american enough-

i wonder if this is the american dream

one summer i travel to my mother country/ it is not home anymore/ my tongue does not welcome the melodic touches of familiarity/ refuses to bend to the consonants and extends foreign instead/ the taste of sesame oil does not pacify my unfaithful mouth/ signifies my american dialect that speaks opportunity/ speaks in tongues i no longer understand-

i wonder if dreaming was worth losing home

1 halmoni: Korean for grandmother

2 son: Korean for hand

3 hae: Korean for sun

140

Spoken Word Homeschool Los Altos, CA

Hannah Hong

141

Visual Arts Grafton High

Yorktown,

Estrangement Colored pencil

over watered down acrylic

on mixed media paper 2022

School

layered

paint

Joanne Hong

142

Visual Arts North Hollywood

North

Which is it? Printed photos, painter’s tape, scissors, pens, markers, acetate sheets, power mesh 2022

High School

Hollywood, CA

Jenny Hu

Rose Red Rose White

CHAPTER 1

Once I dreamt of men with skulls instead of faces, men who would swallow me alive. Wrenching my arms, tearing limbs out of sockets, scratching and biting, worst of all, they were silent as snow. Shoveled pieces of me into their bone-white mouths and I stood outside my body and watched. Tried to scream but my throat was full of chiffon, blood-red, spilling into the snow and pooling at my feet and never ending. They ate my hands and my feet, my chest and my legs, torso, head came last, two eyes blinking and full of tears and then I couldn’t see anymore.

In the morning I told my mother about the skull men—I was barely seven years old and she squeezed my ear hard enough for it to burst into flame, how could I say such inauspicious things. She called my grandmother in Fujian and wouldn’t hang up until she found an astrologer to read my birth chart. The woman started to speak but her voice turned candle-wax thick and full of ashes, we couldn’t hear her and she couldn’t hear us, we sat around the phone for two hours until the line died and still no answers. For weeks my mother burned incense to purge bad omens from the house. Thin trails of gray smoke, the echoes of ghosts.

Jason is the only one who likes to hear my nightmares. Collects bad dreams like candy and vintage coins. A boy made of metal and sunsets, the type of ambiguous blonde hair that can’t decide if it’s gold or bronze. More than once I’ve turned his eyes into charcoal and watercolor, his brows into brushstrokes, a face begging to grow immortal on paper.

Today he lies in the backseat of his Range Rover with his head in the crook of my arm, hovering in the threshold between consciousness and sleep, eyes shut soft like he trusts me. No bad omens. When I was eight or nine, my sister and I spent an entire week wandering through the corridors of the Louvre while my father did business in Paris—now I trail my thumb across Jason’s sloped jaw and imagine him set in marble, molded in stone like my own Galatea, idolized in a glass case and protected from the world. His lashes dance slowly, fluttering up and down and lowering again. As usual, sweet envy on my tongue tip, I’ve never been more jealous of his eyelashes than now. Lush, deep-dark despite his light coloring, just like my sister Cressy’s hair before she got sick.

Cressy, beautiful Cressy, who never liked Jason to begin with. Mocked me for bringing home a white boy, never mind how pleased my mother was. Cressy, who could end the whole world if she wanted to.

Suddenly. A fierce, stabbing pain in my spine. Piercing the cavern between my ribs, forcing the breath from my lungs.

Fingers clutching my throat, it’s been nearly a week since I’ve had a pain like this, the kind of hurt like squeezing a jagged diamond and watching blood run down my wrists from where it digs into my skin. The knife twists, twists, twists.

“Hey,” Jason murmurs. Through the red haze, two hands on my face. Warm and silk-smooth.

Two hands. Skin seeping into skin. Slow shadows shifting sideways.

A sharp gasp.

And then again, again, the knife melts away and all that remains is hollow. Carved clean from the inside out.

“God, Mara,” Jason says. Sitting up now, he peers at me through those perfect lashes. Voice smoky and washed gray. “I thought you were better now.”

I slump backward against the leather seat. Still shaking like a dead leaf in the autumn wind, unanchored. He watches me with eyes greener than usual.

Silence, stretching long and thin.

“Sorry.” I wrap a piece of hair around my finger. Tug once, twice. “That wasn’t—”

“You should see a doctor, you know.”

“Don’t know what my parents would do with another fucked-up daughter.”

Jason closes his eyes. Doesn’t speak and I know he knows better than anyone what it means to have consequences. All of a sudden the car is too small, too tight. I twist my legs beneath me like a pair of blades.

“How’s Cressida?” he asks at last. Swallows. Even Jason is afraid for her. Afraid of her.

I shrug. “I don’t know. She still has a week of inpatient left, but the doctors aren’t optimistic.” Or so they told my mother when she called the treatment facility last weekend, convinced that nothing could really be wrong with Cressy, that my sister’s accident was really just that: an accident.

The one time we visited, Cressy refused to see us. Offstage for once, stripped of glitter and flair and her usual bluster, small and shivering. Wrapped herself in layers of gauzy robes and stood behind the door until Mama had to leave for work. I stood and watched and she never turned around, the walls were pink and green and yellow and they tried to make it cheerful but dust and darkness lingered in all the corners. The picture-perfect home for a girl made of bones and sharp points.

In that moment I’d longed to paint her—the jut of her shoulders, the bat-wing indents of her collarbones. The way she carried herself, all loose limbs, falling hair, dull eyes. Like the little dolls she likes to tear apart and put back together again. But then Dr. Fleming said visiting hours were ending and Cressy didn’t want to speak with me anyway, she was still practicing how to forgive Mama and me, as if this would all be our fault once she came back to the real world.

“One more week,” Jason says. Rubs his thumb on my cheek and exhales, slow, deep. “She’ll be okay.”

How I hunger to believe him. How I hunger to ignore the blue-purple splashes beneath his eyes, how exhausted we both are. We shouldn’t have spent so long talking about me, not when I know he needs me too, I need him to need me. But the thought of my sister’s return is enough to squeeze my throat through a vise, wrong, wrong, wrong and I should be happy but I think I might choke. I see her dark eyes and they are laughing at me, glittering and full of secrets. Like she knows universes that I’ve never imagined. Not fair. Fair: as if that word still carries any weight. A tale made up for children and romantics.

And yet, still, as Jason drives home, veins drawing stark rivers in his hands on the steering wheel, my mouth is flooded sugar-sweet and I want to tell him all the things I wish I wouldn’t dream of: a house all our own, far, far, away, a big window that envelops the sea, mahogany shelves filled with his books, cakes in the oven and vanilla smudging the air, two cats and a horse too, blank canvases begging for paint, his hands drawing infinite circles around mine.

The car drags to a stop outside my house. Sky tinged with bruises, evening beginning to fester. I climb out and crush the grass beneath my sandals, leather backpack over my shoulder. The pristine lawn, my father’s greatest pride. Always showing photos of the house to our family when we’re in China, the pillars and arching doorways, as if insistent on showing how far he’s come from the village where he was born.

“Good night,” Jason says, rolling down his car window. “I’ll see you at 6 tomorrow?”

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Novel The Seven Hills School

Cincinnati, OH

***

“Night, Mara,” he says again, and for a beat I wonder if he’ll lean out the window and press his lips to mine the way he used to, he’d cup my cheek in his palm so softly it was like touching an animal. When we first started dating he wanted to touch me all the time, he always wanted to have his hands on me and I had to tell him when to stop.

But this time the tires screech and he is gone. Not even shadows left behind except for the sound of his voice. Mara. He once told me how much he likes my name, and I’ve never cared for it much but I love the way it sits on his tongue, butter and velvet.

Tomorrow—dinner with the Wolffs. Saturday night dinners, practically tradition, once every month ever since we started dating half a year ago. Sometimes we joke about his stepfather’s last name and Jason calls me Little Red Riding Hood.

He is happy now, or at least I think he is, happy in the way only eighteen-year-old boys know how to be, like he’s taught himself to forget the world whenever he’s tired of it. But he’s also sad in the way all beautiful people are, like he knows he’s running out of time. A battle he can never win and even the past is against him, we don’t kiss often anymore, and he hides it but I know he’s afraid of something. One time we fell asleep together in the library, curled up on a huge couch with ragged pillows and falling threads, and when I woke up he was gasping for breath like this time a knife was stuck in his chest.

One more week. The house is dark and silent except for a light in the kitchen, three cars in the garage. My father is still away, Shanghai or Dubai or maybe Manila this time. His absence is even more of a presence than he is. Suffocating silence and a house too big for two women.

The door creaks. My sandals clatter as I line them up beside my mother’s Gianvito Rossi pumps. An extra pair of kitten heels on the other side of hers. Black and satin and a ribbon for the straps. Shoes I haven’t seen in months. Small enough to fit only a ghost. My heart clamps down.

In the doorway, shadows leaping and vaulting, the sound of something faint and somber and stained in a minor key. The delicate arpeggios of our six-foot Steinway piano, a melody so familiar that a deep ache seeps into my stomach. Heavy and made of stone.

I remember the first time I heard that piece—“The White Peacock,” it’s called—and I realized Cressy could do whatever she wanted and no one could ever be angry anymore. My mother found the sheet music two years ago, hidden in the library of the conservatory where she teaches. Cressy unwound the harmonies on ivory keys and instantly everything slowed and turned to honey in her hands. And then she finished and we both clapped even though Mama wished she could’ve played it better, even though I hated how easy it all was for her, because no matter what, there has always been something radiant about my sister and when she plays it’s like watching a star fall.

There is no one else who plays “The White Peacock” like she does. No one else who can coax sweet strains from the keys like she can. No one else who touches the piano so gently, as if holding a dog or a baby or something to be worshiped.

Before I even step into the living room, where the grand Steinway commands every eye, I know it’s her.

The knife in my lungs grows sharp once more.

Loose limbs, doll face. Smile made of glass.

One more week. Another lie.

My mother sees me first. Gaze so bright, I think she will catch fire, woman made of red and coal and flame. The same eyes as Cressy, haunted and fierce and too lovely to be real. Could swallow me with a look. Make me disappear.

Mama stands beside the piano, one elbow propped on the lid, statuesque. Gestures for me to stay quiet as the music wraps and twists around us like incense. Soft bars climbing up the walls and crescendoing to the ceiling. Binding my feet in place, I can’t

move, liquid languor in my limbs, I could fall to the ground right now and let Cressy’s arpeggios collapse my legs, slice my throat.

Instead I stand, I watch, her hands crawl across the keys like spiders and she hasn’t forgotten a single note and it’s as if nothing ever went wrong. Still the brilliant young pianist with a world to conquer. A world made of honey.

Then my mother looks at me again and I wonder if she’s thinking about it too, the day in September when Cressy took her eyebrow tweezer and attacked her wrists like a wild animal backstage at Teatro Antonio Belloni. Thirty minutes before her turn to play “The White Peacock” on the stage pianists dream of, the same stage Mama conquered twenty years ago. Wilting on the floor of her dressing room like a white rose in a sea of crimson, the youngest-ever finalist of the Bocconi Competition, the doctor said another millimeter deeper and she would have died. Cressy laughed when she woke up. Like she’d meant to flirt with death. Like she’d won.

“What the hell are you doing?” I blurt. Not realizing I’ve spoken until the music abruptly stops. Two pairs of black eyes fixed on me.

Cressy stands. Dancer-smooth and dangerous, too, arms and legs the diameter of coins, layers of silk hanging off her, fabric scraps on a high fashion mannequin. A mannequin, that’s what she is, the figures made of wood and wire that I draw with charcoal pencils.

“Did you miss me?” Voice made of amber and syrup. Like the women in movies.

“You still have a week of treatment.”

My mother clenches a hand around my wrist. “There was nothing wrong with her to begin with and that idiot Dr. Fleming has finally realized it.”

“Mama, she’s—”

“I’m right here, you know.” Cressy loosens her hair from its knot and it slinks down over her collarbones, inky snakes tangled with stars. “You don’t need to worry anymore, Mara.”

The way she watches me. Brows arched and lips tilted and thorns in her eyes. I think of when I was five years old and she taught me to be afraid of mirrors, she said they’d eat my soul if I looked too hard, they’d make me fat and hideous and no one would want me anymore. The time after the skull men came at night, when she covered me with thirty pairs of scissors while I slept. To protect me, she said. Keep the monsters away.

“Welcome home,” I say. Sticky early-autumn heat pressing on my chest and no more sweetness, I taste something bitter and sharp. Blood on my tongue.

It’s me—I am bitter and sharp and my mouth is full of blood.

We eat at the table because Cressy’s doctor says inconsistency is bad for her, everything is bad for her, why didn’t we eat meals together and why didn’t Mama cook every day and why didn’t we sit at the big oak table. Our fault. My father’s most of all, is what the therapist said during our only family session. My mother and me at opposite ends of the long white couch, Cressy’s seat empty, Baba’s seat empty. Two out of four.

There is a meal plan on the counter but my mother took her own liberties, the slow cooker full of steaming chicken broth with chunks of tomato and mushroom, barely enough for two. She divides it into three glass bowls anyway, sets them down. Cressy folds into a seat and shows her teeth. A smile.

I pick up the laminated menu. Today is circled in black marker, Friday, October 8, measurements labeled beside each ingredient. 2 servings of potato. 1 serving of vegetables. 2 sandwiches with egg or ham. 2 scoops of ice cream. Or 290ml Ensure P.

My mother, smoothing down place settings and laying out spoons. Hasn’t yet shed her blazer from work, pressed and sharp and creased like origami paper, she acts like she’s tired of teaching but still treats it like a performance, pretty clothes and heels too high for lectures on music theory.

144

“I’ll be there.”

***

“This isn’t what she’s supposed to have,” I say. “It’s not enough.”

Mama doesn’t turn around. “I got the call to pick her up when I was on my way home from the university. If you wanted more, you should’ve come home and cooked.”

“That’s not—”

“Give your sister your portion if you’re so worried.”

If only Jason were here, if only he were here and he would hold my hands and my face and tell me lovely things, breathe, he would say, and I do, in and out and in again until I can’t feel my nails digging into my palms.

Cressy traces her lips with a nail, picking at a flake of dead skin. Peeling herself like an onion. “Can I have a gin and tonic?”

“Not on your meal plan either.” I drop the menu in her lap.

“Relax, Mara. God.” A pause. She grabs my sleeve, digs her nails into my skin through the knit fabric. “What the hell are you wearing? Is this mine?”

“No. I ordered it last winter.”

She shakes her head, brandishing her spoon at me with her other hand. “This is mine. When did you take it?”

“I didn’t.” Wrench my arm away from her, tufts of yarn tearing from the white cardigan and floating in the air. Suspended in space. “Don’t touch me.”

“Give it back,” Cressy snarls. “It’s not yours.”

“You’re lying.”

“Give it back or I’ll kill myself!”

“Girls! Enough.” My mother slams a hand on the table. Soup sloshing over the rim of each bowl. Spoons clattering. The huge diamond on her wedding ring flashing in the light, she only ever takes it off to play Mozart.

“Tell her to give my sweater back,” Cressy hisses.

I open my mouth and shut it again, fill it with dust and grievances and swallow it all back down. Breathe. Slip off both sleeves under my mother’s fierce, burning gaze and hand the cardigan to my sister. Mama isn’t looking at me anymore but Cressy is, eyes fixing on my shoulders and elbows and the sliver of skin between my shirt’s hem and the waistband of my jeans, she raises an eyebrow at me and doesn’t say a word. Then she turns into a mirror, cold and glassy and full of sorrow, and I see myself twisted and magnified and blown out of proportion and I want to shred that girl into pieces, I want to throw a stone through the surface and claw out my eyes so I never have to see her again.

“Watch out,” Cressy purrs at me. Hugs the cardigan close to her chest. “Stay away from my things.”

My mother twists her hair into a low knot and slides into her chair across from Cressy and me, both ends of the table are reserved for my father. Wraps both hands around her bowl. “Mara, leave your sister alone. She has competitions coming up.”

“Exactly.” Cressy stirs her soup, props her elbow on the table. Long sleeves hiding the scars that haunt her wrists. “Federov played like shit at the Bocconi finals. That man shouldn’t be allowed near Chopin.”

Ivan Ilyich Federov—ice blond, St. Petersburg Conservatory trained, nicknamed Little Tchaikovsky by the papers in Russia and New York alike. Rumors in the music world said Juilliard sent him enough letters last year to decimate a whole forest; if he’d accepted their offers, he would’ve been admitted to the same class as my sister. Instead he enrolled in the university where Tchaikovsky studied, and Cressy opted for a gap year, trading courses and lectures for extra hours of practice in preparation for the Bocconi. In the months leading up to the finals, she sewed dolls with blond hair and broad shoulders, stole tubes of my paints to make Ivan’s likenesses bleed. Cut off their fingers and displayed the stubs like trophies.

“Federov won,” my mother says. Obsidian creeping into her voice. “Not you.”

Cressy sneers. “Please, Mother. We both know I would’ve.”

“Watch yourself.” Mama arches a sleek brow. “I’ve won the Bocconi. You haven’t.”

As if either of us needed the reminder. As if the trophy by the piano isn’t reminder enough, casting gold glimmers through

the whole room, and sometimes I wonder how Cressy can stand to practice with it displayed right beside her, if it’s motivation or condescension or something else entirely. Mama and Cressy are a team, mother and daughter, Viviene and Cressida Song. Until something dark and cold wells up between them and then they turn to wolves, thrashing claws and flashing teeth.

My sister takes after my mother—the same spindlyproportioned hands, the same deftness with rhythm, the same violent dedication to music. The type of artist who’s willing to hurt and to bleed, who will cut corners off their souls to create something beautiful. But Mama faded, waned, a moon at sunrise. Cressy, the sun.

The screech of a chair leg on the wood-paneled floor. My sister’s soup still untouched on the table, chunks of tomato floating like war casualties.

As she stands, she tosses her napkin on the table and runs her hands through her hair, tresses turning liquid in her hands, light and shadow. Revels in her frailty as she turns her back to us.

“Zuo xia lai,” Mama says. Sit down.

“I’m going to practice.”

“Zuo xia lai!”

But Cressy walks away, placid, still as lake water, shoulder blades unsheathing from the straps of her thin slip. Soft steps. My mother’s face is made of stone, tight from anger and something the same color as envy.

The opening refrain of “The White Peacock,” trailing and spiraling into the room. Mama jabs her spoon at me.

“You’d better finish that,” she snaps.

By the time I do, she too is gone. ***

Night, rich and velvet, draped outside the window. Broken chords and careful cadences sing muted from downstairs. I bury my face in my quilt and listen, the melody of something falling apart.

The first time Jason came over, it was the music that he remarked upon, not the cream of my walls or the books on my shelf or even the baby photos in my white silk frames. Cressy’s music, waltzing up the staircase and sneaking through the door like an uninvited guest. This is what he noticed. Touched my face, my hair, I started unbuttoning my dress and he asked who was playing the piano, I said it was my sister and he sat back on his heels and listened. Hair turning gold in the dim light.

I used to fear he was going to fall in love with her because everyone always does. Boys, girls, men, women, they all look at Cressy like some rare art piece to bid on. Can’t help it. The reviews of her performances call her beautiful before they call her talented. Beautiful enough that the whole world wants a taste, the whole world wanted to own her until she cut herself open. Even Jason. Three hours after junior prom ended, we were standing in that hotel room, him in a tuxedo, me in my white silk dress like a wedding, and he was kissing me and pulling down my straps and pressing against me like he wanted to be inside of me at that very instant. Back then he still liked to put his hands and his lips on me, he’d parse my body and read me like a rare novel, and as we kissed I thought of the music—my sister’s eyes—her white dress—and I twisted away from him, I grabbed his wrists and asked if he wished I were Cressy too. Then his eyes filled with something clouded and gray, and we slept on opposite sides of the bed, still dressed. I never brought it up again.

Cressy stops playing downstairs, the music trailing off and tucking itself under the piano lid. Silence filling its space and pressing on my lungs, I grit my teeth and bite down. Stare at my blank canvases in the corner and watch them fill with dissonant colors. Like animated Impressionist works.

Those canvases. The future homes of my portfolio pieces—a lifetime of images compressed into twelve works, my ticket to a university a thousand miles away. Only three weeks left until the deadline and I’ve barely finished nine, charcoal studies and abstract paintings, maximalist. The star portion of the

145

portfolio still remains unfinished: three reimagined tarot cards with symbols from the Chinese mythology of my childhood, but every time I look at them I find something else missing. A crooked line, an empty space, most of all they are hungry for energy. The hardest correction to make.

My door creaks, swings open. Announcing the intruder. Cressy’s thin silhouette is drenched in shadow and I think of the story of the woman who climbed out from the depths of the sea. In the darkness, my sister’s eyes sink deep into the concavity of her face, cheeks disappearing, lips turning black. Only a skull remaining. She sits down on my bed and wraps my cardigan around her shoulders. Shivers like she’s cold. “I forgot how soft your sheets are.”

I watch her. The way she winces at each movement when she thinks I’m not looking. “Why are you home, Cressy.”

“Because I’m better.”

“No, you’re not. What did you do?”

A pause. The air tugging between us like taffy. Then Cressy laughs. A slow, bright, gritty sound. “I fucked him.”

“What?”

“He’s a bottom, you know. All men with mommy issues are.”

“Cressy—”

“Men are like animals. You should watch out with Jason.” She laughs again. Louder this time.

I stare at her. Breath coming faster and faster and faster and I’m going to run out.

“Oh, Mara.” She reaches out, presses her index finger to my lips. Traces my jaw with her thumb. Looks at me with those mirror eyes. “I know you didn’t miss me.”

I fucked him.

Him.

Who is he. Who is my sister.

CHAPTER 2

There is a pair of scissors on my pillow. When I wake they are waiting for me. Blades separated by a centimeter, a wide chasm between slits of metal, faint dawn lurking in the crevices. Close enough to puncture an eye and my first thought is the skull men before I remember Cressy.

Cressy, always one to run with scissors and play with knives, though eyebrow tweezers were a first for her. For years I was afraid of fire and she held matches with the flame twirling just above her fingertips. Drove through red lights and danced on bridges. I told myself there could be no more surprises and yet she still managed, the ushers were sobbing that day when they ran to find us, Mama was sobbing too and I was staring at Cressy’s body and I couldn’t even believe it was real. Face drowning in makeup until she looked like anything but herself. And her blood—lakes of it, oceans of it, seeping and staining and splattering her white dress with the color of dead roses.

In my hand the scissors sit, heavy and thin and cold like clutching an icicle, suddenly I want to hurl them far, far, across the room, through the window, shatter the glass, break in pieces. Slice the world into mirror shards.

Breathe. In, out, set down the scissors instead and twist my hair into a low knot, in, out, pad over to the bathroom, rest my hands on the counter. In, out. Stave off the riot in my stomach and the knife in my spine. Just one day and already I feel something beginning to snap, something tucked deep and damp and covered in teeth, wild, a woman like the ones Paula Rego painted. Faces contorted in the most hideous screams.

I don’t dare to look in the mirror today so I brush my teeth with my eyes closed and skip makeup besides creamy foundation, trade my white slip for a huge wool sweater. No chance of Cressy claiming this one—she’s always preferred cashmere over wool. I bury my hands in the sleeves until they disappear and make my way down the stairs, my sister’s door is closed but Mama is certainly awake, she’s like me, always rising while the stars are

still out to play. An old habit from when she used to compete, carving out extra hours of the day to practice when the rest of the world was still asleep.

From the kitchen there is the sound of something clattering, the dull clank of metal on metal. Dissonant. Not my mother. Acrid. The smell of burning. And faint humming, a familiar, aching tune, something by Lizst or Schumann or maybe Mendelssohn, I never managed to learn the difference between the Romantic composers no matter how many times Cressy performed their works. I pause in the arched doorway and watch as my sister dances around the marble-topped kitchen island in a long crocheted dress, mixing bowl in hand, hair twisted atop her head to reveal a pair of winged collarbones.

“Morning,” she sings. “Took you long enough.”

“Something’s burnt, Cressy.”

She gestures at a tray on the oak table, resting upon a stack of newspapers. “They were supposed to burn.”

I inch closer. One step and then another, something made of iron in my stomach. When I peer down at the table, the tray is covered with men. Broad shoulders and blond hair made of frosting. Every single one cracked from overcooking. The smell of matches. Jason.

No—not the eyes. Blue dots on the gingerbread but Jason’s eyes are green, green as forests and beer bottles from the brand Baba liked when I was young, green as sea glass and grass lawns. Can’t be him because he is mine, he needs me and he could never love my sister. Never. And tonight we’ll sit at the table, Jason and me and no Cressy in sight, we’ll hold hands and there will be nothing between us.

“Federov,” Cressy declares. Picks up a cookie and snaps its neck cleanly. Drops it back on the tray.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?”

She sneers at me and rolls up her knit sleeves. From beneath the knotted yarn, I see the jagged white lines carved into her pale flesh. “I’m not a cannibal.”

“It’s a cookie, Cressy.” The head she tore off is staring at me, searing my cheeks with its gaze.

“Fine. Help yourself, then.”

The head is watching me, still watching, all the others on the tray have turned their eyes to me and I blink once, twice, they don’t look away. Like they see right through my skin and into the tangle inside. Paring shadows into slivers. Cutting to the heart. They see my heart and I don’t want to know what it looks like.

“I’m not hungry.” I swallow the pins in my throat. They taste like scorched metal. “Where’s Mama?”

Silence. Cressy gives me a cat grin. Pointed teeth showing. Vampire girl. Drinking Ivan Ilyich Federov’s blood.

“Where’s Mama?” I ask again. Louder.

She runs a finger through the blond-colored frosting and wrinkles her nose at it. “God, Mara. Why should I know?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you put scissors in her room too.”

Finally Cressy lifts her head. Meets my eyes with those piercing brown orbs, vast and glittering and full of skies, and I turn away because it hurts to look at her. “Scissors?”

“Don’t pretend.”

“You’re imagining things,” she says. “I thought I’m supposed to be the crazy one.”

The open blades, the icicles in my hands. The way dawn danced on delicate lines, I know it. I remember it, I see it all, the red handles, or blue—no, silver—the blades—the metal—my nails dig into my palms, eyes squeezing shut and sparks whirling in the dark. Blue handles. Silver.

“Stop it,” I say.

“What scissors?”

What scissors. What blades. What handles. If I ran upstairs right now, would my pillow and dresser be empty, no scissors in sight. And suddenly I am terrified to know because would I doubt my eyes forever.

A pinch in my spine. Tears springing up. “Stop it,” I say again. Cressy in her beautiful crocheted dress, strands of yarn teasing her ankles. Ankles so small that I think I could snap them

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with a finger, the loveliest things are the ones that break fastest, I want to break her, I want to be breakable. Like her slashed wrists. Jason’s soccer injuries. Mama’s crumbling fingertips.

My sister leans back against the kitchen island and smiles. Slow and sweet. “You’re seeing things, Mara.”

Things. Things that aren’t real. Things made of smoke and dust and glimmers of light. Blinks of the eye.

“Why are you doing this.” On the table, the little Ivan Ilyich Federovs are still staring at me, tiny mouths turning to grins.

Cressy shrugs. Runs a finger up the ladder rungs of her ribs as if she’s counting them. I wonder if she is, I wonder if she knows what she’s saying, what she’s seeing. Then the way her lips twitch ever so slightly, I know she knows.

She knows.

Teeth digging into my cheek. Cannibal. Biting down until I taste iron and blood.

“Don’t you have to practice?” I say.

“Don’t you have a portfolio to finish?” A raise of an eyebrow. “When’s that due? Two weeks?”

“Three.”

Cressy sets down her mixing bowl and sighs. “You always were a slow worker.”

In, out. Breathe. I think of my paintings, propped on the wooden easels in the art room at school, red and blue and black and white.

Hours and hours and hours of mixing acrylics and sketching on canvas, only for a half-finished portfolio, an incomplete set of cards. Before the Bocconi, I’d paint in the backyard, shutting out the sound of “The White Peacock” and Mama shouting and Cressy playing the same notes again and again until her fingers cracked open. Still the minor harmonies infused themselves into each brushstroke. The one thing my sister and I share. After she went into treatment, the house hung suspended in quiet, like the sound had fled, like it had been drained from the air and everything that remained was empty and washed out. And how was I to paint in a home devoid of color.

“I should go,” I say. More roughly than I intend.

Cressy looks at me with languid eyes. Black as charcoal dust. Melting. Dripping. A tilt of her lips and the whole world begins to stagger.

God, I think I’m going blind. I hear Jason’s voice but then it’s gone again. In out in out feet fumbling up the stairs falling at the top. Crawl to my hands and there are my mother’s eyes, face twisted like when she sees the homeless men in the city, disgust, pity, revulsion, she’s always hated animals.

“Get up,” Mama says. Too loud.

Too loud. And where are the hands on my face, softness, sunshine, where. Where. Stumble into my room and heave for breath. Once twice again again in out. In out. Knees on the rug. Gleam of light in the periphery. Lift my head.

A pair of silver scissors, sitting neatly on the nightstand.

147

Jenny Hu

Twin Flames

Your mommy is a very bad woman, my father tells me when my mother and Cecile are washing the dishes. The sound of water rushing, dashing, slapping against bone china plates. The only good thing your mommy ever gave me is you.

He pats his knee for me to sit in his lap, and even though I’m too old and too tall and certainly too heavy for him, I do as he says, just so he might cast one of his elusive smiles at me.

I imagine my mother, a vast presence in the kitchen, passing Cecile my great grandmother’s porcelain with her round, tubby fingers. Thick fat folding over with wrinkles—the same hands she used to spank us with. In the sink, hot droplets crack the fine white bowls into fractured pieces. When I close my eyes, I see Cecile’s palms splitting open, the skin parting angry and red, like a pair of lips.

But, Daddy, I say, lifting my voice so the notes turn sweet and flowery and pretty as bluebird feathers. Daddy, what about Cecile?

The water in the kitchen is still falling fast, fast, fast. He squeezes my thigh, the palest part, soft and tender as a kiss. When I was small my father told me he was descended from kings, and for years I believed him because truly he looks the part: strong and shining and magnificent, sturdy arms from growing up in the fields outside the city, dark hair veering gray. In the mirror, it is undeniable that we share the same features—strong brow, sharp chin—and though they are more suited for a man than a girl, though the boys in Calculus mock me for them, I like how they mark me as his, how they make me feel so much closer to him.

Cecile, he says. Cecile is your mommy’s girl, and you’re mine.

My twin sister, after all, is the spitting image of the woman my mother used to be, all wide pale eyes and rosesmeared lips and legs stretching lofty, skyward. The ten minutes separating us could have been ten years; our classmates used to ask if we had two different fathers, and some days I look in the mirror and I believe it. Boys trail her home even on school nights, like insistent shadows. They grab the ends of her silken skirts and sniff her sweet perfume and hold her name between their teeth, chewing and gnawing on the melody of its syllables until their lips bleed. Most of all it’s her hair they love. Sometimes I watch through the curtain when they gather on the fringes of our lawn to stare at her, eyes turning hungry and wolfish as she runs a brush through her hair in front of her window, her tresses so thick and lush and light that they morph into molten gold. The kind out of fairy tales. Like Rumpelstiltskin’s treasure.

It is hard to picture it now, the fact that my mother, too, was beautiful once. Cecile’s golden hair, face smooth and clear and cheeks so bright they turned to pearls. And how she’d loved to dance, raising her arms in the air, twisting them like grape vines, wrapping my father in her snare. He keeps a photo from their honeymoon in his wallet—that is how much he still loves the woman she was. Even after her features began to melt and her skin began to sink, before two babies sucked her womb dry and her body became undeserving of him. Now, he pulls the picture out of the crumbling leather wallet and holds it out for me to touch. Look, he says, and then grows so pensive and silent that I take sweet pity on him and fill in all the words he keeps unsaid. Look how beautiful she was, and then look what she’s become, look how she’s turned unworthy of him, look.

You understand me, don’t you, Talia, he says, tilting my chin so I have to look at him.

I nod, and a smile spreads across that weary face of his, creased gently by time and dust but handsome nonetheless. Through the rattling skeleton of the house, I hear the water shut off. A vast, carnal sigh from my mother, her stomach certainly shuddering with her breath, and then the long, earnest croaks of the floorboards beneath my sister’s limber frame.

You, my father says to me, running his hand all the way down my back. You, you, you are my most favorite little girl in the world. Even without seeing her, I can hear Cecile, waifish and translucent in her satin robe, walking away from the cracked screen door in sharp, bitter steps. ***

At night, we lie in our tiny adjacent bedrooms, pressed snug in a corner of the creaking old house, the walls alive and whisper-thin, exchanging sounds between them like folk songs. Outside the window, the cicadas wail, swept up by summer air and drunk on moonlit rapture. My mother and father sit silent in their huge, hungry bed, silk sheets sleeping still in the space between them. And from Cecile’s room—radiant Cecile, who stole my mother’s youth and left none for me: rough, heavy panting, the undeniable rhythm of quickening breaths. Vast, hungry gasps for air. For life. For more.

When the heat and volume become unbearable, I lift my nightdress and pry myself open. Bare. Pale and untouched beneath the white glow of the round-faced moon. Cecile’s bed moans beneath her. I think of her, fist between her legs, head tossed back, eyes squeezed shut, hair fanned out, and I wonder how she knows so instinctively what to do, how to make herself cry out and lose her mind in a dream. If she learned it all on her own or if a boy showed her, placing his fingers on her soft skin and replacing them with his lips, lips she tries night after night to remember. Most of all I wonder if my father is doing the same: holding himself where my mother won’t, holding so tight, chasing his loneliness away. Loneliness, that pervasive, sick stench, clinging to our splintering ceilings and refusing to part.

I stretch inside of myself, as much as I can, faster and faster and faster to keep time with Cecile—chasing that secret ecstasy she is too selfish to share. If I try hard enough, I might find it first.

In the morning, Cecile sits on the kitchen counter, legs splayed apart, an orange propped between them. Perfect and pristine and fresh from our mother’s garden, still flush and slick with dew. Her hair spills, a cascade of sunlight, into her lap. When she sinks a curved pink nail into the skin of the fruit, sweet juice spurts out, spraying a sticky, wet sheen onto the granite and her pearly thighs.

You didn’t sleep much last night, she says when she sees me, and smirks.

Neither did you, I say. A hot, red stain spreading up my cheeks. When she stares at me I feel infinitely young, stupid, like a little girl instead of her twin sister. I think of when we were thirteen and I caught her behind the dumpster with a man in her mouth, eyes squeezed shut so she wouldn’t have to look at him, and I just stood there with my pink backpack straps digging into my shoulders, unable to turn away. When we turned seventeen last spring and she spurned our birthday dinner in favor of some college boy whose facial hair left burn marks on her cheeks. An empty seat left between my mother and me.

Now I sit down at the empty breakfast table, where crumbs have gathered and arranged themselves on the fogged glass, a circular stain where my father’s wineglass likes to sit. She shrugs. Swings all her hair over one shoulder. I wonder if our mother’s could ever have gleamed as brightly as hers does. It seems impossible. Improbable, unfathomable, that anyone could ever be lovelier than my sister.

148

Short Story The Seven Hills School Cincinnati, OH

***

I picture my father, majestic, sitting at his throne in our ancient house, passed down for generations—once a place to entertain godfathers and oil barons but now falling apart around the corners, cobwebs gathering in all the dark places. Then my mother, waltzing in with her bone china dishes and Cecile’s golden hair, flooding his world with light.

Tell Mom and Dad I won’t be home for dinner, Cecile says. She peers at me from between her pale, dense lashes, which are almost iridescent in the sun. A pair of flickering blue orbs hovering in the middle.

And even though I know she’s baiting me, even though she said it just so I would ask why, I can’t help myself. Where are you going to be, I say, throat thick with shame as the words escape.

She licks her index finger clean. Lips closing around it like a pair of accordion folds. Not that it’s any of your business, she says. Twists her finger between her teeth. And not that you would know what it’s like but I have a date tonight.

My legs freeze in the midst of their swinging. I think of the boys on our lawn, with their red shoes and white shirts and loose blue jeans. The way they laughed. The way they looked at her. Something hot and angry rushes through me, from my mouth all the way to the place where my thighs rub together.

I don’t care, I say, but my voice struggles to stay flat. You asked, she says. She stretches her legs out in front of us both, long and languid and luxurious. Citrus-scented smugness seeping from her skin.

Daddy doesn’t love you, you know, I tell her. Lifting my chin. Daddy doesn’t love bad girls.

I meet her gaze. The flesh of the orange turns pulpy in her grip. Her thin fingers and smooth, pointed nails. Even on the day she dies, I can’t imagine her having hands like our mother’s, heavy and pruned and fat.

Grow up, Cecile says. Too nonchalant. It sounds gross when you call him Daddy.

She places a half-crushed crescent between her lips and sucks until it’s dry. ***

Cecile is gone by six in the afternoon, whisking her way out the door in a fog of sweet perfume and sparkles in her hair, white dress trailing soft and cloudlike behind her. In her wake, our mother patters around the dining room with a pair of yellow oven mitts, apron tied loose around the layers of her waist.

Look, Dad’s favorite casserole for dinner, she tells me. Your sister usually helps me set the table, you know.

I watch her thick, meaty lips flap over her teeth, and I stay in my seat. On the table, the dish sweats; hot, salty steam filling the air with grease.

I think of the picture in my father’s wallet, the one I’ll never resemble no matter how hard I wish it. My mother, barely older than Cecile and me, dressed in a crepe-thin gown next to the ocean, water rippling and alight behind her, like a piece of sequined fabric, twisting and shining and gleaming. Her tiny dancer wrists, held forever suspended in the air.

Who do you love more, I say all of a sudden. Me or Cecile.

She pauses. Oven mitts still braced on her hands. What kind of question is that, she asks.

Everybody has a favorite, I say, leaning back against the wooden frame of my chair.

She is silent for too long. When she finally speaks again, her voice is tired. Not everybody, she says as she retreats to the kitchen, her apron strings dangling miserably at her sides. Not everybody.

metallic and awful between my teeth, hot blood flooding my mouth. I wonder if our mother knows. Better yet, our father, who will cast his dark eyes upon them and send him fleeing far, far, far away, away from our midnight sanctuary, our house always lovelier and safer at night, as if the darkness masks and warps and creates secret possibilities within its lush folds.

I can imagine them, panting and delirious and overjoyed, stumbling in a haze through the living room window because Cecile and I both know how the front door screams when it opens. Him, strong and vibrant, pushing his cowlick from his eyes, shoulders rope-taut with excitement and dread and longing. Longing dripping off her in shimmering pools. She looks at him, lips parted, smelling the desire in the liquid sheen on his face, and she grabs him, pulls him close, laughing, laughing…

No. Because abruptly the laughter is no more, replaced with the swinging of her bedroom door, the heavy footsteps of a man.

Those footsteps, I’d know anywhere. Suddenly I’m sitting up, shivering, a chill passing through my body as if a draft of wind. The quilt discarded around my ankles. Already abandoned. When I stand, I feel the wetness between my legs, sticky, growing cold in the night air.

The aching, groaning floorboards, sinking beneath my bare feet as I slip out of my room. Rubbing against my skin. I step soft, careful, so the house won’t alert them to my presence.

The door sits just barely open, swaying, a sliver of silver light oozing out from the crack between it and the wall. Moonglow leaking in a puddle on the hardwood.

Oh, Daddy, Cecile is whispering. That zesty, sweet voice of hers. Daddy, I’ve missed you.

Why did you wake me up, it’s the middle of the night, he says. Gruff. Almost hoarse. A note to his speech I’ve never heard before. I miss how you used to tell me bedtime stories, she says. She uncrosses her arms from her chest and lets her hair fall, smooth, around her shoulders. Her slender neck swept full of starlight.

He clears his throat. Sits on the corner of her bed, the mattress crying out beneath the new weight. Bending and arching beneath him.

Aren’t you a little old for bedtime stories. His voice is quiet. So tender my chest hurts.

She shakes her head. Gold flakes seem to tumble out with her every move, her hair snaring what remains of the light, framing her face in an angel’s glow. I’m still your little girl, she says. Places her hands on his shoulders, slides them down. I’m still your little girl, just like Talia.

A sound escapes him like a groan. A long, deep, wrenching sigh, his brows branded deep into his forehead.

My beautiful little girl, Cecile, he says, finally. Something low and electric and hungry pulsing in his words. My stomach thrumming, against my will, in response. He is mine, mine, mine, my father, and here she is, stealing him from me. How dare she call out to him. How dare she ask him for stories. For fairy tales, magic. Witch, that’s what she is. Stealing first our mother’s beauty and now our father’s secret smiles. It runs in her blood, her beautiful hair, and now she has done it, she has bewitched him just as our mother once did. My father, our father. Tearing his love right out of my hands and swallowing it straight to her heart.

Just as he speaks, Cecile twists her head. Turns almost all the way around until she’s facing that slit between the door and the wall, the slit behind which I hide. So slight and yet impenetrable, the window between my world and theirs. With my eyes pressed to the crack, I watch as he tangles his hands in her hair, over and over and over, glowing, and in the middle of all of it, she meets my gaze and smiles.

Just past midnight, I wake to Cecile’s voice, cloying and sugary, trailing through the walls. Laughter: glittering, silver. Weaving its way through the house like fairy dust.

It is the boy, I am certain of it. Sick, sick Cecile, bringing him into our home. Our hallway. I taste something bitter and

It is nearly morning by the time I return to Cecile’s room. Feet protected by slippers, metal in my hand. Her sheets are rumpled. She lies alone, wrapped in a thin layer of satin, sweat slick on her forehead, her cheeks, her upper lip. Without the

149

***

bravado of waking hours, she looks painfully young. Untouched. Like we could say we were twins and people would believe us. For a moment I pause, almost turn around. I could return. Lie back down. Laugh about it in the morning over orange juice and my mother’s stale toast. But I think of my father’s low voice, and finally I step forward and take my place beside her bed.

As Cecile sleeps, her hair splits silken and smooth between my fingers. Glowing faintly, like daybreak. Then falling in sheets against the cold metal of my silver scissors. Rumpelstiltskin’s gold, shining and breathless and insistent, reverting once more to straw.

150

Corine Huang

womanhood: enfleshment for laolao

girl with pickled skin / and rigid hair, fingernails washed off. the river / seasoned with fresh tungsten, fresh / beams of light. / do you remember the taste of water / as well as / you remember its scent? / can you describe it / to me? girl doesn’t budge / until she is called. girl turns over / teethed bodies and reflects. when i was still / young, i liked to form my palms / into the shapes of pebbles / and cover them with salt. i measure my strength / in the grains, seduce them / like a chiromancer. / my bones spangled / with splintered insects; my bones made / out of napalm; my bones / photographed, a dark mirror of honest / lullabies. / girl, is this what it means / to relinquish? in the first / stage, i became / the flowers, the cheeks, the texture / of a second language square across my / tongue, blooming / my lips full of silt, / striating the skin until it glowed. / in a second, i am / cut. / i don’t bother trying my mouth / when it’s ugly. sometimes / it resembles a mermaid’s tail / and i don’t have the heart to say / otherwise. / girl, have you ever been sick? / have you ever been poor? / is it ever so airless / that you need to wash yourself? / does it ever hurt / when you turn around? / not everything is something new. not everything / is something. / the problem is in beginning / the story with a girl / and ending with portraits. when you picture daughters, do you think / of something dead? / girl so in love / with her back that it paralyzes her. girl alone with the river, / leaking. / girl / is a collective, is gorgeous, is lost; is willing / to lose her tongue / in order to lose her body.

151

Poetry Stevenson School Pebble Beach, CA

152

for the

Kaylie Hudson Photography Stivers School

Arts Dayton, OH

2022

Deconstruction of Man Series 3 of 5

Silver gelatin print

Caitlyn Iaccino

Interview

After Franny Choi’s “Turing Test”

//how do you define yourself?

i am woman/derived from man/derived from scales and sweet juice/i emerged from cave bellies/gloriously sinful/gramma said/scarf down the pages/for your esophageal horror/in this utopia/we were made/to scold peaches/bleed on grass/with lady parts//

//what is your name?

two-faced slut/pancake/pain-in-the-ass/fatass/no ass/nerdy bitch/bound-to-be-raped/from a young age/i earned many names/on the street/at school/my pet names surfaced/i was collar-bound/with kicks aimed at my no-no square/& apologies wheezed/through front-tooth gaps/but if you want/you can call me woman//

//what was your life like growing up?

i grew up/a spaghetti noodle/bending to will/to words spoken/to words unspoken/twirling them around butter knives/poking at kale/smiling with crooked teeth/saying sorry about my messy bangs/they’ll grow out in a year or so/i think you like that/you have to like that/my life craves purpose//

//but, you have choices, right?

choice is a funny word/it rolls off the tongue like cinnamon/it chokes me sometimes/government-controlled/i can only reproduce/by 5 & 10 & 13/i was adult/hunching under spitballs/stomped on by dress shoes/i am baby-maker/by choice of man/tell me how you tell/little cousin cindy/she has to bear a son//

//what are you going to do about that? in mama’s words/no gas station past 7 P.M./only dad can go/the devil only appears/when rules are violated/so i’ll become a daisy/on the living room counter/perched with rosy cheeks/for your viewing pleasure/i’m sure someone/will throw me out/but for now/i am woman/there is nothing i can change//

153

Poetry Louisville High School Woodland Hills, CA

Madhalasa Iyer

Mozhi

“Language” in Tamil

America sings that this land is your land and this land is my land, But no, we say, this land is not your land. This land is only my land.

because land is a verb that means to have, because land is not a noun that can be shared, because land is not an adjective that means unity. land is a possession, a word, that has no other meaning other than the one given by the person who holds it.

In Tamil, we say language is Mozhi

We bite into the zh, like we bite into the piece of an apple, And we chew our language up, The skin of the words getting stuck between our teeth, The muffled pronunciations and broken words, Until we swallow each syllable, piece by piece Letter by letter.

All I wanted was America.

But I was told that for America to want me, I couldn’t speak the way I did. I scrambled to change myself

I shunned away from the dosas my grandma used to make, her skin turning browner at every flip, like the excessive burn on the sides of sweet potatoes.

My mother held her tongue,

But my mother’s tongue and my mother tongue Both twisted itself out of the cage Until I embraced my identity.

When we say the pledge, I place my hand on my heart And hear my heart thumping and imagine the beautiful undulations Of the red, white, and blue as it rises over adversity. The country stands for all the right things, Yet our actions slash the flag and dim its once Red, white, and blue colors, and sniff away the flame that burns In Liberty’s torch.

If we feel caged in this land and cowardly in our homes, Then America is not the land of the free or the home of the brave.

154

Spoken Word Plano Senior High School Plano, TX

Arihant Jain

155

Visual Arts Mountain View High School Mountain View, CA Competent Apple Procreate and Apple pencil 2022

Shnayjaah Jeanty

The Lakehouse

Florida has a rotting wound for a mouth, and Julys like this were exactly what it had for lunch. A serving of crushed mosquitoes with a side of redneck insanity is best served in humid, pre-tropical storm weather. Sara’s sweat slicked into adhesive as her t-shirt clung to her shoulder blades. Aunt Mae slanted herself against the doorframe of her lakehouse, her wrinkles forming a harsh arch over her eyebrows.

“Get back inside and finish cleaning the rest of the rooms. You know, idle hands are the devil’s tools,” she chided, the cross on her chain glinting in the sunlight. She rose from her position against the doorframe, gesturing for her niece to come back inside the house. Sara swallowed her spit down her reddened, swollen throat and made her way through the door.

Embellished with pastel fairy stickers and stained stuffed animals, Sara’s designated room in Aunt Mae’s house was merely a mausoleum of her childhood. She outlined the scratches on the corner of her dresser, recalling all the wood-induced scars on her face from bashing her head into it as a kid. The last time she slept in this room was 7 years ago, as a fourth-grader begrudgingly spending Thanksgiving break at her aunt’s.

The doll at the foot of Sara’s bed caught her attention first. Out of every word to hover in the Florida heat, perfection was the only word that attempted to describe the doll’s beauty. Its milk-washed skin was unscathed, save for a constellation of freckles splattered across its cheeks that made Sara want to scrape her own mellow-brown skin off for a lighter shade. Its curls appeared to be composed of tiny slivers of the sun, glistening in tight ringlets around its flushed cheeks.

Without knocking, Aunt Mae swung the bedroom door open, equipped with a pill bottle and a mug of orange juice.

“I forgot to give you your medication.” Aunt Mae’s voice trailed off as she set the items down on the dresser and ambled over to Sara’s bed.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Sara knew better than to stray from the prescribed script of complete obedience under her aunt’s roof. Pleased with Sara’s curt response, Aunt Mae placed two powderblue pills on the flat of her niece’s palm, urging her to take them in her presence. Sara rubbed at her runny nose before emptying the contents of her hand into her mouth. Once she was satisfied with Sara’s pill-taking, Aunt Mae hurried out of the room, being sure to lock the door behind her.

The click of the lock granted Sara the freedom to spit her pills into a napkin and set it next to the doll, wiping the bitter taste off her tongue with the front of her blouse. Hoping to wash away the remnants of the medication, she took a long swig of her orange juice, swiping the tangy liquid from the corners of her lips.

The sky-tinted flecks in the doll’s eyes pooled with lacquer and ulterior motives, making Sara wonder how something so lifeless could harbor such palpable malice. Its cherry-toned smile curled a degree too high, and the thin, tan brows etched above its vacant eyes tilted just enough to create the impression that it was the reason Sara’s mother died at the tender age of 30. It was perched on the bridge that Sara’s mother fell from, drinking in the stench of fear like a tall glass of cool water.

It was also a witness to her sister Gwen’s death, sapping the color from her sibling’s glowy bronze skin and adding it to its own. At least that’s what Sara believed— the doll seemed to grow increasingly beautiful with each death of her loved ones. Their cold blood deepened the red of its lips, their once vivacious spirits brightened its “warm” eyes, and each limp coil of hair only made its fuller and more vibrant.

Moonlight and the beginnings of a storm began to creep into Sara’s bedroom window, thunder booming against the soles of her feet. She shuddered, stumbling back and bumping into the foot of her bed. Sara could hear her aunt clicking her tongue at her, at the fact that she had been burdened with her sister’s highstrung child, but rationality couldn’t prevent the terror that set into her bones as she locked eyes with the doll for a second time.

Sara inhaled the muggy air deep into her lungs, exhaling and dismissing her intrusive thoughts before softly treading across the noisy floorboards of her bedroom and through her window, eager to let the water at the dock wash her problems away.

The water glittered and blushed under the moon’s admiring gaze, shuddering in rapid-growing halos around Sara’s ankles as she relaxed under its caress. A steady shower of rain splashed onto her skin and she struggled to prevent a smile from swallowing her face. Her fingertips explored the ridges along the dock, tracing the lazy circles as the melodies of the hurricane season harmonized beautifully.

A gust of wind skated past the curvature of her ear and she swiveled her neck to meet an electric-blue glower that could only belong to that wretched doll. Its feet barely grazed the wood as its eyes swirled with all the souls it had absorbed. The words she spoke were unintelligible compared to the thunder of Sara’s heart and the incessant rain of her tears, an indestructible storm unapologetic for the chaos in the confines of her mind. To Sara’s dismay, the doll began to move, animated and swift against the harsh winds and rain. The weight of a generational curse churned in her stomach as the doll shoved her into the lake, falling with her as Sara struggled to inhale.

The skies cracked and oozed ultraviolet electricity, screaming into the night as rain fed the raging ocean. Storm-stained tides ravaged her body, obeying the moon’s every command. Sara thrashed against the water’s possessive hold and desperate waves crashed into her skin relentlessly, a silent plea for her to breathe. Her lungs’ greed for oxygen won the war against her brain and she gasped for air, water attacking her insides with the vengeance of all seven seas. Her prayers for mercy fled her lips in bubbles and burst before they touched the surface. Soon, death tinted waves reached into her lungs and ransacked her body for any sign of life to find none.

Once the sun painted the floorboards a warm yellow, Mae turned the key to Sara’s bedroom door, pushing it open. Sara had a significantly altered reality of how her mother died that day, and Mae had decided that was a far better alternative to knowing the truth. Mae rattled the orange prescription bottle in her hands, prepared to continue her daily routine of handing her niece her anti-psychosis medication. Following her sister’s murder, Mae heard crazed muttering about a doll for months before she decided to get Sara professional help. On her bed lay a rumpled tissue. Sara’s aunt rushed over to the foot of the bed, gasping as Sara’s softened prescription meds rolled out of the napkin.

156

Short Story Charles W. Flanagan High School Pembroke Pines, FL

Shnayjaah Jeanty

in which charles darwin actually heals the black community adaptation

noun.

in evolutionary theory, adaptation is the biological mechanism by which organisms adjust to new environments or to changes in their current environment.

according to this theory, the black boy’s heart won’t be a guinea pig tested by a screaming pistol his ribcage will fuse into a bulletproof vest if UV rays cannot desecrate his skin cells, neither will lead his life won’t end as quickly as his news coverage police brutality will not be a natural cause of death his windpipe will not be a step stool for the white cop america will not build an example out of his corpse

according to this theory, the black boy will have no range of motion in his neck his body will not allow him to do anything but hold his head high the diameter of his mouth will widen to cradle both blackness and pride his eardrums will beat deafening percussion in response to “ghetto” and “thug” his only racial representation will not be “beyond scared straight” or “60 days in” he will not think that silver shackles are the brightest his future will ever be

according to this theory, the black boy's salivary glands will secrete caffeine his teeth will clatter into alarm clock for the crowds who are “tired” of his social justice poetry for those who say that Black Lives Matter is “exhausting” for the “woke” allies who swear a black instagram post cancels out 400 years of darkness the black boy and his species will know too much revolution to "rest" in peace

according to this theory, the black boy will reproduce asexually his mother will not mistake her womb for a casket red and blue lights will not blind his father into deadbeat he will not measure his daddy’s absence in grams and dimebags the law will not make a slave out of him this black boy, like bacteria will multiply and multiply and multiply his people will never be divided again

according to this theory, the black boy will be genetically predisposed to alzheimer’s the blackest thing about history is that it is forgotten and maybe the black boy deserves to forget too

according to this theory, the black boy will be white there is no evolution in an environment where your skin is treated like a predator but shot like prey his mistakes won’t receive a life sentence he will not be the product of “wrong race, wrong time” the sidewalk will not be his deathbed

according to this theory, the black boy lives and it is only a theory

157

Spoken Word Charles W. Flanagan High School Pembroke Pines, FL

Fiona Jin

Fiona Jin would quit crocheting on the first day

whereas jinfuyuan would knit a full patchwork sweater, maybe gift it to her pessimistic counterpart over poem-writing in porchlight. jinfuyuan flies American. Fiona Jin is on her mother’s United Airlines Platinum status and sports uncomfortable J. Crew blazers in the lounge. jinfuyuan tried so hard to wrap it well and sorry for the Christmas bells, my family isn’t American (Christian). Fiona Jin silently slits the package open with her pinky finger and says here is a papercut. Here is my violence

jinfuyuan has plump lips, always speaking, and cannot knit. Fiona Jin has plump lips, always bleeding, and likes sweaters. They also have a secret triplet, 金芙源1, who rarely drags herself out of her room these days, who has dark eye bags like danger until she is lured out by the candied haw every Chinese New Year. Her closed-mouthed laughs so crystalline she might crumple inwards and break. The other two are in awe. On the floor: the battered wrapping paper, the sweater baggy with holes, the tarnished silver needles. Fiona Jin publishes poems. The other two fight her to write them.

158

Poetry Adlai E. Stevenson High School Lincolnshire, IL 1. 金芙源: a Mandarin name, the romanized version of which is jinfuyuan.

Annie Johnson

Her Body as Exotic Fruit

I am fourteen years old and feel like I’ve just been punched in the stomach by a stranger. I feel every inch of force in her metaphorical knuckles, every twitch in the sinew and bone as it collides with my body, even though, in real life, her knuckles have not come within a mile of my stomach because she goes to a different school and I have never met her and she does not know my name.

My mother likes to compliment my competitive spirit but it’s all fun and games until your body decides to stop breathing. It’s the letter that does it to me. Of course, I had heard things before, through rumor and word of mouth and archived College Confidential message boards.

But when I see the letter, slightly blurred by the flattened pixels, adorned with hand-drawn hearts and emojis, suddenly her victory becomes real. This is really how it looks. This is really how it feels.

It’s a letter of acceptance to one of the most prestigious summer writing programs in the country; the Super Bowl of nerdy teen girls who spend their free time writing collections of poems about all of their hungers and yearnings. A letter that I spent hours waiting on. A letter I never received.

She got in. I didn’t.

I replay the Instagram story. I replay it twice. I take a screenshot and scour every word. I imagine this is how Victorian wives must have felt, reading love letters from their husbands who would never return from the war.

If I was beaten by some kid from a private arts school or a strange, exotic place like California, I wouldn’t really mind that much. At least they have an excuse: money. But this kid is different. Her name is Jenny Xia and she goes to public school, the same district as me and everything. She only lives ten minutes away. She has no tutors, no connections, and no advantages. Effectively, we are the same, save for one distinguishing factor: raw talent. I feel like I’m going to puke.

Eventually, I work up enough courage to reach out to her. I hide my jealousy thinly, behind a veil of caps-locked messages and heart emojis.

‘CONGRATULATIONS GIRLY!!!! so so proud.’

She replies almost immediately: ‘THANK YOU AHHHH! ur too nice lmao’.

I see an opportunity here and, like some kind of predator with springlocked hindquarters, I pounce on it.

‘so like, what’s ur process??? for applying to these places?’ After a pause, I add ‘totally ok if u don’t want to answer lol’, just to ensure all of my bases are covered.

‘omg … well the writing samples are like really important’.

I can’t see her, but I imagine her body draped over a sofa somewhere, one of those fancy ones, with tassels. She has a pipe balanced precariously over her fingers, and she takes long, slow drags to fill the spaces between replies.

“they like strong opening sentences, like hooks, y’know. and strong closing sentences too.” Her voice is smooth and polished. She wiggles the pipe on her knuckles as she speaks. “and they like artistic structures + vivid scenes. and they like it when you jump around in time. and they like it when u mention fruit for some reason. and birds.”

I double tap on all of her messages, adorning each one with a little heart. She types something, stops, then starts again.

‘ur asian, right?’

‘half. on my mom’s side. we’re rlly whitewashed tho,’ I reply.

‘omg u have to write about that. they love it.’

‘about being asian?’

‘ya’ ‘wdym?’

‘like … idk lmao. like, write about your immigrant pain. about your grandma or how u were bullied in elementary school for eating rice or something like that. make sure to use ethnic names, too!!! and include some foreign words in there. they eat that shit right up.’

I pause; blink twice. ‘is that what u did?’

‘well i submitted a lot of samples. but they only rlly liked the one about being asian. lol.’

I am ten and my mother is in her bedroom, talking to my Halmoni on the phone. A poet would have something to say about this, three generations of women all speaking and listening and communing in the sacred exchanging of words, but I am not a poet yet so I don’t say anything. The lights are off behind the door. I linger outside, trying to catch fragments of their voices, drifting through the frame like smoke. Hearing my mom speak Korean is a special occasion; a rare, once-in-a-year event, kind of like Christmas. The words sound strange in her mouth, in her voice. There’s an aspect of it that’s unreal. But at the same time it’s oddly comforting, a reassuring reminder that my mom is, in fact, Korean, and is not just a white woman with dark hair and slanted eyes. As such, I am reminded that I, too, come from Koreans, which is easy to forget sometimes.

I don’t understand a word of what they’re saying, but I pretend that I do. I trace careless fingers over the imagined thread of their conversation. Now they’re talking about the weather. Now they’re talking about money. Now they’re talking about me. After a few minutes of this, she finally says something I can understand: “Bye, Mom.” There’s a silence, a rustling of fabric, some footsteps. When my mother opens the door, she jumps.

“What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to listen to you guys.”

“Why?”

I don’t answer. Instead, I ask “How’s Halmoni?”

“She’s fine. Same as ever.”

She walks to the kitchen and selects a box of pasta from the pantry. I sit at the table and shred a napkin into small strips, thin and delicate, like ghosts or petals. “Why didn’t you ever teach me Korean?”

“I don’t see why it matters.” She slides pasta into a pot and fills it with water. “Who would you even speak Korean to?”

“You.”

“We can speak English. We don’t need to speak two languages.”

“Halmoni.”

“You never see her.” When the pot is brimming with water, she puts it on the stove and sparks it to life. Pale blue flames lick the underside of the metal. “It’s useless.”

“Why don’t you ever cook Korean food?”

“You refuse to eat it. Remember that stew I made, on the new year?”

“That was too spicy.”

“All Korean food is spicy. Why are you asking so many questions? Don’t you have some homework to do, or something?” Thin wisps of steam float off the top of the pot and disappear into the air, formless, quieter than a breath.

“I don’t know. I just want to feel more Korean, I guess.” My mother stirs the pot three times. A water droplet flies off the top and lands on her thumb, but she doesn’t flinch. She just flicks it off, stony-faced. “I don’t see why.”

159

Creative Nonfiction Dublin Coffman High School Dublin, OH

***

After a few days, Jenny texts me an addendum: ‘u should write something historical!! or about ur family. they’ll loooove that.’

I am twelve and a writer, though I don’t like to see it that way. The word ‘writer’ is just so derivative – I am a creator of worlds, a master of craft, a goddess, an artist, a visionary. My magnum opus is a 250 page warrior cats fanfiction entitled “The Quest of Shadows: Dark Horizons - Book One in the Midnight Sun Saga.” It occupies around 80% of the space in my brain at all times.

My Language Arts teacher is displeased with this. She wants to open up my mind. “You should try some other types of writing,” she says. “Poetry. Short fiction. Play writing.”

I spend the next few days reluctantly crafting a story about a magical girl escaping from an abandoned laboratory and toppling the government. It is thirty-seven pages long, single spaced, font size 10. My teacher reads it with her lips pressed together.

“It’s good,” she says, with her voice all slanted so I know she’s lying. “But it just feels a little … big.”

“Big?”

I still don’t fully understand, but I am young and dumb and eager to please, so I try again. I write a story about my sister, how she used to chase me barefoot through the backyard, fistfuls of hollowed-out cicada husks half-crushed between her fingers, and I screamed and screamed, terrified of things that couldn’t hurt me, things left behind. This time, when I offer it to my teacher, she smiles.

“Oh, this is good,” she says. “This is really something.”

I like the feeling I get when she says that, like I sliced a chunk out of myself and that chunk has something literary about it, something of value. So I don’t stop. I cut myself up until I can no longer tell which meat came from my body and which meat came from my mind.

A few months later, I start submitting to journals, and compile a diverse menagerie of rejection letters from various sources. Some of them come with feedback attached. One very special day, an editor of a local magazine takes the time out of her day to write me an email.

“You write that your sister’s name is Nari,” she says. “Is that a middle eastern name?”

“No. It’s Korean. Nari as in ‘Genari’, as in forsythia, in English.”

“That is so beautiful and exotic! I didn’t know you were Korean.” Then, she adds “You should submit something that better reflects your authentic experiences.”

I change the piece, so that, instead of teasing me for being nerdy and obsessed with horses, the school bullies tease me for being Asian. And, instead of making up in the end and gaining a new understanding of each other, I endure my suffering in silence because I know that, in the history of my family, nothing has ever changed and nothing ever will. Because I am Asian, I am doomed to be a victim of racism forever, and this burden is so great that there is no hope that I can ever find happiness, but also, as an Asian woman, I cannot properly express my rage due to societal pressures, so I am doomed to silently weep my crystal butterfly tears into my small, bird-like finger bones. I also replace the word ‘Mom’ with ‘Eomma’. The piece is accepted into the magazine.

never been to Korea, and I probably never will, since if we go, we’ll have to buy presents for all the aunts and uncles and one hundred cousins nobody’s ever heard of, and take that agonizing 17-hour flight, and the whole thing would just get really expensive so we might as well just stay home and watch some TV.

She tells me that, when people ask me where I’m from, I should say “Dublin, Ohio.” We practice it together, nice and slow, working all of the syllables across our mouths. “Dub-lin Oh-hi-o.”

The next day at school I tell Meredith that I’m not from Korea, actually, and I show off the words I worked so hard to perfect. She gapes at me, blank-faced, then returns to the arduous task of coloring inside the lines of a picture of a horse.

When the weather turns cold, we take our first spelling test. I miss three words: ‘restaurant’, ‘beautiful’, and ‘believe’. Meredith misses zero words. She tells me this, very proudly.

“I scored higher than you!” she says, and laughs. “I thought Chinese people were supposed to be smart.”

In the far and distant future, at interviews and panels and marches for equality, I will recite this moment as the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I might even embellish a little, say that she called me a chink and a dog eater and squinted her eyes at me and told me to go back to my own country. I will say this is a testament to the failure of the education system in our school district. I will say all this with a sort of justified fervor, a heroism, as if I am speaking out against injustice against Asians everywhere, as if my voice could ever carry that far. And the people listening will smile and nod and say ‘What a brave girl’, and they will want to put me in their newsletters and pose me in their pictures and post me on their FaceBooks because I am just so young and tragic and vaguely ethnic-looking but not too much so, and in listening to me, they understand my struggle and uplift my voice and acknowledge my pain and make amends for the long and turbulent history of Asian oppression that haunts this country. All this because they are smiling and nodding so, so politely. In the present, though, I am eight, and I do not know any of this. I laugh with her. ***

I am sixteen and remember the advice I have been given, re Jenny Xia, re writing, re writing about being Asian. I write a story about my Eomeoni and the suffering she endured to come to America and make a life here, about her secret yearning to return to her people with their exotic paper lanterns and their Chuseok rituals and their beautiful, foreign culture. For several sentences, I liken her body to a piece of exotic fruit. Her hanbok like the silky wings of the wise cranes that streak across the watercolor skies, and also our ancestor’s spirits. Her eyes, all brown and misty like the fog over the Korean mountains. Not any mountains in particular – just Korean ones.

After getting my acceptance letter in the mail, I text Jenny Xia again. It’s been a year, but still, she tries to act excited.

‘omg congrats it was soooo fun ur going to LOVE it!!!’

‘ahaha i hope so. thanks for the tips btw. i did what u said.’

‘omg glad i could help!’

‘yeah lmao. the funny thing is tho, idk if my writing genuinely got better or if it’s just what i chose to write about lol.’

‘wdym?’

‘like idk. i just keep thinking, if i wrote about anything else, would i have still gotten in?’

‘ohhh lol yeah probably not’

‘why?’

‘wdym?’

I am eight and an object of great confusion for my thirdgrade class, who is just starting to learn about a world outside of Ohio, ex. California, ex. Mexico. My classmate, Meredith, asks me if I came from Mexico, and I say no, I came from Korea. She asks what that is, and I’m not sure how to answer her, so I say nothing. She asks me if I’ve ever been there, and I can’t really remember if I have or not, so I say ‘Yes’.

Later, I go home, and my mother tells me that I lied. I have

‘why do you think that is? why do they want you to write about being asian?’

‘oh idk lol they probably just want to know about like your identity and stuff’

‘there’s other parts of my identity tho’

‘well i mean yea. but they like it when you write about other things too!! like about being gay or about being a woman. stuff like that.’

160 ***

***

‘yeah but like ,,, isn’t there more to me than that? why does my voice only matter when it’s about all the ways that i’m oppressed?’

There’s a pause. When I see that Jenny isn’t typing, I add ‘lol’.

The list of kids accepted into the program is announced officially on FaceBook in an artistically-formatted PDF, with links to writers’ selected works. I suck on the inside of my cheek and sift through them.

Kelly Choi writes about the racism and oppression she endured during the global pandemic.

Ryan Thomspon writes about his first kiss.

Jungja Lee writes about Japan’s rape and occupation of Korea.

Mackenzie Smith writes about her relationship with her younger brother.

Kevin Zhang writes about how his grandfather’s leg was impaled by a piece of shrapnel during the Vietnam War and yet the folks back home still called him a gook and a rice eater.

Kayley Roe writes about the best summer of her life.

At the first meeting, we position our chairs in a closed circle and the adjudication panel emerges from the woodwork to tell us how incredibly proud they are. They cannot believe what stellar, stellar young people we are, and are amazed by how much we’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time, and they hope we will continue expressing our true, genuine selves through art, forever and ever until the end of time.

All of us clap, and a white girl emphatically sobs how lucky we are to be a part of a program that cares so much about uplifting our voices.

161

Annie Johnson

A Backwards Crawl in Arkansas

Somehow I was certain that nineteen would be the year to end me. My greatest fear came to life. I landed Professor Julep as my advisor. Three months later, I dropped out of college. This was back when Sandusky’s was still open, back when my days began at 5:30 AM and with a slow stumble to my car, a temporary blindness until my low beams divided the dark into thin slivers. Irene and I always got there early to mix Flavor of the Day. She waited for me outside the door with her foot propped up, swinging the keys on her fingers. I think she wanted me to keep that image of her, as if to say, Yeah, you can’t get in without me, what are you gonna do about it?

Irene wasn’t the real boss, of course, that title went to Trevor, a wiry thirty-something who spent most of his time talking about the girls he’d take in the back of his truck. I wasn’t the kind of girl who’d ever be caught dead in the back of his truck, and I think he always hated me for it. I saw Irene back there a couple times, and he always liked her better. Irene brought in the tips.

We kept our heads down in chilled silence through fistfuls of sugar / chocolate chips / caramel pretzels. On a good day I’d stay until two, maybe three at the latest. On a bad day, like the fourth of July or when a Little League game was happening, I’d be scooping Birthday Cake Surprise into cones until the tendons holding my knuckles together gave out. There was no central air so the back of my shirt would end up a mosaic of sweat and sugar. It wasn’t so bad, though. Sometimes, when I worked the counter, peoples’ wrists brushed me when taking their napkins. Sometimes friends from high school texted me. They mostly sent messages like “Why’d you do it?” or “This isn’t you.” One time I got recognized.

It was an older man, and he squinted at me and said, “Aren’t you that girl who writes poetry for the paper?” And I said yes, but that I hadn’t in some time now. And he nodded and said, “Busy with school, huh? I remember those days.” And I didn’t correct him because I didn’t want to.

After he left I retreated to the freezer and tried to write my first poem in three months.

The cold was pressurized there, it was renewing. Every breath came slippery and easy. In twenty minutes I settled on a title: “Already A Stranger To Myself.” Before I could get any further, Trevor discovered me and gave me a very serious lecture on the importance of good customer service.

On the drive home I usually stopped by Professor Julep’s house and imagined throwing a brick through his window. Instead I parked under a streetlight and waited for his window to go dark, then waited a little longer. I never quite figured out what he was doing in there but I always imagined him sitting at his kitchen table grading papers. He’d make sweeping strokes across his students’ poems, poems with titles like “Murder Zone, Oklahoma” or “The Butterfly’s Glass Sobs” or “ARISTOTLE DAUGHTERHOOD”. Then he’d crawl into his bed and listen to his bones crack and pop against each other for a while.

This was living from January until August. I grew intimately familiar with resentment as well as ice cream, the taste of it. I probably snuck around six pints of ChocoMoose from the freezer and only sold a total of four. I’m telling you, I wasn’t like Irene. I didn’t make tips.

Irene was one of those girls who pulled little strands loose when she tied her hair back, to frame her face. She did it even back in high school, even though it was totally impractical for doing double back handsprings or whatever else cheerleaders do. I think it was to compensate for the fact that, if one were to view a population density map of her name, there would be several large clusters around the nursing homes in the area. People always forgot that, though, when she got in the backs of their trucks.

Then they didn’t care if she was Irene, or Jenny, or goddamn Queen Elizabeth the third.

She was the type of person I pictured when I imagined a college dropout. At fifteen if you had told me we’d end up working in the same place I’d have laughed. Do you think Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath ever worked thirty hours a week at a regional ice cream shop? But as long as I didn’t think about it too hard, Irene and I got along just fine. We liked to play this game where we guessed what customers would order before they got to the counter. Little kids gravitated towards Cotton Candy whereas older gentlemen preferred Butter Pecan. Something about the taste just brought them back, I guess, to those Butter Pecan days when college cost a dime and all girls needed were wide hips. Those were the people I expected to recognize me, but none of them ever did.

In Sandusky, everyone’s face is the same. That half-dazed, permanently sunburnt look reminiscent of a blind infant the moment before its first breath. After getting into college, I swore to god I’d never return. My parents taught me to swim by throwing me into the deep end of the pool. My whole life, I swam. I thought I was good at it. By nineteen, I couldn’t keep up.

There was this one really shitty night. The air was warm and gummy outside Professor Julep’s house and I found myself with locked fingers, unable to put the key in the ignition. My brain was thinking sleep and bed and 5:30 AM next morning but my fingers were thinking about Professor Julep’s pen slashing across someone’s paper, slicing strips, opening wounds. I memorized his handwriting after reading and re-reading his comments on my poetry. The deep ‘U’ in Uninspired, the sweeping ‘l’ in Cliche, the double ‘f’s in See Me Office Hours 4PM. Some more words crawled from his lips while I sat in front of him, words like The spark is something you have to be born with and I think you should reconsider your position in this program and Spell CAT, C-A-T. And sure, he never said ‘drop out of college’, but I was a writer. Words are just puzzles. I knew how to read between the lines. Eventually my fingers woke up and I got the hell out of there, but I slept too long the next day in consequence. I pulled into the parking lot muttering curses; of course Irene was already there when I arrived, talking to Trevor. Their heads snapped towards me when I walked in and for a second they just looked at me the same way a wild animal might observe a zebra it’s about to devour.

I waited to be yelled at or fired or something, but instead, Trevor waved me in. He arranged me and Irene in a line, shoulders brushing. And he broke the news: the place was shutting down. Some kind of health code violation. The Food Safety Inspector reported twelve more rat hairs and eight more cricket legs in the ice cream machine than regulation. God bless Sandusky and God bless America.

After our shift Irene and I sat down in the freezer with two pints of ChocoMoose, because what the hell did it even matter anymore? As we shoved sweetened fingers into our mouths we felt the low rumble-hum of the compressor fan shudder through our bodies.

“You know, it could be worse, really,” Irene said, because she was always saying cliche things like that. “I’ll find a job someplace else. My brother works in the auto shop and they need a new desk girl.”

“Sounds exciting,” I said.

“How about you? Where do you think you’re going after this?”

I am dying after this, I thought, but instead I said nothing.

“Back to school, do you think?”

“No,” I said. “I dropped out.”

“Really? You? That’s a shame. I always thought the stuff

162

Short Story Dublin Coffman High School Dublin, OH

you wrote was really cool. I mean, it was weird, but it was, like, artistic, y’know?” A short pause. “Do you think you’ll ever re-enroll?”

“It’d just be the same thing.”

When she finished her pint, she left the freezer. I waited for her to come back. By the time I took the hint, her car was already gone.

On my last day at Sandusky’s, I finally got recognized again. He knew me from Julep’s workshop class. He was one of the older kids, with an apartment and a fiancée and everything all figured out. I didn’t remember his name but he wrote a lot about homesickness and trees. He lived in Marion. He was visiting his cousin, he said, and wanted to stop by since they always used to come to Sandusky’s when they were little. When I told him we were closing up for good, I thought he might start crying. Instead, he offered to buy me a drink.

He waited outside puffing vapor while I begged Irene to let me take my break early. He asked if I had a fake I.D., I said no. So we sat on one of the benches outside and watched the sky darken and turn over. The final hours of Sandusky’s Family Ice Cream were quiet. Stars unsheathed overhead. Crows cawed. It would be autumn soon.

“Old Julep,” the boy said. It was too late to ask his name. “God, what a guy. He didn’t try to scare you off in office hours, did he?”

“Not until my third poem.”

“Jesus. What’d he say to you?”

I shifted in my seat. “That I was no good. That I didn’t belong there. That I was wasting his time, and my own. He said that I’d be better off somewhere else. In business, maybe, or accounting.”

The boy laughed. “What did you call your first poem again?”

“A Backwards Crawl In Arkansas.”

“Yep. That’ll do it. He always hated stuff with state names.” He leaned back on the bench and crossed his arms like the whole world existed to satisfy him. “I don’t know how he seriously expects people to listen to him. Like, ‘Oh, let me just give up on my dreams because you told me to.’ But he came around by the end of the semester, didn’t he? I didn’t see you in class the last couple months, where were you?”

“I, uh, couldn’t make it out. Pneumonia.” I coughed loudly.

“Mm. Sucks. At least this year’s a fresh start, though. Have you started scheduling yet?”

“No … not yet. But I’ve been thinking about it, though. You?”

“I’m going to grad school.” He crossed his legs. “Julep’s my advisor.”

We talked for a few more minutes. Before he left, he gave me his business card and said to keep in touch. It was a good business card, all clean and professional.

Connor Trosky: PhD Student, Artist, Visionary. Trosky346@ gmail.com. https://www.troskywrites.com

I crumpled it into a small ball, savoring the crush of the cardstock between my fingers, the tightness in my hand. There was something so dramatic about the whole thing, yet also something strangely pathetic. I wanted to rip it up into a million pieces and throw it in the garbage, but the business-card-ball was the perfect size for my pocket. Like fate meant for me to keep it. And how can I argue with fate?

Irene found me crying in the freezer that night. I couldn’t help it. There was just something so necessary about how the moisture froze over my eyelashes, about how my screams turned to mist and evaporated in front of me before they were done leaving my mouth. That was how Irene found me. Mid-scream. As soon as she opened the door I fell silent.

She looked at me for a moment, eyes sweeping over every plane in my face. I wondered if anyone had ever looked at me for so long before. I wondered what she saw. Then, wordlessly, she left the freezer. I was worried I’d scared her away again, until she returned swinging her car keys around her fingers.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go for a drive.”

The floor of her car was littered with umbrellas and plastic bottles that floated every time she hit a speed bump. She sped

through every yellow light. The windows were down and the sound of the radio was sucked outside but I could still feel the bass thrumming in my feet. I clung to the safety handle like it would do a goddamn thing. The AC was toothless and warm. I blurred my eyes to give the streetlights a dizzy sort of look.

We passed Professor Julep’s house and for a moment I let the pain eat me alive. Forsythia bushes sprouted on the side of the highway. Most of the branches were brown and wilted, but a few anxious yellow clusters spidered off the top in long shoots. They broke my heart. They continued to live.

Irene laughed and cranked up the radio. I imagined myself buying a house somewhere sunny. She made three left turns. We reached the city limits.

163

Myra Kamal

Gravity

“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.”

some days are heavier than others, the skins you leave behind impressions of a past you sculptures of flesh and light like signatures you misplaced in mother tongue the word is heavy when you cannot pronounce it. The Urdu alphabet like trees in a forest I’ve been trying to climb. Back home Nani waves eggshells around our heads like fractured moons in orbit. A ritual of entering the atmosphere, suspension in space, the oxygen you take with you. I’m still pulled towards the soil even if I float farther away.

Our people have often put fabric to the ground to eat on a dustarkhan our bread tangled with daffodils, our hunger tangled with wild grass.

to pray on a janamaz our heads so close to the ground that we can feel the entire weight of heaven on our backs.

My sister and I pray together, face the Ka’bah and all else in between: billions of people, our garden trees with the cups of hummingbird nests, golden fruits ripe with worship.

It’s heavy, this halving of a fruit, a sun bruised apricot falls to earth

Translations

*dustarkhan- communal tablecloth making up a traditional space where food is eaten

*janamaz- prayer mat

164

Poetry Rancho Solano Preparatory School Scottsdale, AZ Rumi

Andrew Kang

Hoarding

We took what we could get. Filled the garage with old chairs, musty shirts, canned fish, five pressure cookers. When neighbors moved away, they’d leave their belongings behind, sometimes in cardboard boxes on the street, sometimes lingering near the neighborhood dump. Then we’d swoop in. This was superior to thrifting, since it was absolutely free and you could find more than just vintage clothes: a nice lavender shampoo, a pair of teal couches with the extendable footrests, and vitamins (we were puzzled—who just throws away vitamins?), and, since in our neighborhood it seemed that some family was moving out every two months, our garage was stacked.

It began before we lived here, before our apartment days, before St. Louis, before Harlem, before Quincy, where my parents had stayed in the 5th-floor attic of an old professor’s house, essentially freeloading. Before Beijing, before even the streets of Baotou, where nobody had anything to throw away. During the Cultural Revolution, Grandma had been kicked out of her family home, and at eight, fled, itemless, to the mud slap of countryside. She lived by scavenging. When she arrived in the U.S. to help raise me, she was astounded by how wasteful Americans could be—how in China, nobody could afford such excess, could throw so much away. In Mandarin, we called hoarding 捡东西, which translates to “picking stuff up.”

We picked stuff up.

But we weren’t that poor anymore—my parents had degrees, could afford clothes and food. Grandma kept hoarding. Unable to read English, she brought back expired yogurts and Cheez-Its in her haul, which we ate anyways. She’d take the stroller (this, of course, she also had picked up) and saunter out in the middle of the day to come back with it full—I imagined passersby watching her, their eyes as they’d focus in on the stroller, then what was inside: not a baby, but a stack of clothes or worn shoes or most humiliatingly, bright containers of condiments—a squirt bottle of honey mustard, which she thought might save a grocery run.

This was her resourcefulness, our resourcefulness, and I hated it—did we really need all this stuff? Every time Grandma came home with another load, we switched out the old with the new, or rather the old with the old—we lived so exhaustingly, I thought to myself, so hungry for things, like we had no pride.

As her heart condition worsened, she heaved as she walked—and kept walking, as though it was survival. When she’d grown weaker, she’d take me to the different dumps, and I would roll her stroller and slow my pace. I was angry, resentful she had turned me into this—thank god it’s dark out so people can’t see us, we’re beggars—until the stench of the garbage was unbearable—I couldn’t hold it in.

“Why do you have to be like this?”

Grandma’s gaze fell into the distance, countries away. “Child, I’m not going to be here for much longer,” she said. I remembered how her visa had expired years ago. “I’m doing it all for you.”

All of it, I thought, a waste.

But when we got home, we poured everything onto a table and rummaged through our findings. Grandma took out a necklace from the pile, put it around her neck, and rushed into the bathroom. I couldn’t help but stare at her image in the reflection, her fingers caressing each marvelous fake pink pearl, as she turned to me—don’t I look pretty? And undeniably, she was.

165

Creative Nonfiction Gilman School Baltimore, MD

Andrew Kang

I Will Waste My Life after

James Wright

Up ahead, there’s a carillon chiming past the streets and straight into the sea. I climb my way to the bell tower and stare at the Corinthian columns. The lettering on the stone, plaques ivy has overgrown, all those famous, ghastly faces, and I, alone: afraid to recognize myself among them. In the summer, my family and I go up to the Vineyards, rent bikes, pack cantaloupe only to slurp piss clams, good tourists that we are. I pedal fast, wheels cricketing on gravel, so my parents won’t catch up, weighed down by the melons. I see everything ahead, the huckleberry garden, the gold-kissed bell-flowers lining the driveways of this white-ivied town— every window creaking with light, overflowing, colonial. Sea spray clings to my sweat, waves crashing— write that down, write that down. Carillon chiming past and for a moment, the water stills, judging how I skip over every reflection I see, my face growing vines, how I hate the sound of my voice, how it skipped over my parents, pulsing forward in the air, how it tapped the surface of water before sinking. I skip only to wade back through the ripples—to pry them open for flesh. How I dip my tongue in and lick. Then skip home. I sink into a hammock. It curdles around me; a wave. The piss clam: salt, cream, rip, tang, flash, face, tongue. My mouth, stinging.

166

Poetry Gilman School Baltimore, MD

Ari Karlin

167

Hommerdings Digital photography 2022

Photography School for Advanced Studies Homestead Campus Homestead, FL

Marissa Kelley

Traitor

Setting: Present-day / Places specified throughout

Characters

MAKENNA: Age 14, in a relationship with Jayden. She is witty, sweet, and somewhat quiet.

JAYDEN: Age 15, in a relationship with Makenna. Deeply insecure and egotistical. Loves his mother.

JAYDEN’S MOM: Age 40, Jayden’s mother. Believes her son can do no wrong. Very religious.

MAKENNA’S MOM: Makenna’s mother. Has a strong relationship with her daughter but has never had to tackle a situation like this before.

COUNSELOR 1:Basic counselor.

COUNSELOR 2: Basic counselor.

STUDENT 1: Makenna’s closest but skeptical friend. Probably just there for the tea.

STUDENT 2: Makenna’s friend.

STUDENT 3: Student.

STUDENT 4: Student.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: The “cool” auntie.

TEACHER 2: Classic writing teacher.

VOICE: “Voice” refers to office staff on an intercom.

MS BOLTON: A supportive, almost parental figure to Makenna. Spanish teacher.

ENSEMBLE STUDENTS: Middle school students doing middle school things like gossiping.

Scene Breakdown

Scene 1: Jayden, Makenna, Makenna’s Mom

Scene 2: Students, Makenna, Jayden, Ms. Bolton

Scene 3: Makenna, Jayden

Scene 4: Ms. Bolton, Voice, Makenna, Jayden, Counselors, Makenna’s Mom, Jayden’s Mom

Scene 5: Jayden’s Mom, Makenna’s mom, Makenna

Scene 6: Jayden’s Aunt, Jayden

Scene 7: Jayden

Scene 8: Makenna, Jayden, Students

Scene 9: Jayden, Makenna, Makenna’s Mom, Counselors, Ms. Bolton, Jayden’s Mom

Scene 10: Teacher 2, Makenna, Students

Scene 11: Makenna, Students, Teacher 2

Note

- The flier in scene 11 would ideally read something like: “WALKOUT 6/3/22! OUR SCHOOLS MUST CHANGE. WEAR RED ON 6/3 TO SUPPORT OUR CAUSE.”. Also, Makenna would wear whatever color mentioned on the flier to symbolize her support for the walkout.

- Any character can double as a student except for JAYDEN and MAKENNA

Playwright’s Note

The set of Traitor should be highly minimal to highlight Makenna’s story. You can allow the characters’ words, stage directions, costumes, and minimal props to speak for themselves. Each scene is meant to be a “flash”, highlight, or picture of Makenna and Jayden’s experiences. Each character in this play is a human in real life. Each of them has an endless story for the actor to delve into. Each word, mention, and direction is intentional and is meant to be analyzed as the play comes together. Thank you so much, reader, for taking your time to understand my story and for handling it with care.

Scene 1

MAKENNA: It was a Monday when it happened. June third, Two-thousand nineteen. I was 14, then. We were 14. It was the second-to-last week of school, the air was warm, final exams were wrapping up, and the excitement about summer was growing, just like the pit in my stomach when I was on the way home from school that day. Mom, I have to tell you something, but you can’t tell anybody.

MAKENNA’S MOM: Yes honey?

(Notification ding)

JAYDEN: Hey Kenna, sorry if I made you a little uncomfortable today. I didn’t mean to, but why were you acting so weird?

MAKENNA: So weird?

168

or Script

Play

Thomas Dale High School Chester, VA

MAKENNA: That night and the next morning, everything was fine, mostly. The idea of telling somebody at school and getting Jayden in trouble made my stomach turn the same way it had in the car earlier that day. Maybe I’ll talk to him about it one day soon, but for now, it just doesn’t matter.

(MAKENNA and MAKENNA’S MOM exit)

JAYDEN: I was probably around 14 then. Nothing could have prepared me for the last month of my 8th-grade year. I thought I was a good kid. I made straight A’s, I played sports. Hell, I even thought I’d found a solid group of friends. Who knew I’d get suspended for the rest of the school year. I feel guilty. I really do. For myself. I feel guilty for letting myself trust Makenna. Guilty for letting her stab me in the back like she did. I feel the most guilty that my family ever had to get involved. I’m sorry that my mom couldn’t save me the way she wanted to. A little piece of me wishes I’d told somebody the truth about what happened. That could’ve made things easier.

Scene 2

(A classroom)

MS BOLTON: Repeat after me, clase. “Lunes, Monday”

STUDENT 1: Lunes, Monday

MS BOLTON: Good. “Martes, Tuesday”

STUDENT 2: “Martes, Tuesday”

JAYDEN: (Nudges MAKENNA’s shoulder) Hey, you’re Makenna, right?

MAKENNA: Yeah!

JAYDEN: Right. My name is Jayden. I just wanted to let you know that you’re really pretty. Here, (He slides her a piece of paper) this is my snap.

(Lights fade to blackout. A school bell rings. Lights fade up, MAKENNA & JAYDEN enter.)

MAKENNA: I’m just saying, you could’ve been a gentleman and let me win last night!

JAYDEN: Ay, what can I say? I’ve been playing that game since I was a kid!

(They sit.)

STUDENT 1: Ugh, you guys are too cute.

MS BOLTON: Hola clase, we will begin in just a few minutes.

(JAYDEN “practices” putting his arm around Makenna. As soon as he prepares to do it “for real”, she turns to-)

MAKENNA: Jayden, I really really like you.

Scene 3

JAYDEN: Hey, you’re okay, right?

MAKENNA: Yes, I’m fine.

JAYDEN: You don’t seem fine.

MAKENNA: Yesterday, you-

(In school. While walking, JAYDEN reaches for MAKENNA’S hand, which she swats away.)

JAYDEN: You know yesterday was just an accident.

MAKENNA: Sure.

169

(MAKENNA sighs. MAKENNA’S MOM freezes. JAYDEN paces back and forth.)

JAYDEN: Makenna-

MAKENNA: Jayden. You know I’m not a touchy person.

JAYDEN: Oh come on. You know it’s not gonna happen again. I didn’t even mean it like that. I’m not some weirdo.

MAKENNA: But if I asked you to stop, you should’ve stopped.

JAYDEN: Okay chill. You’re making it sound like I raped you or something. I knew you were nervous about the test; I was just tryna comfort you.

MAKENNA: Jayden-

JAYDEN: Just promise me you won’t tell a ton of people and make this a huge thing.

MAKENNA: Whatever Jayden.

Scene 4

(A classroom)

MAKENNA: Ms. Bolton, I just don’t even know how to feel right now. I love him, I thought. I don’t want him to get in trouble. You know what, I might not even tell anyone else, but thank you for listening.

MS BOLTON: Oh, hun, you are a strong, independent girl. You know what’s right and what’s not. I’ll stand with you every step of the way no matter what you decide.

VOICE (offstage): Ms Bolton, can I get Makenna Preyer to the main office, please?

MS BOLTON: Do you know what that’s about?

MAKENNA: No.

(MAKENNA moves to an “office.” JAYDEN, COUNSELORS 1 & 2 Enter. MAKENNA and JAYDEN are in separate rooms; a split stage.)

COUNSELOR 1: Makenna, I received an email from your mother. She told me what happened between you and Jayden Simmons.

COUNSELOR 2: I need you to tell me everything that happened after 4th period yesterday.

COUNSELOR 1: Everything.

MAKENNA: Well,

JAYDEN: Things were fine yesterday morning Until she started acting weird. I was just walking with her.

MAKENNA: Until I told him I wanted to walk alone.

JAYDEN: I was just trying to make her feel better.

MAKENNA: I asked him to get his arm off of me.

JAYDEN: I mean, I don’t even really remember after that. I guess she looked upset.

MAKENNA: I was crying.

JAYDEN: Man, I left her alone after that.

(MAKENNA’S MOM and JAYDEN’S MOM enter.)

MAKENNA: Be followed me to my locker. I told him to stop touching me. He wouldn’t let go of me.

JAYDEN: I barely even touched her. She’s my girlfriend! How could I touch my own girlfriend wrong?

COUNSELOR 1: He said he barely touched you.

170

MAKENNA: There were people around. You can ask anybody.

COUNSELOR 2: Jayden, I need you to tell me the truth.

JAYDEN: I didn’t do crap. Whatever she said, she's lying.

MAKENNA: I’m telling the truth. Mom, you know what happened. Tell them what happened.

JAYDEN: Mom? I can explain.

Scene 5

(MAKENNA’S MOM consoles MAKENNA)

JAYDEN’S MOM: Jayden Lee Simmons. Are you stupid? Are you seriously stupid, Jay? Is this what I’ve made of you?. Getting yourself in trouble over that girl!? What is your sister going to think when she finds out her little brother is letting females ruin his life? Ruin your life. This really has. Have you ever thought about your future, Jayden? Think about your career. What are your teachers going to say? What about your friends, our family? What would God say if he saw you right now, Jay? You’d better fix this. And you- (to MAKENNA) stay away from my son. (MAKENNA breaks into tears)

Scene 6

JAYDEN’S AUNT: Hey nephewwww.

JAYDEN: Hey.

(In a car)

JAYDEN’S AUNT: Hold up. What’s wrong with you?

JAYDEN: Nothing. Just shit going on at school.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: Someone’s messing with you? You know I’ll beat someone’s ass, right? I don’t care if it’s some little boy, a girl, a teacher! You know I don’t care.

JAYDEN: No. Nobody’s messing with me. It’s my girl.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: The one you told me about? From Spanish class? Uh, what’s her name.. Madison?

JAYDEN: Makenna.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: Right. What’s going on?

JAYDEN: She’s tryna say I touched her wrong. I didn’t think she’d tell anyone but here she goes. They got the principal on it and everything. Called my mom up to the school, too.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: I don’t understand Jay. You’d never do something like that.

JAYDEN: Yeah. I guess I’m just nervous. What if they suspend me? What if this shit goes on my record.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: Huh? Why’re you nervous? Did you do what they’re saying you did?

JAYDEN: No. I didn’t.

JAYDEN’S AUNT: Well okay then. You have nothing to be nervous about.

Scene 7

(JAYDEN is playing a video game, speaking to a friend through his headset.)

JAYDEN: Yeah, I don’t know man. Girls, right? You heard what? Oh, man, I never even did anything, for real. You should’ve seen what she was wearing. Tell me she didn’t want it. It's not like Ima get in trouble or anything. What’s that quote? “Fool me one time, shame on you,” right. Yeah, bro, she’s done. She’s messed up, for real. And now she’s acting weird. She won’t talk to me like I’m the one who did something wrong. I mean, when it comes down to it, who are they gonna believe? I know my boys got my back.

171

MAKENNA: Hey, I wanted to-

(MAKENNA enters with STUDENT 1)

JAYDEN: Liar. (He puts his earbuds in and shakes his head. exits.)

MAKENNA: How could he act like this is my fault? I feel terrible. W- why are people looking at me like that?

STUDENT 1: Honestly, Makenna, I think we’re all a little confused about what happened.

MAKENNA: Confused?

(As MAKENNA exits, a crowd of STUDENTS forms around her asking questions.)

STUDENT 3: That’s Makenna, right? Aye Makenna, what’d Jay do?

STUDENT 4: Yeah, tell us what happened!

MAKENNA: Just stop it! I mean, my own friends are telling me things like-

STUDENT 1: Well, Kenna, I don’t wanna take sides, ya know we don’t know what really happened.

MAKENNA: All I can think of is stories I’ve heard like-

STUDENT 2: I spoke up! I wish I never did.

MAKENNA: And things on the news like-

STUDENT 3: Public presses for even more jail time for man convicted for sexual assault.

MAKENNA: My walks through the hallways consist of-

STUDENT 4: Oh hell no, you’re the girl that got Jay in trouble.

STUDENT 1: Is she gonna get her own boyfriend suspended?

MAKENNA: I look in the mirror and all I can think is-

STUDENT 2: How could you do this to me?

STUDENT 3: Why would you do this to me?

STUDENT 1: Can you even hear me?

STUDENT 4: Can anybody hear me?

MAKENNA: Everybody says-

STUDENTS 1: Believe victims!

STUDENT 2: You can speak up!

STUDENT 4: Sexual assault is real, even in relationships.

STUDENT 3: We will support you!

MAKENNA: But nobody talks about how terrible it feels to hurt someone you love.

Scene 9

(JAYDEN and MAKENNA are in their rooms, texting)

JAYDEN: Why? That’s all I wanna know. Why did you have to start such a shit-show? I didn't DO anything to you. And even if you think I did, you did not have to tell anyone. We could’ve talked about it but no, instead you want to act like a…. psychopath. (“sent message” sound effect then, a “received message” sound effect)

172 Scene 8

MAKENNA: I’m sick of it.

JAYDEN: I really am sick of it.

MAKENNA: I’m so tired of crying,

JAYDEN: I could scream.

MAKENNA: I wish I could just scream. But I can’t scream. Everybody expects me to be okay. But I notice all the dirty looks I get in the hallway. I know the awkward conversation I’ve had with all my teachers to let them know why I’ve been spending every school day in the principal’s office this week. My own mother doesn’t even feel comfortable hugging me anymore. Like I’m a shaken-up soda can ready to burst at any moment. Do you really think I wanted this?

MAKENNA: Why don’t you ever think?

JAYDEN: This is all your fault.

(JAYDEN EXITS. Then, a knock on the door.)

MAKENNA’S MOM: Honey? (hugs MAKENNA.) Oh, honey.

(COUNSELOR 1&2, MS BOLTON, AND JAYDEN’S MOM enter.)

COUNSELORS, JAYDEN’S MOM, MS BOLTON: To the parents of Makenna Preyer

COUNSELOR 1: On June 3, it was reported that your daughter, Makenna Preyer, may have been involved in an incident where she was the victim of inappropriate sexual conduct by a male student, (JAYDEN enters, confused)

ALL 4: Student A.

COUNSELOR 2: Camera footage reveals-

ALL 4: Student A

COUNSELOR 2: Touching Makenna while walking up the stairs.

MS BOLTON: Camera footage reveals Makenna pushing-

ALL 4: Student A

MS BOLTON: Away from her.

ALL 4: In Student A’s written statement, he denies touching Makenna in an inappropriate way.

JAYDEN’S MOM: Student A has been issued an out-of-school suspension.

JAYDEN: An out of school sus-?

COUNSELORS: Makenna and-

ALL 4 PLUS JAYDEN: Student A

COUNSELORS: will not be in any classes together for the remainder of the 2018-2019 school year.

Scene 10

(In a classroom. MAKENNA holds a flier.)

TEACHER 2: Make this assignment what you want it to be. You can make it about something meaningful to you, or about something fantastical and funny. There is no right or wrong answer.

(MAKENNA takes one more stare at the flier. She takes a breath, then begins writing.)

173

TEACHER 2: Okay juniors, who would like to read next?

(MAKENNA raises her hand)

TEACHER 2: Makenna, awesome. Go ahead and begin your introduction.

MAKENNA: (Reading off a sheet of paper) Hi. My name is Makenna Preyer, and this is my play Traitor about sexual assault. This happened to me in 8th grade, 3 years ago. A lot of things have changed since then. We drive cars, work jobs, have new friends, and separate lives now, but what happened to me in 8th grade will stay with me no matter how much my life has changed. If you asked him, Jayden would probably give you a vague description of some trouble he got into in middle school. However, I am plagued with the parasite that is June third, two-thousand and nineteen, and the moment I lost autonomy over my own body. Although I can never forget, I can forgive myself and heal. I’ve written this play to prove to myself, and all the boys and girls who have struggled with sexual assault, that you can find peace.

(ENSEMBLE snaps/claps softly)

TEACHER 2: Thank you. Scene 1, please.

MAKENNA: Ahem. It was a Monday when it happened. (blackout) June third, Two-thousand nineteen. Fin

174 Scene 11

Alexis Kim

175

New

Digital

2022

Photography Avenues New York

York, NY Quiet Corner

photography

Erin Kim

halmoni (grandma)

i. nail-clipping

crescent moons fall from my silver clipper with faint clicks, building a pyre on warm ondol floorboards. across the room grandma catches the small sound from a waterfall of english listening exercises buzzing from her radio. your nail so thin. why don’t you eat your vitamin?

as she rises from the unfinished red sweater she’s knitting for me, i catch the flap of her wrinkled skirt, the ghost of mothballs and garden dirt. when she returns with a glass of milk and five vitamins nestled on a plastic preschool plate, i refuse. it’s fine.

ii. five

on may 10 at five a.m., when white flower petals descend and grandma awakens, it’s our birthday. grandma endures oil splashes while frying seafood pancakes, frothing a tomato yakult smoothie. she embarks on the fifty-five minute bus ride to my seoul apartment.

before gangnam-gu, dogokdong, grandma makes her way through the crowd of seoulites. the tornado of youngsters surrounds her when she falls from the bus steps to the street. honking horns & ambulance sirens & the shouting bus driver & red unspooling on the ground.

iii. red

winter returns & it’s time to clip my fingernails again. i sit on the same ondol floor where the milky-colored nails trickle like tears. i wish i hadn’t wanted good food for my birthday. i wish i had taken the vitamins & corrected her english when she asked me for help.

it’s the day of grandma’s surgery & i clip my nails too far down. blood brings good luck, she said. i hold grandma’s needle and stitch the sweater into a blanket for her legs, her oil-stained skirt.

176

Poetry Phillips Academy Andover, MA

Jin Kim

Smile Together, Be With You Never

He was always smiling.

I never understood how he managed to do it.

It was impressive, considering the number of meds he was taking. Anxiety, depression, and insomnia. That combination would not have been good for anyone.

Yet, there he was. Always smiling.

Mark used to say it was because he wasn’t right in the head. But that couldn’t have been true. If he wasn’t right in the head, Mark would have never been best friends with him.

But even if he was smiling, he was constantly hurting. He loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was scattered among ruins. “It’s like me,” he would whisper to me in the dead of the night.

I didn’t understand the hurt. I had just started at the same school, excited to live without my parents. I was learning through what I saw but never understanding why. I thought he was happy - happy with high school, happy with his family, happy with me and Mark.

I didn’t see how he thought his future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted. I didn’t see how that would come to be true.

Now, as I’m writing this, I realize how obvious it was. His behavior that I never understood back then is making sense as I type this.

I remember the times he would lock himself in his room and not come out. When those days came, I would call Mark back home.

“He’s not coming out,” I would tell him, sniffling while holding back tears.

Mark would come running back from wherever he was. He would shake his head and knock on the door, signaling his arrival.

“Hey,” he would say.

Then he would open the door, revealing a room with the curtains closed, lights off, and a single lump on the bed. I realized then he would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep. I wasn’t allowed in, nor were our parents. Only Mark was allowed. Half an hour later, he came out with Mark following behind, both smiling as if I wouldn’t notice something was not right.

“He’s okay,” Mark told me.

From the bottom of my heart, however, I was waiting for him to say he was okay. Not Mark. Not our parents. Him.

However, he would always only smile and I was always left to wonder what happened in that room.

The two of them were constantly together, joined together at the hip, as people would say. They understood each other without talking, something I envied. However, nobody was surprised. They were childhood friends.

It was interesting watching their friendship. He was more quiet, introverted. Only some people knew what his voice sounded like. But Mark was the life-of-the-party. He was spontaneous, rash. He was like a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. They weren’t meant to cross paths but fate put the two of them together, wanting to give more excitement to one and order to the other.

Sitting on the chair that was bought just for me so I could stay at their apartment, I saw how much the two of them meant to each other, watching the fond glances being thrown when they believed others weren’t looking.

An infinity of their passion could be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.

Years later, I realize now there was more than friendship in their relationship. They were skirting that line but never crossed it. I realize now how much he wanted to die, but also wanted to live. He was like a sailor in distress, he kept casting desperate glances over the solitary water of his life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. Mark was the white sail to him. He was only truly happy when he was with Mark. He never stated it but everyone, including our parents, knew. When with Mark, his face was brighter, he laughed more, and his smile. His smile wasn’t fake.

He radiated happiness.

I wonder if his fate would have been different if they had crossed that line.

It was his graduation party.

I remember standing on the background porch of his home, standing with my mom, and looking up to the blue, blue sky. Not a speck of white to be seen. I remember the smell of hot dogs and hamburgers, with congratulations being shouted into the air. Everyone was happy.

Then, I see Mark. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up and he was laughing with one of his friends. I yell his name and he looks at me, waving. A chord struck in my heart.

Something is not right.

I ran up to him, holding my arms out for a congratulatory hug. Mark obliges and I examine his face while he continues to talk. Nothing is wrong.

I pull back and see annoyance flash across his face. I look at his face closely, trying to figure out what is wrong. Then I see it. “Where is he?” I ask. Mark doesn’t answer, only shrugging. Something is strange. Mark always knows where he is, no matter what.

I remember beginning to look for him because then I realized, I hadn’t seen him at the party yet.

I weave through the people, entering the back door of the house while calling for him. I search everywhere that I could, yet, I still don’t see him.

I still don’t know what exactly happened in the next few minutes. All I remember is checking the bathroom and seeing red everywhere. I remember the smell of the blood and I remember screaming. I remember people rushing to where I was. Then, my eyes are being covered and I’m being carried away by my dad. To where? I don’t know.

The last thing I remember seeing is Mark sinking to his knees while cradling him, blood soaking up that white shirt.

Poor child. She must have been shocked.

It wouldn’t have been good for her to see so much blood at a young age.

Don’t worry about the child. She’ll forget it as she grows older. Instead, what do you think is going to happen to Mark?

I hope she doesn’t end up like her brother.

I feel so sorry for their parents. They were so happy and proud of him.

Who would have thought he would slit his own wrists at his graduation party? I always knew there was something wrong with him.

177

Creative Nonfiction Stuyvesant High School

New York, NY

***

It’s quiet.

I’m on my bed.

Blankets are covering me and I’m holding my favorite stuffed animal in my arms. Rain is falling outside. I hear my parents discussing something in soft English, believing I’m asleep. Their words are slowly drifting away, replaced by the sounds of the soft pitter-patter on the window.

I hold up my stuffed animal and look at it.

It’s a bear that he won at the fair for me when we were both younger, living at home. I sit up, throwing it across the room. It doesn’t go far, dropping to a thud near my bed. Something’s crawling up my chest. I want to get rid of it. It feels uncomfortable.

I burrow down into my covers. Something wet is dripping down my cheeks. I touch them, and I realize that they are my tears.

The tears start to fall down my face even faster. And I cry.

I dressed in the only black dress I own. It’s sparkly and lacy, something I usually love to wear. But not today. Today isn’t that day.

Nobody is talking in the car. I scratch my leg, the lace making me itch. I look out the window, wishing that, taking wing like a bird, I could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

I keep scratching my leg, not realizing until my mom tells me to stop.

“Stop scratching,” she says softly from the front of the car. I stop and there are red marks on my leg. Red.

I hate that color.

The sky is blue again.

He loved the color blue. It was the color of the sky, the ocean. Everything that meant freedom to him.

“They’re free,” he would tell me, looking out the window of his room. I look around.

Everyone is crying.

Mark is nowhere to be found.

I look for him. I can’t lose Mark like I lost him. I’m panicking now. Tears fill up my eyes, and then I stop.

I see him.

I have never seen a person cry the way Mark was, sitting in front of his grave. He was sobbing with his full heart, tears streaming down his face. His face was one of true heartbreak, breaking my heart along with it. In his hands was a piece of paper. Ah. The letter.

I was not allowed to read his letter. I was only told the one line he wrote for me.

“Tell her to be happy. No matter how sad, no matter how angry, just tell her to be happy.” Seeing Mark crying, I understood, for the first time, what true sorrow was.

I stood there, wanting to comfort him, yet something was holding me back.

I turned around, running back to my parents, leaving Mark alone at the grave.

And, once again, the pain of this disappointment my heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.

I think I understand now. There are some souls that are constantly tormented. He was that soul.

He wanted to be free, free from the expectations of the world, free from his depression and disappointment. He wanted us to be free from him, believing he was a burden to our lives. He wished for freedom so much that he didn’t realize how much the rest of us would be affected by his goodbye.

By the time he passed away, he already weaved his web in the darkness in every corner of our hearts.

Mark moved away as soon as the funeral was over. He left in the middle of the night, slipping away in the darkness to who knows where. He couldn’t stay in the place where he grew up with him. It was too many painful memories - what they were and what they could have been.

Nobody knew where he went, even his parents. We could only hope that he was safe in the world out there.

One event sometimes had infinite ramifications and could change the whole setting of a person’s life. His death was that for both of us.

Now, I just try to be happy. No matter how sad, no matter how angry, I try to be happy. It’s all I can do for him.

I never understood what he meant back then. What did he mean by freedom? Why did he want to be free? All these questions would swirl around my head.

178 I guess the meds didn’t help in the end. ***

***

The Smoker’s Ghost

I am attending my own funeral. That isn’t a metaphor or a rhetorical device of some kind; in fact, it is more literal than anything I’ve ever said.

I stand in all white beside my widowed wife, who in contrast, is dressed in all black.

Never a fan of dresses or skirts, she wears what I might wear to a memorial service: a black dress shirt tucked into matching pants, a white tie laced under a folded black collar, all of it covered with a long black coat that hangs just below her knees, swinging awfully close to the black wedges that she had been waiting to wear for weeks. I imagine that she never thought this is where she would break them in: a grassy cemetery, surrounded by familiar faces, all dressed in the same gloomy color scheme.

All in black, except for me. Myself and my body, that is, because he too, in his casket, is adorned in a different theme. He is dressed fashionably in my favorite velvet suit. His hair is set in dried curls, hardened from being soaked in gel to look right for his grand event. His hands are cupped in front of him and placed gently over his waist and his large feet stick straight up in their bright red loafers. Unlike my wife’s shoes, these shoes have long since been broken in. They’d attended many a party and numerous other events. They’d been through proms and graduations and two book signings. And now, on their last journey, they would venture underground where they would remain forever.

His face—my body’s—is all too familiar, but all too foreign at once. His nose is still long and pointed, curved upward slightly, susceptible to the occasional “boop!” and the tap of his lover’s fingers. His lashes are long and thick and no doubt admired and sometimes envied by women. But that is where the familiarity dies, because the rest of his appearance is unnaturally pallid. Where his cheeks should be pink and rosy there is nothing but pale skin, and where his lips should be significantly plump are thin outlines.

His ears had always been unnervingly small, but now they seemed smaller, as did his hands, which looked strangely like gloves, and his eyes, which seemed to sink down into his skull. Once a strong man, he now lay there skinny and frail, smaller than life in all aspects. Where my mind seemed to factor in the normal constant motion of a live human—the lifting of the shoulders, the twitching of an eye, the flaring of a nose—was nothing but stillness. His face was locked in a haggard expression with his mouth parted slightly. No subtle rising of the chest, no movement under his eyelids. I was truly and completely dead.

If I had a consciousness to lose I’d probably have passed out looking down at my dead body. Analyzing every corner of my face that was wrong and observing every similarity that would soon decay. It was enough to drive a man mad, but you must realize that I am no longer a man, and instead a mere reflection of light. An energy bound by the laws of the afterlife that no religion could possibly predict. Reincarnation, heaven and hell, complete and utter nothingness… they were all wrong. Or perhaps they were all right? Here I was, a spirit reborn in my body, seemingly present, but nothingness to everyone around me.

“Francis Prince Waters was born October 31, 1980, to Mark and Lu Mary Waters,” my brother reads from the service program. I look over to Lana who does not have the program opened to the obituary page. Instead, it sits wrinkled in her squeezed fist, the blown-up picture of my smiling face bending and contorting under the pressure of her grip. In Loving Memory of Francis Prince Waters is printed on the cover in large fancy text.

Lana stares blankly ahead, her eyes unwaveringly focused on my brother’s lips as he continues to read. As far as I know, she hasn’t cried. She’s wiped her nose, fanned her eyes, and spoken to people in trembling murmurs, but I haven’t seen her shed a tear yet.

My wife has never been one for emotions. It was something I had to learn to adapt to early in our relationship; having to read her body language and using my intuition to properly dissect how she was feeling. Me being such an open and communicative person, it had been our biggest relationship problem. She felt that I asked too much of her. I felt she never let me in and made me feel like an inadequate partner. It was a slow process, but eventually she learned to trust me with her emotions and allow me to see her in a vulnerable state. Later in our marriage, she told me that was when she knew I was the one: when she realized that she felt completely safe with me. When she realized she didn’t always have to watch her back because she knew I was watching it for her.

I wish she knew that I was still here, watching her back. I wish she could feel the comfort of my presence and that I could offer her my visible and tangible shoulder for her to let out all the tears I knew she was holding in. I wish I could wrap my arms around her and whisper soft comfort into her ears while she pressed her face into my chest.

But nonetheless, I am not a comfort. I am not a burden, but I am not a comfort, and that knowledge sits heavier than my motionless heart.

“...received his Bachelor’s of Arts in Studio Arts at the University of Southern California.

After completing his studies, Francis became a member of the Temple Crest Art Company to begin his career in the fine arts.” I did not like the TCAC. I joined fresh out of college, determined to jump right into a career to kickstart to what I wanted to be: an independent, full time artist. The TCAC had practically begged me to join them in my junior year of college, and after reviewing their works and seeing possible opportunities and experiences I could acquire, I told them that I would contact them in my senior year to apply. In the beginning it all felt like a dream. I was working with a company that assisted in public, social, and personal art. Crafting sculptures in parks, designing homes, commissioning pieces for new families and selling to museums and showcases. The money was consistent and quite satisfactory. I worked with them for four years before I began to realize there was a problem. When I first joined, I acknowledged that I was still learning. I knew that a lot of these people had years of artistic knowledge and life experiences that I didn’t have, and so I watched them carefully over the years. I watched them practicing their crafts, specifically the ones I had in common, such as painting, charcoal, and tempera, and I mastered them. Around my third year working for the TCAC, I asked for a promotion. I was denied.

In my fourth year, I realized that they were keeping me down. They were limiting my artistic abilities to keep a leash on me—they knew I was one of their best artists, and they wanted to utilize my abilities and benefit from them without giving me the recognition that I deserved. It was smart but it was evil, and the second I recognized what they were doing, I packed up my studio and walked out with my middle fingers blazing behind me.

In the beginning, working independently didn’t match my expectations. The change from consistent pay to barely scraping by was drastic and it threw me off. Eventually, art became a hobby rather than a career. I started dating—late, I know, but I dated a lot to make up for the time I’d lost. I think I was using relationships to temporarily fill the hole in my heart that had been hollowed out by the disappointment of my failure in art.

Then I started smoking. It was innocent at first—as innocent as smoking can get, I mean. Eventually, it progressed into a coping mechanism. Four cigarettes a day. Seven. Fifteen.

179

Novel San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts

Darius King

San Diego, CA

Soon, I was inhaling three packs of Marlboro Reds a week. I felt like my grandmother. I remember the distinct smell of nicotine on her clothes when she embraced me in her thick grandmotherly hugs as a kid. I remember the thin layer of smoke that lingered everywhere in her house. I remember the walk up the hill to the liquor store when she sent me to buy her more packs of Camels.

Eventually, I decided to go back to school and focus on the mystical art of teaching. I thought, “If I can’t be successful, maybe I can be the propelling force in someone else’s life.” When I graduated, I became an assistant art teacher at a local high school. That was when I met the love of my life, Lana Adam.

“Francis met Lana Adam in 2009, and eventually, bound by their shared love for the arts and irresistible bond, they married in 2011,” my brother continues to read.

Lana furrows her brow and flips through the program, searching for the obituary page.

We got married December 12th, 2012. I cringe at the mistake. How could someone mess that up? We got married 12/12/12. Everyone knew that.

It was Lana’s idea to get married December 12th. She insisted there was something special about that date, considering it would be the last 12/12/12 of our lifetime. She swore there was some external power that would bless us on our wedding day. I must say, the only power I felt that night was my love for her. I knew that this woman was the woman of my dreams and I had known that since the moment she stepped into my class asking for spare notebooks.

Oh, God, no, she wasn’t a student. I’m afraid I must clarify that, knowing the world we—I—lived in. She was a teacher. An assistant teacher, like me, for the Creative Writing class. She’d been wearing an all brown, beige, and black business casual outfit while I was sitting atop a student’s table wearing jeans covered in a variety of acrylic paints and an even more artistically colorful shirt.

I swear she giggled when she saw me. She says she didn’t. She did.

“Francis followed a life of creativity, love, and kindness. In a survey, all his friends and family agreed that he was one of the most reliable and generous people in their lives.”

I shifted my stance. Compliments had always been hard for me, which was unfortunate, considering my career. Being an artist had definitely pulled me out of that insecurity, and once I married Lana, she forced me to accept hearing good things about myself. For one of my birthdays, she filled a glass jar with folded post-it notes, each with a handwritten personal message for me to open any day I needed it.

“In his late twenties, Francis picked up smoking…” Here it comes. “...a habit that would ultimately lead to his death on November 2nd, 2021 at the fresh age of 41.”

“Francis died of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, commonly known as COPD, a disease that attacks the lungs and eventually leads to respiratory failure. To cherish his memory, he leaves his loving wife Lana Waters, his daughter Margaret JackreyWaters, his brothers Thomas and Jack Waters, and a great deal of friends and family.”

Slow applause emerges from the crowd of people as they sit back in their chairs. I join Lana by sitting in what I presume is a ghost chair. I watch a box of tissues travel down the rows of seats. I see my mother in the front take a handful. My younger brother, Jack, the one who didn’t just read my obituary, has his head in his hands and is leaning forward in his chair. My daughter Margaret sits with him, her face pressed into his shoulder. There are too many faces. Too many people.

And suddenly I feel guilty. I feel guilty for dying. I feel guilty for dying. Look what it’s done. The hurt and grief and heartache painted on all the faces around. People I love. People I care about. The pain that they’re feeling is all for me… because of me. Is this wrong to feel? Is it so unreasonable to feel bad for dying because of how it’s affecting my loved ones? Is there a term for this or a handbook or an explanation?

Once the clapping and most of the nose blowing and tears ceased, my brother Thomas spoke again in a rushed, cracking

voice. He too is on the verge of tears and no doubt he was ready to remove himself from the spotlight. I know Thomas has anxiety and terrible stage fright and I know how much it must take him to stand up in front of all these people and read clearly.

“And now, delivering Francis’ eulogy, we have his wife, Lana.” No. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I jump to my feet as she stands slowly from her chair and pulls a folded paper from the inside pocket of her coat.

My voice comes out as if I haven’t spoken in a thousand years—dry and coarse. Too quiet to be heard even if I was alive. I clear my throat and try again.

“Love, please. You don’t have to read that,” I plead, but I know she can’t hear me. She makes her way down the grassy aisle to the front of the crowd, taking Thomas’ spot behind the podium and adjusting the mic.

When her first words come out shaking, I know what will happen.

“Hello, everyone,” her voice quivers. “I’m sure you know me. I mean, I’d hope you know me, at this point.”

A weak laugh echoes through the audience. A small smile forms on my face. “Um.” She looks up and fans her eyes. “Oh, God, I really didn’t want to cry.”

I feel the tears filling my own eyes watching her up there. Did the Christians have it right too? Was this my Hell? Forced to watch my loved ones suffer and grieve because of my death? What did I do in life to deserve this? I feel I lived a fairly honest and good one. I’ve always been good to everyone. I’ve expected nothing in return from anyone. I entered every situation with the best of intentions. If this was Hell, then I did not deserve this. She unfolds her paper with shaking fingers. “Francis…” The tears stream down her face, tinted black from her mascara.

“Good God, can we close the damn casket?” Lana shouts suddenly. “I seriously just… I can’t sit here and read about him when I know his body is just…” She turns to him. My body. “... lying here. I mean…” She continues to shout, but her words are reduced to sputters and chokes and cries. Margaret’s boyfriend Von and my brother Thomas hurry over to the casket and lower the lid. Thomas avoids looking into my face. Von is heavily focused on not dropping the lid.

Lana’s twin brother Lloyd joins her at the podium, wrapping his arm around her and whispering in her ear.

“No! I’m fine… I’m going to read the damn eulogy. Go back… and sit down,” Lana demands. Lloyd lingers for a moment, then hurries back to his seat.

“Um, sorry,” Lana apologizes, struggling to keep the paper steady in her fingertips. “I just… I’m still having trouble… I swear I had something written…”

She inhales deeply and lets out a large exhalation, but the calming exercise we’d done together so many times through the years doesn’t seem to do her much good in this moment.

She stands there for a significant amount of time, staring down at the paper in front of her. Two minutes. Three minutes. Five. No one moves. No one says anything. It’s too painful to watch. I want to scream. I want to throw a chair down the aisle and pull my body from the casket and force my spirit back inside. I want to hug my wife and show her that none of this is necessary because I’m right here.

“I love you, Francis,” she says finally, looking up at everyone. “I’m sorry everyone, that’s all I can say… right now.” She covers her face and hurries down the aisle, back to her chair. At first I think she’s sitting back down, but instead, she’s gathering her things. She tucks the service program in her purse, picks up her bottle of water, and hurries off and away through the grass.

This is what my death has done. I’ve broken down my emotionally guarded wife to her most vulnerable state. I’ve stripped her of her safety and security and left her bare in the coldness of widowhood. I’ve left her, Lana Waters, the most talented writer, poet, and journalist I’ve ever met in my life, speechless.

180

I blink and find myself in a stranger’s car. I’m seated in the back with Lana, who’s huddled against the window, her breath pale against the cool glass and her coat wrapped firmly around her. I scoot closer to her, hoping to offer her some kind of comfort or warmth, but instead she shivers and inhales sharply.

“Can you turn the AC off?” she asks the driver. He glances back with a confused expression.

“It’s not on, ma’am.”

Lana, a natural born skeptic, places her hand against the vents.

“Can you turn the heater on, then?”

The driver exhales slightly with annoyance, but twists the heater dial to the medium temperature. Lana raises her hand over the vents as if she were warming her palms at a campfire.

She’d ridden with my brother Thomas to the funeral, since he was one of the few people she trusted with her safety in a car. Lana suffered from a severe case of amaxophobia, a fear that started after she was in the car crash that killed her grandparents when she was seven. Since then, she struggled with riding in cars and buses and planes, and had never driven a vehicle in her life. I’d always been a safe driver, being someone who suffered from general anxiety, but I was extra careful when driving with Lana. I made sure to drop my speed significantly and be lighter on the brakes and always keep my hands on the steering wheel for her comfort.

I couldn’t imagine what was going through her head. I hadn’t experienced much loss in my life, but Lana definitely had. First it was her parents: drug addicts who used to leave home for weeks at a time, leaving Lana, her brother Lloyd, and their older sister Luci to fend for themselves. After being taken from her parents by social services at the age of five, Lana and Lloyd were placed with their grandparents. Luci was eighteen at that point, so she’d pretty much started a life on her own. Eventually, she decided that her past was too much to carry around with her, and she went missing, leaving nothing but a letter for her little siblings. After her sister disappeared, it was Lana’s grandparents, then her best friend faced cancer, survived, but was never the same.

Now it was me. Her loving partner of twelve years, husband for almost nine.

“Wait!” Lana exclaims suddenly. The driver braked abruptly, alarmed from her shout, sending Lana lurching forward, her face planting into the back of the passenger seat. “Shoot. Can you turn right at this corner? Sorry.” she asks.

“That’s alright, ma’am,” the driver says in a way that suggests it was definitely not alright. He glides into the right lane and makes the sharp turn onto a new road: Art Street. I look over to Lana, whose eyes are locked on the shops and apartments passing by. I have no doubt the same things are running through our heads.

“Patrick’s,” we mutter at the same time, but our words never come together in the once familiar synchronicity.

“House of Green, the Palace, the Barr,” Lana continues. I identify each passing building as she lists them: the old auto repair shop with the peeling white painted walls and cracked glass doors; the newly opened plant and aroma store where Lana and I had planned to adopt a succulent; the pawn shop with a review of 2.4 stars (and rightfully so—I once tried to pawn a watch and the guy ripped me off by at least seventy-five bucks); the old tattoo shop hidden between the Palace building and another building I found all too familiar.

“Q’s Smoke and Liquor,” Lana says for me.

The sight of the small, recently painted store pulls me from my spiraling whirlpool of memories. I peel my eyes from the store and look over to Lana, whose eyes are still locked on the building.

“Q’s Smoke and Liquor,” she says again much louder. “Right here. Right here, stop!”

The Uber driver brakes a few feet from Q’s with a sickening squeal from his worn out tires on the wet road.

“Thank you,” Lana says, bowing her head and unbuckling her seatbelt. “Thank you so much, and here…” She dunks her hand into her purse and pulls out an awfully thick stack of ones. The smug and annoyed expression disappeared from the driver’s face faster than I could form the thought of what a massive tip that was.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the driver says hastily, taking the money from her fingers and bringing his palms together in prayer hands. “Stay safe and stay dry!”

There is nothing Lana should need from here.

She stands in the middle of the empty street, wrapped in her coat, staring at the liquor store in front of her as if it was a lover she hadn’t seen in decades. The sky is a bright canvas, shaded the color of a 3H pencil. Swirls of silver and ripples of ashcolored clouds cap the earth in a pale dome. There’s tranquility in the grays of monochrome. It’s the type of calm you feel looking through a window from the comfort of your fireplace-warmed living room with a light novel and a glass of wine. The type of calm that a dog or a child would take pleasure in disturbing with screams of pleasure and mess making. It wasn’t the vibrance of a sunny park landscape or the flawlessness of the sunset behind the glimmering ocean that captivated my artist’s eye, it was scenes like this. The smells of trees and petrichor and the road, dark with heavy rainfall, streams of water rushing along the curbs, picking up fallen autumn leaves and empty chip bags and ice cream sandwich wrappers.

I stand at Lana’s side, the rain falling around me (or perhaps right through me--either way, I can’t feel it and my white clothes remain dry.) She stands in the road for too long before finally taking that first step towards the sidewalk. Her hair is plastered to her face in a mess of auburn curls. Small trails of water roll off her shoes. Her purse is tucked in the safety of her coat. I walk alongside her as she takes that raised step onto the sidewalk, but my pace falters as she continues straight instead of turning. My skin goes icy--colder than my dead body and colder than I would be if I could feel the crisp wind and frigid rainfall.

I watch in horror as Lana pulls open the glass doors of Q’s Smoke and Liquor and enters, pulling her wallet from her coat pocket.

The light sound of the entrance bell jingling against the glass door frame rattles in my head like a wardrum, each slam of the clapper on the brass interior another slam against the drumheads vibrating in my skull. If there was a word for a less severe version of PTSD, I’d use it to describe the feelings the sound of that bell invokes inside me. All the trips I made to this very corner store—my wallet in one hand and a lighter in the other—come flooding back as washed-out memories. I hadn’t been inside of Q’s since the day Lana and I took our oath—the oath that served as one of the pillars on which the foundation of our marriage sat.

“No more smoking,” we swore, and so we never smoked again. That was about seven years ago, and Lana and I became each other’s sponsors, of sorts. We never smoked another cigarette again.

It was difficult at first, as expected. The first feeling of “emptiness” was the time in our days that had once been occupied by smoking a cigarette outside, now completely vacant. The space was painfully obvious, and it took a while for our bodies to lose the ache that told our brains to pop open a pack of cigs and plop one between our lips. For a while I found myself imitating the motion of my thumb clicking a lighter to my anxious energy. Lana started writing more, most of the work depressive and empty. I know, the addiction was bad, but honestly, what can you expect? I had been smoking for eight years at that point, Lana even longer, and making this change to better our lives was feeling more like an inconvenience than a health improvement.

181 ***

***

A few weeks in, after watching the movie Holes where a character named Mr. Sir ate from a sack of sunflower seeds to suppress his desire to smoke, I decided I’d give the method a try. Apparently, constantly giving my mouth something to do helped fight tobacco cravings, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was actually working. Sunflower seeds became a regular addition to the grocery list (along with getting yelled at about the shells littered around the house). Lana looked to the more spiritual sides of things. She signed up for nicotine therapy, went to meditation classes, and tried hypnosis. All of that never necessarily sparked my interest (nor fit my belief system), but I respected her for finding a way to cope with the absence of something that had been a part of our day to day lives.

The emptiness of my stomach became suddenly obvious as betrayal crept through the cracks of my non-existent nervous system, seeping into my bloodstream and sending pulsing chills throughout my body.

I watch Lana pass every aisle I wish she’d go into: chips, candy--shit, even beer. Every muscle in my body screamed at me to leap forward and grab her ankles and pull her to the floor, but I knew that it would do nothing: I was nothing.

I knew the words before she opened her mouth. “Four packs of Camel Lights, please.”

Four.

The man behind the counter jerks his head up, the recognition setting into his mind. His signature toothy grin forms along his face when he sees Lana’s face. The moment is bittersweet, in a way. I hadn’t seen Quin in years . This was his store, the only place we ever saw him, and once Lana and I quit smoking, that connection burned away.

I love Quin, but God do I wish I wasn’t looking at him right now.

“Well I’ll be damned,” the man said in his heavy Texan accent. His round head was still completely gray and that left eye was still crooked. Those teeth were still stained yellow, and I was standing too far to smell it, but I knew that his breath smelled of nothing more than mint and tobacco. I saw the slight look of revulsion in Lana’s expression, and at that point I knew that what I had worried about the most hadn’t happened: she hadn’t been relapsing. Only someone who had never met Quin or hadn’t been near him in a long time would stand that close to him.

Lana adapted with a half step backwards, muscle memory kicking in: Two tiles from the counter.

“Lana Waters,” Quin said in disbelief. “Where ya been?” “Wish I could say around,” Lana replied. “I’d be lying.”

“Yuh, autumn tends to do that to ya. Where’s that handsome husband of yours?”

The silence was deafening. It held more meaning than anything Lana could say would. The all-black outfit, the missing me, the trembling hands--I watch the dots connect on Quin’s face and my heart twists in my gut as he opens his mouth.

“Oh. Oh my… I’m so sorry Lana, sweetheart,” Quin says, choking on his words. He covers his gaping mouth with the palm of his hand and takes a deep breath. “He was such a lively fellow it’s… it’s hard to believe that he’s-”

“Motionless,” Lana finishes, though I suspect that wasn’t exactly the word Quin was going to use.

I’m here. I want to say. I want to scream it a thousand times. I want to run through the aisles and knock down all the racks and throw all the soda cans on the floor.

I want to drag Lana out the store by her arm and into the pouring rain.

Quin cleared his throat and reached behind the counter. “Four packs of Camel Lights, that was?” Lana takes a shaky breath and opens her wallet.

“That’s right.”

“It’s on me,” Quin says, dropping the boxes into those small black bags that used to fill up the cabinet under the kitchen sink. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

No. Let her pay for it. Let her lose something to get these.

“No, Quin, please. Let me-”

“Take that umbrella by the door too. Someone left it here a week ago and never came back to get it. I know you don’t like to drive.” Quin gestures to a large black and white spotted umbrella leaning against the frame of the glass doors. It was the type of umbrella you’d buy for 17.99 at Target. No one who stood under that was getting wet.

“Are you sure?” Lana asks.

“Yes. Please be safe, Lana Waters,” Quin says. Lana swallows and pulls a single dollar from her wallet. She drops it on the glass counter and plucks a white lighter from a container labeled: LIGHTERS, $1.

Each crackling spark is like an atomic bomb. It’s a warzone for a battle that no one is winning--the wind snuffing out the small plumes of flame Lana manages to produce, Lana’s thumb retaliating with another pull of the spark wheel. Another orange flicker; sparks dancing off the metal surface like bullet shells from an assault rifle. A burst of flame. A gust of wind. Stillness, and then the determination of a relapsed smoker.

There’s nothing I can do. She has the box, she has the lighter, she has the time. She has a reason.

There’s nothing I can do but watch.

“Dammit,” she curses at the wind, shaking her doubtless cramping hand and loosening her fingers. Maybe she’ll take it as a sign to stop. Maybe she’ll look to the spiritual side of things again and find a way to connect me to the wind and the wind to the message that is “Don’t do it.”

Lana always said I was too optimistic.

I watch as muscle memory slowly kicks in, her practiced hands finding the spaces in the lighter where they had once found comfort. One click, spark. Two clicks, spark . Three clicks, fire

Lana huddles the flame dangerously close to her coat to shield it from the persistent wind.

With her free hand, she pops open one of the packs of Camels and pulls a single 4 inch stick from the five by four array. The cigarette dangles between her middle and pointer fingers with practiced ease, secure in her grip. She drops the box from her remaining three fingers and into her oversized coat pocket, turning her attention back to her dancing fire.

She lifts her hands up together, placing the orange butt of the filter on her lips and bringing the flame to the opposite end. It doesn’t take long for it to light.

Two seconds later, a plume of thick white smoke bursts from the end of the cigarette, the bright orange embers already burning away at the rolling paper.

Lana’s hands are trembling. Is it from sadness? Fear? Guilt? Whatever it is, I hope it only gets more intense, because it seemed to be the only thing keeping her from taking that first inhale.

Even the rain seems to be holding its breath, watching her as closely as I am.

She squeezes her eyes shut, the ember on the end burning in and out with the periodical gusts of cold wind.

The embers brighten and a knife goes through my chest.

Lana’s chest expands gradually, her inhalation slow and controlled. Her closed eyes slacken a bit and her muscles untense. She pulls the cig from her mouth and exhales a thin stream of white smoke with her exhale. The smell is transient, the wind blowing the scent into my face and then far away. That smell— the smell of late nights and early mornings. The smell of being a starving artist. The smell of black and white before the world switched to color. The smell of death: my death.

After a few years of our smoking abstinence, I came to the conclusion that the smell of cigarette smoke was putrid. I felt like a kid again in my grandmother’s house, wondering how she could inhale something that smelled so bad. It left me wondering if I was missing out. “Maybe it’s like broccoli’, I remember thinking. Broccoli tasted good, but God did it smell like shit.

Lana opens her eyes slowly and they appear brighter than they had been only a few moments ago. For a second, her breath

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***

is shaky and she only stares at the cigarette in her fingertips as if it were a knife that she had just killed someone with.

“I’m so sorry Francis,” she says. Optimism takes over again: maybe she’ll throw it on the ground and crush it to smithereens. Maybe she’ll toss it into the fast-moving stream of water along the curbside. Maybe she’ll throw it in the air and leave it to the wind to deal with. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats, and she brings the cigarette to her lips again.

I never understood or experienced the phenomenon of unconsciously reacting to something that someone else was doing. I remember seeing my mother clench her teeth when she watched her dentistry videos. I remember my brothers suddenly gasping for air after watching Jaws when we were younger.

I finally understand as I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. It’s as though I’m trying not to inhale in hopes that Lana will stop too, but the smoke continues. The plumes escape through her parted lips. They burst from her nose like a bull. They slip from the end of her cigarette. The embers burn away at the rolling paper and the gray ash trail gets larger with every inhalation. I can tell she doesn’t feel bad anymore. It’s calming her. “It centers me,” she once said, quickly followed with “but not for long.”

She wasn’t thinking about that second part right now.

Tears well up in my eyes as the orange ember gets closer and closer to the tip of the cigarette butt. The wind clears away the evidence of her betrayal as quickly as it comes, and I wish it could blow my spirit away just as fast.

“Lana,” I call to her, too quiet for her to hear even if I wasn’t inconceivable. I wanted so desperately for it to be like the movies, for her to freeze in her tracks and second guess whether she’d heard my voice. I wanted to be able to say her name again so she would know that she wasn’t crazy. I wanted her to know that I was there and I just wanted her to stop.

I just wanted her to stop.

Has the thought that this was how I died not come up in her head? Does she not realize that what she was doing right now was what made her lose me?

It feels like eons have passed when the cigarette butt drops from her fingers and falls into a puddle of rainwater below. Its mangled orange body drifts across the puddle like a lifeless body.

Lana clears her throat and sniffles, one last plume of smoke escaping her lips before she reaches into her coat pocket for number two.

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Isabelle Kong

the syntax of heartbreak

In February, there are only honey mangoes & novelty. My lips sink from the line of sea to stone. The boy, downy in a shirt I helped pick; I, sugar-spun, sing full after unwrapping his name’s syllables (2). I like how the bones of his jaw move. Rippling, reflecting noctilucent clouds. He spits out words slick with pear. It brings me back to Sunday dim sum — chicken feet sleeping in bamboo beds. I used to peel the reddened flesh away to reveal slender bone & talons. It was a sordid affair for my tongue, which sagged in reluctance. Star anise the boy understands because we share the language of assimilation: damp vowels & consonant clusters.

Today we swell quiet in the twilight of his Camry— the birthmarks on his wrist form a colon & I wish for our sea-salted fingers to be clauses. Breathe his cotton sweat. If “I’m here” is an oath, his lips burst. I turn chiropteran & feed on his blood. Talons, flesh.

A cavity replaces my organs: wet, sucking. Wanting. Our ribs grow long-bodied, bare of marrow, Kleenex crumpled beneath my bed. From what used to be a lung grows thick spores until the tide acquaints our bodies to a singular corpse. Everything is skin.

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Poetry Eleanor Roosevelt High School Eastvale, CA

Sherice Kong

Anatomy/Autopsy of a Prom Dress

Prom dresses should be criminalized, their chiffon bodies chandeliered, christened, chain-smoked in a cell. Listen, our gravesite has room for only eight, so seat yourself elsewhere. I see a golden namecard declaring your death.

My neckline is for a sweetheart, the boy that my mother still thinks I am dating, the one whose friends nominated me for Cheater Court. Too often now, I say

I am literate in love. I decode the sweat that cursives the canvas of the back of his neck: No baby, sorry baby, it wasn’t me baby, I love you baby. Baby I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay in this town. An aphorism of suburbia: your crimes silence themselves as long as you stay. At this point, I am hollowlight blackmailed from the bodies I used to inhabit. Unclaimed by the sharp pop of a Boylan’s bottle cap, every bubble a lonely beacon. Each sleeve a single, withered tulip. A microscope’s heat turns the petal to dust. We listen to Lana Del Rey and watch Clueless and wonder if we’ll ever be part of that imprecise Americana. I’m

sorry I lie the way I love, better in the dark and better with strangers. Three threadbare love songs later, we are still buried at this awful table with grief as our centerpiece.

The culprit is still on the loose. The victim has left too many clues behind, a mystery sheared on the dance floor. Shrimp cocktail at sixteen makes us feel all grown-up but it’s only the name. My stomach bulges out from underneath the drop-waist bodice.

I slip out to the bathroom for a while. The bluish light blossoms like a bruise across the tight, tattooed skin of the stall. It guards me, my body. My skirt scrapes the floor, its silhouette no wider than my hands this much apart to symbolize how much I loved you. It notches my legs, numbers my days, narrates my quintessential high school experience. Cut like a bias, I am an animal wounded.

Here are the ways I’ve hurt all the men in my life. Except I am not the same girl I was last winter, and I do not owe them entitlement. I can’t tell if I am the source of love or just a mirror. I am the incident ray

and his reflection is rough and ragged. Never mind `those boys. I am in love with [ ] who smells like TV static and the stale air con and those saintly singing

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Poetry Ridge High School Basking Ridge, NJ

police sirens. There is a vague suggestion of a stain on the waistline of my prom dress. It hangs between my mother’s old leather jacket and my cadaveric crimes. Shroud for the superficial. After graduation, I bring my hand up against its lethal shine, a beckoning blade that solders my skin shut. I cannot afford the luxury of a cover-up. I cannot afford the pleasure of a confession. I am the calculating courier of all my future crimes. I categorize all my crimes like a receipt–knowing that there is no return policy.

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Evelyn Joonhee Koo

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Design Arts

HAYT Acrylic book 2022

Yongsan International School of Seoul Yongsan Ku, South Korea

Sophia Lam

The Black Throne

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Novel Longmeadow High School Longmeadow, MA

Kira

Town of Tangro

“No! Leave him be!”

The woman’s shrill cry pierced the dead silence of the narrow alley. A lone vulture circled the leaden sky above. For a moment, there was silence, save for the wind-driven rustle of fallen leaves scraping across the ground.

Then, crack! A muted wail.

Kira knew she should run, but she couldn’t resist the urge to look. Fifty yards away, she saw a disheveled woman with matted hair and a wild look in her eyes. A muddy, squared-off shift loosely covered her skeletal body. Like Kira, she was Corian.

The soldiers hadn’t spotted Kira. There were three of them, hovering over the woman with batons raised and ready to strike. Each wore the black and gold livery of the King’s Guard, with the addition of thick black scarves that covered their mouths and noses so that only their eyes peered out, like the mummified embodiment of the plague itself.

The woman lay prostrate beneath them on the ground, spreading her arms wide in a curious way. She covered something. Kira couldn’t make it out. She peered closer.

“Shove off, hag, or you’ll get it too!” shouted one trooper, raising his baton a little higher.

The terrified woman shrunk back slightly, and now Kira could see she was protecting an unconscious body lying supine in the dirt. It was emaciated. A Corian man with a ghost-white face.

Dead?

No, she could see an unsteady rise and fall of his chest. Suddenly a flash of yellow—the gold cuff of a trooper’s uniform as his arm swung down hard. The baton struck the woman in the back with a sickening thud. She toppled with a moan. Another soldier kicked her, then used the sole of his boot to shove her body out of the way.

Kira balled her hands into fists. Since the plague, most Elysians no longer bothered to hide their contempt of Corians, the race of immigrants who had, for two generations, come to Elysia from across the sea in search of work. Now, pervasive fear of the sickness made even the most kind-hearted Elysians think twice about consorting with Corians. Kira and her kind were now treated like dogs. Worse than dogs. At least dogs were fed and allowed to roam free.

Momentarily taking her eyes off the soldiers, Kira bent down to pick up a jagged rock the size of a jackfruit.

“Go on, haul it off,” ordered one of the men who wore the epaulets of a lieutenant.

The two other soldiers stared at the body. One of them, a thickset man with blonde hair, nervously adjusted the scarf covering half his face. He glanced quickly up and down the street, forcing Kira to shrink into the shadow of the nearest doorway.

“Do we have to? This one might really be infected. We could leave him here and no one’s the wiser.”

“You’ll do what you’re told, Trooper.”

The soldier looked at the third man, who merely shrugged. Together, the two of them bent down as the lieutenant looked on; one grabbed the victim’s legs and the other the arms. They wore thick leather gauntlets and tried to hold their breath as they carried the body ten paces and swung it into the back of a wagon like a piece of lumber.

Kira burned with rage. Not because the poor man didn’t have the plague—he might—but because she knew he could be helped. She instinctively clutched the satchel that hung at her side closer to her body. Even she, a mere apothecary’s apprentice, could revive the man or ease his symptoms with the herbs and roots she carried. It was just as likely that the man was suffering from starvation or dehydration, she thought. Perhaps his was one of the homes already ransacked by Elysian patrols in their search for sick Corians whom the king had ordered quarantined.

With the unconscious man loaded in the wagon the three soldiers next turned to the woman, who knelt on the ground, sobbing. For a long moment, no one said anything. Then the woman looked up, dried her eyes, and scowled at the king’s men. The two soldiers looked to the lieutenant, who nodded. At this, the woman leapt to her feet and began to run in Kira’s direction. She was barefoot and slipped in the mud, falling to one knee, but she got up and kept coming.

The blonde-haired soldier was on her in an instant. Kira pressed herself hard against the building in front of her. She looked over her shoulder to see what was coming next.

The soldier shoved the woman hard and she fell, face forward, into the mud. He circled her, laughing.

“Corie scum,” he shouted, spitting on her.

The woman lifted a hand in the air, pleading, “Please, sir. I do not have the sickness. I am healthy.”

“You? Healthy?” the soldier laughed. “Of course you are. All the better. I don’t want to catch no stinkin’ Corie disease and bring it home to my missus.”

Tears rolled down the woman’s cheeks. She looked up at the lieutenant.

“Please sir. Don’t take me to one of those camps. I heard what they’re like. Full of the sick and dying. And overcrowded. Please, let me go.” She looked forlornly at the man lying in the wagon for a long moment, then set her jaw and met the lieutenant’s cold stare. “I’ll run off and be no trouble to anyone,” she said.

The lieutenant crossed his arms. “You’ll come with us willingly or we’ll knock you out just like your friend over there.”

“But I’m not sick!” she said, rising to her feet.

“Wrap this around your face!” the lieutenant ordered, tossing a dirty rag at the woman. “I don’t care if you’re sick. We’ve got quotas of Cories to round up, sick or not, no one cares.

Aren’t you glad? You’re gonna get a free ticket home.”

“I was born here! I’ve never even been to Coria.”

The lieutenant shook his head slowly and spoke as if addressing a child. “You think living here means you belong? We never should have let you vermin into Elysia. Fluorentium or no.” Then his expression hardened and his eyes narrowed as he spat out the words, “You killed my daughter.”

At this Kira emitted a tiny gasp. She froze and prayed the soldiers had not heard her.

To her relief, the lieutenant was still talking. “She must have gotten it from the Corie girl who cleans the house. I never liked her. Too dumb to know anything.”

“I’m sorry she died, sir, but I had nothing to do with that,” the woman pleaded.

“We’ve been good to you Cories. Let you live here. Gave you good jobs and fair wages.

Now you’ve thanked us with this pestilence! We won’t be safe until you’re all gone…” He fingered the handle of the baton hanging from his belt. “Or dead,” he added.

The Corian woman hung her head, defeated.

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Chapter 1

“Go on,” the blonde soldier ordered, pushing her back with the tip of his baton in the direction of the wagon. “Now you get to be with your friend,” he said with a chuckle. “You can take care of him.”

“He’s my husband,” the woman muttered as she shuffled forward.

Kira drew a deep breath. The soldiers were all facing the other direction when she turned and slid down the alley, disappearing out of sight. Then she set off at a run, anxious to put distance between herself and the king’s men.

There wasn’t much time. Elysian patrols in Tangro had doubled in the past week, and she’d just seen firsthand that now no Corian was safe from capture, sick or not. The king’s decree one month before had proclaimed that only sick Corians would be sent to “quarantine camps” where they would supposedly receive healthcare; but it was a poorly kept secret that the camps had become heavily overcrowded and that, instead of caring for Corians, they were simply holding them until the King had summoned enough ships to deport the Corians back across the Antibur Sea to Coria.

Now tragedy had become the norm across the land. Elysians were contracting the mysterious disease at a higher rate than Corians, and dying in droves. The illness might begin as a mild headache or upset stomach. Within a day the victim might begin to feel weak and fatigued, or start to have diarrhea with a mild fever. This stage could continue for days or weeks. Those that failed to recover displayed end-stage signs like delirium and seizures. The sickness appeared to damage the lungs, causing breathlessness and a racking cough that had popularized the notion that it was contagious. It wasn’t hard for terrified Elysians to blame Corians for the plague. It was, after all, the Corians who inhabited the most overcrowded and dilapidated slums on the outskirts of Elysian cities and towns.

With thousands now sick or dying, Elysians with means were fleeing the capital city of Valhurst in droves, seeking refuge in northern towns like Ridvel and Batel where cases were fewer. The king’s decree to quarantine Corians was his answer to the crisis. But rather than arresting only the sick, the king’s men made a practice of taking healthy Corians as well—which served to both limit their exposure to the disease and allow them to fill their quotas more quickly.

Now practically all Corians were hiding. Those who had not fled were shuttered, frightened, inside their homes, venturing out only for true necessities. It was every man for himself. To help another, even a friend, was to risk catching the eye of a soldier and being carted away.

Kira slowed to a trot, unable to maintain an all-out sprint. She would have given anything to hurl a rock at the lieutenant, and then bash the soldiers’ heads in, one at a time. But she had wisely restrained herself. Too many people were counting on her. And more than anything, she owed it to her younger brother Liam to stay alive. After their parents’ deaths, all they had was each other.

She weaved through a maze of unnamed alleyways. The sun was hidden behind dark, low clouds and a heaviness in the air portended more rain. It was almost midday; she had been up since well before dawn to retrieve deliveries from Zahra, a wise apothecary who acted as Kira’s mentor. Kira now headed for her sixth and final delivery. Zahra’s instructions led her to a small hut that looked much like her own. Its walls were wattle and daub. A thatch roof seemed to weigh down upon the walls like a sodden blanket. She looked for, and spotted, the strip of red cloth tied to a hinge at a corner of the doorframe. Quickly, she went to the door and knocked.

Inside, a muffled voice, and a cough. Then, silence. Kira knocked again, more insistently.

“Hello? Samuel?” she whispered, “My name is Kira. I have what you asked for. Zahra sent me.”

She heard murmurs, then more shuffling inside. The latch lifted, and the door opened a few inches.

A bedraggled Corian man with dark, bronze skin and a jetblack beard gazed at Kira through sunken eyes.

“You are the healer?” he asked.

Kira shook her head. “Only one who delivers what can heal.”

The middle-aged man pursed his lips. “The healer,” he stated, definitively.

Kira began to suspect the man was not mentally fit, but there was no time to waste. She opened her satchel and pulled out a jar containing a viscous yellow syrup that she and Zahra had made from the harroneous herb. Zahra called it “harrow tonic.”

“Your wife has a cough, right? And a fever? Give her a spoonful of this three times a day. It will help.” She handed over the jar. “Try to keep quiet. There are Elysians about.” She turned to go, not waiting for a reply. If the man could afford to pay, he would have sent deniras to Zahra already; but, knowing Zahra’s generosity, Kira doubted most of her deliveries went to paying customers.

“Thank you, Healer. You’ve saved us…” The man’s voice faded as Kira walked quickly away, further down the deserted street. Helping the sick made her feel useful. She and Zahra formed an effective team. Since Zahra’s stores of herbs and roots had long been used up, and trade had all but ceased, she relied on Kira’s resourcefulness to find and gather ingredients needed to make her poultices, pastes, syrups and stews—everything that had proven effective in relieving patients’ symptoms. It amazed Kira to see how much she had learned in just four short months apprenticing with Zahra. The fact that Kira’s mother, who had been Zahra’s friend and assistant, had taught Kira something about herbs and mixtures growing up, helped. But truth be told, Kira hadn’t known the first thing about what roots to mix with what solutions and in what proportions. At the same time, she took pride in her skill as a scavenger. She excelled at finding what was needed and, just as important, had become adept at hiding from soldiers and covertly delivering medicines to patients in hiding.

What Kira hadn’t told Zahra was that she’d recently been forced to venture beyond the lands around Tangro to seek out what Zahra requested. Kira had even gone into the Forest of Erygos, which was off-limits to all commoners and Corians, to look for glarba root. To be caught in the forest would result in a flogging at best, imprisonment at worst. Breaking the law didn’t come easily to her. In fact, she’d initially decided not to and planned to explain to Zahra that the safe areas had all been picked dry.

But then, Liam fell sick.

At first, she wasn’t sure her eight-year-old brother had caught the plague. His symptoms were mild: a headache, and a feeling of malaise. She had made him rest at home, and when his symptoms lessened after several days, she almost stopped worrying. But then he began to feel dizzy, with stomach pains. Sometimes he acted like he didn’t know where he was, or became listless. All of this terrified Kira. Zahra’s harrow tonic helped to calm Liam and seemed to ease his headaches. It helped him sleep through the night. But to get the herb, Kira had to go into the forbidden Forest of Erygos. And so she did.

Marcus had been a godsend. One of Kira’s oldest friends, Marcus was a skinny, witty boy with a job as a night watchman at a stable. He had offered to watch over Liam during the day while Kira worked with Zahra. Kira and Marcus had gone to school together until age twelve, when Corian schooling stopped and most boys went to work in the mines or as laborers, while girls learned to become maids, tailors, or cooks. Unlike most Corians, Marcus hadn’t yet lost his job, but he told Kira it was only a matter of time.

Kira was almost home. Marcus would be helping to prepare a lunch for Liam. After a quick stop at home, she would wait till dusk to head into the forest and scavenge for plants on Zahra’s list. She was always less likely to encounter an Elysian patrol at the end of the day. She clutched her satchel closer to her body as she ran, to avoid jostling its precious contents. The dusty brown scarf wound tightly around her mouth and nose did little to block the putrid smells of uncollected trash and sewage pooled in the streets. Tangro was a like a ghost town—every door and window locked shut, every curtain drawn as if to make each

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abode as uninviting and unsuspicious as possible. Here and there Kira passed a broken-down door, exposing ransacked interior rooms. These were homes already visited by aggressive patrols that had left no one behind to clean up, close up, or mourn. So far, the patrols had not approached Kira’s neighborhood, but she knew she should soon think of a backup plan—a place where she and Liam could go and be safe.

Kira darted across an empty square containing one of the town’s public wells. Six months ago, the square would have been bustling with curious customers and vendors shouting out their prices. The aroma of the marketplace was always a mix of ripe fruit, exotic spices, and the perfume of cut flowers. But all that was gone now. Silence hung heavily in the air, and it seemed as if everything, and everyone, had disappeared. Past the square was a muddy patch of land crowded with uneven, crooked wood boards sticking out of the ground. It was a graveyard–– rapidly established for the first of the plague victims.

Rather than take the main street up to her hut, she took a back alley that wound past the patch of fenced-in dirt that was her garden behind the hut. It was always wiser to stay off the main road whenever possible. Her stomach rumbled; she craved the chance to sit down and eat some porridge with sprinkled bits of salt pork shavings.

Her neighbors were doing an excellent job keeping their kids and dogs quiet today. Now, at midday, Kira expected to hear muffled signs of life, a clanging pot or a mother’s scolding, and to see ribbons of cookfire smoke trailing up into the sky. Strangely, tonight the air was clear.

There was no smoke.

She arrived at home, rushed through the back fence gate, and opened the back door to the hut, eager to see Liam.

She froze, stunned.

The room she walked into had been ravaged. For a moment, she thought she might be in the wrong hut, but then she recognized a chair that had been battered and split in two—and chips of broken pottery that had been bowls, plates, and mugs. Everything inside had been upturned or shattered, shredded or torn. The front door was broken off its hinges. It was as if someone had picked up their one-room hut and shaken it viciously.

“Liam?” she cried. “Marcus?”

The room was small, only ten paces on a side. She rushed to look under the upturned bed and straw mattress. No one there. She checked inside a tall cabinet, and underneath a pile of clothing. Nothing.

Panicking, she ran to the front door and looked out. Immediately, she saw the damage. Every hut, ransacked. Doors broken in. Clothing and furniture tossed into the street.

They came , she realized. A patrol.

She went back inside. The room spun and she dropped to the ground. Her breath came in short, quick gasps. For a few seconds, all she could hear was the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears.

Liam was gone.

What could she do now?

There were voices. Distant. Coming from outside.

Kira crouched next to the doorway and quickly poked her head out just enough to let one eye peer down the street. There were two small figures walking in the middle of the road. They were children.

She ran out onto the street in their direction.

“Stop! Who are you?” she hissed.

The figures froze. Then they darted into a hut.

Kira followed them inside. They were two boys, huddled in a corner behind a table. Kira recognized them.

“Jeriah! Robastro! What happened here?” They were twin brothers who had lived their whole lives on Kira’s street. The dark-haired boys looked hungry and terrified. “Where are your parents?”

Jeriah was crying, but Robastro spoke up.

“The soldiers came,” he said. “Mother and Father are gone.”

“When?”

“This morning. We heard them coming and everyone ran.” “Towards the woods?”

Robastro nodded.

“Did your mom and dad get away?”

Jeriah’s sobbing intensified. Robastro’s upper lip quivered as his eyes began to well up. “I don’t know.”

Kira slid closer to the boys and gently touched Robastro’s shoulder. “Did you see if they got Liam? Did you see Marcus?”

Robastro shook his head.

Kira sunk back, defeated. She could easily imagine the scene—the soldiers inspecting the first hut, making a ruckus that prompted many of the other residents to drop everything and flee. Some would have stayed, hoping to protect their homes, planning to reason with the king’s men and show that they weren’t sick. Some soldiers might leave Corians unmolested. Others might loot them instead, taking hidden coins or jewelry for themselves. By the look of her street, it seemed the Elysians had shown little restraint.

There was no way Liam would have been able to run. And she doubted Marcus was strong enough to carry him far.

Liam was gone. She would never see him again.

The thought made her suddenly burst into tears. The stress and exhaustion of working nonstop, of constant evasion and hiding, and caring for Liam, suddenly overwhelmed her. The walls seemed to be closing in. It felt hard to breathe. She’d lost the only thing that mattered in the entire world.

“The wagons went that way,” Jeriah said quietly. Kira looked up.

“What did you say?”

Jeriah’s face was streaked with tears. He sniffled. But his left hand pointed firmly out the door, to the northeast.

There was only one road in that direction: Norrath Road. The well-worn artery that connected Tangro to the city of Denebola.

If the Corians were being carted to a quarantine center, it was likely to be located near the coast, especially if the king truly planned to deport them by ship back to Coria. Denebola, the closest deep water port, was along the Norrath Road, a full day’s journey from Tangro on foot.

That’s where Liam had been taken, along with the others who had been rounded up. That’s where she needed to go.

Chapter 2 Rowan Capital city of Valhurst

“Your Majesty, if you please, I advise you not to—”

“Silence!” King Edgar’s voice reverberated across the vast stone hall. He sat atop a wide dais in a gleaming black throne made of pure fluorentium.

Brilliant and lustrous, mined in the Okmore mountains, fluorentium was valued for its incredible strength, capacity to be forged into precise shapes, and rarity.

Beside Edgar was a slightly smaller, empty throne. High above, large black banners hung from the ceiling depicting the kingdom’s emblem––the head of a majestic golden stag under a black crown and sword.

“I have no time for another of your useless propositions, Sinnett!” Flecks of spittle flew from the king’s mouth as he chastised his royal advisor, a wizened old man with long, flowing white hair. “The hour is late. Our people are dying like flies. We must focus on removing the source of the infection.”

“The Corians, Sire?” Sinnett questioned, keeping his expression neutral.

“Yes of course, the Corians!”

The dozen gathered diplomats, nobility, and advisors fell silent at the king’s outburst. Edgar slumped wearily in his throne. His face was rugged, with creases that seemed to deepen whenever his mood turned foul. Over the last fortnight it seemed

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he had aged a year, and a decade since the pandemic had begun in the spring. The king sighed.

“Sinnett, your proposal to put resources into finding a cure are well intentioned. But we all know that would take months, if not years. Too late to help those infected now, some of whom will live, some of whom will die. If the Corians are gone, then the plague will die out.”

“Sire, you are referring to all Corians? Not just those who are sick?” The king furrowed his brow. “How can you know which ones are sick?” The royal advisors looked at one another, unsure of how to respond.

Sinnett spoke, “By their symptoms, Sire.”

“But do we really know if those who look healthy aren’t harboring the sickness too? Which they could spread to others?”

“Well, there is no exact proof—”

“And would it not be safest to just rid ourselves of them?”

“But such a vast undertaking, Sire, would—”

“Enough. The time for restraint has passed. As king I am sworn to protect Elysia. This is the only way.”

King Edgar’s son Rowan pressed his back hard against the side of a large marble pillar halfway down the length of the grand hall. If his father caught him eavesdropping there would be hell to pay. But he had remained glued to his hiding spot for half an hour, listening to the meeting. Rowan was worried. His father’s behavior had changed dramatically in recent weeks.

He was irritable. Impatient. Since Queen Cecilia’s death from the plague two months prior, there were times when the king seemed almost unhinged. He had never been a contemplative or introspective man, but he had always been affable and carefree. In fact, up till now, most of his critics complained he took too little interest in affairs of the kingdom. He’d never quite shed his reputation for being a pleasure seeker in his youth—and especially a sportsman who was more interested in hunting than matters of state.

But the empty throne beside him was an ever-present reminder of Elysia’s grim new realities and the plague’s personal cost. The king’s grief consumed him. Rowan knew he drowned his pain with wine and spirits, practically the only beverages he drank and a luxury only the nobility could afford now that all imports to Elysia had ceased. Rowan himself had been disconsolate for weeks after his mother’s death, uninterested in eating or the usual amusements of a prince. He was hardly able to sleep, and at the same time barely able to get out of bed.

During the five long weeks the queen lay in her sickbed, King Edgar had spent nearly every waking hour by her side, holding her hand, exhorting the healers to save her. Meanwhile, matters of ruling the kingdom had gone neglected just as the pandemic had begun to erupt, and since then, thousands had died and continued to die.

“We will move forward with our plans for expanding the quarantine centers,” King Edgar proclaimed, breaking an awkward silence.

Sinnett frowned but tried hard to keep his voice level. “Sire, our patrols have doubled, and they are working hard to fulfill your demand. But…” the old man hesitated, deciding to try one more appeal, “But my king, I fear that your attention has been focused too long on this…” Sinnett searched for the right words, “…and it may not solve all the problems we hope it will. Besides the issue of the Corians, there is talk of unrest, even rebellion…”

The king looked up.

Sinnett continued, “Yes, Sire, there are rumors of rebels. Our people are starving. Others are simply leaving the kingdom––specifically those in the nobility––and trade negotiations with Ancebus have not progressed. Their ships remain afraid to enter our ports.”

Diplomats and advisors surrounding Sinnett nodded in agreement.

“Don’t you think I know this?” Edgar cried. “It’s the same reason we cannot find enough ships to deport the Corians. I can only do so much in a day, and with this disease ravaging my kingdom––minor trade negotiations and puny rebels hardly rise

to the top of the list!” He breathed heavily, as if exhausted from having to explain such simple truths.

Sinnett had never known the king to be persuaded through force of argument. It was best when the ruler reached the right conclusions on his own. Sinnett’s job was to make sure that happened…eventually.

“We all understand the stress and burdens you carry, Sire. Elysia is truly blessed to have such an enlightened ruler.”

The king seemed to calm himself. An attendant brought him a chalice of wine, which he drained in one long gulp, wiping his lips with the sleeve of his thick blue robe, which he wore over a khaki tunic and comfortable trousers. Then he sank lower until he was almost recumbent, tracing a finger through his throne’s ornate carvings.

“Very well, let’s hear about this little rebellion. I trust that it will be easy to stamp out, yes?”

“So far, there have been a few reports of rebel attacks on small wagon trains carrying weapons, food, and other supplies for our troops. Witnesses have reported that some of the rebels are armed but have not killed any of our men––it seems they only want to take supplies.

Unfortunately, we cannot provide any more information yet. We are working on getting intelligence on the location of their base, their numbers, who they are––”

“Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? It’s those horrid Corians! First, they bring a plague into my kingdom, and now they’re sabotaging my troops!”

“I apologize, Sire, but there is no evidence that the rebels are Corian,” Sinnett offered.

“Well then, who is it? It can’t be Elysians. Times are hard but my people know I am doing everything I can to help. Did I not open the royal grain stores to provide enough bread for them?”

“In the Citadel and Old City, yes, but this grain hasn’t reached the outlying towns and villages.”

“Are you suggesting my own people are raising arms against me?” Edgar’s voice was fearsomely low, almost a growl.

“It’s hard to know for sure, Sire. It could also be simple vagabonds and thieves. Endalinian pirates or perhaps ruffians from Ancebus.”

Edgar’s eyebrows lifted and he waved a dismissive hand as he said, “Of course, I’m sure that’s all it is.” The king abruptly sat up. “I order you to find the rebels, whoever they are, and then we will dispatch a regiment to deal with them.”

Sinnett pursed his lips, contemplating the king’s command, but rather than speak more on the matter, he chose to remain silent.

“Now, tell me what we are doing to rid our land of Corians.” Edgar spat out the last word as if he had eaten something rotten.

“Our men are continuing to sequester the sick. They are even going door to door. Though we have assured the Corians that they will be cared for in the quarantine centers, it appears rumors have spread that they will not, and that they are really deportation camps.”

The king chortled under his breath. “So they aren’t as stupid as they look,” he muttered.

“The truth, Sire, is that although we initially intended for the quarantine centers to not only isolate, but care for the sick, there are now far too many Corians and the centers are overwhelmed.”

“Which proves they brought the sickness!”

“Perhaps, but I have had reports that our men are indiscriminately rounding up Corians and not always distinguishing between the sick and the well. Which contributes to the overcrowding.”

The king shook his head. “Did I not already say that any Corian is suspect? Anyone could be carrying the disease, whether they have symptoms or not.”

“You did, Sire. It is true that anyone may catch the disease. But in fact, more Elysians than Corians have died. It may be inaccurate to believe that separating Corians from our people will stem the spread.”

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“But they must be the source!” There was a wild look in the king’s eyes. He searched his advisors for reassurance and got it from several of them who nodded. “We cannot second-guess our brave soldiers in the field who are putting their lives at risk as they search house by house, coming in close contact with the pestilence. There are so many Corians. They all look alike. It must be hard to tell them apart and who has the sickness. If it were up to me, I’m sure I would err on the side of caution. Sinnett, your job is to expand the camps, collect the Corians, and find enough ships to take them away. We have enough fluorentium to pay for this twice over, do we not?”

Sinnett bowed. “Yes, Sire. We will continue to heed your wishes.”

“Good. This meeting is over. You are dismissed.”

As the advisors turned to leave, Rowan slipped through a side door and outside into a humid courtyard. He was late for his tutoring lesson with Professor Callan, and hurriedly made his way across the Citadel, a complex of massive stone buildings set atop a hill overlooking the walled Old City. Located here were the royal palace and cathedral, as well as the royal administrative offices and library.

It bothered Rowan that his father never discussed matters of the kingdom with him. At eighteen, and the heir to the throne, Rowan hungered to learn more about important matters. As a newly commissioned lieutenant in the King’s Guard, he was theoretically available for deployment on any number of assignments—convoy protection, reconnaissance and fighting rebels.

193

Finding Our Way Through Wonderland

You opened your book to page ten, that’s where we met. I’m not sure what happened on pages one through nine… was there a prologue? A table of contents that laid out our story yet missing everything that made it ours? My mind was still drifting from New York to Vermont and all I remember tumbling through the pages is that you were the first girl I saw and had brown hair whose curls held laughter that couldn’t all be contained in a bun with a pink scrunchie.

With the yawning sun and the endless fields of green, upon green, upon wafts of floral scents and ladybugs perched on leaves, it’s no wonder we became tweedle dee and tweedle dum rolling down the hill during long days and hiding in our bunks during long nights. We would both crawl out of our beds way past the morning sunrise bell and laugh at each other in the bathroom mirrors, our hair tangled and our eyes half-closed. There was no time to say hello or goodbye, we were always late, late, late!

We wove together pink threads with streaks of blue and white, only a few shades different from all the girls around us. When the nightly dances came, we would search each other’s closets for dresses we didn’t like but traded them just so we could belong to something that wasn’t our own. Arm in arm, ignorant happy little music followed our footsteps as we serenaded ourselves onto the floor. I didn’t know much about you other than the fact that you liked pretzels and hated cheese, but even that little bit was more familiar than everything else around me. Here, I was sleeping with my face towards the open and shifting sky, when I was used to the firm and cool sensation of the ground back at home. I was a night owl falling off its perch from the bong of the early morning bell. I was a matter-of-fact brain confused by the cloudlike cotton candy of stargazers.

I knew I had the queen in my hand of cards, but I didn’t know what the people surrounding me at the table had. So I played it safe, only sharing my twos and threes. I stared at the faces around me—the squint of their eyes or the perfection of their smile— trying to figure out who else was bluffing.

I disappeared for a few weeks when my heart wandered farther north to meet a star that was only seen in the sky once in a blue blue moon. His smile took the form of the Cheshire Cat’s and made me forget all the noisy voices around me, sometimes I even forgot you. Dancing may have seemed like a silly thing for fairytales, but we managed a whirling frenzy of locked sweaty hands and stumbling bare feet.

I was afraid to let go first.

I saw his smile everywhere—at the dining tables with a plate turned over for me, at the pitch-black outdoor basketball court staring at the shooting stars, at the place underneath the trees that stole my breath away the second he touched me. But his smile didn't last. I started to see it less and less until it faded into the trees who now left me wanting my air back. After his smile left, it was just our eyes some days, just our lips another night, just the faint outline of his shadow while I stood on the other side of the hill waiting for him. Waiting for something I didn’t even know was entirely real. When I was with him, I questioned whether or not I was real.

The whole time I was looking for his smile, I forgot the one person who was always there for me. You danced with the ghost of my past that night still dressed in your clothes of white fabric, and

I danced with the shell of my present dressed in a tight rope of black—both of us wishing we had someone to lean on. My bare feet on the floor, I felt a cold, hard, and slippery sensation I’d never noticed before. That’s when I saw it lying in the corner, a book that lay closed with our bracelets wrapped around it. I remembered leaving mine there, but when you left yours was a mystery of foggy time. I flipped through all the blank, blank pages I was supposed to fill where, instead, I had dropped the pen and spilled the ink. I saw my reflection in the puddle of ink and thought we were all mad here.

When the star exploded, not into a supernova but a bunch of dust in the mere sky, you were standing right there. I ran back to you, ran back into your arms that were waiting for me. I didn’t know which road I wanted to take before; I thought it didn't matter. Yet now I’ve seen the garden of lies disguised as cakes and sweet illusions, and white roses that are painted red. The truth of the matter is, I still like looking at all the red roses in the world, even if their paint would slowly drip off and melt away after time. I pinch myself, tumbling back into the real world.

The smoke from the caterpillar cleared, and now I know the connection we have is truly real amidst the crazy twisting and turning, growing and shrinking adventures of this world. In a land filled with so many curious new faces, I didn’t know which one to become. I was wrong about us, we are not tweedle dee and tweedle dum. We don't need to go by characters in a book. We are just us, two fifteen-year-old girls who understand each other, not for the facades and tricks, but for the character that is unearthed beneath.

We watched our little flames go down the stream of water. Your whole boat burst into flames and we laughed hysterically at the ball of fire coming down the pond amidst the other seemingly calm and tranquil little lights. This described you perfectly. A fire that didn’t burn enough to be dangerous or sting, but just enough to give you life. A fire that provided light for the cavemen many years ago, a fire that keeps us warm in the winter, a fire that shapes a lump of glass into a crystal swan.

Those friendship bracelets were never meant to last an eternity of wear. Instead, our story lies in the memories ingrained in our bodies forever. I can still hear our voices blending together as we sang around the bell on the last night of the summer when we were more than friends, of the summer when we were sisters. I clasped your hand not because I was scared of letting go, but because I wanted to hold onto the stillness of time. Too soon, the union of our harmonies slowly faded into the silence of dawn as the sun forced a sleepy yawn awake.

Even so, we will never lose the wonders of wonderland. For those wonders and those trials are what transformed us and led us on the path back to each other. People and creatures may disappear throughout the trees and the hills, but I know you will always be an anchor I can count on.

I took a peek at your hand of cards once. We were both truly queens.

194

Carolyn Lau Creative Nonfiction Herricks High School New Hyde Park, NY

Olivia Le

Ocean Origami

I origami my body when I don’t know what to do with it. I spread myself flat and fold and while I was folding someone told my grandmother to “get over” her accent like she had a break up with her culture. Cut ties and stop crying! didn’t someone tell her that young love was never a promise?

That’s when I realized that the nước chấm that I dip my body in (like baptism like communion) is salted with tears from an ocean that has been stealing me since my mom was seven. I want to spit the holy sauce at the concrete for the neighbor to slip on but it’s fish breath lingers in my mouth like a permanent stain, like blood.

When I realize that my sister’s favorite bún bò huế soup is spiced with the fire of abandoned homes, I force myself to swallow the screams so my throat knows what it's like to be burned beyond speech; to glance behind and silently beg that the bullets won't add burden to my back too.

When I realize that with immigrant comes dismemberment comes the mar of a diaspora’s dialogue comes deceit drowning us in a sailor drunk with ocean I want to break up with my culture too!

I want to tell this America how much I hate the way she looks at us…

But instead I origami, and I fold my grandmother with me. I fold to the wrinkles in her forehead that she deepened when her bare feet made birthmarks in the river bed. I fold to the creases of her palms as they craft this cartography of our ancestry. I fold to the red seams of her áo dài,

each stitch that she embroidered: is an emblem to her family. I fold to the square sheets of dough, cook dumplings and wontons. Try to pinch the ends without the entrails emerging. I fold on the borders between home and hope, territories that have tried to make ties.

I am folding origami from the shedded skin of my family from the layers of my culture from something flat to something whole. And I mostly fold cranes that can’t fly but still float. And We are still told to “get over” ourselves because people don’t bridge rivers here in America, they fill them with a hell lot of ocean. And yet I place my paper crane onto its surface, only praying that it has learned to swim like my grandma did, like my mother did. But I close my eyes so that I can’t see the waves swallow it all: my skin my borders my words smeared and stolen by the ocean like it was never even there.

195

Spoken Word Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

Addison Lee

196

Design Arts Maranatha Christian Schools San Diego, CA

2022

Repaired Life (detail) Wool, felt, yarn, laces, branches

Ariana Lee

Through the Eye

I was twelve years old. My friend joked: I can’t ever see rain the same again. Only the storm, the roofs of submerged houses like lily pads, the news going 24/7. Born in the year of Katrina, graduating high school through a pandemic, my generation will get diplomas in disaster, degrees in damage. What kind of city are we inheriting? Each once-in-a-lifetime flood is a watershed moment, but we’ve had so many they’ve watered down this community. Five years later, are we still Houston Strong? Do we still have that outpouring of love to fight the downpour? We’re swamped with work to fix this swamp, where flood mitigation benefits the people who need it the least, who would prefer high ground over taking the high road. We don’t see rain the same. Some see a deluge—others see delusion. Leveling and raising homes won’t raise up our communities of color if we don’t get a say in how we rebuild. To get to where Houston can be headed, we need roofs over everybody’s heads. This is a city of innovators. The iconic graffiti in Downtown comes to mind: Be Someone. This is a city full of Someone’s, it must be something in the water, but we don’t see the same. Let’s try looking through the eye of a hurricane. So many volunteers show up, some have to be turned away. Strangers muck out each other’s houses. Neighbors rescue neighbors in their kayaks, boats, and canoes. A different flood and different Noah’s Ark, while Arkema explodes and families evacuate and floodways fill. Our dams couldn’t hold Harvey, but we have so much capacity in this city to say in all our languages: 我爱你. Te amo. I love you. I was twelve years old. I’d never seen love of that magnitude. Yes, deeper injustices surfaced from the floodwaters. Its murk made inequity clear. But when we see rain, we remember what kind of city we’re inheriting. A city that floods. A city that loves. A city that survives.

197

Spoken Word St. John’s School Houston, TX

Sophia Leng

198

Photography Hunter College High School New York, NY Untitled Digital photography 2021

Marielle Lerner

199

Visual Arts Windward School

2021

Los Angeles, CA Bakery Clay, chalk pastels (food); Cardboard, paper, match boxes, bottle caps, tinfoil and glue

Hahmini Lewis

200

Visual Arts George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Baltimore, MD New Era Oil paint on canvas 2022

Lauren Lin

To Willow Tree

I see you there, Willow Tree

Rowing wind with arms for oars

They all told me

The breeze carried your branches

Swept your leaves through its ﬁngers

And let them ﬂy

They all told me

You bowed to its breath

Your arms knelt

Returning emeralds to earth

And stretched your leaves, your precious stones

To soil

In reverence

They all told me

Your boughs soar on the wings of wind

When they lift your leaves

They let you taste sky

But yesterday, Willow Tree

I thought I saw

Through the window pane

You, not wind

Your gnarled arms reach and row

Through the whistling breeze

Like you were parting the sea

And the red had seeped through your crevices

For a lick of freedom

I wondered then if you drew the exhale from the wind’s mouth

As you fought to move

Rooted beside earthworms

Your bark met mine

We shared a stare

For a single moment

Maybe because you longed to walk

Maybe you envied my legs

Maybe I envied your trunk–its stability

Maybe chance tossed the wind to me, forcing your gaze with it

But as I held you in mine,

You rowed the wind

As if it were the river to your oar

Rowing upstream and rooted

In place.

Why do you allow me to see this of you, Willow Tree?

To know of your imprisonment?

If not stationary in soil

Then stationery in a store

Why did you show me

That it was you, not wind, that wrenched your branches through the air

That your leaves clawed

Like ﬁns raking through waves

And now I wonder

How you can be so serene

Locked in ground by your own roots

And reaching for anything beyond them

And now I wonder

How I can envy your roots

That anchor you like bars

Your invisible cage.

I don’t know how

But I know you shaded my eyes

And stilled my heart

Wrapped me in cloaks of peace

Unless…

That was why you showed me

The way you reach

Because I would understand

For you knew I knew

That unseen bars are hardest to parse

They all told us

The joy we ignite And smiles we lift They surmise the serenity Is shared

The masquerade fades with you And perhaps we both worry That inside there’s a hollowness No count of rings could complete

But they see the lushness of our leaves

The richness of our bark

The smile

As we ﬂail in cages unseen And row.

201

Spoken Word Castilleja School Palo Alto, CA

Daniel Liu

Dog Years

Tell me this, why is the past tense always longer?

—Ocean Vuong

Ama lived in the village. Once, a bony dog had threatened to take her out of it, clenching her white hair between its teeth and dragging her across the dirt path through the marketplace, before my Ba found a ginkgo branch large enough to swat the mangy animal away. Look, it’s gone now. It’s gone, he assured her. But she did not look, and instead, curled up on the dusty ground between the fishmongers tossing grouper heads into a repurposed soy sauce bucket and the open river valley sky, closing her eyelids and caressing the new bald patch on her head. Ba told me to never remind her of this story and never ask her to see her scars, but I did because her stories always ended with someone crying or dying. She detailed them like capitals on the map of her body: a cut on her upper lip from a dispute over rice rations, an almost circular moon on her stomach from a wayward brick while bringing home white turnips, a blemish on her knuckles from knocking out her husband—the tales changed each time she told them, like the light-catching stream winding in wild turns. Honor your past, she lectured. It’s all you have. Still, she avoided the dog’s story on her forehead. Still, she dyed her hair auburn twice a year, snipping her hair evenly and precisely to hide the mark.

Ama was at the salon when we returned to her mudbrick house in the summer. Every decade, the whole family came back. This time, lanternflies had already engulfed the trunks of the charcoal trees, and cicadas accompanied our every hulking breath as Ba and I heaved suitcases up the hard steps. As we ascended toward his childhood house, where Ba had caught rough-skinned toads in his hands and gifted them to his sister in a jar, sending her screaming out the gates we now saw at the top of the hill, an older man with foggy eyes stopped us. He had a frog-like face, bumpy and wrinkled, but he spoke fiercely with a bitter bite. He spat out something accusatory. Ba responded with a soft plealike question, and the man continued raging in the local dialect, a violent chew that required his forehead to scrunch up as much as his tongue. I did not know the language well enough to understand him and I was afraid we had done something wrong: even though Ba grew up in the cradle of the village, he was a rule breaker— when he was young, he carved his name in the century-old wooden frames of doors, stole cigarettes from the deaf herbalist, smoked behind the Buddhist temple, and borrowed money from the local gangs to spend on drunken nights with his bright grin flashing between swigs of colorless liquor. It wouldn’t have surprised me if we had accidentally dishonored a family name wandering through alleys of carved stone paths. But as the man kept spewing endlessly to Ba, the hot air sticking to the backs of our shirts in pools of sweat and humidity, Ama finally came home: freshly curled coppery hair rolling down her shoulders, yellow teeth in a flaunted ferocity that stretched from cheek to cheek. Ama came up to the man and conversed until a moment of revelation crawled across his face. Ba and I sat defeated on our luggage. When he left, Ama motioned for us to get up from the curb, and enter the large doors into the ancestral house : he was just protecting our home. He didn’t even recognize you, my son. Ba let loose a toothy grin. I’ve gotten older, much much older, stretching his back and staring at the suitcases.

When we went inside, the age of the place revealed itself: countless political posters from the cultural revolution and a golden embossed calendar hung on the wall, while discolored plastic and wooden chairs, weakened with years of use, sat at the dining table, which itself was marred by stains and white spots. A dark mint-green fridge sat rusted in the corner, beside a red banner with black calligraphy, decades old.

Ama ran her hands across the propane stove and gave us a bowl of loquats, bright orange fruits with sweet juice. I stiffly took a seat on the hard mahogany couch, the same couch Ba, as a child, had chipped his front tooth on, leaving white dust scattered on the dark red surface while sprinting away from Ama’s straw broom and fury. Ba was never a good kid, Ama had told me before in our video calls. But she loved him nevertheless, even when he had unlocked a singing bird’s cage at the market to the vendor’s anger, letting it flutter above the village people’s curved backs, into the white slice of heaven Ama called her home sky. Even when his schoolteacher had whacked his hands with a bamboo stick a dozen times for trying to take another boy’s pencil when he had forgotten to bring his own that day. Each time Ama turned red as a beet, then sweet, paying for lost birds, rubbing his knuckles repeating don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

Nothing made her as sweet as Ba’s tears hanging on his face. Though she forgave him, she never forgot—every story they told me through the years taught me about the life they lived in this village, everything unearthed, revealed, caught in the heat of the sun. As I chewed through the pile of loquats, leaving yellow skins uneaten, I counted the hurts and contours on each groove of the couch, memories etched into the curves. A dead potted money tree sank into the corner. A column of dust collected on the cabinet.

People began to arrive steadily. Aunts and uncles and cousins and friends, ones that bought new apartments in the harbor city or took on debt to buy a new leather purse, ones that spent the last years of their forties butchering pig heads or selling lamb kebabs in night market stalls, came to the residence, each with travel bags stuffed with coats, dresses, and portable chargers, all wandering around the alleys until they made their way into inspecting painted plates from their own years in Ama’s arms or reminiscing about the yard of endless weeds where they chased each other when they still had heads of full black hair. They piled into the small kitchen with Ba, Ama, and I, dancing strange steps, burning the garlic, uncorking the Foochow red wine onto fatty pork belly strips, and washing the rice the neighbor and his son had brought over. While each focused on a task, they remembered their own history with the house, with the food, with the village, with loud bouts of laughs and yells. Somehow, the past fought its way into every conversation, stained every palm as they sliced through freshly plucked chickens.

Somehow, there was nothing to do here except what Ama had been doing these last decades: remembering, remembering every speck of silt on the steps, remembering every drop of rain that slid down the clay roof tiles to land on her richly recolored hair, remembering all the people that had been pulled out of her womb, learned to stumble by the straw flowers, and ended up running away from this house where she spent her years alone, brewing tea, sweeping, sleeping, stuck in the empty shell of a personal history she had cradled. The past trembled in every tick of her hands, her knees, her spine, her mind.

That night, over a buffet of lychee pork and steamed flounder topped with scallions, fried rice cakes and mussel soup, two dozen people gathered around an extended table brought in by some cousins. The clang of green bottles searched for a sound among the constant chattering. Ama swam in blissful smells and the incessant conversations between her children. I sat at the end of the table, the sweat rolling off my head with the body heat of a whole bloodline in an un-airconditioned house. Everything was too warm and too still, motion writhing in the humidity. Soon it became unbearable. As I got up to use the sink, I noticed Ba took another shot of the shaojiu with an uncle, both flushed with crimson crawling across their faces.

202

Creative Nonfiction Lake Highland Preparatory School Orlando, FL

When I found the restroom, which clearly had been attached to the house recently with its clean plumbing and stainless mirror, I splashed water on my face. I stole a moment of silence. I knew there was something special about coming home, but having never seen this place, let alone growing up here, the sense of fondness the rest of my family had for it amazed me. I still pondered. If they had fantasized about netting carps in the mud-brown ponds or betting on card games with their cousins, why had they left this circle of the past? Why had they left Ama alone and wistful in an empty nest of chipped sofas and severed shelves when they knew her husband was shattered furniture, ash in an urn? I let the water cool my face one more time, and dried my hands.

As I returned, Ama was up in her chair and had a finger pointed toward Ba. You ruin it. You always have to ruin it, she hissed. An uncle with a scraggly gray beard held her shoulder, urging her to take a seat, while an aunt begged Ba to do the same. Just leave, he barked, his drunk face revealing a soft edge to his eyes. You cannot live alone here, you know that. I’ll take you to America. America, Ma. Ama screamed, her heart boiling to the top of her head and thrown carelessly between the served fish eyes, her glare burnt up with the mess of sound coming from her well-worn throat. Once every decade we are together, and you ruin it. You ruin everything every time. Every time. The younger aunt who was with Ba shook her head, and followed Ama into her bedroom. A shadow hovered over us, the dampness of the subtropical climate catching up with the tension, thick with fear. No one prodded at the food, instead turning their heads toward their plates in shame. Ba took my hand, and we left the house by the steps at the gate.

I did not know how to feel. I only caught a glimpse, but the hurt had been looming since Ba had been stopped by the frog-faced man, since Ba left home three decades ago. The brief moment felt just like the eruption, the ash pummeling the landscape below. There was no compass inside me, directing me toward the right shame or anger that had enveloped the others, and my face made it obvious: there was nothing I could do, or knew that would give me the correct emotion. Ama didn’t want to leave, and Ba couldn’t force him too. But Ba was right too. Ama swaddled herself in the blanket of her best years here, clinging to a long-lost ghost of a place that would never return, taking solace in what was already gone. It made sense for her to leave: she was getting older and it was difficult to take care of her when she was so far from any family members. How deadly it was for her to let go. How uninhabitable the future was.

He clasped a cigarette that he dug from a pocket in his jeans between his lips. He lit it and I perched next to him on the curb, taking short breaths in the cool summer night. The moon was full now, catching what little light it could and showering us in a light glow, illuminating Ba’s own craters, old wounds, on his nose and cheek and neck and jaw, staying too long in the furrows of his brows before leaping and spilling all over the front of the house. I thought of Ama’s scars. To have drowned yourself in the radiance of an old sun, to have hoped that somehow, someway, the act of remembering would dig up a grave to reveal a living man. To live in the past until there was no living left to do. Inside, they calmed Ama down and gossiped about Ba. Down the stone alley, a stray dog sang its song. Grasshoppers hummed. Then, Ba turned to me and began to tell a story about a bony animal and a past that hunted and dragged Ama down. I imagined myself as the animal, then as Ama, then finally the river valley sky tracing every jagged tooth of memory.

Ama: Grandmother.

Ba: Father.

Shaojiu: A strong clear liquor.

203

Daniel Liu

Butcher

YAN, 67, white-haired and uneasy, paces at the back of a slaughterhouse. To her left, her son, LIN, 41, defeated by decades of manual labor, is taking off his guts-stained apron. By his side is a white bucket. Late summer heat pummels each of them, leaving a bitter, warm tension in the air.

YAN

We need the money, Lin.

A beat. Lin ignores her, and removes his apron completely.

YAN (CONT’D)

You can’t lose this job, not this one. Landlord already wants us out, remember? Kept coming by yelling about broken pipes. They think we’re bad luck, Lin. Bad luck.

Another beat. Yan’s pacing speeds up and speaks faster.

YAN (CONT’D)

What if the boss’s kid finds us here? You know he drinks here after you close. How would you explain why we’re here this late in the night? We need the money, Lin, what if--

LIN (Annoyed)

I heard you the first time, ma.

YAN

Yan stands still.

Then what are we still doing here?

LIN

Said it yourself, we don’t have the money.

YAN

Is that what you’ll tell them? That we’re broke so you stole frozen pig parts from them?

Yan motions to the bucket, filled with saranwrapped loins and ribs.

LIN

Look. Are you here to help or not?

YAN

I raised you better than this.

LIN

Lin turns to face Yan.

So are you helping, or just standing there?

YAN

I’m telling you Lin, this is a bad idea.

LIN

Ma, I promise you, we’ll be fine.

YAN

All my years, leaving the village, moving here with your cousin,

204

Play or Script

Lake Highland Preparatory School Orlando, FL

all I gave up just to have you steal? We don’t steal, Lin. We’re good people.

LIN

Good people here don’t feed their families. Good people here lose their apartments. I got your daughter-in-law and two boys to feed, and the boss isn’t gunning to give me a raise, so I’m trying to make sure my kids don’t go hungry, ma. I’m trying to make sure we don’t end up on the streets, and if that means I have to do some things to make that happen, I’ll do those things.

A beat. They stare at each other, waiting for one of them to make a move.

YAN

Your dad wouldn’t have done this. He was a good person.

LIN

My dad left us, ma.

YAN

Your dad didn’t have to steal. He didn’t have to do all this.

LIN

No, no. My dad left you alone with a kid in a rural fishing village and took all your money.

YAN

He was a good man.

LIN (Angrily)

He robbed you, ma. He stole from you. He left you to take care of me with no job, no family, the only reason we had a house in the winter was because the neighbors found you crying on their steps. I don’t call that a good person.

YAN

You didn’t know him.

I was two, ma. Two.

He loved you.

LIN

YAN

LIN

If he loved me, he wouldn’t have left you to beg in the marketplace.

YAN

If he could see us now, in America, he’d be ashamed. Stealing when you have a job, stealing--

LIN

There’s nothing wrong with stealing from them.

YAN

Yes! There is! I didn’t have anything and I never stole, never.

Lin collects himself, and turns toward the bucket, straight-faced.

LIN

Go home if you’re not going to help.

Lin goes to haul the bucket. It is clearly heavy as he pulls it.

205

YAN

Never did I steal. Not once. Not even when you were sick and I didn’t have enough for the herbalist.

Lin drags it along.

YAN (CONT’D)

Not even when I hadn’t eaten for three days, and the village official said they ran out of rations. It was the revolution, Lin. Everyone was hungry. Everyone. And they didn’t steal. We were good people.

Lin continues, determined to drag the bucket home.

YAN (CONT’D)

The apartment is a twenty-minute walk, you can’t do it. Just leave it and no one will know we were here. Listen to me, Lin, for once in your life.

Lin stops and turns his head around.

LIN (Snapping)

Because I’m the screwup, right, ma?

YAN

What? Don’t say that.

LIN

Because I’m the screwup chopping pig legs day-in-and-day-out just to live on the outskirts of town with my wife diluting the baby milk with water. Because I’m the screwup who has to ask his sixty-seven-year-old mother to help him steal next week’s dinners, I’m the screwup who got to America and was supposed to be rich, who got to America and was supposed to buy you a house, who got to America--

YAN

Lin--

LIN and lost job after job after job and. And.

Lin squats on the floor and covers his face with his hands.

YAN

You’re my son. You’re my only son. Your dad knew you would be a great man, and you are, Lin.

LIN

Bullshit.

What?

YAN

LIN

You don’t care. Neither did dad.

YAN

You didn’t know your dad Lin. He loved you.

LIN

Stop saying that, you know he didn’t. He got you pregnant and left, he didn’t want to deal with me. He knew.

YAN

206

I--

That’s the truth, isn’t it? That he couldn’t handle it? Every time we fight ma, you always go back to him. I remember when we left the village, you had to visit the schoolyard where you two met. I was fifteen, already gutting fish and laying bricks, and you prayed there, like he was some god. Like he wasn’t the coward that left us.

YAN

That’s not why I went to the schoolyard.

LIN

Then what was it, ma? What was it?

Silence envelopes both Yan and Lin. Something like a rusted cog clicks in Yan. The past has caught up. A long pause.

YAN

She was beautiful, Lin.

A beat. Confusion comes over Lin.

YAN (CONT’D)

She was beautiful and she was all mine. All mine. Her pretty black eyes were big and she slept so softly, even the grasshoppers stopped to hear her little breaths.

LIN

Ma...

YAN

Her name was Hua. She was named after the flowers. I shouldn’t have named her, because I knew she would be gone the second she left me. Your father loved her, Lin, he held her, crying and screaming, to his chest, cooing at her. I named her right then and there, but I kept that to myself. I knew it would break his heart if I told him she had a name.

LIN

No, no, you didn’t...

YAN

We needed a son, Lin. A daughter was no good. We only had one chance. The village officials would have burnt our house to the ground if they found out we had a second child during that time, and we didn’t have you yet. We could have one child, and it couldn’t have been her. It had to be you.

A moment of realization, shock flowers on Lin’s face.

YAN (CONT’D)

I loved her, Lin. It was summer, and I left her on the schoolyard, and your father didn’t find out until it was too late. When he came back, it had been days, and maggots were already on her soft peach skin. Hundreds of them, on my poor baby. My poor baby. She was mine, all mine but she was gone by then. The heat curdled her body. Your father wouldn’t look at me for months. But I knew he loved me, that he knew why I did it. We had you the next winter. You were all mine too, all mine.

LIN

You’re sick.

YAN

I never stole anything in my life, but if I had the chance, I would have stolen just a few more minutes with her. Just a few more.

LIN

You’re sick. You’re sick, you’re sick--

207 LIN

YAN

That’s why your father left us. He loved you too, Lin. He just couldn’t stand to live with me. But I knew he loved me. He loved me. You don’t understand Lin, I needed to do it. It was a different time.

LIN

No, no you didn’t. She’s dead. She was your daughter and now she’s dead because you wanted a son?

YAN

It was a different time--

LIN

Why did you tell me this?

YAN

Because I thought you’d understand. Because you deserved to know, and I don’t know why I hid it from you for so long. I love you, Lin. More than you could ever know.

A pause. Lin becomes visibly enraged.

LIN

I used to think that it was me who fucked up. I used to think that there was nothing I could do that was right, that somehow, somewhere something made me bad inside, like I was already rotting. And I kept trying. Because of you. Because I thought if I could make you proud, if I could save my mother whose husband had left her, who had a bad back, who begged on the streets, who smuggled us to America, who was my mother, I would somehow make myself proud. But now I see that it was you inside me this whole time. A bad person can’t make a good person. No, no. Not you. I blame you.

YAN

I am still your mother.

LIN

You were never my mother.

YAN

It was a different time, Lin. You think that because you never left your child in a schoolyard, you are better than me. You think that somehow you are excused from this too, that what I had to go through, famine and revolution and all the ugly, ugly years, that you don’t inherit them. That the man you never called your father is to blame for all your losses, that me, the person that raised you, is your worst enemy, well suppose you’re right Lin. You’re right, and I should’ve kept Hua, my Hua, and you would have never been born. Where would we be? No son to carry on the bloodline, no son to take up your father’s fishing boat? We would’ve starved, Lin.

LIN

That’s bullshit. All of that is bullshit.

YAN

I didn’t have a choice.

LIN

You had a choice, and you chose wrong.

YAN

You have sons, Lin, you understand.

Lin looks in disgust.

LIN

You’re not even sorry.

208

YAN

Why would I be? I have you, and you’re mine. All mine.

The whir and lights of a grey sedan pass through the stage. Lin and Yan both look up.

YAN (CONT’D)

Now put the bucket back, and we can walk home together.

LIN

No, no.

Lin, listen to me.

YAN

LIN

I’m done listening to you. I can’t even look at you.

Yan looks down in silence. The past remains as full of hurt as the present, as the future too.

Lin...

YAN

LIN

Don’t come to the apartment. I don’t want to see you.

Lin kicks the bucket, leaving raw pork to spoil on the floor. Yan sulks in shame. Lin begins to walk home, until Yan is left alone on stage.

YAN

Hua, my Hua. All mine. All mine.

END OF PLAY

209

Daniel Liu

It was the summer that dead things came back to life. When his mother’s bridal gown surrendered to the smoke in Jing’s backyard, he wound up the film camera beneath his thumb and shot me in front of the fire. White lace folded in the heat. Midnight grasshoppers sang in the undergrowth. He took another picture, this time of just the scalloped sweetheart neckline crumpling into the breeze. Jing promised me that what he was doing wasn’t wrong, that what remained of his mother’s charmeuse satin in the thick air was about creation, not vengeance, that if he could make new art from this burning garment then it was worth it, and I believed him because he had a toothy grin that unwrapped itself over neat rows of lawn, because I was a boy with too few friends, because I was seventeen.

When his mother was seventeen, she had bought the dress in a thrift store in Sunset Park. She told me this once over a pitcher of sweet tea with ginger, that it had been a soft ochre before it was dry-cleaned and renewed and worn on her wedding day. Her voice was shrill and unbearable, the kind that wilted peonies and scared away dogs, unlike her son’s, which was careful and earthly.

Jing smiled brightly at the pyre. The reason he set fire to her wedding dress was not that he hated his mother but instead, he told me, because he was determined to make art. On the stark white walls of his bedroom upstairs, there were dozens of sets of photographs, each with an image entrapping an object and another image with its smoldering remains.

Sometimes they were his own, a childhood train, a novel he had never read. Three of the sets were objects of mine, a deflated soccer ball, a pair of white socks, a copy of a magazine. Since I always ended up witnessing the fiery ritual anyway and didn’t have much besides the object itself to lose, I thought it might as well have been something of mine that he burned, something that I had a memory of. But memory didn’t work in this way. Memory created its own hurts and contours, its own body. I imagined Jing’s mother knew this, always threatening to break his 35mm SLR camera. I imagined she was afraid of what it could capture: her fingers around a green bottle, the purple marks I had seen on Jing.

On the trimmed grass, he stretched his long arms and turned his head toward me. His dimples were on full display, despite how the only light remaining came from inside the house, now that the gasoline-stained liturgy had gone out. His hands fell to his sides. The heavy heads of the flowers in his mother’s garden beds arched back into the soil they stemmed from. Everything was heavier when it was alive.

I followed him as he took a seat on the patio floor right next to the garden table and chair. From his pocket, he pulled out the lighter he had used on the wedding dress, and also a pack of Marlboros that we had stolen from the gas station by a Buddhist temple his mother frequented. I didn’t smoke, only he did, but I took one anyway, because I was seventeen, and lit the white tip. He looked at me disparagingly. Sorry, I said. That I grabbed one. That I can’t do more to help you.

He didn’t move. Instead, he pointed out gently that I had lit the wrong end. I gave the lighter back to him and tossed the failed attempt to the ground and crushed it under my shoe. The shadows we made looked bruised, hazy by the bamboo shades that separated what was outside and the warm house, too amorphous to be ours.

He closed his fist around the pocket lighter, strangled the plastic. He brought his knees up to his chin. There was a mole there, and I had joked before that his mole was like a navigational star, and that if he followed it, maybe it would take him to his real mother. He had kept a stone face then and I didn’t really understand the gravity of what I had said, only speaking what had crossed my mind. I had never seen him cry, but I imagined on that night that he did, even going as far as to think about his mother crying too on the other side of his always-locked bedroom door, two wails an inch apart and still full of distance. The day after, when he picked me up in his gray sedan, I told him the part where I felt guilty and where I was sorry, and he smiled it off and gripped the steering wheel tighter, the faux leather already coming off.

Now on the cold stone floor, where he sat in front of me, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it loosely, and I placed my hand on his torso where there was a tattoo of an animal, or an idea, or a man. He didn’t care for permanent things, he had told me this before. He expected things to fall apart. But there, on the flagstone paving, he admitted to this one attempt at perseverance, something he made that no one could ever take away from him, something that would always stay and could not stop loving him, could not throw plates at him, could not die in an accident, could not become a cut-out space on a family portrait, could not change, could not break, could not leave him, even if this permanent thing was on his own skin.

He climbed over me and kissed my forehead. It was the end of June, and I didn’t know a name for myself then, only a brief mindless word the world had associated with me, but now, with him renaming me, releasing me, I could answer him calling out to me. He stepped back and let his hand hover over the shutter release of his camera. This time, as he shot me, there was no fire involved, only a bright flash. ***

That spring, I didn’t cry and spent the morning talking to his mother. I let her yell at me and scream and kneel and weep and do all the things you do when there’s nobody to blame for all the stifling smoke burying your desires in a sweetened mess of ash. When he was cremated, his mother gave me his photos. How the soft reds blended into the landscape, the grainy details making up the figures of all the things we owned, or thought we owned, or had cared for. How all his pictures ended in a soft pile of embers.

And maybe he was right. That making something needed the past to burn up and fade into nothing and he understood this in his art, that all memory was just the aftermath, the great quivering silhouette of a wave crashing into the shore, the briefest division of time that we could have spent on this earth.

But the fire remembered too, didn’t it? Tracing all the things it destroyed, or created. My lips in the picture hung like a body, spelled out empty, or vessel, or all the things I couldn’t keep dead.

火: Fire

210

Short Story

火

Lake Highland Preparatory School Orlando, FL

Sophia Liu

Twin Studies

Acadia National Park | Maine | June 2021

You keep a distance of a small child away from me at all times. For the first time, I cry to Baba about you. These months I wore my body like an ill-fitting coat, took each day like a shot of Chinese medicine. You stood in the corridor, my ghost-brother, my vicarious boyhood. Before last March, we visited the first home we remember. The trailer classroom, geoded garage windows, feral dog. You were six when you kissed a girl under that dream-red slide and told me you’d run away together. I said I didn’t care, then bit off all my fingernails. I blinked and here summer is and here you are: newborns spitting on my sweater. Maine is honeycomb-lush, sister-like-forgiving. In our motel room, I have two dreams: one where I am dying and the other where everything is a bloodless red but I know you are next to me. I think of how I would want you to apologize. I pretend that my spine is a learning curve, that time is a disguise for forgiveness. I hate how a nine-month-old baby was conditioned to fear rats for the sake of behavioral psychology, or how Genie’s twelve-year-long abuse led to a breakthrough in language development. I wish I could disinherit this grief, or at least bequeath you with enough to feel it. But what is the point of apology when a critical period passes, when the newborn is not yours to bring home. Outside, a white family grills a midnight dinner and you smell their smoke while sleeping. You storm out, shut all the windows, and swim back into bed. I lay on my side, watchful, dreamless. An experiment. Null.

211

Poetry William A. Shine—Great Neck South High School Great Neck, NY

Eboni Louigarde

212

Visual Arts

We are Woven in Blood Embroidery floss, digital printer, family photos, frames, acrylic paint 2022

University of North Carolina School of the Arts Winston Salem, NC

Sofia Lucas

Vuonna ’89

When Joonas came to visit in the summer of ’eighty-nine—the summer of the World Wide Web and twenty-four satellites, the summer when “Minä Olen Muistanut ” by Kim Lönnholm was number one for twelve weeks straight and seemed to be playing on every other radio station, in the good company of Madonna and Bat & Ryyd—he had no idea his world was about to change.

He came in mid-June, when the days stretched so tall that they almost pushed out the nights altogether. That’s how it was with summer in Helsinki—as if the universe thought a few short weeks of endless sunlight could make up for the bottomless darkness of the winters.

My dad told me he came on a truck. That sounded normal enough to me, but then he talked about how Joonas’s mother (my dad’s sister) had paid the truck driver to smuggle him in the back with the barrels of petroleum oil.

Which explained why when he came in, he smelled like he’d been locked in an auto-repair shop all night. And why one of the first things he said was that his nose was stinging.

Though I didn’t know he said this, of course, until my dad translated afterwards. Joonas said it first in Estonian, then realized I couldn’t understand and repeated it in Russian, but even with my few years of the language at school I couldn’t recognize the word “stinging.” Now it’s one I never forget.

“Tere , Antti,” was the next thing he said. “Er, privet Hei,” he said, finally coming to the Finnish word in the end. Somehow, I was surprised that he knew my name.

Our language situation was quite odd. Though my father knew both languages from his parents, Joonas knew no Finnish, and I no Estonian. It was more than weird—though our languages looked and sounded so familiar, like the meaning of what Joonas said brushed against my fingertips but was just beyond grasping, we had to use a third, completely different, language. Joonas spoke Russian as fluently as Estonian (that was how it was in the USSR, the slow Russification of all aspects of life, starting with language), but my Russian was nowhere near as good as my Swedish or English. I tried my best to speak the language anyway.

I’d never met Joonas before (ordinary Soviet citizens had almost no hope of getting the required government approval to travel out of the country, and though my dad sometimes made trips my mom was nervous and wouldn’t let him take me), and at first I spent a lot of time just watching him. He had blond curly hair, almost golden, so much so that for a brief moment I thought to myself that Kultalukot—“Goldilocks”—would be the perfect nickname for him. I used to have hair that color, but by the time I was fifteen—the age I was when Joonas first came—it had darkened slightly, leaving it the color of wet sand with occasional bright streaks in the summer that wouldn’t last long. Joonas had brown eyes; mine were blue. Sometimes I stared in the mirror and tried to see if we looked alike. I didn’t see many similarities, but what I did notice was that he looked a lot like my dad when he was a kid. So we really are related, I thought.

When he came, I was in the middle of playing a game I liked to call Pretending to Be an Only Child, which I played when my mother whisked my sister away to other parts of the country—or even other countries altogether—for various appointments and therapies in the hopes that one day she’d be able to walk stably enough to be able to live on her own. My dad always tried to disguise it as something fun, and so did my mom (“You’ll get to have a boys’ week, just the two of you!”), and once I learned to stop missing them it actually was

Usually these trips would only last a week or two at most and only happened once or twice a year, but this time they’d be gone for months—for the surgery, I was told, the one that might

mean an end to the trips once and for all. This time, it was all the way in America.

Because of this, Dad gave Joonas Aliisa’s room. To him, it was perfect logic; Aliisa was gone and Joonas was here—swap one twelve-year-old for the other. There were a couple reasons I didn’t like this: One, Aliisa’s room was a girl ’s room. The walls were painted pink and she had pillows in the shape of flowers, and I wasn’t sure Joonas would be comfortable in there. Two, it was Liis’s room. Hers. Not his. Liis never gave her permission—she’d never even met Joonas, so who knew if she’d even be comfortable with it. What if his petrol stench stuck to her blankets? I thought it made a lot more sense for him to sleep in the living room, or even in my room. Just not in hers.

Also because of this, our upstairs neighbor came to cook for us almost every night. When I was really little, my grandma used to come down from the north and play Mom till the real thing came back. When she died, Katja took over.

Kateryna Kovalenko had come to Helsinki from SSR Ukraine before I was born, her escape story something she never liked to recount. That was okay, though—she had countless other interesting things to talk about. In Ukraine she’d lived in a rural village, which she often explained was where the true Ukrainian spirit thrived while all the big cities were Russified. She had a passion for folklore that bordered on religious, and sometimes I wasn’t sure whether she was privately a pagan or just genuinely deeply respected the traditions of the way back.

She was excited to meet Joonas, and when she brought dinner that first night she immediately started talking to him in Russian, her eyes lighting up as she finally spoke in her own language family to someone who was on the same fluency level as she was, instead of reluctant Russian students who’d only taken it a few years. She looked at him with something like deep empathy in her eyes, which I didn’t think was needed since he smiled all the time.

That was another thing I noticed about Joonas. He smiled a lot—like it was his default—and his eyes were wide with wonder at almost everything he experienced: sleek freeways, different types of cheese to choose from at the store, the giant lumps of food Kateryna piled onto his plate every night, always something different. Free markets were supposed to be something demonic (or so his country had always told him), but now he was discovering that all they did was lead to a life of choice. At times I wondered what it was like to have your whole worldview flipped on its head, to find out that your own country had been lying to you your whole life. But Joonas never talked about the food lines and supply shortages as anything more than minor inconveniences, and so at other times I thought that maybe I was being a little too dramatic, that perhaps we were lied to just as much about where Joonas had come from as he had been about where he found himself now.

Joonas didn’t bring much with him (and most of what he did bring was more of sentimental value than any actual use), so the day after he arrived—after my dad realized most of my clothes were too big—my dad took us to a second-hand clothes store to look around, one with only vague organization and sky-high piles of clothes that felt like you could get lost in. My dad went off one way with Joonas and I hung around the t-shirt section, as I usually did, browsing. Suddenly, I gasped.

“What?” I spun around, and to my surprise, Joonas was behind me, eyes wide as usual.

I picked up the t-shirt I’d found and held it out for him to see.

“Eppu Normaali,” he read, “Baarikärpänen. What’s that mean?” He pronounced the names perfectly, but switched back to

213

Short Story Woodside Priory School Portola Valley, CA

Russian immediately afterwards, not yet confident enough to give a stab at the question in Finnish.

“It doesn’t mean anything. Eppu Normaali is the name of a band, and Baarikärpänen is their song.”

“Oh.” He studied the image printed onto the black fabric: a bee with a long, tubular mouth, drinking out of a foaming mug of beer that spilled over the edges. “Are they your favorite band?”

I opened my mouth to say no, they weren’t, but still one of the most popular in Finland, but my dad’s voice cut between us.

“Antti! We’re here for Joonas, not you,” he said.

“Well.” I glanced at Joonas sideways. “I think Joonas should get this shirt.” I held it up to him. “Looks about your size.”

“Antti…” my dad said in a gentle, but stern, voice.

“What do you think, Joonas?” This time I turned to him completely, trying to block out the look I knew my dad was giving me.

He took the t-shirt from me and spun it around. “It’s pretty cool, Uncle Osku,” he said.

My dad scratched his head, and I knew he was trying to figure out if Joonas had even heard of the band before. “Okay…” he ceded. “Get whatever you want, Joonas.”

When they rang up the rest of the clothes Joonas had collected, I realized the Eppu Normaali shirt was not his style at all. He’d picked out a lot of tracksuits—mostly Adidas, with a few brandless ones chucked in there as well. Some were just the plain stripes, while others had jagged blocks of color that cut through the air straight to your eyes. He’d be hard to lose in that, I thought, even in the winter’s blinding white. The t-shirts he got were just as stark, and whereas in most cases they would’ve been the ones to stand out, amongst them the Eppu Normaali shirt stuck out like a black coffee stain on a bright, multi-colored quilt.

When we left the store, Joonas made a show of slipping the Eppu Normaali shirt over the blue- and green-striped one he was already wearing. All the same, he whispered to me on the way back to the car, “You know, Antti, I think we’re the same size.”

At home, he followed me to my room and asked me to tell him more about the band on his shirt. At that point I hadn’t really talked to him much; he’d been mostly talking to my dad in Estonian, sometimes right in front of me, even though they knew I wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t as if they had something to hide—from the few familiar words I picked out, I knew it was just catching up, about school and his mom and how things were in Tartu—so I couldn’t think of one good reason they couldn’t talk about it in Russian. Maybe that was why I was annoyed at Joonas when I first turned around and saw him in the doorway, and narrowed my eyes at him instinctively. But then he pointed to his shirt and asked his question and I decided that maybe he was alright after all.

He asked about their name again, and this time instead of brushing it off I explained that it was a play on words, from “epänormaali,” Finnish for “abnormal.” I told him about the members, and their packed concerts, and how their songs were in Finnish, and played him the song “ Vuonna ’85 ,” which prompted Joonas to ask what happened vuonna ’85 , in the year ’85.

I shrugged. “Nothing. They wrote the song, I guess.”

“Oh.” He furrowed his brow, as if disappointed that nothing monumental happened in the year that inspired the song. So he could understand, I taught him some of the lyrics, about going up, up, up on the Ferris wheel and opening your eyes at the top. His eyes widened at the words, as if he was trying to open them even though they hadn’t been closed to begin with.

He asked again if they were my favorite band. I said no, and he asked who was my favorite band?

I knew the answer, but for some reason pretended to spend time thinking about it, maybe just so I could say more. “Well, Metallica and AC/DC both hit number one here, and I’ve been following them for a while… And the British rock scene is really great too, with Iron Maiden and The Smiths and The KLF…” I trailed off, not sure whether or not the Iron Curtain was thick enough to keep out what I considered the best music of our time, but Joonas just nodded along so I kept going. “I think my

favorite is Stone, though. They’re from Kerava, and pretty new, but I think they have a bright future ahead of them. And they sing in English,” I made sure to point out. English was cool—well, as long as it came from the mouths of our favorite rockers and not our dreadful language teachers, that is. Really, we learned more singing along than we did hunched over our textbooks.

When I was done talking, Joonas asked me to play some of their songs, and I did, starting with “Back to the Stone Age.”

He was a good listener, I found out, and since that was so rare I almost forgot to be a good listener back. I asked about Estonian music, and he named a few artists and bands as well as what he called “protest songs.” Whenever we went to record shops later that summer, we could never find any of them, so Joonas bought albums by artists I liked instead, which by then he had grown to love as well.

A couple days later I found the shirt in my closet, and I picked it up. Some of the oily, earthy scent had stuck to the black fabric, and when I put it on I could smell it. It needed a wash, that was for sure. That was when I decided that Joonas was more than alright.

I brought it back to his makeshift room, and when he insisted I keep it, I insisted back.

“I already have a bunch like this,” I told him. “I want you to have it,” I said, and meant it, even though the bee on the beer was sick and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to find one like it.

But I already had a collection of band shirts from all my years as a metallipää —a metalhead—and Joonas was just starting from scratch. He was new to Finland, new to the country’s passion for electric guitars and bassists and screaming and long hair.

He was starting from scratch, but I would help him. That summer, my dad gave me one task: babysit Joonas. Well, actually, those weren’t his exact words. He said something like, “Antti, be sure to bring your cousin along when you go out and meet friends, okay? Remember, he’s here all by himself and doesn’t know anyone except us. Plus he’s homesick, and missing his mom. We can’t even imagine what he’s going through. So be nice and make him feel welcome and do lots of fun things with him to distract him, alright?”

Okay, so maybe “entertain Joonas” would be more accurate. Either way, it wasn’t that hard.

My best friend Joel was gone for the summer, off playing bass at pubs and other small gigs around the country with what he called “an up-and-coming thrash metal band.” Joel was a year older than me, but we’d been friends for years, and since we were never in the same classes summer was our time. Every year we’d plan out an itinerary of things we had to do before school started up again, weeks before it even got out. Swimming, concerts and music festivals, road trips with his older brother Olli—we’d do it all. But this time around, the whole “when you go out and meet friends” thing didn’t really apply, since my friendship situation was best described with the singular.

Add that to the fact that my mom and Liisa were gone, and my dad was teaching summer classes to help pay for their long stay. No family trip to Sweden or up north to Grandma’s cabin, either, or even family dinners at McDonalds on Fridays; no having Dad to myself all day.

I had been preparing for a summer with an empty flat, with plans to keep turning up my CD player till my ears hurt so the sound would fill the blank space, the singers’ voices taking the place of my parents’ and sister’s and Joel’s. Maybe I would find some concerts to go to, though the thought of turning up to one by myself was intimidating, even though I’d gone with Joel many times before. I could still swim—you didn’t need a second person for that. And I had my weekly job babysitting Aleksi, the downstairs neighbors’ kid. Maybe I’d appreciate him more, maybe this would be the summer Aleksi and I finally clicked and he’d stop chasing me with markers and terrorizing me with Play Doh and glue—

Then there was Joonas.

We went swimming, and to the music store, and downtown to get ice cream or just people-watch. Sometimes

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Joonas would make up stories about people as they walked past, sometimes tragedies, sometimes comedies. For some reason I ended up laughing at both.

I brought him with me to watch Aleksi and then split the money with him afterwards—he was always better behaved when Joonas was there, maybe because Joonas didn’t tell him what to do and just played with him instead, a fellow kid instead of an authority figure. It wasn’t like Joonas could tell him what to do anyway—instead, he communicated with car noises and gestures and suggestions of what to do by fetching toys and holding them out. With his share of the money he bought black licorice and t-shirts of bands he’d made his own.

It wasn’t hard to learn to love Joonas.

I showed him how to use the sauna, and laughed at him when he jumped at the sudden puff of steam that erupted like a volcano from the rocks as he splashed water on them. We’d spend entire days wandering around in Ikea, sitting in every piece of furniture that caught our eye and pretending the rooms were our own and we lived there together after university before walking through the warehouse empty-handed and buying Swedish meatballs on the way out. Sometimes I’d read aloud from the Swedish books on display in the various shelves and bookcases; sometimes I really translated them, and sometimes I made up chapters of my own. Joonas could never tell the difference.

Some days we showed up at Kateryna’s flat unannounced and she’d always take us in, feeding us with crispy reindeer meat and Ukrainian folklore in exchange for some words in Russian with Joonas. The suspicious look in his eyes as he picked apart his poronkaristys for the first time was priceless, but he got his revenge when I gagged upon seeing Kateryna boiling the pig legs needed to make the meat jelly they both seemed to be so familiar with— holodets for her, sült for him.

Once Joel’s brother Olli saw us coming out of the grocery store and recognized me, beckoning for us to join him in the crowded car with his friends even though we were marginally younger. Me and Joonas squeezed into one seat, the grocery bag stuffed uncomfortably between my legs. All the windows were down to let out the smoke from the cigarettes a few of the guys were smoking. When we sped, the wind would whip the long hair of the guy squeezed next to us into our mouths. I let my arm hang out of the car since there was no room for it inside.

Olli was in a band too (though it was a different subgenre than his brother’s), and I couldn’t tell if these were his bandmates or just other metallipäätä . The rock connection was clear, though—the black metal screaming from the radio and the shoulder-length hair on some of the guys were dead giveaways.

“Introduce the kid, Antti,” Olli ordered me from the wheel, after explaining me to his mates as “Joel’s little friend, a decent guy with good taste.” He didn’t turn back, but I saw his eyes glance up at the rearview mirror.

“This is my cousin, Joonas,” I said, not sure which of the five guys to address. I didn’t know if that was sufficient, or if I was supposed to add that he was from Estonia and had come on a petroleum truck and was filling the space of everyone who’d left me that summer.

The guy in the passenger seat turned all the way around. His dark hair wasn’t quite touching his shoulders yet. “What kinda music you listen to, Joonas?” he asked. He was wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt with the sleeves cut out. I whispered the Russian translation in Joonas’s ear.

Joonas listed the bands I’d taught him, but it wasn’t like he was copying me—he said the ones he genuinely liked, the ones I’d walked in on him listening to on his own. Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Stone, Eppu Normaali… Actually, Eppu Normaali was his favorite, but I think it was more because of how ingrained they were in our first few days than the music itself.

He got nods of approval from the guys, and for some reason I was proud of him; he was one of them, now. He seemed to feel this, too—his chin tilted up slightly and his shoulders relaxed.

This drive didn’t seem to have an aim, going one way only to turn around a few streets over and come back in the same direction. Occasionally Olli would slow down to shout and wave at people he knew—usually girls—and once there was a passenger exchange, where one guy got out only for a different one to get in a couple blocks down.

The guy with the long hair next to us reached over into our bag and pulled out our salty licorice, tearing open the bag without asking and passing it around the car. I heard the pop of a can of beer, and someone passed that around too. When it reached my hands I took a small sip and tried to swallow without tasting it, but it didn’t work and my throat burned. I began passing it to Joonas when it dawned on me that he was only twelve years old— it was an easy thing to forget when for weeks we’d run around Helsinki as two sides of the same coin. It didn’t seem that big of a deal when it was just the two of us, but here we were in a car full of smoking, drinking rockers in their early twenties, and suddenly the difference was stark.

I didn’t know what I was doing there; I didn’t know what Joonas was doing there.

I told Olli to drop us off here, even though it was further from our building than where we’d started. He sloppily pulled over and I jumped out, grabbing the rest of the groceries but leaving the licorice. Olli shouted out the window that we were invited to be their test audience for the new songs they were working on, and I said we’d be there, because he was my best friend’s brother and I’d known him for years and liked him. I could decide later if I would bring Joonas.

As I held open the door for Joonas, fingers around the handle, I noticed my reflection, distorted in the car’s reddish shine. For the first time, I could see some similarities between my face and Joonas’s.

I had to remind myself that we weren’t just close friends, but something tighter. We were related, even if we hadn’t known each other for long. He had my blood and I had his, and we looked like each other in the rippling reflection of a red car with all the windows down.

It didn’t take long for the three of us to feel like an odd kind of family. On weekends my dad would take us to the movies or for ice cream, just like he usually did with me and Aliisa when she was here. We’d laugh and forget the people we were missing because there were also people we’d gained

I wondered if this was what having a brother felt like. Before Joonas came, I’d thought of Joel as something like a brother, but now I wasn’t so sure. Joel had his own brother, after all, and was way different around him than he was with me. Joonas felt different from Joel too, like he was stuck to me and nothing I ever did or said would unstick him. It was the same feeling I got with Liisa that allowed me to tease her without guilt.

We used every drop of sunlight we got, and our days were always full and long—we milked that summer of every possibility it held. When we’d come home in the evening we’d have dinner with my dad and sometimes Kateryna, then we’d go to my room and I’d teach him the lyrics of all the songs we’d heard on the radio that day. He was a horrible singer but sang anyway, and that was something I liked about him. Because he sang anyway, he could put together full sentences in Finnish from fragments of lyrics, the way I did with English. Sometimes instead of going back to his room he’d camp out on my floor with a blanket and pillow, not wanting to break the feeling of the day with a “goodnight,” instead refusing to say adieu for the time being and talking till one of us stopped responding.

We talked about everything and nothing. Our grandma had been Estonian and our grandpa from here; I was a quarter eesti and he a quarter suomalainen. We were each a quarter of each other’s worlds, worlds we knew nothing about till we opened them up to each other. He whispered to me rumors that the Soviets were losing power (hushed, as if they could hear him all the way from Helsinki), and I told him about the United States and about Finland’s first ever school shooting that January and about

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how beautiful the night was in winter when you looked at it from inside a warm room.

Once, on a particularly hot night, he crept into my room at a little past one with his blanket and pillow and set himself up on the floor. I wasn’t asleep either, my legs twisted up in my blanket and my shirt sticky with sweat, and at first I didn’t say anything, but when the moon shifted it lit up his mouth and I could see that it was trembling.

“You okay?” I asked.

He was silent for a moment. Then: “Do you ever miss your mom?” The question was sudden and caught me off-guard, and I didn’t understand its aim. I tried to answer it all the same.

“Yeah, sometimes. At first. And when I’m upset about something. But other than that, I get used to it.”

“Do you really get used to it?” He propped himself up on his elbows to look at me, and the moon moved on him to turn his hair white.

By then I knew who he was really talking about. “Yeah. I mean… Kind of. It depends. It’s different every time she goes away, for me.” I wanted to reassure him, but I also didn’t want to give him false hope that it would get better—I got to call my mom every once in a while, even if the expensive international rates meant it was only for a few minutes, those minutes usually spent on updates about Aliisa (in my most recent call, she had told us that Liis’s post-surgery rehab program was going better than expected, that by the time they got back she would certainly be up and walking again). And I had a definitive date when she was coming back.

Then he asked me what my mom was like, and then my sister, which was his way of hinting that he wanted to talk about his own mother. So I asked him about her, question after question even though I was too tired to process his answers, until he grew quiet and rolled over to face away from me. Only then could I finally go to sleep.

At the end of August, something happened. Well, two things, actually.

First, my dad pulled me outside in the middle of the night and whispered the words, “I haven’t been able to get in contact with Joonas’s mom for a long time.”

“What?” I breathed. I tried to tell myself that this was natural enough, that sometimes letters get lost in the mail and telephone lines go down and you go for a few weeks without hearing from someone. It’s completely normal.

But then he said, “Yesterday I found out from a friend of hers that she’s been arrested.”

“Why?” That was the only thing I could think of: why, why, why, why. Why does a normal person get arrested? Why do the police get to take an ordinary mother away from her child?

He didn’t know why for sure, but told me that somebody had probably found out about Joonas. Where Joonas was from, leaving was a crime, he said, as if I didn’t already know from the way he’d arrived. You could be whisked away for anything over there, it seemed like.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know. It would be impossible to find her—I’m not even going to try, it’d just stir up more trouble. And that’s the last thing Joonas needs.”

Then, he started crying. His sister had disappeared, and now the boy in his care was without a mother. He didn’t know what to do, and that scared me. My dad was always supposed to have all the answers, always supposed to be the one person I could count on.

I almost hated him for telling me this and then making me swear not to tell Joonas. “What good would it do? He’d have to keep staying with us anyway. Nothing would change if he knew,” he said.

What good would it do? Maybe none, but also maybe we had the moral duty to tell him. The whole summer, Joonas had been telling me everything , even about his growing crush on Ilta, the girl who lived in a building on our block who we’d sometimes

see when going for drives with Olli. I didn’t want to hide anything from him. I wanted to give back what he’d given me.

I thought of his mom—my aunt—and everything I had learned about her these past few months, more than I had learned about her in my fifteen years combined before that summer. That her second-biggest regret was moving to SSR Estonia for a man whose job as a diplomat meant he was always away anyway, her first being having a child there. And because she loved that child more than herself, she risked everything to get him out. And paid for it with her own freedom.

My aunt knew—before any of us—that their world was about to change and it was better that Joonas watch from the outside.

The second thing was that suddenly, our TV screens filled with images of Baltic citizens and their human chain spanning three republics. The Baltic Way, it was called. After decades of silence, the people of the Baltics stood up quietly again, their bodies making all the noise they needed to.

The entire day (and every day that followed till the news stations stopped talking about it) Joonas sat on the rug in front of the TV—not the sofa, because he wanted to be close enough so that the screen was all he saw, so that he could feel like he was in it—his arms hugging his knees to his chest as he watched with wide eyes. He saw people in Tallinn hoisting a white-, black-, and blue-striped flag, different from the one with the hammer and sickle the Soviets used. He saw people in Latvia and Lithuania waving their flags. He saw mile after mile of people holding hands, never more than a few at a time, but he put the fragments of what was on the news together till it formed the entire fourhundred-mile chain. Sometimes he squinted at the faces, and I thought he might be looking for his mother. It was a silly thought, I told myself—he couldn’t possibly expect to find her amidst the thousands of people they showed.

Then he muttered, as if thinking aloud, “Eight million people in the Baltics, two million in the chain, they say. That’s a twenty-five percent chance she’ll be there.” I knew who he was talking about, and because of it, couldn’t look him in the eye.

I sat next to him on the carpet and mimicked his position. After a while I got uncomfortable, and let my legs sprawl out in front of me.

“Hey, that looks like my friend Jüri,” he said, pointing to a face that quickly disappeared.

When he went to the bathroom, he asked me to “keep an eye out for my mom.” I said I would, even though I’d only ever seen her high school photos and didn’t really know what she looked like. When he came back my “No,” I hadn’t seen her, was definitive despite that fact. He sat back next to me, but I couldn’t look him in the eye, even through the reflection in the TV screen when it went dark.

“I wish I was there,” I heard him whisper once.

Something about this protest made Joonas really believe that the end was near. Almost every day he started saying, “I’ll really miss you when I go back, Antti, but with the borders open I’ll be able to visit you whenever I want. And your mom won’t have to be afraid about you coming to visit me!” Even when everyone around us seemed to forget the Baltic Way in favor of everything that was starting to happen in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the excitement never wore off for Joonas.

It was when he talked wistfully about seeing his mom again that I always felt sick to my stomach. A couple times I came close to telling him, saying, “Joonas, your mom…” before trailing off and finishing with, “will be so excited to see you,” followed by a forced, watery smile. We still knew nothing. When he smiled back, it made me want to scream it at him.

But it was two years before the Red Army finally left Estonia, and in those two years a lot would happen: that first, magical summer would end; Liisa and my mom would come home, nudging me and Joonas apart because now my family was full and his still fractured; Joel would also come back, but now that he’d been around the country and met people who were

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both older and more exciting than me, he’d decide he was bored with me, pushing me towards Joonas again; Eppu Normaali would break up; Joonas would celebrate his thirteenth birthday with us in September, then his fourteenth and fifteenth; Joonas would discover twenty-four hour darkness for the first time that winter when we went up north, and also skiing and with it the feeling of being attacked by wind; after a year and a half, Joonas would feel comfortable enough with Finnish to ask Ilta out, once, twice, three times; he would break his leg falling out of a tree the second August; and then finally after the two years, Estonia would win their independence, which meant that it was time to tell Joonas the truth; he would look at me and my dad with so much hatred that I knew everything we’d built in those three years since ’89 was gone; he would stop talking to us, and eventually just pack up and leave without telling us, taking with him every trace he was ever here, even the Eppu Normaali shirt.

As I was sitting there trying not to meet his eyes through the TV screen, I couldn’t know any of that. All I could think was that everything was wrong and too many people were not in the places they needed to be. I wanted my aunt to be released and go back to her home. I wanted The Estonian Diplomat to stop traveling all the time and talk to Joonas as much as my own dad did. I wanted Joel to come back and join us and Olli in the car that was also a mirror. I wanted my mom to come back to Finland and I wanted Liis to take her room back.

And more than anything, I wanted Joonas to be able to go home. Even if he stayed longer because he wanted to, I wanted going home to be an option for him, not something that was so unbearable he inhaled petrol for six hours to escape it. I wanted him to have parents to go back to, and I wanted him to go to them, even if it meant leaving me.

I whispered the word “pian,” soon, under my breath, and wondered what its ratio was. How many times was it used truthfully, compared to the times used to create false hope?

“We’ll be back sooner than you know.” “We’ll hang out soon, don’t sweat it, dude.” “You’ll get to go home soon, don’t worry.”

“Hm?” Joonas kept his eyes glued to the screen, but tilted his chin slightly towards me.

“Pian. It means ‘soon.’ That’s your Finnish word-of-the-day.”

Joonas tested the word on his tongue. “That’ll be an easy one to remember. In Estonian it’s ‘pea.’”

There it was again—our twin languages bridging the sea between our estranged lands, my world staying predictable while his was changing, changing, changing.

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Thy Luong

Letter Offering to the Supremacist

If you are the white knight, let me be the chink in your armor. Let me creep through your eggshell, our yolks indistinguishable. No more secrets. I know you hunt me because when you gut my parchment stomach and spicy beef noodle soup flows from my corpse, you can convince yourself your insides smell like lilies and laundry detergent. I know you wrap yourself in the calcium membrane of hate and creamy Machiavellianism because you are afraid of escaping from your cross: although maybe the deity in your head likes to live in peeling plaster church walls or the war-rimmed eyes of your father, residue from when he fished for men who tasted like freedom. My grandfather also fished for freedom— when men become fish, you do not forget the feel of their scales (still-twitching) beneath your fingers. You crave to slice my spine into doubled vertebrae: Do you see how you wound me when you hit me, stab me, rob me? When you admire my milky thighs, the whiteness to your taste? When you filet my throat with familiar fishbone knives? Chink, you spit-spat, Asian cockwhore. I see-saw you, in Charlottesville, in a spa in Atlanta, in elected office. My classroom, my neighborhood, the football game last Friday. I want you to know: I am the slanty-eyed bitch who will crack you open until your juices spill out before my eyes like a masterpiece. I will delve into you so deeply that you forget to watch where you end and I begin, because when I was in fifth grade, a white boy in my class cut his finger and his blood was the same color as mine, slick like sun rays. Later, we kissed in a Panda Express and he tasted like orange chicken and blue gatorade and split yolk-bright under laughter. Later, we stripped our souls bare and saw we were miracles of water and will. Is it so radical that you want to be loved? Is it so radical that I want to love you?

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Poetry Notre Dame High School San Jose, CA

Mohini Mahajan

Film Noir

A Vogue model inspired Marlene Sharma’s shaggy, platinum hair. She bleached it weekly with an alloy of factory paint thinners, corroding her fingernails and the house’s copper sink. The disguise held up well, but due to laziness or rather a recent loneliness, she allowed her black roots to grow back. The choppy piano-key edges hang limp, creating ghosts in her peripheral vision. In the last five months of suburbia quiet, with no human vessels, the ghosts were merely figments of a deep-set paranoia. But now, the squelching rhythm of flesh and heartbeats makes her nervous.

Marlene hears the refined bustling through the wall. Not shuffles and grunts but clicks and lilts. The sliver of light in the doorway flickers from passing figures, and her breath steadies. He trapped her here—a last resort.

She’s lodged between a billiards table and the top half of a loveseat. Even in the vague darkness, it’s strange to be here after all that’s happened. She has the carnal instinct to claw her way out. Instead, her watery eyes stare at the 50’s floral print surrounding the chamber, blurring in and out of focus. The distorting pattern seems to extend with an unusual depth. Yet as Marlene trails her fingers against the grooves, she only feels a shallow double-pronged vampire bite. She tries to imagine the katana that once hung here or the former antique room that enveloped the space. Has that ever truly existed?

The print fades.

“One of those Hayashi twins walked in the other day and begged me to sell it. I didn’t think you would mind since, well…..”

Wick’s sentences were always bereft of a punchline, waiting for a more anxious mind to fill it in. Or, in Marlene’s case, more irritated.

The backlight from the hallway creates a hazy, almost divine glow around him. His lanky figure warps and billows under a velvet coat, triple-cuffed at a raw, freshly tattooed wrist.

Marlene supposes, in this grand interruption, he needs something. His slender hands buckle under two familiar packages.

Wick closes the door, and the commotion muffles.

“You look young, y’know, with the—” He gestures to her hair.

Marlene winces. In the rough manner she was taken, she didn’t get to change her disguise. With her Class of 1985 t-shirt , she distorts into the American girl who arrived three years prior. Back when she tried to fulfill simple corporate dreams in solitary obsessive work. A naïve effort that snowballed into an explosive partnership with Wick. A more adult innocence has overtaken her recently, a cloudy withdrawal.

“And you look tortured,” she whispers. Standing only inches away, her brain time lapses his former youthful, rather plain face into a scruffy, shadowy vignette. He always displayed the starving artist label proudly. But, after Marlene left, it seemed he leaned into the charade. Stickand-poke tattoos season his pale skin, and when his thin lips curl up to smirk, the skin distends.

“In fact, you look like a drug addict who eats all of his vegetables. The audience has become either stupid or complacent if they fall for this stuff.” Marlene chuckles. “Why am I here if you have this brilliant solo act?”

Wick shoves the packages onto the pool table, causing a snowplow of dust to flurry. With the aggressive motion, she flinches.

“Marls-” He steps towards her, his cloak inviting her into a sultry, devilish embrace. “-I don’t want to fight. That whole business with Lorenzo didn’t mean you had to run away. ”

“Why am I here then? For Business? Lorenzo’s dead.”

Wick didn’t understand that all these months alone, she

had been concocting paint thinners and exhaling fumes. Avoiding the reality, her reality. That there was nothing left to do.

The door wrenches open, scattering the hallway glow. In one slipping moment, Marlene discerns a faded scar on his temple. A woman stumbles in. The ends of her short hair splay against some kind of anti-Christian choker. The socialite fidgets with the clasps of her wool cardigan and shrugs it onto the loveseat. Widened eyes discover Wick’s little tea party.

“Leave us.” He shoots her a stern look.

The rumors will run wild tonight. Marlene hasn’t been around in a while, and fanatics have a chronic fear of missing out. He continues, intaking shorter breaths, “It doesn’t matter, Marlene. Come back or don’t.

The reality is I have a job that needs to get done.”

Marlene sighs. “I’ve retired. Shop’s closed. I’m done working with or for you. I don’t need the money.” She doesn’t. Of course, he flashes the gun. A thin barrel pointed at their past.

They met in ’89 after she was hired by his hot-shot father, Alden Wallace. New in town, Marlene opened a conservation studio where she would restore paintings, no questions asked. One of Wallace’s workers would pick up, transport, and organize the sales. Fresh out of college with no prospects, Wick’s Dad shoved him toward the job. It was only a month or two when she was first invited back to the apartment. There was no room for expansion, leading to a simple exchange between Marlene and Wick. During long days of paperwork and technicalities, they developed a relationship. Wick told her about his rudimentary art dreams, and Marlene talked of a new life. With her experience and his connections, their art ring transformed into a bustling enterprise. And everything ran smoothly.

Until it didn’t.

Wick extracts a box knife from his pocket and slices through the smaller package. A flesh of canvas seeps through the slits. She looks up to the ceiling to prevent the splitting headache. “There’s no nostalgia; I’m serious. I refuse to help, not after killing a man.”

Wick pauses. “Don’t tell me you’ve adopted a moral compass from all that exposure to neighbor-hospitality. We’ve done much worse. Certainly not enough to disappear for five months.” He tears the butcher paper off. “Only twenty kilometers away. Either you’re hiding something or you wanted me to find you.”

Marlene scrounges for anything to make him stop. Her thin defense falters.

“This infatuation with your father is why I ran. It’s impossible to work for him and party with you.”

“Marlene. I don’t need you anymore at the parties. I’m paying you to get a job done.

"Consider your relationship with me over.”

Wick removes a long roll of canvas from the shredded package. Thin bits of pigment stain through the fabric in oil splotches. He takes the worn edges and flattens them onto the billiards table. The reverberation of flakes of paint cracking releases hundred-year-old particles into the room. He slides it towards Marlene.

“We know you’re living with Laurie Daniels, one of those paralegals.” He has a smug look on his face. “You can run away from this, but she’s kinda stuck. Isn’t she?”

Laurie always asked about Marlene’s life before she moved in. Wondered where she got the chemical burns or the authentic Botero sculpture. She couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t a gift; it was leverage. Now somehow, she’s become a bargaining chip too.

Marlene hovers above the painting. Only lying bare could she see the extent of the damage. Deep vertical cracks interrupt

219

Novel Clayton High School Clayton, MO

the once carefully sculpted paint strokes. The manual texture matches shallow lacerations ribboning through the center in a geometric manner. A raised pattern alternates between dots and lines of elevation. Her forearm skips over the sharp edges of the canvas, which feather and splay out unevenly as if sawed off with a knife. Every move and shift to inspect the top causes more pigment to flicker. Her fingers are coated in ashes, presumably cigarette smoke.

Marlene senses Wick’s stare. Tired and exposed, she hopes he can’t see through her mask. It’s taken time to adjust. Her superficial examination will only identify structural damages. Nothing essential.

“Isn’t it beautiful? I’ve never seen a Whistler this close before.” Wick smiles. He grasps her shoulder. But she cringes, unfamiliar with touch.

A Whistler? He did the boats, right? Or maybe it was the pastorals? She couldn’t remember which, and here’s Wick reminding her of the old days when they used to obsess over every painting that came their way.

“Based on the state of the artwork, I would recommend a high-risk procedure. I estimate it’ll take three months to be ready for sale.” Enough time to cover her tracks and leave.

Wick cocks his head towards both packages. “They’ve already been sold. It took three months just to excavate you from that cave you ‘fell’ into.’”

He pets the revolver. “I would say a month is more appropriate.”

Marlene stares past his expectant look and back at the trippy wallpaper. She wonders if she were to walk at a perfect angle through the curled petals, would the blossoms create a labyrinthian entrance? Or must she settle to exit through the glowing gates?

Wick grabs her arm. “What about the other one?” He points to the unopened package.

Marlene stands.“This courtesy call is over. I’ll magic these two paintings in thirty days if you promise that this is it. Deal?” She notices his hand clasped into hers and wrenches her arm away.

“Say it.”

“Deal, Marls. Deal.” “Okay.”

Wick leaves the room like the unsubtle oaf he is, smacking a duffle bag against the wall.

It’s the New York myth that the violent abstract is the unconscious yearning fueled by drugs. In these parts, the expressionism is all done stone-cold sober, everyone with experience either recovering or dead. To non-believers, the whole avant-garde mass hallucination is awkward to watch. To Marlene, it’s an invitation into a private skinning of an artist’s attempt at public tragedy. Quite scandalous, really. And at the center of this madness is a tiny flat in South London, above the House of India. A humid crowd has scurried in through the cracks in the floorboards.

In the before, she had hosted many events with Wick; however, Marlene can’t remember if tonight she will see the pretentious colleagues or sly investors. Either way, she’s surrounded. In the safety of the hallway, she smooths out her jeans first, then her hair. There will inevitably be a bit of mingling. And it takes a little practice to get back into that, Marlene. She peeks into the living room, or rather an arena, with a boxing ring intensity. Canvases splay on the floor and walls, dripping Wick’s new work. He must’ve named it ‘Roadkill’ because it seems to still be alive, the globs of oil convulsing. Young people failing to charm the modern masters amble around, victims to the blinding scale. And the persecuted artist, in the midst, is orbited by teenage girls. A demo crackles through the speakers. Sinuous voices thinly wavering just above wisps of over-dyed hair.

Marlene strategically loops her path, avoiding the appetizers, drugs, and all members of the Wallace family. But she only gets past two trays of shrimp when a man with shoulder-

length hair bumps into her. He catches her arm before she can stumble.

“Sorry.” She offers a grateful smile and lurches away, but he doesn’t let go. “Marlene.” He smiles, displacing a goatee. The notso-stranger pulls her into a hug, stifled by his shiny bare chest, the main event of his designer outfit. “It’s been a long time.”

Winter of ‘93, Marlene and Wick took a weekend trip up to Essex. This was long before the duo moved in together and even longer before they went for a proper dinner. They discussed the expedition in passing between working and wandering for weeks, both sharing an appreciation for Constable’s pastorals. The town, Dedham Vale, became this mythic fantasy as the two scrounged with wild hypotheses. Wick argued that the herds of cows were probably of the same generation. Marlene thought that was silly. At the time, the city was undergoing an expensive housing development, so they checked into an overgrown inn on the outskirts of town. Wick brought large tree-toned canvases, and they walked miles through the wilderness in dress shirts and boots. As nightfall covered the area, Wick painted within the brush and leaves under the lamplight while Marlene whispered sonnets to drive away the chill. Maybe she should’ve found a way to stay in that moment forever. But in a single stroke, the sun rose, and shadows crept their way into Marlene’s life once again. Early the following day, they were in the lobby, struggling to fit the canvas through the door, when Ray Martinez approached them. He wore a similar fit to now, something off the Milan runway.

Nevertheless, he bought their act, even down to Wick’s stained corduroy jacket. Citing something along the lines of ‘I knew you before you were famous.’ A month later, when their apartment became the scene for nightlife, he brought a grounding critics eye. He looks at her now with one.

“What’s happened?” Ray gestures at two plastic folding chairs. “Wick doesn’t answer our questions anymore. Says you’re doing things here and there, but,” he drops his voice. “I think you’ve always tried to be a rebel. Can’t get too radical with an entourage.”

Marlene sits across from him but slanted, getting a slight view of Wick painting past Ray’s golden earrings. It looks as if Wick is etching Ray’s expression. She laughs.

“Sorry.” Marlene takes a breath. “I’ve just been working a lot in the studio, I swear. You must have heard about that ancient storage locker found in Saint-Tropez.”

She picks at a one-pound note in her pocket. It’s separated into three pieces, so she feels the edges and serial numbers in a plaid configuration.

“Have you been hanging out with a new crowd?” He points to her hair and casual dress. Unlike the eternity-tight tattooed rings, a loose one rolls up and down his finger. “You look like you’ve had a purifying experience. Like you’re feeding off of fresh energy….”

“...Seeing through a new lens,” he lingers on the last syllable. Watching it sink in through the flashes in her blank eyes.

“Are you accusing me of-”

The party tunes out. People begin to notice and turn their heads toward Marlene. Her bare eyes pain at the light.

Isla and Freddie Lehmann approach them like a pair of platform shoes. They’re certainly higher than everyone else, and one often has to crane their head to understand the casual nonsense they provide. Marlene recalls their disjointed vernacular, how they finish each other’s sentences in tricky places.

They’re asking about her. More about where she’s been. Who she’s been with. They critique Wick and his recent artistic confessions. He’s not as luminary without you, they say. Someone jokes that he’s not as dangerous. Marlene says he’s never been more. And they skitter around, and around the psychedelia they’ve been searching for. Most of all, they want to know where she got the next metaphorical fix. Real pills don’t have this visual, dialectical aftertaste, they say. It’s a compliment that they mistake the dead surrender in her eyes as a primitive ascendancy.

Wick’s party tunes back in.

220

***

She would’ve never let someone play this god-awful demo.

It is a forty-minute walk from Wick’s place to the office. She sees printed flowers in gaping shop windows and concrete pavements. Unsurprisingly, the fall chill is not deterred by her skimpy t-shirt. Her fingers are numb as she fumbles with the key. The open linoleum door does not release heat, just stale air.

The electricity was cut off two months prior; at least, that’s what the utility guy told her. Marlene wasn’t a reliable source; she had been gone even longer. The packages thud on the floor, crushing into themselves. She feels around for the emergency flashlight.

Trapped under the shapeless beam are naked paintings stripped out of their conservative frames. They are carcasses on the tile. Dirty grout growing mold on their lifeless bodies, chewing through the eyes of biblical figures. It all feels like an accusation, sacrilegious even. The shelves and stools glittered with dust.

Each step towards a plastic working table is in rhythm with a metronomic dripping. She tries to get off-beat, but there’s a twinkle at the end of every footfall. Swiveling her head, she sees a large reservoir in the center of the room collecting water from a hole in the ceiling. It’s clouded with expensive debris.

Marlene runs over and plunges her hands into the freezing water. She fishes for the canvas that bobbed back into the waves. It keeps slipping from her grasp like her fickle sanity. And she can’t remember why she left it there. Her palm connects with the soggy wood paneling. A grandfather clock half-dissected sits on her main working table. Marlene pushes it onto the floor in a crunch, letting the gears and screws fall to the ground. The shimmering sound breaking the whistle of the wind blowing through.

She slams the painting down. Rummaging through the drawers, she finds a cloth rag and begins to save it, if she could even call it that. The water from the copper sink comes out in a toxic trickle. It has probably been swimming for weeks. The canvas piles in a scratchy manner, and Marlene can’t even imagine what the composition looks like.

The world saturated in a black-and-white filter made conservation impossible. In the past couple of months, Marlene has grasped driving, cooking, and distinguishing most shapes and edges. But every time she looks at a painting, only nocturnal chaos clouds her vision—the image hidden by an impenetrable varnish that is Marlene’s mind.

The world is like a film noir, the paintings, her femme fatale. The pursuit that led to her ruin is the only thing she desires. To learn to live without all the impulses that color provides has strangled her appetite for the unknown. Instead, she’s conceded her fantasies for the gripping obsession of solving her complete color blindness.

She takes the damaged painting onto the pavement to dry—an expensive welcome mat.

Strange Gatherings

Marlene stalks through the galleries with the familiarity one has when coerced to inspect the haunting echoes ricocheting from a basement at midnight. Her eyes comb through the darkness recognizing sharp-toothed demons and scaly monsters as rotten desks and lumpy couches, but the fear hastens her steps. Similarly, she detects the on-display relics comfortably in her line of sight. But now she protects herself from the arresting quality of the paintings.

The British Museum is more famous for its stolen artifacts, so Marlene can sink deeper and deeper, a mere spectator of pleading Elgin Marbles and Benin Bronzes. A sympathetic feeling does not course through her. Her former work directly correlated to the further misplacement of artwork that deserved to be displayed like these. Maybe not as chained up and homeless. But with family and friends. Her clients provided plenty of illegally held artwork.

Hundreds of paintings she didn’t care to ask questions about left to the sea of time. To her, beautiful things, no matter how ingrained into history, are not owed to the public. And it is a fantasy to pretend that the long galleries don’t emulate a plastic, sticky, sweaty sort of energy. Not the refined aura of a Veronese over a sparkling dining table.

She stands in front of the gift shop dedicated to “Unlocking Egypt’. She pulls out a piece of paper from her pocket. A few days ago, Harry Norman- a fellow conservator, sent her a note. British Museum-11:30, Tuesday; RM. 306. And in last night’s frenzy, she overslept. She has been following all sorts of leads in the previous couple of months to have something to do. But now, with Wick looming over her, she knows she can’t miss this.

A guard approaches her. The uniform is too long on him, and his pant legs blend into the flooring.

“You need assistance, Ma’m?” his voice cracks. The man clears his throat and begins to repeat himself.

Marlene cuts him off, “–306?” She points to the room numbers.

He ushers her through a hallway and into a side staircase to the third floor. The exhibit is new, so fresh; a woman fidgets with a red banner onto the entrance. It reads ‘The Sublime: JMW Turner’s Reality’.

She turns to the guard, “Are you sure this is it?”

A pitchy wail shatters the silence. Marlene crumples the letter she holds and instinctively leans towards the sound. The guard flinches and grabs her wrist. She shakes him off and slips into the gallery.

The temperature drops as if she had stepped into a meat locker. Not only does the air feel contaminated with health violations, but the dim light further suppresses her depth perception. The first room is easy enough to ignore, with small, distracting watercolors.

Marlene can’t see Turner’s warm or cool or sunset impressions on the cold press paper.

Her younger brother back in America used to love to play with their mother’s expensive watercolor set. He painted pages with blobs of ink bleeding into each other like blood stains. That’s the only way Marlene can describe what she’s seeing. It’s lifeless without the color.

Her thoughts are interrupted by another shriek. She breaks into a sprint, running through the different exhibits. Turner’s life flashes before her eyes in a 20’s film reel. Seascapes, Landscapes, Britain, Italy all of his phases passing by her in moments. She hears a muffled voice—a chapped tune sending shivers down her spine.

The screams cease in the encapsulating presence of the art. The paintings are colossal, covering the cubical room walls in its entirety. It’s obscene how the wild frenzy of brushstrokes clutters her eyesight shamelessly. Marlene’s eyes lock onto the canvas. The immense size alludes to the color field paintings. She saw his stuff at the Met a couple of years prior before she left for London. It wasn’t uncommon for one to cry in front of a Rothko. She didn’t at the time, but now her eyes brim with tears.

A thing is shivering in the center of the room. Harry looks toward her, his red-rimmed eyes tearing into her soul. She hushes him with her words, focusing on him and not the paintings, “What is your need?” She says.

“This curse is a weed,” he chokes. “A lustrous solvent disintegrates. Of which an artist’s hell imitates.”

Harry’s limbs wave in ritualistic circles at their surroundings. She grasps his boney forearm and tugs him towards the doorway, leading him away from the madness. Clasping her palm over his watery eyes, Marlene drags him to the previous room with only sketches on the wall.

“Harry. Focus.” She grabs the side of his head. His eyes roll around like a pair of dice. He wears a suit with a tie tight enough to cut off his circulation.

“Okay, so you’re also colorblind. Is that it?” Harry nods, finally looking at her “When did this happen?”

“Last week” His voice is scratchy. “On the 28th. I woke up, and it was all black and gray.

221

***

I went to the local guy, Dr. Thomas, and he gave a stupid diagnosis, stress or something, recommended some fancy brain doctor in Chelsea. Said it was funny; a woman had similar symptoms a couple of months ago. Pointed me towards you.”

He coughs. Tears streaming down his stubble.

“I paid 2 thousand dollars for the checkup only to hear the problem is psychological, not physical. And that I’m crazy. They prescribed me bipolar drugs.”

“Did you encounter someone, get something in your eye? Can you think of anything that might have triggered it?” she says.

“You don’t understand. God has punished us. We have sinned, and now we will pay the price. Can you imagine a bigger consequence for two art conservators than their ability to see?”

“Then why did you send me this message?”

“I thought you could help. But Marlene, you look crazier and more treacherous than I remember.” She scoffs. One guy tells her she’s pure, and the next counts her sins.

Marlene tries to reason, speaking softer. “This has been a direct attack on both of us. So please try to tell me what you did to trigger this so-called curse.”

“I killed someone.”

“Are you sure that is what caused it?”

“Yes, a day later.”

“Well, who’d you kill?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where, How?”

He completely shifts once again.

“Why do you care? It won’t bring anything back. It won’t fix my failing business or your….”

The guard appears with a confused look on his face.

“Is everything all right here?” He asks, glancing between Harry’s disheveled look and her hands by his neck.

Harry pats the guard on the back and leaves.

Eric, the right-side neighbor, unlocks his door as Marlene approaches the old townhouse she calls home. The street is a long urban thing miles into the country. The hedges plastered to the door temporarily disguise his advancing figure. His tall fathertolled stance slouches as a large briefcase weighs him down.

“Hey, you!”

Marlene glances up from the sidewalk.

“My children live here. All your bustling late at night has been tolerated. But you brought the Wallaces here, and that will not be forgotten! I’ll call the cops next time!” With that, he slams the door.

Before her vision impairment, Marlene moved out of Wick’s apartment. Their relationship only functioned when she called the shots. And when Wick tried to take control, everything crashed. His decisions led them deep into Ackroyd business, a.k.a Wallace’s historic rivals. The stealing and kidnapping hit too close to home, so she temporarily decided to ditch the parties and focus on conservation. It wasn’t exactly temporary, though.

Marlene huddles in front of the door, but a new safety lock bars her from entering. She rings the bell- thirty times.

“Laurie? Are you there? Laurie!” The night sped up her exasperation

Marlene shoves her fingers into the crack of the door. Like a demon at the gates of hell.

Inside she sees a picture of Laurie and her parents sitting lop-sided on the wall.

A thumping of feet descends the stairs. “Marlene? Of course, it’s you. Close the door.”

The door shuts, and soon enough, the safety lock is removed, and Marlene’s terrified roommate ushers her in.

“What happened?” Marlene lets out a tired chuckle as she sees the state of the house.

The long corduroy couch that balanced the room is not only torn up but tips to the back and onto what looks like their smashed dining table. There are holes in the kitchen wall near the cabinets, and all of the Herbert family knick-knacks are in pieces on the ground.

Laurie shuts the blinds and fastens a couple more locks on the door. She wears a hunting hat that covers her ears.

“After that Wallace kid grabbed you, the cops came thirty minutes later. They had a search warrant and ransacked the place, looking for some illegal holdings. They thought this place was one of their secret warehouses. See, the Wallaces apparently are holding drugs, guns, or something of the sort to sell overseas, and they’re trying to get them.”

Laurie’s father owns the place and thus left Marlene out of any official documents of residence.

“The police must have thought they had struck gold linking a convict and the glorified gang,” Laurie says.

Marlene chuckles, “They even managed to ruin their decades-long relationship with the police. I saw Wick today, and he’s become so weak. The next generation of Wallaces won’t survive this new millennium.”

“Maybe they were being fragile with you.”

“They don’t know what’s happened. You’re the only one I trust. It’s too risky to be labeled as unstable.” She places her coat on the wall. “And you didn’t see how we left things before I came here months ago. Total wreckage.”

“What do they want?” Laurie inquires.

“I’ve had some unfinished business for a while, and I believe if I do this, they’ll leave me alone. Did they find anything?”

“Saw the tray of pills in the kitchen and thought it was a great reason to keep looking.

Dug up all your paintings and grimaced at Dad’s knife collection. Thankfully they didn’t find the biscuits in the pantry.”

On Monday, Marlene and Laurie went to the local jail to visit Mr. Herbert, her roommate’s father. On the way back, she had seen a car trailing them. That must’ve been how Wick had found her.

“How’s his case going?” Marlene picks up a couple of loose objects on the floor. “I called him the lawyer after all of this. They said it might affect his appeal.” Marlene gasps. “What? How? It has nothing to do with him.”

They sit against the wall. Leaning into the floral print.

“It’s his house. They found some dead cats in the backyard. The prosecutors are adding it to the evidence file.” Laurie rubs her eyes.

“What am I going to do? We’re running out of time?”

“Don’t worry,” Marlene says. “I’ll fix it.”

222

***

Katerina Malabarba

The Ex-Villains Redemption Project

It was a crisp, criminally bright summer day, and the second-greatest evil in the kingdom of Velrona was viciously plotting vengeance on a spider.

That’s me, by the way—the second-greatest evil in Velrona. Pleasure to meet you. If only I could say the same of the spider in question, which had decided to spin a sizable web in the corner of the ceiling. The web blocked a few of the notches in the stone, which I had taken to counting every morning out of sheer desperate boredom, and woe be to the man (or spider) who interrupts a creature of habit. Time cools anger, but mine had been simmering away for three years: a sour taste beneath the dryness of my tongue. In the absence of its rightful target, I supposed it had turned toward the nearest mild inconvenience.

“Don’t look so smug,” I told the spider. “You’re as trapped in here as I am, now. Would you mind moving a bit? I’m on notch number eighteen, and I can’t tell if you’re covering nineteen and twenty, or just nineteen.”

It regarded me coolly, with its horrid, glassy little eyes.

“Yes,” I confirmed, to nobody in particular, “I am talking to a spider.”

Dear gods. All that time around Lovelace was rubbing off on me; next I’d be cackling madly, savoring the manic echo of the sound against stone. (All right, so I had done that before, way back in the days of seizing every opportunity to unnerve the poor guards posted outside. By now, the novelty had largely worn off, as had my energy.)

As though in response to my words—a trembling in the cold floor. Through the stone of the wall came the gleam of magic: runes shimmered into existence, sparks jumped through the air, and the stones began to shift aside, receding into the two adjacent walls. A visitor. I frowned and flicked a lock of hair, hanging lazily over my eyes, over my shoulder. Then I flicked it back.

Should I go for disheveled and sympathetic? Threatening and poised? Spitting mad? I settled on leaning back against the wall, legs crossed and stretched out in front of me, hands laced in my lap as comfortably as the metal cuffs on my wrists would allow.

“Well, well, well —oh.” I felt my scowl deepen. “It’s you.”

Arms crossed, glowering at me through the shield of magical energy that had sprung up in place of the wall, stood the bane of my existence: Nanya the Cursebreaker himself.

“You brought friends,” I noted. Fanned out behind him, a handful of familiar faces stood beside the normal blankfaced guards, hands gripped loosely to weapons and eyes fixed suspiciously on lowly little me. Perhaps I should have felt flattered that he found me threatening enough to need backup, even cuffed out of my magic and locked behind a magical shield. All I could muster at the moment, however, was wry resignation. For Calastrius’s sake. What did they expect me to do— lunge out at the visitor with my bare fists?

(As though I’d try the same thing twice.)

Nanya cleared his throat. “Malyon,” he said gruffly.

“Please.” I smiled faintly. “Malyon-in-a-disgusted-tone-ofvoice was my father. Call me Sylv.”

No response. I’d forgotten how tepidly he and his little crew responded to banter (with one notable exception—Jericho— whose gaze I rapidly found and held for a moment, just for kicks). How long had it been since we’d spoken in person? The three years spent rotting in this cell had hardly done wonders for my complexion, from what I could see of it, and my loose sheet of hair hung past my waist in pale, bedraggled waves, grayed by lack of sun. He, on the other hand, had gained some muscle, and unless my eyes deceived me, a scattering of facial hair as well. The last time we saw each other might very well have been our final battle.

I braced myself, grimacing, against the tidal wave of memory that brought—the rain-slicked flicker of a thin blade, spindly black battlements, the ground hazing in and out of view through the trembling water far below. His face out of the darkness, battered and bloodied.

“What brings you to my humble residence?” I asked, shaking off my thoughts. “I’d offer tea, but we seem to be . . . out.”

“We’re here to escort you.”

I paused, then arched my eyebrows, unwilling to convey the extent of my surprise. “Escort me where, exactly? Don’t tell me I’ve gotten off on good behavior.”

One of the sidekicks snorted. “You wish,” they muttered darkly.

“Oh, no, quite the opposite.” I made a show of kicking up my feet onto the bench that ran around the back edge of my cell, sprawling over its full length as luxuriously as the cold stone afforded. “I’m very comfortable here. Can’t you tell?”

“We’re bringing you to your next meeting with Herah,” said Nanya, ignoring me completely. “That’s all you need to know.”

My mouth quirked up of its own accord. He sounded sharp, but still not entirely sure of himself, like a knight swinging a sword with a blindfold on—still growing into the whole war hero with a newfound position of authority thing, I supposed. And apparently my small indication of amusement sparked sudden suspicion, because a few of his companions bristled; his knuckles stiffened white over the hilt of his sword.

“Relax,” I told him. “I’m hardly going to bite. Has it been a month already, then?”

He glared daggers at me. This time, Jericho stepped in to answer, and my eyes snapped to their face at the sound: “Just about three weeks, but let’s just say there’s a little surprise in store—“

“Jericho.”

“What?” They rolled their eyes, hip cocked, at stark contrast to the rest of the tense-backed party. “It’s not like they’re going to hatch some kinda sinister plan just because they know the date.”

“If it eases your worry, I don’t actually know the date,” I called.

“See?” Jericho flourished a hand theatrically in my direction. “The kingdom is saved!”

I caught their eye and smirked. Oh, the luxury of banter. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d spoken to someone other than my guards. At this point I’d let go of the notion that fear was what held their tongues; perhaps all guards assigned to me underwent a training course to be as stony-faced and incorrigible as possible, as some form of psychological torture for me.

When I rose, painstakingly, to my feet, Nanya actually unsheathed his sword. Seriously. I was still behind the barrier. “What?” I challenged. “Are you escorting me or not?”

He hesitated, but nodded to one of the guards, who began the familiar process of letting me out. Glistening chains dropped from the stone ceiling, and I stepped forward to loop my wrists through them. A shimmer of magic melded them to the metal of my cuffs; the chains slithered down like snakes through the air, until my wrists were bound firmly together.

“Remember,” Nanya warned, as the barrier winked from existence, “don’t try anything.” I huffed, more to blow a stray piece of hair from my eyes than out of exasperation. (Apparently hair ties were too dangerous a weapon to allow.) “I’m not an idiot, Cursebreaker.” A mild flinch at the title. Filing away that juicy bit of knowledge, I stepped from the cell, and felt more than heard the collective intake of breath as the worn leather of my boot hit the other side of the threshold. When I moved no farther, Nanya exhaled, and the tension dispersed.

223

Novel

Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

“Follow me,” he ordered.

Echoes of our footsteps whispered, like unrestful ghosts, down the twisted dark hallways which wound down and through the murky earth to my prison. Occasionally the guard directly behind me saw fit to prod me with his spear, as though he took my ambling pace as a mortal offense to his authority. I longed to gather crackling red lightning to my fingertips, to summon shadow into dark steel and bind his wrists as they had bound mine, to shatter my chains with a whispered word and whip them across a shocked Nanya’s throat . . . but those days had long since passed. Any magic I called would fizzle out, useless, into the enchanted cuffs at my wrists.

I inhaled the scent of must and cold iron and breathed: in, out. Lungs, limbs, blood. Empty.

At my side, Jericho whistled as they walked—sauntered, more than anything. I kept my head up and strode as evenly as I could manage, even when the old pain flared up in my right leg and begged me to stumble. I’d rather walk by Jericho than any other of those fools, but pride held my tongue behind my teeth. Instead, I pondered over what little they’d let slip: a surprise.

What surprises could Herah and her meetings possibly have to offer? We were patterns, those of us who gathered in her candle-lit room: patterns and arcs, woven into stories of the past. Nothing we had to say shocked one another. We knew each other intimately as childhood playmates, because we were, on some level, the same.

Up, up, up we walked, in spirals of soot and ghostly torches kept aflame by whatever poor mage’s apprentice was made to practice their conjurations in the Tower Gray. My cell lay buried deep beneath, at the base of the tower’s stone. Herah had us gather at the very top. Why was I kept so close by, while the others teleported in from all across the Six Kingdoms? I suppose they couldn’t resist the irony of it all, or else worried I’d manage to tamper with the teleportation circle. (As though the cuffs didn’t keep me from that sort of thing.)

We halted, after so many stairs Jericho had to clasp my arm to keep me from collapsing; as it was, my leg screamed demandingly for comfort, as though I had any to give. Silver-clad guards saluted Nanya at the ornate door. He nodded solemnly at them; I scowled.

“In a mood today, honey?” Jericho murmured to me, dark eyes twinkling.

I snatched my arm back, in a swing of chains. “We don’t all live to smile, circus freak.”

Their jovial manner faded back slightly. It was a low blow, especially after their show of inexplicable chivalry. I didn’t care. Villains didn’t owe heroes politeness , even roguish sidekicks who would have made far more interesting nemeses than the one I’d received.

And maybe I was in a mood.

The door creaked open, and my escort remained silent and still. I supposed they wouldn’t be following me in. With a nod to Nanya, and a flick of my hair as a sweeping acknowledgement to the rest, I swept as regally as possible into the room—which couldn’t have been all that regal, considering the plain rags and visible limp.

The door swung shut behind me. Wreathed in flickering candlelight, dappled with sun rays through the stained-glass windows that shimmered with protective runes, the circle of people who greeted me provided no clue to the surprise Jericho mentioned. So I swung into my usual seat in the corner, next to Arianwen, and flung up my feet onto Niro’s abandoned chair.

“Sylv,” Herah greeted me, from where she sat, crosslegged, in the middle of the circle.

I nodded coolly. “Hey.”

Niro looked up at me from the floor, that wickedly barbed tail of his curled around his knees. “You’re late,” he said, in his deep, gravelly voice. As if it was my fault.

“Terribly sorry,” I purred (we were always purring sinisterly, and I was determined to sound the most natural at it). “I was caught up in an intimate moment with one of my guards. Actually,

she looked quite a bit like you. By any chance is your mother a guard at—”

“ Sylvestine,” Herah interjected chidingly.

“Ooooooh,” cackled Lovelace, splayed out backwards in their chair, one sleeve tied up over where their missing arm would be. “Full names!”

“Hi, Sylv,” Donovan said softly, waving to me as much as his heavy manacles would allow. Unlike mine, they were simple metal—either because no one could quite figure out how to suppress his particular form of magical threat, or because he tried so very hard to do so himself. It looked like a good day for him: barely a smattering of extra brown hair rippling over his skin, and no wings, no claws, no hint of jet-black in his eyes. If not for the flash of fang when he grinned, childlike, at me, he might have passed for human.

I disguised the urge to grimace at him with a smile. “Hello, Donovan. Devoured any hapless civilians lately?”

“No.” The man actually looked proud. “Sacrificed any virgins lately?”

“Alas, no, they’re more difficult to find than you would think.”

“Are you joking?” chirped Lovelace, then turned to Herah, head tipped like a curious bird. “I can never tell when they’re joking—are they joking?”

“I don’t know, Lovelace.” Herah smiled, tight-lipped. For someone put in charge of us in order to corral our emotions, she lacked considerable talent in masking hers. “Let’s refrain from morbid jokes for the moment, gang, all right? We want to keep up a positive environment today.”

“What’s so special about today ?” Niro grumbled, voicing my next question.

“Well, we’re going to be on our best behavior today,” Herah trilled (Niro, Arianwen, and I exchanged a three-way glance of conspiratorial exasperation), “because we’re welcoming a new member to the gang!”

That was what Herah called us: the gang. Niro, on the other hand, called us a lost cause. Donovan called us the support group. Me? I liked to think of us as the Ex-Villains Redemption Project. (Ironically. Of course.) Because that was what we were. We were villains whose stories had ended, whose heroes had moved along. Monsters who’d been dragged out of the closet, kicking and screaming, and pushed unceremoniously out into the daylight. We’d all had our arcs, our doomed journeys, spit out and dissected by Herah so many times we could practically recite each other’s word for word: tragic backstory, inciting incident, rise to power, fatal flaw, moment of near-triumph, and moment of defeat.

The last one defined us. Ex-villains. No point in fighting to win—we’d already lost.

A new villain—that meant a new conflict, a new story, a new addition to the ranks of the vanquished and the vengeful. One that I, cloistered away in my prison of spiderwebs and stone, had entirely missed. Suddenly the additional escort made sense: they weren’t really here for me

“Who?” asked Arianwen.

Right on cue, the door opened again.

Surrounded by bristling spear-tips, a handcuffed woman clad in green stepped over the threshold, with Nanya at her left and an unfamiliar man at her right. From Arianwen’s sharp inhale, that was her heroic nemesis, the famed Jamie Rye.

“Herah,” said the man, nodding. He didn’t so much as glance at us. “Apologies for the delay. There was a slight . . . holdup.”

Under her breath, the woman snorted. Half-dried sweat gleamed at her forehead, and a fresh cut dripped scarlet over the deep black skin of her bared arm. Holdup , I assumed, was code for her making a break for it, and I gave her a sharp jut of the chin— not precisely a welcome, but as close as we could get.

“Welcome,” said Herah warmly, perfectly at odds with the half-dozen armed soldiers pointing spears at the newcomer’s face. “Thank you, Jamie, Nanya, for teleporting her over.”

The woman moved swiftly to the only unoccupied seat— Niro’s—and stared at me when I didn’t move my feet from it. The

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old court-born desire to sway all potential allies to my side warred briefly with my sense of pride; I settled for holding her unflinching dark gaze, flecked with emerald, before slowly and deliberately ceding the chair to her. She sat, knees apart, cuffed hands between her legs—daring us to say something. I decided I quite liked her, for now.

“Everyone, this is Finley,” Herah announced, as the door swung shut behind the menagerie. “Say hello to Finley.”

“Hello to Finley,” Lovelace and I instantly droned in unison. Niro jerked his head in acknowledgement; Donovan waved. In my peripheral vision, I noted Arianwen’s stiff back, and my mind leaped to an immediate conclusion—was this—? No— surely not...

“Right,” said Herah, “let’s go around and introduce ourselves with a little icebreaker. Donovan, we’ll start with you— introduce yourself to Finley, and tell us: what’s one good thing you have to share with us this month?”

Donovan perked up. Naturally she’d begin with him; he’d always been the best of us, which made us all uniquely and almost unanimously inclined to hate his guts. When I referred to “us,” I excluded Donovan by definition: he wasn’t a villain. He was barely even a monster, and even then only in the most literal sense. I’d never even seen him monologue, for gods’ sake. If he had to be some kind of villain, he was the Beast—growling, mindless, gormless, and at the moment merely the latter.

“I’m Donovan, call me Don, and—well—as you can all already see, heh—I’ve been keepin’ a pretty tight leash on the beast for a couple days,” he announced. The yellowed fangs, which protruded over his lips and affected his voice with a slight lisp, rather intruded upon his claim, but Herah merely beamed back at him.

“That’s wonderful, Donovan!” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Let’s go clockwise around the room.”

“I’m Lovelace! Call me Lovelace! Dr. Lovelace if you respect me, but nobody does.”

Lovelace, our resident lunatic, with their stringy ginger hair and eyebrows locked comically in a position of eternal shock. Years of careless experimentation left their sickly-pale face scattered with burn scars, which stretched grotesquely when they talked. The Mad Scientist, to the core. Finley wiggled her cuffed hand in a wave, looking mildly amused.

“Anything good to share?” Herah prompted.

“I ate a rat!”

We all stared at them.

“What was that?” Herah ventured, slowly.

“I ate a rat,” said Lovelace, even more slowly, as if talking to an idiotic toddler. “Well—I didn’t eat it, but I took a bite out of it, because it skittered right by and I was so bored , and you’d think they’d be happy that I’m helping out with pest control —scaring away the vermin! Except no, everyone was mad —so I threw it back up and then they got madder.”

I stifled a chuckle. Oh, Lovelace ; they had about as many screws loose as a village razed to the ground, but I took a twisted sort of amusement in guessing what they’d do or say next, and inevitably guessing wrong. All of us had some level of endearment for them, like a troupe of elder siblings forever prepared to ruffle their hair. (Though I doubt I could bring myself to actually do so: the grease on that unruly mop shone brighter than polished steel.)

Donovan blinked owlishly. “That doesn’t . . . sound like a good thing.”

“Good is relative,” said Herah. “As are all things. Vaster?”

My gaze flickered to Vaster, who coiled like a snake in the opposite corner, strategically perched so the light touched half his face and the darkness obscured the other. Shadow misted his eyes from view, but the uncanny sensation that they bored directly into mine, and simultaneously into all of ours without the need to move, persisted nonetheless. I shivered.

“I rested.” Vaster’s voice, raspy from disuse and yet possessed of a strangely musical resonance, seemed to murmur from behind one’s very ear. It was one voice, and a thousand voices all at once. “I reflected. I dreamt.”

“Dreamt?”

He inclined his dark-curled head.

Out of all of us, Vaster remained the most difficult to categorize. Poised, but unsmiling; dangerous, but polite. He was a returning villain, closer to beating the game than any of us, defeated once by a magical technicality and once by the spell that bound his ancient spirit to the mortal form he now, like a puppet, wore. Alavasterius, the shadow which had once loomed over the Six Kingdoms for decades—Alavasterius, the Lord of Nightmares. (We weren’t allowed to call him Lord of Nightmares aloud— Herah’s real-names-only rule—but no other title truly fit.)

“Well.” Herah cleared her throat delicately. “Thank you, Vaster. Emerine, you’re next.”

The girl started. She had spent the conversation staring fixedly at the floor, and flinched bodily when Vaster spoke. Now, she lifted her gold curls—faded, like all of us, from her captivity, but still more shining than the rest of the room.

“My name is Emerine Kasl,” she said, clear as a ringing bell, “and I encourage you to ignore these—these villains . As for good tidings—another session so soon is my good news. The Lady Mother has heard my prayers, and She has willed it that I might draw your souls to light.”

No one spoke, but the reverberation of eight mental sighs practically shook the floor.

Poor, sweet Emerine, until just now our newest recruit. There’s nothing worse than a self-righteous hero with the blessing of the gods . . . except for a self-righteous villain who believes they have the same. Regarding us down her freckled nose, Emerine clutched at the sign of the Lady Mother, goddess of creation, at her throat as tightly as she clutched to her ideals. When they locked her up, they let her keep her pendant, her incense, and her priestly garb, worn down by now to a fraying, faded blue. Like Herah, she wanted to save us. Unlike Herah, she thought she didn’t need saving herself. The Fanatic, through and through.

“Why do you think it is that it’s your mission, specifically, to help these people?” Herah asked, not for the first time.

“Why else would I be here?” Emerine replied—though what she meant, and what I heard, was I don’t belong here.

“Dear Calastrius ,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. Emerine visibly flinched at the name, her glare intensifying; Herah coughed.

“Sylv, remember how we’re trying to move away from invoking that name? It contributes to an uncomfortable atmosphere.”

“Of course. Apologies—old habits.” Vitriol likely seeped into my voice, but the beatific smile I flashed seemed to appease her. I redirected the urge to sneer into a twitch of my fingers.

“Niro?” Herah prompted.

The demon scowled. “No.”

She pushed her gold-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Can you clarify that for me?”

“No.”

“Nothing good has happened to you since our last meeting?”

Niro spat and scraped at one of his needle-like fangs, his silver eyes blazing and narrowed. “No,” he growled.

Ah, Niro. Never had the bowels of hell spat out such a demon as he. Looked the part, too—skin the color of a freshly blooming bruise, wicked black horns, wings shot through with batlike veins. Sharp teeth, sharp tongue, a bark equal to his bite. He liked me because I was angry; I liked him because he was blunt. He worshiped the ground Vaster walked on: the loyal, vicious Demon Knight.

But outside of the battlefield, stripped of his iconic sinister armor, he twisted himself into a knot of limbs on the floor and glared balefully. “Nothing happens,” he snarled. “I pace around all day in a damp, moldy dungeon, sleep in a pile of damp, moldy bricks, and wait around for a damp, moldy helping of slop every morning. What do you think happened? A battle-axe materialized in my cell and I chopped down the bars and then chopped off Izabel’s head?”

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By the end, his voice rose to a shout; rows of extra silver eyes warped open with a squelching pop across his forehead. Breathing hard, he clenched his clawed hands into fists.

I’d never met Izabel—the heroine who dueled Niro oneon-one and emerged victorious, who’d banished Vaster’s physical form in his first defeat and bound him to a new one in his second. But by now, we’d heard quite a bit about her, mostly regarding the acts of violence Niro dreamed night and day of inflicting upon her. I almost felt sorry for the girl.

“Niro,” Herah murmured. “Deep breaths.”

“Shit out a horse and die,” he spat.

“Remember, positive environment—”

Niro growled, deep and guttural enough that I scooted my chair a few inches toward Arianwen. He launched himself forward—and screeched in howling fury as the safety runes snapped into effect, and lit up in a web of lightning from the floor and the chains that bound his limbs and wings. Flesh sizzled; he panted, like a wolf, and convulsed on the floor.

Involuntarily, I winced. Finley, when I glanced at her, looked wary.

A flustered Herah straightened her glasses and folded her hands. “Please,” she said, quietly, “try to hold your temper, Niro.”

“I’ll kill —”

“Niro.”

At the ring of Vaster’s voice, passionless and low, Niro snapped to attention. His chest heaved with the tremendous effort of his breaths, but he lowered his gaze and spoke no more.

Expressively, Herah closed her eyes. “Sylv,” she said slowly, pleasantly. “Would you like to introduce yourself?”

I didn’t. I rose from my seat and offered a stilted half-bow regardless. “Sylv Malyon, at your service, and before Herah asks— the only good occurrence of the month has been the pleasure of making your acquaintance.” I winked, and Niro snorted loudly at me.

Finley’s mouth quirked. “Charmed,” she said dryly, in an upper-class Iseldiran accent that mirrored Arianwen’s.

I sat down—perhaps too quickly, if the throb of extra pain in my leg said anything—but brushed it off in favor of the satisfaction of getting her to speak first. (Not everything in the world of evil is a competition, but the charming of potential allies certainly qualifies.)

“Arianwen?” Herah began, turning, but Finley cut her off, her voice stiff: “We’ve met.”

Beside me, Arianwen’s jaw tensed, infinitesimal enough that I doubted anyone besides myself caught the motion. We were two of a kind, Arianwen and me. The Advisor. Trusted, preening advisors, hiding the stains of dark magic beneath the thin veneer of a pretty face (if I do say so myself, which I do; vanity ranks as my second-favorite vice). The only difference was that I never stopped playing the game. She’d given up her spot when she lost her magic, unless all that desperate dignity was as much a facade as my calculated strategy of kissing ass. (Not literally; that’s unhygienic. Villains such as Arianwen and myself are always pristine, with the occasional exception of a tasteful spatter of blood.)

Still, the past marked us both. Me, ever since my hair went white-blond from dark magic, a fate Arianwen only partially escaped: a pale streak went down the left side of her hair, twisting like lightning down the long black braid. And her eyes, since her glamor dropped and revealed the irises stained red as freshly spilled blood.

“I am Arianwen,” she said, as though Finley had not spoken. “And I’m inclined to agree with Niro. Nothing good ever happens to us.”

Finley’s half-smile had faded. Still not entirely willing to believe my earlier theory had been proven, I waited for her or Herah to fill the silence; predictably, Herah did so first.

“All right, Finley, you’re up.”

I crossed one leg over the other, as much for theatrical effect as to ease the pain, and watched her. She leaned back, careless, bound arms still slumped between her legs.

“I’m Finley.” Her voice was hard and cool. “Just Finley now. But you might’ve known me as the princess of Iseldir.”

You could have heard a pin drop—artless Donovan actually gasped. Out of instinct, my gaze flitted across the room, over everyone’s faces. Besides Arianwen, only Vaster appeared unsurprised, either from some eldritch omniscience or his extremely convincing poker face. (I’d once been known as the Deceiver, but several very embarrassing group game nights had proven he far outclassed my ability to bluff with a straight face.)

“You’re Princess Finley?” Niro laughed cruelly. “What’d you do to end up here ?”

I decided to play my cards, banking on the right hand. “She tried to kill the king.”

Arianwen narrowed her eyes at me. I narrowed my eyes right back.

“I did kill the king,” said Finley harshly. “But I’m here for trying to kill the new queen.”

“Poison?” I said delicately.

“Poison for my father.” She lifted her chin and regarded me. “For my sister, a blade.”

“King Ciaran is dead?” said Donovan blankly.

“Who?” (Oh, Lovelace.) “You killed King Ciaran?”

She stared Donovan down, like a fox eyeing a farm dog. “I did it for the good of the kingdom.”

I held my tongue, but— gods . I despised this part of imprisonment most of all—losing all connection to the outside world. Ciaran’s death, the new queen, Finley’s trial—we missed all of it. When Arianwen first joined us, tousle-haired and trembling with leftover rage, we learned of her failed coup on the king of Iseldir, but she refused to name whom, if anyone, she’d allied with. Admittedly, the second daughter of King Ciaran was not on my list of suspects.

(...Damn. If Finley had conspired with Arianwen, then I owed Niro ten gold.)

If Ciaran had perished at the hands of his younger daughter, and the elder daughter—Fiona, if I remembered my Iseldiran politics correctly—now sat on the throne, why in Calastrius’s name had she left Finley alive? A lingering sense of sisterly honor—or perhaps the rumors surrounding both princesses’ involvement in the coup had some truth? After all, her father’s death had given her the crown. I glanced at Arianwen, but her face contained no hint as to which sister, if either, had schemed with her two years ago.

(If it was Fiona, I owed Emerine ten gold . . . I hoped it was Finley.)

Herah cleared her throat again. “We’ll dig into all that later,” she said. “It’ll be like an initiation!” (Read: interrogation. I remembered my own initiation . . . not so fondly.) “For now, we’re looking at some positives. Finley, what’s something good that happened this month?”

Finley shrugged. “I didn’t get executed. That’s a plus.”

“Precisely what I tell myself every night,” I chimed in. Even that sliver of a positive interaction buzzed Herah to bits. She bubbled at us like a proud parent; I held back the urge to do something ridiculous, like stick out my tongue. “And last but not least”—she paused to giggle at herself—“I’m Herah, although you might recognize me under a different name. I’m—well, I’m something like a therapist. I guide our discussions as we journey toward a better path—a better future. Everyone together: what’s our motto?”

“Malice, mayhem, and malevolence,” we immediately chorused—except for Emerine, who sniffed, and Donovan, who said, “Reformation, rehabilitation, and redemption.”

Finley chuckled. Irritation briefly crossed Herah’s face, but she shook it off with a saccharine smile. “That’s right, Don reformation, rehabilitation, and redemption,” she said pointedly. “Isn’t that right?”

None of us answered.

It mattered not how we bickered and bantered: on this, all of us who had accepted who we were, what we’d become in our varying quests, stood in solidarity. Niro came up with the response to Herah’s ridiculous motto before I’d even joined our group’s ranks, and it bothered her to no end. Oh, how we loved and

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despaired, envied and despised, teased and taunted our Herah. You could tell from a look at her that she had reformed: newly short hair, a tattoo over the scar at her throat; clothing in either spring-pale or summer-bright hues. Traitor, all our poisonous gazes whispered, even as we said nothing. (Except for Donovan, who gave her a schoolboy’s sheepish smile.) Those first few meetings, I’d waited for a darkly triumphant smile to creep over her face, for her to gloat how she’d fooled them all, how we could make our grand escape and betray each other (as villainous custom dictated) at least one time each before we parted ways.

But no. If this was a con, it was a long one. A long, convincing one. Herah—once Sarlukia, the infamous Sorceress of Black Peak—had turned the most annoying new leaf in the history of new leaves. Herah. The traitor—the Redeemed.

The Beast. The Mad Scientist. The Lord of Nightmares. The Fanatic. The Demon Knight. The Advisors. The Redeemed. And now . . . Finley. Finley, Finley, Finley. How might a disgraced, treacherous royal fit into our humble group? She spoke wryly, which I liked, and defensively, which I didn’t. For the good of the kingdom, indeed. Well, we’d all had that phase. She’d grow out of it quickly enough, with enough prodding from Herah and the rest of us. (Emerine hadn’t, but I endeavored not to use Emerine as a basis of comparison for anything.)

Selfishly (selfishness is my third-favorite vice), I hoped we would get along.

“Okay!” Herah clapped her hands, startling us from the tense silence. “Now that we all know each other, let’s try out a short bonding activity! Look around at each other. What can you identify about each other that makes it difficult to benefit from what we’re trying to do?”

“Niro has anger issues,” I said immediately. He threw me a sour look; I shrugged.

Niro: “Emerine’s delusional.”

Emerine: “Lovelace is delusional!”

Lovelace: “Yeah I am!”

Emerine: “You’re all terrible people.”

Me: “Ah ah ah, darling— we’re all terrible people. Oh, and Emerine is in denial.”

Arianwen: “Niro’s disagreeable.”

Niro: “I disagree with that!”

Lovelace: “Ooh! Ooh! Niro has the hots for Vaster!”

Niro: “How dare you, you impetuous wench —”

Vaster: “Niro. Peace.”

The rare sound of Vaster’s voice hushed us a little, though no discernible expression gazed back at us from his haunt in the shadows. Herah bit her lip, but remained silent.

“Um,” said Donovan nervously. “I don’t know if this is a healthy bonding activity.”

“Donovan’s too soft,” Niro hissed, still glaring at a snickering Lovelace. Just to see how Donovan would react, I laughed; sure enough, he bristled, the muscles beneath his skin warped and bulged into unnatural shapes.

“Sylv provokes us for fun,” said Arianwen.

“Arianwen’s paranoid,” I countered.

“I see what you’re doing here,” said Finley, addressing Herah, and we fell silent again. “You want us to admit we need to be fixed.”

“Not...exactly.” Herah sighed. “I want you to admit the crux of the issue here. Do you think this is working for anyone here?”

“No,” said Niro immediately.

“Nope!” said Lovelace.

“I feel like an even worse person than before we started,” I lied, for comedic effect.

“Why is that?”

“You’re trying to redeem us,” I said. “And we can’t be redeemed.”

Donovan, his whole body heaving from the effort of suppressing his beastly form, looked up. “No,” he panted out. “You just don’t want to be redeemed.”

Herah snapped her fingers at him. “Exactly, Donovan. And that’s... understandable. Especially when you’re locked away, kept

from the parts of the world that would motivate you to care about making up for what you’ve done.”

“It’s fairly difficult to make up for what we’ve done when we’re in prison,” I pointed out.

“You’re right, Sylv.” She looked pleased; suspicion flared in my gut. What was she up to? “You’re absolutely right. And that’s why we’re going to modify our approach a little bit.”

“Modify our approach?” I echoed.

“That’s right,” Herah announced. “We’re going to try some community outreach!”

Promptly, Lovelace fell out of their chair.

227

Emily Maremont

We Rule Ourselves

Oleksa warmed his fingers as he strummed on his kobza.1 His music, mixed with the rattling of the train on all sides of him, reverberated across the frozen forest steppes. Beside him, his povodyr2 gnawed at a hardened loaf of crushed acorns and river water baked by Oleksa’s wife.

“Tell me, Stepan,” said Oleksa, “Are we passing any villages?” The boy gulped. “Some.”

“Are there people?”

“Yes. They are fat. Maybe they have food to share. Are we going to visit them?”

“If they are well-fed, they are from other places in the USSR. They have come to our lands to replace us as we die. They will not so much as open their doors for me.”

Before that year, Oleksa would travel with his guide from village to village. In each one, he would wander the streets singing the zhebranka3 until he was invited into a home, where he would perform for his hosts. After collecting a few kopeks ,4 he would sing his farewell song and move on to the next family.

Sometimes he traveled to festivals, where he would hear kobzari5 and lirnyky6 from other villages. No two villages had music that was exactly the same. There were variations in the lyrics, and the instruments that accompanied them. Over the years, he had begun to recognize the sounds of different villages. He feared he would never hear many of them again. Even some of the most respected kobzari in Ukraine were left to forage in barren fields for something to fill their stomachs, if they hadn’t already been disappeared.

Without a doubt, the Soviets had figured out that there was no better way to snuff out the spirit of Ukrainians than to empty their reservoirs of wisdom and tradition.

The conductor announced they had arrived in Kharkiv. Snow had fallen heavily the night before. As Stepan guided Oleksa into the station, the ground crunched beneath the soles of their boots. Most of the voices Oleksa heard were speaking Ukrainian, although some spoke Russian. Stepan asked a Ukrainian for directions to the opera house, and they were on their way. Soon, the hum of kobzas, banduras,7 and the chatter of young guides reached their ears. They entered a space where every sound vibrated through the marble floor and velvet seats.

“How many of us are there?” Oleksa asked Stepan.

“Oh, a few hundred,” Stepan replied. “More if you count their guides. There are soldiers, too.”

“Soldiers, you say?” Oleksa rubbed the smooth wood of his kobza to ease himself. He had many instruments that hung along the clay walls of his hut when he was not using them. This one enchanted his fingers, allowing him to play in the sharpest cold. He’d crafted it from a single maple tree his two sons felled years ago. He had not heard their voices since spring, when they were caught stealing grain from the local storehouse. Oleksa was performing in another village at the time, and his wife refused to speak about the incident. She would talk about nothing but their daughter’s wedding to a well-off merchant in three weeks’ time.

It was because of his wife’s desperation to keep this good fortune and to see her sons again that she urged Oleksa to attend the Congress of the Folk Singers of Soviet Ukraine in Kharkiv. Don’t get us into more trouble. Just do what the Soviets want you to do.

Oleksa was wary of the invitation, which stated that the goal of the congress was to include them in the development of socialism in Ukraine. There were rumors in other villages about orders by the Soviet government for kobzari to perform statesponsored dumy. 8 Oleksa was willing to die rather than betray his people. Still, looking over his wife’s bony frame, he decided to heed her words.

Over the course of the six-day train ride, he’d come to the conclusion that perhaps this congress was just for show. At the end of it, he would return home and continue filling his people with dumy about Cossack warriors and revolts in centuries past. And perhaps he would take his povodyr for his son. The boy had lost his parents during the famine of the past year. Oleksa had an affection for the boy, who sometimes sang when he thought his master was sleeping. If Stepan were blind, Oleksa would have taken him on as his apprentice.

For the entire day, attendees shared songs they had written about the good deeds of Stalin and his government. The chair of the congress announced the resolutions they would vote on regarding the adoption of a new repertoire of songs that sounded to Oleksa like nothing more than Soviet propaganda.

Beneath the gazes of the soldiers, the congress voted unanimously for the new repertoire. They agreed that all training in schools and conservatories would also adopt this repertoire, so it would live on with the next generation.

In early evening, the congress finally adjourned. An announcement was made that they would be taken to Moscow for the Congress of Folk Singers of the USSR. There was a great ruckus as povodyrs scrambled to guide their kobzari and lirnyky outside, where train cars were stationed.

Squeezed into a corner at the back of a train car, Oleksa and Stepan ate the last scraps of the loaf in their knapsack. They were promised a warm meal once they arrived in Moscow.

Oleksa doubted it. No one would think of feeding hundreds of singing beggars and their poor or orphaned guides.

They rode all evening. Blood pooled in Oleksa’s legs from the constant sitting. He was used to wandering, not staying in the same place and being told where to go. He rested his head on the body of his kobza.

Oleksa was jolted awake by the snapping of a string. He felt the strings of his instrument, counting one, two, three, four, five, six…he did it again. They were all there. It was someone else’s that had broken.

Heavy boots marched up and down the train car. Men yelled, “Leave! Now!” “Soldiers,” said Stepan.

“Has the train arrived in Moscow?” Oleksa asked. “No,” said Stepan. “We’re surrounded by forest.”

They smelled smoke. People around Oleksa mumbled. Has the train gotten stuck? Is there food outside? Is there a fire in one of the train cars? Is anyone hurt? Is the fire about to reach us?

They scrambled off the train, leaving all their worldly possessions behind except for their instruments, for those were extensions of their bodies. Wind dense with smoke slapped the weary travelers. Oleksa coughed, his throat raw and tight.

“Stand in single file,” a soldier commanded.

After some shuffling, for the guides had to coordinate with each other, they were all standing in a line. A kobzar, ignorant of the tension in the air, began to sing and play a duma about a Cossack leaving his family to fight in a war. The kobzar fell silent as several guides cried out. Oleksa heard the sound of strings snapping—only constant, ear shattering, followed by more screaming of people young and old. Screaming that, translated in every language, means the same thing.

“Stepan? Stepan!” Oleksa called. He tripped over something and dropped to the ground.

It was too soft to be earth. The body of a young boy, not yet hardened by working out in the fields. Next, Oleksa groped for his kobza, but it had been knocked out of his reach. Stones pelted

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Novel San Francisco University High School San

Francisco, CA

1. Ukrainian folk music instrument belonging to the lute family. 2. “Guide” in Ukrainian. 3. Begging song. 4. Monetary unit in Russia and other countries in the former Soviet Union. 5. Itinerant Ukrainian folk bards. Singular: kobzar. 6. Similar to kobzari, lirnyky were itinerant folk bards who accompanied themselves on a hurdygurdy. 7. Ukrainian musical instrument belonging to the lute family with a larger body and more strings than the kobza. 8 Ukrainian historical epic poems.

down on him. Once more he reached for the instrument he had carved from the tree felled by his dear sons, on which he had played the epic songs of his ancestors. But at that moment Oleksa’s kobza was being tossed into the flames of a bonfire by Soviet police.

There was a sharp pain between his ribs. He was sinking into the earth.

A firebird landed at the peak of Lysa Hora,9 carrying on its back a girl whose family had not touched Ukrainian soil for well over a century. Eva buried her head in the hot, bright orange feathers of the bird’s neck as artillery collided with the ancient city of Kyiv, to the west of the mountain. When it was over, Eva unfolded herself and slid to the ground.

Surrounding her was a forest of thin trees, wrinkled leaves scattered at her feet. At the entrance to a tunnel stood a trio of wooden statues of pagan gods with swords carved into on their bellies. They were positioned back-to-back and facing outwards, mouths agape, as though they had been surrounded.

Students emerged from the tunnel and filtered past her, dark bags under their eyes, suitcases in tow. As more crashes were heard from Kyiv, they quickened their steps, leaving shallow imprints in the snow. Some of them tossed confused glances at Eva and the firebird moving in the opposite direction. They spoke a language Eva did not understand.

Inside the tunnel, she followed her feathered guide along a river of ashes. The tunnel sloped downward, although there were no stairs. More students pushed past her as they fled. The wheel of a suitcase rolled over her foot.

A jolt of pain. She stumbled, falling into the river. Water filled her ears, nostrils, coat, jeans. The river reached the place where her tail was removed on the day of her birth, a surgery the doctor told her parents would normalize her. To make her fit their so-called scientific definitions of male or female. Only she would be the one to regret what they did to her.

Something reached underneath her and rolled her onto the bank of the river like a mound of dough. The weight and heat of the firebird’s wing around her shoulders helped her regain her balance. When the wing receded, she was dry.

Now the students had stopped to make sure she was alright. They asked questions. She smiled and shrugged until they moved on. I’m fine, she resisted saying in English, lest they figured out that she was an American from a family that Assimilated.

After a sharp turn, the tunnel opened onto to a ravine with a high domed ceiling made of gold. It seemed to be some sort of meeting place. People sat on stone ledges overlooking the water. They wore red and white embroidery from head to toe, ornate with floral designs and geometric patterns. One person stood to address the gathering, and was immediately interrupted by another. The air smelled of honey, fish, and smoke.

Eva felt a beak pecking her on the shoulder. She took one last look at the dome and followed the firebird down another tunnel. Left alone in her new dorm room, Eva screamed silently into her hands. She was in a war zone, or very close to one, in a country that might not exist tomorrow. Or so they were saying on the news as she’d left home. All those students were fleeing, perhaps to join their families or stay with relatives outside of the country. And yet here she was, moving in. Tomorrow she would begin her training, something she had looked forward to as one does for planets to align.

There were four beds in opposite corners, covered by wool blankets. In the back, an oven was stuffed with coal. Plaques with faded inscriptions hung on the walls, along with kerosene lamps providing warm light. Eva chose the north corner, closest to the door. Beneath the bed, she found a chest of embroidered shirts. She recalled the name of these: vyshyvanka. Black threads for the fertile soil. Red threads for the blood sacrificed by those fighting for the freedom of the land.

Eva shrugged off her backpack and took out her Ukrainian language grammar. She was distracted from studying by the

sound of doors slamming in the distance.

Coals rolled out of the oven as a creature emerged from it. The creature, about the size of a five-year-old child, had glowing eyes and a human body covered in yellowish-gray hair.

“You are the new vedma,”10 he said gruffly, with choppy English.

“Yes. I’m Eva.”

“I am your domovyk .11 It is my duty to protect you as long as you respect me. You will not see me very often, so we will not be friends.” He retreated back into the oven, sealing the oven tight with a metal lid.

“Are we safe from the war?” asked Eva.

The lid opened a crack. “No one is safe from the war.”

In the domovyk’s voice, Eva could hear echoes of her mother from that morning. You will not be safe. You should not have applied. Eva had assured her that the school was perhaps the most protected place in the world. Why did they not protect our family? Her mother had pointed to a photograph on the wall of the kitchen, where her great-grandparents were smiling in front of their old apartment in Chicago. Her great-grandfather’s face was soft, cheeks rosy. Relatives liked to tease him for having feminine features.

At the same time, they told stories about him in the same voice they used when chanting Torah. Born to farmers in a shtetl12 in western Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, he spent years almost starving until he immigrated to Canada. After working as a merchant for a few years, he married a Jewish woman who had grown up in the same region as he did.

Hearing about the economic boom in the United States, he bought a one-way train ticket to Chicago, where he and his wife opened a bakery. Their son, Eva’s maternal grandfather, was the first U.S. citizen in the family.

Eva’s father was an ethnic Ukrainian whose family had immigrated to New York after World War II. Eva had not yet called her father about where she was going. If he wasn’t busy with his new wife, she suspected he would be against it as much as her mother was.

Still, since the day that woman in the produce section of her neighborhood Eastern European grocery store had urged her to apply, there was nothing that could dissuade Eva from going to Lysa Hora. As a vedma, you will learn to wield ancient magic that will connect you to everyone and everything in your motherland. To accentuate that point, the beets on the shelf behind Eva clambered on top of each other in the shape of a peak.

The application was an essay about the source of her magical abilities. “I don’t have any,” she’d admitted to the woman, who’d laughed. Not yet. You only have a source, a well cut off from the river.

More like a leaky faucet, Eva had thought.

The woman promised she would return on the first day of the new year. Over the winter holidays, Eva scribbled down five pages about yellowed immigration papers and American hamburger buns made out of Ukrainian wheat. A few weeks after she handed it to the woman at the grocery store, she got the call that she was admitted. Her transport would arrive the next day. Three teenagers with suitcases stumbled into the dorm room, taking Eva out of her memory. She pretended to be studying how to conjugate Ukrainian verbs in the present tense as they chose their beds. One of her new roommates wore street clothes with an egg dangling over her chest from a string. She emptied her suitcase of package after package of candles, arranging and rearranging them next to her bed.

Another wore tall mountain boots and a thick rain jacket suitable for hiking through dense vegetation. He flinched at every noise–the creaking of a bedframe under a mattress, the shifting of coals inside the oven, the collision of candles falling to the ground.

The third wore too much black eyeliner–the result of putting it on hurriedly, or relying on a mirror filled with shadows. They looked at their roommates with unsuppressed curiosity. Finally they asked a question in Ukrainian. The two others nodded. Eva bit the inside of her lip. It was now or never.

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9. “Bald Mountain” in Ukrainian. 10. Witch in Eastern Slavic folklore. 11. Guardian spirit. 12. Town” in Yiddish.

“Sorry, I’m still learning Ukrainian,” she said. “I’m…American.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” said the roommate with too much eyeliner in English. “I was saying that I wonder what those words on the plaques mean, don’t you?”

“They look ancient,” Eva agreed. “Where are you all from?”

The English speaker translated for the others, and reported back. “Nika is from Kherson,” they said, gesturing to the roommate with the egg necklace.

Kherson. Eva hadn’t even known the city existed until yesterday, when the news on television reported it was the first major city captured by the Russians.

“Dmytro is from Kyiv,” they continued, indicating the boy with mountain boots. “And I’m Artem, from Odesa.”

Nika took out her cell phone and tapped it furiously with her finger. She said something that included “mother” and “war”.

“I don’t think we have cell service down here,” said Artem. “Which is stupid, given that people are fleeing the country. No wonder so many students are leaving.” Her gaze fell on the siddur13 Eva had put on her bedside table. “Are you Jewish?”

“Yeah.”

“I am too. For some reason I thought no one here would be Jewish.”

Eva laughed. “Me too.” During those many hours spent trying to come up with a cohesive essay to explain the source of her powers she wasn’t sure existed, she’d wrestled with the fact that she wasn’t just Ukrainian-American. There was that other component, the part of her history confined to small villages where Jews had been forced to live. Vedmas, she’d thought despairingly, grew out of Ukrainian traditions. The Jews in her family were somewhat removed from the land and culture, even more so after they immigrated to America.

The strumming of strings echoed. Dmytro flinched. The music vibrated across every surface, merging the hundreds of subterranean tunnels into one instrument. It seemed impossible that less than a mile away, Ukrainians in Kyiv were burrowing under their homes in basements and cellars to take refuge from Russian shelling.

Eva and her roommates poked their heads out of the dorm. Students wearing embroidered shirts were already making their way through the tunnels. The procession was split into four lines of only about a dozen people each. It was exactly as the woman in the grocery store had described, although less grand given the dwindling numbers of students. One line leader was holding an egg the size of their head. Soothsayer. Another held a gnarled wand. Weather conjuror. Another wore a wreath of herbs around their forehead. Healer. The last line was led by two people, one on the back of a bear, and the other on the back of a wolf. Their skin was slightly translucent, as though they weren’t all there. Witch and wizard. That was her group.

Eva turned her head and discovered that her roommates were already back in the room, putting on the clothes from the chests under their beds. She did the same, slipping a shirt over her head. It reached down to her calves. The red and black lines on it made her dizzy. For a moment, it seemed they stretched into infinity. Shaking her head, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders just in time to see her roommates disperse into different lines.

She followed her group. They walked in the direction opposite the way the river was flowing, until they reached the ravine with the golden dome Eva had passed on the way to her dorm. The meeting had ended. Long tables of stone were set with bowls and platters filled with blood red soups, crepes, and other things Eva had never seen before. The witch and wizard leading them dismounted from their animals and stood on a marble platform overlooking the ravine. The music had stopped, but tunnels still vibrated.

Eva sat at the end of a table, staring at the reflection of the dome in her soup. Other students were already eating, but she could barely take a sip. She needed help. When she applied, she reported she had basic fluency in Ukrainian, thinking she would have more time to learn it because the term wasn’t supposed to

start until autumn. When she was admitted, she was told she had to come immediately. The explanation sounded like a riddle: We are fixing an imbalance.

Someone cleared their throat behind her. It was the wizard, the wolf at his heels.

“Are you the American?” he whispered. Eva nodded. “I am the Head Vidmak 14 Here.” The vidmak placed an amulet around her neck. Instantly, she could understand the voices speaking around her. “Thank you,” Eva said.

“Keep studying so you will not need it anymore,” he said. “To become a great vedma of Ukraine, you must learn independence.” He returned to the platform, where the Head Vedma was speaking from behind a podium.

“In this time we are in, many of our students have made the choice to leave with their families rather than remain here to continue their training. For those of you who have stayed, you made the right choice. In return for your dedication, you will learn the skills necessary to protect our people and the land. All of us are familiar with persecution in some way. That is what brings us together. We have dealt with wars before here at Lysa Hora. And we dealt with war when we were still isolated in villages across Ukraine, only gathering once a year. We will get through this war. Ukraine will get through this war.”

Eva joined the crowd in applause. The Head Vedma held up a hand for silence. “However, we will experience hardships. Many of you are not familiar with war. You are from places war has not touched for a very long time. Your minds have been numbed by what you have seen on television. You do not know what it means. Or, you have a different definition of what war is. ” She paused, bristling as a few students in a corner whispered to one another.

“Many of you were not born here. Your family has lost or significantly altered its Ukrainian traditions. Or you are not even Ukrainian, nor were any of your ancestors. If so, there is nothing to worry about. We selected you for a reason.”

“However, it does mean we are not united under a common history. It means we are drawing on different sources of power. The limits of our abilities cannot be well defined or regulated. And therefore we may have conflicts with each other. In war, conflicts like these can be particularly dangerous. So, there are some rules we must put in place.” She took a sip of kvas15 from her glass

“You may only leave your dorms for classes and assemblies here. Otherwise, venturing beyond your assigned location is strictly forbidden. This rule also applies when you have classes aboveground. When you return to your dorms, you will find we have left you maps of where you are allowed to go. Failure to comply with this rule will result in–”

The Head Vedma’s speech was cut off as the entire ravine shook. For a moment, the walls and the dome became transparent. Surrounding the ravine were roots, denser than any forest.

No, not roots. Tunnels. Or both. They were also shaking. No one is safe from the war, the domovyk had said Eva stood, ready to flee.

The walls and dome returned. Dishes lay shattered across the floor. Eva and her classmates stared at the Head Vedma. Her face had paled by several shades, glistening like the surface of oil. “Let us resume this tomorrow,” she said. “You are dismissed.” Eva followed a group of older students back to her dorm. Her roommates were already there, changed into regular pajamas. “Ask her if she wants to help us,” said Nika. Artem began to translate. “It’s ok,” said Eva. “I can understand now.”

“We’re trying to figure out how to contact my parents in Kherson,” said Nika. “They said they were leaving, but that was a while ago and I don’t know where they are now. Do you want to help us?”

Liba was born in a shtetl to a family of farmers as the last embers of winter died. Her shtetl was located in Galicia, a region

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13.

14.

15.

Jewish prayer book.

Wizard in Eastern Slavic folklore.

Low alcoholic beverage made from fermented cereal or bread.

of western Ukraine that was part of the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were forced to live. In the early nineteenth century, during and after the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it was part of the Russian Empire. Liba’s family got by with many children working the land, growing wheat for bread.

When the midwife first examined Liba, she pronounced that the baby was a girl. A bath, however, revealed her small tail. As was the custom in those days, her parents took her to the synagogue to seek advice from the rabbi. He believed the baby was a girl, and that the tail would fall off with time. The tail did not fall off, although the parents did not admit this to the rabbi.

Instead they hid it, and taught Liba to do the same. For eleven years, it was all they had to hide under the layers of her skirt.

Then the hair started springing up around Liba’s mouth. A bump developed on her throat, like a pit had stuck. Her voice deepened, even as her chest swelled. Her parents stayed up late at night. Is the child a boy or a girl? they whispered. Both? Neither?

Meanwhile, their elder daughters and sons were getting married. Soon grandchildren were coming to visit, eating the bread, and later helping with the harvest. People began asking, casually at first, when their youngest daughter would find someone to marry. They would force smiles. Soon, soon. She is still young. We’re looking for the right match.

Then the patriarchs of families nearby approached with their sons. Liba’s parents did their best to entertain these offers instead of reject them. Perhaps in a year. Perhaps two years. Soon, soon.

Much of the local gossip became centered on Liba’s behavior. How she walked around after dusk with her hair ruffled like a chicken’s feathers. How, on the way to market, she would stop dozens of times to smell a leaf or vine. How she sat by the river petting snakes and gathering their scales in her apron. How, during community services at the synagogue, her lips never moved and her body was as rigid as a broom. Sometimes she did not attend services at all, and would be seen wandering the village just before dawn the next day. Anytime misfortune came–disease, drought, famine–Liba was blamed.

These rumors became more persistent as what was happening outside seeped into the shtetl.

Czar Nicholas I brought hard times for the Jews. Taxes rose faster than crops could grow. Children were seized to be educated in Christian schools. There was talk of the Pale of Settlement shrinking, meaning those within fifty versts16 of the border would be expelled.

Houses emptied as families left for America and other parts of Europe, although the shtetl was thriving in comparison to the ghost town it would become less than a century later.

Liba’s parents thought of taking her back to the rabbi, or a healer, or even sending her away to live in another shtetl. They were convinced her behaviors were a result of the way she was born. That tail the rabbi said would fall off in time but didn’t. In the end, they did not have to make the decision for her. She left for good.

All that time she was supposed to be becoming a bride, she was being trained by a vedma A vedma disguised as a merchant traveling through the village who had eavesdropped on every household by hiding within their chimneys, and therefore had learned all of their secrets.

She had foreseen the inevitable shame the girl’s parents would put on her, and decided to take Liba on as her apprentice.

The vedma waited ten years before approaching Liba, as the most powerful vedmas choose their profession of their own free will. On the first day of spring, she went down to the river where Liba fetched water every morning, where a frog and snake were locked in battle. When Liba arrived, she froze at the sight.

The vedma stepped between the two creatures. She grabbed the frog and tipped it to the side until the froth from its mouth seeped into the glass jar in her other hand. She released the frog back into the river and capped the vial with a cork from a nearby tavern.

“How did you do that?” asked Liba, in the voice she used with everyone except her parents. High-pitched, cheerful. As usual, she wore a scarf around the lump on her throat.

“I was trained,” the vedma replied.

“Trained for what?” Now Liba spoke in her real voice, low like the grinding of stones.

“To devote myself to Lysa Hora. I am one of many who carry out the wishes of the spirits and the land. We pledge loyalty to Ukraine, not a czar. We rule ourselves, as we have since the beginning of Kievan Rus’.”

Liba did not know Kievan Rus’, the first East Slavic state. In time she would study it, and find that the ties between the Slavs and the Jews went way back. For now she fixated on something else the vedma had said: We rule ourselves. It was something she was deprived of since birth, when the rabbi decided whether she was a boy or a girl. And as she spent more and more nights with an empty stomach because of a mortal man decked in gold lying around a palace in Moscow.

“I would like to do that,” she said.

The vedma taught Liba the functions of different herbs, how to gather mercury and snake scales. How to make her family’s crops grow faster. How to conjure rain, hail, storms, and floods.

And when she was sixteen, the age her father had married her older sisters off, the vedma took her to the annual gathering on Lysa Hora for the first time.

They traveled as bubbles on the wind. Vedmas and vedmaks from villages across the land gathered around a long table in the Ravine of the Vidmas. A gold dome illuminated the feast in front of them. Liba’s teacher put an amulet over her head so she could understand Ukrainian, as she only spoke Yiddish at home.

There were young people like herself who were not yet fully trained. They smiled timidly at each other. The gathering lasted until early in the morning. As they feasted on warm soup and bread that baked itself out of thin air, they discussed the state of magic and how the political situation in the country would affect their operations. Liba’s favorite part was when the conversation turned to the training of apprentices. She was seen for the first time by this small community in the womb of a mountain that seemed to hold her entire world together.

By the time of the third gathering, Liba was a fully trained vedma She was officially initiated into the community by pledging devotion to Lysa Hora, and giving a sacrifice of blood to the river. Liba returned to her seat feeling a mix of pride and terror. She could not imagine returning to her village. But she did not know where else to go.

After the ceremonies, a proposition was made by a group of vedmas from eastern Ukraine, where heavy violence made it almost impossible to train their apprentices. There was enough room on Lysa Hora for an underground city. Why not start a school there?

“Guardian spirits are being left behind with all the people leaving the country,” a vedma added. “Many wait in the frozen hearths of families who’ve abandoned them. If we invite them to watch over our students, their magic will strengthen Lysa Hora.” They spent days debating the logistics. What would be taught? How would they find students? Who would be the headmaster?

At this last question, there was the fiercest debate. It would have to be a vedma, as vedmas were highest in status. Among the vedmas, it must be a vedma who voluntarily trained in their profession. That narrowed the vote to about a dozen. Of those dozen, three were already well-established in their villages. Six others were secretly planning to leave the country with their families.

That left Liba and two other vedmas, both older than her. They were from Kyiv, which gave them a certain amount of prestige as well. However, they had a decades-long dispute that they had interfered with each other’s terrain.

The gathering voted to condemn the vedmas to servitude, turning them into a bear and a wolf. Liba was made Head Vedma of the new school.

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16. Russian unit of length.

As Liba’s former teacher draped ceremonial embroidery over her shoulders, everyone watched her with a mix of envy and admiration. A vedma from a shtetl, rising to become the spearhead of a new era.

In her first few days as Head Vedma, Liba worked harder than she ever had in her life. She traversed the entire mountain, mapping the rooms and tunnels on parchment, and assessed the history and possible functions of each. On these excursions, she took a group of dedicated vedmas and vidmaks. Andriy, a vidmak who had recently finished his training, was among them. He was an expert on history. While Liba had learned to read the land, Andriy had studied ancient stone inscriptions and deciphered their meanings. He argued that nothing should be moved or destroyed, for doing so would erase what gave Lysa Hora its sacredness. This included keeping the cells where people used to live sealed.

The next task was finding spirits and convincing them to relocate. Liba traveled to a nearby village, where she found a domovyk wandering an empty house, smashing furniture and overturning floorboards.

“What happened here?” she asked in horror.

“Why do you want to know?” the domovyk snapped.

“I am here to invite you to Lysa Hora.”

“Fool,” the domovyk grumbled. “We are bound to our homes unless we get permission from our families to leave.”

The cries of other spirits emerged from the bathhouse, the pond, the cracks in the former doorway. Liba realized she had two options: Track down thousands of families who had left their spirits behind, or break the laws of magic. Since the former would require an exorbitant amount of time, she chose the latter.

When Liba returned to Lysa Hora, she devised a network of roots that connected every home in Ukraine to the mountain, allowing the spirits to travel freely. She harnessed the system with magic so complex that not even the most experienced vedmas could comprehend how she had accomplished the feat. Soon, there was steady migration of spirits from the villages to Lysa Hora as higher taxes, war, and famine drove the humans to flee.

Finally, Liba assembled a group of teachers, including her own, as well as Andriy and other members of her generation. Besides vedmas and vidmaks , she invited soothsayers, weather conjurors, and healers from villages across Ukraine to lead their own divisions. They brought with them apprentices and orphaned or neglected children.

The first students came with a diverse tapestry of languages and traditions. Not just ethnic Ukrainians but Jews, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Romanis. Their laughter filled the mountain and warmed the spirits, who put on spectacular performances with fire and enchanted wax.

The students studied hard, although what was happening in the cities and villages they had left was never far from their minds. Liba, too, was distracted at times. She thought more than once about returning to her shtetl, but she was afraid of what she would find there. At annual gatherings, when there was talk of pogroms against the Jews, Liba would have to steady herself with a glass of kvas

The migration of spirits to Lysa Hora increased profoundly in those years. To maintain the balance between spirits and mortals, more students were brought in. As the school expanded, unified by the magic employed by its headmaster, Liba became the most renowned vedma in a land whose borders were always shifting.

Almost a century after she had left, she finally made the decision to travel back to her shtetl to find the next generation of vedmas there.

The spirits of Lysa Hora still await her return.

232

Emily Maremont

So You Think We Can't Love

FADE IN:

INT. PSYCHOLOGIST’S OFFICE - DAY

YOUNG LEE, 5, plays with blocks on the floor as LEE’S MOTHER talks with the PSYCHOLOGIST.

LEE’S MOTHER

But does he have feelings like the rest of us?

PSYCHOLOGIST

From my experience, it is hard for autistic people to have relationships because they have difficulties communicating. And they also feel a lack of attraction.

LEE’S MOTHER

So he may never find a romantic partner?

PSYCHOLOGIST

That’s hard for me to say at this point, but in my experience it’s unlikely.

EXT. GREYHOUND BUS STATION - NIGHT

A bus pulls into the station. LEE, 22, gets out. A bulging knapsack is slung across his shoulders. He digs into the pocket of his jeans and retrieves a map of San Francisco. A route is drawn in red.

EXT. CASTRO STREET - NIGHT

We follow LEE as he wanders, peering into various shops and restaurants. Finally, he reaches the corner of Market and Castro, where red neon letters spelling TWIN PEAKS blaze from a sign jutting off the side of a building. A rainbow arrow points to the open doorway. LAUGHTER emanates from the dark bar. LEE folds his map and stuffs it back into his pocket.

INT. TWIN PEAKS TAVERN - NIGHT

LEE sits in the corner of the tavern. From LEE’s POV, there are close-ups of MEN throwing their faces back as they laugh, cocktail glasses knocking together, the music speaker, a door swinging on its hinges.

LEE’s hands start flapping. They don’t stop flapping until his focus settles on a MAN AT THE BAR, around his age. The surrounding sounds are drowned out. The MAN AT THE BAR stands and approaches, speaking inaudibly. LEE is frozen. He only nods in response. His breath becomes shallow. The MAN AT THE BAR points to the back room and reaches for his hand. LEE pulls away and flees the bar.

EXT. PARK - MORNING

LEE wakes up on a park bench. He digs into his backpack and pulls out a sandwich wrapped in foil. He takes a bite.

EXT. CASTRO STREET - MORNING

Now in daylight, LEE is walking once again. He passes the bar from the night before and turns the corner, coming across a gym. He peers through the window and sees FREDDIE, 24, lifting weights.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - MORNING

A GARDENER, mid-fifties, is shoveling up dirt when LEE stops behind him.

GARDENER

Do you need something?

LEE

I graduated from college in May, sir. I have a bachelor’s degree in botany.

233

Play or Script San Francisco University High School

San Francisco, CA

LEE takes a sheet of paper out of his pocket and shows it to the GARDENER. The GARDENER reads it.

GARDENER

Alright, young man. I do need an extra hand. It’s ten bucks an hour, seven hours a day, every day of the week except Sundays. Grab a shovel. Welcome to the team.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

LEE, his clothing stained with dirt, opens the door to a small apartment. It has a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and closet. The apartment is empty apart from a stove, a bed, and a dining table just big enough for two.

INT. GYM - MORNING

LEE lifts weights in the gym. He watches FREDDIE, who is doing push-ups across the room.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - MORNING

LEE works in the garden.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

LEE makes a dinner of Mac and Cheese on the stove.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - LATER

LEE turns out the light and gets into bed.

INT. GYM - MORNING

LEE watches FREDDIE as he works out. FREDDIE lifts his head in LEE’s direction. LEE turns away, running a hand through his hair. A couple moments later, he looks back at FREDDIE.

INT. SALON - MORNING

A BARBER cuts LEE’s hair. LEE examines himself in the mirror. INT. GYM - MORNING

LEE lifts weights in the corner of the gym. FREDDIE enters and starts lifting weights a few feet away. Between circuits, the two men rest the weights on the floor and wipe sweat off their foreheads.

FREDDIE

Hey, you got a haircut.

LEE stares at FREDDIE’s ten-pound weight, avoiding eye contact.

LEE

Yeah.

What’s your name?

I’m Lee.

FREDDIE

LEE

FREDDIE

Nice to meet you, Lee. I’m Freddie. Are you new to San Francisco?

LEE

I’ve been here for about a month.

FREDDIE

Where’re you from?

Kentucky.

LEE

FREDDIE

Aha, you’re a Midwestern guy. Should’ve guessed it. I grew up in Connecticut. When I was seventeen, my parents kicked me out. Bam. I came here. The people are great. My first week, I was broke and had nowhere to go. Then I met a guy, he helped me find a job. Four years later, I have an apartment all to myself.

234

I gotta get to work.

LEE

FREDDIE

Me too. Where do you work?

LEE

Many places. I’m a gardener.

FREDDIE

You’re kidding me right now, man. I am too! Maybe we could partner up sometime, yeah?

LEE

Sure.

FREDDIE

Anyway…I’ll see you tomorrow?

LEE drops his weights on the rack and puts on his jacket.

LEE

Yeah, see you.

INT. GYM - MORNING

FREDDIE is already there when LEE arrives. His hair is shorter than last time.

LEE

You got a haircut.

FREDDIE

Sure did. How was work yesterday?

LEE

Good. We planted ceratonia siliqua

FREDDIE

That’s awesome. I’m not even sure I know what that is.

LEE

Carib. It’s an evergreen native to the Mediterranean and the Middle East that produces seeds similar to cocoa. They’re pretty good, actually. You should try them.

FREDDIE

I guess I’ll have to. Hey, do you guys need more clients?

LEE

What?

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - MORNING

LEE rakes the soil a few feet away from where FREDDIE and the GARDENER are sitting.

FREDDIE

I know some people with mansions in Pacific Heights. They’ve asked me to work for them, but I don’t know if I can do it alone. If you guys want to work with me, I’m sure we can pull it off. We’ll split the proceeds. It’s a big sum.

The GARDENER holds out his hand.

It’s a deal.

GARDENER

FREDDIE smiles at LEE, who nods and smiles back. They work at the garden together-digging holes, watering plants, trimming branches, etc. LEE talks to FREDDIE, showing him plants he’s dug up. FREDDIE laughs at something LEE says. LEE hesitates, and then he laughs too.

235 Beat. LEE checks his watch.

LEE and FREDDIE enter and stand in line to order. When it is FREDDIE’s turn, the SERVER behind the counter begins uncovering pots and offering dumplings to him with her tongs.

FREDDIE

I’ll get two of those, nope, and two of those. Thanks.

The SERVER puts the dumplings into a plastic bag and hands it to him. He hands her cash. She nods at LEE.

LEE

Do you have anything without meat or fish?

SERVER

Speak louder?

LEE (raising his voice unsteadily)

Uh, without meat or fish?

The SERVER gestures to a cluster of sesame balls.

SERVER

They have beans, no meat or fish. Do you want an order?

LEE is frozen. He does not respond.

FREDDIE

Do you want an order of those, Lee?

LEE

Uh, okay. Thank you, ma’am.

She plops the balls into a bag and puts it on the counter. LEE slides her the cash.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

LEE and FREDDIE are sitting at the dining table across from each other. While FREDDIE eats his dim sum, LEE is picking the sesame seeds off his and depositing them onto a napkin.

FREDDIE

Are you allergic to seeds?

LEE No.

FREDDIE

What made you choose San Francisco?

LEE

When I finished college, I needed to get away from my parents. They were trying to match me with a girl.

FREDDIE

I see. So you came to San Francisco looking for something different.

LEE

Yeah.

And have you?

I think so.

LEE’s hands start flapping.

FREDDIE

LEE

236 INT. DIM SUM

- LATE AFTERNOON

RESTAURANT

What’s wrong?

FREDDIE

LEE

Just something I was born with. Did you see those baccharis pilularis earlier?

FREDDIE

Coyote brush? They’re all over the place in California. You know, I’ve never met anyone who’s as absurdly into plants as me. (taking a flask out of his bag)

What do you say? Do a toast to the humans and plants of San Francisco?

FREDDIE pours a couple glasses. They raise them into the air.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - MORNING

LEE and FREDDIE lie on opposite sides of the bed. LEE wakes up. He rubs his forehead and glances at FREDDIE. Then he steps a foot out of bed. FREDDIE stirs.

FREDDIE

Where’re you going?

I’m getting groceries.

LEE

FREDDIE

It’s not even seven yet. Get in.

LEE

I’m just doing my routine.

FREDDIE

Let’s have more fun before a long day, okay?

LEE

Every Wednesday before gym I get groceries. Be right back.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - LATER

LEE re-enters with a bag of groceries. FREDDIE is dressed in his gym clothes. He is rubbing something on his torso, frowning. When he sees LEE, he smooths out his T-shirt and smiles.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - AFTERNOON

LEE and FREDDIE remove weeds from the garden. FREDDIE sits down on the edge of the fountain to catch his breath. He holds his head in his hands.

LEE

Are you okay, Freddie?

FREDDIE

Just a headache. It’ll pass.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

LEE makes his usual Mac and Cheese for dinner at the stove. A knock on the door. LEE lets FREDDIE in. He stands in the doorway, while LEE returns to the stove.

FREDDIE

Lee?

LEE

You can sit down. It’s almost ready.

FREDDIE

We’ve been hanging out for almost two months, right?

LEE turns around.

237

I think so.

Okay. Okay.

What’s happening?

FREDDIE

LEE

FREDDIE

I got tested last week. I didn’t think…I mean, I had no reason to think… (sighs)

I have AIDS. Which means you need to get tested, because I may have given it to you. Sorry, I…I’ll go home now. I need to…be alone for a little while. Call me when you get the results.

FREDDIE rushes out before LEE can reply.

INT. MEDICAL CENTER OFFICE - MORNING

A NURSE ties a rubber band around LEE’s arm and sterilizes a spot with an alcohol wipe. They stick a needle in.

INT. COUNSELOR’S OFFICE - MORNING

LEE waits in a chair. DR. MARTIN enters and sits behind the desk across from him.

DR. MARTIN

I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you some shocking news. When we ran our tests we found you only have about a hundred T-cells. You are HIV- positive.

LEE nods and shifts in his seat.

LEE

How much time do I have?

DR. MARTIN

Six months to a year, but probably closer to six months. I recommend you get your affairs in order sooner rather than later. I would be happy to talk to you more about making arrangements.

LEE

I can handle it.

DR. MARTIN

Well, my door is always open. I’m sorry. I wish you all the best.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

LEE and FREDDIE sit in silence at the dining table, an unopened flask between them.

LEE

Six months to a year. Closer to six months.

FREDDIE

That’s what I got too.

LEE

What are we going to do?

FREDDIE

Whatever we want.

Sorry.

LEE

FREDDIE

What’re you apologizing for?

238 LEE

Are you mad at me?

Why would I be mad?

You look mad.

FREDDIE

LEE

FREDDIE

I’m not. Okay, come to think of it, I might be. But not at you. I’m mad at this stupid disease.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - LATER

LEE and FREDDIE lie in bed side-by-side.

Freddie?

Huh?

LEE

FREDDIE

LEE

There’s something I haven’t mentioned yet about me. I’m autistic. I was diagnosed when I was three. That’s why some of the things I do might seem odd to you. My parents were very protective. I couldn’t do anything on my own. They took me to doctors. Shrinks, psychologists. That’s why it took me a while to figure out I was gay. I knew I liked guys, but I thought maybe that had something to do with my autism. Anyway, I was done living in a place where people treated me like a puzzle they needed to solve. Everyone talks about SF as a place where people can be different. That’s really why I came here. It wasn’t just the girl.

FREDDIE

I thought something was up. You don’t usually make eye contact. When we went for dim sum, you kind of froze when the server asked you a question. Is that part of it?

LEE

Yeah. That happens a lot.

FREDDIE

I never thought an autistic person would be like you. I mean, you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met. You just think differently. What’s it like to be autistic?

LEE

It’s like living in a tree and suddenly all these people crowd down below, telling you to come down, telling you that you’re stuck even though you’re fine. Even worse, they’re so far away that you have trouble communicating with them. So a lot gets lost, I guess. My parents think it’s a disease.

FREDDIE

Being gay is kind of like that. Some people treat us like a disease. At the beginning of the epidemic, when all my friends were dying for no reason, I stopped leaving my apartment. After a year I was like, I’m done with this. So I went out again. Now I have the disease and for some reason I’m not afraid of anything anymore.

(beat)

Do you think there are other queer autistic people?

239 LEE

LEE

I don’t know. Does it matter? Just cuz I’m autistic doesn’t mean I have to find someone whose brain works similarly to mine. Besides, autistic people are all different. I just have to find someone who gets me.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - MORNING

LEE, FREDDIE, and the GARDENER work on planting. When the GARDENER goes to grab something from his truck, FREDDIE pulls LEE aside.

FREDDIE

Remember how this house is going to be put up for sale? What if we bought it? We could move out of our apartments and live in the same place. Then…if one of us got worse, the other one would be there. Plus, it wouldn’t be a big investment. An old Victorian isn’t worth that much. This could be our garden.

INT. LEE’S APARTMENT - MORNING

LEE sits up in bed. FREDDIE rolls over to face him.

FREDDIE

Lee, I don’t think I can go to work today. I’m not feeling well.

LEE touches FREDDIE’s forehead.

LEE

You have a fever. I think you need to go to the hospital. Can you stand?

FREDDIE

I think so.

LEE helps FREDDIE get out of bed. INT. QUARANTINE - DAY

FREDDIE lies in a hospital bed. His eyes are closed. They open as LEE enters.

NURSE (V.O.)

Sir, you need to wear a mask.

LEE

It’s not the flu. He’s not contagious. (to FREDDIE)

How are you?

FREDDIE (grimacing)

Great.

LEE

I just did the down payment on the house.

FREDDIE

Fabulous. Let’s go.

LEE

Go? They said you might need oxygen.

FREDDIE

To hell with oxygen. Let’s go home.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - DAY

FREDDIE watches from the window as LEE gives the house a fresh coat of paint.

INT. VICTORIAN HOUSE - NIGHT

LEE does different tasks to take care of FREDDIE. LEE serves him dinner in bed. He gives FREDDIE shots and checks his temperature. He lights a candle and gets into bed with FREDDIE.

240

LEE is halfway done with painting the house. He works in the garden, planting seeds and plucking out weeds.

INT. VICTORIAN HOUSE - NIGHT

He helps FREDDIE stand in front of the bathroom mirror with a toothbrush. He fills a tub with water. He plays music on a record as they share a drink.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - DAY

LEE finishes painting the house. He looks through the window at FREDDIE.

INT. VICTORIAN HOUSE - NIGHT

LEE is talking on the phone.

LEE

Yeah, he still has a fever and sometimes he has trouble talking. He’s been wanting to sit in the front of the house, near the window. I think he gets more air there. Yeah. That would be great. Thanks.

(to FREDDIE)

They’re bringing an oxygen tank for you.

FREDDIE

Forget it. A tank is as bad as quarantine.

LEE returns to the phone.

LEE

Actually he doesn’t need it. Thanks.

After hanging up, LEE goes to lie beside FREDDIE.

FREDDIE

I called my parents yesterday while you were at work. They’re coming in a couple weeks to visit.

LEE

Why’d you do that? Didn’t they kick you out?

FREDDIE

Yeah, when I told them I was gay. They’re super religious. But I think they turned around when I told them I’m sick. Why’re you looking at me like that? Come on, they won’t get between us. Even if by that time I can’t speak, eat, move, or see. I won’t let them.

FREDDIE smiles. LEE smiles back.

INT. BEDROOM - MORNING

LEE lies beside FREDDIE on the sofa in the front of the house. A KNOCK on the door. LEE leaps out of bed to answer it.

MS. DOBBS (V.O.)

Freddie? Is that you? It’s your mother!

LEE opens the door to let in MS. DOBBS, MR. DOBBS, and the PRIEST.

MS. DOBBS

Freddie!

LEE

Ma’am, he’s been having trouble speaking lately. But he hears everything you are saying.

MS. DOBBS

Excuse me, can you give us some privacy?

241

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - DAY

We need privacy.

MR. DOBBS

LEE

I-I’m a friend of Freddie’s. I’m Lee. I live here, with him.

MR. DOBBS (sharply)

You must be tired. We’ll take over from here.

LEE

Uh…alright. Is there any way I can help?

MS. DOBBS

You can help by giving Freddie his much-needed rest.

LEE nods, glances back at FREDDIE, and exits.

MR. DOBBS

What a strange man.

MS. DOBBS

Some sort of nutcase. I don’t want him near my son.

EXT. VICTORIAN HOUSE - THE SAME DAY

LEE knocks on the door of the house. MS. DOBBS opens the door.

LEE

Ma’am, it’s been four hours. He needs his shot.

MS. DOBBS

You’ve been giving my son drugs!

LEE

That’s what the nurse at the hospital told me to do. It helps with the pain.

MS. DOBBS

Get away or I’m calling the police.

MS. DOBBS slams the door shut.

EXT. GARDEN OF VICTORIAN HOUSE - EVENING

LEE lies behind the fountain in the garden, watching through the window of his and FREDDIE’s home. Candles and statues are set up around the living room, with FREDDIE lying at the center of it all. The PRIEST stands over him, back turned to the window. MS. DOBBS and MR. DOBBS are seated on either side of their son, heads bowed as they pray. LEE closes his eyes and falls asleep. He is awoken by the sound of a siren.

PARAMEDICS are carrying FREDDIE on a stretcher out of the house. LEE scrambles to his feet as FREDDIE disappears into the ambulance.

INT. VICTORIAN HOUSE - MORNING

LEE is sitting on the sofa playing the music that he and FREDDIE had listened to. The phone RINGS. He rushes to pick it up. He listens and puts it down.

LEE’S MOTHER (V.O.)

But does he have feelings like the rest of us do?

PSYCHOLOGIST

From my experience, it is hard for autistic people to have relationships because they have difficulties communicating.

LEE’S MOTHER (V.O.)

So he may never find a romantic partner?

242 LEE W-what?

LEE tears the disc from the record player and slams it into the wall.

EXT. PARK - MORNING

When LEE arrives for work, the GARDENER is sitting on a stump.

GARDENER

How’s Freddie?

LEE shrugs. Then he picks up his shovel and begins to dig.

GARDENER

How’s Freddie?

LEE stabs the ground violently with his shovel. He sinks to the ground, weeping.

GARDENER

You need to take care of yourself. Freddie was one of the best gardeners I’ve ever had, but he didn’t take care of himself. You know what I mean? All these young people, they don’t believe they’ll be affected. They can keep doing what they’ve been doing with no consequences. Now all of them are dying. You should get out of the city. Go back to your town in Kentucky. Get a girlfriend.

LEE shakes his head.

GARDENER

You have it too, don’t you? I’m sorry, son, I really don’t want to have to do this. I need you to leave. I can’t have my employees dropping like flies. It won’t look good to our clients.

LEE and the GARDENER stare at each other for a moment, before LEE stands to leave.

INT. COUNSELING OFFICE - DAY

LEE sits across from DR. MARTIN.

DR. MARTIN

Your recent test looks surprisingly promising. Your T-cell count is within the normal range.

INT. VICTORIAN HOUSE - DAY

LEE holds the phone up to his ear.

LEE

Mom? Dad? It’s me. I’m sick, and I don’t know if I’m going to get better or get worse. The doctor says I’m healing, but it could still come back. You probably don’t want to come here, so I just want to tell you…I’m gay. I had a guy I was living with here, but he just passed away. He appreciated that I think differently. I…loved him.

He pauses, listening. His parents have hung up. He places the phone back on the receiver.

EXT. TWIN PEAKS TAVERN - NIGHT

LEE stands outside of the tavern. The door opens and a group of MEN walk out. He walks in. FADE OUT.

243

Emily Maremont

The Morton Project

Tuesday, June 10

MOM, 4:00 pm: How was the last day of school?

YOU, 4:01 pm: ok

YOU, 4:03 pm: An activist spoke at assembly

MOM, 4:04 pm: Sounds interesting

YOU, 4:06 pm: it was awkward b/c she’s my age

YOU: but way better obviously

Tuesday, June 10

YOU, 4:21 pm: what did u think about the activist?

BEA, 4:23 pm: i saw her on the news last night

OLIVIA, 4:23 pm: me 2

YOU, 4:24 pm: i bet she doesnt go to school

BEA, 4:25 pm: she doesnt have to lol

YOU, 4:26 pm: 2 bad 4 her not getting an education

OLIVIA, 4:28 pm: i mean yeah but she’s doing much greater things

YOU: so what we’re doing is not great? aren’t we going 2 school 2 learn how to do great things?

YOU, 4:31 pm: ur totally right

Notes: Miscellaneous

How to become a teen activist:

• Amass a large social media following

• Organize protests, fundraisers, school assemblies, etc. Volunteer to get involved in issues

I guess the younger the better? (i’m 16 now, so i have 2 yrs left)

Filters: Virtual, Human Rights, Advocacy The Morton Project

Become an intern for The Morton Project! We are looking for individuals who are passionate about fighting global poverty. Extreme poverty is the result of various factors, including economic crisis, political instability, and the marginalization of certain groups of people. We work at the government level to get bills passed and increase the U.S. foreign aid budget. By joining us, you will be helping save the lives of millions across the globe. This is an unpaid internship opportunity.

Wednesday, June 11

YOU, 10:41 am: sorry to bother u at work but i was looking for activism opportunities on a volunteer site and i found something called The Morton Project. It’s a virtual internship and i’ll be advocating for people in poverty.

MOM, 10:43 am: Sounds exciting. Is it for teens?

YOU, 10:44 am: i mean it doesn’t say that but people love young activists

MOM, 10:45 am: What’s the time commitment?

YOU, 10:46 am: 3 months, 4 hrs per week

MOM, 10:47 am: Are you sure you have enough time? You’ve got a lot going on this summer.

YOU: well nothing else i do actually means anything

YOU, 10:51 am: yeah positive—

Notes: To-Do List 1st week of summer!

• Become a teen activist

• Dance intensives 9-5 pm (Mon-Fri)

• Study Spanish (2 hr/day)

• Study Geometry (2 hr/day) Go out w/ Olivia & Bea?

To: mortonproject.apply@gmail.com

From: amelia_b@gmail.com

Wednesday, June 11, 5:00 pm

Dear Morton Project,

I am a 16-year-old high school student who is passionate about advocacy and fighting poverty. I would like to apply for the position of Advocate. Please let me know how I can begin the application process. Thank you so much for considering.

Sincerely, Amelia

To: amelia_b@gmail.com

From: lin.mortonproject@gmail.com

Thursday, June 12, 4:11 am

Hello Amelia,

Thank you for your interest in The Morton Project. We would like to schedule you for a meeting to discuss your application. We use Zoom to conduct our interviews. Once you schedule your interview, we will send a confirmation email with the info on how to join. Please ensure you check your spam folder if you aren’t receiving our emails in your inbox.

Thank you, Lin Chief of Staff

Thursday, June 12

YOU, 1:15 pm: ok i just finished the interview

MOM, 1:17 pm: How’d it go?

YOU, 1:18, pm: it was really quick, like 10 min max. Idk if that’s a good thing

MOM, 1:19 pm: What did they ask?

YOU, 1:21 pm: just why i want to join the organization and what questions i have. I asked what bills The Morton Project has helped get passed recently

YOU, 1:22 pm: she said she’d get back to me on the answer

To: amelia_b@gmail.com

From: lin.mortonproject@gmail.com

Friday, June 13, 5:50 am

Hello Amelia,

Given how well you performed in the interview, we would like

244

Short Story San Francisco University High School San

Francisco, CA

you to take an online quiz to ensure you are familiar with our organization and would be ready to advocate on behalf of the world’s poor.

Thank you, Lin

Chief of Staff

Friday, June 13

BEA, 8:05 pm: hey do you want to get dinner after dance?

OLIVIA, 8:07 pm: totally

BEA, 8:08 pm: Amelia?

YOU: i don’t have time

YOU, 8:12 pm: sorry i have to go home after

The Morton Project Quiz:

Please use The Morton Project Website to inform your responses. Good luck!

1. What’s the story behind the founder of The Morton Project?

The Morton Project was founded by James Morton. In 1994, a young James worked as a volunteer in Rwanda to help people suffering from civil war and genocide. From this experience, he got the idea to start an organization that works at the political level toward poverty reduction. To raise funds, he worked as a tour guide in Hawaii. Since then, The Morton Project has emerged as a leading non-profit with volunteers operating in thousands of U.S. cities. It all started with one man who ended up changing the world.

2. What is your favorite blog post on The Morton Project website and why?

My favorite blog post is “Lifting Human Trafficking Victims in China Out of Poverty” by Donald Williams. I appreciate that the post gives a comprehensive look at what is being done at both the federal and local levels, including how volunteers for The Morton Project are spreading awareness about programs that are improving lives.

To: amelia_b@gmail.com

From: haley.mortonproject@gmail.com

Monday, June 16, 2:14 am

Hello Amelia,

Thank you very much for taking the time to work your way through the application process. We would like to offer you a position on our Foreign Affairs Team. Please see attached the Conditions of Hiring, and let us know if you have any questions. Welcome to the team!

Best, Haley

Conditions of Hiring

The Morton Project receives applications from people all over the world. Only 5% are selected. By accepting your position, you will become a voice for the people who are struggling in developing countries. You will be required to submit reports every Monday, no extensions allowed unless you give notice two weeks in advance. Here are the requirements for the 3-month program:

1. Mobilize 100 people to call or email Congress.

2. Call or email your representatives in Congress every week.

3. Run a fundraising campaign to raise $1,000. Send letters to

friends and family for donations.

4. Post regularly on your social media platforms to raise awareness about our work.

5. Represent The Morton Project at local events.

6. Write letters in support of The Morton Project to celebrities and the press.

Failure to meet these requirements will result in your removal from the organization.

Monday, June 16

YOU, 8:25 am: amazing news! The Morton Project is hiring me as a Foreign Affairs Intern! I’m part of the 5% of applicants accepted! MOM, 8:27 am: Congratulations! That’s exciting.

Updates for @amelia345:

@natalie.gomez Thank you @presidentoftheUSA for meeting with me today to talk about how climate change is affecting the lives of youth. I hope that our conversation will inspire you and your administration to take action so future generations will thrive. Comments (1.3 M)

@presidentoftheUSA Thank you, Natalie, for your wisdom. Here at the White House we deeply appreciate the work of you and your nonprofit. @congressmandaniel Just fourteen years old! Wow! @nationalyouthradio Hi Natalie! If you have a chance, send us a message and we can arrange an interview with you for our program. We reach 2 million Americans weekly!

Monday, June 16

MOM, 11:30 pm: Amelia go to sleep

YOU, 11:32 pm: lm finish this MOM, 11:33 pm: ?

YOU, 11:35 pm: stuff for The Morton Project MOM, 11:36 pm: Wasn’t it supposed to be 4 hrs a week?

YOU, 11:38 pm: yeah but it’s taking longer than i thought. if i can’t finish my work for this week i will be fired

YOU, 11:39 pm: and if I do more I will be spotlighted on their website MOM, 11:41 pm: please go to sleep

Wednesday, June 18

YOU, 11 pm: Hey y’all! I just want to let you know about an organization I’m interning at, The Morton Project. It is a non-profit that works closely with the U.S. government to reduce extreme poverty across the globe. Before I learned about The Morton Project, I thought that there was nothing I as a young person could do to make a difference in the lives of people in developing countries. If you’re interested, go to The Morton Project website. It walks you through how to call and email Congress–in less than 30 seconds! You can also donate to my fundraising page. Links below. Thx!

BEA, 11:02 pm: whoa that plug

OLIVIA, 11:04 pm: cool

Updates for @amelia345:

@thegrammys Tonight we’re featuring an inspiring speech by a twelve-year-old activist, Hugo Jones! For the past two years, they’ve been leading protests across the United States against

245

gun violence. In September, they will speak at the United Nations. Bravo, Hugo!

Comments (3.8 M)

@jonesfamily We love you, Hugo!

@nomoreguns At such a young age, they’re already doing great things in the world. Everyone should listen and follow their example.

Friday, June 20

YOU, 8:40 am: what’s up it’s me again. I’d really love it if u could help me fundraise for The Morton Project. If u want i can send the email template for friends and family!

YOU, 8:42 am: lol i’m literally calling congressmen in D.C. from my car

YOU, 8:45 am: u can do it too it’s so easy

BEA, 8:46 am: lmao stop it with the plugs

OLIVIA, 8:48 am: seriously i’m gonna block you Amelia

YOU 8:50 am: just a few calls can make a big difference

OLIVIA, 8:51 am: lol

BEA, 8:55 am: do u want to hang out after dance today?

OLIVIA, 8:56 am: yeah

YOU, 9:01 am: sorry i don’t think i can

Monday, June 23

OLIVIA, 10:05 pm: hey Amelia just wondering if you’ve seen all the stuff online about The Morton Project? There are a ton of articles about it that say it’s a pyramid scheme. Like they hire unpaid interns to gather more recruits and raise money. Type The Morton Project into the search bar and you’ll see everything. Also looking at the website it’s very white man’s burden you know what I mean?

OLIVIA, 10:08 pm: just thought u should know

Monday, June 23

YOU, 10:10 am: Mom can we talk

MOM, 10:15 am: I’d love to but i’m at work sweetie

YOU: I don’t know what to do with my life

YOU, 10:19 am: it’s urgent

MOM:10:22 am: Fine give me 5

Tuesday, June 24

YOU, 11:06 pm: Hey, I recently sent y’all a message about The Morton Project, which hired me to be an Advocate about a week ago. Today I learned that there are serious questions about whether The Morton Project is a pyramid scheme. This was a learning opportunity as someone who takes every chance I can find to improve the world. Please do not make the same mistake I did. I am so sorry if I misled you. Thx!

BEA, 11:08 pm: lol

OLIVIA, 11:11 pm: no worries

To: mortonproject.team@gmail.com

From: amelia_b@gmail.com

I will not continue being an Advocate for The Morton Project. It is a pyramid scheme that exploits interns and funnels money into a privileged white man’s pocketbook. You trapped me by giving me a

fancy title and saying I was in the top 5% of applicants. I bet that’s not true. I’m telling everyone I know that you’re a scam.

Tuesday, June 24

YOU, 5:45 pm: Just sent u the draft

MOM, 5:47 pm: Got it

MOM, 5:50 pm: I get you’re angry but remember they fell for it too. They think they’re doing something worthy of their time.

YOU, 5:55 pm: what so i have to protect them

MOM, 6:00 pm: They’re just the next layer. They take orders from their superiors, who take orders from their superiors. That’s how the pyramid works.

YOU, 6:04 pm: so it wouldn’t be speaking truth to power

To: mortonproject.team@gmail.com

From: amelia_b@gmail.com Tuesday, June 24, 7:30 pm Dear Volunteer Team,

I have decided not to continue being an Advocate for The Morton Project. Thank you for this opportunity.

Sincerely, Amelia

Tuesday, November 4

YOU, 9:50 PM: what ever happened to that teen activist who came to our school last year?

BEA, 9:52 PM: i think she went to college

OLIVIA, 9:54 PM: yeah i heard she gave her non-profit to younger teens

YOU, 9:56 PM: wasn’t her thing social justice? That doesn’t have an age limit

OLIVIA, 9:57 PM: she called her non-profit Teen Voices 4 Justice

Notes: Miscellaneous

How to become a teen activist: Find something to be passionate about Start an organization that empowers teens

• Know you’ll have to leave the thing you’ve built

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Lilly Marquardt

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Visual Arts Pius Xi High School Milwaukee, WI Untitled Twine 2022

Ollie McCrary

Dear God, Are You a Boy or a Burden

If heaven didn’t give me the right to tell you that your laws suck, Then, lawmakers, We don’t know the same heaven.

See, mine was when I was eight years old and my mom gave me my grandpa’s fedora. It smelled like him, and let me tuck my ponytail into it so sometimes, If I was good enough, people would tell my mom what a handsome young man she had raised. And I swear, for a moment I could feel her, and his touch on my cheek,

HEADLINE: Nearly 240 anti-LGBTQ bills filed in 2022 so far, most of them targeting trans people (NBC).

See, mine,

Was the first time I got to play football, and everyone looked at me like I shouldn’t be there, Until they saw me tackle.

And if I was good enough, people would look at my summer camp coach and congratulate him on what a tough group of boys he was training. And I swear, for a moment, I thought if I ran no one would be able to catch me, even if my ponytail came untucked,

HEADLINE: 2022 is already a record year for state bills seeking to curtail LGBTQ rights, (CNN)

See, mine,

Was the first time a girl that I love sang Beautiful Boy to me and knew all the words, And I knew that I didn’t have to be good enough for her to do it again,

HEADLINE: 10 anti-LGBTQ+ bills impacting students go into effect across six states (19th News).

And I swear,

That there are some heavens that you can only find in summertime, and first loves, and a testosterone shot.

There are some heavens

Where the gods look just like us, And some, don’t even tape their chests They don’t have to, They’re gods. But you, Won’t even let us live and be human. I can’t crawl out of this skin and trust me, I would. But even if I did, I’m sure it wouldn’t make you happy because it’s not “natural enough”,

HEADLINE: This year on pace to see record anti-transgender bills passed by states (NBC).

By March 2022, nearly 240 anti-LGBTQ bills had already been filed in the year. It’s October, 2022. I have updated this document with new headlines over the past 3 years. I haven’t been able to remove any irrelevant headlines, only add more.

So okay then, build your laws around the kids you love so much then. Baptize my body in your backwards beliefs then, And I promise you, I will bleed boy blood right out of my uterus and into that water.

You may bleed blue, But I bleed boy.

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Spoken Word Legacy of Educational Excellence High School San Antonio, TX

Sophia Medina

Mami’s Nature and I

DRY SEASON —

February

Droplets of water sparkle in the air, kicked up as I run through the little stream in my backyard. My toes press into the clay soil at its bottom, soft like brown sugar, a stark contrast against the occasional elevated rock.

The stream is shallow—no higher than my calves—and lukewarm. I do wish it was cooler, but the Puerto Rican afternoon sun will have its way; despite the shelter of the mango and coconut trees, the scattered rays that peek through are more than enough. Sweat beads on my forehead and I wipe it away.

I crouch down, stick my hands into the water and wiggle my fingers. A leaf flowing downstream catches on my hand and I shake it off, standing back up. Droplets hang between my fingernails.

I step forwards and balance on a rock with my right foot, then hop to the next with my left. My arms are extended outwards. I imagine I am on an adventure, and there are crocodiles in a great torrential river, and if I slip in, I will be eaten. I jump to another rock, then another, making my way to the side of the river opposite my house. I land on the bank with a heavy breath. Success. A chango1 sitting in a mango tree flies deeper into the grove, rustling the leaves and shadows and cawing at the wide blue sky. I watch until it has fully disappeared, then turn my attention back to one of the crocodiles slithering in the river.

I’m looking into their beady eyes when I hear the creak of a window being opened, and my Mami’s voice calling out to me.

“Sierra!” Her head peeks out the window. “Come get yourself changed and help me cook. I left a lacy white dress for you on the bed. The neighbors will be over around eight.” The crocodile sinks down into the river, which dissipates into a stream, babbling softly. “Okay Mami!” I call back. I dash into the stream, water splashing at my thighs. I step onto the grass on the other side, then the concrete, which burns the bottoms of my feet. A small puddle forms, dark gray footprints, as I make my way around to the front door. Immediately the puddles turn to smoke and cloud. They swirl around my legs, kiss the inner corners of my knees, spirals and curls of transparent white.

I walk inside the front door.

The clouds let go of their grasp.

Mami and I like to cook together—it’s just one of those things we do. I love it, because when Mami cooks, she sings. That’s how you know the food is going to be good. Mami says the best food is made with the power of music, and even though she has a silly grin on when she says it, I think she is right.

We pour sofrito 2 into the pot with the chicken while singing and dancing to the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz.

Mami holds the wooden spoon to her mouth and it becomes a microphone, an exaggerated emotional expression on her face. The pot sizzles and pops like her hips. I perform with her, screwing open a can of Goya tomato sauce. We pour in the Goya, sprinkle in the sazón 3 , and plop in the vegetables, all measured with the heart.

A glass lid covers the metal pot, and heat on low, the food simmers.

Mami sets the vegetable cutting board down and takes my hands, which feel tiny in hers. We do the basic Salsa step, alternating feet forward and back to the beat of the music. She raises her arm and spins me. I giggle, then back to basic. We sway together and dance our way across the kitchen floor, cool white tile on bare brown feet.

About an hour later, the metal pot is painted in greens and warm yellows from the walls and lamp light, a few slight blues from the night sky reflecting in through the little window. The fire flicks at its bottom.

It is ready.

Mami carefully lifts the lid. Tendrils of flavorful steam dance in the air, illuminated yellow by the lighting. I watch Mami from behind, her black hair pooling on her shoulder as she leans over the pot, stirs with the wooden spoon, the movement of her hand a practiced pattern. She offers the spoon to me filled with brick-red sauce, a piece of chicken, lumps of potatoes and carrots. Warmth down my throat, I chew and swallow and my cheeks tingle pink. It tastes of song and laughter.

I will never get tired of our pollo guisado4

It is seven forty-six when the first guests arrive: the couple from a few houses down, Mrs. Paula and Manolo, who is holding a container of rice. Mrs. Paula is wearing the same pair of dusty red heels she always wears, and Manolo, his brown sandals. I know all my neighbors by their shoes. I watch them pass by whenever I draw with colored chalk on the concrete outside my house.

Then, it’s black loafers and white socks—Abran with a walking cane and tinfoil-wrapped alcapurrias5 Finally, fourteen minutes later, it’s paint-splattered timberlands– Clemente and his daughter, tan flowery sandals–Lili, carrying a pot of habichuelas 6

Clemente greets Mami like this: “Alondra Eva Ortiz,” a flourish in his voice, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” and he touches her hand, eyes glittering. “Ay dios7 , Clemente, no need for your formalities,” Mami shakes her head “We’ve known each other too long for that.”

“Oh but a woman like you deserves only the best treatment,” Clemente starts stepping in rhythm to the merengue8 song that’s come on, smooth and playful, and he moves her hand along with his to dance. Mami laughs, a bright and twinkling sound, and allows herself to be swayed.

Clemente is cool like that– charismatic. He’s got good energy, as Mami would say. He raises people up wherever he goes.

Lili puts the habichuelas 6 on the table and skips over to me. Her smile is toothy, but, oh! That is new! One of the front ones is missing. She runs her tongue across the space in between. “Look!” She exclaims. Laughter bubbles out of my mouth at the sight of it. “Lili!”

She starts giggling too, and sticks her hand into her pocket to pull out a crumpled napkin. She unwraps it, revealing a white tooth. I am in awe, and apparently it shows on my face because she’s laughing harder, and I’m gasping, and our hands are on our stomachs in glee.

Lili is my best friend like Clemente is Mami’s, and she can always make me laugh like this.

The song leaves Mami and Clemente breathless from dancing. Abran shifts his weight on his cane.

“Let’s eat!” He complains, “I’m starving.”

Tin cups and old ceramic plates are nothing fancy, but filled with the food everyone brought, our kitchen feels like the most elite of restaurants.

My attention is mostly focused on shoveling arroz con gandules9 and pollo guisado4 into my mouth, but my ears are open to the chatter of the adults. Some of the things they discuss sound like a whole other world to me, but it is dramatic and thus it is fascinating.

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Short Story Scholars Academy Rockaway Park, NY

***

Abran scratches his white facial hair. “What, so you think statehood is better?” “I do,” Manolo pushes up his round glasses on his round face. “Think about it! More jobs would open up, good ones. The economy would strengthen. More companies would invest in us.”

“And we would be able to vote for president and have active representatives in the House,” Clemente adds.

Abran’s eyebrows are wrinkled. “That does sound good, but…” his head tilts, “what about the culture?”

“What do you mean?” Clemente asks.

“What if too many mainlanders start to come here, and gentrification increases faster than it already is– and you know how bad it has been in some areas already– and what if the things that make Puerto Rico so distinct start to fade? Our food, our language, our identity.”

Gentrification. I think I’ve heard that word before, whispered, a heavy sore on Mami’s tongue during late night phone calls when the smell of dinner and spices has started to settle down and leave out the windows. The way Abran said it too, it sounds dirty. Bitter. He basically spat it out. I don’t think I understand why.

“I understand your concern, Abran,” Manolo speaks, “but I do think, regardless, things would improve around here with statehood. Statehood would make us eligible for better disaster relief efforts, and with all the hurricanes–”

Mami chuckles, shaking her head at the men while chewing a mouthful of alcapurrias5 . All eyes turn sharply to her and she waggles her fork.

“If you want to be a formal American so badly” she teases, a failed attempt at a New York accent on the word American, “then why don’t you just move mainland?” The men roar and then there is a muddle of laughter and jokes about gringos10 and clinks of forks on plates.

Mami leans over to Mrs. Paula, close to her ear. I see her lips move and just barely make out her words. I think she says: “Sometimes I consider moving to become a mainlander myself,” and then “rent is rising,” and something about money.

I quizzically look at Lili to see if she caught the last part, but she is happily eating her father’s habichuelas 6 and smiling because everyone else is, chewing carefully to avoid the space where she is missing a tooth.

It’s all very warm—the lighting, the house, the food, the company—here we are safe and cared for and together, but I can’t help but focus on Mami’s whispers. I don’t understand why she is worried.

I think we must be rich to be able to eat like this.

RAINY SEASON — April

Just past the little, now dried up, stream in my backyard is a grove of fruit trees. We’ve got guavas, mangoes, coconuts, and bananas, but right now, only the bananas are ready to pick. Our banana trees are short so it is not too difficult to gather the fruits. I think they are short because they are young. Mami says she and Papi planted them about a year after I was born. She says it was one of the last things she and Papi did together before he changed. It’s ironic that she and Papi planted a banana tree, as bananas are a very reliable fruit here—ready to be picked pretty much year-round—while Papi is the farthest thing from reliable. Whenever Mami reflects on it, there is a bitter crinkle between her eyebrows. She doesn’t like to go back to the banana trees, so she sends me.

This time Lili has accompanied me and we are running loops between all the fruit trees in the grove, touching their leaves, their bark, our sandals crunching on dried grass. The banana trees have large green leaves that are half my size and yellowish-brownish trunks. The bananas are light green, plump and ripe; that’s how you know they are ready. I stop running and point to a nice full bundle hanging on one of the trees.

“Lili! This one is perfect!” I call out, and she pauses to look at it and nod her head enthusiastically.

I pull a small knife out of my shorts pocket and begin sawing at the stem of the bundle. It is best to pick bananas in mass, rather than individually.

After a few moments of sawing, the bundle falls and Lili helps me catch it. She grins and motions to another bundle.

“Let’s get that one too!” I skip over to it, holding the knife carefully, and cut it down as well. And then another. And another. By the time we have cut the fourth bundle, we are sweating and snickering.

“What are we going to do with so many bananas?” Lili exclaims, lying down on the dried grass.

“I have no clue,” I reply, lying next to her, bananas resting on the ground around my head.

Lili faces me and I can see a gleam in her light brown eyes reminiscent of her papa’s. “You might say,” she grins, “we’ve gone… bananas.” She plucks one from the bundle and holds it up to her mouth sideways like a smile.

She looks so silly and combined with her joke, I just double over laughing. We lay there for what could be minutes or hours, watching strange shapes of sparsely dispersed clouds float across the sky and sorting them. We have just seen a fluffy castle fly by when I feel overheated and want to go back home. We grab two banana bundles each and start making our way through the bends of the grove.

At the stream, I hop from rock to rock while Lili just walks across the cracked clay. I can’t fully see where I am stepping because of the bundles, but I think I know these rocks well enough to be able to navigate. It’s a fun challenge, testing my muscle memory. It’s fun, until my foot lands on the side of a rock rather than the center.

I lose my balance and a shriek rips out of my throat; I topple to the ground, feel my knee scraping a dead stick, feel the tiny tears in my skin and the impact of my bones on the cracked earth. The bananas fall with me and get coated in dirty dust, bruised skin to match mine.

It happened so fast. The trees are spinning, there’s tan sandals dashing a few yards to me, a light-colored hand reaching out to me, someone calling my name. How can they expect me to respond already? It’s been only a second.

I sniffle and see the sizable scrape on my knee starting to produce blops of blood. My eyes water. I have banana skin. So easy to injure. I know the bundles I was carrying might be ruined too. They’ll turn entirely brown and speckled with banana scabs in a few days. As will my knee.

Breathe

I take the light-colored hand—Lili’s, I can tell that now— and I stand up. She rubs my shoulders and asks if I’m okay.

I’m not sure what to answer. I think I am. Maybe.

When Lili and I get back to my house, my knee is still dripping a little blood. We set the bananas down, peer in through the window, and see Mami and Clemente sitting on the couch together. Her hands are in his and he is saying something indiscernible from our distance. His thumb rubs over her knuckles as he speaks. He raises her hand to his lips and kisses it. It feels intense, like we are intruding on something intimate.

Lili and I share wide eyes. My mouth gapes. She pulls a funny face of dramatic disgust and amusement. One of our hands knocks at the window, I can’t be sure which. Immediately both their heads snap in our direction and Clemente hastily rises to open the door. Mami stays sitting until she notices my knee.

“Ay dios mío11, what happened? It wasn’t the knife was it? I knew I shouldn’t have given it to you, what was I thinking?”

“No Mami, I just fell. It’s... I’m fine.” A drop of blood slowly makes its way down my leg and my eyes start to water again. Her face tells me it doesn’t appear fine.

“Clemente, it was a pleasure as always, I will talk to you later, yeah?” She hastens him out the door, “I have to deal with Sierra right now.”

“Don’t worry Alondra, I get it,” he reassures her, holds Lili’s shoulder, then turns to me. “I hope that feels better soon, Sierra.” He makes a weird smile, picks up the other two banana bundles,

250

then shuffles away with Lili, who sends me a sympathetic wave.

“Ay, baby, what were you thinking?” Mami chastises, pouring a bit of water on my cut to wash it.

“I don’t know, Mami,” I mumble. “I couldn’t see because of the bananas.” She rubs a salve onto my knee. It smells of honey. “Next time try not to take more than you can handle,” she starts. I tune her out and my vision blurs, hyper-focused on a small, melted candle on the table in front of the couch. Her voice of television static says I must be more careful, and “you don’t always need to reach for more,” and something about appreciating what we have.

I feel my head slowly turn to look at her. A strand of black hair lies on her forehead. It is beaded with sweat.

A sigh escapes her cracked lips.

Rainy season is supposed to have come already, but it isn’t coming. The weatherman on the television calls it a drought.

Drought. That is a strange word. I ask Mami what it means and she says it is bad. It means the coconuts will have less juice and the grass will turn brown and there will be more dried worms on the concrete. I recall the landscape of my trip with Lili, the dried grass and disappearing stream. I frown. How terrible.

Mami says we need to be good to the earth because Mother Nature is working hard to sustain us. Swirly words of prayer rise from her mouth like smoke to the sky. Two days later, it rains.

The weatherman on the television sounds ecstatic.

May

The sky has been weird lately– gray in the distance. A dense fog has rolled in and hasn’t left, along with a sporadic light drizzle. The coquis12 have been very loud. The stray cats have stopped coming. There’s this orange one that always lays down on a ledge near our kitchen window. We’ve named him Hercules and we feed him occasionally. Mami says he stood up a few days ago, looked at her with his golden green slotted eyes for a whole minute, and left. We haven’t seen him since.

The birds have been on edge as well.

“Something bad is coming,” Mami says, tasting the air. Her dark brown eyes burn into me. She paces the kitchen, the sound of her bare feet on the tile.

After seemingly contemplating for a couple minutes, she tuts her tongue and says we need to cleanse the house. “Bad energy,” she concludes.

I don’t question her. She is usually right about these things; it is an ancient sort of knowledge she has, one that ebbs and flows to the beat of the natural world. The cool misty light from our catless kitchen window illuminates her figure against the green walls. Her black hair shines like the feathers of a chango1. She’s wearing a thin blue shawl over her shoulders right now, and I can almost imagine she has wings. Maybe she is getting the

sense that she should fly away too, like all the creatures have this week. After all, her name, Alondra, means lark.

Her phone rings in the other room and she patters away into the shadows to get it. It is a piercing sound, electronic against the rustle of trees and songs of coquis12 and foggy ambience. “Why are you calling me?” Her voice is hard, muffled by the wall between us, but hard regardless.

I can’t hear the caller’s response, though I guess who it might be. She only uses that tone with him.

“I thought we agreed all ties would be cut, Samael… No. I don’t care… No.” Mami huffs, and I picture her pinching her brow bone.

“I am not giving you—you haven’t supported us at all and you expect—” She raises her voice.

I can tell Papi is asking things of her. Every so often he will. Mami never wants to give them, though she always cracks and gives a little. She makes him promise that it will be the last time.

It never is.

“Samael, I —okay, I will mail it to you—Goodbye.” She hangs up.

An exhale.

Mami patters back to the kitchen, now holding a bundle of sage and a stick of palo santo. “To send out negative energy and bring in positivity.” She opens the rest of the windows and doors.

The smell of burning sage and palo santo fills my nostrils.

June

Five rapid knocks on the front door demand attention I am not sure I want to give. I am comfortable. We’ve just finished eating dinner, so we are relaxing. I am drawing with my crayons as Mami is watching the news. The people on the television warn about intense downpours and harsh winds. I don’t pay much mind. In my art we are smiling with Lili and Clemente and big pink flowers. The knocks persist and I wonder who could be outside in a rain like this. An umbrella could barely shield you, the drops are heavy and many and I brace myself for a wet breeze as Mami stands to open the door.

“Alondra.” The voice is raspy, masculine.

“Samael. What are you doing here.” A practiced calm, placid but spiky. Mami’s blue dress billows a bit, her body a dark silhouette, and his even darker.

The thud of black boots on our floor, Papi pushes past her into the house. He leaves muddy footprints.

“I called you again earlier today.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I didn’t want to. And I was at work.” A little louder now: “How many times do I have to tell you I—”

“You answer me,” he demands, and his voice booms, bouncing off our walls, resonating off my eardrums. He saunters across the room and his eyes meet mine for a split second. My lungs are chilled. He smells strange. He passes me to the kitchen table. Mami is still standing at the door. The rain pours outside.

“Sierra, baby, go to your room, okay? Let Mami handle this,” she pleads softly. But I don’t budge.

“No, let her stay, Alondra. Let her see how unfaithful her Mami is, that she won’t help out Papi when he needs it,” he croons. He rustles through the pile of papers sitting on the table–electricity bills, mortgage statements, spam mail. He doesn’t find what he is looking for. “I need twenty dollars,” he says, resolutely. “For gas. Where do you keep the cash?” He smacks the pile off the table, papers flying haphazardly to the ground.

He looks at Mami and his brow bone casts a shadow over his eyes. “Can you give me that? Just twenty. Then I’ll be out of your hair.” A sharp crooked smile pulls on his face. He has crocodile teeth. I’m sure of it, I’ve seen crocodiles before in documentaries on television.

“I don’t like it when you do this.” She says. Suddenly she seems so small. When did Mami shrink? She clears her throat and begins again. “You need to be a grown adult and stop coming back to me asking for—”

He slams his hands on the table and it shakes. “You need to give me what I ask for! We were in love once, Alondra. Got any left in your heart to give me?”

She swallows a lump in her throat.

Samael roams to the refrigerator, green reflected light from the walls painting his skin. He examines the photos taped to its white exterior. His hand touches one of me as a baby, then one of Mami posing with sunglasses, then one of all our neighbors together smiling. He stops on a photo of Mami and Clemente. His arm is around her and the colors are sunny. Samael tugs it off the fridge, a prolonged sound of the tape straining and ripping.

“Who is this?”

Mami steps forward, but doesn’t reply. In the stillness between them, the men on the television say something about a hurricane. The wind roars outside.

251

***

“Tell me who this is!” Papi screams. He looks to me and shoves the photo in my face. “Do you know who this is? Tell me, Sierra. Who has your Mami been spending time with?” He is thundering, and outside the world is thundering, and everything is shaking. He throws the photo onto the tile floor and steps on it, leaving muddy boot prints.

“Stay away from her!” All focus turns to Mami. “You have no right to come into My house and make demands. You do not own us, Samael.” Something in Mami has shifted, broken maybe. She strides over to him, a fiery glare on her face. She grabs his arm and her nails scrape his skin. She leans in close, and–

An ear-splitting crack, the window fractures. Shards of glass splinter and coat the sink, the stove, the floor. A large branch from the mango tree outside our kitchen lands with a thud. Mami and Papi turn their backs to the window, arms instinctively covering their faces. I curl into the couch. A beat of silence extends across our home.

Mami stirs first, still holding Papi’s arm.

“Get the hell out of my home.”

He hesitates.

“ GET OUT.” She screams. She pulls him towards the door. “ Get Out Get Out Get Out.” I see something I don’t recognize in his face: fear. Papi’s eyebrows are furrowed as he dashes for his car parked in front of our house. Mami chases him, her light blue dress turning dark from the wetness, splattered with bits of mud. Activated car lights turn rain droplets white and red.

“And don’t come back.” Mami yells after the car as it disappears down the road. Her shoulders shake. I don’t know how long it takes me to run from the couch to the open door. I don’t know how long Mami stays standing there, drenched, bare feet on chilled muddy earth. The rain drops fall slowly. I run out to her and I think I’m crying because the droplets on my face are warm. Her hand, fallen at her side, is warm. She looks shocked when she feels me take it.

Her black hair shines. I guide her back inside. I lock the door. I close the window shades. The wind howls outside that night. The incessant rap of rain and falling mangoes on our tin roof is loud, and the ripping of tree leaves is loud, but the pattern of Mami’s heartbeat as I lie curled up next to her is calming enough to lull me to sleep regardless.

The next morning we wake to dried muddy footprints and lights that won’t turn on. Mami doesn’t go to work. Schools are closed. I’m afraid of what I’ll see if I open the window shades. It turns out I don’t even have to open them because by 11:00 AM, the outside intrudes in, our sanctuary torn apart.

With a loud crash, the rest of the mango tree falls into our kitchen, ripping open the green walls and tin roof. The metal pot sitting on the stove hits the floor and clangs. Ceramic plates in the sink shiver and smash. The mango tree drips water from torn green leaves onto the white tile floor.

And Mami prays and prays and prays.

Two days later, the hurricane has left, and yet it remains. Fragments of it have been scattered across the island, and they accumulate in the corners of our eyes, the back of our throats, and the pit of our stomachs. They stick to us, a rainy grief that the sun just won’t dry up.

People lean to each other for support and there is crying everywhere I look. Mrs. Paula cradles Mami’s face as she cries about the tree that broke our kitchen walls and ceiling. Mami holds her back when Mrs. Paula sobs about the second floor of her and Manolo’s house that’s broken from the wind and rain, the things they’ve lost. She says the roof and walls were ripped right off.

Clemente points to his car, squished under a palm tree like a berry. He says that his bedroom window caved in, and the wall came with it. He runs his hand across his face and says how

grateful he is that everyone is alive, because that is what is most important. He kisses Mami on the forehead.

Manolo helps Abran cobble over the debris and opens up a lawn chair for him to sit. Abran’s roof had been leaking everywhere and his floor had been so wet he could barely walk without slipping. He had injured his ankle.

And dios mío, there is so much debris: broken wood and shards of glass and pieces of homes, of lives, laid bare across the streets. It looks like how my heart feels. Lili doesn’t let go of my hand. We wander around and see the little stream that was once dried is now overflowing. Two of the banana trees have ripped in half. Bananas and unripe coconuts and guava-tree branches litter the ground. Mostly, they are rotting, or the wildlife has already gotten to them.

We carry some of the salvageable fruits back for the others to eat.

The brown wounded bananas taste overripe and I gag.

July

Despite the pain, people have been rebuilding. Our neighbors here are very resilient. Makeshift closures of wood and plastic reform walls that had been torn. Debris is carried out and piled up in a mound.

As soon as they can, the local government sends agents across the neighborhoods. When they reach ours, they ask if anyone is hurt, and tell us of people they had to pull out of the rubble of collapsed homes from other areas. They wrap Abran’s ankle, then go about their way. The mainland government has been slow to help.

There is a local repurposed gas station that provides canned food, bottled water, and toilet paper. We visit every so often to meet our needs.

My neighborhood still doesn’t have power.

There is incessant chatter on our battery-radio documenting the damage across our island, the number of people rescued, injured, dead.

Mami gets tired of hearing it one day and just shuts off the radio.

“We’re going on a walk,” she states, sliding on black flip flops.

“But it’s raining,” I reply, looking out the front window.

“It’s drizzling,” she says.

I see that there’s no changing her mind, so I follow her out and she locks the door. Locking the door is more out of habit than necessity these days. The kitchen wall is still open, plastic and staples the only thing stopping anyone from breaking in. No one would dare, though. Our neighbors look out for each other.

We walk around to the back of the house. Mami stares at the fallen mango tree for a moment, then gracefully lifts her dress and removes her shoes, wading across the flowing stream. I don’t even try to walk on the rocks. I don’t imagine crocodiles.

We pass the coconut trees and step over their moist brown leaves on the grass. We go around the guava trees and their still inedible fruit. We halt at the broken banana trees. Mami holds her head high and her dark eyes scan their bodies. She turns to me. Her mouth tugs into an amused smile.

“I like them better like this,” she says.

I am taken aback for a moment, but then I start to laugh, and she’s laughing too, and it’s hysterical and loud and the trees quiver. And then I’m crying. And she’s crying. My arms wrap around her waist and she leans down and hugs me so tightly it is hard to breathe. We stay like that, wordlessly, for about two minutes. I hide my face in her neck.

“So much has broken,” she says, defeated.

“But we will rebuild here,” I hold her, salty wetness gathering on my cheeks, “Right Mami? Us and all our friends. We will fix our houses and then life will go back to normal.” “We will rebuild,” she repeats. She sounds wistful. Distant.

A chango1 sitting on one of the broken banana trees tilts its head and stares into my soul with its dark eyes. Then it opens its wings and flies up and away, cawing at the wide gray sky. I

252

***

watch until it has fully disappeared, then I turn my attention back to Mami’s arms around me, the broken banana tree, the broken home behind us. Mami exhales–a silvery noise– and I think of her whispers, and her phone calls, and her tired sighs. And for the first time, I think I understand.

Translations

1. Chango is blackbird

2. Sofrito is a latin seasoning sauce

3. Sazón is a latin seasoning powder

4. Pollo Guisado is chicken stew

5. Alcapurrias are meat-stuffed plantain fritters

6. Habichuelas are red beans

7. Ay Dios is Oh God

8. Merengue is a Latino-Caribbean dance originating from the Dominican Republic 9 Arroz con G.andules is rice with pigeon peas

10. Gringos is a teasing word for a non-Hispanic person, typically used for foreigners

11. Ay Dios mío is Oh my God

12. Coqui is the national frog of Puerto Rico, characterized by their “Coquee” call

253

Lyat Melese

I will not forget

I press my hands to the porcelain mug filled with tea. I move my fingers up and down as I wait for them to regain some warmth. The wind wails and branches tremble and sway from side to side as the sky unleashes its fury. A streak of silver slithers across the sky taking all the lights along with it. The storm must have caused a blackout, a voice announces in the background. A small smile graces my face, my mind carried back to a time where power outages were a daily occurrence. A time where I was so adept at finding my way around the dark, my father used to call me an owl. A time back in Ethiopia, where much of my childhood remains. A time back home… a voice whispers in my head.

When it got dark we would turn on the solar lamps and sit together. Sometimes Muluye would tell me stories and other times I would sit and talk with Zewde and Tigist.

I turn my head toward the window and my eyes trace a droplet making its way down.

Moments like these with those closest to me have shaped many parts of my identity. They taught me how to make the most out of very little and how a person can recover from so much loss. They have taught me to persevere and remain strong in the face of adversity. They instilled hope in me: a belief that even those with the wrong beginning can have the right ending.

This was my beginning....

Muluye flips to a picture in the album. She presses her hands to the black-and-white photo, her fingers running over the clear plastic protector as if she were smoothing out wrinkles only she could see. I lean my head on her shoulder, as she points to the woman carrying a small child in her arms. That is me, Muluye points out. The woman in the picture is smiling at the camera, her headband doing little to stop her large afro hair from blowing into her face. She wore one of those flared pantsuits that would have been the height of fashion in the 70s .

I am surprised. That’s you? It’s hard to imagine that the woman in the picture is my grandmother sitting next to me. Moving to the child, Muluye tells me her name is Ethiopia; she named her herself.

I ask, Why would you name a child after a country?

A shadow passes across her face. She responds, I found her when I was working at the hospital, the nurses found her in the trash at the back. Her whole body was covered with ants. I imagine a small wailing child, a black river flooding from her mouth and ears. It was a miracle she survived, Muluye continues, she had no one, so I named her Ethiopia. She was eventually adopted by a family in the Netherlands. The corners of her eyes crinkle and her lips spread into a small smile. Now she will never be alone, she has a whole country with her. She will always know who she is and where she came from.

“Atiresam”

She will not forget ...

I grew up more in my grandparents’ house than I did in my own house. I spoke my first words at their dining table and took my first steps in their living room. I am told that when I was only a month old, Muluye was the one who bathed and changed me because my mother was too afraid she would drop me. When my parents traveled for work, I would spend weeks or even months living with my grandparents. Muluye would pack my lunch, and Ashe would walk me to the bus stop.

What I loved most about my grandparents’ place was that it was always full of life. They lived in an apartment complex where there was no such thing as privacy or personal life, a life where you couldn’t tell where one home ended and the other began. The front door was always open and neighbors dropped by to eat lunch or drink coffee together. Women would chat in the evening as they hung their clothes to dry, and wailing babies were passed from house to house to those who offered to babysit. The weekends were a time where the sound of children’s laughter and thundering feet shook the building. I would wake up before dawn and rush to meet my best friend who lived in the apartment below. We would spend the whole day playing outside, knocking on the nearest neighbor’s door when we got hungry, and we would return home only when the sun had set. The concept of stranger danger was unknown to me until much later, when I moved to the U.S.

When I reached eight, I moved back to my actual home when my parents hired live-in help, as was customary in Addis Ababa. Most of them only worked for a short time and moved on, while others stayed. I lived, ate, and slept with these young women until they became an extension of my own family. We had become sisters.

My first sister was Tigist. I was too young to remember when she first entered my life, but I still hold with me the many firsts she gave me. She was the one who taught me my first words in Oromo. My Amharic accent was harsh and made sharp sounds as if my tongue was made of tin, whereas Oromo was delicate, meant to be spoken in a tone of milk and honey. I could never form the words the way they were supposed to sound. I still can’t. With Tigist, I baked my first injera and brewed my first buna. It was from her that I first truly understood struggle and what it meant to survive.

Tigist often asked me what I learned in school, and I would happily launch into a speech about my day. I would tell her about my math quiz, how I didn’t like sitting in the front because all the chalk dust made me sneeze, and that we learned about photosynthesis in science that day. I would ask her why she didn’t go to the local night school. She tells me Min yiseralignal... there is no point.

She held herself back from all she could do, from all she wanted to do. Going to school and seeking the life she wanted somehow became forsaking the family she couldn’t save. She couldn’t go back and she couldn’t go forward. She was always running, the fear of her past always nipping at her heels. Every spare Birr she had went to her mother; yet she visited as little as she could and called as little as she could. She ran from being? the farmer’s daughter tilling the land that never yielded enough food to fill all the hungry stomachs. She ran from her mother who was never strong enough to protect her own children. And she ran from him, he who became the person he was meant to be protecting her from. She ran and ran until one day, she suddenly stopped … and asked if I could teach her to speak English. That day, I rushed to my bedroom and pulled out my English book from school. I pointed to a picture of a house as I read the word aloud.

Howsss , she copied.

Every day for a month, we sat on the porch looking at pictures of words, the sun beating our backs and the dust blackening our shoes. Eventually, the kiremt season arrived and the sky shed heavy tears as it wailed and thundered. When we couldn’t sit on the porch anymore, we would head inside and try learning

254

Creative Nonfiction Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Alexandria, VA

***

from English shows. We would often watch WWE wrestling, Tigist’s favorite. We laughed as we tried to mimic the war cries the wrestlers yelled, and we pinched our notes imitating the funny lady who always said “Excuse me” in a high-pitched voice.

I didn’t know it then, but this was the very beginning of the long journey of her leaving me.

She stopped running, and all the hate and pain she had locked in the deepest crevices of her mind … swallowed her. All she could see was her mother and siblings she couldn’t save. She was willing to do whatever it took to get them out from under that man, her father. Even if it meant soiling her hands in blood.

She will not forget... ***

My second sister was not much older than me. Zewde was eighteen when I was twelve. I remember the day her aunt first brought her to our house. Her aunt was short statured; an unkind woman whose struggle had calloused her. A woman whose eyes never smiled as her pearly teeth flashed and her laughter echoed through the room. And still, she was all Zewde had. That day she dropped off her niece and dusted one more burden she had had to carry off her hands.

What struck me most about Zewde was how little she knew. She wore a timid smile and had soft eyes, as if the world hadn’t yet stolen anything from her. Her first day, she had screamed when she saw my doll, and my parents rushed to ask what was wrong. She had never seen a doll before and was confused when we told her it wasn’t alive.

Every month she would leave to visit her aunt. She would take three buses to cover the 65 kilometer distance from Addis Ababa to Debre Zeyit. The buses took different routes differentiated by different bus numbers. Numbers that she couldn’t identify. The night before her trip, my mother would map out all the routes while I used my best handwriting to write down the bus numbers on the back of a card. Zewde took that card with her, mixing and matching the symbols with the numbers displayed using chipped yellow paint on the dust laden buses.

Every Sunday, right after the church-goers wrapped their white Netela shawls as they left for church, and before noon where they would walk back, umbrellas perched on their shoulders to hide from the merciless African sun, we would carry chairs out to the yard and bask in the silence and morning sun. Zewde would stand in front of the one-way window and comb her hair. She would sometimes let me braid her hair. My face would scrunch up in concentration as my fingers weaved in and out of her hair. Despite my visible effort, my braids were always too loose and too messy, unlike the elegant cornrows that often graced her head. She would laugh at my attempt, and tell me she wasn’t pretty anyway. That if she was, she would still be with her parents. I asked her what she meant. She tells me she had shamed her family. She was neither wealthy nor pretty enough to be married off to a rich husband. At the age of fifteen, her family married her off to a man who offered a parcel of land in return. She ran away and went to the only relative she had who wouldn’t send her back. I have shamed my family, she said, but one day I will save enough money to buy them twice the land my husband had.

I often wonder, how can someone who knows so little, know too much?

She will not forget ...

The room is shrouded in darkness; the only light was coming from the lone candle flickering in the middle of the room and the sliver of moonlight escaping through the clouds. It won’t take long before they fix the problem causing the blackout.

Despite the poverty and loss the darkness signifies, I can’t help but find a small part of it to be beautiful. How it wraps

the room in a warm blanket and deceives one into thinking there isn’t anything that can’t be covered over and smothered. The reality is that the struggles we face as a society, the struggle that women face cannot be forgotten. At some point, the power would return, and the room would once again be veiled in light, a feast for all to see.

But sometimes all the pain, hate, poverty, domestic violence, child marriage, and illiteracy pave the road to strength and courage. In between the moments of darkness, there are moments of light and hope. And I realize that these moments in the lives of those around me have shaped me more than any of the dark ones have. I am inspired by how these women have turned their weaknesses into their weapons. I am inspired by Tigist’s courage and unbridled ambition, by Zewde’s forgiveness and conviction, by Muluye’s open heart and selflessness.

So, I will not forget.

We will not forget.

255

***

Hayward Metcalf

256

Photography Saint Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX Henderson Digital photography 2022

Lilly Mitrani

257

Self Portrait I Digital photography 2022

Photography David Posnack Jewish Day School Davie, FL

Nicole Molina

258

Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami,

Acrylic paint and colored pencil 2022

FL Both Roles

Karolina Montalvo

To My Future Husband

My mother warned me of love. As she scraped the egg pan, she told me, Tighten your neck screws so you don’t fall head over heels. But, as you know, I don’t wear heels much. Not even the kitty ones. Once, my cousin Leo told me on the way to church that I walked like a buckled-knee horse in them. Or was it a wobbly-knee whore? Maybe both. So I cursed all heels under the Jesus Cross and swore to Mary Jane flats for the rest of my life: for downtown clubs and for country weddings, even our own down the line with my mother sitting front row in the nose-bleed section. She’s still hoping to God that I stay grounded like her after all these years. That I don’t lose my head in the rolls of our breathing, the ridges of our bodies in bed, the rims of my lips to yours. So someday, I won’t find myself bent, serving you your breakfast with a silver ket spoon stowed in my collar to relieve your stress at a snap’s notice. Someday, I won’t stitch your handkerchief with royal blue thread in front of the TV set. Someday, when we’re older, I won’t dye your roots black before Sunday church. And if you can’t sleep one night, I won’t insist on not sleeping just to keep you company. No, I’ll wish you goodnight and sleep, and the next morning, I’ll leave your toast unbuttered on the counter. I will see the world how it is, right side up. I’ll learn to follow my gravity.

259

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

Karolina Montalvo

Crossing the Expanse

1. News

The first time Vidya will see her Uncle Pragnesh is at his funeral. Three weeks ago, he had died alone of heart failure in a hotel bed while orange juice soaked his underwear. When her dad Prasun heard the news from his mother, after a few seconds he said into the phone, “I believe that’s the leading cause of death in the United States. And the world.”

Prasun is in charge of arranging the funeral, only out of love for his old mother and guilt for what he had first said to her about his brother’s death. The only condition Vidya’s grandmother set for the funeral is for it to be in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she knew Pragnesh loved to spend his weekends at the turquoise spas. But what she and Vidya don’t know, what everyone else in their family knows, is that Pragnesh only went to splurge at the biggest casino in the state. For flowers, she wants Prasun to buy the prettiest and most popular kind in the state, whatever it is.

2. Funeral

The cemetery is two miles away from the hotel/casino where Pragnesh died and across the road from an IHOP. The cemetery manager could only give them a corner plot because the two available ones more toward the middle of the field are reserved by families who expected deaths soon. The day is mostly stagnant and sunny.

“Why haven’t I met him before, Mom?” Vidya asks, holding her hand up to block the sun, to see Uncle Pragnesh’s enlarged passport photo beside his casket with yellow poppies on top (Arizona’s state flower, the white blossom of a saguaro cactus, was not feasible). “Because he’s always kept to himself,” her mom says, rubbing her hands in her lap, turning back in her seat to find Prasun.

Prasun is standing on the curb of the parking lot with his hands dug into his pockets. He’s talking to his older brother, who Vidya had met once at her grandmother’s 81st birthday party. He came a little drunk, but nobody could tell until he helped his mother blow out her candles. Then Prasun pulled him outside and the party pretty much ended.

Vidya watches them now, waiting for a cheek kiss to happen, at least a hug, but they must be too old for that.

3. Reception

Vidya’s grandmother is serving everyone bowls of green moong dal tadka with paratha, and there will not be dessert. Not even a honey mango, which Vidya craves on a summer day. Instead, her grandmother gives her a plum that’s bruised, and Vidya thinks this is to punish her spoiledness.

As most of the extended family leave, Vidya’s mother sweeps the kitchen while the uncle watches a soccer game on his iPad. After Vidya brings all the dirty dishes to her grandmother at the sink, she goes to see her dad, who’s inside the hallway coat closet. He’s hunched over an old wooden box with stickers of the Flintstones, Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Popeye. Inside are black tattered cleats with grubby green laces, toddler size.

“I’m sorry about your brother, Dad.”

“What are you sorry for? You didn’t know him,” he says, closing the box and putting it back on the shelf.

4. Flight Home

The flight is only two hours and a little turbulent every twenty minutes, when Vidya grips the seat arm. Prasun, next to her, lays back his head and closes his eyes whose lids twitch. For a minute, Vidya thinks he’s praying, but she’s not sure. His hands stay composed on top of a book in his lap, which he never opens, and they don’t move. His back is flat against the seat, which makes it easier for Vidya to look out the window without worrying whether he’ll think she’s staring. They’re flying over the Sonoran Desert now. From 35,000 feet above, it just looks like an expanse of sand, an alternate sky with wispy shrubs for clouds. Vidya leans back in her seat, trying to figure out what she should do or say to him. When she asked her mom after the reception, when they got a chance to be alone, she told her to just “be there, and it will be enough.” So Vidya folds her hands in her lap and decides to just stare. She thinks if she tries to sit like him, then she can know what’s on his mind. Or maybe she can sense what he really feels. Exhaustion? Sadness? She feels sad, but it’s more about her father than his brother. She imagines if she had a brother who died, she’d want someone to hug her, hold her hand. She wants to know what her father wants, what he’s feeling. She wonders if he feels anything at all. Maybe he doesn’t even know. Vidya reaches across her seat and rests her hand on top of his.

260

Short Story South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities

Greenville, SC

Carlota Montero

261

Visual Arts New World School of the Arts

FL Untitled Screenprint 2022

Miami,

MaCayla Moody

Crowning Moment

When they say my hair needs to be fixed, “I simply tell them this story”

This hair was bonnet wrapped

Before my naps

Showering with Walmart caps

Hair Primped and primed

Donut glazed with oil shine

That’s how you describe, my hair

But at the end it was always worth it

My hair was always the topic at elementary school lunch tables

This not that get up and go hair

or that pony tail and go hair

Or that sprinkle some water

put it in the bun and put the door hair

This that wake up and it’s a fro hair

That failed wash and go hair

Or that pop all my scrunchies and rubber bands trying to put it in a style and I burst into tears type of hair

But this hair, helped me build patience

This kinky ish

This fabulousness

Can never be copied

Not to quote the times my hair has been misappropriated in the media

But I let that slide

no sequel of a movie is better than the original

See My hair, is a trendsetter

My hair speaks Ebonics

Sorry not sorry if it’s not proper enough for your understanding

But my hair’s electrifying

Defies gravity in all of its uniqueness

The only hair type to ever grow upwards

In 3rd grade I uttered

“Why is my hair not straight like Samanthas”

Then I realized it was never meant to be

This 4C

Is so uniquely me

But my hair has been through struggles

Not the struggle that I can’t do a French braid without pro style black gel no,

The struggle that black girls are taught young not to love their natural hair

The struggle that Barbie took 50 years to have a doll look like me

The struggle that perming it at age 12 was the only way to be beautiful in society

Because Hair is not just hair for me

This hair guided my ancestors through slavery

This hair was savory

As we used butter and bacon grease as means to moisturize

Because at the time

Black hair wasn’t made of any value

It was then deemed a commodity

This hair, doesn’t have laws protecting it from discrimination in the state of Georgia

So we must fight

Fight like our ancestors who died in oceans because death was better than bondage

Fight until they hear our voices scream from the rooftops of Congress

Fight until every loc, curl, braid, twist and weave is seen as equals from our kitchen to the backyard

Ion know bout y’all but My hair shows a journey

My hair shows a journey I don’t think you have the patience for

This hair so kinky you would think it was a super freak

This hair so beautiful you would think it was Julius the way it stabs at the heart and tells you what the true meaning of beauty is

This hair so holy only Moses could part it

And this hair stands for generations of the oppressed

And I’ll represent them till death with no hesitation

So when they say my hair needs to be fixed I tell them you are mistaken

Because you can’t fix what was never broken

262

Spoken Word Northside High School Warner Robins, GA

Krish Mysoor

LET THE CHILDREN CRY

WE HEAR OVER BLACK---

The sound of rain. It offers an ambiguous calm. A calm that is interrupted by the cries of a child.

INT. ATTIC - NIGHT

ROHIT AGARWAL (8) cries, head in arms, on a ping pong table. He has on his US National Team jersey and as we PUSH closer in, his paddle is broken in two, with the slam mark next to him on the table. His father, SUNIL AGARWAL (52) bursts in and runs toward the table.

SUNIL

What is this. What is this beta.

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

ARJUN AGARWAL (16, Indian American, tall and thin with curly jet-black hair) sits at the desk of his modest bedroom, covered in old movie posters and filled with camera gear. He listens to the cries and yells from the attic above him.

SUNIL (O.S.)

This is the third paddle you’ve broken in the last-

ROHIT (O.S., still in tears)

I don’t want another paddle; I don’t want to play.

SUNIL (O.S.)

You’re on the national team beta. You’re the youngest in history. You don’t want to play? Come on, let’s play a game right now. Like when I first taught you.

Arjun sighs and tunes out. He turns to the envelope on his desk.

CLOSE IN on the envelope. Sent from “The Oakmont School, Palo Alto CA”, delivered to “Arjun Agarwal.” The envelope is hastily opened to reveal a slip of paper reading:

“Arjun Agarwal,

The Oakmont School has been consistently ranked the best private high school in the United States of America and frequently places on international lists. In the last year, 2021, 90% of our students matriculated to Ivy League universities, and we have retained a graduation rate of 100% since our founding in 1947. When you were accepted to this institution, your acceptance was conditioned by sustained academic performance that meets the level of your peers and respects our history of excellence. Unfortunately, your previous semester grades, specifically in AP Calculus with Mrs. Machevsky, have not met said condition. We are officially placing you on”

We now see ARJUN (V.O.)

Academic--probation...

The camera ZOOMS in to READ

“Failure to maintain at least a B average in this current semester (semester 2, junior year for future reference) will result in further punishment, expulsion.”

He hears a knock on his door and repulses back from his desk.

SUNIL

(O.S, through the door) Arjun, what was that letter about?

263

Play or Script

School

Greenhill

Addison, TX

Arjun grabs the letter and crumples it, looking for a place to hide it.

ARJUN

(hesitating)

Uh...

He looks at the mixed-up Rubik’s cube on his desk.

ARJUN (CONT’D)

There’s uh, there’s a Rubik’s cube competition at school.

SUNIL

(O.S, walking away from the door) Oh.

He faintly follows with,

SUNIL (CONT’D)

(O.S, very quiet) They sent a letter for that?

Arjun spots his open second-story window and throws the crumpled letter out of it, landing in a bush. Through the window he retains a look of simultaneous fear and intense panic.

INT. CLASSROOM - DAY

MRS. MACHEVSKY (age, unknown but often the subject of rumors) hands ARJUN his freshly graded Calculus exam with a big, looming, D circled in red ink at the top. Arjun attempts to speak but swallows his words.

ERIC LEE (16, Chinese American) and ALLISON SHAH (17, Egyptian-American), of whom Arjun sits directly in between of, peek at Arjun’s paper.

ERIC

Hey Arjun, it’s gonna be sad and all when you get kicked out of this class, but at least I’ll get to take your seat.

He not so subtly makes his A+ test paper visible to Arjun and smiles at Allison.

ALLISON

Arjun, has anyone ever told you that you look like that creepy guy in every anime that no one likes and ends up abducting and murdering the girl at the end?

Silence, before...

Eric and Allison break into a maniacal laughter.

INT. BATHROOM - MOMENTS LATER

Arjun bends over a stall, about to puke. He overhears some students talking.

VOICE 1

(O.S.)

Machevsky got away with murder in 1999.

VOICE 2

(O.S.) No shot.

(O.S.)

VOICE 1

Vehicular manslaughter. She ran over a pest control specialist and his sixteen-year-old second-nephew.

BARGHGHGHH. Arjun VOMITS and the two other students, confused and frightened by the noise, leave.

VOICE 1 (CONT’D)

(O.S, faintly)

That’s their spirit’s man. They say she buried them under the building during its construction.

264

Arjun stands awkwardly in the corner of a bustling family and friends Diwali party. Little kids light firecrackers and set up rangoli with their parents. SUNIL introduces his son to SHARAD UNCLE (64). He flaunts his pride and joy, his Scripps Spelling Bee 1975 runner up medal, around his neck. God.

SUNIL

Beta, say hi to Sharad Uncle.

ARJUN

Hi-

Sunil walks away for a moment.

SHARAD

Look at you, Oakmont kid. Mujhe garv hai. So, what’s it going to be, Harvard or Princeton.

ARJUN

Well actually uh, I was thinking about NYU for film school. Oakmont doesn’t really have any film classes or uh, any arts, so I’ve kinda just been doing it on my own...but with school there’s not much ti-

Sharad drinks a sip of laci and spits it out, unable to contain his laughter. He notions Sunil to come over.

SHARAD

Your beta is a funny one ha. Film school.

Sunil looks infur-----SWING! The door SWINGS open to reveal Palo Alto’s golden child, ISHAAN SHAH (22). All of the parents and kids alike swarm to the door to greet him.

ISHAAN

Thank you all. Thank you all.

SIMA AUNTIE (58) is in tears. She isn’t related to him.

SIMA

But you said you couldn’t make it?

ISHAAN

I got out of the developer’s conference I was supposed to go to in Switzerland. And I haven’t seen all ya’ll since the Stanford graduation.

He doesn’t seem to let anyone forget. Arjun sighs, but Ishaan spots him over the crowd and walks over.

ISHAAN (CONT’D)

Is that who I think it is? Arjun, goddamn, Agarwal, the last time I saw you, you pissed your pants when we lit the candle. Got that all over my white sweater.

ARJUN

Yeah. My aim was pretty good.

ISHAAN

What-

ARJUN

So, what does that startup you’re working at do again? Acid or some-

ISHAAN

Acidify. We like to describe it as like Shopify meets the knowledge economy.

Everyone laughs at Ishaan.

ARJUN

What does that even mean bro? The knowledge economy.

265 INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

He gets visibly nervous before----

ISHAAN (CONT’D)

Is that who I think it is? Arjun, goddamn Agarwal, the lat time I saw you, you pissed your pants when we lit the candle. Got that all over my white sweater.

Arjun snaps back to reality.

Uh-

Still just as awkward.

ARJUN

ISHAAN

Ishaan moves on to the others. Arjun spots a man standing in a suit alone in the corner, he looks familiar. It’s RISHI BHATT (48). He walks up to him.

ARJUN

Hey, you’re Rishi right, you were in that show, as a kid, yeah, I saw a reru-

RISHI

Sharad

What do you want?

ARJUN

I didn’t know you were from here, I want to be a filmmaker, maybe even acting too, it’s-

Uncle hands Rishi a dirty plate which he takes to the sink.

SHARAD

Don’t give me that look. At least someone’s giving you a job.

As the crowd settles down from Ishaan’s entrance, a banging noise is heard from the attic and followed by crying. Sunil runs upstairs, embarrassed.

SUNIL

(O.S., faint)

If I hear you cry again beta. I told you not today.

Rohit continues.

(O.S.)

SUNIL (CONT’D)

WHAT is it. USE YOUR WORDS!

The party has come to a complete standstill. Rishi in the corner next to Arjun, speaks under his breath.

RISHI

When little kids cry people tell them to use their words, but what if they want to cry because that’s a human expression that was given to them.

Arjun looks confused, but he nods, agreeing.

INT. CLASSROOM - DAY

A sign reads “Mock College Interviews” on the door.

BEGIN MONTAGE -- (cut between multiple students staring directly at the camera, the mock admissions officer)

ALLISON

I’m a honors student, on track to have a 4.3 GPA, by the end of the year. Unweighted.

266

ISHAAN It’s-it’s

RAJAN

I placed second in the worldwide Intel Science and Engineering Fair, and won robotics regionals twice, as well as having won-

AARON

Won the state tournament in debate- twice-the first time for a team from Califo-

JACOB

started a nonprofit that delivers succulents to people’s doorsteps. Well, I guess it’s not really a nonprofit but that’s what my sister told me to say it wa-

RACHEL

Chess grandmaster, former water polo captain-

ARYA

Published author in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and I-

DORY

I competed at the 2016 Olympics but now I’m retired and working on a memoir.

CUT TO-Arjun, sitting in the same chair as everyone else, except he has absolutely nothing to offer.

ARJUN

I played on the freshman basketball team last year-uh-as a sophomore and, well I guess I didn’t really play per say more of a-uh

Arjun looks visibly uncomfortable and gets out of his chair.

ARJUN (CONT’D)

Would you excuse me for a moment?

INT. BATHROOM STALL - MOMENTS LATER

Once again, Arjun bends over the same stall, vomiting. He hears some more voices, whispering.

VOICE 1

(O.S.)

We need one more person otherwise this whole thing will fail.

VOICE 2

(O.S.)

Don’t you think this is wrong.

VOICE 1

It’s not like we’re learning anything. Everyone’s cheating in their own way and my grade is sufferiArjun finishes puking and puts his ear to the stall door. He’s curious.

VOICE 3

(O.S.) (O.S.)

BE QUIET!

VOICE 1

For what there’s no one else herSLIP! BANG! Arjun’s shoe slips and he bangs his head on the stall door.

VOICE 1 (CONT’D)

(O.S.)

SHIT! (beat)

VOICE 3

(O.S., quietly) Everyone, calm.

267

Who’s there?

Arjun slowly opens the stall door and peeks over it to find ISHA (17), OLIVER (17), and ORION (16) staring directly at him.

OLIVER (has a British accent) Who are you supposed to be?

ARJUN

I’m Arjun, uh, I’m sorry is that accent Britis-

OLIVER I transferred here from the UK.

ARJUN

Ok, that makes sense uh I don’t want any trouble so I’m just gonnaHe starts to walk out before-

ISHA

Wait!

Arjun freezes in his tracks. Isha, Orion, and Oliver all look at each other and nod.

INT. COMPUTER LAB - NIGHT

Isha, Oliver, and Orion stand around a projector screen.

ISHA

You’re gonna want to sit down for this.

Arjun sits down on a chair facing the screen, which suddenly lights up to a 1999 mugshot of Mrs. Machevksy.

ISHA (CONT’D)

Shit, wrong slide.

ARJUN (muttering)

It’s true.

He fiddles with the button until-

Here it is.

ISHA

The projector displays an intricate blueprint of the Oakmont Science and Engineering building.

It’s a blueprint.

Of this building. She expects him to be more surprised.

There’s another floor.

ARJUN

ISHA

OLIVER

Oliver throws a tennis ball at the floor. There’s a sound. It’s hollow.

OLIVER (CONT’D)

A basement of sorts, that was never disclosed to students.

ORION

Wait, there’s another floor? My Grandma used to tell me that if a place is underground it’s bad luck. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it stems back from one of the scriptures-

268

VOICE 3 (CONT’D) (O.S.)

Orion.

Sorry.

He looks at Arjun.

ISHA

ORION (nodding, muttering)

Arjun nods.

ORION (CONT’D)

It’s a problem I have, talking too much.

ARJUN

What’s in this basement.

OLIVER

The answers.

To what?

ARJUN

Isha changes the slide to an image of Mrs. Machevsky unlocking a door with an intricate code and carrying a binder inside.

ARJUN (CONT’D)

That’s the-

OLIVER

The binder from class, that she grades with.

ISHA

Our theory is that there are hundreds of them written during the summer and they store them underground during the year.

ARJUN

Why do you need me?

Our decoy got sick.

Decoy?

ISHA

ARJUN

INT. SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING BUILDING - AFTERNOON

The clock strikes 4:30 and class is dismissed. Isha leaves Mrs. Machevsky’s room and runs to the computer lab.

INT. COMPUTER LAB - MOMENTS LATER

She opens her computer and runs a code to disable the security cameras.

ISHA (V.O.)

I come to the lab and disable the cameras.

INT. HALLWAY - SAME TIME

The red light on the cameras turns off.

INT. HALLWAY - MOMENTS LATER

Mrs. Machevsky walks down the hallway with one of the binders and, after entering a ridiculously long code, enters the door. After it closes Oliver leaves a tennis ball in its corner.

269

and

blankly.

Isha

Oliver stare at Orion

OLIVER (V.O.)

I leave the bait.

INT. OTHER SIDE OF THE HALLWAY - SAME TIME

JANITOR JIM (56) cleans the floor of the neighboring hallway.

ORION (V.O.)

I-what do I do again?

ISHA (V.O.)

The janitor.

Orion approaches the janitor and begins talking to him.

ORION (V.O.)

Right, I distract Janitor Jim.

ISHA (V.O.)

Jim?

ORION (V.O.)

I don’t know if that’s his actual name, I just thought he should have a name.

Orion inspects one of Janitor Jim’s mops.

ORION (CONT’D)

Oh, this is one of those new models right.

Janitor Jim nods.

ORION (CONT’D)

My cousin-he works at In’n’out - he was telling me that they just got these new models in from Detroit, really top of the line I’m sure you-

INT. HALLWAY - SAME TIME

With the door slightly propped open by the tennis ball, Oliver runs to the other side of the hallway and hides.

ARJUN (V.O.)

And me?

ISHA (V.O.)

The decoy.

As Mrs. Machevsky leaves the room, in slow-motion, Arjun grabs the tennis ball off the floor. As the door begins to close behind Machevsky--

INT. COMPUTER LAB - SAME TIME

Isha runs another code.

INT. HALLWAY - SAME TIME

The code causes the doors lock to release as it closes, thus propping it open.

270

ARJUN

Sorry Mrs. Machevsky, I dropped my tennis ball.

MRS. MACHEVKSY

You know you’re not supposed to play with those in here.

ARJUN

I know, it won’t happen again

ISHA (V.O.)

Make sure she doesn’t look behind her.

As Mrs. Machevsky turns back to check that the door is locked-

ARJUN (screaming)

ARGHGHHGHG!

What in the-

MRS. MACHEVKSY

ARJUN (back to normal)

Sorry I thought my, uh, my dog died. But he’s ok.

Mrs. Machevsky walks off, confusedly.

ISHA (V.O.)

If we can all do that, we’re in.

Isha, Oliver, and Orion reunite with Arjun and they all walk through the door.

INT. STAIRWELL - MOMENTS LATER

They walk down a semi-long downwards staircase. On the way Arjun spots the outline of a skeleton and shudders.

INT. BASEMENT WAREHOUSE - MOMENTS LATER

An expansive warehouse. On it is a wall, sorted alphabetically, with a binder of answer keys for every academic course.

OLIVER

The answers.

Isha runs towards the wall before--

Arjun??

ERIC

They turn to find ERIC and ALLISON combing through a pile of binders in the corner.

ERIC (CONT’D)

What are you doing here?

ARJUN

What are you doing here?

ERIC (CONT’D)

Well, I guess we both know what we are doing here. This is the first time I’ve seen you here this year though, how’d you find out about it?

ARJUN (muttering)

But you guys, you guys acted so-

271

ISHA

How’d you get in here?

ERIC

Oh, there’s a back entrance.

Eric points to a small door on the side of the basement.

ERIC (CONT’D)

They don’t even bother to lock it. We just come in whenever we hear Machevsky and the other teachers leaving.

Isha, Oliver, Orion, and Arjun look at each other in pure shock and minor disappointment in the complicated route they took.

ERIC (CONT’D)

Why, what did you all do?

ALLISON

I paid the Janitor.

ORION

(muttering, in even more shock) Jim...

BANG! The side door swings open and a parade of tens of students flock into the room. RAJAN, AARON, JACOB, RACHEL, ARYA, DORY (everyone from the mock college admission montage).

ERIC

What’s up ya’ll. Let’s study up for tomorrow, am I right?

It’s a whole party. One kid brought a speaker, and everyone is having a great time except Arjun, Isha, Orion, and Oliver who stand expressionless and whose two-month plan turned out to be both already done by half the student body and completely overcomplicated.

In the midst of this chaos--SWING!

The kids hear the main door swing open. Everyone freezes and turns to the stairwell. THUD, THUD, PLOP, THUD, someone is walking down the staircase---it’s

Mrs. Machevksy, who forgot her scarf.

At the sight of almost all her students pouring through the answer keys she FAINTS and collapses to the floor. Everyone looks on in shock.

OLIVER (in an American accent) My god.

ORION

Wait, say that again.

OLIVER (now in a British accent) What? My god.

These two are the only ones talking while everyone is still frozen and speechless.

ORION

No, no, no, you had an American accent the first time you said that. My brother told me once that-

OLIVER

(in his American accent and frustrated) FINE, I’m American and I lied about being British because I don’t really have any personality traits. You got me. Congrats.

ORION

Yeah. Thanks.

272

The silence then resumes. Arjun looks around in horror and confusion. Everything was a lie. ERIC

What if we kill Machevsky?

Everyone looks at each other and shouts in agreement. They begin to run towards her, before--

ARJUN

STOP! We-aren’t-you--how are you all so blind?

They all freeze, look at Arjun for a moment, and then chase after him. One of them has a baseball bat. They chase him through the staircases and eventually through the hallway.

INT. KITCHEN TABLE - MORNING

CLOSE IN on a copy of the OAKMONT TIMES, Oakmont’s student run newspaper. The front-page story on the newest issue reads

“The Final Issue: A Cheating Scandal destroys our institution to its very core.”

“70% of the student body were found in connection to a large-scale cheating operation that gave them access to the library of answer keys stored underneath the Science and Engineering Building. Unable to properly punish (expell) that many of the students without the school itself ceasing to function, and with the leakage of this story to media outlets, thus losing Oakmont almost all credibility with ivy league institutions, the Oakmont School will be forced to”

The camera ZOOMS in.

“suspend all further operations on its 75th anniversary. This event will most definitely leave a stain on all students involved and prevent them from admission to most universities, let alone other high schools.”

Sunil sighs with a hint of both disappointment and pure sadness, and crumbles up the paper, throwing it out the window, where it lands slowly in the same bush along with Arjun’s initial letter.

EXT. PICNIC TABLES - SAME TIME

Arjun lays on the picnic tables near the entrance of the school, staring at the clear sky.

Around him, news reporters attempt to enter the gates, faculty walk out with cardboard boxes, and other students say their last goodbyes.

He spots his father’s car and slowly walks over.

INT. CAR - MOMENTS LATER

Arjun sits in the back instead of the front. No words are exchanged.

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

On this October night, the rain falls down once again. Immediately upon entering his room, Arjun notices the absence of his movie posters, his camera gear, and his notebooks.

INT. ATTIC - SAME TIME

Rohit sits on the ping pong table, crying. Next to him, the once empty attic is now piled with Arjun’s items, in clear containers labeled “GOODWILL.”

INT. BEDROOM - SAME TIME

Arjun sits on his bed. What’s left behind is a lens cap from his camera. He holds it and begins to cry over the rain.

FADE TO BLACK.

273

Claire Nam

PEAKHEIGHT

Mother eyes the space above me, the air seemingly pushing my head down back into my body, crushing growth plates. Neomu jageo1 , she says, as she wraps my limbs in measuring tapes then pulls, yanking them from their sockets. She curses when I curiously reveal my red-stained panties – no no no no too early andwae2. She runs her hands down my legs, reaching out as if to confirm that what she sees is true, that the artificial lighting and shadow is not just an illusion. She forms rings around my ankles with her hands and I know she is searching: a slice of pale moon, a wafer tibia, space, space, space. When her hands wrap instead around her own tree-trunk stumps, she consults the “ologists.” Dr. H says that when girls get their period, they only have growth spurts for two more years.

That night, for my eleventh birthday, Mother and I slit open my esophagus and stuff it with fibers and milk.

Mother invites me into her bedroom. Her face is illuminated by the blue glow of her iPad screen. Neon tabloid headings in Korean print incandesce into the room. I cannot understand what they say but they look vibrant and artificial. Baljomjoba3 , she says, give me your legs . I lay down next to her and I’m reminded of the night of porcupine syringes, the flush of hormones injected into my veins. Is this plastic surgery?– no, it’s like acupuncture! My mother, a fierce adversary of anything manual and laborious, grabs my calves. She begins to squeeze my legs. Her body rocks back and forth almost mechanically as she digs the heels of her palms into my limbs, transferring the weight of her body and will into mine . Squeeze, release, squeeze, release , she murmurs to herself. Our limbs merge in a hot, aching equilibrium. Tendons and ligaments and cartilage crush into each other as my mother, the scientist, performs the transfusion. By the hundredth squeeze, her dark hair has been transfigured into a loose topknot and holographic molecules of sweat gleam on her forehead, emblazoned by the flashing tabloids. When the Samsung ringtone goes off, merrily announcing my bedtime, she kisses me goodnight and shuts the door. This becomes a nightly routine.

I took my first shower when I was six. That year, my mother deemed that I could graduate from the guest quarter bathroom to the master bathroom upstairs. Maybe it was my mastery over the “starfish” pose in survival swim class or my notable dexterity with a colored pencil – something about me was grown enough for the change. She would get in the shower with me everyday for a week and demonstrate each step, carefully and deliberately moving through the procedure like a dance. She stood straight up and combed the shampoo from her hair in long, sweeping strokes. The soap suds always traveled in a steady stream down the curvature of her back, never touching the front of her body.

On my twelfth birthday, Mother watches through the glass door as I bend my head down to let the water soak the nape of my neck. Through the roar and fog of the cascading water, I catch a glimpse of her unmoving figure. The shampoo bottles that she had been carefully filing away are now strewn at her feet. She opens the shower door and eyes my naked body. My body has always been a shared space between my mother and I, a vessel for her to float in and out of, clipping and cleaning me like a home garden. Her discernment does not intimidate me. It isn’t until the cold air scatters goosebumps across my skin and her hand slaps

my chin upwards that I realize today she is not here to nurture . In China, people never bow their heads in the shower because it is a sign of submission. It’s not always a gesture of respect. I want to say: But I’m not Chinese? My mother leaves me in the hands of physics. Scorching water collides with my outstretched tongue.

I never quite understood what my mother was doing in those mornings. She would spend hours in the mirror squeezing handfuls of flesh on her leg, holding the pooch of her belly, twisting her neck and body to get a glimpse of her back. She would wrinkle her nose at her underarms that swung too much when she shook them, peering fiercely into the glass surface. I want to tell her that, unlike when you are a teenager, nobody cares what you look like when you’re fifty. I try to exercise empathy. It must be an unfortunate feeling to be trapped by your own loosening skin, a constant paradox with no solution. I wonder if my mother ever considered her body to be a vessel as well, a space that is meant to expand and grow wide so that you can carry more of yourself. Mother later tells me she did feel that way once, during pregnancy.

The PEAKHEIGHT pills are smooth, round, and milky. They bloat in my stomach along with the NON-GMO beef, organic fruit, and whole milk my mother has stitched into my stomach that evening. Later that night, the organic filaments cut my tongue as my stomach heaves white chalk from my body.

My Korean friends are growing to be pale, willowy, and gorgeous. My mother asks to see pictures of new high school friends. In the polaroid, we are dressed in pink sequins and shiny lip gloss. My homecoming date has made sure to take the picture from a low angle to make our legs look longer, just as I requested. Ummuh, she points to Soohyun. That one is so tall, gnomeo yeppuda4 I point to Amelia, she’s tall too. My mother nods but does not say anything more. I know what she’s thinking: yes, but she’s white, so it doesn’t matter.

Ms. V, my social studies teacher, encourages the class to pursue a research project about our home country for extra credit. The New York Times is talking about the Korean-Japanese trade war and Parasite ’s Oscar nomination. I feel a surge of patriotism, but I’m uncomfortably comfortable in the narrator’s voice, stuck viewing my country from a third-party perspective, a mere satellite in space. I migrate to Naver and Missy U.S.A. , the unifying blogs for teenagers and moms across South Korea. There is something validating about being familiar with the cartoony greens and pinks of Korean news outlets. Trending first in “media” is the comic Lookism. I do a quick Google search and my world shifts. Lookism: The discriminatory treatment of physically unattractive people. It occurs in a variety of settings, including dating, social environments, and workplaces.

The internet algorithms lead me through an echo chamber of information. During Japanese colonialism in the 1940s, Korean citizens sought to establish their own nationality not just culturally but also physically, claiming to have taller and stronger limbs than

274

Creative Nonfiction

Horace Greeley High School Chappaqua, NY

***

1. Too small 2. Impossible 3. Give me your legs 4. so pretty

any of their Mongolian counterparts. In the 1990s, the IMF economic crisis sent Korean people scrambling to make themselves as attractive as possible in a brutal job market. Suddenly, I understand why my mother was so secluded during her dances in the mirror. For those brief minutes in the morning, my mother had taken the form of an entirely new woman. The woman she had sacrificed for motherhood. The woman she had never grieved.

Ms. V asks to use my article as a class example. What a freaky story! My mother congratulates me but does not read my article. This isn’t out of the ordinary. She has never attempted to read any of my writing pieces. I’m not sure if it’s because of the language barrier or because she’s just uninterested, but I don’t press her. She was never an intended audience anyway.

On the other hand, it seems that the news of my article has spread to my entire town. So, do the men get plastic surgery too? a dad asks me at the winter orchestra concert.

As I progress in my high school years, a new group of male suitors emerge from the sea of white boys that love to flirt by debating what color your eyes are. Bluish-green? Aquamarine? Emerald with a hint of turquoise? This shiny new group of boys prefer to compliment our race rather than anything else. All of a sudden, my Asian friends and I are valuable on the market. We learn that they enjoy watching anime in their free time, their favorite food is sushi, and they listen to Kpop for the “lyrics” (this is a joke, they later clarify). I am flattered by their interest in my culture and, most of all, by their flamboyant expressions of attraction for my appearance. 11:52pm from Nathan: don’t say that about yourself, you’re super petite and hot ;) ***

On the day of the Atlanta spa shootings, I learn yet another word. Festishization: A sexual fascination with things not inherently sexual, like race, gender, sexuality, or body type. Fetishization. Its soft syllables remind me of the French word, chuchotement (a hushed whisper), but it does not roll out of my mouth the same way. A Wikipedia search adds skins to my tongue. In the media, sexualized Asian characters are often depicted as small, submissive, and obedient figures.

My mother had always taught me vicious methods of navigating marriage and men, even though her own relationship with my dad was stable . If the husband cheats on you, you cheat on him. Your daddy makes good money so that your husband knows you have a powerful family. Don’t get married if you don’t want to. I always considered myself lucky to have parents with a healthy marriage and wondered why she was so apprehensive about the subject. I revisit Nathan’s text. I wonder if my size had been the enticing factor or if I had somehow played into his fantasy image during our flirtatious nightly texts. His commercialized desire disgusts me. That night, swallowing the PEAKHEIGHT pills is rebellion.

age, half with language. Tourists. My mother grips my hand tightly as she leads me back to our car.

The “ologists” inform my mother that over the past year, I have only grown half an inch. This means that my growth spurts have come to an end and I will remain the same height for the rest of my life. That night, my mother does not call me into her bedroom for a massage nor feed me my PEAKHEIGHT pills. When I pass by her bedroom I can hear her weeping, mourning a world where her child will always be looked down on, mourning the heritage of a daughter, mourning the broken contracts of a mother. I lay down next to her. The room is dark and static save for the quiet hum of the air conditioning. I curl my body next to her and for a moment we are floating symbiotic in a womb. My body, a vessel for her anger, reminding her that although it is small, it has always been elastic enough to hold the both of us.

Unlike my suburban, Jewish-dominated hometown, I can easily feel a sense of belonging with NYC crowds. Mother claims she is a city girl because she was born in Seoul, but in the city, she becomes neurotic. She stands taller and straighter than she usually does, shouldering her way briskly through the crowd. She talks louder than usual to the waitresses who sit us down, as if she is afraid that they will not hear her voice. As the hibachi chefs bellow happy birthday! Happy fifteenth birthday to you and clang their spatulas on the metal stove, she smiles but does not try to sing along. When we walk back out in the evening, I can’t help but imagine how we must look: two small, skinny Asian women weaving through the peanut-crunching crowd, half-armed with

275

***

Zora Nooks

276

Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH

Photography

Silver

2022

To the Moon (Series 1 of 5)

gelatin print

Alicia Nordmeyer

Greenhouse

Sometimes, when I lie on the lawn, I can almost see the cork in the sky and the glass walls falling down around us. We have been here, wherever here is, for nearly six years now. On a shelf in a bedroom, I imagine. Or on a table in a lab, surrounded by large and shadowy figures in white coats.

Are they what we used to call angels?

I close my eyes against the thought and the too-blue sky, against the cotton ball clouds, and a sun that doesn’t hurt to stare at. It won’t blind me even if I wanted it to.

“What are you doing?”

I open my eyes to my little brother standing over me, nudging my side with his foot. “Nothing,” I say and roll over.

“I want to go to the plaza,” Ian demands, kicking me harder.

“Stop that,” I say and snatch his ankle. He wobbles on one leg. I put his foot down and sit up. In front of me is the busted part of our picket fence.

“C’mon!” Ian whines.

“I’m busy.” I glance at the sky and look back at him. “Besides, it looks like it’s going to rain anyway.”

Ian cranes his neck. “How can you tell?”

The excuse comes out of my mouth before I have time to think about it and remember that the clouds don’t darken here. They don’t move. We’re not even sure if that is where the rain comes from anymore.

“I can smell it.”

“Liar,” Ian chants at me. “Wanna know how I know?”

“Not really.”

“It’s Tuesday and not Sunday,” he says, and I feel sick. Here, it rains on a schedule: one hour, once a week, from three to four in the afternoon.

I choke on an attempt at a deep breath. Thinking about this place too hard feels like putting a grocery bag over your head and suffocating— it’s too plastic.

“Are you okay?” Ian asks me.

“Allergies,” I say, forgetting once again that he doesn’t know what those are either.

“Here” is a mis-matched neighborhood. 48 houses from different American suburbs, all neatly rearranged on the curb of an infinity symbol. We have two roads, Avenue St. and Street Ave. They intersect at a weird little roundabout framed by a playground and a grocery store.

That’s what Ian means when he says the plaza.

I let him walk ahead of me. He’s restless, antsy, and doesn’t like to be seen with his big sister. Apparently, I’m embarrassing.

I walk far enough behind Ian to let him feel free but still keep him in my line of sight. Even though here is much safer than our neighborhood back home, Mom still doesn’t let Ian walk around by himself.

My brother hops over the thick, white lines that stretch across the width of the road. I don’t think he realizes that they’re letters yet. The word is written so big that it’s hard to tell what it is when you’re walking across it. I don’t know what I’ll say to him when he asks me why “HELP” in big, block letters is painted on the pavement.

Mr. and Mrs. Mathers did that in the first few months of being here, hoping that maybe an airplane or something would fly by. So far there have been no airplanes, no birds— nothing extra in the sky. We don’t even have stars anymore. Just a construction paper moon, a perfect sickle, and safety-proofed sun.

My Dad stopped tucking me into bed when I was ten but he started again the first week we got here.

“I’m going to figure this out sweetie, don’t even worry about it,” he’d tell me even though I wouldn’t say anything. I knew he didn’t know what was going on any more than I did.

“We’ll be back home soon. I promise.”

The closer we get to the roundabout, the faster I walk, slowly closing the gap between Ian and me. He stops in front of a yellow house.

Mrs. Evenson is standing in her front lawn, wrangling a green garden hose. She wears a big floppy hat and peachy colors. She says something to my brother to make him pause, he says something back. Her laugh is almost a bellow; I can still hear it from a driveway away.

“Eliza!” she says when I’m close enough for her to see me. I come up behind Ian and rest my hands on the back of his shoulders.

“Hey! How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she tells me. “Just fine. Where are y’all two headed on a beautiful day like today?”

It’s always a beautiful day.

I bite my lip. “Just to the park.”

She nods and puts her thumb over the spout of the hose. The water sprays out in a fan over the lawn. I hold my teeth together to hold in everything I’m thinking but shouldn’t say aloud. The grass doesn’t grow anymore.

Nothing does. Nothing green has changed since the day we got here. Mrs. Evenson knows this but she plays house anyway. I can’t tell if it’s some sort of coping mechanism or some sort of delusion. I turn to walk away from her backyard. Ian is already two houses in front of me, rounding the curve of the road that will put him in view of the roundabout.

“Robert Callahan was in town this morning causing quite the commotion,” Mrs. Evenson calls after me. I look back. “A lot of people aren’t very happy with him at the moment. Be careful, okay?”

“We will, thank you for the heads up.”

I half walk, half jog to catch up to Ian. I grab his hand even though he fights me. “Just until we get to the park.”

“Why?” He whines. “Because.”

I understand why Mom doesn’t let Ian wander around here by himself. She wants to keep him away from the crazies. I was eleven when we got displaced, but Ian was two. He doesn’t remember the world before or how big it used to be and he doesn’t understand why we are all— to some degree— losing our minds. I don’t know how to explain it to him. ***

After eight months of being here, my dad got quiet. He stopped talking as much, he stopped eating. I would see him sitting on the couch, chin in his hand, staring at nothing and thinking about everything else.

“Dad,” I said to him once in the afternoon. “Are you okay?” He didn’t say anything. Then, all at once, he got up from the couch and walked out the front door. I followed him out onto the steps. He disappeared around the side of the house and came back with an axe he had pulled from the cellar.

I watched him bring the axe down on the picket fence once… twice… a dozen times until the only thing he was striking was the ground. After that, he threw the axe down on the lawn and took a step back, studying his work. Then he walked back towards the house.

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Short

Story Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

***

“Just to see,” he said when he passed me in the same voice he used to talk to any other adult. “Just to see.”

Just to see if it would break like wood or plastic.

We don’t know how we got here, if we were moved or our houses were. I can picture it both ways. The hand of God or some unholy machine, ripping our houses up from the ground by the roots and replanting them here. Or masked figures that stole us from our beds while we were sleeping, depositing us into replica homes like plants into a terrarium. Either seems impossible, but in my opinion, the ladder is more likely.

In the beginning, there were people that believed that we were not physically displaced but our consciousness was. Todd and Emily Beckett, for example. Twelve days after we were displaced, the young couple lit their house on fire. We don’t know why they did it, if it was to send a distress signal or a message to whoever put us here that might be watching— we never got the chance to ask. Two days after the fire was put out, they killed themselves.

When we cross the threshold of the park, I let Ian go. He runs behind the play structure, out of sight. Two of the eight kids that exist in the neighborhood are here, an eight-year-old girl and another nine-year-old boy. He plays with them. I sit down beside the playground to watch.

I start pulling the grass, shredding it into paper confetti. I like knowing that I am not the only destructible thing here.

Sometime during our third year here, Dad came home dirty, sweaty, and unusually happy. “John Pearson is a genius,” he proclaimed to the house. He found Mom and me lounging in the living room, reading. We looked up at him. “An escape tunnel.”

“What?” The word was out of my mouth before I was able to fully process what he was saying.

“We started digging this morning.” Before Mom and I could ask him any more questions, he takes to the stairs, whistling every step of the way.

In my sixth-grade science class, we learned about lima beans. Mrs. Camby planted a few right outside the classroom and then she gave us all plastic cups. We measured soil and planted the bean exactly three-quarters of an inch down. We used eyedroppers to water them every other day and every other day we would check the plants outside. She had us write our observations in a green composition notebook.

“Which do you think will grow better?” Mrs. Camby asked us on the first day of the experiment. Almost everyone said the plants inside.

I have a small pile of shredded grass now. The more I think about plants, the more I think about oxygen. If the plants here don’t grow then how do we breathe?

What if the air stops working? What if whoever or whatever has been restocking the shelves in the grocery store and making it rain and making the sun go up and down just stop?

I have to stop thinking about it because it’s already starting to feel like styrofoam peanuts have been shoved up my nose. I have to open my mouth before my lips become like the seal of a Ziploc bag and I forget how to breathe entirely.

the “real world” he talks about the ocean and the way red and orange bleed together when the sun sets. Mom talks quietly about climate change and the shootings that would take place outside our house, the people that were left bleeding on the sidewalk.

“I don’t know Honey, maybe it’s not so bad,” I remember her saying. This was a little over a year ago. They were talking in the kitchen after they thought Ian and I had fallen asleep. I hovered on the stairwell, out of sight.

“Are you kidding me, Catherine?” My dad responded. I heard a noise like a chair being pushed back.

“I’m just saying—”

“No, because you don’t even know what you’re saying,” he interrupted her. “I work hard every day to try and find a way back home so that you and me and Eliza can go back to our real lives.” He paused for a moment. “So that Ian has a chance to experience the real world.”

“I know,” my mom answered quietly. I haven’t heard her say anything good about here ever since.

I have a small pile of grass by the time a familiar, middleaged man crosses the street and positions himself in the center of the roundabout like it’s a stage. He wears clean clothes and holds a wine-colored book under his arm.

“Hear me!” Robert Callahan calls out to the people minding their business. “Neighbors, friends…” Parents on the park bench, passersby in the parking lot, women talking in clusters, and men standing around the chasm in the Pearson’s backyard, glance at him. Most of the people looking at Callahan don’t agree with what he’s about to say.

Dad must have been in the hole when we were walking over here but I see him now. In a minute, when Callahan’s routine is up, I will get Ian’s attention and we will go over there.

“I come to share with you a gospel,” Callahan says and opens the book. He holds it up to the light and I realize it’s too small to be a bible.

“This truth we have tried to deny has become inevitable. For too long, we have tried to escape this place. We have called it a prison, ourselves the incarcerated, but I ask you to consider the hand of our jailer, if we should even call him that.”

Callahan, a charlatan preacher, likes to compare the force that put us here to God.

I watch my father. He stands with his arms crossed and his head held high. Even from a distance, I can tell that he is angry.

“Tell me, has he been cruel to us, punished or mistreated us?” Callahan pauses for dramatic effect. “No. A provider, he has ensured that we will never be hungry. A protector, he has delivered us from the violence of the world before and given us shelter behind these glass walls.”

Those that were watching him go back to talking to one another. My father does not. He stoops down, picks something up, and walks forward.

“This,” Callahan proclaims, “Is a plentiful garden. The garden we once read about in scripture. The garden—”

My dad throws a clump of dirt and it hits Callahan square in the jaw. He has the same look in his eyes as when he took an axe to our fence. I want to stop him, but I am afraid to get in his way. My dad walks closer.

“Neighbors and Friends—”

A man behind my father throws another clump of dirt. It doesn’t hit Callahan but it comes close. My dad steps over the curb of the roundabout and keeps walking.

Callahan looks directly at him. “Let’s not victimize ourselves any longer.”

My dad shoves Callahan and he staggers back. He drops his notebook. Behind him, the men continue throwing clumps of dirt. Rocks, too.

My parents like to think that they remember everything from the real world but I’m not sure. When Dad talks about

I remember to look at Ian. My stomach drops when I see that he is watching the scene in the roundabout, watching our

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***

father beat a man into the ground. I want to go over there, to cover his eyes and shield him from this, but I can’t take back what he’s already seen.

Nobody intervenes on Callahan’s behalf. When Dad walks away from him, he doesn’t get up. Dad doesn’t look back and he doesn’t look our way either. He just disappears back into the hole. Shortly after, the men in the Pearsons’ backyard do the same. Everyone else that was watching seems to scatter.

Ian is still standing still. When he moves to take a step towards the roundabout, I am there to stop him.

“What was that?” He asks and tries to move around me.

“Nothing,” I say because I don’t have a better lie to give him. Death is not something he has been exposed to. Ian was too young to remember Todd and Emily Beckett.

I wrap my arms around my little brother so it feels like I’m hugging him instead of holding him still. After a moment, he stops struggling. I wait for him to try and escape like the rest of us do, but he doesn’t. Ian wraps his skinny arms around my torso and squeezes, hugging me back.

279

Samaya Norman

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Photography Fort Hayes Career Center Columbus, OH Artificial Warmth Digital photography 2022

Ashley Olszewski

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Photography Pius XI Catholic High School Milwaukee, WI Cardboard Digital photography 2021

Enrique Oropeza

Design Arts

Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

By Her Generous Nature – Preliminary Looks Pencil, paper, Procreate, Adobe Express 2022

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Thomas Pace

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Design Arts Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL Observatory Tower (Process) Marker, pen, colored pencil, Photoshop 2022

Nikita Pai

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Photography Portage Central High School Portage, MI Aarti Digital photography 2022

Mulan Pan

When I die, I would like to be honored as if I were a blue whale, Or humpback, or bowhead toothed or baleen – I’m not picky.

Behold the corpse of a god balloon with prayers: unanswered, crowding breathless lungs, the barnacles cling & weep to bloated starless night;

three days to mourn. Bid the surface farewell, let seafoam scrape away eulogies of seabird & shark, consecrated flesh in open -mouthed beak.

Now sink

into ether, vast & faithless. These creatures do not revere the sun as we surfacedwellers do—no, their stars are self-made, forged in ever-evolving hunger

& apathy. Teeth—longer than lifespans—languish in aching jaws; in absence of circadian & sun, the pace of eternity is dictated by the dinner bell.

But understand this: the seabed is not a resting site. Cessation of breath does not denote sepulcher or insignificance. When body returns to earth, it is reborn— divine.

Supple scale, stony shell, see how these heathens align soft against sharp against starving when faced with fallen heaven, rejoice at this unfathomable feast.

Writhing ribbons of rattail hagfish isopod arthropod seven-meter sleeper shark every scavenger of the seven seas comes to sanctify with teeth & tongue, every inch of flesh exalted in jaws snap shut as if in prayer until the culmination of their consecration strips blubber down to bone

scaffolding. Cracked marble of a crumbling acropolis, slowly sundered by bone-worm & bacteria. Not a surface they do not supplicate, no iota of bone they do not break down. At these depths, there is no “waste,” only worship

until nothing is left but an elegy. An echo.

The fourth stage of whale decomposition is called the reef stage; is only postulated, not observed; occurs eons after the initial fall; but the archaeologists believe in spectral pillars shifting in the space between vertebrae stirring ichor-stained sand.

Gaze upon barren benthos, scoop sediment & see in your cupped palms neither snow nor scripture but fragments of a spine, & clinging to each ossified speck: life.

Tiny red tendrils—like grasping hands trying to find the right position to pray. Even these sessile insentient souls understand: this land is an altar to the empty maw. Outlined in dust & detritus—life devoted to this deity.

I am an artist, both whale & worshipper. I am no stranger to hunger. How can I see the hallowing of flesh & marrow, fat & lipid, the veneration that consumes every ounce—how can I see the refracted colors of rot & not want for my own untouched page?

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Spoken Word Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Alexandria, VA

I want to touch the hearts of the abyss who have not known the sensation of the sun in their mouths until my flesh lays before them for the feasting.

I want them to gorge as they’ve never had before, so when all that is edible is stripped, & then some, they are left only hungrier.

I want my body to be the breeding ground of new life, my bones to host the epicenter of a new era, my legacy lining the insides of every mouth.

I want to put my blood to paper & watch it sink.

The fourth stage of whale decomposition is called the reef stage, because even when all that remains of the whale is an imprint, it is still— so unquestionably —alive.

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Accompanying hybrid art for excerpts of the poem “When I die, I would like to be honored as if I were a blue whale,”

287

Adhya Parna

RAN, RUNNING, WILL RUN: A Testimony in Three Acts

Act One: Ran

I stared down at my legs with basement eyes. Gravel shards from the asphalt road were embedded in my calves. Beads of blood erupted slowly from each tiny, sharp cut—creating a crimson constellation.

My legs were the least of my worries, though. I was lost in the creases of my velvet dress. Although I repeatedly smoothed the furrows, the fabric wouldn’t return to . . . normal. I wanted normal. Yet I desired the impossible.

I held my frigid cheeks, fingers quivering. When I opened my phone’s camera, I was riveted by a horrifying reflection: a young woman with tufts of straightened hair flying out of place, mascara flecking lower eyelids, burgundy lipstick caking dimples alongside bare lips. The screen became a halo as I bent over the glass, and it seemed as if a black void surrounded me.

Is that me? I stuck out my fingertip to stroke the image, to make sure she was real; my flesh was a centimeter away from her face—

ADHYA! What are you doing over here?

I experienced the world again: colors, distant chatter and music, the gummy sensation of bleeding. I looked up and noticed the sequined borders of Saaya’s and Saatchi’s dresses.

Where’ve you been? We’ve all been looking for you!

I opened my mouth but didn’t know what to do with it. Howl? Cry? Shout? I had no idea. How could I possibly know? Just a half hour before, I hadn’t even known if I would live.

An hour before, it had been October 2nd, 2021. Homecoming Night.

Dancing in a circle, I had felt sweat on the back of my new crimson velvet dress. The dress. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen. When I had tried it on, my mother sighed with admiration.

I refused to let sweat ruin the glorious velvet, so I escaped the perspiring teenagers and exited, aiming for the one spot outside where I knew I’d feel safe: the Arboretum. I sheltered beneath Cheryl, a beautiful large American Elm tree; she never judged me, and she was my safe haven. She was company.

About to open a pack of Skittles in my clutch, I heard periodic crunches among the fallen leaves. Footsteps. Out of nowhere, an arm locked around my neck. Another imprisoned my waist. I squirmed as hot breath pricked the side of my neck. Move or make a sound, and I promise I’ll make this worse for you.

I tried to scream, but it felt as if my head was beneath water. The man slithered serpentine fingers all over me. Please. Stop. I don’t want to do this.

He dug his nails into my stomach. Shut up! I told you this will be worse if you keep running your mouth! He was stronger. I wasn’t strong enough. His grip on my breasts stiffened.

STOP! I hate it! He yanked my hair to pull my head back and grunted in my ear. You’re gonna learn to like it or you’re gonna be dead.

Death. I had thought he wanted to use me. Use my body. But no: he was going to kill me. This was it. I breathed deeply, pushed forward, and rammed my sharp heel on him. Breaking free, I defied gravity. I ran past Cheryl, through the darkness, and toward a particle of light. Soon, I saw my brown skin. I ran until my heels were firmly striking asphalt again. I didn’t stop running.

Even now, I’m still running. Running away from that night, from the memories. But I’m also running toward a new me . . .

Act Two: Running . . . into my imagination. Envision Kamathipura, Mumbai. She smells of betel leaves, ginger-root chai, and fried dough. Chamakan Lage plays from radios as the choris’ anklets

harmonize with the sarangi. And every time, I see the woman who has made me into who I am: Gangubai Kathiawadi, as Bollywood acknowledged her. But I call her Gangeji.

Her paintings adorned all of Kamathipura. She sat with one leg inward. Her ankles were adorned with ghungroo. She was draped in a white saree that had been stitched by the chapped hands of women seamstresses on the street. Between her fingers was a beedi, smoked tobacco flakes oozing. My Gangeji.

Gangeji was a prostitute. She ran Mumbai’s renowned red-light district. She didn’t let prostitution demean her. Instead, she embraced it. She fought for the rights of sex workers, for protection of women from domestic violence, for educating women who lived in poverty, and far more. Jo chaaho mujhe ek tawaif kaho, lekin mera khoon abhibhi ek mahila ke roop ubaal hai. (I may be a prostitute, but my blood boils like a woman.) Those words blazed my path to feminism.

I’d ask Gangeji why she never left Kamathipura—because she faced sexual assault daily there. I’d also ask where she found the spirit to remain and fight. How did she keep from breaking? How did she find courage to speak up without fear of being labeled as a “woman with a large mouth”: behoodaurat?

In my imagination, I assume that the Gangeji I know also wrote poetry. She’d have written while listening to Siddheshwari Devi and drinking Raani Chaap. As a poet, I want to hear her poetry in my dreams, and to share my own.

But most of all, I want to hear Gangeji call me Raanjha: Sweetheart

That would be enough for me, but still I run . . .

Act Three: Will Run

. . . into the classroom. The bell rang. It was finally study hall. I immediately sprinted to the library. I was browsing through shelves of books: feeling the vintage spines. I picked the section on criminal justice, but I stumbled upon a book that was out of place. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It looked interesting, so I thought I’d check it out. I took the book to Ms. Bastien, the librarian, and she smiled and told me, “I think this would be a good book for you.”

Puzzled by her words, I opened the back of the book to skim through the summary. A book that explains Christianity to those who might be skeptical. My eyes fixated on the word skeptical; I wondered what the extent of the word skeptical could mean. Nevertheless, I began reading. For two days, my nose was buried between the cream-colored pages.

What contrasts our materialist and religious mindsets? How does a moral and just God create a universe where bad things happen to the righteous? I was intrigued by the motifs of die and pianos to show the complexities of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the dynamics of human morality. The message of the book was synthesized in a way to break the barrier of what we think religion is. I slammed the final page over. This book let me think. Books have always just told me what would happen to a character or what the character was thinking, but I was the one thinking through it all. This book was different.

I loved the way the book made me think. It made me ponder my own beliefs as a Christian. I even explored the Bhagavad Gita and Quran. I completed two Harvard online certificates on Christianity and Hinduism. To me, studying religion wasn’t captivating because I believe in God. Studying religion was captivating because I had found out why we act the way we do and how to grow. I found how to heal myself from my toxic upbringing—by falling in love with theology.

And that’s how I began running deeply into myself and into the dawn of my life. Running with the goal of supporting

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Creative Nonfiction Poolesville High School Poolesville, MD

sexual violence victims. Running into my future as an attorney who protects and achieves justice for victims of domestic abuse. Running while finding peace. Happiness. A new life.

Forever, I will run

Translations:

Chamakan Lage: How She Shines

Choris: Girls

Sarangi: Bowed, short-neck string instrument

Ghungroo: Anklets

Saree: Dress worn by Indian women

Beedi: cigarette filled w/ tobacco flakes

Raani Chaap: Liquor made of sugarcane

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. .

Christina Poulin

CHAPTER ONE

Where I come from, women have two faces: the one we are born with, and the one we deserve.

I came into the world one foggy midwinter, when tendrils of mist circled the church spires and devoured your hand if you held it too far in front of you. It was a difficult birth. Later, my mother told me that she had woken all our neighbors, screaming murder as the midwife muttered instructions and fed her chunks of ice. By the time I’d been cleaned and blanket-wrapped, she was sobbing weakly, both from utter exhaustion and because she had wanted a son.

“It was all worth it, of course,” she liked to tell me, “once I saw you.”

Most babies are ugly things, red, wrinkled, and disgruntled-looking—practically begging to be returned to the comfort of the womb. Not me. When the midwife placed me in my mother’s arms, at first she thought I was a dream. Women like her aren’t blessed with daughters like me, and yet there I was: skin brown as syrup, scalp dusted with black curls, eyes like gleaming moons. The way my mother tells it, the moment she saw me, she sobbed even harder—son or no, surely I was more beautiful than any other child.

Then the midwife set me in a cradle and tied a blindfold round her head. It was time for the second birth: the birth of my true face. This one was easier; my mother only cried out once before it was all over. It was when the midwife placed my face in her hands that she really screamed.

True faces are private things, things only your parents see when you are born. They are hidden away soon after, locked in gilded chests and varnished cabinets with other valuables, then left to languish, half-forgotten, for most of childhood. Even the closest of friends do not reveal their true faces. Only when you become engaged is your true face brought out at last: the ultimate judge of character before your wedding vows. After all, if your true face is beautiful, you are gentle and kind, loving and pure—the epitome of goodness and the perfect wife. If your true face is ugly, you are nothing but wicked.

Still shrieking, my mother lunged for the wooden box on her bedside table, prying it open with trembling hands. True faces are precious, but she flung mine inside like a dead thing, then fumbled with the key, unable to lock it quick enough. She paid the midwife precious little and ordered her out. This time, my infant cries mingled with her sobs.

For years, I knew nothing of my true face but that it was hideous.

At first, Mother and I simply pretended my true face did not exist. This was not uncommon, at least not in society: childhood is meant to be an idyllic time, unburdened by such mature topics, and so the discussion of true faces was mostly left for the future. Of course, some families found subtle ways to gloat—there were always passing rumors of how certain it was that so-and-so’s little girl would grow up beautiful—but any outright talk of true faces would have been improper, so, thankfully, Mother was spared those conversations. What was strange about her silence was that she refused to mention my true face even to me.

If I had been lovely as an infant, that was nothing compared to how I looked as a child. Soon, my dark eyes were ringed with thick lashes. I had full, pink lips and a plump, graceful neck, and

my once-fine curls burst about my face like a black halo. Mother purchased cheap dresses of sickly lilac and canary yellow, but these did nothing to dim my beauty, and when we strolled down the street, hand in hand, few strangers failed to stare.

Once, when I was barely six years old, we took a turn about the park. At a bend in the path, we encountered two giggling schoolgirls strolling in the opposite direction, a sullen-looking matron trailing behind. To my six-year-old self, they seemed like grown women, but they couldn’t have been over fifteen. Their eyes lingered on my face. For a moment, I thought we might pass unbothered, but then one of the girls, a plain-looking redhead, approached Mother with caution.

“Pardon me, madam,” she said, inclining her head respectfully. “I just wanted to tell you how pretty your—daughter is.” Mother swelled proudly, nudging me forward so they could take a better look.

“She is, isn’t she?” she replied, before turning to me. “Thank you for the compliment,” she prompted. “Say, ‘thank you,’ Marguerite.”

I said it. The schoolgirls giggled again. I didn’t smile back. I thought that would be the end of it, but then the redhead asked, with just a trace of snideness, “Is she your real daughter?” Her question puzzled me. Did she not see how I clasped Mother’s hand? Whose daughter would I be, if not hers? However, I think I understand it now. Compared with my loveliness, Mother must have appeared unsightly. I can imagine her face as it must have been then—rounder, perhaps, and with fewer wrinkles, but with the essential structure intact. She had a delicate nose and high cheekbones, but there her attractive features ended. Her hard jawline was said to denote sternness, while the lines about her thin mouth implied a tendency towards judgment. Her vast forehead meant immense pride. And her eyes, blue and cold as glaciers, one slightly larger than the other—their misshapen look betrayed her overwhelming shrewdness.

These faults were clearly visible because Mother wore her true face. Like all women, she had put it on, according to custom, during her wedding ceremony, just after the exchange of vows. Once put on, a true face can never be removed.

At the redhead’s question, Mother drew herself up to her full height. Her nostrils flared.

I had rarely seen her so livid.

“She is my flesh and blood,” she sneered. Then, looking the redhead up and down, she added, “I pity you that she is not yours.”

The girl’s homely face twisted indignantly, but the matron sidled up behind her, shooing her and her companion onwards before she could speak.

“What did she mean?” I asked Mother when we were a good distance away.

“I assume,” she replied, not meeting my eyes, “that she was referring to your father’s blood.”

I knew three things about my father: that he was a merchant, a foreigner, and dead. He hailed from a sun-drenched island where people had rich brown skin and hair like mine. When he arrived here, in the city of January, he was wealthy in stories, but had no connections and little money. Mother married him in a whirlwind dream, against the wishes of her family—only for him to die of blue fever six months later, leaving her pregnant and near-penniless in an unforgiving city.

I had inherited my father’s tumbling curls and rounded features, and my skin was several shades darker than Mother’s, but children of mixed parentage were common among a certain class in January. Somehow, I knew the redhead had been referring to more than just my coloration.

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Novel High American Studies at

Lehman College Bronx, NY January 20-Page Excerpt

***

Soon after the incident—perhaps that same night—Mother called me before the leaping fire and patted her knee for me to sit upon. I obeyed, searching her face for a sign of what was to come. The flickering light made it difficult to read, but a glint in her glacial eyes told me to mind my words.

“Marguerite,” she said, “are you aware of your beauty?”

I was not too young to know that this was a difficult question, something many women hesitated to answer—and yet I couldn’t understand why. Beauty was a good thing. I decided to answer honestly.

“Yes, Mother,” I replied.

“Of course,” she scoffed. “Well, I should hope I’ve taught you that much. Perhaps this is a better phrasing: do you know just how beautiful you are?”

I considered it. Everyone, even strangers, seemed to think I was a sort of rarity, and I had yet to meet anyone lovelier than me. Again, I chose the most honest answer.

“Very,” I guessed. Mother smiled.

“So you remember the things I tell you,” she murmured. “Very good. Well, the time has come for me to be completely honest with you, for if I don’t tell you, someone else will. You are not ‘very’ beautiful, Marguerite. You are the most beautiful girl this city has ever seen.”

There was a pause, eaten up by the crackling of the fire.

“People will tell you that your beauty does not matter,” Mother went on, “for it is not your true face. They have a point, but they are wrong.”

I held my breath. This was the first I had heard of my true face in a long, long time. “Your beauty means nothing about you, but it is far from useless. It is a gift, an asset—it is power. Wield it wisely, and it will lift you up. Squander it, and it will destroy you.” She skewered me with her piercing gaze. “But above all, you must savor your beauty, for it will not last.”

I waited for her to go on, but she only smiled ruefully. “Do you mean . . . my true face is not as beautiful?”

Mother laughed harshly. “Oh, it is anything but beautiful.”

“May I . . .” I swallowed nervously. “May I see it?” Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she thought. Perhaps she was simply making it up.

I know now that I had every right to look upon my true face—by six, most girls have seen theirs at least once. However, Mother only frowned, any trace of laughter gone.

“No,” she said. “Believe me, Marguerite, when I say it is too painful to look upon. It is the foulest sight I have ever seen.”

For three years, that was the only time we spoke of it. I rose from Mother’s knee and fled the room, tears stinging my eyes, my heart buried in my stomach. If my true face was foul, that meant that I was worse than proud, worse than shrewd. I was every fault in Mother’s face and more. I was wicked.

CHAPTER TWO

At first, I held out hope that Mother was exaggerating. It was not impossible. Mother was prone to overstate things, whether it was the inclemency of the weather or the tastelessness of our dinner. Perhaps she hadn’t even meant to do it. Next to my extraordinary beauty, surely anything was bound to look wretched. I began to imagine a dull sort of face, plainer than my own, but still far from ugly—weak-chinned and beady-eyed, perhaps, but no disfigured horror. I even imagined that it was charming, in its own funny way.

This daydream was shattered soon enough. Within a year, I knew without a doubt that I was every bit as horrid as my true face implied.

Other children grew docile and obedient, gradually learning to obey their parents or suffer the consequences. Not me. I had an inexplicable hatred of authority and a penchant for chaos, both of which manifested in me nearly every chance they had. I made messes and threw crockery. I hoarded food until it drew cockroaches. I made faces and hurled insults at the neighbors’ children. Then, whenever Mother was preoccupied,

I left our home altogether. The streets of January crawled with stray cats, and I made it my frequent goal to catch one and yank its tail. Its frenzied yowling was, to me, an unmatched source of entertainment.

If this was wickedness, Mother never told me so. When she inevitably found me, standing above a cracked dish or with a squirming cat in my arms, she failed to scold me. In fact, she hardly said a word. It was the expression on her hardened face— bitter resignation mixed with pity—that truly told me I’d been bad. I could see Mother’s thoughts written there, as plain as if she’d said them aloud: Alas, I cannot blame her. This is her nature.

I faced little punishment for these childhood crimes, aside from the nights I was sent to bed without supper—although even this, I understood, was more to conserve food than to reform me. It was clear that Mother thought me irredeemable. I knew that she loved me, for she often told me so, and she lavished upon me whatever finery she could afford. Yet after these incidents, she grew cold and aloof for days. Once, when I should have been asleep, I heard an unfamiliar sound down the hall. Upon pressing my ear to the keyhole, I realized it was a woman’s sobs: Mother’s sobs. It was a wretched noise, full of despair and self-pity, and I knew at once that she resented the trials of having such a sinful daughter.

I knew, then, that what I was doing was somehow horrible. And yet I could not seem to stop.

The fact that, even after my revelation, I could not curb my wickedness, seemed only further proof that this was in my nature—something my true face was bound to reflect.

Gone, now, was my vision of the weak-chinned face. Instead, I began to imagine the worst. Fangs and demon horns haunted my dreams, followed by forked tongues and slitted eyes like a serpent’s. I endured nightmares where, upon looking in the mirror, I saw a snarling monster, or a grotesque carnival mask. When I tried to pull off the disguise, I felt warm flesh, which melted in my hands like candle wax.

Before these dreams, I had been a fearless child. Now, the thought of my true face drove terror like a nail into my heart. I feared discovery; yet I feared a life of secrecy. I dreaded marriage—and, at the same time, I shuddered at the idea of spinsterhood. When I roamed the streets, I saw beggar-women in gutters, beneath awnings, in alleyways—women with soiled rags and bare fingers. Every one of them was ugly. These were the old maids of January, women with true faces too repulsive for marriage, who, barren at the age of thirty, were required to put on their true faces. By thirty, a single woman is hopeless— and, in the case of the old maids, with good reason. They wore their true faces as a badge of immorality and a warning to society.

I passed these women as they jangled their coin-cups relentlessly—women with hairy warts, or bloated features, or toothless sneers. None were nearly as hideous as I imagined my true face to be. ***

For all my wickedness—towards the neighbors’ children, towards the cats in the street—I did not dare to cross Mother. Of course, my other victims couldn’t punish me; Mother could, yet it was not a fear of discipline that kept me from lashing out. To me, Mother was both safety and strength. Mother was power. It did not cross my mind to defy her—just as it would have been pointless to fight rainfall or curse gravity.

That all changed when I was ten and I saw my first ghost. I came upon him in the stairwell. He perched, back turned, on the bottom step. I thought he must have been the little neighbor boy from upstairs, the one who, just weeks ago, had perished in a gruesome carriage accident (so I’d heard from Mother). Surely a real phantom could not have looked more out of place. The boy wore a rumpled suit of clean linen. His ruddy curls were carelessly tousled. Clutched in his pudgy hand was a toy soldier, stark red against the surrounding grime.

291

Was this what children received in the afterlife—fine new clothes and costly toys? If so, death couldn’t come soon enough. Still, I balked. I had not been kind to my neighbors, and I recalled sneering at this boy more than once. Was he here to sneer back, to flaunt his posthumous wealth? Or did he intend something worse?

I was just telling myself that I was too old to be afraid of ghosts when the boy turned, revealing piggy eyes and plump red cheeks. But that wasn’t my neighbor—and this was no ghost! I was looking at a different boy entirely. I crossed my arms, too shocked by this turn of events to do more than stare.

“Hello.” His high voice echoed in the stairwell.

In a flash, I remembered Mother’s rule: don’t speak to those beneath your station. Both withering glance and practiced scowl came easily, but this boy was dressed like a nobleman’s son, and my cotton dress bordered on threadbare. I had never met someone above my station. To my surprise, I had no words for him, either.

“Who are you?” he asked, now fidgeting with impatience. I couldn’t leave the building without passing him, but I wasn’t about to turn tail and flee from this pompous little boy. I cleared my throat, trying to imagine what Mother would say.

“I should like to ask you the same thing,” I replied smoothly. “Do you live here?”

“Yes. Do you?”

So he was poor. Anyone who lived on Crook Street was. His family must have moved in after the neighbor boy’s death. I smiled, safe in the knowledge that I was above him after all.

“Well, then, I won’t talk to you,” I scoffed. He didn’t seem fazed in the slightest.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said, as though it were obvious, “you’re poor.”

“I’m not poor.” The little boy tossed his head defiantly. “I used to live in a big house on Laurel Street. I’m only here for a little while, until Uncle dies, and then we’re going to get—”

“Cecil!”

I jumped. The call had come from one of the upper floors. Somewhere, a door slammed, followed by the light clattering of footsteps. Before I could stop him, the boy darted behind me, shuddering with giggles as he crouched in vain camouflage behind my back.

“Cecil! Where are you?”

I leapt away from him just as a tall girl rounded a turn in the staircase, bright pink and breathing hard. I had never seen her before, either. She was older than the boy—perhaps twelve or thirteen—with long yellow ringlets and a face that unfortunately resembled a horse. A silk blue hair bow flapped atop her head. With a shuddering gasp, she seized the boy and wrenched him away.

“Cecil, you can’t keep running off!”

“I’m not running off.” The little boy, Cecil, wriggled out of her grasp. “Stop making a fuss. I just wanted to play, and our new home is so small.”

“Just imagine what might have happened.” The girl’s tones grew hushed. “This is a dangerous neighborhood—you can’t just run out and play any time you feel like it. You must keep your wits about you.”

“Not so dangerous,” I said, “if you aren’t stupid.”

The girl whipped her head around. Her slow gray eyes settled upon me, and she drew Cecil close again.

“I’m afraid you must have misunderstood,” she said, offering me a polite, if tremulous, smile. “I meant no offense by my comment. Thank you for finding my brother, but we were just about to return to our rooms.” She began the hurried climb upstairs, Cecil in tow.

“Ah! So was I.” I bounded up the steps after them.

“I’m sorry, perhaps I misunderstood.” The girl smiled again, more nervously than the last. “Do . . . do you live here?”

I stared at her, my tongue thick and useless in my mouth.

“Yes,” I said at last, resenting how stupid I sounded. That wasn’t fair— she was the one who was stupid.

The girl’s eyes grew wide.

“My name is Marguerite,” I went on doggedly, trying to regain some kind of dominance.

Then, remembering my surname was something to be proud of, “Marguerite Remedy.”

There was a long pause in which I waited for their wideeyed shock, their horrified apologies.

“You don’t look like a Remedy,” Cecil said loudly.

The blonde girl slapped him on the shoulder and shushed him. It was too late, though—my face grew hot. Suddenly, I hated the two of them. I was supposed to be the one in charge, not these half-wit children who had just barged into the building days ago.

“Well, I am,” I shouted, “even if my father was foreign. My mother is Lord Remedy’s daughter, and she’d be furious if she knew I was forced to associate with the likes of you.”

All at once, the tension left the blonde girl’s frame. The crease in her brow disappeared, and a slow, warm smile spread across her face.

“Why, I had no idea! A Remedy, here! Of course, you’ll forgive me if—well, I suppose you aren’t exactly what one might expect.” Her pale cheeks turned a blotchy pink. “Does your mother live here, too?”

“What do you think?” I snapped. Then, at her apparent confusion, “Who else would I be living with?”

“Oh! Well, how lovely!” She turned to Cecil, oblivious to my exasperation. “I didn’t know we’d be living amongst such fine company.”

My eyes darted between the two of them. I couldn’t tell if the girl was poking fun at me, but she seemed genuine—almost relieved.

“I’m Dorothea,” she murmured, extending a limp hand towards mine. “Dorothea Phare.” She said the name with solemn importance. “And this is Cecil, as I’m sure you know.”

I took her hand. Her grip was clammy as she pressed my fingers weakly.

“We’re so pleased to meet you,” she went on sheepishly. “I’m sure Mama will be, too. She worried we might not find any— appropriate playmates here . . . Pardon me, but how old did you say you were?”

I told her I was ten. Dorothea smiled at that, for she was eleven, although she admitted she looked a good deal older. Cecil, I learned, was nearly nine.

“You don’t look like siblings,” I said.

“I know.” Dorothea smiled ruefully. “He takes after our father.” If that was true, I certainly didn’t want to meet him. “As for me—well, our mother is very pretty, so I suppose I don’t take after her, either.”

Scrutinizing them, I now saw brief flashes of resemblance. She and Cecil shared the same snub nose and crooked teeth. However, Dorothea didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re pretty, too,” Cecil piped up. I realized he was staring at me.

“Oh, yes,” Dorothea agreed. “Beautiful, really. I’ve never seen anyone who looks quite like you.”

I smiled, my anger fast dissolving.

“No,” I said. “No, I daresay you haven’t.”

At that moment, Mother’s warning rang loud in my brain. If the Phares were low-class, I had spoken to them for several minutes too long. Yet the two hardly seemed ill-bred, and it was hardly a crime to associate with children of my own rank.

“You should play with us,” Cecil insisted. “Have you any toys? Papa sold ours.” He said it with the miniature soldier still clutched in his hand.

His sister shushed him frantically, but I did not care. For all my superiority over my neighbors, perhaps unsurprisingly, I had never been asked to play before—not even by two simpletons who couldn’t tell their feet from their faces. They could certainly use someone to show them around before they got themselves killed.

If I had known then how this would end, I would have turned on my heel and run. But I did not have that foresight. You can hardly blame me, then, when I agreed, and the three of us strolled out into the watery sun.

292

The cat lounged, eyes shut, in contented ignorance. A skinny thing with a patchy black coat, its rail-thin body stretched atop a rotting storage crate, soaking up rays of meager sun.

Every so often, its tail flicked into a tantalizing new shape. I pointed. That one.

Crammed in a narrow alleyway, we stood inches from a stinking puddle of brown water: overflow from last night’s rainfall. With the sewage drain came rats, and with the rats came cats. I’d been here many times, for there was always a critter or two to chase, but never with company. This was my special secret, my favorite alleyway—and yet, a mere fortnight into our friendship, I’d decided to bring the Phares along, too.

“Are you certain this is quite safe?” Dorothea called. She lingered a few steps back, eyes wide at the surrounding filth. “I wouldn’t want anyone to fall ill.”

“ Shh.” We needed absolute silence or the cat would bolt. Cecil watched as I crept closer on wobbling feet, arms outstretched. In one swift movement, I pounced. The cat woke with a yowl, scrabbling frantically for freedom, but I held firm—my forearms, bundled with spare rags, safe from its slashing claws. Cecil squealed happily.

Now for the best part. Squeezing the cat with one arm, I grasped its black tail with my other hand. If there were any feeling more powerful, I had yet to discover it: knowing that I held this creature’s life in my hands, that if the pathetic thing could talk, it would grovel for mercy.

Not that I would offer any. That wasn’t how life transpired.

Like clockwork, my sharp yank elicited a tortured scream. I grinned, savoring the thrill. My hand was primed for a second tug when another shriek—a distinctly human one—made me jump.

“What was that for?” I snapped. In my surprise, I’d dropped the cat, which hissed at me before fleeing. Then I paused. Dorothea’s hands trembled over her mouth. Cecil began to cry— loud, gasping sobs that distorted his reddened face.

“What?” I demanded. My stomach lurched horribly— I’d displeased them.

“How could you do such a thing?” Dorothea cried. She peered down the alley, as though searching for the escaped cat, but of course it was long gone. “Oh, how cruel!”

“What?” I repeated desperately. “Tell me! What’s cruel?”

“Why, pulling its tail!”

She said it as though it were obvious—as though I were the uncomprehending fool. I remembered Mother’s look of bitter pity when she’d found me cat-catching, time and again. I had done something wrong; I just didn’t know what. Staring at Dorothea, I grasped for an excuse, for something to make it better.

“Well, yes,” I said, “if it were any other cat. But I saw this cat just the other day, torturing a poor mouse! That’s why I did it—to teach him a lesson.” Dorothea’s brow creased. I drew closer, filling my voice with as much sincerity as I could. “You know, Dorothea, I’d never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. You believe me, don’t you?”

She looked away. “Of course I do. It’s just—well, cats always play with their food.”

We said nothing more on the matter. And here, the Phares did something that Mother could not, for I never chased cats again.

Considering all I have said about Dorothea and Cecil, perhaps this all sounds rather abrupt. And yet, while it remained true that I didn’t particularly like them, I needed them. Even worse, I needed to please them.

“Why do you always do as your mother says?” Cecil whined, one month into our friendship. The church bells had just ceased their tolling. Mother had instructed me to be home at seven, so I was just standing up to leave, much to the Phares’ dismay.

“She does as she’s told because she’s a good daughter,” Dorothea cut in. “She’s right to do so.” She cast Cecil a chiding look. “You might do well to follow her example.”

Perhaps her words should have reassured me, but instead, they only confused me further. I wasn’t a good daughter. I couldn’t be—my true face said so. It made me wonder, then, why I did bother following Mother’s commands, especially when Cecil, apparently, didn’t follow his.

“I . . .” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. Did they want me to be obedient? Or would they prefer it if I rebelled? “I don’t have to do as she says.”

“Oh, if you have to go, you should,” Dorothea murmured. “We wouldn’t want you to be punished.”

I did go, but not before I felt Cecil’s gaze, burning accusingly at the back of my neck. “You’re late,” Mother said when I arrived. I waited, breathless, for her to ask why—for her to smile when I told her of the Phares, to commend me on finding such well-born friends at last. But she never said a word, and so neither did I.

The next day, Mother told me to return at six. This time, I knew better than to listen.

We played in the street, trundling my wooden hoop across the cobblestones. Well, Cecil and I played. When I invited Dorothea to join us, she repeatedly demurred: hoops were for little boys, she insisted, and we were young ladies. Cecil, of course, had no objections, so the two of us played for hours at a time, occasionally dodging horses’ hooves and disgruntled passersby while his sister looked on in silent disapproval. Yet Cecil was young, and awful at the game.

So, naturally, it was Cecil I blamed when my hoop rolled out of control and clattered at the feet of a graying old maid.

Cecil gasped. I bit my tongue, clamping down a hundred furious insults. Slowly, the woman fixed us with a withering glare.

“Don’t meet her eyes,” Dorothea breathed, rushing over and turning Cecil’s face away. “She’ll bewitch you. If you turn round and walk away slowly, perhaps she’ll leave us all alone.”

“But my hoop—” I started.

“What about it?”

“I can’t just leave it there! She’ll steal it!”

“You can’t possibly go back for it!” Dorothea’s gray eyes bulged. “She’ll hurt you. She’s dangerous . Mama says there’s not a single old maid who isn’t a drunken criminal.”

“But—”

“Think! Is a toy truly worth more than your life?”

I narrowed my eyes. Surely she didn’t think that spindly hag would kill me.

“Pretty girl!” the old maid mocked, her voice squawking like a crow’s. “Come get your plaything!”

“We can return for it later, if it means so much to you,” Dorothea insisted, tugging weakly at my arm. “Perhaps it will still be there tomorrow.”

I glanced at the woman slumped in the gutter. She’d picked up my hoop and was now running it between her knobbly, calloused fingers. When she saw me looking, she grinned maniacally, revealing three blackened teeth.

It wasn’t the idea of losing my toy that I abhorred as much as the idea of her keeping it. Before Dorothea could restrain me, before I could reconsider, I dashed towards the old maid.

“Little girl.” She was even uglier up close, with a wart on her left cheek and an upper lip furred with hair. Her soiled skirts reeked of sweat and liquor. “Why so bold?”

“I want my hoop back. Please.”

The old maid cackled. “Pretty girls like you get too much of everything.” Then she paused, considering me, her eyes roving the soft lines of my face. “Although perhaps not pretty for long.”

I froze. Terror leapt from my belly and into my throat, and the woman’s eyes glinted hungrily.

“My hoop, please,” I repeated, trying to force the tremor from my voice.

But now the old maid knew she had nothing to fear. She propped herself up with one hand, then slowly rose, swaying

293

CHAPTER THREE

***

slightly. An empty glass bottle emerged from her skirts, clutched in her fist.

“So greedy,” she sneered. “Perhaps you need a lesson taught.” She hurled the bottle at my feet.

I never saw it explode. I was already running when I heard the crash, searching desperately for Dorothea’s blue hair bow. Something twinged in my calf. I ignored it and raced ahead, at last spotting a flash of ruddy curls that belonged to Cecil.

It vanished into a nearby alleyway. They’d fled without me.

I sprinted on, ducking into the alley, following the Phares’ pattering footsteps as best I could. I was faster than they were, but with every step, fresh pain now lanced through my leg. I forced myself to hurry on, wondering why on earth they’d decided to flee so far when, clearly, the old maid wasn’t giving chase.

It happened all at once. One minute I was running through the alley, the next, I felt myself ballooning outwards, expanding into empty space. On either side of me, the two buildings stretched into eternity. I swiped at my eyes, trying to blink away the illusion—but then the world flipped upside down. Curls tumbled into my face. Blood rushed to my head, blurring my vision. Horror gripped me as, at last, I understood: we had stumbled upon a split place.

January was not called the living city for nothing. Its streets curled about each other in a haphazard spiral, like a snail’s shell, or perhaps a fingerprint. At the center, the Church of Our Lady Winter. Spiraling outwards were the noblemen’s manors, then sprawling parks, crowded storefronts, houses that grew gradually smaller and shabbier. At the outskirts, where Mother and I lived: crumbling tenements and poverty. A vast wall ringed the limits, and the Enne River, running east to west, split the whole city in two. This was the January that the city’s cartographers dutifully charted year after year.

Yet, crisscrossing through the spiral, there were a thousand little alleyways, overland bridges, underground tunnels—even the rare street corner—that remained unmarked on city maps. These were “split places”: places where reality grew thin, and January allowed two locations to exist on top of each other. Split places were no secret—they were simply impossible to track. What was a split place yesterday might be an ordinary brick wall today. Likewise, you could walk the same footbridge a thousand times, only crossing through a split place once.

Mothers claimed that if you were good to Lady Winter, if you said your prayers every night, her hand would shape the city streets, and split places would favor you. As for disobedient children, well, they were out of luck.

I staggered on, expanding outwards, running on a cobblestone ceiling.

294

Tara Prakash

My Father’s Eyes

My father is my hero; he visits my grandparents regularly to take care of them, he arrives home from work every evening with a huge smile on his face, and he never cries during sad movies, not even when we watched Where the Red Fern Grows In my eyes, there were no chinks in his armor. But every family is its own universe, and every universe is aligned one way, until an event throws off the entire orbit. I remember that night so vividly. That night where I found the cracks in my father’s armor.

Thunder growled, and tendrils of clouds stole the sky from the stars and the moon.

The storm devoured every pinprick of light. In movies, circumstances are often characterized and amplified by the weather; a murder or robbery may take place on a stormy night, whereas a joyful reunion would occur in sunny weather. The night my father cried was just like that. Inside our warm house, we were oblivious to the rain. My brother and I were playing basketball with the tiny hoop on the top bunk of my bed. I tossed him the ball, and he swished it in. My mom came in, coaxing us to bed. Several moments later, we heard the front door slam shut. My brother and I eagerly raced out to the foyer.

Papa was home!

But before we could race down the staircase to leap into his open arms, he met us at the top of the landing. He silently walked to my room, both of us clutching his legs playfully. He pushed my bedroom door open, and my brother and I jumped eagerly onto my comforter, awaiting a bedtime story. Instead, he walked briskly past us to my mom. He nodded to her, a subtle dip of his head. My mom gasped, and threw her arms around him. He fell into her embrace, and began to cry, tears streaming down his cheeks. My brother and I looked at each other. What was happening?

My father leaned on my bunk bed, so heavily I thought it might break under his weight.

He covered his face with his hands, his body shaking with every sob.

This isn’t how it works, I wanted to say, You aren’t supposed to cry. My brother’s face, eyes wide open, eyebrows raised , mouth in a perfect O, reflected exactly how I felt: confused, scared, shocked. I continued to stare at my father, disbelieving. My father had come home after days of rough work, had held us after beloved cousins died, had remained calm when my grandmother fainted and lay unconscious for over twelve hours, and he had never cried, never showed any emotion other than strength and confidence. I couldn’t understand what was happening.

“I’m so sorry,” my father managed through his tears “I’m so sorry.” I had never heard his voice so weak and helpless.

“It’s alright,” my mother soothed. She motioned to my brother and me “Give us some space.”

My brother and I didn’t budge. Give us some space? This was my room!

I felt glued to the carpet. I continued to watch my father for several moments longer, until I couldn’t stand it. Instead of leaving the room as I was asked, I moved closer to my father, and pressed myself against him, waiting for him to comfort me. He continued to cry. His heartbroken sounds choked me up, and tears began sliding down my cheeks as well.

“What happened?” my brother finally asked, and seeing his eyes pool up suddenly made me cry harder.

“Dada fully lost his eyesight.”

Several moments passed, the words processing inside my head.

My grandfather…

The rain pattered heavier against my window pane, as though the outdoors was crying with us.

My grandfather was the rock in my family. If my dad was the hero, my grandfather was the rock upon which he stood. Dada was the reason why so many incredible things happened for us. He landed in jail at a brutally young age--ten--for supporting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an organization assisting the freedom struggle in India, which the Indian government had banned. In jail, he faced numerous hardships; he often went hungry, he became lonely without any family visitors, and soon after being released, he was confused about where to go next. He immigrated to the United States, and began a life here for my family. In the United States, the challenges numbered even higher than those he faced in prison. He settled in Carderock, Maryland, a town full of fair-skinned people. He had to work twice as hard as the person beside him, yet despite this, he began a family, an entire line of generations, in America. The sole reason I was here, blessed with the opportunities and privileges that came with being a US citizen, was because of him. It felt more than unfair for the universe to punish him in this way. It felt cruel. Lightning flashed across the sky. It cast a harsh light, illuminating the room: the bunk bed, the basketball hoop, the pillows. For a long time, we leaned heavily on Dada. Why was this happening? The pain and confusion I felt at seeing my father break down was more than Dada’s eyesight loss. It was the preventable circumstances that caused it. I didn’t understand the significance then, but my grandfather’s vision was stolen from him by a careless error on the part of several nurses and the surgeon. Apparently, my grandfather merely had a failed cornea transplant that led to an infection called the herpes simplex virus (HSV). The HSV infected both of his optic nerves and essentially killed them by blocking blood flow. He went in for surgery, but it failed because his surgeon made mistakes doing the cornea transplant. Furthermore, she failed to diagnose the resulting HSV infection. The virus moved very rapidly; his eyesight progressively got worse, and he essentially went blind within ten days of his surgery.

It was the story that hurt. The hatred I felt towards the hospital was overpowering. My sweet, loving Dada. The Dada that spent the night at our house with my brother when my mom was in labor with me. The Dada that taught me how to take a photograph with the first camera I owned. The Dada that took me on long strolls through Brookside Gardens. How could someone do that to him?

Ten years later, I’m still bitter. My grandfather has been blind for nearly a decade now. It has put significant pressure on my grandmother, and my parents. He needs assistance going on walks, writing emails, and plating food at mealtimes. I try to imagine being surrounded constantly by a dark void, but I just can’t.

I’ve closed my eyes to see how long I could last, and I barely made it over a minute. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to imagine being blind. Yesterday afternoon, I tried to walk with my eyes closed, and even though I was clutching the hand of the girl beside me (whose eyes were wide open), I couldn’t walk more than seven steps without opening my eyes. I hated the uncertain feeling of not knowing what was right in front of me, the feeling that I could collide into a slab of concrete at any moment, the feeling that the next step I took could be off a cliff, into empty space. The feeling my grandfather faces every single day.

But despite everything my Dada can’t do, there is so much more than he can do. He is able to load the dishwasher entirely on his own, run on the treadmill every morning, and operate his nonprofit (an organization focused on giving back to India). My grandfather has always been a huge hero of mine, but I thought his blindness would break him; in the end, it only made him stronger. I should have known better. Nothing brings down Dada for long.

295

Creative Nonfiction Sidwell Friends School Washington, DC

He still cries himself to sleep some nights, still calls my father several times a day to have someone to talk to, still sits in his beige roller chair in the family room every evening falling into a shallow pit of loneliness. But that isn’t fear of adversity. It is only the actions he takes to soothe a wound that may never fully heal.

I still remember my five-year-old self, confused and frightened at the sight of my father crying. I remember watching my father collapse into my mother’s arms. I remember my brother’s voice rising in fear, and my heart pounding louder because of it. I remember the basketball hoop falling to the soft carpet as my dad leaned against my bed frame. I remember the rain pounding the windowpanes endlessly, without a break. But I also remember the next morning. The day was new. Dappled sunlight bounced between clouds, and the light shone down on the earth. My dad’s eyes were tinged red from crying, and he would cry over this again, but after a while and for most of the time since, his eyes were dry.

296

Michelle Qiao

Peeled

The oranges lay in a red twine basket by the door. I ordered them online and had them sent to his door. I wonder if they have been neglected long enough for the mold to split through the rind. I wonder if he has given them a second glance, noticed them, or the flowers and the peppermints, the delivery bill with his address. Wonder if he still remembers his address. Wonder if he looks at the pictures of me by his TV sometimes and thinks to himself, who is this little American girl, and why do her eyes look like mine?

This morning, sitting in the backseat of Auntie Lin’s green sedan with the tea stain on the carpet, I press my temple against the window. I pick at the soft grey fabric of the seats, rolling pills of lint between my thumbs. There’s hair stuck all over my legs from their old yellow dog with brown spots at her ears. Auntie hands me my mother’s list for the supermarket and tells me she’s going to the hairdresser to cover up her roots. I notice her adjust her rearview mirror, pull her hair flat, run her finger down the patches of white. She talks to me about the color of the hydrangeas dying in their front yard, tells me about how the rain last Thursday somehow shot new life into their stems, tells me about how she hopes it isn’t terminal lucidity.

Auntie Lin is a hospice nurse. From her stories of her patients on our long commute to Lucky 99 Foods every Sunday, I know all the words that describe the end of life–transition of care, withdrawal from the external world, terminal lucidity. A state of sudden remembrance, a sort of miraculous healing, the last hurrah. Patients with dementia, brain tumors, schizophrenia, anything that eats through the brain, look up, blink, smile, call their loved ones by their names for the first time in a long time, and then quietly pass. A miraculous healing, a last goodbye.

When she drops me off at the curb, I pull out a cart and walk past the doors and through the frozen potstickers to get to the tank by the back wall. Here, everything is still alive. Here, you need to look a living thing in the eye before deciding to eat it. My mother wants a bag of shrimp and a red snapper.

I look at the fish in the tank. Their eyes reflect like abalone shells. I point to one, and the man behind the counter fishes it out, hits it in the head with a yellow mallet, bags it, weighs it, and hands it to me. I don’t look at it. The shrimp I have to scoop myself, and as I dig the plastic ladle into the tub, I recoil at the sight of loose legs and tails. The cart squeals from the bolts. The shrimp spasm in the bag, flicking their tails and jumping up, each time landing with a soft click of shell against shell on the bodies of the others.

By the time we get home and Auntie waves goodbye, a raging headache has taken hold. I hand my mother the shrimp and the fish and notice she has already turned on the stove. With one hand, she pours red oil into the pan, and with the other, finds the bottle of ibuprofen pills in the cabinet and taps two capsules into my palm.

“He should be awake now, you should go call him.”

So I call his home phone, and Qiu, his caretaker, picks up. I ask her if he’s seen the oranges. And she says yes, he ate two yesterday, and my heart leaps into my throat. I yell to my mom, see, he ate the oranges, I knew he’d like them and I’m smiling this big dumb smile, and run up the stairs. I ask Qiu to wheel him to the computer, and when I see his face on screen, he looks up, blinks, smiles.

For the first time in a long time, he calls my name.

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Short

Story Leland High School San Jose, CA

Avani Ranka

6:30 pm.

panic attack in the kitchen, i break by the fireplace, i patch my fractures over a bowl of Maggi

you never realize how much you like to breathe until you’ve forgotten how; throat constricting, chest collapsing, lungs desperate for the taste of air.

i wonder what you would say if you knew— caricature of a human being who wills herself into being, beating bleeding heart staining carpetless floors and still too small to carry everything.

can’t talk to anyone so you talk to me, one less burden on your shoulders one more stone on mine, splintering collarbones as the skull and crossbones fly;

but what’s another warning between friends. what’s another omen between family.

do you know how much weight i carry?

do you know how much of it was yours?

but what’s a little more pressure to a lump of coal. what’s a little less oxygen to dying lungs.

do you know how to mourn mortality?

do you know there is nothing left to grieve?

keep your nails sharp, keep your nails long. break skin before they break you. keep your hands fisted,

keep your hands strong. watch bone-shattering crescents sink into your palms. keep your shoulders steady, keep your shoulders taut, ignore your fissures for the sky’s endless assault—

you are not Atlas.

there is no Hercules to offer respite from your load, the world was always yours to hold, the enthroned always bear burden with grace.

so what’s one more duty to a tired king. what’s one more tariff to starving peasants.

do you know the cost of tribute?

do you know I have nothing more to pay?

but what’s one more fire to a burning building. what’s one less ember to dying flames.

do you know the risk of candles?

do you know the lives your blaze consumes? it is 6:30 pm.

panic attack in the kitchen, i break by the fireplace, i patch my fractures over a bowl of Maggi i breathe.

i stand.

i open my palms, trembling fingers uncurling to a rhythm all their own. after all, what’s a little more weight?

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Spoken Word Del Norte High San Diego, CA

Soren Rasmussen

Trees Fall Without a Sound

“And so they looked at one another with burning eyes as they fled. Why me? Why you? Why you and I together when I don’t know you, I don’t speak your language, I don’t grasp your way of thinking, when we have nothing in common? Why all of us?”

—Stephan Zweig, The World of Yesterday

Chapter 1

Over the course of 22 days, a leaf fell from its branch in the upper canopy, drifted to the ground, and dried up in the sun. A strong gust of wind had ripped it off its stem with many others, and they fell together, gliding through the humid air, bouncing off the lower branches where the rest of the leaves held on tight, watching what was once below go above, and above go out of sight. They hoped they would find the shade, maybe a few of them did. This one fell on a large, dark rock and quickly began to fade, going stiff, ends curling in, veins wrinkling, shriveling up and losing green bit by bit until it turned pale brown and traveled on with the wind, tumbling along the floor of forests and roads and never settling down again. In some place far off from its home it was eventually crushed into many pieces by a force it could not name. And the leaf became a hundred leaves, all still blowing through the air, losing color and the memories of what life was like up there next to the sky.

Tany held loosely to Mother’s soft coat, listening to the birds’ noonday chirping routine. He knew the pattern well, one of the louder ones, always starting strong and dwindling near the end. It began with one very loud and bright chirp, then a series of increasingly softer ones with short pauses every so often amid the decline. The last three were substantially different from the rest and lingered as the song grew quieter and quieter, its sound slowly fading away. He didn’t understand what it all meant, but it was always the same tune. His kind had a similar call, only he didn’t have that down yet, not having heard it enough. There were fewer Indri around than birds, to be fair. He looked, but none were nearby. And they were not easy to miss as the biggest thing in the trees, large four-limbed creatures with short black and white fur all over their body. The outer sides of their arms, legs, and stomach held the white fur, although up close it looked more like a light bluish-gray, never pure white. The black fur covered the inner arms and legs, as well as their hands, feet, and head. Their heads were near-perfect circles of black with two tufts of fur sticking out on either side as if the creator had become lazy and decided to just stick on some left-over clumps of hair for ears. It was hard to believe that anything could be beneath all the fur, so thick that maybe they had no insides at all—just a giant pile of fur with eyes and a nose. Their eyes were a blinding shade of yellow green, which perfectly reflected the leaves of their meals. They also far outdid the birds with cries audible throughout the forest, generously assuming everyone wanted to hear them as Tany did.

He disobeyed Mother by looking down at the ground below; it was still somewhat visible beneath the slew of hundreds of branches. Nearby, a stream riddled with small round stones moseyed along in a steady whisper. Tany could hear it, but the sound did not register, as he had become so used to the stream that its whisper disappeared like the surrounding air. Down below he saw a speck moving about, walking along like a small rock trying to keep secret its ability to move. He followed its path across the ground as it stepped over stones and around saplings. It went beneath a bush, and with no other interests or means of entertainment, he continued staring, waiting for the pebble to appear from the other end. Now all sounds were unacknowledged, and his mind cleared of all thoughts unrelated to the pebble creature. After a moment and an eternity it emerged again,

walking at precisely the same pace as when it had disappeared, still entirely unaware of its young admirer above. From his spot the creature’s little snout was just barely visible, quivering as it scanned the terrain, decisively focused on this tiny journey. Then, after a moment more, a whole slew of the little pebble creatures came into view, specks of life who greeted this other pebble back from its journey with fantastically imagined dialogue that Tany assigned to each of them in his head.

He was jolted suddenly as Mother shifted her weight to climb higher, and Tany had to turn around to hold tighter. When they stopped once again a bit higher up, the pebbles were out of sight. He cried out.

She turned around hastily, “What? What is it?”

“I lost them!”

“Who?”

“The pebble people!” he said, still moving about to try and find them.

She laughed, “What pebble people?”

“Down there!” Tany pointed with one tiny finger to the ground.

“I thought I told you not to look down,” she said.

“But Mama!”

She sighed, and then to his delight, began to descend the tree a few branches at a time until they had gone below the canopy. She turned, and Tany crawled from her back to her stomach. “Alright. Where are they?”

He looked around frantically, “Where’d they go?”

“Maybe they went to take a nap.”

“But it’s the middle of the day! Why would anyone go to sleep?”

Creatures nearby listened to the conversation attentively, eager to see things in the same light. Tany didn’t notice their ears.

“Some creatures sleep in the middle of the day. Or maybe the pebbles had to go eat like we do.”

“But I’m not hungry!”

She smiled, “That’s alright. I’ll just eat everything I’ve saved for you.”

“No! I’m having them!”

She began climbing back up, and Tany looked down one last time. Still no pebble people. Maybe they did go to sleep. He kept his eyes out as they ascended the canopy and the veins of dead leaves on the forest floor went out of sight. Mother returned to her previous spot and handed Tany a small twig to eat from, Father eating from the other side. Tany avoided looking at him; it was always too strange to watch him eat, like seeing the clouds go down to the ocean to collect their water—the mythology ruined. As Mother reached to grab a new branch there was another sudden jerk, and Tany struggled to get a grip again.

“Mama,” he said, shifting around uncomfortably, “can’t I just get off?”

She grabbed the branch, “I’ve already told you, no.”

“But why not? Why can’t I get food on my own? You don’t need to feed me, you said yesterday I was getting a lot bigger anyways!”

“What happens if you see a fossa?” She asked, bringing up the only subject of Tany’s occasional nightmare, the catlike, tree climbing creature that seemed to exist only to keep Tany from freedom.

“I’ll stay up high, they won’t catch me. I won’t go far away from you guys anyway,” he said with little commitment to his words.

“He has lost all his babyfur,” Father butted in from a few branches away. Tany’s eyes and hopes grew wider now, as this kind of interjection was very rare.

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Novel

Joel Barlow High School Redding, CT

“You think he can go on his own already?”

“He has to at some point.”

“But so soon? With everything out there?”

“Mama, I’ll stay away from fossas!”

“And who’s to say they’ll stay away from you?”

“But I’m bigger now, Mama!”

“Tany, there are leaves here that are older than you.”

“He’s just stepping off your back,” Father said, “not being thrown out into the world.”

A moment of tension filled the forest as Mother stared at Father in a way that Tany couldn’t recall seeing before. But took little notice in the heat of the moment. She stared at him for what felt like a lifetime to Tany before finally caving in. He cheered and was already debating in which direction to run when she spoke:

“But I want you staying close to us. Just because you can eat solid food and recognize a fossa doesn’t mean you can’t hurt yourself.”

“So I can get off now?”

She hesitated a moment, “No. Tomorrow you can walk on your own, but I get today.”

Confused, Tany sighed and continued munching on his leaf, proud of his persuasion techniques and dreaming about running through the forest under a bright sun.

A passing wind made the trees dance, and the three of them calmly swayed along with the wind. The rustling leaves were a soft background in the forest, and the branches flowed slowly like a receding tide. Up above, the bright circle which would mark the beginning of Tany’s freedom had reached its peak, but was shrouded by the passing clouds so that he could look up safely. Rain from the night prior filled the stream below, submerging the rocks that had once contained it, flowing fast and loud to an unknown end. All the while the smell of water in the soil soaked the canopy in a rich and assertive aroma.

Tany took small bites of his leaves, shaping them carefully with each bite and watching an open space between the trees. The sky’s bright hue seemed to be glowing just slightly, and as he stared out at its calm expanse his imagination illustrated the open canvas, all his flowing thoughts and bubbling emotions singing together in a harmony he could not understand and that would only ever return to him later in the form of momentary impressions, so lost by that time in a sea of memories that he would never be able to distinguish what past they came from.

Here and now, though, everything went through ten layers of vibrant colors and dreams.

The clouds shone a pure white like foam from the stream and passed by like the water, a permanent wanderer, but seemingly happy with that fate. As they went by his eyes locked on one in the perfect shape of a butterfly, wings adjacent and only half-opened, as if in the middle of beating, politely shrouding the sun’s glare so that it could be seen in all its wonder. Atop the thin cylindrical body were two wisps, so faint that they would have gone unnoticed by an older creature, emerging like antennas, flowing with the kind blue sky. It was all a glowing, pure white. He watched it move, entranced by the figure, imagining it flutter closer and closer and landing softly on his nose.

As it inched onward, the clouds gradually split; one wing fell off, the antennas detached in their thin spirals and stumbled away. A moment later it was gone, just an array of different shapes, one which no one in their right mind would see and distinguish as the silhouette of an insect. He kept watching for a few moments more, curious to see whether the pieces would come back together, but eventually lost interest and shifted to watching the sun. It had begun its descent toward the horizon, and Tany couldn’t help but wish it would move faster and allow him to finally roam in liberty.

Finishing the leaves on his stick, he let the little twig fall through his fingers. He watched half-heartedly as it casually plummeted, bouncing twice off the trees before hitting the ground. It quickly disappeared into the array of dead leaves and other twigs, and after a moment Tany couldn’t tell which one he had dropped, though he expended considerable effort trying. Soon

he regretted not paying attention as he let it go, looking from one fallen stick to the next, often losing his place as they were all intertwined. He tried to rewind the few seconds in his mind, to remember with great focus how long the twig was, what shape, every notch and bend, and where he saw the ground flutter as it landed. But he could remember nothing.

Finally giving up on searching for the past possession, he spotted a fallen log on the forest floor and thought back to the conversation a few days ago when he first asked what they were.

“What is what?” Mother had asked.

He jumped on the strange log, “This thing!”

“It’s just a fallen tree.”

“How’d it fall?”

She reached the bottom and stood on the opposite side of the tree, “Things die Tany, that’s just... what happens.”

“Will it happen to the rest of the trees? What about our trees?”

“Someday, but not for a long time.”

“But what happens when they all die? Does the whole land die then?”

“No,” she said, “land doesn’t die. You see how all this bark is crumbling? Soon the rest of the dead tree will crumble, and then after a while it’ll turn into dirt that other trees grow in. And that’ll happen to every tree and everyone, over and over. So the land will always grow back.”

“It can just keep growing and living forever then?”

“Until the end of time.”

Tany imagined that small twig crumbling into dirt and holding down a new tree. He looked at the dirt in between the fallen branches and leaves and imagined a million twigs falling and turning to dirt. Maybe that was why he couldn’t find his twig from earlier, maybe it had turned to dirt already. Eagerly, he snapped off a few more twigs and let them go as well, hoping to speed up the process, listening to the faint taps as they hit the ground. They were just as inconspicuous on the ground as they were still attached to the tree, but he knew better than to lose sight of them this time. For whatever reason, though, they did not quickly turn to soil, and with newfound disappointment in the speed of the process he turned back to eating.

That night, as the three of them settled down to rest, the moon cast a glow that struck through the leaves and onto their resting spot high in the trees. Tany tried furiously to go to sleep. His eyelids strained as they scrunched, forced down hard to make a jump start on tomorrow. He tried to evade Mother’s clinging hands and sleep on his own. It was always too warm in her coat. Soon his eyes closed, sleep came, and what he didn’t see he would never see, as Tany finally drifted off and left that place forever.

Chapter 2

An immeasurable amount of branches and leaves made up the canopy of a tree which, according to classifications it would never know, was one of the species Ocotea madagascariensis of the genus Ocotea and of the family Lauraceae. It would be described in those scientific journals which detailed its discovery as having obovate and obtuse leaves—shown in greater detail by later specimens turned brown in their isolation, taped onto large sheets of paper made from a distant relative—and being a large tree, contrasting with others of its same family who maintained a smaller, underbrush size. Perhaps, it may have wondered, if it were ever told of this information, that this difference between it and the many other members of its family was the reason it had no personal connection to any of them, had never met them, had never exchanged a few words or interacted with them, but of course none of this was true. Those people only meant biological connection. As far as their studies entailed, the personal life of the tree was an entirely unrelated matter. As far as they were concerned, everything else was impossible to measure.

On this very normal late morning, as the final dewdrops landed and the sun returned to its throne in the sky, the tree stood as it always did, carefully observing, as it assumed was

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its job, the never-ending movement surrounding it. Four months and five days would mark the 68th year of its existence, during which time many thousands of leaves had grown and fallen, and it had established itself as a respectable member of this lowland forest canopy. The rainy season was just about halfway through, although it appeared that today they would all get a moment’s rest, as the sky was clear blue as far as the tree could see from above. A good day to warm up.

Down at the forest floor where the trunk met the earth and began that great mysterious underground network, a shrew tenrec no bigger than a mature leaf slept in his burrow, a tiny hole nestled against the base of a trunk under a slightly exposed roof, insulated by layers of dry leaves and firm soil. He had wrapped himself in a ball, his long thin nuzzle resting against the light brown fur, tiny black dots of eyes gently shut, sleeping through the daylight hours. When night returned he would, as had been his routine since settling in four seasons ago, emerge and scour for grubs, peeling small bits of bark that only felt like a pinch for the tree ten thousand times his size, discussing among a few of the other creatures of the night but staying relatively solitary, listening to the calls echo from above, and basking in the greatness of the world he would never know any other way. All of that when the evening arrived. Until then the others made their way around.

At this time, just on the other side of the trunk, a redstriped ground snake which lived a second life in the shrew tenrec’s restless nights brushed by in search of new ground, her rough scales never felt again by the tree. And the tree was used to this by now, millions of interactions old as it was, having encountered nearly everything, even if some things only for a moment.

Two golden yellow frogs, shining in the sunlight that had maneuvered its way through the canopy and bounced off their skin, settled into the daylight and watched everything with the rest of everyone else. The wide leaves of the low hanging branches were slick but sticky against their barely visible narrow fingers that spread wide across the leaves’ surface, because any fall is a big fall when you’re small enough. In the breeze, their leaves swayed slightly but didn’t bend from their weight. The two males had chosen leaves next to one another when the daylight had first arrived, catching fruit flies and talking away the time through the bright clicks that were their language, clicks the whole canopy could hear but never pin to a source, the high notes in the background score.

“I don’t think it will rain today.” “Yes, looks unlikely.” “Are you going to the pond this season?” “I think so, there’s no sense in moving too far.” “It’s very nice this year, and I heard it’s not as crowded.” “That’s good, last time it was difficult to get my calls heard.” “You just have to be louder. It’s not too bad.” “Is this your third breeding season?” “Only second.” “Did you see all the tadpoles wash into the water last time?” “No, I think I missed that.” “It’s quite a sight; when the rain comes down and they all flow right into the pond.” “I’ll have to stick around a little longer.” “Just be careful when you do. I got too close to a skink last time.” “Oh no.” “He gave himself away thankfully, but you can’t always expect to be that lucky.” “Of course. You were fortunate.” “I wasn’t thinking. I was far too visible.” “Was it close?” “Not very. I got away as soon as I heard him.” “Good.” “Yes, just keep an eye out for all of that.” “I certainly will.” “I wonder who else will be there.” “I assume the same crew as last time. With a few new arrivals, of course.” “I’d like to be done pretty quickly this year.” “So would I.” “Do you hear that?” “Hear what?” “I thought I heard an eagle’s call.” “Oh yes, I think I did pick that up.” “Have you ever seen one up close?” “No, but I’ve heard stories.” “So have I.” “Very scary.” “Yes, they really keep you on edge.” “They never come down this low though.” “Yes, we’re very lucky for that.” “Do you think they can eat us?” “I assume they can’t, but I would rather not find out.” “Yes, it’s better to never learn.” “Yes, I hope I never learn.”

Listening but not interpreting from a few branches above was a large two-banded chameleon, clasping a minor branch with her V-shaped hands and feet. Her rough scales were a dark but neutral green—no reason yet to display anger or excitement. In

the center of her curved, narrow body was a thin pale beige stripe, which gave the impression of a deep and painful knife wound sweeping across her torso. Her head and tail remained just as still as the rest of her body, tail hanging to one side and wound up in a tight green coil, big circular ball-socket eyes gazing back, her mouth outlined in a long white frown.

She moved with gentle consideration out from the trunk, slowly, having spotted an insect at the end of her branch. Each step and moment was calculated with extreme patience, gliding along the bumps and ridges, closer and closer to the prey. Meanwhile, the wind rocked the branch, and she saw the bug flutter slightly, swaying in its resting place, still noticing nothing. Inching closer and closer until, in a fraction of an instant, her tongue shot out and grasped the insect with utmost precision, out and back like lightning. And the spot where the prey once was showed no trace of its existence. And the chameleon stood still, still swaying, hoping her movements had not aroused the attention of the dangers that loomed above, looking for what came next.

But no small triumphs for everyone. Thankfully out of sight of the chameleon from a few branches higher, a small group of caterpillars fed on those obovate leaves with sharp and tiny teeth, little round cylinders with many green folds indicating that perhaps they ate too much for the distance they traveled in a day. But this was all necessary. Gazing up from the seemingly never-ending meal, one of the caterpillars spotted a giant yellow moth with large, beautiful wings a couple branches over. The wings extended out just slightly at the bottom into a tail that looked like thick streaks of paint, brown before turning yellow again at its tip. She had two large brown circles on each side declared by someone very long ago to look like a moon, giving it and the caterpillar their interchangeable names, as they were of the same kind.

The caterpillar watched curiously as this beautiful creature held onto the large, off-white, dewdrop-shaped cocoon it had just emerged from—the sign of its former life—completely immobile. He had dreamed of wings for a very long time now and wondered why she did not seem to care for them at all. Go, fly away, he thought to tell her if he could reach her, you don’t have to stay on the branches anymore.

He hoped that when he grew wings he would not be afraid to fly. How fascinating the world will be from up above.

The madagascan moon moth, or comet moth, spends about two months as a caterpillar feeding on leaves. It then pupates and, in transitioning from caterpillar to moth, loses all ability to eat food. The moth lives in its recognizably beautiful form for about a week, slowly losing energy, during which time males search for females and females mainly wait by their former cocoons.

A life’s work and a week’s decay.

Up to the center of the canopy now. The tree’s loudest and most recognizable figures enjoyed the sunlight glowing green through the thin ceiling of bright leaves. The branches intertwined in endless knots untraceable to their source, all spotted with bright green peeling lichens and frequently blanketed with thin mosses, detail that only amplified the smaller and smaller one became.

Six lemurs occupied this sanctuary at the center, picking and chewing leaves, watching and listening to the rest of the orchestra, bouncing around among the branches. They had a light gray coat on their backs which darkened by the neck and face and suddenly turned a pale orange at the arms and legs—this stood out much more than the rest of their fur, as they were constantly in motion—with a long white tail and black hands and feet. Their faces were small and dark but encircled in bold white spiky fur like a small mane or bright aura around the eyes and mouth.

Three males and three females, and the ones in motion patrolled the area, brushing up against the branches to mark them with the scent of their rightful owner just in case another came by with any plans for residence. They had ventured here, the center of their large territory, a little while earlier, returning to the tree as they often did because the trees were among the best in this area that constituted the whole known world to them.

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“This is the best tree,” one says between bites.

“I don’t understand how you think that.” “It is! Without a doubt.” “This one doesn’t even fall into the top five, let alone the best!”

Another chimed in, “Is this necessary again?”

These two bickered every other time they came to the tree, and the sounds of these statements were nothing the canopy, though they couldn’t understand, had not heard before.

“You think there are five better than this one? “Probably more!” “Which then?”

“They all taste alright,” another tried again to stop them.

“Don’t say that.” “I’m not even going to address that statement.” “Name five that are better.” “You want a list? Alright. And this is not in any order—” “Let’s have it.” “—The tall spiny one over that way—” “That doesn’t count, you can barely get to those leaves.” “You just reach from the other one next to it, it’s not that hard.” “Alright, what else?” “Okay. The really wide one just out there—” “That one’s not that good.” “—the one overhanging the stream over there—” “Alright, that one’s okay.” “Don’t interrupt me. Let me see—” “Keep going.” “I’m trying! The short one over there the red-bellies always take—” “Oh, come on, those are bitter.” “You haven’t had them in a while.” “Yes I have.” “When?” “I don’t remember.” “You see?” “But it was recently, I’ll tell you that.” “Well they’re better than these, that’s what I’m saying.” “Not a chance.” “What do I need, one more?” “You’re at four.” “Oh, of course, the smooth one with the bark all peeled just over that way.” “I don’t remember that one.” “Well, time to try it then.” “It can’t be better than here.” “Come on, we’re going over.” “Fine, but you already know my opinion.” “Don’t do that, just try it.”

The two of them ran off, and the others glanced at each other with sighs of relief. The forest was never quiet but they could at least hope not to hear the same things over and over again. Now only the cicadas and bird songs and clicks from a couple frogs were audible, and one could easily drown them out after a moment. They kept climbing and maneuvering through the branches; the daylight was bright and warm and the time to eat was as good as any. Eat and groom and talk and climb and watch the world move as it always did and always would.

Another creature of a different kind reached the tree for a moment, stouter and with dark orange fur and pointy black head, quickly made to feel unwelcome by the natives, eyeing the scene but soon vanishing among the green shadows. The tree felt the visitor’s long, warm fingers wrap around one of its branches, grip not tight in expectation of a short stay, but still distinct and with a quality the tree had not felt before. In a moment it leapt away, and the tree would not feel that same grip for a very long time. Finally, upon reaching the upper floors and rooftop of the canopy, the large and boisterous sifakas gave way for the small and still boisterous winged neighbors, often colorful and always in motion. At this height the greens had given way to a pale blue, shade became a luxury beneath a thinner layer of leaves, and the air became a network of long distance calls, free as long as one could identify the other amid the hundreds of auxiliary discussions.

A very small gray-headed bird with a white belly, slightly orange wings, and a red tail stood near the end of the tree’s fourth highest branch. His tiny claws, hidden underneath his stomach, nearly wrapped around the thin twig sprouting nothing but small buds. He called out to the sky. The wind was light and cool. He felt a slight itch and burrowed his beak through the tiny gray feathers to find it. He looked around to his other side and called again. The itch was not gone. He burrowed some more and glanced around again. Had the canopy answered him? He had not listened for it. He called again and tried to listen this time. The lemurs were making noises again and it was hard to hear. He heard part of an answer but wasn’t sure if it was right, then looked frantically around again. They were getting louder down there. He nagged at the itch a bit more and found the source. One of the lemurs began yelling. He took off for a quieter tree. The air was still brisk from the morning.

This repeated a thousand times more around the trunk.

Bearing witness to all of this from the highest peak standing on a branch that cut through the top of the canopy and out into the sky was the penthouse resident: an eagle as large as the springing lemurs down below with bold yellow eyes and dark brown feathered wings looming at her side, static but unrivaled in power by any other creature in sight. She gazed around the landscape with greater ease than the little songbirds that scattered before its presence, fearing less and owning more than they could ever imagine. She listened to all the other birds around, those who needed to speak to establish a presence, and wondered whether or not she was hungry.

Gazing at the canopy below there were no chameleons directly in sight. A thin streak of red suddenly flashed near the bottom branches, which she immediately registered as likely an outstretched tongue, but in another moment it was gone, and she was not hungry enough yet to go searching for it.

After a moment of empty deliberation and boredom watching the leaves hover in the wind and listening to the conversations below, she let go and took off into the great blue sea above. The sounds of the chirping faded away beneath the wind rushing by, and the cooler air was welcoming after perching for so long. She held her wings out and let them glide along the air, not flapping or trying to go anywhere fast.

The forest below grew smaller and smaller as she ascended, the thousands of trees blending into a soft green layer like a coat of moss on an old stone, so many blooming and reaching up together for the sun in vibrant shades light and dark, bending and dipping with the changes in height and curves of the land, coming to represent one thing rather than billions, and suddenly she could no longer tell which tree she had taken off from.

Chapter 3

When the long-awaited morning finally arrived, Tany was up to welcome it. He had been up for some time counting the endless moments, watching the shadows of leaves in the darkness and listening as more and more birds slowly added to the morning chorus. A fleet of deep grey clouds had rolled in and the sunrise was already receding behind their towering presence. Only a matter of time before the rain began, but in his excitement Tany didn’t notice.

After waiting for another eternity in anticipation, Mother finally awoke. In a procession of events that could not have taken more time, she called out softly, opened her eyes, looked around, saw him staring eagerly at her from her shoulder, paused for a moment to remember why, and then gave a solemn nod. Before she could so much as lay out the ground rules for his independence, Tany was out of sight.

He ricocheted off the branches, all the built-up energy of a tiny lifetime finally given an outlet. Every so often he paused and stood still to hear in case a yell went out in his name, but none did, and so he exercised his new freedom to its limits. The wind whistled in his ears to welcome his presence in this new world, and the sun flickered on his eyes where the canopy did not shield the light, sudden flashes of warmth smiling at him every second. He embraced all of it like one finally emerging after a long and tiring hibernation, greeting the trees and the leaves and the forest again as an old friend finally back from a grueling journey. The adrenaline kept him from having to take a breath with an impenetrable smile. As he leaped about, each preceding branch shook from his movement, creating a visible path of swaying trees behind him, his unshakable energy contagious to those branches, which held a touch of his excitement before eventually falling back to equilibrium.

He bounced around for a short while, gaping at everything from a view free of Mother’s fur. With time the look of the forest ahead of him changed, more and more sky apparent in front of him where the canopy should have been. He slowed down, nervous and completely unaware that an edge to the forest existed, that the forest was not the world.

302

As the canopy receded and the trees flew backward, strange new sounds came into view. These weren’t the chirps of morning birds, the crashing of water on rock streams, or the wind rattling through the trees. None of these noises he recognized. Tany reached a final branch on the outskirts of the canopy and looked beyond in petrified awe.

There were fewer trees, and when Tany saw everything before him he clutched tighter to his thin hair of a branch. Before him a large hill dominated the landscape, divided into small flat yellow fields that cascaded down the hill in quadrants. The sections were divided by thin dirt paths, if one could call it dirt, as the earth that separated these sections was a dusty ochre with no sign of soil in its veins.

At the very top of the hill on his right were a group of three small brown boxes. They had square holes on their sides which revealed a dim orange light on the other side. From one of the holes he noticed a thick, black air pouring out and rising up, and he saw it spread and disappear in the sky. It didn’t look like fog.

The boxes were covered on top by a soft sort of material that reminded him of tree bark, but he was certain these things weren’t trees. The coverings were in two large pieces, each on a slant covering the box, creating a tip where they met in its center.

It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Leaning against the box closest to him, resting in the shade it provided, was a creature of some sort. He couldn’t tell what, but it was much bigger than an Indri. This thing didn’t have any hair, but some sort of covering over its torso and legs, in red and brown shades that he recognized from somewhere but could not identify. It stood humbly, putting all its weight up against that wall, looking around at nothing in particular. Friendliness and fear glanced at each other, muddled in Tany’s mind as he looked, neither sure who should take the wheel.

A moment passed. Tany shifted his weight on the branch, and the creature caught sight of him. They locked eyes and Tany froze. He contemplated running, but the creature didn’t move, nor appear to have any intention of ever doing so. It only stood there, immobile as Tany was in his tree, watching him just as Tany watched it.

Suddenly Tany gained the strange sensation that he was at a riverbank, standing over the water, gazing down at his reflection below. The water was calm and he could see every hair on his face, the streaks of pigment in his pupils, the texture of his nose.

The creature smiled at him. Again, he didn’t know whether to greet it or run.

He kept watching as it stood up calmly, arms akimbo for a moment, taking one final glance up at the trees before walking back inside, that smile ceasing to fade.

For a moment it seemed the clouds were parting, and a wave of relief came over him at having survived the stare-down.

Two more of these creatures were in the tall grass, fussing about, pulling the grass out of the ground and arranging it in small piles. He noticed them only now that the other had gone inside. They moved as if a tree had been placed on their backs, bent over, taking a few lumbering steps at a time, working tediously and subconsciously. As they moved along, the field became lined with rows of grass piles, as if some giant creature had come through and stomped it all down. The reeds not yet plucked saw their inevitable fate as the workers moved closer, then being pulled from their roots and added to a preexisting pile, indistinguishable from the thousands of other reeds. He watched the process continue, slowly and melodically going through the field, revealing the light brown soil beneath, just a shade or two darker than the ocre paths that sectioned off the land. He looked to the other sections of land the giant had already stomped on, pushing more and more of the field beneath its large feet.

As Tany watched transfixed, a rustle grew behind him, and an arm reached out and pulled him back. Mother’s familiar musk returned as she yanked at him, yelling something about leaving and running and danger, all of which was only an incoherent jumble of words amidst Tany’s focus on the creatures ahead. He interrupted her and said shakily, “Mother, who are those?”

“Are you listening to me? What are you talking about?”

He pointed, and she realized why his voice had been so soft. The clouds, who had held it in as long as they possibly could, turned very dark, and the rain began, a few drops at a time.

“Oh, them.”

“Who are they?”

“Those are humans.”

“I’ve never seen them before.”

“No you haven’t.” Her entire being seemed to deflate in that moment, as if she had lost half of her weight. At the time her shift did not seem unusual to him.

He leaned in closer to the outskirts of the forest she had pulled him away from. “What are they doing down there?”

Tany: Malagasy for Earth / Land

303

Gabriela Rey

WRITTEN ON THE BATHROOM WALL

INT. HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY- DAY.

A hand slaps BRIGHT PINK POSTERS to the walls along a hallway.

“Jess for Class President” is written next to a photo of JESS, a teenage girl with a plastered, phony smile. We can tell each poster was painstakingly hand-made, by the excessive use of glitter and stickers on each one.

Jess brushes some glitter off of her skirt and strides confidently down the hall-- her pair of fancy designer shoes clacking on the linoleum floor.

We tilt up to her grinning face from the large CAMPAIGN BUTTON on her chest, which features her grinning face- identical to the posters.

JESS (V.O)

What people don’t understand about me is that I have to win. If I don’t win, I don’t see the point in it. Why do anything if you’re not going to have people chanting your name in love and admiration? Enjoy your sad little participation trophy your mom is going to throw away the minute you go to college. I plan on winning at everything I do, and having a wall of real trophies so big my dad is going to have to buy another shelf from IKEA. What, you’re going to volunteer at your local animal shelter to make a better life for the poor abandoned dogs? I joined because I want to win the world record for most shelter dogs walked at once and get famous. Jess passes a bulletin board with the words VOLUNTEER OF THE MONTH: across the top. Camera tracks across several identical photos of smiling Jess under the words AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER.

JESS (V.O. CONT’D) (CONT’D)

They even started a “volunteer of the month” wall because of me, and I’ve won every month for … Three months straight. I’m on a roll!

Jess hands flyers to students walking in the hallways. Tilt up from her picture on the flier to her face.

It’s the same pasted-on smile. She doesn’t really care about her classmates, and just wants their vote.

JESS (CONT’D)

Vote Jess for Class President! Jess is the bessss…t!

She dismisses each student once she shoves a flier in their hands.

JESS (CONT’D) (CONT’D)

If you vote for me, I’ll make sure our school lunch is actually edible!

I’ll, uh, give everyone a free puppy, to keep! (winks)

I’ve got the hookup.

A clique of three ARTSY STUDENTS in the hallway glare at her.

ARTSY BOY #1

So desperate.

He crumples and tosses the flier into a garbage without reading it and wipes the glitter residue on his hand onto his skinny jeans.

Jess pretends to be unfazed and marches on.

JESS (V.O.)

Yeah. Sure, they’re empty promises: the school lunch is going to stay tasting like the bottom of someone’s foot. (beat)

I just want to win, and I don’t care what it takes. If I have to lie to my peers, then so be it. I never liked any of them, anyway. (beat)

I guess except one.

304

Play or Script Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts New York, NY

VICKY is pressed against the side of the bathroom stall on the phone with someone. Her eyes are watery, and her mascara is running.

VICKY

No, no, no… you can’t break up with me. (beat)

VICKY (CONT’D)

I’m serious, Theo. Prom is like, three days from now.. (beat)

Oh, you’re going? Without me? Yeah, good luck finding a date in three days. (beat)

You already have one, (scoffs) yeah right. (beat)

Freaking Olivia? That girl who literally can’t read? (beat)

I’m going to write her a very passive aggressive text the minute I hang up. Wait. She wouldn’t be able to read it. Because she literally can’t read words.

Never mind. Tell her I hate her then! (beat)

No Theo, I see how it is. (beat)

Yeah, go to hell, Theo. I hope your date wipes out on the floor because she can’t read the slippery when wet sign!!!

Vicky hangs up and slides down the bathroom wall-- slowly sitting down on the bathroom stall floor, face pressed against her knees. Sobbing.

SOUND: the door of the bathroom creaks open and slams.

A pair of fancy designer shoes walk past and then turn back to face the bathroom stall Vicky is in. It’s Jess’s shoes.

JESS

Can you hurry up? I wanna put some posters in there so when they’re taking a dump… they think of me.

Jess slides a poster under the bathroom stall.

VICKY

Ew. I’m not coming out of this stall anytime soon, Jess. Put your stupid posters somewhere else. We don’t need all that glitter in the toilet. Bad for plumbing.

On the other side of the door. Jess realizes who it is.

JESS

Vicky?

No response. Jess sighs loudly and stomps away to the sink. She twists the squeaky knob and runs the water. We hear the sounds of Vicky sobbing loudly. Jess turns around to face the stall. It is reflected in the mirror behind her. She realizes Vicky is crying. Jess is conflicted: too afraid to comfort her but doesn’t want to leave her alone in the bathroom.

JESS (CONT’D)

Vicky… are you okay? Are you crying?

The loud sobbing stops.

…No…

Jess takes a leap of faith.

VICKY

JESS

Look. I know it’s been a while since we… hung out. But do you want to talk to me about it? I-I’m here for you…

305 INT. GIRLS BATHROOM–DAY.

Jess looks at her smiling poster on the wall of the bathroom.

JESS (CONT.) (CONT’D)

…if that’ll make you stop sobbing very loudly and scaring away all the girls, so they won’t see my lovely posters in the bathroom.

Vicky stops crying. She’s conflicted too. She looks over at the sharpied-in “Vik + Jess = BFF” on the bathroom stall door, fading away and smudged.

CLOSE-UP on Vicky’s face.

CUT AWAY TO:

[FLASHBACK]

INT. MIDDLE SCHOOL. NURSES OFFICE– DAY

YOUNG VICKY and YOUNG JESS are sitting in the waiting room of the NURSES OFFICE with a chair in between them.

Young Vicky has her arms crossed and is clearly annoyed. Young Jess is sobbing over her BLOODY NOSE - now with an ice pack to ease the pain. They are both careful not to even acknowledge each other. We sense tension between them.

VICKY (V.O.)

The first time I ever met Jess was when I punched her in the 8th grade. Why punch someone I didn’t know? Well… I was aiming for another kid- but he ducked, and Jess took the hit. I had to spend several hours in the nurse’s office watching that dork cry over her bloody nose.

[FLASHBACK continues]

INT. CLASSROOM– DAY.

Young Vicky and Young Jess are sitting next to each other in DETENTION. Vicky is looking at her black nail polish, and Jess has her arms crossed, angry. Jess’ bloody nose is gone, but her bruise is now BANDAGED. They’re both clearly bored, while mutually angry at each other.

VICKY (V.O.)

We had to spend a week in detention together for “fighting at school”. I never got why Jess even got detention with me. But I never said anything because, well, I didn’t want to be alone. For the first few days she refused to talk to me, but after a while we got so bored, we decided talking was better than sitting in silence picking our noses.

YOUNG JESS

I still don’t understand why I’m here. Like, I literally got punched in the face. I’m the victim here! (Jokingly) I should sue you for attempted murder, Vicky.

YOUNG VICKY (rolls her eyes.)

You know I wasn’t aiming for you, Jess. You didn’t deserve to get hit. You know who does?

YOUNG VICKY (CONT’D)

That idiot Robert. I hate him. He said I had “major anger issues”.

YOUNG JESS tries not to laugh.

Wow, I wonder why.

YOUNG JESS

Young Vicky glares back. A wave of regret hits her. She’s determined to make things right again.

YOUNG JESS (CONT’D)

I’m sorry Vicky, okay? I didn’t mean it.

306

Young Vicky looks up at Young Jess. It’s clear not many people apologize to her. She’s grateful for Jess’s sudden kindness.

YOUNG VICKY

It’s ok. I guess Robert is right. I do have anger issues. But don’t tell him I said that.

YOUNG JESS

Why would I? He pops his pimples in class and smells like wet socks.

The two new friends chuckle. They’ve made a connection. [FLASHBACK continues]

INT. BATHROOM, STALL - DAY.

Giggling, Young Jess and Vicky swing open the bathroom stall door. Vicky whips out a SHARPIE marker and takes off the top. Jess looks at it, wide-eyed, with a look of: are we really going to do this?

VICKY (V.O.)

And so, we became best friends almost instantly. We kinda didn’t have any other friends to start with, so this was pretty refreshing for the both of us. It was nice to have someone to vent to, and someone who will always have your back no matter what.

Vicky writes “JESS + VICKY = BFFS” on the bathroom stall

VICKY (V.O. CONT.)

Or so I thought. (beat)

A year ago, we got into a major fight. I don’t even remember what it was about. All I remember was that I started dating Theo in Sophomore year. She grew distant after that and got into that Student council crap. We grew apart. And suddenly, we weren’t friends anymore.

[FLASHBACK ends]

CUT BACK TO: INT. BATHROOM,STALL–DAY.

Vicky looks at the faded writing again with a sense of pain, and almost longing.

JESS (O.S)

Well, do you wanna talk about it or not? Girl, I have posters to tape up.

The OUTSIDE of the door:

JESS (CONT’D)

I want everyone to know that in my campaign, I’m advocating for 4-ply toilet paper in every bathroom. Students deserve the comfort and satisfaction of-

VICKY (O.S.)

Fine. Come in here.

CUT TO:

Vicky reaches her hand out from under the stall, and beckons for Jess to follow.

CUT TO:

INSIDE the stall. Vicky is peering underneath the stall, but is met with the stall door opening by itself. She looks up. It’s Jess.

JESS

The door was unlocked.

VICKY

Oh.

Vicky and Jess stand squished together, shoulder-to-shoulder leaning on the wall of the stall. Jess tries to make conversation.

307

JESS

So… where do you think I should put this?

She pulls out the poster, this time picturing JESS holding a roll of pillowy toilet paper with googly eyes. She has that same plastered smile as before. Vicky smiles and rolls her eyes. She forgot how funny Jess used to be.

VICKY

Next to the T.P would be good. Maybe they can use it instead of the sandpaper the school gives us.

Jess’ eyes light up.

JESS

So, you agree! Can I count on your vote?

VICKY

You know I was going to vote for you anyways, Jess.

Jess is taken aback. Vicky points at the sharpie graffiti on the wall again. Jess squints and notices it for the first time.

JESS

Wow, I can’t believe it’s still there. I remember when we did that. (chuckles)

It was like a month after we met each other.

VICKY

Yeah. You wanted to write it in pencil, so we didn’t get in trouble, but before you had the time to take the sharpie out of my hands… I had already scribbled it.

Jess starts laughing, embarrassed.

JESS

Oh my god, you’re so right. I was so scared we were going to go to detention for that. I could not go back to that prison cell.

VICKY

You were all like: “my permanent record will be tarnished!”. That was so freaking funny. I could not stop laughing for days.

JESS

Well, I guess nobody ever found it, huh?

There’s an awkward silence. Neither Jess and Vicky don’t know what to say. Jess stares at the graffiti, thinks about it, and takes a deep breath.

JESS (CONT’D)

Look Vik, I know what you’re thinking.

“How could Jess be so successful after losing me as a friend?”

“She’s just so awesome at everything she does, it’s amazing!”.

“She walks multiple dogs at once and looks really cool doing it!”

But to be honest Jess, it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows for me.

Vicky chuckles.

Oh, is that so?

Yeah.

VICKY

JESS

(Not sensing the sarcasm) After my stepmom moved in with us, I’ve been under a lot of pressure to be the “perfect daughter” from both her and my dad, now that my brother is living with my mom. (beat.)

My stepmom told me she didn’t like you, and that’s why I snapped at you a year ago and why I’ve been avoiding you ever since. And to be honest, Vik, I’m just running for student body president to make them happy.

308

JESS (CONT’D)

I don’t really care about the 4-ply toilet paper. I rarely drop a deuce at school, anyways.

Jess suddenly becomes embarrassed. She’s regretting telling Vicky about her personal life. It’s just that she has no one to talk to, and sitting together with her rekindles that spark of friendship they used to have.

VICKY

Wow. I thought it was because you thought I was too dependent on Theo. I know, I was starting to hang out with him more and more around this same time last year. I seriously thought you hated him.

JESS

What? I don’t hate Theo! (Guilty) ) But I was just a little jealous when you’d go to movies with him and not even invite me. Or laser tag. Or that Italian restaurant with the all-you-can-eat breadsticks…

Vicky realizes what she did and feels guilty about it. She tries to make it up to Jess.

VICKY

Want to know something that’ll make you feel better?

JESS

Vicky smiles.

What?

VICKY

He dumped me. He’s going with to prom with Olivia

Jess’ eyes widen.

JESS

That girl who can’t read?!

VICKY

That’s the one.

JESS

I knew I had a reason to hate Theo!

VICKY

Wait, I thought you said you didn’t hate Theo!

JESS

Well, I just found my reason!

Jess and Vicky smile. They both look at the graffiti on the wall. We get a close up of the words scribbled. Vicky looks at Jess, and pulls a sharpie from her pocket.

VICKY

Wanna make it extra-permanent?

JESS (paranoid)

But what if we get in–

Vicky shoots Jess an insistent look, takes the top off the sharpie.

JESS (CONT’D)

Alright, fine.

Jess rolls her eyes. Vicky smiles.

Jess and Vicky take turns outlining the graffiti in sharpie. “JESS + VICKY = BFFS”

309

Kaydance Rice

after i overheard you and gabriel gossipping about me and he asked if i am spiritual

not in the way the gods tell me to be. i don’t drink wine or kneel to the cross. the last time i prayed it was because i was high and maybe a little sad and i swore i wouldn’t bother you again. there are nights when the only things i can think about are glass and paper and the stars. my mind becomes a kaleidoscope of couplets. there are only so many moments left for us and too many days to waste. the moon hangs above us and i’ll ask him about the bible and he will tell me about the revelations and the fire. i will ask him again and he will sift the ashes together

a new earth. the seventh day we will awaken and there will be lava and torn pages.

not in the way

to create

you probably want me to be but i’ll still sit here and ask why you didn’t show up until now.

310

Spoken Word Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

Georgia Rigby

Windy Gap: A Summer Camp for Girls

CAST

Miley Chambers- Age 18, strong southern accent, doesn’t stop talking, overly enthusiastic and energetic, nice but in a fake way.

Taylor- Age 16, very quiet, strong teenage angst, very emo teenage girl. The two characters starkly contrast one another.

SETTING

A summer camp office. There are brightly colored flags, crosses, and off-putting decorations all around the room.

Interior of a camp office. Taylor enters into the room where Miley sits behind a desk.

MILEY

Oh, my goodness gracious! You must be Taylor. Your dad has told me so much about you, girly! We are so glad you’re joining the Windy Gap Girl Squad this summer! That’s what the cabin leaders are called, bee tee dubs!

Beat.

Alright, well, since you missed orientation—nooooo worries on that by the way—I guess we should just dive right in. To start, let me introduce myself! My name is Miley Chambers. Yep, just like Cyrus! Party in the USA everyday baby am I right or am I right? WHOOOO! I am from a small town in Tennessee. Well, I actually live in Chapel Hill now, and I’m going to UT Austin this fall, HOOK ‘EM! Anyways, I have been a member of Young Life since I was old enough to talk! I absolutely fell in LOVE L.O.V.E. with this beautiful program for young believers. I found Jesus when I was 9 and first saw the App-uh-latch-in mountains. Looking out at God’s creation filled me up and I knew. I just knew! …Oh my goodness, you’ve let me talk for just SO much time, girly! Tell me about you! How did you find Jesus?

TAYLOR

…I’m Taylor. From Durham. My dad’s the cook here. I’m Jewish.

MILEY

Oh! You must be our diversity sign up! We love our Jews for Jesus here at Windy Gap! Shabbat Shalom to you, my friend! Well girly, let’s get you all caught up! There’re a few rules we want you to be aware of, but they are all an absolute breeze. You’ll be just fine!

TAYLOR …Okay.

MILEY

Okay girl! So, you just sit tight and let me know if you have ANY questions. Nothing’s off limits! I want to guide you through this summer of FUN F.U.N. Don’t forget: Jesus will be with you the whole way.

TAYLOR Ok.

MILEY

Alright, well it looks like you will be the head of our Devoted Darlings cabin! Cute! You will fit right in with those girls! So, let’s talk rules. Rule one: Absolutely NO illegal substances are allowed here. This includes drugs, alcohol, vape, and any kind of water that is unholy. Otherwise, we gotta…you know. Number 2: stay POSITIVE! P-O-S-T-V-I-E! Sounds good to you?

TAYLOR Postvie?

MILEY

HAHAHAHAHAHA! You are just a HOOT! Anyways, number 3: don’t— and I mean DO NOT N-O-T—even think about canoodlin’ with ANY of your male coworkers. (In a fake whisper) some of them are HUNKS, so I know

311

or Script

Play

Durham Academy Durham, NC

how difficult it can be. I try to remind myself that the only man in my life that matters is Jesus. But stay strong, girly. Anywhoodles, number 4: accept EVERYONE that you encounter. Doesn’t matter who—

TAYLOR

What about my female coworkers?

MILEY

What’s that sweet girl?

TAYLOR

Am I allowed to “canoodle” with any of my FEMALE coworkers? Pause.

MILEY

Well… my cousin’s sister’s neighbor…uh… does roller derby too, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, that’s against the Young Life code of conduct. Let’s keep plowin’ through! Number 5: Start every day with a clean slate. We do not tolerate any grumps at Windy Gap! No ma’am! Number six: Every single piece of readin’ material that enters this campground is to be thoroughly inspected OR it will be confiscated. There is a short list of permitted reading material, like study Bibles, or Veggie Tales. If any camper is found to be in possession of something that is not on that list, you are to take it from them and burn it right over the stove.

TAYLOR

What the fuck?

MILEY

Oops! That’s another rule. Absolutely NO language. It is not in the Lord’s best interest. If you catch a camper cussing, please bring them to the front office and have Mary Mae deal with their sins.

TAYLOR

What does that mean?

MILEY

Just let Mary Mae handle it. Okay, next! This is the last rule, for now. The campers are not to have any contact with people outside of the camp. That is STRICTLY not allowed. This rule extends to counselors, so prepare your family and friends to have a radio silent summer.

Is that lega—

TAYLOR

MILEY

Alright sweetie! I’m gonna take you through a normal day here at Windy Gap. Sound good? Great! So, wake up is at 7 AM in the morning sharp. You’ll get the girls in your cabin ready to conquer another GREAT day of loving Jesus and get to breakfast no later than 7:28. You will have—

TAYLOR

Twenty eight? Why not thirty?

MILEY

That’s just how we do it here! Y’all have 29 minutes to eat every day. Usually, we’ll have cereal, pancakes, bacon, or those… oh my goodness. What are those called again? Those round Jewish things.

TAYLOR

Bagels??

MILEY

Oh, yes! Silly little me! We will also have bagels for breakfast sometimes. Then we will move on to activity number one. Or as I like to say… number FUN! Hahaha! Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get used to our little camp lingo here at Windy Gap. Mornings are for crafts. It looks like we have room in the friendship bracelet room and at the weaving station. Do either of those strike your fancy?

312

TAYLOR

Uh, bracelets, I guess.

MILEY

Oh wonderful! Following crafts, we’ll all meet in the Chapel for a hymn session before lunch. Lunch is always ham and cheese, by the way! We unfortunately don’t accommodate dietary needs, and we are firm on that.

TAYLOR

That can’t be—

Taylor is cut off by a loud grumble that almost sounds like a roar. The lights in the room flicker.

What was that?

MILEY

Oh, that’s just God saying hello. After lunch, that’s when the REAL fun begins! You’ll sign your girls up for some sort of water activity. We have kayaks, canoes, a swimming pool, water guns, and tanks. What do you want your cabin to do in the afternoons?

TAYLOR Tanks?

MILEY

Alright! We will get you all signed up to head up to the tanks following breakfast. Are you claustrophobic?

TAYLOR

No, I wasn’t choosing tanks. What do you mean by tanks? Fish tanks?

MILEY

Oh, bless your heart. I can’t believe you’ve never seen the pit! Shark tanks, of course.

TAYLOR

What?? SHARK ta—

MILEY

We’ll send you and your girls down into our shark pit in a metal cage—with oxygen of course. We have an amazing team up there that will study y’all!

TAYLOR STUDY?

MILEY

I love L.O.V.E. your curiosity but I really can’t tell you anything else. Sorry girly!

TAYLOR

Do the parents know about—

MILEY

Alright. We’ve got your Devoted little Darlings reserved for tanks. Watching those sharks’ appetites’ grow can make a girl hungry, so we’ll get y’all up to dinner right after the tanks!

TAYLOR

Why do you have shark tanks at a summer camp?

MILEY

You haven’t heard of Ispera? Oh my GOOD-NESS! Well, I LOVE talking about this, so you are in LUCK! In the fall of last year, Jesus came back as a shark. Here at Windy Gap, we found this story so inspirational that we just HAD to put in some shark tanks here. ALL HAIL SHARK JESUS! WOOO!

TAYLOR

I don’t even know what to say to that.

313

MILEY

Don’t be nervous, sweet thing! It’s just the daily life of a girl at Windy Gap! Oh! I almost forgot. On the first night of camp, we’ll be tie-dying. Each of the girls have mailed in a supply of enough menstrual blood for one project each. They aren’t to share blood, you know, because of (whispers) disease!

Beat.

Excuse me?

TAYLOR

MILEY

Do you have any on hand?

TAYLOR

My own period blood??? On hand?? …No… Are you serious? Why does it have to be period blood?

MILEY

Serious as in XM! Here at Windy Gap, we like to think of Auntie Flo as a blessing from the Lord. Regular blood should work just as well as menstrual blood. I can get you a stash real quick! I have a blood drawing kit right here.

TAYLOR

What the fuck? I signed up for this job because I thought I would just get to do crafts and sing Jesus songs. That’s what my dad said. This? This is NOT Jesus camp. I don’t know what’s going on, but it isn’t normal. This is a god damn cult.

MILEY

Oops! Be careful with the language. There is nothing I hate more than having to report one of us members of the Girl Squad to Mary Mae. There is no room for sin in this campground. Where are you going, sweet girl? I gotta draw your blood!

TAYLOR

Out. I’m leaving. You’re just going to have to find someone else to be the leader of the Devoted…Debbies. This is insane.

Taylor darts to the door and attempts to open it. It’s locked.

MILEY

This is all in the lord’s best interest. We promise!

Miley reveals a blood drawing kit.

TAYLOR

What the fuck? No, you’re not gonna do that to me, I’m getting out of here.

MILEY

Oops! Language, girly! Now come here and let’s get you ready to tie dye!

TAYLOR

Don’t touch me. Jesus, where the hell am I?

MILEY

Awww! I just love that you’re already looking to our Savior for answers! You are going to fit right in this summer at Windy Gap: a Summer Camp for Girls! Come here! I gotta get that blood supply for tie-dye day.

Miley moves to Taylor.

Blackout.

Taylor screams. End of play.

314

Arysmel Rodriguez

I’m sorry, but my feelings are not for the public India ink, graphite, charcoal on paper

315

Visual Arts New World School of the Arts

Miami, FL

2022

Maria Rosales

316

Photography Whetstone High School Columbus, OH Eternal Sunshine Digital photography 2022

Zaida Ross

317

Visual Arts Alabama School of Fine Arts Birmingham, AL Fizzle Cardboard, paper lunch trays, tissue paper, foil, electrical tape 2021

Isabella Rotker

Motif With Interlude

Inspired by Más Allá De Los Sonidos Del Silencio: Latinoamericanos que conectan arte, sonido y sociedad

Synopsis

MARIANNA and XIMENA are a queer couple leaving their land of origin.

Characters

MARIANNA (20’s, she/her) Should be populated by a queer/latine actor

XIMENA (20’s she/her) Should be populated by a queer/latine actor

ENSEMBLE, ten to a hundred ﬁfty people and a string quartet

Usual dress

All characters are usually in a simple gray, mauve, or otherwise sepia dress except when designated. Ensemble wears black simple, ﬂowy clothing except when designated.

Sepia colors represent actionable or grounded scenes in the way Marianna feels soil is a nostalgic concept; the brownish colors justify the monologue in scene 12. Light blue signiﬁes the metaphor scenes/ ones less grounded in reality. White dress signals ghostliness, something fading, or a full derealization/ disconnect from reality.

Time & Place

Here & Now

Playwright’s Notes

This play is written for a blackbox.

When ENSEMBLE is labeled with a number, this doesn’t have to designate to be the same actor each time (ie ENSEMBLE 1 in one scene doesn’t have to be ENSEMBLE 1 in another). . signiﬁes a beat.

It doesn’t matter how the silhouette scenes are done as long as MARIANNA and XIMENA appear shadowy and their faces are obscured. Translations are included in italics after any Spanish and are included for reference, I don’t intend for them to be spoken or read.

Ximena’s chorus repeats Vivladi’s Concerto Grosso In D Minor but can be replaced for a classical song of similar candor.

“Perhaps even more than silence, which is never absolute … certain sounds contain the power to connect us to what is invisible, or to what has not been given enough visibility.”

–– Lowe Art Museum on Beyond the Sounds of Silence

Scene 1

Lights up on MARIANNA (stage left) and XIMENA (stage right) kneeling side by side center stage. They are holding hands. The lights are dim.

Enter ENSEMBLE 1 & 2 stage left and ENSEMBLE 3 & 4 stage right. Each pair holds a very large metal bucket of melted wax. They walk slowly towards MARIANNA and XIMENA

Once ENSEMBLE reaches center stage, they raise the buckets and pause.

318

Play or Script

Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

They pour the melted wax over MARIANNA and XIMENA in such a way that they are now soaked in it and sitting in a pool of wax.

Shift.

Scene 2

Lights up on MARIANNA and XIMENA, who have not moved since scene 1. This scene occurs in silhouette.

MARIANNA

No tenemos vos aquí pero no es mejor allá. We don’t have a voice here but it’s not better there.

No podemos ir. We can’t leave. He’s afraid of who we will become without him.

XIMENA

We have to try.

How?

MARIANNA

XIMENA

I don’t know. We could go west. Try to get out.

MARIANNA

Mi amor. Tu sabes que quiero. My love. You know I want to/ You know I care. But they would stop us. We can’t afford to try again.

XIMENA

It’s better there.

MARIANNA

Ximena, no es mejor. Ximena, it’s not better

XIMENA

¿Quién dije eso? Who told you that?

MARIANNA

It’s worse. They don’t want us there, and he won’t let us leave. We all want to. But we can’t all have that. Es mejor tratar de ayudar aquí. It’s better to try to help here.

XIMENA

¿Quién estamos ayudando? Who are we helping?

MARIANNA

Nosotros. Us/ our people.

XIMENA

Y quién somos nosotros? And who are our people?

MARIANNA

Whoever is left. We have to help our people before ourselves.

XIMENA

There are no people left. There are no nosotros. Us/our people. There is us and there is something better somewhere. Everyone who could have helped is gone.

We aren’t.

MARIANNA

XIMENA

How are we supposed to help? How do we do that? There’s nothing we can do.

We don’t have a choice.

MARIANNA

319

XIMENA

We do. You’re afraid of making it. God, Marianna, we all are. But there’s nothing left but to choose. Our lives, Marianna, or this land.

MARIANNA

Our lives are here.

XIMENA

El precio de nuestras vidas es más importante que cualquier otra cosa, cualquier tierra. The cost/price of our lives is more important than anything else, any land. We can’t do anything more than to protect ourselves now.

MARIANNA

No podemos permitirnos ese precio. We can’t afford that price.

XIMENA

I would rather have nothing than this.

We already have nothing, Ximena.

So, then what’s left for us to risk?

Scene 3/ Chorus

MARIANNA

XIMENA

Shift.

Lights up on XIMENA wandering the stage. She wears a light blue dress, and a light blue headband. She walks around for a few moments, then approaches a light blue piano with a light blue bench, downstage right. She sits and begins to play.

She ﬁnishes playing.

Shift.

Scene

Lights up on MARIANNA standing center stage in a light blue dress. Stage is dimly lit.

MARIANNA

I close my eyes. In a dream, I’m on dry land. I don’t have to fight for any of this. Here, saltwater slips thin around my ankles. Everything else falls behind our footprints. He says he can’t do anything about the salt as it coats our tongues and teeth and lungs. We are the salt, he tells us, sundown, dusk, dark, thick air chokes our skeletons, encases the muscle. Between skin and bone, this is all that’s left. Suddenly I’m seven again, red ribbon under a streetlamp, the steel liquifies with our voices and takes the flame with it. How much longer can we hold our breath before we are engulfed? I’m still waiting for this to be breathing. For the blood to come back between our bones and for the bones to snuff off the fire. Here, I am autobiographical. A thin slip hidden in the index. No one else will say this. Here, he tells us we can’t stop flood water if we are the water itself. God, I’m afraid of never being dry again. Is anyone listening?

Shift.

Scene 5

In silhouette. Piano is gone. MARIANNA and XIMENA are kneeling as they were in scene 1.

MARIANNA

Y tu mama? Qué pasa cuando ella no puede venir? And your mother? What happens when she can’t come?

XIMENA

No se. I don’t know.

320

4/ Dream monologue 1

We can’t leave her behind.

No. I know, I just…

You just…

I don’t– no se. I don’t know.

What don’t you know?

MARIANNA

XIMENA

MARIANNA

XIMENA

MARIANNA

XIMENA

I can’t leave her, I know, but. We can’t stay. Marianna, I can’t do this to us.

Shift.

Scene 6/ Dream Monologue 2

Lights up on MARIANNA standing center stage in a light blue dress. The stage is dimly lit.

MARIANNA

I am afraid one of these days I’ll wake up and none of this will have been worth it. That one day there will be no us and no way to save us. I’m afraid there is no such thing as saving. Here, I am only body, all legs, arms, hip. In most dreams, I try to swim but my ﬁngers wrinkle and split open, ﬁll with sand. In most dreams, I forget how to swim and drown just south of halfway. When my eyes are closed, I don’t see anything but water and the curve where the world drops off. The sky stretches for as long as I can stand to think about it. Somewhere at the end it’s hazy. Somewhere, someone is saying something about temptation. God, I’m afraid I am distance. I’m too distant to do anything. I’m growing into time and place and here, there’s nothing left of me but this. Please. I can’t keep asking for more time. I’m becoming time.

Shift.

Scene 7/ Chorus

Lights up on XIMENA at the piano. A single light shows her but keeps the rest of the stage dark. She wears her light blue dress and light blue headband. She looks slightly disheveled. She plays the same song, but this time in half time.

At the climax, the lights change to show a string quartet, in four chairs upstage left, who join her for the rest of the song.

They ﬁnish playing.

Shift.

Scene 8

Lights up on a comfortable chair or recliner center stage. XIMENA is sitting down stage from it, stage right, and lit so only her silhouette is visible.

321

XIMENA

I’m sorry. There’s nothing left for us to do. Marianna says we have to clean up, stay. There’s nothing left for us to clean up, though. There’s nothing here that’s left.

I’m not even here anymore. You’re not here anymore. What’s left when there’s nothing to do? No way to say it? Mama. Are you there? Can you hear me?

MARIANNA enters from upstage left; a light follows her. She walks slowly until she reaches an equal but opposite distance of XIMENA from ANDREA

MARIANNA screams as loud as her actor’s voice goes. The lights ﬂash red. She grabs at her chest.

Shift.

Scene 9

Lights up. XIMENA is kneeling beside MARIANNA, who is now wearing a white dress and lying on the ﬂoor in the same spot onstage she was in the previous scene. ANDREA and her chair are gone. The string quartet is sitting in four chairs set up upstage right, dimly lit. They play the chorus song. The lights are low and warm.

XIMENA

Marianna? Marianna. Come on. Mi amor. My love.

XIMENA uses two ﬁngers to check MARIANNA’S pulse on the downstage side of her neck. MARIANNA doesn’t move. XIMENA sits back on her heels.

Song ends.

Shift.

Scene 10

Lights up on MARIANNA and XIMENA standing centerstage holding a cardboard box each. MARIANNA wears white. XIMENA wears light blue. They look on at the audience. The string quartet is downstage upstage right and plays the chorus. The stage is dimly lit.

Enter ENSEMBLE from upstage. ENSEMBLE wears white. Each holds a single white church candle and walks onstage in a single ﬁle line.

ENSEMBLE 1’s candle is the only one lit. As they lead the rest onstage, they turn and tip their candle to light the candle behind them. Repeat and continue repeating until every candle is lit. While this is happening, ENSEMBLE tightly circles MARIANNA and XIMENA , creating a spiral, obscuring them from view. Each faces the person before them.

The music fades. ENSEMBLE turns sharply inward to face MARIANNA and XIMENA in the center of the spiral, raising their candles above their heads so the light is visible to the audience.

322

Scene 11

Scene 12

The lights ﬂash bright white and ENSEMBLE retreats immediately into the wings. MARIANNA and XIMENA are now visible to the audience.

Their boxes have leaked dark red wax out the bottoms and sides. The wax is solidiﬁed and pooled over their feet, piled up from the ﬂoor to the boxes.

MARIANNA falls silently to the ground. MARIANNA looks on into the audience, almost ghostly. Shift.

Enter XIMENA from stage right. She walks slowly towards center stage facing across the stage.

XIMENA slowly drops to her knees.

Enter ENSEMBLE 1-4 from stage left and ENSEMBLE 5-8 from stage right. They walk inwards towards each other in two parallel lines, facing the opposite direction. They continue walking until they pass directly between each other, bypassing XIMENA , facing across the stage.

ENSEMBLE 2 turns to face stage left and walks back towards XIMENA.

ENSEMBLE 2 grabs XIMENA with one hand and pulls her back towards stage right. XIMENA rises silently and faces stage left as she’s pulled offstage completely. Shift.

Enter XIMENA downstage right. The string quartet is sitting in four chairs set up upstage left, dimly lit. They play the chorus song.

XIMENA

The ﬁrst July I loved her, she took me to the coast and connected the constellations. Drew them from memory down my collarbone. The North Star, she’d said, meant guidance. Freedom. She played Vivaldi on her speaker and told me it was like soil to her. Told me homeland was warm water surging over her in the summer months. Mud covered dresses. Crawlspaces. She told me once that love is dreaming.

The stage goes dark. The string quartet continues playing.

Lights up on XIMENA standing center stage. The string quartet hasn’t stopped playing between now and the previous scene.

XIMENA

The stage goes dark. The string quartet ﬁnishes playing.

323

“Ximena ,” she’d said then. “Te amo.” I love you.

The lights rise, barely, so a shadowy ﬁgure (MARIANNA in all white) is seen onstage. She enters from stage left, slowly approaching center stage. She stops some distance away, as though she’s repelled by something on center stage.

Shift.

324

Isabella Rotker

Exhibit

Roaches are older than dinos. You hate how people say the Earth was once green and perfect and belonged to the dinosaurs. Their museumbound bones know as well as you do that living has always been this scary. Maybe not white, but red. We are far from an ice age. Even dinosaurs were afraid of roaches and maybe they also cried and slept in the yard until you could come kill them. Were the dinos sore? Sure You always say that when I ask if it hurt when they died. Google says it was long and miserable. Will it be like that this time? Maybe not red but white hot. What does it feel like to burn? I don’t like thinking that after it singes us, time will keep going without me. About how our skeletons will fossilize a hundred feet above the dinos and someone will dig up our gray bones and say, wow. How did they let it get this bad? And say the same things we did. This is the cycle of life. The excavation process. Look for dinosaur bones and instead find another reason to try to fix this. Realize we can’t fix climate change or the way you raised me but we can use paper straws and hope it’ll keep things breathing for now. We can’t stop the sea from rising, salt from coating our tongues and teeth and lungs. We will become artifacts, a real 21st century mother-daughter relationship, pulled out from where Florida used to be. They’ll pay the twenty buck admission fee and crowd around our bones and say God, I wonder why they lived like that.

325

Spoken Word Interlochen Arts Academy Interlochen, MI

Camila Salinas

326

Visual Arts Lebanon

High

Acrylic paint and colored pencil 2021

Trail

School Frisco, TX Don’t Skip School

Andawen Sauder

Silver Linings

“Don’t you just love life?” Mick had asked, and Andi couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic. For one thing, he was breathing hard—hair red, eyes red, and heart bleeding—after yet another argument with his mom, and no one knew his name was Mick yet. For another, though, they were sitting with their legs dangling off the side of the water tower catwalk, the town behind and the sea before them, watching the sunset.

Andi twisted a strand of coarse, dark hair between her fingers and snuck a glance at Mick—or Mia, as she knew him then. “I guess it depends on my mood,” she said, letting a mild chuckle escape her lips. It wasn’t in her nature to stay melancholy, at least not while she was with her best friend, and especially not when the sky overhead was shot with pink and golden clouds. And she knew Mick hated wallowing in self-pity anyway.

He pressed his hands against his upper arms, where goosebumps were beginning to form. “We should probably go soon,” Mick said, then began to stand. It was almost eight, according to Andi’s cheap digital watch, and they had been lounging on the water tower for over an hour.

“Are you hungry?” Andi stood as she spoke, brushing dirt from her denim shorts and frowning at the crisscrossing indentations in the backs of her thighs. “The coffee shop might still be open.”

“Nah.”

Andi didn’t press further. Instead, she followed Mick towards the ladder, which they would take to get to solid ground.

That summer, the first after the turn of the century, they were coming out of their sophomore year with long, wild hair and inboxes full of college emails. Back then, Mick was called by another name, and went—along with Andi—to an all-girls camp every summer at the behest of both his parents. In a little less than a day, that’s where they were going.

It wasn’t like Mick ever expressed an overwhelming desire to go to the summer camp, but this year, Andi could tell he was plagued by an increasing sense of dread. Arguments with his mom grew in frequency with every day that passed, and Mick seemed to draw inwards more than ever.

“Do you just want to head home?” The question came when they reached the bottom of the ladder, Andi combing her fingers through her windswept hair. On any other day, they might go to the beach and stumble barefoot through the sand, or buy ring pops at the corner store where Mick worked and let their tongues turn a seasick green, but that day, something was out of place. Andi couldn’t quite put her finger on it—it was just out of reach, like an itch stuck in the back of her throat—but she knew something was brewing.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mick said, then turned to walk away with barely a glance at his friend.

Gravel crunched under Andi’s Converse as she shuffled forward a step. “Do you want to meet at your house?” She let the words roll softly out until they lingered on the air between them.

“Sure.”

He didn’t turn; he kept walking, and Andi watched him go until his black-clad back was out of sight.

Andi didn’t sleep well that night. Her house was near the beach, on a private stretch of sand inherited from her grandfather, and she could hear the waves rolling into shore from her bedroom. They seemed far too loud.

She and her mother had barely spoken when she returned home that evening; a painfully quiet dinner—spent with Andi staring out the window and her mother reading a magazine—

ended with Andi offering to wash the dishes as her mother went up the stairs to bed.

It had been years since their last real conversation: after Andi’s father died, her mom buried herself in her work as a lawyer in the city nearby, and if it weren’t for the hastily cooked meals of spaghetti late in the evening, she wasn’t sure they would see each other at all.

Andi sighed, staring up at the barely glowing plastic stars on her ceiling, stuck to the drywall with tape and old toothpaste. The dishes were still in the sink, drowning in greasy water and soap suds. She would wash those in the morning. Out the window, she could see the moonlight reflecting off the water as it stretched its sloppy fingers up onto the sand, and she sat up on her bed.

The window beside her was old, creaky. It was held up with a worn paint stirrer and looked out on the shingled porch roof, where Andi snuck out when she was feeling particularly daring—or particularly restless. Tonight was one of those nights, and she crawled under the sash, picking her way to the edge of the roof and letting herself drop to the ground below, landing just inches from the porch railing.

The sandy ground was cool and coarse, spotted with tufts of grass and rough beach pebbles that poked and gnawed at her bare feet. A grassy bluff, cut through with a narrow wooden walkway, was all that stood between the shore and the house. Sometimes, Andi wondered how many years it would be before erosion and global warming would send her house tumbling into the sea.

That night, though, something else caught her eye: the compact, lumpy silhouette of someone sitting on the sand, the moonlight casting a disproportionately long shadow that almost reached the base of the bluff.

“Hey,” she said, plopping down her friend and glancing at his face, whitewashed in the pale light. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

Mick turned, letting a hesitant smile break his face. “Nope.” He leaned his head against Andi’s shoulder, and his hair— slightly damp—brushed against her chin, smelling faintly of applescented shampoo. “Do you ever just feel… wrong?”

“What do you mean?” Andi asked the question, thinking of missed test questions and arguments and apologies.

“Like, do you ever just feel like your life, who you are, just isn’t right?”

Glancing down, all Andi could see was a mass of frizzy hair and a jutting-out nose. No eyes, though. She so badly wanted to look him in the eyes. In a distorted compromise, she shrugged and said, “I’m not sure. Do you?”

He was silent for much longer than a moment, and he breathed deeply in, then out, as if in preparation. Then Mick jumped to his feet, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Let’s run away together.”

“What?” Andi laughed impishly as he helped her to her feet. “But we have it so good here!”

Mick didn’t let go of her hands, leaning back so their arms stretched out into a wonky sort of oval. “We’ll become circus performers!” he said, grinning, and with the moon silhouetted behind his head, he looked like some ethereal being. “You can be a tightrope walker, and I’ll be a clown.”

“Oh, you’re definitely a clown.” Andi leaned back even farther, and they spun in crooked circles until the stars were whirling drunkenly above; until her grip slipped and they fell, hiccupping with laughter, to the ground.

“Silver lining.”

Mick groaned and slumped against his stained, bluecheckered seat. “It’s too early for that.”

327

Short Story Lightridge High School

Aldie, VA

***

They were sitting behind the driver’s seat in a Greyhound bus, wrapped in matching Hollister sweatshirts and squinting into the morning sun, on the way to Camp Amber. Neither of them had slept for more than a few hours the night before, going home sandy and sore after their time at the beach, and a two-hour bus ride certainly didn’t help.

Andi glanced over at Mick again, whose head was tilted back against the headrest. “Silver lining,” she said again. It was a game they played when they were in low spirits, and she figured they could use a pick-me-up.

“Okay, fine,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Um… rooming together.” “Being away from home.”

There was an unexpected pause, and Mick shifted in his seat. “What if–” he stopped, picking at the skin of his fingers where hangnails perpetually formed.

“What?” Andi turned her head towards him, studying the curls that tumbled down over his eyes.

“What if we didn’t go to camp this year?”

Andi’s voice froze in her throat; a laugh, half-formed, spurted out and fell awkwardly between them. Outside on the interstate, cars whizzed by and buildings blurred and humidity hung heavily over the asphalt. The station where they would transfer onto Camp Amber’s creaky, decrepit school bus was only a few minutes away, and their permission forms were zipped safely into Mick’s backpack.

“You’re kidding, right?” Andi studied her split ends, rolling them between her index finger and thumb. “That’s crazy. Where would we even go?”

“I just got my debit card—I have money, you know. I’ve been saving it.”

“Yeah, for college.”

Mick pulled his leg up under him and twisted his body so he was sitting sideways with his back to the window. “You can’t possibly tell me that you want to go to Camp Amber. It’s not like we have great memories there.”

“No, of course not, but–”

“I mean, the only reason we started going in the first place was because my parents decided they hated each other’s guts.” Mick was breathing heavily, his hands suspended desperately, uselessly, above his lap. “And, because–”

“Because of my dad,” Andi finished. “Yeah.”

It was true: the first year they had been sent to camp was the same year Mick’s parents were haggling over custody agreements; it was the same year Andi’s mom had gotten the call that the remnants of her life partner’s fishing boat had washed to shore. Though nine years had passed since then, both of their parents had agreed that sending them to camp made everything less of a hassle. Amidst the late-night screaming matches and the search for a body—and for nearly a decade after—the two children were left to struggle alone.

“But we’re already almost there,” Andi said, her voice diminishing to almost a whisper. “And what are we gonna do when our parents find out?”

“So what if they do? It’s about time they pulled their heads out of their asses and bothered looking in our direction.”

“I’m just not sure it’ll end well.”

The bus exited the highway, its wheels kicking up dust. At the end of the tree-lined road, Andi could just make out the faded, yellow-orange hue of Camp Amber’s school bus, striking against the browns and brick-reds of the Greyhound station.

Mick snatched his backpack from under the seat, the vinyl whistling as it scraped the floor. “You don’t have to come along, and I won’t ask you to cover for me. But I’m sick of doing the same thing at the same camp every year just because I’m told to.”

The brakes squealed as the bus came jolting to a stop, engine ticking and door hydraulics hissing as they squeezed through the aisle towards the corrugated stairs. Converse smacking to the pavement and bag slung over her shoulder, Andi grabbed Mick’s hand and urged him to the curb.

“You know that if you’re going, I’m going,” she said, glancing again at the bus they were supposed to board. “So, any ideas?”

Mick pulled a pack of gum from his back pocket and passed a stick to Andi. “There are buses here going to all kinds of places,” he said, making a grand, effusive gesture and stuffing his mouth with spearmint. “All we have to do is choose.”

Across the lot, rows and rows of Greyhounds, each with scrolling LED letters that proclaimed their destination, were just waiting to be boarded. Mick scanned the maze of vehicles, eyes glittering with the red sheen of brake lights and the warm glow of promise.

“There it is.” He stretched his arm out over the sea of buses like a lord surveying his kingdom. “Ocean City.” ***

The black eye, Mick would maintain for years to come, was really Andi’s fault. She was the one, after all, who had insisted that they forgo creature comforts in favor of cost effectiveness—Mick wasn’t particularly wealthy, after all—and the comforts of their motel room were few indeed. There was only one rickety double bed, its comforter spotted with stains; there were countless cigarette burns on the floor, the wall, the ceiling. But it was a glorious, glorious thirty-five dollars a night, and by the time they checked in, they were too tired to care.

They curled up side by side on top of the bedspread, facing each other with their heads inches apart and warm, familiar breath mingling, lulled into sleep by the creaking of the mattress and the feel of their elbows side-by-side. When Andi next awoke, it was to Mick’s sleepy, sluggish fist making contact with her eye socket, and she let out a yelp.

“Jesus, Mick, what was that for?” she demanded, sitting up and massaging her eye.

Mick pivoted, and the bed shrieked under their weight. “Let me look at it.” He put his hands on either side of her head, strands of hair catching under his sweating fingers, and pulled her face closer. “I think it might bruise,” he said, grimacing. “Sorry about that.”

“Oh, please.”

Knees sinking into the mattress and playful smile growing, Mick leaned forward and planted a kiss on Andi’s eyelid. “There. You’re cured.”

“Your lips are chapped.” Andi turned away, cheeks warm. Mick frowned at the pause that followed, punctuated only by the tapping of his hands against his thighs.

Chastened by the pervasive silence, Andi suggested a trip to the beach, and back to back, they shimmied on swimsuits and jean shorts and put on their sneakers with no socks underneath. When their unhurried, rambling steps reached the boardwalk, Mick bought them hot dogs, and, later, ice cream, which dribbled down their fingers as the afternoon rays beat down.

For hours, they wandered along the beach, Converse dangling from their fingers and calves covered in sand. They splashed in the waves, tasting salt on their tongues as the sky changed hues and the clouds undulated above them. They talked about everything, and nothing, and when the sun finally began to set, they made their way to the Ferris wheel on the promenade. Feet sore and bones tired, Andi and Mick paused when they reached the boardwalk to lace up their shoes and brush the granules from their legs.

“Andi?” She had started to move towards the ticket booth, but Mick seemed rooted to the spot. “I want to tell you something.”

“Like what?” Her voice was soft and her face unchanged, but her mind was frothing with memories of late-night conversations, tangible silences, and unexpected hesitations. Behind them, the Ferris wheel churned to life, pink and green spotlights casting an eerie glow on its slowly revolving spokes. Mick closed his eyes as the tinny music began to play, closing his hands into fists, then opening them, then closing them again. “Never mind,” he finally blurted, letting out a sigh of epic proportions as he turned to the ticket booth.

“No.” Andi was taken aback by her own words; never before had she been so brazen.

328

That steely, take-no-prisoners kind of attitude was Mick’s thing, but she muddled on anyway. “I know you’ve been keeping something from me,” she said, “which is fine. But I’m tired of this back-and-forth. It’s just–” Andi stopped, kicking at the weatherworn, greying planks with the rubber sole of her shoe.

“It’s just what?”

“It’s just not good for you. To keep it all bottled up.”

Arms crossed, Mick craned his neck and looked up at the clouds, features muddled in the dusky evening. “We should get our tickets. We’ll miss the sunset.”

“There’ll be plenty more, you know.”

“I know.”

He bought the tickets anyway, perforated and red-orange, and led Andi up the rumbling, bleacher-style ramp. An attendant closed them into their pod, doors decorated with round, faintly buzzing filament bulbs, and the wheel lurched into motion.

Tangerine clouds were slung recklessly across the sky, the sun a dripping half-circle of honey over the darkening sea, while a crisp breeze brushed their burnt cheeks and carried away the sounds of the carnival below. Butterflies flailed in Andi’s stomach as the wheel spiraled, her hands and Mick’s resting side by side on the stainless steel bar laying coolly across their thighs.

“Andi?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m transgender.” Mick looked down at his legs as they swayed over the promenade, and picked at his cuticles.

Inexplicable tears welled up in Andi’s eyes. “So, I guess your name’s not Mia then, is it?”

“No, not Mia. Mick.”

Andi grabbed her friend’s hand in her own clammy-palmed one; an awkward, sideways handshake. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mick,” she said, a teary giggle bubbling from her throat. “I’m really glad you told me.”

Mick leaned against Andi, smiling unabashedly into her shoulder and letting out a relieved burst of laughter. “So am I.”

The Ferris wheel began to slow, and the music faded. “Do either of your parents know?” Andi asked.

“No. Nobody does.”

The Ferris wheel creaked, then stopped, and an attendant helped them from the car. “How long have you known?”

“Around six months, maybe. But I’ve been thinking about it for longer.”

The carnival bustle whirled around them, carousels and cotton candy blues burnishing in the dying light.

“We should probably start getting back to our room,” Andi said, but neither of them moved.

“Okay,” Mick finally said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jean shorts, then continued abruptly: “Can you cut my hair?”

“Your mom’s gonna freak.”

“Yeah. But that’ll be the last thing on her mind when we get back.”

“Alright, I can cut your hair.” Andi said, smiling. “Just don’t expect too much.”

They stopped at a dollar store on the way back to their motel, purchasing microwaveable mac n’ cheese cups for supper and a pair of cheap, purple safety scissors. Andi shampooed Mick’s hair in the sticky motel bathroom sink as he sat on a hard wooden chair and blew on forkfuls of steaming macaroni. He wanted something short, so Andi lopped off chunks of sopping hair with reckless abandon, tossing dead strands in the bag-less trash can.

Mick watched her progress in the mirror, and Andi avoided his gaze. They had always been physically affectionate with one another, but there was something oddly intimate about the feel of his scalp beneath her water-shriveled fingers.

The last few curls sailed into the bin, and Mick tousled his hair, grinning. “Not bad.”

They made eye contact in the mirror, Andi’s face afire, and she forced herself not to look away. “What would you say,” she asked softly, “if I told you that I think I’m falling in love with you?”

The chair scraped clumsily against the tiles as Mick stood. “Shit,” he said, stumbling. “I’m so sorry. That was stupid of me to say.” She turned away, biting her lip. Mick took her hand from where it hung limply by her side, inspecting the callus—formed from years of holding a pencil too tightly—on the side of her ring finger.

“No, no. I’m glad you did.”

He leaned forward, and Andi could feel his hesitant breath on her face. When Mick’s lips brushed against her cheek, startlingly warm, she inhaled sharply and turned to meet his eyes.

“Sorry.” He pulled back, her hand still in his. “I just wondered what it might feel like, y’know?”

“Yeah, I know.” The silence stretched out torturously, and Andi asked, “What did it feel like?”

“Not awful.”

They laughed together, there in the bathroom between the chair and the doorway, standing closer than they needed to and wondering what to say next. Andi was the first to break eye contact.

“We should get everything cleaned up,” she said in an act of self-sabotage.

So they slipped on pajamas and switched on the television, drifting off with Mick facing one wall, Andi facing the other, and nothing but the quiet drone of MTV to soothe them to sleep.

The next three days passed with beach trips, jellybleeding PB&J’s, and no mention of Andi’s confession, though the echo of her words hung in the low, cumulus clouds and above the mattress they shared each night.

Their fourth night began with an outdoor movie by the boardwalk; a 3-D showing of Jaws as the evening began and the sea murmured softly behind them. Andi and Mick sat on their beach towels on the side closest to the water, far enough from the screen that the soundtrack was garbled by the time it reached them. Fingers greasy with too-salty popcorn, they watched the film in relative silence, red-and-blue cardboard glasses perched on the tips of their noses.

Andi finished her popcorn just as the movie’s intermission began, tucking the bag under the corner of her towel and removing those ridiculous glasses. She felt Mick’s eyes on her and turned, face reddening.

“What?”

He leaned closer, slipping off his glasses. Then his free hand brushed her arm and his mouth touched hers, and Andi hardly knew what to do with herself. First there was the taste of butter on her lips, then a rush of heat—bewildered, embarrassed, and indignant all at once—bloomed on her face. She pulled away.

“Sorry,” Mick said, blushing. “Are you okay?”

Andi scooted back, towel wrinkling beneath her, and pulled her legs to her chest. “No. I mean, I should be. But somehow I’m not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Everything feels so complicated.” She sighed, fiddling with her hair and inspecting the bruises on her knees.

“I really don’t think it’s that complicated, Andi. I thought–” Mick frowned. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

A cheesy pop song pumped through the tall speakers as families moved back and forth between their beach chairs, the porta-potties, and the concession stand.

“Maybe it should be what I want, but…”

“But what?” Mick demanded, twisting his fingers into knots. Irritation crept into Andi’s voice. “I don’t know, Mick.”

“Really, Andi?” He threw his hands in the air. “Why can’t you just be honest with me?”

Andi’s nose prickled with oncoming tears, and she rose ungracefully to her feet. “I told you, I don’t know.”

“You can’t just throw the word ‘love’ out there like that.” Mick stood as he spat out word after word, dagger after dagger. “Are you in love with me or not? Because if you were, you would’ve let me kiss you.”

329

***

“I already told you, I don’t know.”

Mick kicked at the sand, clenching his hands into fists. “Andi, just–”

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite!” The words came out louder than Andi intended, fueled by frustration and built-up tears, and people began to stare as the girl with a black eye broke down into raw, raging sobs. “I was so patient with you, Mick. I’m always patient.”

Face softening, Mick took a step forward to brush away the hair sticking to her dampened face. “Andi, I didn’t mean–”

She backed up, smacking his hand away and wiping furiously at her eyes. “I want to go home, Mick. I’ve had enough of this.”

“Andi…” A long breath hissed from Mick’s mouth, and he seemed to deflate. “Okay.”

“We should get back to the motel.”

Mick cast a long, miserable look at the screen as the intermission came to an end and the projector flashed to life. “Do you wanna finish the movie first?”

“No, Mick.”

They returned to their room to pack, walking along the narrow sidewalks with as much space between them as they could muster. Andi tried not to stare at the heap of hair in the trash can as she collected her toothbrush and toothpaste from the bathroom, cursing the tears that still pooled in her eyes.

The rest of the night was drenched in uncomfortable glances and relieved, restless sleep, and at seven the next morning, they checked out of the motel and took a city bus to the Greyhound station. Uncertain steps took them to the ticket counter, then to their seats, which they occupied in pained silence until the bus reached the highway. Just like that, their vacation was over.

Andi was by the window this time, feigning sleep and listening intently to Mick’s erratic, shallow breathing.

“Andi?”

She was tempted to keep up the illusion that she couldn’t hear him, but sighed and opened her eyes. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry for pressuring you. That wasn’t cool.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“And I want you to know that I love you, too,” Mick said, letting the words come out in a rush, “but you can decide what kind of love you want that to be.”

Andi’s eyes shone. “I don’t know if I’m ready to decide. It seems so final.”

He reached for her fingers. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”

They were both shedding tears now, holding hands in tentative promise as traffic hummed outside the blurry glass of the window. Mick pulled a Kleenex from his sweatshirt pocket and dabbed at his eyes, then passed it to Andi.

She gripped the damp tissue in the palm of her hand, shaking her head and looking down at the floor. “I’m not sure about this, Mick. I don’t know why, but it makes me kind of scared.”

“Then how about a silver lining?”

A smile flashed across Andi’s face—Mick was rarely the one to begin their game. She turned to watch as the sun continued its slow march across the sky, its beams steeping her hair and her cheeks in a warm, lemon light.

“Getting to know you.”

330

***

The End.

Maria Fernanda Serra Almeida Leite

331

Photography Design and Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL Etched onto Me Digital photography and embroidery 2022

Tatiana Solano

332

Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL Happy Holidays? Acrylic wash and calk pastel 2022

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Design Arts Cary Academy Cary, NC Implied Space Pen on paper 2022

Maggie Su

Dilara Sümbül

Smaller, Still

We moved into the old servant’s quarters when the earth was still mothed and flowered. It was a faded place that kept a glimmer of its old heartbeat, a place where many people like us must have gotten down on their hands and knees. The summer we were there, my entire atlas was the green that lined the estate. If I’d lived previously, I didn’t know it then. My mother had taught me to cast things away, bring my hands up to my face and let the knowing shrink. The great war had just ended. I stopped tasting tin lids and started knowing quiet nights where the clouds passed peacefully.

During the day, I made tracks in the well-tended forest, tucked myself into the soft grass lining the willows that kept the estate’s borders hazy. I could have nested out there, but instead I slept on the cool slates of wood in our borrowed room and watched dust turn in the sunbeams. ***

I chose my new name at the courthouse in the city. The earliest appointment was before daybreak, so at four we folded ourselves into train seats, watched slate sick streets upon streets until we were in the rush of the city. I made lines in my forearms on the wooden edge of the desk, pressed down with the pen hard enough to kill the ink. At the time it had seemed like another of my mother’s ancient remedies. How I brought the folded papers back to the office, how they took them and remade me entirely. There would be no more huddled persons in my name like the memories I disremembered. I was a new thing that day, creased into patterned fluorescent dreams.

It was the winter before my late start at university, and when I walked out down the marble stairs my mother was waiting for me. We waited for the train back on a residential street, and when my mother admitted to the sickness, she lit a cigarette and spoke very slowly. We were two trench coats huddled on the frost-slick street, casting fog with conversation. We spoke till her cigarette stub glowed, like burden-swollen water drained until relief. I should never have been a mother, she told me. I was pinched into my shoes, into my body.

In the remaining silence we stood and watched the windows on the street flicker with light, this unfamiliar place blinking. We would never speak my name again. It was so early then, we were sure it was a mercy.

I spent time like I’d been taught, forgetting my old name and my mother’s last words to me. I walked around like a miracle for the first years of school, still young when the sky began to shutter from the stress of our new industrial humanity. Those first years, I knew beginner’s archeology, local streets, and Sylvie’s routine intimately.

I knew wishes to be truer than truth, so when I knew I loved Sylvie I didn’t believe myself. Instead, I offered to take her to work at the theater on the nights she didn’t feel like walking.

And she knew something I tried not to, would sometimes stop her long rants and the lively arcs of her arms to speak gently to me.

She’d asked me once if something had happened. Leaned in and put her hand on my arm where I felt carved out acutely. And I’d let myself look wounded, because some part of me craved the pity. But the answer was something that was too true to

say— that she was undoubtedly a real person and I was some temporary placeholder. How I imagined all of my family to be this, watermarks you can’t stop from crumpling the paper, turning and turning to find each blank new page ruined, wrinkled into their own echoes.

But one night we’d stopped on a road lining the park on a calm slate-skied evening, and she turned and caught the light, illuminated in her slacks and her pale coat, rendering me completely unable to speak. It was like something being revealed to me. I was some shaken, nameless creature, but I still started driving. I drove and saw the roads reinvent us, watched the tunnel press my hand into hers and prayed it would keep. ***

Last week, I heard the social club’s fireworks send themselves off into the night and knew it was time to leave. And I felt like five again, looking out a thin, battered window and watching my father bend into the earth with something like a shattering. How I first saw the sunlight reaching for me, invisible pillars lighting the dust shaken away from where it was supposed to be.

As a child, hidden in the softest of the green, I forgot what it was to love my father. It kept a grey mark like ash in my chest where the knowing used to be, carved a new rib over my heart. I once thought that despite it, I’d answer some day, tell Sylvie whatever she wanted as long as it was her asking.

I begin to flicker in pictures. I spend walks through halls taking vows quietly, carving Sylvie away but keeping her passing rustles dear to me. In the mornings, I make tea. I decide it’s not enough. I drink it boiling. I can’t fully remember the estate, but it must have been in the north, and I don’t know where I’m from, but it must have been worth leaving. I close my eyes. I try and see the same soft green.

But now I’m aware again that when I was four years old, my father would set me on his lap and sing to me, something in a lilt I don’t remember. I should’ve known I wouldn’t survive losing that. When I blink, I know again that we huddled down in the basement with the votive candle we’d been saving. It hurt to swallow, and my mother’s dress smelled stale from sweat, and the adobe wall we pressed ourselves against was the only calm thing imaginable to me.

At first, as a child, I didn’t get the trick, held my hands to my face and begged for something to reach me. Now it’s been years, and I’m a member of an unspoken country within a country, of a rib within a ribcage that is still somehow unknown to me. Again, I shrink, a spool in my mother’s arms, her eyes, a blink.

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Short Story Berkeley High School Berkeley, CA

***

Lakshmi Sunder

Papa, Machine

We like to say my mother died giving birth to me, but she was dead long before then. So I was born from Papa alone, from the smoke streaming out of his tailpipe, twisting into baby shapes in the air. The first thing he did after wresting me from the sky was take me to his garage. With shaking hands, Papa dunked my pudgy body into a vat of gasoline. A water baptism did not save my mother from herself, so he wanted to try this other route for me. ***

I spent my childhood in Papa’s garage, slouched against the wall with my legs splayed out on the chalky floor. Each car he repaired was lined up in a row that seemed to stretch into the horizon. Once, Papa had found a particularly bad case in a junkyard—a compact car from an obscure Italian manufacturer. My eyes widened at the sight of it. When Papa slapped its hood, a clod of dirt flew off. She used to be a beauty, he breathed. You can tell by the make and model. But the nose emblem was now bashed in, and the vivid red exterior was scratched away to the point that it was more silver than red, more bone than flesh. Papa went days without eating and sleeping to fix that car, changing the brake pads, heating the metal to undo dents the size of my body. I kept track of this time by the bones that caged me. My ribs became apple slices, shining white and smooth, protruding a little more each day. I wanted to eat myself because Papa forgot to feed me, too.

Every day, I could see the tiniest line of white light seeping in beneath the ribbed garage door; I stared at it for so long that I could see it in my sleep. Papa always made me face the wall whenever he opened the garage to bring another car home. You don’t need to see the world. That line of white powder is what killed your mother.

Sometimes, I would get stir-crazy crouching in my corner of the garage. So I began to pace around, naming each vehicle as I went. The baby blue Mini Cooper was Cooper, of course. The Ford Bronco was Cowboy. The red compact Papa and I starved for was Mother. I named her this because he spent days fixing Mother and could never bring himself to sell her.

One day, I was pacing around the garage when I slipped on a pool of oil that had accumulated from under a leaking car. For a moment, my entire face was drinking in the oil as it slithered up my nose and into my eyes. I managed to catch myself with my hands, but when I finally crawled away from the puddle, my fingers felt loose and limp.

Papa’s first instinct when he returned from the used car dealer was to slap me across the face for not facing the wall when I first heard the roar of the garage door. But my eyes had been closed because I thought blindness would make me forget my throbbing hands.

He refused to use alcohol to clean the wounds. I can’t let you be tempted like your mother was, he justified, washing a rag in the garage’s utility sink with a bar of soap. When he scrubbed my hands raw with the rag, I heard myself scream like a tire tearing asphalt.

Papa tore off a sweaty scrap of fabric from his flannel and used it as a sling for my hands, wrapping them so tight I had to crush my head against the wall to keep from jolting away. The sling was imperfect, and my bones never set properly. Papa was always better at fixing machines than he was at fixing girls.

The pain in my hands eventually diminished to an underlying ache that I could forget if I tried hard enough. When I could finally speak without fearing that oil would seep into my

mouth, I asked Papa if this was what my baptism was like. Papa shook his head. Your baptism was beautiful, he said. It wasn’t painful like your fall because it was purposeful. He took my hand in his. I didn’t yank it back though the sudden movement sent splinters of pain up my arm. But these broken bones , he added, do not compare to the pain of your mother’s baptism

Papa’s stories helped to divert my attention away from the wrongness of my fingers, the way they were bent in like a broken side-mirror. He revealed that my mother was baptized in a toilet bowl for her whole life. My mother’s phases would shift but they always ended with her slumped over a porcelain rim, staring at grayish water as she retched. In one phase, the cause was her own fingers being shoved down her throat as my mother whittled her body down. I thought of my own body, the way it became hollowed out when Papa forgot to bring me meals from the outside world—caught up as he was with repairing Mother. The world I’m keeping you from is one that makes girls like your mother starve themselves on purpose

Though my mother couldn’t bring herself to eat, she consumed in other ways. In another phase, the cause of her toilet baptism was bottles of alcohol and lines of white powder that spanned tabletops. I didn’t know much about what drink and pills and powder could do to a person, but Papa told me that it was like pouring sugar into a gasoline tank: it causes the whole engine to gum up. Papa explained that the world outside was full of places called bars, which humans frequented at night to find themselves, to feel less lonely.

Papa and my mother met at a bar called Copperhead. When he first saw her, she was slouching against a velvet-lined wall, holding a glass of poison in her hands as she waited in line for the washroom toilets. But Papa stalked over to her, pried the drink from her hands, and asked if she wanted to dance. He presently dropped my bound hands and began to pantomime dancing. Papa moved mechanically, his arms stiff and legs too close together. I asked why he had wanted to dance with my mother in the first place if he wasn’t very good at it. He glanced back at the ocean of painted cars and steel; the compact car, Mother, was blazing so bright against the low-hanging lights that her red body seemed to pulse. I guess I’ve always liked to remind things that they are beautiful, Papa rasped. I thought of him holding my mother’s hair back as her insides slapped against the commode water; I thought of the way he tore off a piece of his shirt to piece my body back together.

In the final phase of my mother’s life, the cause for her toilet bowl baptism was me. She used to baptize herself late into the night, after stumbling home from Copperhead half held up by Papa, her stilettos flung across the bathroom tiles. But a year after they first danced together, she found herself running to the bathroom early in the morning. A few weeks later, her stomach began to swell. This terrified her, especially because she spent her whole life honing herself to the thinness of a blade. But what the doctor told my mother terrified her even more; she was pregnant with a daughter. Your mother begged me to keep you safe from the cruel world, Papa explained, which meant keeping you safe from her.

I thought I was dying the day I found my blood in the garage’s dry toilet. This was worse than the time I skidded in oil: unlike before, now I felt no pain to help me track where the blood

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Short Story Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Houston, TX

***

was coming from. I wondered if, even without the world’s vices to tempt me, I was turning into my mother—witnessing my whole life transform from a toilet bowl.

The hurt came later, my belly and back suddenly tightening, as though there were some invisible wrench in my body. When Papa returned, I told him what had happened, that maybe my gasoline baptism had not worked the way it should’ve—clearly this blood meant that I had not been saved. But Papa seemed to understand more about the world than I did. Your mother went through this too, he consoled. All girls do. For the first time in my life, I wished my mother could have been in this garage with me. I wished Papa had to repair himself once a month like girls did; he would find a smear of oil lining his boxers, instead of blood.

Papa left the garage and returned hauling a red plastic container with a long spout; it looked comically large compared to the other container he bought—an orange cylindrical bottle that rattled with every step Papa took. He put the larger container down with a solid thud and loped over to me holding the smaller one, which I feared more for its unfamiliarity.

They call these painkillers , Papa informed me. I wondered if this was what my mother had been looking for her whole life— something to kill her pain—but she wound up with the wrong kind of pill. I was surprised Papa even gave the medicine to me. He didn’t bring me this from the outside even when I broke my hands.

The contraption to open the pill bottle seemed complicated, like it required a wrench.

But Papa knew how to open it. A pill knocked into his palm like a loose fingerbone. I took the water Papa brought me from the sink and imagined my mother to fathom how to swallow this: she would take a swig of soapy golden drink to push the capsule down. When Papa handed the painkiller to me, I placed it haltingly on my tongue, fearing that it would explode the moment I put it in my mouth. But it slipped down my throat with ease.

I expected to look up and see Papa’s smile. But his head shook rapidly. Why was that so easy for you? he whispered, eyes bulging. You are your mother’s daughter

Papa yanked my head back by the thin strands of my scalp. I knew he was pulling my head harder than he once pulled my mother’s, back when he kept her hair from getting into the toilet. His fleshy fingers thrust into my mouth, grazing its ridged roof and the little hills on my tongue. I tried my hardest not to choke, even as my vision was tarnished and I forgot how to breathe. Papa tried to wrest the pill from my throat, but it had already slunk down. ***

The gasoline Papa brought to the garage was also the same color as my blood. I watched him pour it into a metal vat as tall as I was. Come over here, Papa ordered, his voice steel hard. This was the first time Papa had spoken to me since I swallowed the painkiller.

The moment Papa planted his hands on my shoulders, I knew he was never going to see me the same way again. He shoved me in front of him, my chest scraping against the vat’s rim. I could see my face in the oil, distorted and darkened to a brown splotch. I rarely saw my face in this garage, but what I saw now made me think of my mother—a head whetted down to something more akin to a skull. I wondered if this was what other girls looked like.

Papa could no longer carry me by holding my scalp alone, the way he did when I was a baby. Instead, he wrapped his arms around my waist. I knew not to thrash.

I tried to remember what Papa had said about my first baptism: It wasn’t painful like your fall because it was purposeful I tried to internalize those words instead of the gasoline. Liquid gurgled around me, swallowing the constant hum of cars. Gasoline hugged my body the way I would have expected my mother’s embrace to be like if I had ever met her—clinging to my skin so much I didn’t know where I ended and the oil began.

I hungered for the way it smelled, the torched sweetness of it. I wanted to taste this gasoline, to erase Papa’s touch from my mouth and warm my caved-in stomach. He was right. I was my mother’s daughter.

When the gasoline did slide into my mouth, it did not taste the way I wanted it to. It tasted instead like Papa, like the grimy film crusting his fingers. The gasoline came in crooked, viscous spurts, bitter and corrosive. My tongue was like a tire stuck in mud; my lungs were rusting over. Papa only peeled me from the vat when I was half-dead. I could feel his fists pounding my lungs back into breathing. I could feel his hands shaking my shoulders. I could feel his guilt. But I wanted him to know that I understood why he baptized me a second time. I must remember the taste of poison so I would never drink it again.

I emerged from my second baptism as a machine, unable to distinguish the blood trickling down my leg from the oil that had devoured me. Papa cut through my black vision, walking towards me with a bottle of rust converter. I prised open my tarnished mouth, dried rusty flakes crumbling off my lips. This will be better than painkillers , I convinced myself. If I was a machine, I was no longer a woman. I would never become my mother—would never feel absinthe or pills or a baby swimming in my belly. My womb had mechanized in that vat, no longer able to sustain a life. But I would never need another life to keep me company, not when Papa was here. Now that I was a machine, surely, he could fix me.

336

Lindsay Susten

Self

1 INT. BEDROOM - DAWN

WE OPEN on a dark bedroom with a bed in the corner. The only source of light is coming from the screen of an alarm clock. An alarm sounds and a figure stirs in the bed.

ELISE (15) girl, dirty blonde hair

Elise rises from her bed and positions herself at its edge, her feet hanging down. She stares at the floor for a moment, still. Elise releases a long sigh and crosses her arms, slouching her posture. Beat.

Elise stands and crosses the room to face a full body mirror. She peers into it, holding eye contact with the reflection staring back at her. After a beat, she sighs and walks toward a closet.

FADE TO:

Elise reenters, dressed now in loose jeans and a large T- shirt. She glances once again at the mirror before walking out her bedroom door.

2 INT. KITCHEN - DAWN

CUT TO:

CHRISTINE (45) Mother of Elise, tall, thin frame, brunette hair

Christine is standing next to an island in a small kitchen, preparing food. Elise enters, grabs a backpack off a chair, and quickly crosses toward a door.

CHRISTINE

(glancing up at the sound of Elise) Hey, hey, honey wait up!

Elise stops, sighs, and quickly turns to face her mother.

ELISE Mom, I have to get to school.

CHRISTINE

(quickly, faintly, as if trying to avoid offense) I know, I know, I just... good morning!

Elise nods slightly, giving her mother an irritated and confused look.

CHRISTINE (CONT’D)

Ok, fine then. (grabbing an apple out of a fruit bowl) At least eat something.

Christine tosses the apple to Elise. Elise catches it in her hand and ponders it. She swallows and rests her gaze on the floor between her mother and herself.

ELISE (quietly) Thanks.

Christine smiles lightly and nods to her daughter as she leaves the kitchen. Now alone, Elise looks at the apple in her hand. She stares at it for a beat, appearing nervous and uncomfortable. Finally, she stuffs it in the side pocket of her backpack and, quickly, exits.

3 INT. SCHOOL - DAY

LYDIA (15) close friend of Elise, tall and lean frame, dark hair

337

Play or Script Idaho Fine Arts Academy Eagle, ID

Elise walks through a high school hallway, lined on either side with lockers. Students pass all around her, conversing and opening lockers. Elise’s eyes are dazed and sad as she walks. The school bell rings, and Elise becomes aware of Lydia approaching her.

LYDIA

(cheerfully, to Elise)

Hey!

ELISE

(mustered with false enthusiasm)

LYDIA

You will never believe what happened to me this weekend.

ELISE

I'm sure I won't... what happened?

LYDIA

Ok, so...

The sound of students talking and lockers closing gradually increases to become louder, overtaking Lydia's storytelling. Elise stands fiddling with her hands as the noise rages around her. She looks Lydia up and down a few times, quickly, before diverting her gaze to the ground.

Her body turns slightly away from Lydia as she crosses her arms tightly against herself and closes her eyes, focusing on her breathing. Suddenly, just after the noise reaches its crescendo, it all cuts out. Elise snaps back to attention as we can hear Lydia speaking.

LYDIA

So, yeah. That's it. How was your weekend?

ELISE

(stammering, trying to regain composure)

Uh, it was fine. I mean, I didn't really... It was ok.

LYDIA

Ok...

Elise quickly looks Lydia up and down again, then discreetly turns her head down, gaze on the floor, and fiddles with her hands. After a beat, Lydia speaks.

LYDIA

(concerned, sincere) Hey, are you ok?...

ELISE

(snapping her gaze back up) I- yeah, of course.

LYDIA

Ok...

Elise looks at Lydia and nods, attempting to reassure her. Lydia registers it and nods slightly.

LYDIA

So, uh, to class, then?

ELISE

Yeah, yeah... Uh, one second, I'll- I'll meet you there.

Lydia nods, offers a small smile, and turns to walk down the hallway. Elise glances around, takes a breath, and walks the opposite way.

4 INT. BATHROOM - DAY

FADE TO:

Elise enters a small, well-lit school bathroom. She walks in quickly and glances around. She walks across

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the room to rest her back against one of the stalls as she folds her arms tightly against herself and breaths heavily. Her breathing is quick and unsteady, as if holding back tears. She remains this way for a few beats and then begins to regain composure. She takes two deep breaths and looks around the bathroom. Her eyes settle on the mirror, and she walks to it. Elise looks in the mirror, surveying her appearance. She fixes her hair, turning her head side to side. Finally, her gaze goes down to the reflection of her body and outfit. She adjusts her sleeves and pants, pulling them outward to be not so tight on her figure. She then adjusts the fit of her shirt, observing the way it fits around her waist. She looks uncomfortable and disappointed.

After releasing a shaky breath, she loosens that area of her shirt, making a few obsessive adjustments, and growing frustrated. She does this a few times then stills, looking at herself fully in the mirror. She balls her fists, takes a deep breath, and turns to, quickly, leave the room.

5 INT. CAFETERIA – DAY

GIRL #1 (15) one of Elise’s school peers

Elise sits in the center of a table in a large, brightly lit school cafeteria. There are rows of tables covering the whole area. Kids fill every table - laughing, talking, and eating. Elise's peers sit to either side of her, conversing and eating. Elise slouches slightly as she sits. Her shoulders are slumped forward, and she is glancing around at the people surrounding her. There is no food in front of her. In fact, the presence of others' food appears to make her uncomfortable, as she quickly rests her gaze on the table surface directly in front of her. Lydia and Girl #1 sit to the right of Elise, laughing while huddled together over a phone. Girl #1 leans over to Elise, who snaps to attention as the girl speaks. Elise’s posture straightens and a look of faint, brief excitement passes over her face.

GIRL #1

(giggling)

Haha, look at this.

The girl tilts her phone toward Elise. Elise looks at it for a second, then makes eye contact with the girl, forcing a polite smile and a light laugh. The girl turns back to Lydia. Elise resumes her slouch, looking disappointed and once again uncomfortable. After a beat, she reaches under her seat to retrieve her backpack, and from it, she pulls the apple. She holds it in her hand as if it weighs a hundred pounds. After focusing on it for a second, Elise looks slightly disgusting. She swallows, releases a shaky breath, and replaces the apple in her backpack. The bell rings, startling Elise slightly. She begins to pick up her backpack. Girl #1 is already standing.

GIRL #1

(to Elise, gesturing toward the remains of a bag of chips on the table)

Hey, do you want the rest of these?

Elise ponders the chips for a brief second before speaking.

ELISE

(dismissively, though trying to sound kind)

No, I'm- I'm good... thanks though.

GIRL #1 (shrugging shoulders)

Ok.

The girl picks up the bag of chips and throws them into a nearby trash can as she walks away from the table. Elise sits at the table for a moment longer, staring at its surface as her eyes grow red and brim with tears. Finally, she grabs her backpack, slings it over her shoulder, and marches out of the cafeteria.

CUT TO BLACK:

The screen is black for many moments before we hear Christine speak.

CHRISTINE (V.O)

Hey honey! How was school?

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Elise quickly enters her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She leans back against the door, breathing unsteadily. After a few beats, her breathing slows and steadies slightly. Elise stands upright and walks to her desk, where she takes off her backpack and sets it down. She rifles through a few things and then stills. Her hand emerges holding the apple. She looks at it, turning it over in her palm. After a beat and a sharp inhalation, Elise throws the apple, with force, against the farthest wall. She staggers away from her backpack to stand in the center of her room. She shoots a troubled glance at the full body mirror. After beat of staring, another mirror is thrust out near her, though the same distance as the former. She looks at it, slightly puzzled, but nevertheless upset with her reflection. Another mirror is thrust out on the other side of the room. Elise abruptly turns her head to look at it. Then another appears, until she is surrounded (left, right, and behind) by mirrors posing her reflection. She spins frantically, gazing at all of them. It sends her into a panic as she grips her arms tightly around herself. Her breathing speeds as she looks at different parts of herself and the room that are easily visible. She grows more and more frantic and uncomfortable until, in a final crescendo and fit of panic, she crumples in upon herself. Elise sinks to the floor, head in her hands, her breath loud and uneven. She remains this way for a few beats until all the lights suddenly cut out and her room is submerged in darkness. Elise’s breathing is faintly audible at first, but it begins to shake, descending in volume, until it can no longer be heard.

340 6 INT. BEDROOM - DAY

Camryn Sydnor

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Digital photography and color film photography collage 2021

Photography George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Baltimore, MD Memory Lane

Phoebe Trask

Like an Old French Revolution Painting

Growing up in Paris felt safe, even though it was a big city. I was comfortable taking the bus home alone from gymnastics, late at night. I would scooter past crowded cafes, over cobblestone streets, lonely dark alleys, to and from the bus stop, all in the glow of the streetlights. But on January 7th, 2015, that feeling of safety changed. After finishing our school’s typical 4 course lunch, my class was suddenly let out of school early. I was 10 years old, and in 5th grade, one of the big kids in my little elementary school. The teachers abruptly dismissed us, and we all just left the building, slightly bewildered. I opened the big green doors, unlocked my kick scooter from the rack outside, and scooted home alone. I went on my usual route alongside the Seine, almost falling when my wheel got caught in the cobblestones, longingly gazing at the nearby bakery filled with the smell of fresh pastries and baguettes, passing near the Grande Mosque and Institut du Monde Arabe, finally making it home. I was very confused and curious at being let out so early, but don’t get me wrong, extremely happy not to be in class. The teachers didn’t tell us what was going on. They may have barely known themselves. We understood though, once we heard the news that night: there had been a massive terrorist attack in Paris.

It turns out the attack was in the same neighborhood as my school, and the attackers had not yet been apprehended. Two French Muslim brothers, part of the Islamic terrorist group al- Qaeda, forced their way into the offices of the weekly French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hedbo. The magazine is known for publishing funny and often outrageously disrespectful, raunchy articles and comics on everything from politics to daily life. The paper had recently published satirical cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammed. My entire elementary school was wandering the same streets–at the same time–as heavily armed al-Qaeda terrorists who had just shot and killed 14 people.

For days, we were bombarded with sirens, police cars, and cordoned-off buildings—and also signs of solidarity saying “Je Suis Charlie”. The attacks forced France to temporarily close embassies and schools in more than 20 countries for fear of reprisals, including my elementary school. The city united in protest, with barricades popping up, looking like old oil paintings from the French revolution. The brothers were captured two days later on January 9th, but the city remained extremely loud, filled with blaring emergency vehicle sirens. My journeys to and from school were no longer peaceful. I had to avoid ambulances at every turn, and slow down for the occasional onslaught of police cars. Even though it was cacophonous, there was somehow an eerie quiet to the whole city, like everyone was holding their breath waiting for what was to come.

Even once the men were captured, the signs of the Charlie Hebdo attack didn’t disappear. There were literal signs up everywhere now, red triangles outlined in a black bold line saying “ vigipirate.” I’ve seen vigipirate translated into English as “anti-terrorist security plan” but as an American in Paris who spoke English as a first language at home, it always felt more like it meant “vigilance against the pirates.” For a 10-year-old, that might have been close enough to the truth. And the city was vigilant. Something new began to happen: “ colis suspect ” announcements would interrupt my metro rides at least once a month after the attacks. The overhead speaker would blare that a package had been left unattended on the train. Every shopping bag, backpack, purse, and food bag was suspect. Everyone would have to pile out of the crowded metro. We would all have to either exit the metro station completely or find our way to a different line, heading to a different stop. As I exited the metro doors, I would listen to the warning about the gap offered in three languages, French, Spanish, and English, mouthing the

words that I had memorized from a young age: “ attention à la marche en descendant du train ”, “ cuidado con el espacio entre el vagón y el andén ”, “please mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

On two occasions of colis suspect, I got lost in the heart of Paris. The first time, I was in a hot, jam-packed metro heading south on the 4 metro line to get to gymnastics. A few stops before Vavin, the stop where I would normally get off and go to my gym, the announcement speaker blared “colis suspect.” Everyone piled out of the train, marching as one crowded mass towards the fresh air and the stairs up out of the metro station. I looked around and realized that I had no clue where I was. Given that I have the worst sense of direction of anyone I know, this was not a surprise to me. This was a metro stop and a neighborhood in Paris that I had never been to before. It was an irregular intersection of several big boulevards nowhere close to my school and home but also nowhere close enough to the gym for me to recognize it. At this age, I had a tiny pink flip phone incapable of anything other than texting, calling, and one candy crush game. I looked around the carrefour, the intersection, but I didn’t recognize a single street name, or even the metro stop name itself.

There was a cafe across the street, and I decided to sit there while waiting for an answer from the text I sent my mom. I told her the metro stop and streets where I was and waited patiently, sitting at an outdoor cafe table. I had no money with me, but I was a cute, polite, French-speaking kid, and usually waiters treated me well–when I was with my parents. But this time, I was subjected to the full stereotype of the snobbish Parisian waiter: glaring looks, loud sighs, curt answers. They let me sit there, with no food or drink, waiting for this poor, lost child to get off their chair. It was mortifying. To this day, I can’t believe they didn’t just give me a cup of hot chocolate for looking so miserable and lost. My mom came to fetch me, and we went to gymnastics together.

The second time was far more ridiculous, and really shows my appalling sense of direction. I was headed to school, running late, as I had a PE swim class first thing in the morning. So, swim bag in hand, I took the metro–just one stop from my apartment to the school. As I was a competitive gymnast and did around 14 hours of gymnastics per week, I commuted from my house and from school to the gym many times per week. On this occasion, it was early and I was still sleepy. I entered the Jussieu metro stop and out of habit took the 10 line headed west towards the gym rather than the 7 line towards school. Two stops in I realized my mistake and switched to the opposite track to go back two stops so that I could try again.

Then, instead of taking the 7 line one stop north towards the school, I got on in the opposite direction and took the 7 line south. It was at this moment that the announcers called the “colis suspect ” at Place Monge, just one stop below where I had started my morning. Our house was between Jussieu and Place Monge where I ended up getting off, so in truth it was not far away at all. But, of course, I never got on at Place Monge by myself–not for school or gymnastics– and so I didn’t recognize where I was. I exited the metro into a small, unfamiliar alley, holding my swim bag, late for school, confused as all get out, and just started crying. Again, I pulled out my mini pink phone, called my mom and waited. She tried to explain to me how to get home, but I felt too lost to try. When she got to me–just minutes later–she laughed while I sobbed, and I soon realized why: as I walked down the small alley into the intersection, I recognized it to be the boulevard I walked every day coming to and from my house. My apartment was, in fact, just one block away. I just needed to walk down the alley, or even look up at a street name. I just needed to be more vigilant.

342

Creative Nonfiction Bay School of San Francisco San Francisco, CA

We lived on the same street as the large mosque in Paris and there were times where we weren’t allowed to go back into our own apartment because we had to wait for security checks. The police would block off our entire block and when we were finally allowed back into our building, they checked all our bags for weapons. It was like going through airport security checks, only it wasn’t to get on a plane, it was to go into my own home.

While the sirens and onslaught of police cars stopped after a few weeks, they restarted less than a year later when another terrorist group attacked several places around the city in November 2015, most famously at the Bataclan theater, killing even more people. I lived in this strange new world filled with fear and intensity and terrorism that existed alongside bakeries and beautiful churches and cobblestoned streets. Paris went back to regular life, yet also remained on high alert, a city whose heart never stopped compressing and squeezing, leaving me constantly on my toes, wondering when and where the next attack would be.

The city never felt the same to me again. It felt like the whole of Paris’ heart was waiting to explode. Whether I was in the streets, on my scooter, in the metro, in my school, or in my apartment, my young, naive heart was constricted too, sucked into a world of cultural, political, and religious tension.

343

Navi Trotman

344

Photography Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH Venus of the Morning 2 of 5 Silver gelatin print 2022

Isabela Vallar

345

Visual Arts George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Baltimore, MD Nose Cancelling Headphone Never Work Canvas, acrylic paint, oil paint, hot glue 2022

Jacklyn Vandermel

Polyphony of Bane

I. Mourning Doves

Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 2020

Luna breathes through her mask: the same air from the dusted lungs of caskets. Like eyes soot-swept to mercury glass rheum, her body clings to clothes without gaps. The smog undresses her family, puffs miasma into exhaust vessels, follows their hearts. They wait for the wind to transmit their words, shadow what they speak for: justice beyond wafting. This is what it feels like to be closer to an end than a beginning.

II. Dusk Star

Santarém, Brazil, January 2020

Farming season singes the Evergreen Abai roots for Grandmother’s silk poems: nature weathers woe with man’s belief that it can. In the heart of the Amazon, night birds smolder like unrequited loves, tamarin turning the ground golden like the animal skin of man. Through matchstick teeth, the indigenous pray for blues: we save our sorrows for rain. They taste cocoa, the last gift of Earth. Afar, Abai smothers the licking hearth, bears his family of saplings for new trails. Nature’s belief that man will mobilize to save it—Abai’s eyes flicker to Grandmother’s ending.

III. Monsoon Glass

Jakarta, Indonesia, February 2018

The Javanese live capsized. Waves rise in the shape of the oh of a mouth, and ships fold into each other. By the sea foam, a young boy casts red cents. Vulgarity to the blood stone water wells. Pleas for the children with lips swollen as jasmine. The faraway ocean lulls the indigenous tribe like moonsong. They unscript their mouths, steady to the tide with bamboo’s hymn flutes. To Borneo Isle, where wishes don’t dissolve into brine.

IV. Fossil Pitch

Tokyo, Japan, March 2011

Black and white stones beat against the Go board as people watch Earth split. Panic fills the parting asphalt, cracks the mosaic of each family beyond recognition. We’ve lost the things we used to forget. Beneath vanity Rai folds herself into a seaweed wrap, waits for the chime of medics, their tectonic boots

like shapes of origami cranes. Rai’s future settles with the other children’s into tapestry. They study to craft their own climate.

V. Neutrality City

Copenhagen, Denmark, January 2025

Skiers descend CopenHill, electron currents stretching across homes. Danes pedal waste into energy. The capital consumes renewables by its crowns. At the brim of neighborhood, Alma and Elias recycle the year’s journal. The world returns our gray. Footfalls of the organic greens in the garden. In carbon neutral, the world becomes.

346

Poetry Northern Valley Regional High School Demarest, NJ

Amy Wang

Ama,

even in dreams your lips are always moving. In this one, you return to my bedside and variegate me with folktales, fertilized and the warm yellow of a yolk. Your voice like a molting, shedding feathers in my sheets, its syllables riding the sheltered edge of sound. Underneath it, I have more limbs

than I know what to do with. I remember New York, how I rewrote your ghost as if I could make sense of something senseless if I shaped it with my own hands. In my palms, your voice became a revision of flight, a softening that deserved to know more than fields, more than ocean. Light leaked through my skin in a breach of the morning, and I moved in circles, as if location eluded me. Don’t listen, you always told me, when we passed men on the street, whose eyes made small caricatures of us. But how could I have listened when I never understood? When you laughed, your throat echoed in the vein of a hollow thing, scratchy and soft like the plucking of a violin string. How young I was then. How you sat by my bedside and unearthed all those bones just so I could see them. How your mouth opened and opened and—

Ama, I turn and we are awake again. There is no longing to this evocation. There is no way to keep myself

from turning and looking for your face. I see your body rising up in the dark beside me, and the smell of your skin is soft enough to remind me of those summers in Beijing, how the air wept and wept and knew too much to stop.

In that house, you wrapped my hands with the warmth of an ending and I forgot how to love you without falling apart. Let me tell you a story, you say. A story about a woman who loved so much she couldn’t live. The heat as threshing, a threshold, threatening in the face of all our blooming. The kitchen bubbles over with the wetness of a mouth, and I am reminded of how warm you were before you sank into the water like a stone, how even asleep

I can’t touch you. Truthfully, I do not want to know you as anything other than this —whole, unbroken, a woman

who knows more about the smell of salt than her child. Let me tell you a story, you say again. I wait for a quickening, my tongue rended over and over with silence. Like gauze, the memory of that afternoon falls over my face,

and I feel my throat convulse with every leaping breath. Ama, I cannot love your ghost in the same way I love you.

How old that makes me. How easy it is to taste blood in my mouth, when I wring it dry of water.

347

Poetry Westview High School San Diego, CA

Amy Wang

Ten years after she pawned her shadow

for its stitching, my mother went back to Shanghai to see if my grandmother could make her a new one. If anyone can do it, she told me, it would be your waipo that could do it. Before she left, she packed the skins of things that had once been precious to her young eyes. The key to the first apartment we’d lived in in America, the duvet cover she’d turned into a wedding dress for a play I’d been in in sixth grade. Pressed flowers, wet desire, the skim-milk skin of the rain she had stood beneath that first Friday afternoon, when her ankles were newly unmoored to the pavement. The night before her flight, she held my face in her hands and told me that she knew this because she would do it for me. Only mothers and daughters , she said. The light fell over her hair, into the empty space behind her, yawning wider and wider and wider until there was a suggestion of a mouth in its place. Only mothers and daughters . Beneath it all was that fine titration of hope. The day was calling her from the spine of another country, and she was calling herself a girl again. I did not have it within me to tell her that waipo had died four years ago, that her shadow was one of the things that she could only think about wholly at night. Only mothers and daughters , she told me. I knelt before her. I could not put my hand on her knee. I didn’t know how to touch her in a way that would make sense to the both of us. And so I bowed my head and pretended that I was praying, even though I had stopped believing in God years ago. Only mothers and daughters , I thought to myself. How much I knew it to be true.

348

Spoken Word Westview High School San Diego, CA

Ashley Wang

Red

1. I used to hate the color red. It held an overeager magnetism, always too many steps ahead of itself. Like a self-lighting candle, red roped in unsuspecting outsiders, forcing them to witness whatever blameless object it attached itself to. There was a certain arrogance to red, as if a color could supersede the will of innocent passersby. As if a simple slant of light could grab a girl by the neck, hold her captive to a world burning on its axis.

2. Like everyone else, my first introduction to red’s stuttered pulse was the womb. A bold imposition. I suppose most people don’t remember this. I, too, nearly slipped by. But my mother clung onto the underbelly of our merged bodies, painting my nursery in streaks of crimson. Wooden crib coated like an altar for sacrifice. She thought it would keep me quiet, turn my sleep dreamless. But red has never been beholden to the scythes of human desire, so it did the opposite—seeped instead into my dreams. A premature awakening.

3. When it came time for me to step into the world, my mother couldn’t let go. She forced me into more variations of red: backpacks, skirts, skorts, hair ribbons, hair bands. She strung me in scarlet Sunday dresses, a fire-alarm siren walking into church every weekend. Over time, the shade started sprouting wings on my back. The red blooming everywhere. Inescapable. Inconsolable.

4. If the billboards and neon nightclub signs of my preteen Wan Chai upbringing taught me anything, it was that red was a monstrous color. A seductress’ color, or the purest distillation of womanhood. But at thirteen, I was unequipped with the flashing teeth required for any of these roles, for the lofty mantle of femininity. So instead, I weaved my way through taxis at traffic lights, refusing to acknowledge the boundaries between pavement and steel. My eyes bounced from scabs, fire trucks, the unspeakable side of a Rubik’s cube. All apples were Granny Smiths. I struck the shade from my vocabulary, opting to name it as every other tone—beige, peach, flush orange. I unpeeled their rinds from my lips.

5. In hindsight, purging red from my life proved to be a foolish endeavor. I should’ve known that it always claws its way back—a daughter more prodigal than myself.

6. In Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung’s characters are literally ravished in a world of red. Under the eye of Christopher Doyle’s camera lens, the color becomes sacrosanct, a cocoon for the pair’s clandestine path towards love. For the two main characters, passion is entrapped in every unseen corner—between the seams of Cheung’s carmine cheongsam, her subtle glances across a plate of wine-red beef, the slight smear of her lipstick. Likewise, every beat of the plotline seems all-encompassing and inevitable—their meeting, the missed rendezvous, their eventual collapse. All of it is predestined, charted by some crimson god with a grander vision. At the very end of the movie, all the two of them have left is the hazy memory of their shared years, whispered into the crevices of a hollow Cambodian tree. What’s the point of a doomed romance? asks a reviewer. Good question.

7. Honestly, red has always been a little overwrought, especially in its proximity to desire. I’m aware. Case in point: walk into a CVS in the three months leading up to Valentine’s Day, and you’ll find the color coated around plastic rose petals and Kinder chocolate eggs—sweet, cloying, nauseating. But even still, even now, when I think of red, it’s you. You, on a windy fall night, wrapped in a

thin layer of scarlet satin. The first temptation. Or you, draped in magenta silk, snowflakes nested in your hair. A winter ghost. Or you, in the scarlet dress again; this time, its tangled sequins flashing in the blazing sunlight. An ambulance screaming its siren. Like Maggie Nelson once said, my love has a morbid heart. I, too, am trying to find dignity in my loneliness.

8. When I turned seventeen, my mother explained that her obsessive practice of draping me in a single, striking shade for 90 percent of my childhood was the ultimate form of maternal affection. She grew up in Shanghai, in the waning twilight of Mao’s reign. In elementary school, she prided herself upon the elegant knotting of the red scarf on her neck, a bright symbol of loyalty to the Communist body politic. Back then, every song she sang immortalized the color, wove it into an untouchable god. The sun, the sea, the East formed a country burning with red. Like many others, she wept when Mao died. Carved her country into her palms, vowing to keep it alive. This is how I learned that motherhood, in its purest form, is an art of projection. Of a woman mapping the unlived onto a breathless daughter. Motherhood as a sharp shade of red, suffocating and illogical. Perhaps vermillion, or claret.

9. In Chinese culture, red is a lucky color. I’m sure most people, even casual viewers of Kungfu Panda and Crazy Rich Asians , are familiar with this inescapable element of my heritage. Every new year, Chinese people across the world go into a frenzy, flooding their streets in rivers of red. They paste red paper diamonds on wooden doors, saunter down the streets as red-dragon dancers, wrap their money in red envelopes, imparting the Sino religion of prosperity to their children. For all my aversion to the color, I never doubted this myth. Of course red was a harbinger of fortune. It was far too excessive to be anything but—always in surplus, always pouring out of some unwanted crease or orifice.

10. The thing I resented most about my mother’s incessantly nostalgic projection of red was that I had no choice in the matter. If a red gingham skirt was laid out on the couch, I inevitably had to wear it, lest I bear her early morning wrath or show up to school an hour late. Red became an omnipresent instrument of power: my mother may have called it unfiltered love, but the color quickly became a chokehold, seeping into every corner of our apartment. Sometimes I wonder if her obsession was a form of inheritance— if somehow, in some Pavlovian way, I had internalized a captivity to future flashes of scarlet. If I had internalized a desire for possessive, strangled devotion.

11. Months before you said you loved me, I started preparing for the end, like one of those paranoid dads stocking up on bunkers and disaster survival kits. I read breakup poems, wrote an essay in the past tense (the first paragraph began with the phrase “it played out like a cliché.”) Unearthed crayons I once buried in the corner of my drawers—poppy, rose, salmon. I watched In the Mood for Love on-loop, developed an obsession with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. All tales of dissolution and departure. Back then, I thought that preemptively inviting the omens into my door was the smarter choice—that they would simply stick to the ceiling like specters, never strike down upon my fragile shoulders. Now I wonder if I was molding a self-fulfilling prophecy.

12. What I do know with unblinking uncertainty: whenever I saw you in those red dresses at Homecoming or Valentine’s day or any gilded social gathering our school could conjure up, I felt a

349

Creative Nonfiction

Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, NJ

familiar tightening around my throat. An ever-present echo of breathlessness, bordering on suffocation. And whenever you emblazoned red onto the softest, most visible parts of my body, I would go any lengths to hide it.

13. In the popular tragi-comedy series Bojack Horseman, Wanda the Owl utters an unforgettable quote upon ending her relationship with the show’s titular character. It’s a phrase I’ve often appropriated as my own, wedged between lunch gossip sessions: You know, it’s funny; when you look at someone through rosecolored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. Never has a quote from an adult animated show rung so true. Still, it took a long time for me to consider that it might also apply to myself.

14. In truth, I didn’t need rose-colored glasses to be held captive to your fire-alarm manipulation. My world had already been flooded with crimson, years before you waltzed into my life— the supposed warning signs and toxic cycles so intrinsic to my inherited understanding of love. I was too accustomed to red’s omnipresence, unable to extract the difference between similar tones, between affection and possession. No wonder then, that I stumbled so easily into your red-handed embrace. No wonder I stayed for so long, even if it killed me.

15. A day after the breakup, I sat in the last row of Hadestown. On stage, actors played nymphs and demigods and snakes, belting their way through an industrial Hell. Orpheus’ falsetto blew the hinges off the theater’s unoccupied seats, Persephone stumbled to jazz-band-folk, and Hades sang a deep, penetrating bass. All the while, Orpheus and Eurydice danced to a ballad of unmitigable distance—they were condemned, it seemed, to always be apart. One lover a step in front of the other. I was hooked, sinking into a scale of self-projection that could rival my mother’s. I extrapolated every second of the pair’s romance onto my own unraveling, molding the epic into a private lyric. I heard you in every riff: red seeping from the edge of Hades’ mouth, from the turntable stage, from the pocket of Eurydice’s leather jacket. And when Orpheus turned around to look at Eurydice for the last time, the theater broke apart in a sea of crimson. Within seconds, the singular fact of his gaze had constituted his undoing, condemning Eurydice to an eternal death.

16. I cried on the bus ride back, Playbill clutched between my sweat-slick fingers. Its cover was emblazoned with a single poppy, a flame glaring through gray gloss. I couldn’t bear to look at it.

17. For three months after the show I had a recurring nightmare. Every time, the dream ended with the word red-handed I’ve caught you. No more fleeing. Every night, it started with a door— half-open, flung open, rammed open SWAT-style—a parent or a teacher or a pastor or blank-faced angel dragging me out of your bed and into a bleeding hallway. The walls outside of your room literally sagged with red paint. It didn’t matter what permutation the dream took—the door was always locked in perpetual motion, contaminated with my guilt and my sin and my utter redhandedness. And always, I woke under the weight of the hallway’s scarlet ceiling, opening like a freshly gashed wound.

18. Through all the breakdowns, momentary reconciliations, and broken promises that punctuated our months together, I clung onto my small measure of self-awareness, thinking it would save me. I used to tell my friends that you were a walking red flag, but that it was the exact source of your appeal. Like Eve in the Garden of Eden. I confess—I was bragging. For too long, I adopted an extreme case of selective memory, clung only to the good. At the height of your deception, I refused to leave; instead, I came running to your room and held onto your warm, red body. Every kiss, a deeper descent into Hell. I confess—I was weaving a myth of my own.

19. People like to villainize Orpheus for his final act. After the show, my friends reviled him, arguing that his head was too far

up his ass, too caught up in his own insecurities. Why the fuck did he have to turn at the last second , they said, the man’s a simp in the worst way possible. Similarly, Plato’s Symposium once labeled Orpheus as a coward for his attempt to cheat death. Of course Orpheus deserved his tragic fate: he didn’t have the guts to die for Eurydice, only enough to sing a few trite verses. But I find him a little more sympathetic. After all, Orpheus merely made the poet’s choice. He decided that the memory of romance was more valuable than the thing itself. That the song was more tangible than the muse.

20. I admit that my theory might originate from a place of personal bias. Regardless, I stand by it. Orpheus was right to walk away from the type of infatuation that would drag him across the floors of Hell. In the face of a musical Faustian bargain, there was no way he could realistically salvage his love. The only conceivable action was to immortalize Eurydice in verse.

21. Nowadays, when I flip through my memories of you, a charcoal-drawn pattern emerges at the forefront—hazy but unflinchingly present. I never realized until this summer that I was always the one walking out your door. Always the one leaving, head tilted for one last glance before the inevitable sprint down your dorm’s stairwell. I inscribed my greatest fear in red ink, turning myself into a proto-Orpheus—mired in the notion of desire but ultimately destined to leave. I was doomed to choose the possibility of a poem over your body.

22. Tragic flaw or not, I think I made the right choice. I needed to walk away from my red-handed fate, my twisted inheritance. I needed to walk away from your grasp.

23. So after a lifetime of overexposure, I am trying to colorcorrect. I am trying to see my experiences of red as examples of the interstitial—the wound before it’s healed, the pause before a flood, the exit sign before the earth splits in half. I want, so desperately, to believe that there is a destination beyond its grip, beyond my mother’s Foucauldian gaze, beyond my quicksand heartbreak.

24. A week ago in a random corner of the Internet, I stumbled upon Goethe’s fabled last words: “light, more light.” I’ve committed this phrase to memory. It might just be my way out. Perhaps the solution to my morbid heart is not to cast out red’s brutal intrusions, but to open a window for other wavelengths of light. To become aperture, let Newton’s prism wash technicolor over my arms. I don’t know how to accomplish this feat on any level, scientific or imaginary. I know nothing about the inner workings of light. Or love, for that matter.

25. I know only this: one day, I will walk out of this simmering state of transit. One day, I will stop writing endless letters in carmine ink. One day, I will stop missing you.

26. And the flood of red will cease.

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Ashley Wang

God and I Play Russian Roulette / The Youth Group Debates Capital Punishment

Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, NJ

The first scene of rapture opens like this: the glass on my desk choking out a bullet, metal conception. & suddenly you’re barrelling over my lampshade-shadow-trapdoors, muzzle pulsing against my temple. So I hollow. I swallow commas. I follow you into a blank-spaced cellar, shatter the walls with voids. & when the silence grows too wide, jams against the spinning cylinder, I hand you a return receipt with all the letters that slipped out the hatchway of my belief. But let’s reverse the roles, God. God, your chamber’s empty. God, don’t bluff. Don’t you see the pistol in my palms, the way it blinks in this bonewhite basement. So confess to me. Tell me, God. Tell me the girl wasn’t a blood lunar eclipse, fire-alarm hands flitting over my jaw. How she wasn’t an omen or another ghost hanging from the ceiling. Tell me retribution isn’t just the way the moonlight bares its teeth over our license plates each night. That the neon billboards hailing repent or choose life won’t haunt us down in a Kowloon pawn shop tomorrow. Tell me this world will last. That we’ll be gorgeous for longer than five years, and we’ll outlive the trigger, and one day all there is to do is laugh in the face of a picket sign. Tell me that language isn’t just a ship with interchangeable parts. It’s okay, keep talking. We both need this gunpoint to survive. I already know the ivory church pews are just boneless reproductions—discount doors to an empty Garden of Eden. I’ve known for years that the girl’s clasped palms contain the entire sky. & wind is just another verb for desire: her body split between the two parting hands of a pocket watch, humming along the razor edge of a 24-hour asymptote. See, I’ve been trying, God. I’ve been trying to understand. When I first loved the girl, I thought it final: we’d end as two pistols baptized in a basement, caking gunpowder on a country-fair mirror maze. Violent from all angles. I, both the perpetrator and victim of my most stunning crime, circumscribed by the reflections of our slippery vocabularies. God, be honest— here’s my gun to the night and no more metaphors to spill—tell me if a body like mine can live without possession. Without ruin, without touch, without light. Tell me a body like mine can pull the trigger and still die holy.

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Poetry

Cheungwan Wang

352

Visual Arts

Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

2022

Imprisoned Freedom Acrylic paint and wire

Emma Wang

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Design Arts Ursuline Academy Blue Ash, OH The Aquatic Log Cabin Resort Leather, pleather, carpet samples, upholstery fabrics, tweed, ceramic clay, embroidery thread 2021

Kylie Wang

Hòu Yì and the Ten Suns

Part 1: 有朋自遠方來

Long ago, the gods Dì Qūn and Yì Hé birthed ten children— gods who took the form of yellow-white discs, their radiance so glorious it stretched over the entire human realm. They lived past the Eastern Sea, sleeping in their human forms under the branches of a giant underwater tree, and took turns rising into the Sky Palaces in the heavens.

Yì Hé also had an eleventh child, by the name of Hòu Yì. She had visited the human realm one year, and met a young archer who took her in when she fell sick. When she returned, she hid away the result of their unholy union, and only she and her ten other children knew of Hòu Yì’s existence.

Although Yì Hé only ever addressed Hòu Yì coolly, as if speaking to a stranger and not a son, the ten suns never held reservations and freely showered him with love. Zhì, the eldest, taught him everyday lessons in the form of stories—about the fox and the tiger, the frog in the well. Yì, the graceful sister, painted celestial patterns on his skin with black ink and water when he was eight. And every year, his sister Sú organized great feasts on New Year’s Eve, the only time he ever saw his mother.

Then, one day, Hòu Yì sat with his siblings, swallowing spoonfuls of rice cake and soup, and waited for the wooden door to open, revealing a long-haired goddess in a fern-green cloak. The night deepened, and one by one the ten suns left, leaving a golden trail behind them. The ocean’s coldness slunk in every time the door opened, with no sign of the spring promised by the glowing red lanterns they put up every year.

The last to leave was Hé, who was the youngest other than Hòu Yì. “Happy new year,” he said.

“May your trip be in the direction of the wind,” Hòu Yì replied.

A few minutes after Hé set out, Hòu Yì threw on a cloak and snuck outside, barefoot. He could see his brother’s soft glow in the distance, so he followed, soles of his feet curling to muffle his footsteps. He saw his brother disappear into a red-tiled house, the light disappearing when the front door slammed shut.

His mother lived there, and she had often warned him never to enter. Hòu Yì snuck up and peered through the round window.

Inside, all ten of his siblings sat around a circular table, their radiance lighting every corner of the room. The god Dì Qūn, who Hòu Yì had only glimpsed a few times in his childhood, was seated in their midst. And beside him was his mother, her back towards him, leaning casually against the wooden backing of her chair. They all talked animatedly, passing dishes back and forth. The picturesque image of a perfect family.

He had seen what he wanted—or rather, what he didn’t want—to see. Retrospectively, he supposed that he should have expected it to happen sooner or later. He was twenty now, just turned into a full-grown adult—of course his mother didn’t feel obligated to him anymore. He trudged back in silence, engrossed in his thoughts.

Hòu Yì left the next dawn, stealing a rickety boat from an old, napping fisherman. The water stretched out farther than the eye could see, but Hòu Yì was young and blessed with divine strength. He ripped through the uncharacteristically calm sea, oars flexing in his muscular grip and a slight breeze propelling him forward. The fishing boat shot across the smooth water like a fish as he sank into a rhythm—push and pull, push and pull.

Just half a day later, the little boat ground against the salty sand of the beach. He stepped off, sandals sinking into the shore. Four or five other boats floated nearby with humans perched serenely on each of them. Atop a gradual slope, a few small huts squatted, and miniature figures could be seen scurrying between them.

Hòu Yì pushed the boat back out to sea. Then he climbed towards the houses, heart fluttering in his chest. Three suns hung in the sky: one right above his head, one slanted slightly to the west, and one lingering on the edge of the horizon. His sisters Lǐ and Qīn, and his brother Xìn watched from afar. Remember your manners, Lǐ whispered, her voice carried in the wind. They’ll love you, said Qīn.

Presently he arrived at the first row of residences, looking around curiously. Moss stained the little village, and wispy trees hung over dilapidated roofs. Although bare wood and clay made up the shabby walls, Hòu Yì found the overall aura to be more welcoming than any opulence he might have expected. His arrival caught the eye of several mortals. As he stood quietly, a dismal crowd had gathered, passing murmurs between them like bronze coins at a market.

Hòu Yì raised both his hands, his left enclosing his right in a fist, the traditional salutation. “Greetings,” he said, uttering the words that had been fizzling on his tongue for half a day. “My name is Hòu Yì, the son of the goddess Yì Hé, and I hail from past the Eastern Sea. I have not much to offer, but my gratitude and my humble services, in exchange for a place in the mortal realm.”

The villagers looked at each other, talking amongst themselves instead of replying. They pointed, too, at his platinum hair the color of midmorning sun and the bold art that lined his skin, glimmering softly in the sunlight. Hòu Yì suppressed the urge to cover it up. At last, a few middle-aged women ushered forward an old man in heavy robes and a wispy white beard.

“Greetings, brother, and welcome to our village. Though we regrettably do not have much to give you but some food and a cup of tea, we would gladly take up your offer, since fate has seen fit to bring us all together today. We have one request to make.”

Hòu Yì blinked. Though he genuinely meant his words, he had not expected the humans to make an actual demand on a guest. Regardless, he dipped his head. “Speak your wish, and I will gladly try my best to fulfill it, my strength be willing.”

The old man nodded. “Very well. The gift you can give us is one that, once granted, would cause us to hail you as a hero among men. There exists in our village a very old but sturdy bow. Legend says that it was fashioned in none other than Lóng Wáng’s deep-sea palace. The bow itself takes at least three young men to lift, and it is paired with a satchel of ten arrows, each as thick as a lady’s forearm. No mortal has ever been able to wield it.”

“Go on,” said Hòu Yì, noticing the obvious shift in the villagers. Whispers swept from lip to lip, like a wind passing through each leaf of a tree.

For a moment, the man pressed his mouth shut, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “For a long time, the ten suns have plagued us. Our people can hardly stand the blinding light and the heat, and our crops have all but withered. If you can shoot down the suns, then we will be forever indebted to you.”

Shoot down the suns? For the second time, the man took Hòu Yì by surprise. The suns were his brothers and sisters. But he stood in the mortal realm now, the gods nothing but fleeting halos, faceless orbs in the sky.

All around him, hopeful eyes widened, leaning in, devoid of the hostility from just a while ago. His heart ached to stand next to them too, as equals. Hadn’t he wanted to come? They were giving him a chance to prove himself, to be loved and adored and stitched into the fabric of history. Did anyone give him the same chance back home?

A cloud shadowed the suns above, and he couldn’t hear his siblings. He squared his shoulders, as if cracking open his chest. “I will do it.”

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Short Story Campolindo High School Moraga, CA

Part 2: 本是同根生

Flanked by a few young men, the bow and quiver on his back, Hòu Yì set off towards Huangshan, where he would be closest to one of the sun’s paths. A day’s trek brought him to the foot of the rocky mountain, where he began his climb into the silvery clouds, his head bowed, almost afraid to look up. Too soon, he reached the top, where his brother, Yán, hovered above. Where are you going? said Yán.

Looking unblinkingly into the light, Hòu Yì drew an arrow and aimed at Yán, the brother with whom he conversed most often. It was he who taught Hòu Yì the language used to speak with the ten suns and the language used to speak with the humans. He paused for a second, a moment for Yán to say something, anything. But the fastest winds wouldn’t have carried a message soon enough.

And Hòu Yì let loose.

The arrow flew through the sky, hissing through the air like a snake. For a moment it stalled, at its peak, frozen in the air— then it fell, slightly, and pierced right through the center of Yán. The sun’s golden light flickered, then, with a final flash, it went out, revealing a black crow in red flames slowly descending to the horizon. The world was stained crimson, fiery blood spilling across the sky. Hòu Yì’s ears rang, any sound from his siblings whisked away. His shoulders dropped.

But he turned, and below the crest of the mountain, the people cheered, hugging each other, the red glow basking their bronze skin. They escorted him down the cliff, stuffing fruits and buns into his arms. The gods seemed a million years away. Here, the people were real, made of flesh and laughter, with hands reaching from everywhere to touch his skin. He adopted their infectious smiles, nodding to everyone who clapped him on the back. At the foot of the mountain, someone slipped a horse’s bridle into his palm. Hòu Yì examined the creature—gray and black specks flecked its white body, congregating at its ears and rear end.

Hòu Yì mounted in one leap, and the horse started galloping. They ran across a field, the wind buffeting about their ears. The horse must have been descended from dragons, a demigod in its own right—for it reached the mountains and lakes of Guilin in just half a day, breathing harshly, its flank dusted with sweat. Slowing to a trot, they made their way up the tallest peak, springing up the steep inclines.

At the tip, Hòu Yì raised his face to his sister, Yì. His skin warmed where she had once written her signature on his right ankle, when he was young and her canvas. Below, the lake shimmered the same jade green as the mountain’s lush treetops, a fitting resting place for an artist.

Taking a deep breath, he drew his bow. Yì was silent, and in fact Hòu Yì had not heard a word from any of the suns since Yán fell from the skies. Time passed differently in the sky palaces—his sister Xìn always told him that a year would pass on the ground in the span of a day up there. Had the other suns heard the news yet? Hòu Yì breathed, shaking off his thoughts. Then he let loose.

The arrow flew true, penetrating through the center of Yì. The light shriveled into a crow, and blood spread across the sky; a splash of red ink in water.

A sharp pain everywhere. Hòu Yì looked down at the smoke rising from his ankle, from where his sister’s artwork had burned away. He examined his newborn skin, a plain, unmarked tan. If not for his silvery light hair and muscular frame, he would’ve looked like one of the mortals in the village.

Hopping atop his horse, Hòu Yì made the journey towards the frost-dusted pines in Jilin. A passerby told him snow rarely fell at any time of the year, since, with ten suns, at least one of them always touched every corner of the human realm. But when Hòu Yì arrived, white powdered the branches of the woodland, like a sea of mist submerging the land. There he shot Sú, the third death, and the frost on the trees reflected pink.

The night of New Year’s, Hòu Yì had a vision, as clear as though he had looked into a mirror. In it he was trodding slowly, just as he had walked back to his home that evening. But in the

dreamlike world, his white hair twisted in a dull tangle instead of in his usual sleek bun. Wrinkles wormed up and down his face, and his spine folded in lethargy.

Then, without warning, he fell. And he did not get up. Hòu Yì watched as time sped up, and the old version of himself sank into the soil, faded, deformed, untouched and unbothered by anyone. He rode away from the snowy land, cold nipping his joints. At Yunnan’s stone forest, he shot down Qīn. He had to squint when he aimed at Lǐ at the Hukou waterfall, where the Yellow River spilled over gleaming black rocks, because on his journey from Yunnan his eyes started hurting whenever he looked at the suns for too long.

The route to the desert, where Hòu Yì planned to intercept Zǔ, was the longest one so far. Thirty hours and then some had passed since Hòu Yì had first set out. On the way, he came upon a town. He entered a restaurant sitting on the outskirts, brushing aside the hanging curtains at the doorway.

Daylight illuminated the building, with only a few people strewn quietly around the tables. “A cup of wine,” Hòu Yì called out. His sister Lǐ would’ve berated his rudeness, but his limbs felt feathery and light, eyes bloodshot from exertion.

A portly man bustled out from another room. “You have coins on you?” He asked, eyeing Hòu Yì up and down.

“No.” He patted his empty pockets. “My name is Hòu Yì, and I am the hero who hails from past the Eastern Sea, come to shoot down the suns that plague your realm.”

The restaurant owner said nothing, stepping back into the room and returning with a cup in his hand. Hòu Yì accepted it and downed it in a gulp.

“This is plain water!”

“You’re welcome,” said the man. “The best we can offer you, since you can’t pay.”

Hòu Yì huffed and released the cup, letting it shatter on the floor. He ignored the man’s protests and stormed out of the restaurant.

He climbed onto his horse and spurred it on, forcing it to go twice as fast as it had before. The horse obliged, sprinting as if in a race against the wind. In almost no time they reached the boundless desert, stopping where the faded yellow bushes shrank into a field of sand, as far as the eye could see. Zǚ would feel at home here, in the land’s skeleton weathered by time. He was the eldest of the siblings, born centuries ago, perhaps even before Nǚ Wā fashioned the first man and woman out of clay in her likeness. The feathered arrow flew; the flaming crow fell; and Hòu Yì continued his chase of the ten suns. They must have understood what happened, because those who were left had dropped from the pinnacle in the sky. Their movements were imperceptible, so far away, but Hòu Yì knew he would have to hurry before they disappeared to safety altogether. In Jiuzhai valley, he had a clear shot at Rén, whose dying sparks fell into the serene lake, unbroken as the surface of a dinner plate.

He left that place slowly, his head hanging. He noticed that his white hair had faded to black, the last sign of his lineage vanished. Now no one would doubt him if he claimed to be human. He had long lost count of the number of his brethren he had slaughtered already. The cluster of humans around him, once thoughtful of his every need at the start of the journey, were nowhere to be seen. For some time now, he hadn’t heard anything but the sound of his breath, the hooves of his horse on beaten paths, and the thrum as the arrows left his bow.

But eventually he made it to the gorges of Changjiang, the longest river in the human realm. Its gurgles drowned out all other sounds as he drew another arrow from his quiver and aimed it, eyelids shielding his eyes, at Xìn, his passionate, optimistic sister. Like before, he let loose.

A memory resurfaced just as the arrow made its arc towards the sun. He was seven, running around with Hé. They spotted a table laid out with food—fruits, vegetables, and biscuits filled the surface. Delighted, he reached for a loaf of bread.

Out of nowhere, a hand caught his. Seven-year-old Hòu Yì looked up at his sister, Xìn. “This food is for the gods!” She chided.

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“If you

eat it, they’ll get mad at you.”

Unused to such harsh words from his benevolent sister, Hòu Yì’s lips trembled. She stopped, kneeling down to eye level with him.

“It’s okay,” she caressed his shoulder. “As long as you’re good, they’ll still watch out for you.”

The sky filled with red once again. Hòu Yì lowered his bow, strapped it back onto his back, and dragged his horse down the length of the Changjiang. A weariness settled into his limbs, despite his gift of strength. He tried to conjure an image of himself, welcomed back into the village, his name beloved and revered, his residence filled with friends and a family he would form.

He gave up and climbed onto his horse with a grunt, following the flow of water.

After a half hour, he arrived at the Eastern Sea. There, his brother Zhì sank rapidly into the horizon. Hòu Yì began to think that the crimson painting the sky would never be scrubbed away. The orange light faded into puce—behind Hòu Yì, people started to gather, pointing at the darkening skyline. He heard their mouths move in prayer.

Hòu Yì kneeled so that Zhì was at eye level, steadied his shoulders, and aimed. Just before the sun touched the horizon, only a breath away from liberty, the arrow struck.

A flash rippled across the sky, and at the same time a cheer thundered. A searing pain stabbed Hòu Yì’s eyes, and he doubled over, clutching his face. When he opened them again, the world had turned black.

A ringing deafened him; he couldn’t differentiate between the crashing waves of the beach and the voices of the mortals some way away. A while later, the pain faded. The voices of celebrating villagers had washed away, echoing somewhere in the distance. All else stood still, coldness descending like a vice onto Hòu Yì’s body. The last of his energy was stripped away, just as the markings that adorned his skin had been burned off. Spent, he collapsed on the salty sand, the bow falling from his stiff fingers.

Part 3: 海上升明月

It was the first rest he’d had in three whole days. In his sleep, he dreamed of his home, the two colossal mulberry trees intertwined like an intricate sculpture, its branches unmoving despite the onslaught of ocean currents. His mother came to him, glowing white robes billowing. Robes of mourning.

“Mother,” said Hòu Yì coolly.

The goddess regarded him silently, her face expressionless. He raised his chin. “I had to do it. It was my destiny.”

The water, dark as an eye for the first time in his life, undulated softly around him. He could feel her judgment, as hard and cutting as stone. “Well?” His voice rose. “What are you going to do about it? You forced my hand. You banished me from this realm before I was even old enough to read and write. Maybe not physically, but I was never welcome, all the same. Do you fault me for trying to carve out a place among mortals?”

Eddies whirled around them. Yì Hé’s loose white hair whipped across her face. “Go on, Mother.” Hòu Yì had to yell over the storm. “What will you say to me?”

The goddess finally opened her mouth. “You have no mother,” she whispered, the sound barely entering his ears before being snatched away. The turbulence screamed to a peak, and darkness overtook everything.

For a second Hòu Yì thought he was still asleep, because of the gaping void greeting his open eyes. He groaned and rolled over on the beach, waiting for his vision to adjust.

Then it registered that he couldn’t see anything at all. The moon, the stars, the fires from the village—utter darkness swallowed it all, left and right indistinguishable from up and down. He was blind.

A thin layer of sand had glazed his skin while he slept. He brushed it off his raw and oddly frail skin, and shivered from the night-tinged wind blowing from the sea.

Where were the humans? He had completed his task. When would he receive the welcoming hands, the steaming meal, the warmed bedroll? We would hail you as a hero among men, the old man had said. Had it been a lie? A ruse to manipulate him to answer their every beck and call?

A warmth caressed his bent knees, climbing up his chest in a slow line. Hòu Yì sat up straight. Morning had dawned, and realization with it: he had never achieved his mission in the first place. From the Eastern Sea, the last brother, Hé, rose. Despite everything Hòu Yì had done, the sun was still molded to its fixed path, unable to resist the temptation of its duty. Without his sight, Hòu Yì’s fingers groped until he found his bow and quiver on the ground. A single arrow still lay in the satchel. For the tenth sibling. His skin would act as his vision, directing him by the angle of the sun’s rays. The mist rolling in from the Eastern Sea obscured the direction of the sun, however. He should wait until midmorning, when its glow was strongest, and find some higher ground in the meantime.

Hòu Yì scrambled to his feet, stumbling away from the crashing of waves. Using his bow to feel out the terrain, he tottered forward, finding purchase in rocky crevices when he reached a small hill of some sort. For more than half of an hour he made his way steadily up, until his skin burned where the sunbeams firmly landed.

He knelt then, angling his face so that the sun hit it squarely. Drawing the last arrow, he repeated the familiar motion, stretching his elbow back—

“What are you doing!” Something crashed into him. He let go of the arrow, startled. He could tell that it flew amiss, falling into the ocean somewhere.

“Are you mad?” someone roared. Spittle sprayed onto his face. Hòu Yì didn’t recognise the voice. It didn’t matter. “We need the last sun! Are you trying to curse us with eternal winter, you little mix-breed?”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” With a bellow, Hòu Yì tried to pounce on the man. He missed severely, crashing into a thorny bush instead.

Coarse laughter grated his ears. “Look at yourself now. Not such a golden boy anymore, huh? You’re but a common man now, a crippled one at that.”

Seething, Hòu Yì pushed past the mortal and down the hill. His hand still clutched his bow. Once he judged that he had run sufficiently far away, he brushed himself off, wincing when his thumb ran over ant-sized thorns embedded into his flesh. Something trickled down his calf—probably blood.

Crying out, he threw his bow onto the ground. What was he doing? He wiped his hands on his robes, trying to clean off the taint of invisible dirt. He had turned his back on his only family. And for what? The man had disappeared, whether still on the hill or miles away for all that it mattered, as if somehow Hòu Yì owed him an apology

Somewhere above, Hé kept inching across the sky. And Hòu Yì was eight again, asking his brother why doesn’t our mother like me? Did I do something wrong? Hé had replied no, it’s not your fault despite being just ten years old and not understanding the reasons himself, and I think you’re great. Then he had taken Hòu Yì to their sister Yì, so she could paint markings on him identical to the rest of their siblings—how naked he felt without them now, like a hairless mouse.

Hòu Yì cupped his palms around his mouth. “Hé!” He screamed his brother’s name. Not knowing if the wind would still carry that far. He cocked his head, trying to listen for some sound, any reply that might float down to his ear.

“Hé!” His voice gave out. Desperately, he picked up the bow again and started jogging, trying to find higher ground. With a grunt he snapped off the string of his bow, his fingers damp where it cut him. Then the sun passed over his head, speeding up towards the west—and Hòu Yì started running now, the bow held out like a walking stick to avoid boulders in his way and to right himself when some jutting roots knocked him over.

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But though he still had the build of a strong young man, the goddess Yì Hé no longer claimed him as her son—he no longer possessed the divine power that once coursed freely through his body. Despite that, Hòu Yì kept pumping his legs, his breath heaving, his strides stumbling into a stagger. Hé, his brother, had all but disappeared when Hòu Yì’s now-mortal body collapsed at last, curling to rest on a small grassy field. His panting slowed, slowed, slowed, then finally stopped. The world got impossibly blacker.

The winds carried away his last breath, an eternal, regretful sigh.

In the years that followed, his body sank into the soil, faded, morphed, untouched by any mortal. They say afterwards that his bow—his walking stick—grew into a forest of peach trees, nourished by the sun, which seemed to linger longer than usual over that patch of land, where Yì Hé’s son rested. They say that his tears and sweat trailed into the earth, and from it a river formed. “How much grief can one man have?” a poet would ask, centuries later, and they say he referred to Hòu Yì when he answered: as much as a river in the spring, gurgling as it flowed East, off into the Sea.

Glossary

言 (Yán): language, speech

藝 (Yì): art, craft; talent

俗 (Sú): custom, tradition

親 (Qīn): relative, close friend; dear

禮 (Lǐ ): propriety, ceremony

祖 (Zǔ): ancestors; ancient

仁 (Rén): compassion, benevolence, humanity

信 (Xìn): belief, religion

智 (Zhì): intelligence, wisdom

核 (Hé): core

有朋自遠方來 (yǒu péng zì yuǎn fāng lái): “A friend comes from afar.” A well-known line from《論語》(Analects of Confucius), often also used as a greeting. The full sentence says: “isn’t it pleasure when a friend visits from afar?”

本是同根生 (běn shì tóng gēn shēng): The historical novel《三國演

義》(Romance of the Three Kingdoms) tells the story of Cáo Zhí, who composed a poem in the span of seven footsteps to escape execution by his older brother, Cáo Pī. The poem used cooking beans as a metaphor for the cruelty of his brother’s betrayal, and the fifth line,「本是同根生」, means “grown from the same roots.” 海上生明月 (hǎi shàng shēng míng yuè): “A bright moon rises above the ocean.” The first line of the poem 《望月懷遠》 (“Homesick While Moongazing”) by Zhāng Jiǔ Líng

問君能有幾多愁？恰似一江春水向東流：“How much anguish can I have? As much as a river flowing East in the spring.” From the poem 《春花秋月何時了》 (“When Will the Cycle of Spring Flowers and Autumn Moons End”) by Lǐ Yù, written in grief about the annihilation of his nation.

357

Sophie Wang

358

Design Arts Lexington High School Lexington,

Modular Playing Cards Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop 2021

Vivian Wang

Secondary Grief

My grandmother died two years ago. Like her husband, she died of cancer: slow, painful, endlessly long. It was miserable to watch, her loved ones constantly torn between denying the inevitable and abiding by her last wishes.

I was never that close to her. I’d see her once a year, she’d hold my head against her perfumed chest, chuckle a little at how much I’d grown, and that was all the generational barrier could afford us.

II.

My mother died two years ago too. Not in the sense that her heart stopped beating, but in the sense that she stopped caring whether or not it did.

III.

My mother has always been a natural introvert. Since I was a child, she spent her mornings and afternoons programming computers and her evenings immersed in Korean dramas. Occasionally she’d bake on Sunday mornings for my brother and I: waffles, Dutch baby pancakes if we were lucky; otherwise, she alternated between the office and her bedroom, allowing very little to disrupt her simple routine.

But when she did find the energy to socialize, she was the type of woman whose tender playfulness could only be found in a child’s spirit. When immersed in her favorite things, her entire soul lit up from the inside. Blasting “Time to Say Goodbye” on the car speakers, she would become teenager-like, fangirling at Andrea Bocelli’s voice, prompting my brother and I to learn the lyrics from the backseat just to sing along with her. Explaining the mechanics of the chandelier drop with unparalleled animation, she would drag our family to see Phantom of the Opera , sparking my own decade-long fascination.

Her hair evolved from black to red, from waist-length to a bob, but her illuminating smile was the singular constant throughout every framed picture in our living room. My mother’s incomparably youthful beauty became the object of my friends’ admiration, and for me, it became a point of pride. Eight-year-old me was dead set on becoming her when I grew up.

Most of all, when she started laughing, she wouldn’t be able to stop for at least ten seconds. It was quite beautiful, really, how if she laughed the whole room would laugh with her. I wanted, more than anything, to be able to laugh like that.

IV.

She didn’t speak at her mother’s funeral. I don’t know why. Perhaps there wasn’t enough time.

I remember lots of flowers. Red flowers. Decorative plants lining both sides of the hall, enveloping a sea of black dresses and suits. The average attendee in their seventies, looking as if they had already been to too many of these. The mourners speaking to their neighbors in practiced funeral tones: half-whispers, not too brash, so as not to disturb the deceased. A slideshow projected with rotating pictures of my grandparents and their family; I occasionally felt a twinge of nostalgia when I found myself in a decade-old group picture. Hands tensely folded in their laps, my mother and her four siblings sitting upright in the front row, silently passing plastic packages of tissues to each other.

Various speakers made speeches. Fifteen-year-old me only had eyes for the drearily clothed figure sitting ten rows in front of me who I called my mother. When she turned her head, I could see her aged side profile, her once-inviting eyes now swollen and red, coated with glistening tears, her once-flawless skin scarred with the lines of someone suffocated by the air she breathed.

While others dabbed their eyes at the pictures of my grandmother who now lay motionless in a coffin, I sobbed at the images of my once-vibrant mother, who now sat twenty feet in front of me, a corpse of a woman.

My mother seemed hollow. It was as if she herself had become a wooden coffin, housing her deceased self.

Electing to sit at the kitchen island counter instead of the dining table, she stopped eating dinner with my brother and I. No longer pretending to be interested in my father’s ramblings on the daily news, she simply walked out of conversations in which she found no value. The walls she built around herself imprisoned her former childlike, exuberant disposition.

Once I walked in on my mother crying in the master bathroom closet. She wiped the back of her hand across her face, sniffled, and turned away. Humming to myself, I picked up a stack of towels and walked out, pretending I hadn’t seen anything.

I got into the habit of acting as if I didn’t notice her hollowness, but really, I wallowed in the bottomless depth of my grief, spiraling further down each day. The guilt of mourning the wrong person only made it harder to climb out. I tried to convince myself that I was merely a devoted granddaughter grieving her grandmother’s death, but unfortunately, my powers of persuasion weren’t that strong.

VI.

It’s been two years. I wonder if grief is the type of monster that swallows you whole and never lets you go. Perhaps you merely learn to live inside it.

VII.

Sometimes I have nightmares about my mother dying. I wake up at four in the morning with my pillowcase soaked in tears and two salt rivers etched on my face and lungs that seem to have forgotten their job. It’s a harrowing feeling, the throbbing fear masked with nervous relief. Elbows propped up in front of me, I frantically jot down the contents of my dreams in the middle of the night. The next day, I desperately psychoanalyze them, futile attempts to hold on to some semblance of control.

I decide that I will never survive my mother’s death. I decide that it is easier to keep her at arm’s length. I decide that it is too terrifying to love somebody that much. I push away her oxytocin-infused hugs, fearing their future absence will destroy me. I hold my teenage-shaped resentment near, because even misdirected hatred is better than vulnerability.

Sometimes I see a glimmer of her former self, peeking its head out of the coffin at a particularly comical anecdote. But on most days, she retreats into herself, face blankly lifeless as she goes through her motions. Not only am I unaffected by her emotional unavailability, I am happy, relieved at the sight of it. The fact that she pulls herself away means that I do not need to push her away myself.

I develop a habit of asking myself, if my mother died today, would I be okay?

I finally succeed in the ultimate avoidance of pain.

VIII.

My mother and I were supposed to have the same birthday: March 4th. (She always used to joke that I came out a day earlier than expected just so I could have my own birthday cake.) But besides our zodiac signs and genetic material, we still share an uncomfortable number of similarities.

359

Creative Nonfiction Saratoga High School

Saratoga, CA

I too am a natural introvert, preferring the nonjudgmental company of worn-out books over that of meticulously manipulated small talk. I too drown out my thoughts with music and television. I too resort to isolation in the face of slight emotional discomfort. I too cry silently in bathrooms, but only with the faucet on loud enough. I wonder how many secrets people living in adjacent rooms can hide from each other.

Our similarities used to fill me with pride. Now I only hope there aren’t too many.

When people ask if I ever want children, I never know what to say. To be responsible for more than my own happiness is overwhelming to think about.

360

Wenqian Wang

361

Visual Arts Lovejoy High School Lucas, TX

The Shelf Metal utility shelving unit. oil paint, India ink, color ink on plaster blocks. Objects stuck in plaster. Impression of objects on plaster when drying. 2022

362

Elise Webb Visual Arts Desert Hills High School St. George, UT

Tea Leaf B-Mix clay, tan matte glaze, marble queen pothos plant, soil, handmade wood handle, walnut stain 2022

Margaret Whitten

Shattered Perspectives

363

Visual Arts A & M Consolidated High School College Station, TX Fabric dipped in diluted glue, safety pins, wooden dowels, cassette tapes, wooden frame, photographs 2022

Patiance Wiley

Against Me

I often hide behind metaphors

Often use rose petals and broken glass as a makeshift shield

Ripped pages and brokens pens a sword

Me, on a battleﬁeld where I don’t know what the war is

This voice, all sweet tea and summer air, is the only way I can make sense of the world around me

Make sense of myself

Or maybe

Just convince myself of that which I don’t understand

My conﬁdence is a spinning glass door

My beauty penciled on

My mistakes erasure marks still clear

My personality glowing hammers

My joy is a poorly made mask

Covering poorly concealed exhaustion

I am tired

I am tired of corner store compliments

You do not have the resources to provide

Nor I the resources to afford

I am tired of pumpkin carriage friends

Who pull the ground from under me every time

The clock strikes 12

I am tired

Of having to wrap the world in this language just for it to speak to me

I am tired

And that is not a metaphor

And life is not a metaphor

And I am not a metaphor

Do you know what it’s like

To be surrounded by people and only feel alone

What it’s like

To walk into a room you thought was your home

Full of people

And feel nothing but less than

And if you do

Can you explain it to me in a way I will understand

And If you can’t

And I still hand you my armor

Do you know how to not use it against me?

364

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

Chloe Wong

INT. PRISON CELL - MORNING

CLOSE ON the face of a middle-aged woman (LINDA). SUPER IN WHITE: CHEAT FADE IN:

PULL BACK to reveal the interior of Linda's cell from above. Linda lies on her cot in a tan jumpsuit. She stares at the ceiling, looking slightly dazed.

There is a loud knock at the door.

Mrs. Wentworth? (beat)

You have a visitor.

PRISON GUARD (O.S.)

Linda brightens, just a little. She rolls off the cot.

INT. VISITATION CENTER - MORNING - MINUTES LATER

Linda sits at a table. Standing next to her by a coffee machine is FAITH, her daughter, eighteen. A few other female prisoners chat quietly with their families.

FAITH

I'm sorry things have been so hard for you here, Mom. She gives Linda a cup of coffee, makes one for herself, and then sits down.

LINDA

I guess I thought it'd be different, you know? But my life is just so...oppressive now. I mean, the once- a-day trots around the recreation yard, the tiny windows, the god-awful meals...

FAITH

It's only a few more weeks.

Linda tastes her coffee and puts a hand to her mouth.

LINDA

Ugh. Even this coffee tastes awful.

Faith laughs shortly. A beat.

LINDA

How are you doing, Faithie?

FAITH

I'm OK, I guess.

LINDA (probing)

I heard from your father that you plan to visit Africa for the summer.

FAITH

Just for a month or so. And I'll be going with Erin. We're planning to volunteer at a mutual aid hub. (beat)

I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, but—

LINDA

Where is it exactly? This "mutual aid hub." It sounds like charity.

365

Play or Script Arcadia High School

Arcadia, CA CHEAT

FAITH

I'm going to help build schoolhouses for disadvantaged orphans in Tunisia.

LINDA

"Disadvantaged orphans." So, it is charity.

FAITH

You shouldn't call it that. Being a white savior isn't acceptable to most of society anymore.

Linda can't tell if she's serious.

FAITH

You should be happy. This is for a good cause.

LINDA

I know it's for a good cause. And I'm alright with it, as long as this little excursion doesn't interfere with your studies. Aren't your classes at Whitelake Community College starting up in August, too?

FAITH

I'll have to check the student schedule.

LINDA

Why haven't you already?

FAITH Mom.

Linda frowns for a moment. Collects herself with a smile.

LINDA

I'm sorry, sweetie. We shouldn't be talking like this when you visit me. I mean, everything's been so crazy, hasn't it? When was the last time we had the chance to just...spend some time together?

Linda reaches for her coffee.

LINDA

The last I can remember; it must've been Christmas Eve.

CLOSE ON her hand. As she grabs the cup...

INT. PARLOR - CHRISTMAS EVE - FLASHBACK

MATCH CUT TO:

A woman's manicured hand lifts a wine glass. We FOLLOW the hand and see Linda. She wears Versace and heels.

She is mid-toast in front of the Christmas tree, surrounded by her husband TERRY, her parents ANNE and STEVEN, and LESLIE, her business partner. Linda has her arm around Faith's waist.

LINDA

...and before this night is over, I wanted to thank you all for making this another astounding Christmas Eve. Mom, Dad, you know how amazing it is to see you guys — Leslie, it means the world to me that you're here. We may be business partners in the most fantastic mid-sized company...

Laughter.

LINDA (cont'd)

...but more importantly, I know that we're as good as sisters. So thank you. I'm aware that it's getting late, but I promise you, you're going to want to stick around for this one. Because tonight is a very special evening. Faithie's got some big news to share.

366

Faith unwinds herself from her mother, standing in front of everyone.

LINDA

Go on, go on.

Um. OK.

Faith glances around, then blurts:

I got into Longworth!

For a moment, everyone is stunned.

FAITH

ANNE

Longworth University?!

STEVEN

You got into where?

Longworth, Grandpa!

FAITH

STEVEN

Holy cow, kid! Are you serious? Are you serious?

Everyone gathers around Faith - clapping her on the back, giving her kisses, and so on.

LINDA

Her early decision results came out this morning. I mean, we trusted that she'd make it in for a while now — she's in the National Honor Society, for Christ's sake, President of the Red Cross at Penhart — but still.

Longworth University! And we got you a little something to celebrate, Faithie. Actually, I bought this before we even got the acceptance, but I figured...

Linda retrieves a present from beneath the Christmas tree, hiding the box behind her back. Everyone makes a big show of trying to peek at it. Linda hands over the gift.

LINDA

I think it fits the occasion quite well.

Faith opens the gift, revealing a scarlet sweatshirt with LONGWORTH UNIVERSITY on the front. Anne hurries over as Faith shrugs it on.

ANNE

That is adorable.

Linda proudly produces a ceramic mug. It reads LONGWORTH MOM.

FAITH Ohmigod. Mom. That is so corny.

LINDA

You don't like it? I think it's cute.

Faith rolls her eyes. Linda kisses her daughter's cheek.

LINDA

I can't help how proud I am of you, Faithie. (beat) You deserve this. Honestly.

INT. VISITATION CENTER - MORNING - BACK TO PRESENT DAY

Linda is smiling. Faith is not.

367

LINDA

That was a good night, wasn't it?

FAITH

Right up until that phone call.

INT. PARLOR - CHRISTMAS NIGHT - FLASHBACK

FOCUS ON Faith now, taking a selfie with Terry in front of the tree.

TERRY

Say cheese, Faithie!

Cheese!

FAITH

Linda toasts in her direction before her phone starts to ring. She glances down at the Caller ID: KEN LAWYER. Terry gestures her over.

LINDA

Ah, I'm sorry. I've got to take this call. (mouthing)

It's Ken.

TERRY

What's he doing working on Christmas Eve?

LINDA

I don't know, Ter. Just gimme a sec.

She hurries toward the hallway. She steps outside and takes the call. We don't hear the other end of the conversation.

LINDA

(into phone)

Hello? Hey, Ken. Hey. Look, I'm sorry, but I don't think I can talk about the thing right now. It's Christmas, I just want to spend some time with my family, and—

Linda breaks off. We hear frantic, muffled babbling.

LINDA

Ken, wait, slow down. Slow down.

She glances behind her at her family, still celebrating the good news. FOCUS ON Faith in the background, sipping eggnog and watching her mother.

LINDA

Say that again. Arrested who?

We see Linda from Faith's POINT OF VIEW, pacing back and forth as she talks indistinctly on the phone.

FAITH (SOUND ADVANCE)

I'll never forget that look on your face.

INT. VISITATION CENTER - MORNING - BACK TO PRESENT DAY

FAITH

I mean, it was just like...

Sardonic, she mimes her face falling off and exploding on the table.

LINDA

I didn't know you saw that.

RAPID MONTAGE - EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWED - FLASHBACK

CUT TO:

368

FAITH (V.O.)

You did a good job of pretending nothing was wrong.

- Linda returns to the parlor, faking a smile.

FAITH (V.O.)

But there was no hiding anything after Christmas ended.

- Later, Linda argues with Terry in the study, both of them distraught.

FAITH (V.O.)

It was all out in the open from there.

CUT TO:

- A police car parks outside of the Wentworth residence. Two cops knock on the door. Faith watches from her bedroom window.

- From an interior view of Faith's closet, we see her shoving her LONGWORTH sweater inside. She slams the door, taking us to a long DARKNESS.

FADE IN:

INT. HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - DAY - FLASHBACK

Faith sits at the back of the class on her laptop. MR. SAMWELL moves from desk to desk while the other students work. As she surfs the internet, Faith's heartbeat slowly grows audible: BUM-BUM. BUM-BUM.

Scrolling through the news, Faith zeroes in on one headline:

WALTERS-WENTWORTH CEO ARRESTED IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS BRIBERY SCANDAL. DAUGHTER'S ADMISSION TO LONGWORTH REVOKED.

She clicks on it and scans through the article. We see a MUGSHOT of Linda.

As we track certain phrases onscreen - DOZENS OF FAMILIES ENTANGLED, LAWYER CONNECTED TO FALSE TEST SCORES, TEEN HAD NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, $15,000 - the sound of Faith's heartbeat grows LOUDER, and LOUDER, until-

Someone closes her laptop. Faith flinches and looks up.

MR. SAMWELL (gently) Focus on your work, Faith.

The other students titter and glare. Faith reaches for her notebook.

MINUTES LATER - CONTINUOUS - FLASHBACK

As Faith gets ready to leave, she notices Mr. Samwell beckoning her over.

MR. SAMWELL Faith. Could I speak to you for a moment?

She shuffles toward his desk. He organizes a few test papers as the room empties.

MR. SAMWELL

I'd like to discuss your behavior in class. And I just want to make a few observations about your recent performance. (beat)

Now, I know that things have been difficult with your family lately...but at the same time, I don't believe you should compromise your education because of it.

Faith is impenetrable.

FAITH

I don't know what you mean.

Mr. Samwell pushes something forward: a COMPOSITION ASSESSMENT, covered in red ink.

369

MR. SAMWELL

Do you know what this is? (beat)

It's a composition assessment from two days ago. An analysis on syntax in Going After Cacciato. Now, this isn't yours. Because not only did you miss the in-class test, you also didn't show up for the make-up I provided.

FAITH

I was sick that day.

MR. SAMWELL

Were you also sick the day of the last test? Or what about yesterday, when you were thirty minutes late?

FAITH

At least I came. Half the guys in here never show up to class.

MR. SAMWELL

And I never miss them — because they don't write paragraphs half as insightful as yours.

Faith is surprised.

MR. SAMWELL

You're smart, Faith. Don't think I haven't noticed. You used to be one of my most dedicated, involved students, did you know that? And I find it such a shame that you've been slipping lately.

FAITH

It's not...I haven't...

MR. SAMWELL

I know you've been getting some flack lately. And I know that things have been hard. But a mistake that wasn't yours to begin with doesn't define who you are, as a student or as a person. Just know that I know that you're capable of much more than this. OK?

Faith's eyes water slightly.

OK, Mr. Samwell.

OK.

FAITH

MR. SAMWELL

(slightly awkward)

But I don't want you to worry, so...you can leave now. Go to class. Have a good day, Faith.

He taps his papers against the desk and watches Faith as she goes.

INT. COURTROOM - DAY - FLASHBACK

WIDE ANGLE on the court's PRESIDING JUROR. He reads off a slip of paper.

PRESIDING JUROR (monotonously)

We the Jury find the defendant, Linda Wentworth, guilty of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud, as charged in the indictment.

CUT TO:

RAPID CUTS inside the courtroom: a gavel falling. Handcuffs snapping shut over Linda's wrists.

INT. COURTROOM - DAY - FLASHBACK

Faith and Terry watch from the public seating area as Linda is led away in an orange jumpsuit. Anne and Steven are next to them, crying. Faith turns to her dad.

370

FAITH

Tell me this isn't happening.

Terry hugs her close.

INT. VISITATION CENTER - MORNING - BACK TO PRESENT DAY

FAITH

Did you know that he's in therapy now?

This surprises Linda.

LINDA

Your dad never bought into that kind of nonsense.

FAITH

Well, he does now.

INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT - FLASHBACK

FAITH (V.O.)

2:15 appointments with Dr. Davis, once a week on Thursdays.

In her graduation gown, Faith opens the crisper and reaches for an apple. Terry walks up to her, making her jump.

FAITH

Oh, Jesus, Dad. You scared me.

TERRY

It's only 9:30. I thought you said you were going to hang out with some of your girlfriends after the ceremony.

FAITH

I was. Didn't really feel like it. I'm about 95% sure everyone just plans on getting high to celebrate.

Faith closes the fridge and moves toward the cupboards, tossing off her graduation cap. Terry chuckles.

What?

FAITH

TERRY

Nothing. It's funny, that's all. That on a night like this, you're still such a stickler for the rules.

FAITH (dryly)

Just trying not to cause any more problems.

Faith bites into her apple and rummages through a cabinet. She pauses, turning to Terry as she holds out the LONGWORTH MOM mug.

FAITH

What is this still doing here?

Terry gives Faith an apologetic look. She tosses the mug into the garbage can.

TERRY

Faithie.

FAITH

No, I said I didn't want any of that crap around.

She sits down at the kitchen island with a thump. Terry stands across from her. No one speaks for a long while, until:

TERRY

That mug meant a lot to your mother.

371

TERRY

You're still angry with her, aren't you? (beat)

I've said this before, Faith, and I'll say it again. Your mother just wanted the best for you...

FAITH

Jesus Christ, here we go...

TERRY

...and honestly, how long can you hold onto this grudge? You should talk to her.

FAITH

I don't want to talk to her. What's there to say? She's in jail, she ruined all of our lives, she got you and Grandma and Grandpa ostracized from society.

TERRY

She didn't mean for that to happen.

FAITH

She put you in therapy — she faked my SAT scores...

TERRY

Only because she loves you.

FAITH

That's crap. She thought I was an idiot.

TERRY

She always said you were smarter than both of us.

FAITH Ha.

TERRY

Silence.

She did.

TERRY

Your mom basically flunked her SATs, did you know that?

Faith glances at him. Terry laughs.

TERRY

Well, she wasn't like you, Faith. She didn't have much drive when she was younger. So she got a 1040...and it sunk her pretty hard. She ended up going to a state school, you know. And that affected her for the rest of her life. She'd always get passed over for promotions and raises and opportunities, and it'd always be because there was some Ivy League bastard waiting to swoop in from the wings and take the glory. And she did what she did because she wanted better for you.

FAITH So?

TERRY

So, I know you don't agree with her actions. But the least you can do is try to understand.

Faith stares at her lap, clenching her fists.

372 Faith is silent.

FAITH

Understanding doesn't change anything, Dad. It doesn't justify her cheating for me. I'm sorry. I just don't think not getting into a fancy college is the end of the world. Neither of you guys went to amazing schools...but look at the life we live.

Faith gestures around her at the expensive mansion. Terry frowns.

TERRY

Mom just wanted you to have the best opportunities possible, Faith. The best education. She was terrified you'd freeze up on the SATs, that an off day might cost you admission to a good university—

FAITH

The only reason I'd ever "freeze up" is because I have a mother who liked to scream at me over Bs in math. (beat)

It would've been easier for her to just believe in me.

INT. VISITATION CENTER - MORNING - BACK TO PRESENT DAY

Faith has been staring at the table. Now she looks up.

FAITH

I was lying earlier, Mom.

LINDA

About what?

Faith chews at her nails.

FAITH

I didn't check my class schedule because I'm not enrolling at WCC. And I'll be in North Africa for a year, not just the summer. And that's why I visited today. Dad thought you deserved to know.

A long silence.

LINDA

A year? You're going to Africa...for a year?

FAITH

After everything that's happened...it's the right thing for me to do. I want to build those schoolhouses. I want to do some good. And my mind's made up. So, don't even try to convince me otherwise, or tell me that I need to place more value on higher education. I don't care if you're upset—

LINDA

Well, Faith, this isn't what I envisioned for your future.

Faith is vaguely triumphant.

I know. A beat.

FAITH

LINDA

But still. I suppose this isn't all bad.

Faith is confused. Her mother takes her hand.

LINDA

If this is what you want, we can — we can work with this, honey.

FAITH

There's nothing for us to work with. I'm not going to Whitecrest—

373

LINDA

No one said you have to.

Well, you know I've always been a firm believer in receiving a traditional education. But who says this can't be a little pitstop on the way to success, huh? Now that I think about it, how good would this look on your resume?

FAITH

I'm not doing it for my resume—

LINDA

Oh, no one said you should! I'm just...processing some advantages of the situation, that's all. The opportunities afforded by a little humanitarian work are incredible, you know. Just look at what billionaires can do with some PR and a few strategic donations.

FAITH

Mom...

HOLD ON Faith's face.

LINDA

And don't you remember how well the blood drive at Uncle Frank's firm was received last year? Maybe you could do something like that in Tunisia! And once you're back home, well then, I'm sure Frank would be willing to offer you an internship. Or you could work for Leslie at the family company. And next December you'll have a good platform for reapplying to all the Ivies, Longworth even—

Gradually FADE OUT the audio, leaving only the faint murmur of Linda's voice. There is something like pity and disgust in Faith's eyes. FADE IN the audio.

LINDA

And hey, let's not forget. With me being in jail, you've got the perfect jumping-off point for an essay. I just know there's a narrative in there about overcoming adversity and assumptions—

Abruptly, Faith pushes back her chair and walks away from the table. Linda stares after her in confusion.

LINDA Faithie? Faith, where are you going?

Faith walks out of the visitation center and does not look back.

HOLD ON Linda's puzzled face, before we...

TO BLACK: THE END.

374

(beat)

CUT

Chloe Wong

Ten Million COVID Cases as Ocean Resuscitation

Golden Shovel after Mother Goose’s “Ring around the rosy”

You put diamonds on to go swimming tonight, and what I see is a different ring; an old, soldered plastic one, a second, deliberate mouth, a mask looped around all the roads and rivers that keep your body together. You are golden now, but the breaths tucked between your wheezing teeth were once far less than rosy, and I remember clutching your fingers between those citrus-stained coughs. My pocket has held ten million sickbeds. Yours was white, waterlogged, jammed full with prayers and shark teeth. Doctors sunk you into the ocean and told me to think of better things: the Sierra-glow that I grew up on, a fledgling quail’s birth song, the posy flower you laid inside my redwood bassinet. They said, this woman will soon be ashes— but I answered, this woman’s name is California; starry seaside; she accepts no ashes today. From that, your lungs heard surf and survival. Between echoes, we watched the gray whales beach you back to shore, and between breaths, I milked all the mussels that followed. Now see the ocean two years later, half-in half-out of its falling—salt still sits between your lips, but it cannot drown our grotto hearts down.

375

Poetry Arcadia High School Arcadia, CA

Peijin Wu

376

Photography Harvard-Westlake School Studio City, CA Untitled Digital photography 2022

Jacqueline Xiong

Emma’s Reminiscence

You grew dying hawthorns in a cracked black box behind our apartment. They dotted the dusty box in sad, pale patches. Every time I visited, I would crouch down to brush my fingertip against the sting of their thorns, and you would slap my hand away. Their bones were too brittle, their thorns not quite prickly. But you always said that, and the hawthorns never grew.

The hawthorns were a remnant from our grandmother to our mother. You watered and visited whenever you remembered, but I went to see them every day, watching as they shriveled and wilted, and then perked at the slightest droplet of water. It seemed like a kind of miracle. It had to be, the promise of tiny roots pulsing beneath the dirt, of something beautiful blooming outside these four whitewashed walls.

Within these walls, we had nothing but a clumsy block TV lugged from our four-hundred square-foot flat in Hong Kong to the teeming human archives of San Francisco. It was long motionless, the box long void of moving pictures. You took its empty shell and hammered it into the wall facing the west. Above it, I put three photographs side by side—our grandmother, our father and mother, and at last, the two of us.

All of our faces were too weary and shadowed. Weeks later, when you threw Mama’s photo away with the Tuesday trash, I told you that there was no point, because we all looked too much alike.

In the ghostly dusk light, you were fixing the hole in the wall that the missing portrait previously filled, speaking to me on the side, your words low and quick. “You look like strangers you’ll never meet. Mama is just a stranger.”

“But she’s Mama.” The words soured in my mouth like a treasure disintegrating into ash. “We’re supposed to love her.”

“Says who?”

“Says Baba.”

“Baba is a coward who watched as his wife went to a big city with a rich boyfriend.” Your fingers strained and buzzed like clockwork, and I didn’t know whether you were bitter or glad. “She’s not our Ma if she gives us nothing. Do you miss her?”

“I love Baba. And I love you.”

You hummed, low enough that maybe you were listening. “I sure hope you do.” Then, quieter, “I’d love her more if she was a stranger.”

One month in, we are running low on money and promises. You come home late at midnight smelling of barren winter chill and manufactured computers, and I try to come home early in the afternoon to do our refrigerator-taped list of chores. When late November frost gathers on our windows, I blow on my hands to keep them warm and you slip them into your pockets, warding off the cold.

Everyone talks about coming to a new place to start a new life, but somehow, San Francisco doesn’t feel like a new life at all— the same shadows dog the streetlights, the same ice dampens the air. Before he died, Baba said that we would stay together no matter what, the older and the younger. Like how your Ma and I didn’t, he might have wanted to say.

But all he ended up giving us was an empty promise, something out of a fairytale about how America is a land of dreams.

When you were younger, you were still in school like me, and you still dreamed and sang and read. Do you remember? There’s a paperback novel packed within the compartments of your old suitcase, but the pages are torn and the cover so tattered I can barely make out Jane Austen’s name and its title: Emma That might have been a dream, too.

In America, people like us can work overtime or leave everything behind, but it’s always hard in San Francisco, where someone might be young and promising if they’re a nineteenyear-old graduate from Stanford or UCLA, but when they’re a nineteen-year-old Chinese college dropout, they’re just stupid and slow. You say that in Beijing, in the old days and nowadays, they go by 996— numbers that for once matter, even when not put beside a dollar sign. Numbers that don’t seem to determine your worth, but do anyways.

Two months in, it’s almost Christmas. You bring home another TV when December breaks through a white fog, and you set this one on a table facing the westward window. It’s a Samsung, thin and smooth and graceful, and I wonder whether you notice the way Grandmother’s face sits above it like a silent phantom.

I am watching moving pictures on the new TV when you come through the door, your gaze falling upon me like our mother’s, like our grandmother’s.

On the screen, it is already Christmas. Lights dance across the protagonist’s face like a blessing—strings wilt and die. At last you sigh, your breath leaving in a rush. “You’re just a child, Anna.” Snow has fallen, covering the narrow screen. My body feels small and foreign, sinking into the couch covering you stitched with Grandmother’s old needles. Children are people who don’t have to be heroes. Far away, you look different, maybe like a hero, maybe like a watery mirror. You don’t look like Emma without Ma. Instead, your lips are always moving in a promise, an oath breaking the silent monotony we come home to every day—providing and accepting, accepting and providing, giving and taking. ***

In San Francisco, everyone lives off trade except the people that don’t know how to. You say that those people trade, but they never bargain—they should be like you, who knows how to trade hours for objects, giving for taking, sacrifice for profit. It has to mean something , you tell me when you come home at the end of the day, calculating the value of what we have and what we can afford to sell. It has to mean something, because we’re doing this for a reason. You tell me lots of things, things no one ever got to tell you.

I don’t remember half my childhood anymore, but one thing’s been etched so many times into my mind that I don’t know what’s fiction and what’s memory. You tell me that Mama left with a rich boyfriend and a newborn son. She left feeling like a bird, you know, freed from this claustrophobic Hong Kong life. Is that true? If it’s true, then why did we leave too, even when we loved the city?

Even though you don’t speak of it, I think I know the answer. Sometimes we stay not out of need but out of necessity. Later, I think it’s a special kind of cruelty, because Ma’s love was the only thing you could’ve ever relied on. So after Mama and Baba left, we left too.

At school, my English is too slow to keep up. I speak with syllables stifled like a child trying to make sound, tracing words I don’t know and stumbling over passages in Anna Karenina. In my family, I have always been the youngest, the slowest, the weakest. My shadow drags longer and thinner on the snow-coated pavement when I walk home, slowly trudging through grey. There are always more dishes to wash, more floors to clean, and fewer paper bills to pay for it all. You come home later

377

Short Story Glenda Dawson High School Pearland, TX

***

and later as the days grow shorter and darker. My hands become cracked and cold as the sun sinks into its grave, and I think of the buried hawthorns, of ticking mechanisms wearing down, of a string of numbers and 996

One time, you don’t come home at the end of the day. Instead, you come through the door as the new day dawns, bringing a crack of light through the shivering walls.

I spend many hours waiting and more hours waiting to ask you what happened. But it’s a story that speaks for itself; your steps small and quiet upon newly birthed light, white hospital shirt washed big and colorless around your shoulders. You’re a superhero torn down at last, but you don’t want to say it out loud. When you sink down into our shared bed, I wonder whether you know how you feel like an apparition, a phantom of nineteen years. Later, after you shut the door to the bathroom, I creep in to see remnants of chalk dusted over the counter, the pill bottles carefully tucked away. Traces of your vulnerability.

I have only fourteen years stored in this frame, but it’s easy to lose the years as they stack up. You wish at ten to be eleven, eleven to be twelve, twelve to be thirteen. Baba says that adding years is less like adding days and more like adding memories, but I don’t want days or memories—I want something life-changing that comes with growing up, years that add up to answers.

In a few years, I will be like you. You who seem too strong to crumble, so different from someone like me.

If I had been older, I might have gone to the hospital before you came home alone. Someone might have greeted me in the waiting room, someone tall and in their mid-forties, someone who can be someone else’s mother for only one moment. A nurse might have called my name. People would look at you and see our similarities, and it would be life-saving, because when I put my entire life into a number on a page, it would be more than a small, insignificant fourteen.

Then the overly-bright light would catch some unprepared fault of mine—a question I have no answer to, years that would slip off me like layers of thorns stripped away. My sister collapsed at work because she was too tired. Because she was overworking. Because we have no parents, and she is nineteen, and she only has me.

You come home alone because there is nowhere left to go but here; here, to this small and broken place we call home, a home we patch together with scraps of dead things. I know you take your pills when I’m not looking and you know I store posters where you’re not looking, posters you might have once looked up like Now Hiring and Work Under 18 . We have no insurance or money. So we fill up the empty space with whatever we can, always giving ourselves gifts.

On the roads, night has set, submerging San Francisco in a mesh of neon lighting. You and I are side by side, our shoulders swaying and bumping together. A car screeches past, eager to go home at the end of the day. The green light switches to red, reflecting off the car’s shiny surface and casting your face in a red glow.

This late at night, the promises bathing San Francisco have worn off, painting it as just another restless city. It’s almost Christmas.

I wonder if in that pause between childhood and adulthood, we lose that innocence which binds our first five, ten years—or whether that is just the prolonged, inevitable process of slowly losing things that mean less and less to us.

Somewhere in the dark, your hand, calloused and skinny, finds mine. Hey, Anna. Happy New Year.

On the TV, I watch a dozen women tell an interviewer what they’d name their newborn child. The American show is old, maybe twenty years back. The women still wore wide-legged jeans and metallic tops. The dark-haired woman who smiles the brightest has a brand-new ring on her finger, one she shows off like a trophy upon her round belly.

A few feet away, I trace our likeliness with my eyes. The women on the wall tell me that we share the same weighted lines, the same tired faces.

You look like strangers you’ll never meet. My grandmother’s face looks down from her photograph, impassive and kind— it’s much less terrible to love a stranger.

You come into the room. Your steps are loud now, floorshattering, like you think you’ll become a specter if you don’t leave something behind. You lean against the doorframe, your gaze hazy and unfurling in the late afternoon dust.

“Hey, Anna.”

I think of the hawthorns in the back of the apartment, of some suddenly awakened memory. “You’re home early today.”

“I don’t have a job anymore.”

For a moment all I can hear are the women’s voices on the TV, happy and monotonous—and the silence comes too soon. I click off the TV and turn slowly, so as not to disrupt anything. You are swaying on your feet, absent and far away.

“It’s okay.” And then, because it is not, “It’s not your fault.”

You only shake your head. “Someone more competent took the job. I’m not good enough. That’s all there is to be said.” Your voice is humorless, brittle as dry leaves buried beneath unmelted snow. “Without income, no one pays the rent and the bills. San Francisco has no space for people like us. We either leave or die.”

Leave? It has always been a word associated with Mama, to leave all of this behind. To give— to surrender. I whisper, “But people leave because they want to. We can still find a way.”

“No, Anna.” Your lips stretch into a smile. For once you are telling me something I already know. “Always, people leave because they have no other choice.”

Just when I think you will leave, you pause by the door. Look back.

“Do you miss Mama?”

By now, I’ve learned the right answer. The words come like nothing. “Not anymore.”

Your expression doesn’t waver. For once I hate it, the infallible endurance of it. “If something happens to me, you need to go find her. Do you hear me?” You don’t wait for my reply, only face me so your bony shoulders hang suspended in the wide doorway. “If something happens, you go find her. If you go to her, she’ll let you stay. And no matter what, don’t look back.”

Fireworks slip through two square windows scratched raw; somewhere buried in that dark, the muted roar of a motor churns and twists, sounding like a million moving pictures collapsing into one. Dreams and promises, you might say. Dreams and promises, hovering over our heads with a single chime of the midnight clock, knitting us so tightly together that we can’t escape even if we wanted.

The next week, early one morning, you pack our bare necessities into two suitcases and usher us onto a bus. Your movements are wordless, your gaze withdrawn. Around us, San Francisco rushes past, timed to numbers we no longer follow. Behind us, the apartment is empty and hollow. The clumsy and old things we used to fill it up are now just a shadow through the window; they’re like ghostly markers, marking us as one of the desperate, poor people who dared to dream of living here.

The hawthorns are already dead, beaten deep into the rain-drenched soil. Before we leave, I pluck a tiny bud and slide it beneath my shirt.

On the bus, I lean my head against your shoulder. I tighten your fingers around mine the way you used to tighten mine around yours, barricading us from the chill.

378

***

The bus jostles on, driving us away. The rain drizzles down. Somewhere in the dust-gray Hong Kong alleys, there is an old, old song— 996

When the bus stops, you step out to buy lunch and promise to find me later. When I come out of the washing room, you’re gone. I look in and out of the crowd, look in desolate places where missing sisters might be. Look on the empty bus and at the slow bus stations, look in the far and wet horizon. Even after the bus splutters alive and disappears into the distance, I keep looking. It is like someone has pulled me apart and sunken my center of balance into the ground.

Minutes pass and then hours. People come and go. On the TV in the nearest convenience store, I look for notices of missing sisters and unconscious girls, but by the time the TV clicks off, there are no alerts of people who have left. They simply trickle away, like inconsequential currents flowing into a deep, bottomless body of water.

You left of your own free will, like how Mama left. Desperate to escape from this sluggish, quicksand place, where people live off promises and find other ways to live when no promises are left.

Once, when I was very young, my mother told me a story. My mother said she knew she was prepared for burial the moment she was born. Much sacrifice had built an altar for her birth; her father had tried to exchange her for another boy, but my grandmother packed up her bags and went to America with my mother. My grandmother left because of generations that came before her. She left because if she didn’t, she would have to sacrifice more than just a husband.

“Likeliness is how women survive,” my mother told me once, when the night was low and my grandmother was far away. “We survive through our blood in times when it’s easy to die, but it also generates much pain. Because we don’t have a choice but to save ourselves.”

Overhead, the rain has stopped. The single hawthorn curls into itself in my blouse, fragile like a newborn despite living and dying so many times, and I think of your death. Think of giving up on you, like how our grandfather almost gave up on my mother, how our mother gave up on us, how you gave up on me.

We are all so easily killed, suffocated by one thing or another. The older sister and the younger. One reminiscence from another; generation upon generation, death upon death. White pill bottles stacked into small cities in our bathroom. Paperbacks abandoned in forgotten places. Our home in Hong Kong, our new apartment in San Francisco, the old block TV and the new. You have always protected me. Once, I swore to protect you.

Once, I stood still in bustling Hong Kong, waiting for my mother to take me home.

Standing alone, I watch as you approach from the far side of the street, blurry now in the misty aftermath of rain. You had looked back. Ragged and weary, it is as if no time has passed at all.

Hong Kong is no longer the present. Soon, you will take my hand, and together, we will go home.

Ever since then, we are bitter. My mother remained my grandmother’s greatest sorrow, and you and I hers.

At home, we kept a black box containing many moving pictures. The empty shell on the wall had long been taken off, and now we had other pastimes. You read paperback novels while I planted baby blossoms behind our house, hearing their thin, vibrant pulses through the dirt.

Years later, we will take more photographs and hang them up like oaths. The hawthorns in the backyard will come alive at last, living off themselves and always hungering for more. And in our new home, we will remember nothing of the years that came before—the years left only of brittle, frozen bone.

379

***

Madison Xu

For My Father Who Lives Alone

Baba turns fifty alone/ in the 6x8 box/ of our iPad 3/ September on our breaths/ seven years coming now/ funny how memory/ has a way of nebulizing/ the hum of radio static/ the way you learned English by listening to The Beatles/ Hey Jude on repeat/ now white noise/ at age ten /we were two continents/ sundered by ocean/ arbitrary geography/ at age ten/ I held dawn like a permission/ tasted it skin by skin/ a mouthful of you to be swallowed/ back then when you visited/ I could still take a tweezer to your hair/ the kind of ebony/ the way mine is now/ back then/ there were daily Facetime calls/ updates on my growth spurt/ about your colleagues/ those assholes/ new Mandarin proverbs/ xiang yi wei ming/ mutual dependence for life/ our shared vocabulary/ an inheritance guaranteed/ by blood, I didn’t know/ how easy a mother tongue erodes/ first along the meridians/ stumbling over directions/ left mistaken for right/ now there is a stranger in my mouth/ makes meat of my tongue/ a sluggish thing/ funny how the memory requires sifting/ through an ocean of derelict syntax/ the bones of our vocabulary/ birthday wishes strung together/ white noise nebulizing into radio static/ silence on both ends of the line/ turns habit/ September on our breaths like mourning.

They say all the cell’s in the body/ replace themselves every seven years/ which is to say every seven years/ we are a new person/ at night I language myself/ seven years back/ Baba/ ni hai ji de ba?/ do you still remember?/ once there was a girl/ who learned Mandarin/ small palms held to your lips as an offering/ I say: sorry/ I cannot squeeze a childhood into a 6 x 8 box/ I can say only permissions/ now taste like rusted pennies/ inhabiting the cavity in my mouth/ where you were once buried/ alive.

380

Poetry Horace Mann School Bronx, NY

Grace Yan

The Reunion

Evening in Sausalito, the Bay Area: The sunset is blocked by a cloudy sky, and the house is surrounded by overgrown cucumber plants. MIA is in the kitchen, making cupcakes and humming to herself. A battered radio plays on the kitchen counter.

Radio Broadcaster: (slowly fading in) Now for the daily essential items update: All supermarkets in the Bay Area have run out of napkins and kitchen towels. Authorities estimate that new supplies will take three to four days to arrive.

As the radio continues to play, Mia freezes in the middle of wiping down the wet countertop. She stares at the radio, then at the paper towel in her hand, and carefully wrings the towel dry, hanging it on the rack.

Radio Broadcaster: Local fresh fruit has also run out, and locals are resorting to freeze-dried, packaged fruits. The new government has unveiled plans to build new factories for drying and processing fruits to meet the growing demands brought on by natural disasters…

CHRISTOPHER knocks on the door. He is holding several pieces of paper and a thin, pocketsized paper package.

Mia: Who is it?

Christopher: Hello? This is Lieutenant Christopher Sanders from the United States Department of Defense. I’m looking for someone by the name of Mia Wang.

Mia: Oh! Oh! Christopher!

Mia turns the radio off and rushes out of the kitchen. She checks through the eyehole then flings the door open, pulling Christopher into a tight embrace. Christopher tries to reciprocate, but struggles because his arms are full.

Mia: (letting go) Christopher! You’re here! / It’s been so long!

Christopher: Yeah, I know, right? / It’s really been a while.

Mia: Yeah! Yeah! Really! It’s been a really long… (trying to think of a word) time.

Christopher: Right, uh you see…

Mia: Well, come on in!

Mia rushes back into the house, leaving the door ajar.

Mia: Sorry, it’s quite messy. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I lost my Roomba 12, and I just haven’t been able to get it replaced yet. It’s just been hectic, I’m all over the place.

She turns around and sees Christopher still hovering at the doorway.

Mia: What are you doing? Come in!

Christopher: Au— Mia? Ms. Wang? I actually / have something to… (trailing off)

Mia: I have some cookies that I made from last night! Come in, come in!

Christopher: Wait, I… oh alright, fine.

Closing the door behind him, Christopher takes his shoes off and places them neatly on the shoe shelf.

Mia: Have a seat on the couch, Christopher! I’ll be right with you!

Christopher doesn’t sit, and instead fidgets with the papers and the package in his hands.

Christopher: Could I, maybe, possibly help you with anything?

381

Play or Script

Sage Hill School Newport Coast, CA

Mia: Oh no, stay right where you are! I’ll take care of everything.

Christopher: No, no, I insist! How about uh, let’s both sit down maybe? A lot to catch up on… (fidgeting more with the items in his hands) Aunty Mia! Please don’t bother with the cookies, I just ate dinner! It’s really okay—

Mia: Don’t tell me what to do in my house, Christopher, you will eat these cookies, like it or not.

Christopher: Right. Boss of the house.

Christopher folds up the papers and places them, along with the small package, into the inside pocket of his uniform. Stealing glances over at Mia still in the kitchen, he begins to rock back and forth on his feet. The rocking and glancing become increasingly exaggerated over time. Mia finally hurries in with a plate half full of cookies and two glasses of milk. Christopher instantly stills himself.

Christopher: Wow! Oh nice, these cookies… they look delicious! You made them yourself?

Mia: Yes! Yes! They aren’t as fresh as they were last night, but they’re still good. Maple syrup cookies: traditional, Quebec, pecan drop style.

Christopher: Oh! Nice, nice…

Mia: Go on, take one! There’s plenty and I can’t eat them all by myself.

Christopher: (as if snapping out of a daze) Right. I’ll just take… one…

Christopher takes a cookie from the plate but doesn’t seem to register the fact that he has something edible in his hands. He stares at it blankly.

Mia: Well? Try it!

Christopher: Mm! It’s (between bites) very good!

Mia: Come, sit! And have some more!

Mia whisks the plate of cookies past Christopher and sets it on the coffee table. Christopher turns to face Mia instead, making no move toward the couch. He starts to fidget again.

Christopher: So, Aunty Mia. The war ended.

Mia: Yes, I don’t live under a rock, Christopher. I heard a couple months ago.

Christopher: Only a couple months? The war ended… four months ago.

Mia: Well, they only restored the internet in this area two months ago.

Christopher: Fair. Alright then. Well, you see…

Mia: Yes?

Christopher: So, basically the new government— I mean, the Secretary of the Army, the new one, he wanted to reconnect soldiers with their families, and provide support where it’s due and—

Mia: Oh! So, the government let you go? No wonder you could visit!

Christopher: No, not really. I mean, sort of? I, well, it’s more about…

Mia: (smiling broadly at him) Yes?

Christopher: It’s about, well I, uh, it’s… me.

Mia: …You? What about you?

Christopher: Me, my, uh, my travels. And stories.

Mia: Your stories! Come tell me about them! I’m sure you have a lot.

Mia pats the couch cushion beside her.

382

Christopher: There’s something else too… yeah sure, we can start with my stories.

Christopher sits down next to Mia. He taps on his knee and makes a face.

Christopher: Ah, where should I begin?

Mia: What, are you going blank?

Christopher: Yeah. There’s just… so much to tell. It’s kind of overwhelming.

Mia: I’d still love to hear them. I’m free all day! You can stay for the night too, if you’d like. Luke’s old room is nice and clean.

Christopher: (swallows) Right… Luke.

Christopher shifts in his seat. His eyes dart around wildly, searching for something to talk about.

Christopher: Ah, are you making a cake?

Christopher points to the kitchen counter, which is coated with flour, eggshells, and spilled splotches of milk.

Mia: Yep, I was making cupcakes before you got here. Tomorrow is October 1st. Right, I gotta finish up or else the batter is gonna to sit too long.

Mia hurries toward the kitchen counter.

Christopher: I’m sorry, Aunty Mia, I don’t really remember. Is October 1st your birthday or…?

Mia: Oh, no! My birthday is in the spring. October 1st is China’s birthday. Back in my hometown, they would throw lush feasts for a week! A few cupcakes were the least I could do. (muttering) I really need to finish these up.

Christopher: Ah, do you need some help? Here.

Christopher gets up from the couch and follows Mia to the kitchen.

Mia: Sure! That would be nice, thank you!

Christopher: Oh right! Remember how the first time I met Luke was at a Church activity?

Mia nods. She checks her finished batter one last time and turns around to take a cupcake pan out of the kitchen cabinets.

Christopher: Well, I asked him if he believed in Jesus. He said no. Instead, he told me he was atheist, his mother worships Chairman Mao, and his grandpa is a Buddhist.

Mia bursts out laughing in the middle of attempting to open a package of cupcake liners.

Mia: Hoh! That silly child! I worship Chairman Mao? What a crazy notion. Maybe my grandparents did, but certainly not me.

She shakes her head and continues to wrestle with the packaging. Christopher leans closer.

Christopher: Oh, allow me. So, what do you believe in then?

Christopher successfully opens the package of cupcake liners, and hands her a stack. Mia takes it and begins fitting the cupcake liners in the holes of the cupcake pan.

Mia: I believe humans make their own decisions, whether or not they do so in the name of some religious figure is inconsequential. Even if I do like Chairman Mao, I wouldn’t be ludicrous enough to build a shrine to him, much less go to war against those who disagree with me.

Christopher: I guess that makes sense, if that’s the way you see it.

Both fall silent for a few seconds.

Mia: Oh, can you help me pour the batter in while I—

383

Christopher: Oh yeah, of course!

Mia: Okay, okay. Great.

Christopher eagerly steps forward and begins pouring the batter from the bowl into the individual cupcake liners. Mia turns around and checks that the oven had preheated to the right temperature. It’s good. She shuts— almost slams— the oven door, startling Christopher.

Mia: (sighing) It’s this… this war. This damned war. This pointless, religious war. It should never have been fought in the first place. Neither side proved their point, and look where we are now! Rebuilding the country from scratch.

Christopher cocks his head and opens his mouth slightly, as if he plans to object. Mia notices and rolls her eyes.

Mia: Oh, I know what you’re gonna say, Christopher.

She grabs a dish cloth from the sink and begins wiping down the counter.

Mia: Luke used to talk all the time about his (sarcastic) quote, great, revolutionary ideals. So, I’ll spare you the need to lecture me about that.

Christopher stiffens at the mention of Luke.

Christopher: If you’re so against the war, why did you let him fight in the first place?

Mia: (shrugs) Hmph. I didn’t. That brat enlisted without telling me. By the time I found out several months later, he was all the way over in the midwest already. Oklahoma, I think. (shaking head) I haven’t heard from him in… wow. It’s been three years.

Christopher: I see. Here, the cupcakes are all good to go.

Mia: Oh, oh, good. Thanks.

Mia takes the cupcake pan and whisks it into the oven. Christopher washes his hands free of batter and flour and dries them on a kitchen towel.

Mia: And now we simply wait, hold on, you didn’t know what happened with Luke? I thought you two kept in touch?

Christopher: (shaking head) Nope. He fought for the Blues.

Mia: And? You two couldn’t have just…?

She suddenly realizes, stops in the middle of her action, and stares at Christopher.

Mia: You fought on the red side?

Christopher: Yeah.

Mia: (Visibly upset) Wait, what? So, none of you— You two haven’t been in contact since the war began?

Christopher: Well, we were already on kind of bad terms before the war due to our political stances and since I joined the Reds a couple years before him… I’d say it’s been six years.

Mia: Then, you— you wouldn’t know his situation then, would you?

Christopher’s hand automatically and unconsciously drifts over to his pocket, where the folded papers lie. Mia keeps her eyes fixed on his face and doesn’t notice.

Christopher: (hesitant) No, I don’t. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing, nor how he’s been.

Mia: …I see.

Another awkward silence stretches between them until Christopher spots the radio.

Christopher: Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask… what’s that?

Mia: The radio?

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Christopher: That’s a radio?

Mia: Yeah, I dug it out of my garage a couple years ago. Haven’t you seen a radio before?

Christopher: I have, but— That doesn’t look— I’m pretty sure radios don’t—

Mia: It’s a radio.

Christopher: But—

Mia: It’s a radio, Christopher, from the late 1970s.

Christopher: The 1970s? It’s been, like… seven decades! How does that thing still work?

Mia: Come on, you’re in the army. You guys still communicate with radio waves. The fundamental medium hasn’t changed, so why wouldn’t an old radio work?

Christopher: But it’s decades old. I guess your family just kept it in pristine condition. Wow, did radios really look like this?

Mia: Honestly, it outdates me too. It belonged to my uncle.

Christopher nods absent-mindedly, examining the radio. He toggles a switch and accidentally turns the radio on.

Radio Announcer: (full volume, fast-paced) …Forty-three percent of the area–

Christopher jumps back with a start. Mia covers her ears and grimaces. She attempts to dial down the volume, but it fluctuates as she fumbles with the machine.

Radio Announcer: –devastated from the California Great Floods just a few months prior. Combined with the lack of ground vegetation and trees to hold the earth in place, the soil on many mountainsides loosened in light of recent rains, resulting in seven major landslides yest—

Mia succeeds, and the sound abruptly cuts off.

Christopher: Eh? Why’d you turn it off?

Mia: You want it on?

Christopher: Yeah.

Mia: Why?

Mia turns it on before he can respond.

Radio Announcer: (fading back in) fire department chief, James Tuckerman, says he isn’t hopeful. “There’s just been too much debris. Not just the rock, but the trees. They’ll come sliding down at eighty miles an hour, and if you were near the top, you would’ve gotten carried away and fallen down the canyons. Instant death.”

Mia reaches forward and turns off the radio.

Mia: That’s enough. (sigh) It ruined the mood.

Mia walks away from the radio— and the kitchen. She goes back into the living room and settles down on the couch. Christopher quickly follows.

Christopher: I mean, it wasn’t that bad.

Mia: (raising an eyebrow) Wasn’t that bad?

Christopher: —No, no, not as in the content. It’s bad, what’s going on over there. Real bad. All those people dying. It’s just, I didn’t know what was going on here in California. I’ve been very busy. Very busy. Dealing with… army things. Right. So, I didn’t know. But now I know? I like the feeling that I know! Like… gosh how do I explain—

Mia: No, it’s alright, I get it. Knowing what’s going on in the world, it makes you feel more connected?

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Christopher: (heavy tone) Sure. Connected. Listening to the news reminded me of eating breakfast at your house. You always had the TV on. The broadcaster’s voice just made me nostalgic, I guess.

Mia: (matter-of-factly) Yeah, the good old days. Fun times. The world’s really gone to hell now.

Christopher: I thought it was always this hellish?

Mia: No? Of course not!

Christopher: Really? Besides the war, there hasn’t been much of a change with everything else, I don’t think. You’ve still got flooding, wildfires, natural disasters, lack of fresh fruit— oh, oh! Aunty Mia! I was gonna tell you my stories, right? Well here’s one: back in the army, I got to eat a mango. A fresh mango! I hadn’t touched one of those in years! We got it from one of the refrigerators of a military base that we took over. It was the general’s, but we got it. My unit ate all seven and didn’t tell anyone else.

Mia looks down at her hands.

Christopher: Aunty Mia?

Mia: Oh no, it’s nothing. I just… I didn’t realize how different the world was for you growing up. I was born during a time when fruit and foods all around the globe could be found within a single grocery store, just sixty square feet. Mangoes were common back then. The sequoia forests still existed too. They were huge, you know? They averaged between 250 to 300 feet tall.

Christopher: 250 to 300…?

Mia: It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around, huh?

Christopher: Yeah, it is.

Mia: I’ve seen those trees myself, and I still couldn’t comprehend it. How giant they are. It’s surreal.

Christopher: I can imagine.

Mia: Hah! No, you can’t. The tallest skyscrapers of New York can’t even compare to the sheer majesty of a sequoia. And the forest was full of these trees! Kings! Imagine… imagine the influential figures from every single era from every single place— Alexander, Caesar, Octavius, Genghis Khan, Mansa Musa, Thutmose III, Ashoka, King Louis XIV, Napoleon—

Mia gestures maniacally at the heavens. Christopher stares at her, growing more astounded with each name drop, many of which he’s forgotten.

Mia: Well, maybe not Napoleon, but imagine them meeting in one giant room! That sort of… intensity, I suppose. It overwhelms you.

Christopher: I wish I could’ve seen them.

Mia: I wish you could’ve too. But they’re all gone now. The forests in southern California are burnt to crisp, and up here, they’re flooded, and burned. Your generation, you… you and Luke must’ve thought this world was on the brink of apocalypse your entire life, huh?

Christopher: I don’t think we’ve approached the apocalypse just yet. Sure, it’s bad right now, but it’s still manageable. Most of humanity still lives in a much more convenient and comfortable environment than the pre-industrial world.

Mia: (sighs) I guess I was just born at the peak of comfort then.

Christopher: Maybe. I never really thought of how you were brought up. I suppose everything’s really weird for you too, huh? Watching the world come crashing down. Really makes everything seem so delicate.

Mia: Delicate, hmm that’s the right word. Oh yeah! You saw the truck outside, right? It looks so weird! Like—

Mia snaps her fingers, trying to remember the word.

Christopher: Aluminum foil?

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Mia: Yes! Precisely. It looks like aluminum foil, all crumpled up like that.

Christopher: Delicate, I know. You’d be surprised how delicate tanks are too. I’m surprised your house held up so well.

Mia: Eh, not really. It was pretty bad. The power is fine for now. They fully restored the lines just about a month ago. Water’s a different story though. We still don’t have running water since half of the underground pipes got busted.

Christopher: Ouch.

Mia: I know, right? It’s annoying. You’ve got all this water gushing down the streets, and you can’t even drink it!

Christopher: That’s pretty ironic.

Mia: Mhm. Ironic and troublesome. The small room in the back of the house fell apart the second time, and we had to fix it up.

Christopher: What? “Fell apart” as in, the walls came down?

Mia: Well, just one wall. But yeah, it fell.

Christopher: And “fix it up” as in rebuild?

Mia: Yeah?

Christopher: You didn’t hire any contractors?

Mia: Nope! No one around anyway. Surprised?

Christopher: Wow. (pause) Yeah, wow that’s—

Mia: Impressive?

Christopher: Very impressive.

Mia: The government air dropped supplies in the area, and we got all the materials for free, which is pretty nice. It took us two months.

Christopher jerks up.

Christopher: Wait, did you just say… “us?”

Mia: Yes? I remarried.

The two look at each other. Mia grows more and more mortified.

Mia: Did I never tell you? Oh! (Slapping her forehead) That’s right, I never told you! I married Ben four years ago, about a year after you enlisted. Wow, it’s really been so long—

Christopher: No, no, wait. Hold on, I… Well, first of all, congratulations! But— I thought… sorry that was just—

Mia: A huge bombshell?

Christopher grimaces slightly at the term “bombshell.”

Christopher: Yeah, huge… I mean, I’m very happy for you! I thought you might’ve been lonely all this time, but it seems like you’ve got someone.

Mia: (laughing) You still look shell-shocked.

Christopher grimaces again at the term “shell-shocked.”

Christopher: No, it’s just… I thought when I was younger… Luke, he said that you weren’t ever remarrying. So, I guess, this is / a bit of a… shock.

Mia: He told you that? I never said that though. When did this happen?

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Christopher: (Shrugging) We were both eight or nine, I think, somewhere around that age.

Mia: How do you even remember that?

Christopher: I guess it stuck with me. Anyway, tell me more about Ben! How’d you guys meet?

Mia: Right. Ben’s great. He’s… the most imperfect, perfect husband. Do you know what I mean?

Christopher: No, not really.

Mia: So, you see, he has his faults, but that’s what makes him… perfect for me? I dunno. You’ll understand when you meet him someday. Here let me find / you our wedding photos.

Mia begins to dig through her shelves. Christopher sits up straighter, looking alarmed.

Christopher: Is he… Aunty Mia, is your husband not coming home today?

Mia: Uhh, no he isn’t. You sound pretty disappointed.

Christopher: No, no, no, I was just thinking maybe… yeah, a bit disappointed, I guess. It would’ve been nice to meet him. Do you know whether or not he’ll come home anytime soon?

Mia: (absent-mindedly) Nope, he’s in Washington. He works in the government.

Christopher: Eh? The government?

Mia: The new one, yes. Ah, there’s / too many of Luke’s paintings here…

Christopher: Wha— I, what’s his position?

Mia: Yeah.

Christopher: Uh, Aunty Mia? That wasn’t a yes or no ques—

Mia: (snapping back) Oh! Oh! Right, sorry. Ben’s the, uh… Ah, found it!

Mia scoops an old photo album out of a drawer and opens it, flipping through the pages as she walks back to Christopher.

Mia: He’s the personal assistant to the new Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, so he can’t really fly back and forth across the country so easily. Not now, especially, with the war ending. I haven’t seen him in several months.

Christopher: (masking his disappointment) Wow! Assistant to the new Secretary of… Wait, wait!

Christopher stands up and looks at Mia with a gaping mouth. Mia looks up, startled.

Christopher: What? Assistant to the— Is your husband Benja… Benjamin Darrel?

Mia: You know Ben?

Christopher: (enthusiastically) I met him! Just a few days ago before I came here! At a meeting!

Mia: (sensing something off) You were… at a meeting with him? But I thought you were on vacation break? Isn’t that what you said earlier?

Christopher: No, no. I never said that. You misunderstood. I actually meant… Well anyway, I met him. He’s cool.

Mia: Alright. Well, that’s great. But, why were you meeting? Benjamin said he’s been busy with post-war things for the last several months such as tallying casualties, contacting families, and— you said you met him at a meeting?

Christopher: (nodding) Right. I… Aunty Mia, why don’t you…

Christopher falters. Mia watches him, unmoving.

Christopher: Why— Why don’t you sit down and…

Mia keeps staring at him, stone-still. Then, her arms drop to her sides. She clutches the photo

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album tightly with one hand and forms a tight fist with her other.

Mia: You said you were on break? You came to visit.

Christopher: I didn’t!

Mia: Then you lied to me.

Christopher: Aunty Mia you misunderstood. I just… I just said the Secretary of Defense wanted… he, I just—

Mia: So out with it! Why are you really here, Christopher, if not on break?

Christopher: I had some business in the area…

Mia: About?

Christopher takes a deep breath. He reaches into his uniform pocket and takes out the papers.

Christopher: I got a new job.

Mia: Should I congratulate you?

Christopher: —As a death notification officer.

Mia registers what she just heard.

Mia: A death notification… So… So, you’re here on business. My house. Here.

Christopher: Yes.

Mia: (pause) What happened to Luke? (long pause) Christopher Sanders!

Mia slams the photo album on the coffee table. Christopher jumps at the sound of the impact.

Mia: Just tell me already! Where is my son?

Christopher: We don’t know! Okay? We don’t know.

Mia: What?

Christopher: He’s MIA. He went missing a year ago during a military operation near Chicago, the Battle of Arlington Heights. Maybe you’ve heard of it, it was pretty big. Anyway, Luke disappeared from The Liberal Army’s radar, and they never heard from him again.

Mia: But not confirmed dead? Hey. Hey Christopher! Stop staring at me and just— just tell me! Is he dead or not?

Christopher: I… I don’t know.

Mia: What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Christopher: Luke is—

Mia: Oh my gosh give me that!

She marches forward and snatches the papers out of Christopher’s hands.

Christopher: Aunty, please. I told you! He’s missing.

Mia: (reading) MIA, Chicago… Chicago… went missing… September 16th… during an airstrike by The Conservative States Army Air Force…. Presumed to be… to be… dead.

Mia sways a little, then stumbles toward the armchair. She collapses into it, leaning her head back and staring up at the ceiling.

Mia: Dead a year ago… a whole year— More than a year. He—

She chokes on her words, and suddenly finds tears rolling down her cheeks.

Christopher: Aunty… Aunty Mia—

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As if his words were a trigger, Mia begins to sob hysterically. She takes the pillow next to her and throws it on the floor, then buries her head in her hands and continues to bawl. Christopher stares at her, then flops onto the couch himself, sitting in the spot nearest to Aunty Mia’s armchair.

Christopher: It isn’t one hundred percent. He could still be—

Mia: Stop it! Stop it!

Mia bangs her hands onto the armrests.

Mia: Just stop! Stop! This stupid war! You and everyone else that fought in this cursed war and dragged everyone in between into it! Just stop! Just—

Mia swallows, cutting off her sentence. When she makes no effort to continue, Christopher bows his head. Mia’s tears slow to a trickle after her outburst and she leans back again, staring at the ceiling.

Christopher: (suddenly remembering) His unit… his fellow soldiers, they, ah, they turned this in.

Christopher reaches into his uniform pocket again and pulls out the paper package. He holds it out to Mia, who takes it gingerly.

Christopher: It’s all that’s left of his belongings. Everything else was donated and passed on to new soldiers because they were running out of supplies.

Mia opens the package. It’s a tiny sketchbook. She flips through it.

Christopher: He continued to draw, even after he left for the army. Those are the sights he saw along the way, the landscapes and events. His lieutenant said he was drawing all the time.

Still, Mia’s expression doesn’t change. She closes the sketchbook, reaches forward, and sets it down on the coffee table before returning to her original position.

Mia: A long time— several months, maybe a year ago… I had a dream. I saw Luke when he was a boy. He was standing before an old, graffitied, cement wall. (pause) He had a paintbrush in his hand and was surrounded by buckets of paint, and just painted and painted and painted on that wall and— (another pause, another deep breath) and by the time he was done, the wall had turned into a door. A gate. Luke had also turned from a boy into a man, into a soldier. It was a beautiful gate. But… But then, Luke opened it… and he just walked through. It was a blood red bridge on the other side, splattered with tombstones and splotches of blue and white. I couldn’t move. I could only watch. He got farther and farther away and just— He just… disappeared. Was this a mother’s instinct? Or some divine figure trying to warn me?

From the kitchen, the oven rings, but neither of them get up to take the cupcakes out. Christopher shifts in his seat as if trying to decide what to say. After a long time, he settles on something.

Christopher: … I’m sorry.

Mia: You should be. I told you— you and Luke— this war was pointless. So, utterly, utterly pointless. You two even ended up fighting each other! You!— (pause) Why are you here? Why is it you, of all people, coming to give me this— this notice?

Christopher: I’m sorry, I was… I was there.

Mia: What?

Christopher: The battle— I was a pilot in the war. For five years, my sole job was dropping bombs onto the battlefield. That day, when Luke went missing, I was there bombing everything. I was—

Mia: (quietly) So you killed him?

Christopher: No! Not that! I—

Mia: (voice rising) Then what the hell are you trying to say?

Christopher: I— I’m sorry! I didn’t. I couldn’t have— the chances that— I just, I didn’t kill him.

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Mia: You sound awfully sure of that.

Christopher: Aunty Mia, I swear! Even if I was there, there were seventy other pilots—

Mia: (quietly again) Do you believe it?

Christopher: What?

Mia: Do you think that you killed Luke? Your best friend? My son? Did you kill him?

Christopher: I— no, I don’t—

Mia: Liar. Liar, liar, liar. That’s the whole reason why you’re here, huh? You feel guilty. You know Luke’s not MIA, he’s blown up into smithereens so there’s no body left to find. Right?

Mia stands up. Tears are streaming down her cheeks, but her voice is firm. She looks Christopher straight in the eye, as if searching for something, but he refuses to meet her gaze. She forms a fist, crumpling the papers in her hands.

Mia: Get out.

Christopher: What?

Mia: Get out of this house.

Christopher: Au-Aunty—

Mia: If I hear you call me that one more time— No, just. Just get out. Now!

Christopher: I truly— I did it for my cause, for what I believed in! Luke also fought for his—

Mia: Stop! If I hear another word of revolutionary doctrine spew from your mouth, I will chase you out with a crowbar. I told you! Get out! Get out and don’t come back!

Christopher stares at her, eyes wide. His mouth opens and closes, as if trying to find words. Finally, he swallows and stands.

Christopher: (hoarsely) Okay.

He shuffles toward the door, head hung low, and takes his shoes from the rack. Just as he opens the door, he turns around and calls one last time to Mia.

Christopher: The cupcakes are ready. You should… take them out of the oven.

Then, he vanishes into the darkness, leaving Mia alone in the living room. Mia stares after Christopher and the open door, her arms hanging limp at her side. Luke’s crumpled casualty notice papers fall out of her hand and onto the floor.

The End.

391

Daniel Yim

to the grandson who writes war novels

Poetry Bellarmine College Preparatory San Jose, CA

I burned the manuscript this morning. The fire began the night you freckled your arms in neon, laced my mouth with the dew of bottles and battlefields. I said to never repeat what I told you. But you crowned yourself in celluloid, poured kerosene into your mouth for gold men melting into bullets, and I knew what you would say. You swore yourself to words but numbers seduced you, and when you began peeling fistfuls of green from grenades I knew that you were an American. Because your country cuts borders into mouths, pours history into Coke cans. Because your country milks words from the barrel of a gun, tears cities’ waists with barbed wire until they bleed poems. You sold your voice to a nation that slashed our throats for firefly blood. You sold the days when we mistook little boy for liberty, when we measured the distance between rice and rifle with red bodies. Sold it for a name hollowed into cardboard, for blue muscle twisting into broken bridge. Pretended to fold these fireworks back into gunshots. But know how we punish thieves of memory. Understand that we will translate your spotlight into bonfire. Tell the bearded men that these mountains hold no secrets for them. Know that they hold no secrets for you.

392

Sheerea Yu

On the Atlanta Spa Shootings

ONE.

I always thought democracy was guaranteed, I took it for granted, I thought if I worked hard, I could make it in white man’s Christian America.

But now I see the pot shaking on the stove, and I find I cannot raise my voice over the sound of seething.

TWO.

My classmate says, “these killings should have been a bigger deal.”

He is angry, and I feel grateful and relieved, that people of other races would care about StopAsianHate because I know white supremacy is not the only supremacy, and even the word, “Asian.”

Do you know how much history and identity is between those countries, who would never think they could ever fit together—certainly not into just one word. Yet I stay silent.

On some level, I feel I have no jurisdiction over pride and protest, I am consumed by self-doubt. When it is the people who look like me murdered, why do I feel the urge to look away?

I cannot stand how my face could result in the pattering of gunfire.

THREE.

Embrace this conflict. As a reflection of facing issues rather than burying them, better to roar and rage than dejected acceptance, I promise in countries where everyone looks the same racism never has the chance to bubble to the surface.

Diversity is a powerful heat.

I think it is better to feel its burn than let racism simmer, kept to dinner table murmurings.

Only with it can we work, can we challenge racism, can we turn the heat dial until the water finally boils,

clear and sure, cleansed. Our knees ache from standing by the stovetop, but there—the sudden rush of quiet, and that moment of held breath.

393

Spoken Word University School of Nashville Nashville, TN

Anya Zhang

They Didn't Want Us

[A stage is dim except for one single spotlight in the center.]

[A Chinese-American girl, Anna, who is roughly six years old, steps into the spotlight.]

Anna, 6: There was always this one lullaby that my Chinese teacher . . . hmm, what’s her name? Oh! “Wang Min Lao Shi” taught us. Translated, I think it went something like this:

[Anna lifts her face up to the ceiling and starts to sing softly]

The sun, the sun

You bring us colorful light

You found the beautiful flower In our soul

Today we grow under the —

[Anna, 6, suddenly steps backward out of the spotlight, and another version of Anna, now eleven years old, steps into the spotlight]

Anna, 11: — sunlight. I spent my days out in the sun, playing in the ferns that lined the backyard fence. [sits down on the stage with legs out in front of her] I wrestled with imaginary foes and pounced on little grasshoppers and moths. Sometimes, I accidentally crushed them [claps her hands together] and I would cry.

[slowly lifts hands up to face and examines them] So it’s no wonder my skin became tan, but my tan was different from my classmates. They had beautiful, golden brown skin, but mine? [scoffs lightly] I looked like a burnt banana!

[Anna, 11, laughs and the spotlight shifts off of her and onto a woman, Reporter 1, who had been standing next to Anna]

Reporter 1: According to Daniel Goodkind, an independent researcher based in Virginia, approximately 120,000 Chinese children were adopted by Western families in the 1980s, with a majority of them —

[Spotlight shifts off of Reporter 1, and back onto another version of Anna, now fourteen years old, who is in Anna’s previous spot and is clutching a doll]

Anna, 14: — girls. Yeah, I know people say it’s hard to, you know, be a female and stuff, but like, I like being a girl! I got to play with dolls, [hugs doll to her chest] I didn’t have to help with cleaning the garage, and I got to wear dresses! And let’s be honest, dresses are so much prettier than any boy clothing!

[Anna, 14, steps out of the spotlight, and Anna, 11, returns back into the spotlight]

Anna, 11: I called my parents “mama” and “papa.” And it made sense to me, and it made sense to my friends . . . until it didn’t. In third grade, they asked me:

[A second spotlight turns on next to Anna, 11, and illuminates an elementary school-aged boy, Little Boy, who was a friend of Anna’s and standing next to Anna, 11]

Little Boy: Why do your mama and papa have blond hair, but you have black hair?

[The second spotlight turns off, leaving Anna, 11 the only one illuminated]

Anna, 11: I told them that it was because I was adopted, but it didn’t matter to me then. They had always been my —

[Spotlight shifts off of Anna, 11, and onto a man, Reporter 2, standing next to Anna, 11]

Reporter 2: — parents were regulated, starting in 1980, by the one-child policy in China. Lasting thirty-five years, this law restricted couples to only giving birth to one child to curb the growing population.

[Spotlights shifts off of Reporter 2, and onto another version of Anna, now seventeen years old]

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Play or Script Dublin Jerome High School

Dublin, OH

Anna, 17: I don’t remember anything about China. I just remember America. I guess my adoptive parents tried to teach me about my heritage and [using a sarcastic tone] all that woke jazz. But other than the occasional Panda Express takeout and the paper lanterns at Party City, I didn’t know anything about being Chinese. And I didn’t want to.

[Spotlight shifts off of Anna, 17, and onto Reporter 1]

Reporter 1: In a traditional Chinese family, a son was supposed to take care of the farm, and once his parents got old, he would care for them. But a daughter was no use doing any labor, as she did not have the strength to take care of the rice or tea crops. And when she was married off, she was to move into her husband’s house, barely ever coming home again. So it’s no surprise that —

[Spotlight shifts off of Reporter 1, and onto Anna, 14, who is in Anna, 17’s previous spot]

Anna 14: — there were exceptions to this rule. Dubbed the “1.5 Baby Policy,” citizens in rural areas were allowed to give birth to one other child if their first was a girl. [using a sarcastic tone] I mean, it totally makes sense. A daughter is essentially worthless, so let’s start counting them as half a person!

[Anna, 14 steps out of the spotlight, and Anna, 11 steps into the spotlight, holding a photo album]

Anna, 11: [Rifling through pages of the album] My parents had always told me that I had been their gift from God. You see that photo? [holds up the album and points at a photo of baby Anna and her adoptive parents] That’s right after I was adopted. My mom used to tell me that when she picked me up, she knew I was the one.

[Anna, 11, steps out of the spotlight, and Li Qiang, Anna’s biological grandmother, steps into the spotlight, carrying a bamboo basket]

Li Qian: [talks to the audience as if talking to Anna’s biological mother] You see this basket, “nu er?” [sets the basket on the ground, then stands back upright] I bought it at the market for you in case you have a girl. We can put her in here, and then leave her out on the street.

[Li Qian steps out of the spotlight and Zhang Chu Hua, Anna’s biological mother, steps into the spotlight]

Zhang Chu Hua: Red posters – they were everywhere. And on them, always the same three words: “Wan, Xi, Shao” — “Later, Longer, Fewer.” And I knew that I should do my part for the good of my country, but my husband wanted a son, and he wanted one now.

So even though I tried to wait for the “later,” my husband, my husband’s family, and even my own family urged me to the “now.”

[mimicking Li Qian] “It’s for the good of the family,” they said, but their smiles were too big and their eyes were too cold.

[Spotlight shifts off of Zhang Chu Hua and onto Reporter 1, who was standing beside Zhang Chu Hua]

Reporter 1: A study done by Xi’an Jiaotong University reports that there are between “40.9 million” “missing girls” in China, who were killed in the womb or after their birth. According to John Kennedy, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky, “That’s [more than] the population of California!”

[Spotlight shifts off of Reporter 1 and onto Anna, 14, who is standing in Zhang Chu Hua’s previous spot]

Anna 14: When a family did not want a daughter, there were a few possibilities for what could happen to her. If she got lucky, her parents would take her to the orphanage in town, and maybe a nice, rich white couple would come and adopt her and whisk her back to their mansion in America. But only 120,000 children were adopted, so if she was one of the other millions of girls, she was kind of screwed.

[Anna, 14 steps out of the spotlight, and a high school-aged girl, who was one of Anna’s classmates, Older Girl, steps into the spotlight]

Older Girl: [talks to the audience as if having a conversation with Anna] Ohhh … so you’re adopted?

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[Pauses and then nods furiously] Mmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So what about your REAL parents?

[Pauses again] Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. So like, are you an American citizen and stuff? [scoffs awkwardly] Oh ha! Yeah, of course you are!

[Turns to walk away, hesitates, then comes back slowly] [whispering] So like, not to be rude, but does it hurt? Knowing that your parents didn’t want you?

[Older Girl steps out of the spotlight and Anna, 17, steps into the spotlight]

Anna, 17: I knew I was one of the lucky ones. . . But – But I was bitter. [using an angry tone] So what if my parents didn’t want me? I didn’t want them either!

So I threw myself into American culture and pushed my heritage away. I got about thirty minutes into that one Chinese Marvel movie before I couldn’t watch it anymore. [growing in frustration, tears starting to form in her eyes] I pretended I didn’t care, but I was hurting. I hated my real parents, I hated my race, and I — I hated myself.

[Anna, 17, quickly wipes her eyes as the spotlight shifts over to Reporter 2, who was standing beside Anna, 17]

Reporter 2: According to author David Emil Mungello, for the past 2,000 years, China’s history has been riveted with female infanticide. The practice continued until the 19th century but leveled off until the one-child policy was enacted. With the few scarce orphanages already overcrowded in impoverished, rural areas, families hold no other choice.

In 1980, the Chinese government did address female infanticide, stating it as a “feudalistic evil”. However, they denied any link between the murders and the one-child policy.

[Spotlight shifts off of Reporter 2 and onto a middle-aged Caucasian man, Dave, who is Anna’s adoptive father]

Dave: My wife and I – we had decided to go to China to adopt a child. I mean, just look at how cute those babies are! [pulls out his wallet and opens it to show a baby photo of Anna]

And when we got there to Shang Rao, we met the director of the orphanage. He was a great, a really great man. He gave us some wood ear mushroom salad and little cups of hot water, and when he spoke, he swept his hands in giant circles, like this [moves hands in grand gestures].

He even had tears in his eyes! [laughs lightly and shakes head] And because we really wanted a family, [face dropping a little] I pretended not to notice the slight tones of desperation in his voice or the weakness in the wailing of the babies in the next room.

[Dave steps out of the spotlight, and Anna, 14 steps into the spotlight]

Anna 14: “Ni nu.” They even had a name for it. It was horrifying; fathers would grab their newborn daughters and [takes a deep breath, then continues in a strained voice] push them into the mud of the river.

The mothers would turn away, their eyes glazed and lifeless, until the cries faded. And the passersby — oh god, they would walk past like nothing, nothing was happening! [puts hand over mouth]

[Anna, 14, steps out of the spotlight, and Anna, 6, steps into the spotlight]

Anna, 6: [singing softly]

Tomorrow we will create a colorful world Come, come, come!

The colorful light, the colorful light You are the radiant sunshine We walk towards the future with radiant —

[Anna, 6, suddenly steps out of the spotlight, and Anna, 17, steps quickly back into the spotlight]

Anna 17 : — dreams. I wonder what they dreamed about. Or if they had any at all. It must’ve been a cruel irony. [using a bewildered tone] They weren’t wanted, but then they were!

396

But not in the way anyone would want. Because of the shortage of women, men needed wives. And if you were one of the “lucky” ones, you would be sold to a man to be his bride, and you could pray that he would treat you half as well as his dogs. But if you weren’t lucky, you were used to . . . to satisfy men’s needs. Even if it took force.

[Anna, 17, steps out of the spotlight, and Anna, 14, steps into the spotlight]

Anna, 14: I have a good life here, don’t get me wrong. But it always bothered me how invisible Asian Americans were. How invisible our struggles were.

I’ve heard my fair share of insults and slurs, like how the man behind me in the line sneered for me to [crouches down and mimics the lower voice of a man] “Go back to China, chink!” or how the girls would giggle at me in the locker room, pull their eyes up into slits, and sing [mimics the shrill voice of a girl] “Ching chong ding dong!”

[The spotlight shifts off of Anna, 14, and onto Reporter 1, who was standing next to Anna, 14]

Reporter 1: Because of the one-child policy, women in China faced even greater inequalities. Paradoxically, fertility rates lowered, but pressure on women in relation to giving birth increased.

Chinese women became seen as a vehicle that was necessary to continue the bloodline. Essentially, they were turned into a donkey: valuable, but only really useful for breeding.

[The spotlight shifts off of Reporter 1, and onto another version of Anna, now twenty-three years old, who stands in Anna, 14’s previous spot]

Anna, 23: When I was in college, I met this guy at the bar. He seemed nice and everything, like he was really cute too. So a couple of beers later, I was kinda tipsy, and when he suggested that we go back to his apartment, I agreed.

So we ended up in his bedroom, and I just remembered looking at his teeth and thinking about how white and straight they were.

[long pause, then speaks with a shuddering voice] I was still thinking about his teeth when he — he grabbed my wrists [yanks her hands behind her back] and shoved my head into his mattress [forcefully bends over so she is looking at the ground]. [starts crying] And I . . . I bucked, trying to get him off of me.

[A second spotlight slowly turns on next to Anna, 23, and illuminates a college man, the Attacker, standing next to Anna, 23]

The Attacker: [leans down so his mouth is right above Anna’s ear] I thought you Asian chicks like it rough.

[The second spotlight turns off, leaving just Anna, 23, illuminated]

Anna, 23: [stays there looking at the ground for a long time, quietly sobbing] [slowly straightens up and looks back at the audience] So um, I’m not going to lie, it’s been hard. Like everyone expects me to be grateful for being here, and don’t get me wrong, I am.

But there are times where I [takes a deep shuddering breath] . . . I think that I would’ve rather died. Maybe when my mom left me in that basket, I should’ve died. Because even now, I am just another number in that stack. Another tick on the list of abandoned girls.

[voice growing in sorrow] And what life do I have here? I am treated as an outsider at best, and worse than dog shit at worst. I don’t know who I am.

[volume of voice increases] I’m supposed to say “sorry” and put myself behind others. I’m supposed to bow my head and take it when people yell slurs at me. I’m supposed to cry silently behind my hand when I’m hurting because at least I was lucky. [screaming] I’m supposed to be the innocent Chinese girl that boys will use just for fun.

[collapses to knees] [long pause] If I’m nothing more than an object, then why should I live?

Why me? Why?

[The spotlight slowly turns off, causing Anna, 23 to disappear, while the second spotlight slowly turns on, revealing Reporter 2 standing nearby, holding the bamboo basket]

Reporter 2: When they ended the one-child policy in 2015, the Chinese government applauded themselves and the Chinese people for avoiding 400 million births. Thanks to the policy, China’s economy was booming and overcrowding was leveling off.

397

But it came with a heavy price. With every bamboo basket left in the street, I ask you: [long pause] was it worth it?

[The second spotlight slowly turns off, causing Reporter 2 to disappear, while the first spotlight slowly turns on, revealing Anna, 6 standing in Anna, 23’s previous spot]

Anna, 6: [looking up to the ceiling, singing in a quiet voice]

The colorful light, the colorful light You are the radiant sunshine We walk toward the future with colorful dreams Because they didn’t want us We keep walking towards the sun

[The final spotlight slowly turns off]

Bibliography

“Family Planning.” U.S. National Library of Medicine , National Institutes of Health, 21 Apr. 2010

Fifield, Anna. “Beijing’s One-Child Policy Is Gone. But Many Chinese Are Still Reluctant to Have More.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 9 May 2019

Goodkind, Daniel. “The Chinese Diaspora: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Trends.” US Census Bureau, US Department of Commerce, Aug. 2019

Jiang, Quanbao et al. “Estimates of Missing Women in Twentieth Century China.” Continuity and Change vol. 27,3, National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2012

Mungello, David Emil. The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013.

“The Song of the Sunlight.” China Broadcast Childrens Choir, eChineseLearning

398

Natalie Zhang

399

Design Arts Weston High School Weston, MA Body Positivity Calendar Adobe Illustrator, Procreate 2022

Sophia Zhang

Ungrieved

The door bangs shut as my mother returns. She brings a gust of winter air with her, chilling the room’s temperature. Feet cold on the hardwood floor, I dart towards her, following my older sister’s lead.

My mother had been at the hospital more often than at home the past few days. The silence left hanging over the house was suffocating, the stillness like waterlogged cotton wool stopping up my ears. He’s close , I’d heard in whispered conversations between her and my grandmother.

Bàba qù shì le Your father is gone. My mother’s eyes hold pools of grief but her voice is steady, calm, rehearsed. My sister lets out a groan reminiscent of a wounded animal and launches herself into my mother’s outspread arms, tears already seeping out. My eyes are painfully dry.

Oh, I think to myself. It’s finally happened. I hunch over, twist my facial muscles in an imitation of my sister’s despair, and stand slightly apart until my mother pulls me into the hug. We conjoin. A misshapen pile of limbs and breath and hair. I smell antiseptic. I feel my mother quivering, small shudders transmitting through her body. Before long, she crumples like a used tissue, and we fall together onto the stained brown leather couch. I feel suffocated.

I extricate myself and escape to my mother’s bedroom, where I pace in circles and stare through the open doorway at my mother and sister intertwined. My mother strokes my sister’s hair, comforting her. The two of them fit perfectly together.

Dōngshēng shūshu, my father’s best friend from college, comes to visit. He will later cry while shoveling dirt on top of my father’s coffin; it will be my first time seeing an adult man shedding tears. He comes with a gift—Huáng Fēi Hóng Spicy Peanuts—that he tells me to share with my sister. Crouching down to look me in the eye, he places a single weighted hand on my shoulder and tells me to value the time I have left with my brave, strong, loving, fighter of a father. I clench the polypropylene of the snack bag and listen to it crinkle.

Before and since I’ve heard people preach about the heroism and strength of cancer patients. But disease is an ugly beast. Liver cancer especially. It wrecks. It ruins. It incapacitates, strips away basic human dignity.

Urine red from blood. A sweet and musty stench that smells like rotten eggs. Yellow everything: skin, nails, eyes. A feeble voice that calls out for help to go to the bathroom. A clenched-fist voice that yells about the taste of a perfectly fine lunch, quick to anger thanks to inescapable pain. A broken voice that asks to see my face, to be with me. A father who loves me.

Scanning through our bookshelf on a Wednesday afternoon, months after the funeral, a title catches my eye. I curl up in the dusty sharp-cornered nook between the piano and cabinet and flip through A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children , splinters of sunlight from a single window illuminating its pages. The story of Ryan, an 11-year-old who lost his firefighter father in an accident is detailed. So is that of Jane, a girl whose grandmother died from a clogged artery. Children process grief in different ways, it says. There are stages to grief, it says. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Yet the presence of grief is always assumed.

It’s been months since the funeral but I have yet to miss my father. Shouldn’t I be over at least the denial stage by now?

You don’t know a lot at 7, but you know you should be sad when your father dies.

I want to remember my father at his best, as the person I’m always told he was, as a person who oozed love, kindness, and life. But my father went abroad to Beijing right after I was born and was diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer when I was three. Long intermittent hospital stays followed.

I know that father only as a secondhand story, through details passed down in an extended game of telephone. I know my father only through small snippets of memory, more bad than good, that fade with each passing second. I know my father only as something diseased and dying even in life, and as a blurred sketch in death.

I can count the number of times I’ve wept for my father on one hand. I even have two fingers to spare.

The first was at the new hospital; we kept switching to cheaper and cheaper facilities as treatment costs piled on. It’s the only time I can recollect visiting my father, which we did after doctors projected that he was nearing the end.

I am intensely fidgety during the hour-long drive, the hard rock of dread growing in my stomach with every mile we get closer. How much longer, I ask every few minutes. Who else will be there ? Just close friends and family, my mother tells me. Do we have to go? This question leads to a stern lecture.

I walk into the hospital room tightly clutching my folded paper card, cut in the shape of a heart. My mother had told both my sister and me to prepare one last night to communicate our last words. I stared blankly at my piece of printer paper for what felt like eons, nothing coming to mind. Ultimately, I end up googling “phrases to comfort a dying person” on my iPad. I love you, I jot down. I will always keep you in my heart, I write. My sister doesn’t seem to be similarly struggling, her card inked with dozens of razor-black letters.

My mother motions for me to read the card first, and I begin to do so. Dozens of both strange and familiar faces stare back at me, seated in a circle around my father. Lying on the hospital bed, his cheekbones are indecently prominent, his body one from which all superfluity and fat have been whittled away. He looks strangely at peace.

I choke on the first word. I try and try, and manage to force the I love you out of my throat and into the air, before I give up and wretched, loud sobs come out. Before long, my mother sends me out of the stifling room and into the hallway where I wait crouched against the wall, bathing in the fluorescent light for an indeterminate amount of time.

The second time was at the funeral. Standing next to the coffin, I watched a multi-colored slideshow filled with various family pictures and accompanied by mournful organ music. Hours upon hours are condensed into snapshots. Us visiting Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, feeding small lambs and printing our own pennies. Us dining at the Mayflower, a feast of chicken-feet, dumplings, fried rice, and my father’s favorite, roasted duck, laid out before us. Us at a hotel in San Francisco to watch July 4th fireworks and celebrate my July 5th birthday, an apology and attempt to make up for his absence.

As mourners come up to give their condolences, I see pity in their eyes and taste salt.

Some pat my head. A small part of me is pleased.

400

Creative Nonfiction

Evergreen Valley High School San Jose, CA

The third time is when I’m 11. My aunt-in-law, visiting for the summer, tells me about him. Your father really loved you, you know, she says. When you were a baby and visited China with your mother, he simply would not put you down. He wanted the best for you, you know. Babies grow up really fast, so it’s not worth it to invest in expensive toddler clothes, right? But despite everyone telling him not to, that it wasn’t worth it, he went right ahead and bought you a pair of genuine Italian leather shoes. God, they were expensive! Another time, while he was holding you out on a walk, you soiled your pants and weren’t wearing a diaper. Lots of dads would be disgusted and put their children down, but he didn’t care in the least. He continued carrying you close to himself, and only worried that you’d be uncomfortable

I turn my head and stare up at the ceiling so she won’t see the tears pooling in my eyes.

That night, after breaking the news of my father’s death to us, my sister and mom remain wrapped in each other’s arms for hours. It’s 9:30 pm and after my bedtime, but I tiptoe down the stairs for a glass of water.

Did you see mèimei’s face , my mother sobs. She didn’t even seem to be sad. What kind of daughter is that ?

I stop in my tracks. I feel like a raw exposed lump of flesh. I hope she never learns I heard that.

What I know of my father: he played college basketball. He was intensely smart and tested into one of China’s best universities despite his upbringing in rural poverty. He was handsome. He smoked and drank and had terrible lifestyle habits. He was an atheist. He lived for just 43 years. He loved us. But as my mother says, not enough to love himself.

What I know of cancer: it is a disease where your own body betrays you. Your cells won’t stop multiplying and become malignant tumors and damage your tissue and organs and you and your loved ones. It is in my mother’s crow’s feet and her under-eye bags, in her salted hair and her small back that’s spent countless late nights hunched over a bill-filled kitchen table. It is the stacks of expired pills and bandages and gauze pads and antiseptic still in our storage room. It kills, but more, it destroys.

What I know of fatherlessness: research has found that growing up fatherless can permanently alter brain structure, increasing risks in seemingly every negative thing that exists, from anxiety to crime. And even though I don’t dislike my current self, I can’t stop wondering: who could the un-fatherless me be? Would I be happier? Kinder? Smarter? I think I mourn not my dead father, but dead possibilities.

What I know of grief:

What I know of shame: it’s not a burning red flame that fizzles out with time, but a cold blue-grey that is absorbed deep inside the marrow of your bones and permanently dyes them.

Bàba qù shì le: Your father has passed away

Dōngshēng shūshu: Uncle Dongsheng

Huáng Fēi Hóng: Huang Fei Hong, the name of a Chinese snack manufacturer

Mèimei: little sister

401

YoungArts

About

About YoungArts

Established in 1981 by Lin and Ted Arison, YoungArts identifies exceptional young artists, amplifies their potential, and invests in their lifelong creative freedom. Entrance into this prestigious organization starts with a highly competitive application process for talented artists ages 15–18, or grades 10–12, in the United States. Applications are adjudicated through a rigorous blind process by esteemed disciplinespecific 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.

YoungArts award winners are further eligible for exclusive opportunities, including: nomination as a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, one of the nation’s highest honors for high school seniors; a wide range of creative development support including fellowships, residencies and awards; professional development programs offered in partnership with major institutions nationwide; additional financial support; and access to YoungArts Post, a private, online portal for YoungArts artists to connect, share their work and discover new opportunities.

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.

For more information, visit youngarts.org.

Join the conversation

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407

Notable Winners

408

Doug Aitken 1986 Visual Arts† Hernan Bas 1996 Visual Arts Terence

2013 Theater Gerald

2002 Jazz*† Doug

1984 Film† Camille

1997 Dance*†

1983 Theater Daniel

1999 Visual Arts†

1985 Writing*

2015 & 2016 Writing

2002 Voice

Blanchard Timothée Chalamet

Clayton

Blush

A. Brown

Viola Davis

Arsham

Allegra Goodman

Amanda Gorman Judith Hill

1994 Classical Music

1998 Dance

Jennifer Koh Sarah Lamb

1999 Theater

1993 Jazz

1988 Voice†

1987 Theater

1997 Theater†

1986 Dance*†

2000 Classical Music*†

2017 Design Arts

1994 Theater†

2003 Voice*†

Arts †YoungArts

Tarell Alvin McCraney Jason Moran Eric Owens

Billy Porter

Andrew Rannells

Desmond Richardson

Elizabeth Roe

Hunter Schafer

Kerry Washington

Chris Young

*U.S. Presidential Scholar in the

Guest Artist

Guest Artists Guest Artists

409

Derrick Adams Ayodele Casel Debbie Allen Mikhail Baryshnikov Ron Carter Lisa Fischer Frank Gehry Bill T. Jones Naeem Khan Ignacio Berroa Dr. Joan Morgan José Parlá Rosie Perez Paula Scher Jeanine Tesori Mickalene Thomas Jeffrey Zeigler Nikki Giovanni Renée Fleming Germane Barnes Marika Hughes B.D. Wong Endia Beal Hank Willis Thomas

2023 Guest Artists

Chip Abbott

Dance Coach

Leticia Bajuyo

Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Jenni Barber

Theater National Selection Panel

Germane Barnes

Design Arts Guest Artist

Letty Bassart

Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Jean Baylor

Voice Guest Artist

Endia Beal

Photography Guest Artist

Ignacio Berroa

Jazz Guest Artist

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

Daveed Buzaglo

Voice Discipline Coordinator, 2012 Voice

Elinor Carucci

Photography National Selection Panel

Devin Caserta

Visual Arts Discipline Coordinator, 2006 Visual Arts

Christopher Castellani

Writing National Selection Panel, 1990 & 1992 Writing

Robert Chambers

Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Lauren Cohen

Film Guest Artist

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

Machine Dazzle

Design Arts Guest Artist

Rick Delgado

Film National Selection Panel, 1992 Film

Edouard Duval-Carrié

Visual Arts Guest Artist

Kenny Easter

Dance Coach

Clinton Edward

Dance Discipline Coordinator

Dave Eggar

Interdisciplinary Guest Artist, 1987 Classical Music & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Diana Eusebio

Design Arts Discipline Coordinator, 2016 Design Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Jason Ferrante

Voice National Selection Panel

Chris Friday

Visual Arts Guest Artist

Vanessa Garcia

Writing National Selection Panel

Gino Grenek Dance Coach

Lance Guillermo Dance Coach

La Tanya Hall

Voice National Selection Panel

Rosie Herrera

Dance National Selection Panel

Robert Hill

Dance National Selection Panel

David Hilliard

Photography Guest Artist

MaryAnn Hu

Theater National Selection Panel

Baba Israel

Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Javon Jackson

Jazz National Selection Panel, 1983 Jazz

Catherine Jimenez

Photography National Selection Panel

Jlin

Classical Music and Jazz Guest Artist

Loni Johnson

Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Lucy Jones

Design Arts Guest Artist

410

Tanya Kalmanovitch

Classical Music National Selection Panel

Mitchell Kaplan

Writing Guest Artist

Dariush Kashani

Theater National Selection Panel

Yashua Klos

Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Joan Lader

Theater and Voice Coach

Pascal Le Boeuf

Classical Music National Selection Panel, 2004 Classical Music & Jazz

Peter Lerman

Film and Voice Guest Artist

Lydia Liebman

Voice Guest Artist

Nick Lim

Design Arts Guest Artist

Yvonne Lin

Design Arts National Selection Panel

Marina Lomazov

Classical Music National Selection Panel

Taylor Mac

Closing Keynote Speaker

Russell Malone

Jazz Guest Artist

Jeremy Manasia

Jazz National Selection Panel

Arsimmer McCoy

Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Johnathan McCullough

Voice Guest Artist

Charles McPherson

Jazz Guest Artist

Alex Mediate

Photography Discipline Coordinator, 2016 Photography

Hollis Meminger

Film National Selection Panel

Aaron Miller

Classical Music Discipline Assistant, 1998 Classical Music

Dr. Joan Morgan

Writing Guest Artist , YoungArts Trustee

Nicole Mujica

Theater Discipline Coordinator

Stephen Petronio

YoungArts Week Florence Stern Master Class in Dance Teacher

Shamel Pitts

Interdisciplinary Guest Artist, 2003 Dance

Marcus Quiniones

Theater Coach

Lee Quiñones

Visual Arts Guest Artist

Noel Quiñones

Writing Guest Artist

Christian Reátegui

Jazz Discipline Coordinator

Chire “VantaBlack” Regans

Visual Arts Guest Artist

Christell Roach

Writing Discipline Coordinator, 2015 Writing

Morris Robinson

Voice Guest Artist

Alejandro Rodriguez

Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Shamie Royston

Jazz Guest Artist

Lara St. John

Classical Music Guest Artist

Matthew Saldivar

Theater National Selection Panel

Chris Sampson

Voice National Selection Panel

Norman Sann

Voice Guest Artist

Marlon Saunders

Voice Guest Artist

Reid Schlegel

Design Arts Guest Artist

Gerard Schwarz

Classical Music Guest Artist

Vernon Scott

Dance National Selection Panel

Maya Shanbhag Lang

Writing Guest Artist

Jean Shin

Visual Arts Guest Artist, YoungArts Trustee, 1990 Winner in Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Risa Steinberg

Dance Coach

Becca Stevens

Voice Guest Artist

Grace Talusan

Writing National Selection Panel

Nadhi Thekkek

Dance Coach

411

Demondrae Thurman

Classical Music National Selection Panel

Clara Toro

Photography Guest Artist

Cristy Trabada

Film Discipline Coordinator, 2016 Film

Chat Travieso

Design Arts National Selection Panel, 2003 Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Derek Wallace

Classical Music Discipline Coordinator

Daniel J. Watts

Theater Guest Artist, 2000 Dance

Adeze Wilford

Curator

Tom Williams

Jazz National Selection Panel, 1980 Jazz

BD Wong

Theater Guest Artist

Stacie Aamon Yeldell

Mindfulness Coach

412

Special Thanks to Educators

YoungArts would like to acknowledge the following educators, named by the 2023 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.

Leslie Long

Julia Gregory

Amy Menas

Tony Chirinos

Cassandra Claude

Linda Bon

Jan Sloman

Josie Walsh

Catherine Cho

Judith Switek

Sarah Blackman

Brian Wuttke

Mark Churchill

Philip Neal

Peter Valera

Gussie Danches

Frank Almond

Alexander Blake

Paramita Maitra

Nicole Croy

Jeremy Lundquist

Misha Vitenson

Dennis Grantz

Joseph Elliot

Danielle Palorames

Howard Schott

Rebecca Limerick

Anupama Srivastava

Kathleen TieriTon

Marc Ganzglass

Emily Mohn-Slate

Preston Pierce

Terry Patrick Harris

Joe Sniegocki

Jason Anderson

Jennifer Parchesky

Carrie Hill-Leech

Christine Baker

Jamel Booth

Dennis Hodges

Leah Stahl

Angie Cohen

Alexis Lambrou

Jim Walker

Laura Saggers

Hye-Jin Kim

Don Zentz

Julius Tolentino

Ann Setzer

Timur Rubinshteyn

Zena Ilyashov

Mark Hilt

Victoria Mushkatkol

Ayako Oshima

Cameron Shim

Wang Lu

Doug Blush

Yoheved Kaplinsky

Glenda Timmerman

Mr. Will Lagos

Victoria Lee

Christopher Sabocik

Nathan Hughes

Erik Clayton

jihee Kim

Melinda Ronayne

Jennifer Young Mahlstedt

Leo Park

Theresa Shovlin

Renato Biribin

Joshua Murray

Robert Beaser

David Higgs

Zachary Steele

Chanel DaSilva

Enrique Toral

Ning An

Nicole Cusick

Gabriel Berent

Nealya Brunson

Peter LaBerge

Roxane Carrasco

Kimberly Waid

Sam Boutris

Clara Kim

Dave Eggar

Reb Limerick

Daniel Dona

Aisha Sidibe

Valerie Anthony

Aaron Orullian

Guinea Bennett-Price

Ludmilla Lupu

Brian Carter

Gretchen Teague

Cameron Stymeist

Chris Leslie

Kirk Averitt

Valentina Gottlieb

Daniel O’Reilly Rowe

Lynelle Smith

Scott Hunt

Brice McCasland

Greg Sinacori

Nicholas Brust

Eddie Brown

Chad Bloom

Hannah Harris

Hillary Hogue

He Zhan

Catherine Payne

Martin Beaver

Ilana Vered

Mala Tsantilas

Branndi Lewis

Victor Smalley

Annelle Delfs

Robin Sharp

Kelly MacKenzie-Thurley

Elizabeth Bishop

Christine Abraham

Christine Moore Vassallo

Ernesto Montes

Igor Resnianski

Anna Polonyi

Jessica Henry

Enid Gonzalez

Adam Casey Fallis

Ya-Fei Chuang

Natasha Pasternak

Margaret Clark

Molly Schad

Katie Viqueira

Sydney Carlson

Jim Gasior

Ryan Meehan

Vania Saleem

Ida Saki

Katie Barnard

Bradley Barrett

Jaren Feeley

Dornell Carr

Yusha Sorzano

Jeremy Manasia

Bethany Pettigrew

Lee Akamichi

Angelia Perkins

Marie Gaschler

Jennifer Sandusky

Hilerie Klein Rensi

Alan rossi

Joshua Lawrence

Ashley Jones

Renna Moore-Edwards

Dr. Katherine Jolly

Courtney Kaiser-Sandler

Yuanan Cheng

Inyoung Seoung

Mark Gonder

Mariné Ter-Kazaryan

Caleb Paull

Dan Perez

Leah Stahl

Mike Hyland

Yi-Fang Huang

Dimitri Murrath

Emil Khudyev

Stephen Scarpulla

Mary Lynch VanderKolk

Dan Dery

David Morgan

George Garzone

Kristy Modia

Marion Feldman

Keenan McKenzie

Jim Ketch

Kristina Zakrzewski

Tony Braithwaite

Sarah Koo

Spencer Nilsen

Alison Mahovsky

Rebekah Binford

David T. Little

Samuel Cheney

Zhao Wei

James Moore

mark small

Armine Karapetian Donato

Kathy Cammett

Brittany Cavallaro

Shannon Cassano

Elaine Douvas

Megan Buckland

Jane Jingyu Zhang

Desiree Ruhstrat

Gregory Wilkin

Benjamin Smolen

Jonathan Koh

Jinjoo Jeon

Jinyoung Park Kim

Lucas Aleman

Julianna Evans

Melinda Rodriguez

Cynthia Hughen

Adam Smyla

Salwa Rizkalla

Katherine Needleman

Jonathan Weil

Carol Wincenc

Alan Semerdjian

Josh Wood

Vidal Rivera

Ayako Oshima Neidich

Sharon Neff

Connie Chung

Tatiana Kasatsky

Charles duChateau

Christina Hendershaw

Courtney Kaiser-Sandler

David Driggers

Joseph Cypressi

Nancy Weems

Cody Toscano

Teresa Blume

Allen Anderson

Marine Ter-kazaryan

Matt McKagan

Kate Doak

Daniel Felsenfeld

Julia Krohn

Magaret Reges

Marjorie Lee

Nicole Gingrich

Chris Battistone

Myung Kim

Tracy Fordham

Elizabeth Alexander

Hans Boepple

He-Lyun Chung

Megan Barrera

Kristin Keenan

Warren Sneed

Madison Hicks

Brent Stater

Lovell Bradford

Jenny Cresswell

Dmitri Vorobiev

Ashley Clarke

Robert “Jake” Jacobs

Cathy Burnett

Melissa Clark

Steven Kirby

John Walcutt

Tyler Hanes

James Gasior

Eric Cruz

Jess Hendricks

Karen Bennett

Marcus Brown

Rob Denien

Scott Hunt

Jennifer Hayghe

Jana Ballard

Susan Chadwick

Charles Ruggiero

Judie Jackowitz

Diego Guiterrez

Emily Cinquemani

Jenny Gifford

Marshelia Tillman

Ann Setzer

Jaqueline Bayne

Vlada Kysselova

Leslie Denning

Aaron Orullian

Linda Woolley

Janaki Sivaraman

Heidi Serrano

Sophie Arbuckle

Joe Kemper

Michael Pellera

Douglas Marriner

Mika Perrine

Corrie Witt

Cameron Stymeist

Cathy Burnett

Brittany Fegans

Hideko Amano

William Griswold

Eric Hankin

Shanpatick Davis

Valerie Adelung

Lisa Jepson

Hung-Kuan Chen

Jamond Mccoy

Gil Domb

Scott Cmiel

Leanna Kirchoff

Kristi Manno

Kevin Blancq

Linda Hallman-Darr

Peter Horvath

Lisa Cotie

Jacob Dogias

Pat Whiteman

Nicole Quintana

Bob Sloan

Dominick Farinacci

Michaela Florio

Joshua Lawlor

Divya Shanker

Steve Watson

Amanda Blaikie

Albert Blackstone

James Dragovich

James Bohanek

Matt Daniels

Courtney Kaiser-Sandler

David Wong

Bob Hackett

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We’re honored to support YoungArts. Truist.com Truist Bank, Member FDIC. © 2022 Truist Financial Corporation. Truist, the Truist logo and Truist Purple are service marks of Truist Financial Corporation. Caring for the community starts with providing support for the people who live in it. So we’re proud to work with YoungArts. Together, we can inspire and build better lives and communities.

YoungArts Supporters

Thank you to YoungArts’ most generous donors who make programming throughout the year possible.

1M+

500K-999K

100K-499K

50K-99K

Support for YoungArts programs is provided by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Sidney and Florence Stern Family Foundation Barbara and Amos Hostetter Michi & Charles Jigarjian / 7G Foundation Sandra & Tony Tamer Micky & Madeleine Arison Family Foundation Sarah Arison & Thomas Wilhelm Jeffrey Davis & Michael Miller Agnes Gund Bruce & Ellie Taub Leslie & Jason Kraus Jay Franke & David Herro Steven & Oxana Marks

e best investments are the ones we all appreciate.

Northern Trust is proud to support YoungArts. For more than 130 years, we’ve been meeting our clients’ ﬁnancial needs while nurturing a culture of caring and a commitment to invest in the communities we serve. Our goal is to ﬁnd you perfect harmony.

TO LEARN MORE VISIT northerntrust.com

Board of Trustees

as of 05/01/2023

Sarah Arison, Board Chair

Richard Kohan, President of The Board

Natalie Diggins, Secretary

Richard S. Wagman†, Treasurer

Derrick Adams

Doug Blush*

Hampton Carney

Linda Coll

Kristy Edmunds

Jonathan Flack

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

Maurice M. Zarmati

Trustees Emeritus

Armando M. Codina

Meryl Comer

Justin DiCioccio

Agnes Gund

John J. Kauffman

Dr. Ronald C. McCurdy

Dr. Eduardo J. Padrón

Desmond Richardson *

Marcus Sheridan

* YoungArts award winner

† Trustee Emeritus

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Aon Private Risk Management (APRM) is a leading global organization that offers extensive experience in servicing the personal insurance needs of successful families and their advisors. APRM provides highly specific risk solutions through specialty practice groups including, but not limited to the Art & Collections Practice, the Global Yacht Practice and Family Office Practice.

For more information please visit aon.com or contact Blythe Hogan at 212.441.2409.

We believe in encouraging the growth of the artist of the future

© 2023 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership. All rights reserved. PwC is proud to support YoungArts as part of our commitment to passionate communities of people who uncover new perspectives. TheNewEquation.com Some people make art. Others make art possible.

The artists of tomorrow need professional and creative development support today. With the help of our community, YoungArts offers artists the tools they need to pursue a life in the arts, including a lifetime of training, funding, mentorship and community.

Make a contribution today.

Visit youngarts.org or scan the QR code below.

Thank you for empowering artists!

We envision a world that embraces artists as vital to our humanity.

The National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists