Cary Academy Literary Magazine 2017

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Contents

The Ancestor Arman Kassam 4 Untitled Olivia Sherman 5 The Creatures of the World Mac Harman 6 the hallmarks of suburbia Caroline Brewer 7 Untitled Pauline Pauwels 8 They Say It Rains When She Cries Drake Richards 9 The Pipe Maker Tom Baker 10 The Night Mackenzie Gibbon 11 Untitled Pauline Pauwels 12 Transition Vincent Ingram 13 What do you want to do? Leonora Lee 13 Excerpt from: The Zodiac Society Cat Pitterle 15 Water Anna Cheng 18 A Short Story Ellie Johnson 19 Dog Cat Cobb 20 Untitled Olivia Sherman 21 Don’t Think Keegan Kerns 22 Dude Where’s my car Mason Reece and Leo DeSouza Untitled Morgan White 25 Escape Rachel Marston 26 Split Ends Rachel Marston 27 Someday Laura Cunningham 28 Untitled Jaishree Gupta 29 A Short Story Rosie Hoile 30 Untitled Michelle Rouse 33 Archer Sasha Kostenko 34 Ode to Bras Rachel Johns 35 Untitled Pauline Pauwels 36 Rejection Sasha Kostenko 37 Orbit Anna Cheng 40 Untitled Jaishree Gupta 41 Pantoum: Bees Jessica Jenkens 42 Inside the Attic Marisa Bishop 43 Untitled Mackenzie Newman 45

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3 Untitled Mackenzie Newman 46 Dante’s Inferno Kelly Bright 47 Nightmare Sam Stanforth 48 Untitled Lindsey LaSasso 49 Untitled Morgan White 50 Untitled Alex Bandong 51 How We Met Tatiana Bohorquez 52 Bubbles Liya Chen 53 An Ode to the Passenger Seat Kelly Bright 54 Betraying the Sea Kelly Bright 55 Untitled Alex Bandong 56 Lenny’s Way Hanna Saklad 56 Forgotten Memories Cameron Latta 59 Untitled Liya Chen 61 Ero Dragon Sasha Kostenko 62 THOUGHT PROCESSES Anna Cheng 63 Untitled Jaishree Gupta 64 Prologue from Star Fighter Anna Cheng 65 Untitled Mackenzie Newman 66 Untitled Mackenzie Newman 67 Who is She Julia Gong 68 Untitled Deming Haines 69

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The Ancestor Arman Kassam

I am cradled by my grandfather, us sitting on a sofreh with the pears, persimmons, pits.

Pointed to the ceiling is a spire, spiraling smoke with each dragon's breath.

He takes a whiff from the smoldering machine and embers tack against the walls of glass.

And embers tack against the walls of the room.

The humidity infiltrates my nose and I cannot breathe, so I take all in with my eyes.

The valleys in his hands, volleys of vermiculate rivers in each strand, Veins in an industrial churn in the direct connection to his bony chest.

The pump of his breast, rounded in a crest behind the most austere patterns of clothing.

This is the most religious place.

He has not shaved, so the forest is bustling. His natural presence booms in the room of geometric rugs.

Hung like his jacket near the nearly invisible door.

And the aroma of greens, gastronomical wonders, gormeh sabzi grows with each passing breath.

The whole breadth is the macrocosm of my imagination, the mosque of each revelation.

The donned overcoat wrapping its arms around my bones with warmth and gentle creation.

This setting is dilapidated next to my grandfather. He is the most decorated temple.

The wisest creature. The oldest being. The prime primeval prophet from the time of the first grain of sand.

From the first whiff of air.

From the first galĹŤn.

And the smoke that he lets out is proof of the centuries. It is proof of every wavelength of every loss and all love and each life, so that the dancing lines of white coalesce in a hovering mirror that I am sucked into.

He is my reflection, and I am his.

And when the smoke subsides I've already forgotten what it feels like to inhale each color.

To conserve each taste.

To exhale each memory.

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Untitled

Olivia Sherman

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The Creatures of the World Mac Harman The wind brushes through the trees, The leaves move back and forth, back and forth.

The humming sound coming from the bees And that star that always points you north.

The leaves move back and forth, back and forth.

The evergreens never experiencing change, And that star that always points you north.

The things around seem so strange.

The evergreens never experiencing change, The flowers that pick when they want to bloom.

The things around seem so strange.

And you wonder how this world has enough room.

The flowers that pick when they want to bloom, Creating thousands of different smells You wonder how this world has enough room, And there they hide curled up in their shells.

Creating thousands of different smells The creatures that roam the earth.

There they hide curled up in their shells, Thinking about what they are worth.

the hallmarks of suburbia Caroline Brewer

a rusted lawnmower (probably dad’s); wait where did dad go he’ll be home soon love but mom you’ve been saying that for years now the grass is growing longer, yet my patience is running short the landline in the kitchen; hush now, everyone’s asleep i don’t care i had to call to tell you i love you. now love is a four letter word and there’s static on line one a 2006 honda odyssey: the car smells like memories like music notes and melted crayons pack up your baggage kids let’s take a trip far away from here picket fences; of the white kind, the sort you see in movies pristine from afar, look closer, the paint is chipping, peeling (don’t touch them you’ll get a splinter but its ok because mom will pull it out)

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Untitled

Pauline Pauwels

They Say It Rains When She Cries Drake Richards

They say it rains when she cries Collapses as her soul is pried Robbed at day, left for dead at night The sorrow, she tries to disguise.

They say it rains when she cries As they slice through rings with their knife Earth’s solely dirt, no more highs The animals rot through the night.

They say it rains when she cries A tear for each one that now flies The woods drenched, the deserts dry, She sobs where there was once life.

They say it rains when she cries And the pain falls out through her eyes Gray fills the darkened blue skies As she slowly begins to die.

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The Pipe Maker Tom Baker

In an odd little town surrounded by cypress trees, That couldn’t have been concealed better, An odd little wood-carving man you’d have seen, The masterful Pipe Maker.

Each morning he took his brilliant briar burls, Sometimes five a day.

He would carve them, file them, wax them, burn them, And elegant pipes he’d create.

The Pipe Maker’s talent and craft were known worldwide, By mark but not by name, And anyone who smoked his pipes did cry, “No craftsman’s quite the same!”

But the fires of his artistic passion that he did stoke, With unparalleled skill, Produced malevolent – though palatable – tobacco smoke, That everyone knew could kill.

He knew smoking was slowly poisoning him, But he puffed his pipes as well, Because a life with nothing to appreciate, Is surely not life, but Hell.

Inhaling the warm white wisps through his own pipe, While he transformed his briar every day, He was more than content with his style of life, And willingly withered away.

But still whispered in the leaves of the cypress trees, Every time they waver, And spoken in briar by the pipes of his legacy, “Rest in peace, The Pipe Maker.”

The Night

Mackenzie Gibbon As the night grows darker And the kids sleep inside The day is no longer No one is outside The moon becomes fuller As the night grows darker And the wind becomes cooler The day is no longer As the night becomes silent The moon becomes fuller No one dares to stir up violence And the wind becomes cooler The moon begins to fall As the night becomes silent The night feels so small No one dares to stir up violence As the sun starts to peak The moon begins to fall But everything remains meek The night feels so small The kids sleep inside No beds let out a creek No one dares even to try To let out a peep

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Untitled

Pauline Pauwels

Transition

Vincent Ingram Under indigo skies the day comes to an end The sun falls down into its resting place Remnants of red transformed to hues of blues fill the sky As the sun's warmth disappears, the chill of night fills the void Under indigo skies change is in motion The Day slowly shifts to night Rays of clarity brought by the sunReplaced by the translucid glow of the moon Under indigo skies man put travails to rest The inundation of stress is pausedRest is now paramount All things prepare for another day

What do you want to do?

Leonora Lee

I’ve been robbed.

And no one will help.

I’ve lost everything.

I never even had it, it was never even mine, but it could’ve been.

It could’ve been my everything.

I was robbed, of the only thing I could’ve truly owned.

A future, a dream, a life.

It was taken from me, snatched from my hands, as soon as I could talk, as soon as I could think.

A dream.

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14 That’s what I always wanted, but was always denied.

Taught to survive, but denied a life.

I was taught to create skills, not passions.

Any chance I had of dreaming was stolen.

Covered up by expectation and necessity.

They scold us for hiding.

For immersing ourselves in other worlds.

Living vicariously, through the people in our screens.

Trying to feel their passion.

Trying to steal their experiences.

Trying to see, what it is like to live.

They tell us, to create our own experiences and memories.

They tell us to embrace our youth, the most beautiful time of our lives.

But why?

So that we can look back?

And regret, like they do?

So that when we lose ourselves, when we give away our lives to survive, we can have something, to hold onto, and remember?

Will our future happiness truly rely on our pasts?

I don't want to live looking back.

I don't want to live worrying about the future.

I want to live.

But I don't have the time to live.

Don't have the energy to live.

Don't have the passion, the fire, to go out there, to fight against their expectations.

So used to listening, I don't know how to speak.

Too scared to take the risk.

Too scared to disappoint.

Too scared of the consequences that they have always warned us about.

So I continue to listen.

Continue to learn.

So that I can build my future, my future that they expect.

Now, My future "independence", my future "freedom", seems more like a future tragedy.

And this life, seems more like a prison.

I want to ask, "What is the point of surviving through a life in which I'm not even living?"

But I don't.

Instead, I do as they say.

I spend my time being cautious.

Worrying, and trying to live according to their

expectations.

They think this means I have potential.

But I feel like I'm suffocating.

I crave something more.

They say I can create my future.

They ask me, "What do you want to be?", and “What do you want to do?”

What can I do?

But survive, as they've taught me.

I have potential.

But I feel like I'm suffocating.

I crave something more.

They say I can create my future.

They ask me, "What do you want to be?", and “What do you want to do?”

What can I do?

But survive, as they've taught me.

Excerpt from: The Zodiac Society Cat Pitterle

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Leo told me once that I would be a hero, a savior to our people. He couldn't be farther from the truth.

Lights whirled around me in a storm of color, illuminating the faces of the other clubbers. I didn't know a room could be this hot. Sweat dripped onto my flushed cheeks like a waterfall on the surface of the sun. Energy buzzed through the air like a living being, vibrating under my skin and deep into my bones. Somehow, the crowd's energy left me gasping for air. I felt alone, surrounded without a familiar face to anchor me. I'd come here with two friends, but they had abandoned me the moment we'd stepped onto the dance floor, and I knew they wouldn't come back. As much as it made my skin crawl, I didn't blame them; once people knew what I was, they were bound to hate me. One glimpse at my ID card was all it took. And with my luck, the entire basketball team would know by tomorrow, and I'd have to transfer-- again.

But that was the least of my concerns. Right now, I needed to get out of here before someone saw through my disguise.

I pushed through the sweaty bodies, elbowing any too-close passerby away with huffs of indignation. Suddenly, an opening appeared in front of me, and I burst through it. I was finally off the dance floor. A crowded bar laid in front of me, and I grabbed the first empty seat I found. Slumping over the counter, I allowed myself a second of rest. The door was a few yards away; I might be able to get there without any fatal trips or stumbles. That, however, was unlikely, as I was notoriously clumsy. Leo used to berate me on that.

A light touch grazed my shoulder, and I spun around to see a young man beholding me. I took note of the empty shot glass in his fingers, but it was his curious gaze that gave me shivers. He looked strangely sober, and his eyes were lucid and bright.

"Well?" he asked me, voice low and lilting. "Are you going to get a drink?"

My eyes widened. "No, I-- well, I don't exactly--" He smiled, revealing paper-white teeth. "Not used to the chaos, eh?" He waved to the bartender. "A shot for the girl," he said, and the bartender nodded, sly green eyes skimming over me. He passed something over to the man, and I shivered again as he walked away to tend another patron.

The man grabbed the shot glass from the bartender and slid it across to me. "Tip it back," he said. "One gulp. It'll make you feel better."

I fingered the glass nervously. Stars, what have I gotten myself into? I took the amber liquid in, nose wrinkling at its putrid smell. My eyes watered as I snatched the glass and downed it, and the liquid seared down my throat.

The man laughed. "Better?"

I shook my head. I couldn't remember a time when my stomach had been this upset; it boiled now with an unnatural vigor, hot and fiery.

Forcing a smile at the man, I spun around and strode towards the front door. I elbowed my way past a couple blocking my path, stumbling when my foot caught on a lady's purse. Keep going. Breathe in, breathe out.

"Hey!" came the man’s voice from behind me. I ignored it, continuing to push to the door. "Come back here!"

I spun around to find him catching up to me. A nervous gulp rose in my throat, and I edged towards the door; something was wrong. The man's well-meaning tone contrasted with his cunning gaze and devious smirk.

He sauntered up to me. "I think you forgot your wallet."

My heart stopped. Oh stars. If he saw my ID… He produced a brown wallet from his pocket with a flourish, and I grabbed at it. He lifted it out of my reach and leaned in closer. "Oh no," he said. I cringed at his putrid breath. He'd been drinking after all. "It looks like there's some sort of… card…

16 in here. But that isn't yours, is it?" He bent down to my ear, and I froze, breath catching in my throat. "You're certainly not wearing any signs, are you, Zodiac girl?"

My hands trembled at my sides, and my heart beat so furiously I thought it would crush my ribs. "I-- I'm not sure what you're talking about."

The man grinned like a feral creature. "Then I'm sure you won't mind this." He grabbed my wrist, and pain shot up my arm.

I trembled furiously, but there was nothing I could do as the man lifted my arm and rubbed the makeup off the back of my hand.

"Please--" I began, but the damage was done. The makeup was gone, revealing an eight-spoked star imprinted on my hand-- a clear birthmark. A reminder that I was different down to my genes.

This was it, my death sentence. Jail for life, at least. Not showing my signs in public was the worst crime I could have committed.

Wait. If this man wanted to turn me in, he would have done so already. That wasn't his intention at all. I almost laughed in relief. "What do you want?"

"Just a dance," he said. "Only one. I'll have the DJ play it slow."

I eyed him, his cruel expression, and the wallet in his hand, and gave him a sweet smile. No going back now. "Well, as fun as that sounds, I'm afraid you have the wrong girl." As his expression morphed from satisfaction into monstrous fury, I jammed my heel into his kneecap. He collapsed, leg buckling, and I snatched my wallet and pushed open the heavy door, stumbling out into the night.

"You little--" yelled the man, but the door was already swinging shut and I was sprinting across the street. The night was still; no cars braved the potholed road. I stopped at the road's other side and looked out at the club door. It remained closed.

I buried my head in my hands, trying to quell my ragged breaths. Every time. The moment I thought I had a friend, I was duped. But never had anyone pulled a stunt like this. It was unprecedented, leaving me in a nightclub with creepy patrons and an indifference to underage drinking.

I moaned; my stomach still churned from the shot, and the sizzling alcohol refused to digest. I let my surroundings overtake me, hoping they might calm me down. Noise was all around me: owls whooping as they did their rounds, the distant roaring of a motorbike engine, and the single whip-poor-will of a nightjar perched on a building ahead of me.

Then another sound joined them: the wailing of a siren, cutting through the air like a barn owl's shriek. I cringed, head ringing with pain and memory. This must be a side effect of the alcohol. I heard sirens all the time. But still Leo's face surfaced in my mind, eyes glinting manically as he completed his mission and the police cars bared down on his house. Gunfire cracked, so vivid in my mind-- but that had happened years ago. Back when I trusted people, before Mom took over my schooling herself. Leo had been my teacher, but he had also been a liar.

It was worthless to remember, now. He was gone, little more than a memory in the mist, and I was just a girl standing on the sidewalk on Grove Street.

I don't know why the sirens got to me, or why I chose to listen. But I did, and I balked at the sound: sharp, wailing, and getting closer. No. I needed to stay far away. If Leo had taught me anything, it was that.

I stood up, hands clenched into fists. If I took the alleyways, I could be home in a quarter hour. Mom wouldn't know I was out, we'd be safe for another night, and I could forget this ever happened.

Then a scream cut through the air, surfacing above the sirens. A girl's, coming from that same direction. Street fights weren't uncommon in this part of the city, and I'd seen dozens over the years. It was the voice that gave me pause. Even here, in a

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city like this, there was an unspoken code: don't go after the kids.

I guess even that code was shattering.

My phone dinged in my pocket, but I reached down and turned off its power. I needed to investigate this. If the girl was a Zodiac, she'd be left to die without a second thought. If she wasn't‌ well, that was a risk I was willing to take.

Another scream. I started jogging, heart thrumming as it settled into the normal routine of exercise. But something else took root in my bloodstream too: adrenaline. By the time the next scream came, I was sprinting, high heels torn off and left to the streets. Panic took root until all I heard was the blood roaring in my ears and the gravel grinding into my feet with each step.

I found the girl two streets down. And I saw that I was correct.

Her fate would not be good.

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Water

Anna Cheng

A Short Story Ellie Johnson

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I didn’t know at the time, but you’d think my mom would’ve noticed at some point. I just wanted to be friends so badly. Like, you don’t even understand. I thought she was quite literally the coolest girl at the school. I did my best to hang out with her during recess, the only time we had in common, but she was just too popular. Instead, I sat on the steps to the slide with my knees propped up and my chin in my hands. I had the sudden realization that maybe if I got really good at monkey bars, then she would notice and want to be my friend. So I practiced. Oh boy did I practice. I even developed the calluses that are a mark of a true monkey barer.

After weeks of practicing, I finally felt confident enough to ask her to hang out with me at the monkey bars. Leading up to recess, I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t wait to go out and show her my proficiency in the art of monkey bars; I was sure she would be blown away. I quite literally jumped out of my seat when Ms. Miller called for recess, and I was most definitely first in line to go out. I had this weird feeling in my stomach, though. It was as if the butterflies in there had been given Monster Energy and jet packs. Despite the Energizer bunny impersonators in my stomach, I managed a full-on sprint to the monkey bars as soon as the door opened. I spent the entire recess with her at the monkey bars. The 20 minutes we had together felt like 20 seconds, but it was full of laughter and happiness and exactly what I pictured spending time with her would be like.

I was only five years old. I didn’t even know what it meant to have a crush on someone. Honestly, I’m surprised my mother didn’t figure it out before I told her last year. There was a reason I had a lot of guy friends in elementary school: we have the same (love) interests.

20 Today my dog went outside.

She’s old and it wasn’t for very long, But she went outside and sniffed at the sky.

And I guess she was happy but I couldn’t tell Because her eyes are clouded And her face is gray And her limbs tremble when she steps But She is still a good dog And my dog What a good Old Dog When I was seven we saved her And she was very skinny and very scared And she wouldn’t come near me for a while Because I was seven and wanted to grab at her and hold her close And she was scared because I was new And I might hurt her like her other people But I didn’t Because she’s my dog and I don’t do that to my dog And after a while she let me pat her head and give her walks And throw balls for her and dash around her in circles And it was good

Dog

Cat Cobb She can’t really run anymore And the last time I tried to throw a ball for her she just stared at me with sad eyes As if to say Why are you humiliating me?

And then I walked to her and let her lean on me Because her hips had started shaking again And then we went inside and I brushed her while she rested Because she’s my dog She turned thirteen last year And she’s lived a good life And I know she’s getting sicker and her limbs hurt when she walks And that her teeth are weak and her vision is blurred And that she’s probably wondering why I’m still so young And why there’s a spring in my step while her spine withers And why I still try to throw her ball for her like when I was seven And she probably wonders why she can’t play like that anymore

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Untitled

Olivia Sherman

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Don’t Think Keegan Kerns

She is lying on the porch, motionless. He does not want to move her. How can he move her? His strength has left him, his body is lifeless. There is not much he can do. He attempts to lift her over his shoulder; she is light, light beyond anything he would have predicted, but as soon as he begins to carry her down the stairs, his arms fail him, and she slides off his shoulder.

Scrambling to save her from the dirt, he turns her body over in his hands, resting her head in his palms and staring at her sunken face. How long has she been dead? She is still her. It can’t have been for long, he thinks. Why have I left her here?

He stands up, making the small sacrifice of letting her rest in the gravel and dirt for a few seconds while he enters the house. It is petite, a two story log cabin with a large kitchen on the bottom and a bedroom on the top with a few closets and bathrooms interspersed into the design. The kitchen is empty, all the doors of each room and bathroom open. It is a silent house. It is a barren house. The walls contain no phones, no televisions, no pictures. It wants no visitors. He goes in and takes a rug off the kitchen floor, making the house even more barren, and then exits.

He places the rug between her and the nearby horse-drawn wagon, her head lying directly next to the rug. He slowly slides her on top of it, being careful to not disrupt the dirt and minimize the potential for tearing and ripping that might occur as he drags her and her clothes across the rough, coarse ground. Her body and her light white gown are slowly becoming a burnt orange color to match the earth, but he swipes away the dust. Dragging the carpet towards the wagon, he begins to sweat, the heat of the sun bearing down on him; his shoulders are heavy, sweat appears through his shirt. He is weak. But he continues.

The back of the wagon is tilted down to reach the ground, for otherwise he would not be able to carry her into the back of the cart. He thanks God for this, but then condemns himself; it is not the body, it is her. What’s wrong with me? With great effort, he lifts her into the back of the cart, placing her next to a few tools, then attempts to close the wagon gate and lock it, but finds he cannot lift it. After several attempts full of straining and groaning, he lies down in the back of the cart. I can’t even close the wagon gate, he thinks. He looks towards his unmoving wife. I can’t even do it for her. He gives up.

He moves towards the front of the wagon, where he finds the reins connected to a stout old horse. He lightly cracks the reins, and the horse begins to move at a slow walk down a well-trodden path into the forest. The shade is rejuvenating for the old man, and he almost falls asleep. However, the back of the wagon keeps him awake as it drags constantly against the ground, bumping and screeching as it hits different patches of uneven land. The horse objects to this, stopping not far into their journey, but he whips and whips the horse until it begins to move again.

They move deeper and deeper into the forest, and the man becomes more and more fatigued, almost relenting to the call of sleep. He wants to get off the wagon and send the horse away forever. But he knows that it is not right. He loved his wife, and he feels that he has an obligation to her.

There is no one else to fulfill this obligation. Suddenly, the wagon hits a large bump in the road, and his wife rolls off the back of the wagon onto the forest floor. She is defiled. He jumps off the cart, tripping as he lands, but he recovers as quickly as possible and sprints over to her. He grabs her and pulls her back onto the wagon, praying to God that she is okay, that she is clean and pure. Instead, now she retains both the dirt from the house and the green and mossy texture of the forest.

Is this even her? He asks himself. She is too dirty, too...shadowy. His face contorts in disgust at himself, and he groans and flails in anguish. No! No! Don’t think like that! No! Don’t think! Don’t think! Don’t think! This is her, this is her, she is here! He reaches for the back of the wagon, and this time is able to pull it closed, latching it shut.

23 The wagon continues its ride over hills and small valleys, finally reaching its destination of a small clearing. Many tiny graves with tiny tombstones lie in the clearing, but no large ones. This will be the first. He stops the horse as they reach their destination. He throws out from the back of the wagon a shovel, and then he unlatches the back and slides out his wife on the rug once more. He looks towards her and speaks, “I’m sorry that I’ve failed you again.”

He carries the shovel over towards the ground in front of the tiny graves and stabs it, hoping that it will all be over in one strike. But it is not. The earth is hard and resists his efforts, and each time the shovel enters the earth less dirt is moved.

But he persists. This is what she would have wanted, right? I knew her well. I loved her. So I know, right? This is where she should lie. I knew her. She was my wife. She is my wife. Squatting down, he rests his hand on top of the shovel. He begins to weep.

“I will die soon too.”

Now he is on his knees. Throwing the shovel to the ground, he begins to dig with his hands while tears fall from his eyes.

Dirt cakes his nails. He flings the brown earth about, even in his frenzy making sure it does not get onto his wife. There is nothing but a dent in the ground; there is no progress. I am a dog, he thinks, burying a pile of bones. He looks towards the ground, then towards his wife. Now he holds back his tears as he crawls towards her. Pulling off her previously pure white night gown, she is now naked, but less of her and her exposed body has been dirtied by the earth when compared to the gown. Only a thin layer of flesh clings to the bones- she is a corpse, she is a corpse.

“Why are you like this now, you’re just a collection of angles strewn about on the ground, white and rotting in this…inhuman flesh! Where are you? Where are you? Where did she go?”

He stumbles forward, his chest falling on top of her head until he looks into her face. He sees maggots, he sees worms; they slide in and out of her eyes while her eyes themselves sink back into her skull. He plucks at the creatures, searching for them as they move in and out of her body as if stitching and sewing but he cannot remove them; they simply disappear and reappear somewhere else. His hands grasp at nothing. She is real, she is here, this is my fault, she’s not a corpse, she’s not a pile of bones, what is wrong with me, I can’t save her, but I can’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.

He stands, pressing his palms into his eyes and beginning to yell.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Picking up the shovel, he begins to dig furiously. In action he escapes. He does not stop, even as his arms become sore and his legs start to shake. He continues for hours in his weakness, slowly forming a shallow grave. From there, he walks over to his wife, whom he begins to carry over to the grave. He lays her in her final resting place gently. He crosses her arms over her chest and closes her eyes.

“She’s gone, and I loved her, but she’s dead now. She’s dead now.”

He looks towards her corpse. It does not move. Finally, he cringes and winces as he begins to throw dirt on her body. The body is buried. He walks to her gown, colored like the muddy earth, then picks it up and moves to the cart, where he walks up the back and then pulls it up to latch it shut. He looks one more time to the grave; his face trembles. She was gone and now the body is gone, right? He turns around to the front of the cart to spur the horse away.

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Dude Where’s my car

Mason Reece and Leo DeSouza

Billy and Joe were best friends. Joe lived on Main Street, and really liked big trucks. Billy lived on 1st street, and loved Transformers. Billy and Joe played with transforming big trucks all day. One day, Billy and Joe were hungry. They were close to the ice cream store, so they went in. Billy had a quarter, and Joe had 16 pennies, so they went up to the counter to buy some ice cream from Steve. Steve told Billy and Joe that he had run out of ice cream. Billy and Joe were sad. Steve felt bad, so he took Billy and Joe into the backroom to get popsicles. Billy and Joe were excited. There was nothing in the backroom. Steve, shouting to the room, demanded “Dude, where’s my crusty annular refrigerator!” Steve explained that the refrigerator could blow up the world. Billy and Joe had a mystery to solve. Billy and Joe walked out of the ice cream store. They stood on the street, where they watched big trucks go by for 15 minutes. Then, Billy and Joe walked home, because it was bedtime.

The next day, Billy and Joe walked out of their houses, to watch trucks with each other. As one truck drove by, it transformed into the crusty annular refrigerator. The crusty annular refrigerator couldn’t move, so it stopped on Billy’s driveway. Billy and Joe pulled out their detective magnifying glasses. They looked at the crusty annular refrigerator. They opened the crusty annular refrigerator. Inside was what looked like meatballs. Billy was hungry, so he ate a meatball.

Later in the day, Billy and Joe go to the ice cream store. Steve asks if they found the crusty annular refrigerator. Billy and Joe say yes, they did. Billy says that there weren’t any popsicles, but there were meatballs, and they were tasty. Steve got very worried. He screamed, “that was combustible avuncular radon!”

Billy exploded. Joe was very sad. He then went home to look at trucks.

The end.

25

Untitled

Morgan White

26

Escape

Rachel Marston

27

Split Ends

Rachel Marston

28

Someday

Laura Cunningham i hope that someday i'll finally meet you that your embrace finds me, and keeps me warm that we can be strangers, then friends, then more that i can have the courage to trust that you'll read the poems i wrote before i met you and still hold me close i hope that someday i'll understand myself well enough to devote my study hours to you and that you'll understand yourself well enough to let me i hope that someday we'll be wise enough to say the things we mean and love hard and fast, but not recklessly that when our fingers intertwine for the first time that the sparks won't shock us, but stir the fire within i hope that someday we'll care enough about one another that we'd be willing to fight for it that no one's skinny judgment could touch us, cloud our sunny skies that our fights can come from too much passion, rather than lack thereof. i speak like i know you, like my fingers have traced your temples enough times over that i know the grooves in your brain like i could recite the patterns in your irises by heart, but i don't know you. not yet. maybe someday.

29

Untitled

Jaishree Gupta

30

A Short Story Rosie Hoile

Love dripped down from the ceiling in the form of crystals.

Love bubbled gold in champagne flutes on each table. One has a ring in it—love cut and compacted into a diamond.

Love glistened red on her fingernails, stuck mauve on her lips and sparkled black on her dress, as she waited for her date, and love lessened as time slid by.

The waiter sheepishly slunk over to her table once more, and she fixed him with her best polite but unwelcoming gaze.

“Ma’am. We have another reservation…” Her tight lips dissolved into a smile.

“I assure you, my dear, he is on his way.”

The waiter hesitates, but as her gaze intensifies he nods quickly and heads once more to the kitchen.

She waited in this manner, impatient but dignified, for a half hour before the waiter made his way once more to her table.

She steeled herself, preparing an excuse, but— “Miss Ratcliffe, you are needed urgently at the front entrance, there has been an accident…”

She met the policemen out front, shivering in the New York night as she listened intensively, breath stuttering out between her teeth.

They glanced down and up at their notepad as they informed her of the details: car totaled, no other victims, body recovered from the Hudson, most probably drowned.

“They’re sure it’s Harrison?” she whispered. “Sure of it?”

The taller policeman nodded. “His mother and father have already identified the body. They knew you were waiting here, and gave us your name.”

Her eyes swiveled to the other one, who cleared his throat and bowed his head, as if cued to do so.

“Deepest condolences.”

There was a pause as the men shuffled their feet, the waiter quietly returned to his post and she shivered, blinking at the ground.

“Well, I—I thank you both for coming all the way down here from—the Hudson, was it?”

“Ma’am,” the taller one said seriously, “Perhaps it would be best for us to drive you home, to make sure you’re alright and safe.”

It didn’t sound like a suggestion, but she shook her head anyway.

“I…I think I’d like to stay in here for a while, collect myself. I can catch a cab home, it’s not far…”

The policemen glanced at each other.

“Really,” she said, firmer this time, “I think I should eat something, I tend to get woozy after a shock.” “You’re sure you’re alright to find your own way home?”

“Like I said, it’s not far.”

The policemen straightened up and she realized how harsh her tone suddenly was. She sighed and smiled sadly in compensation, batting her eyes at the street.

“My apologies. I’d just rather sit by myself for a bit.”

They left her reluctantly, but leave they did, and she walked slowly back into the restaurant where love drips from the ceiling and sparkles in glass—and now, she supposed, floats in the Hudson.

The tiny clock on her wrist told her she had an hour to decide what to do next. She walked back to her table as the waiter

31 vwatched her nervously, surely gauging her reaction to the man that had appeared in the seat opposite her purse and coat, fingering his own glass of white wine.

Well, she was irritated.

She sat down in her seat and stared at the man across from her, and slowly his stare lifted from the table to her face.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Still no date?” the man asked, as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation.

She sniffed. “He couldn’t make it.”

“Seems awfully rude.”

“Well, he died.”

“Oh.” The man sounded caught-off guard, and she was pleased, until he continued. “You don’t seem terribly sad.”

She frowned. “I’m in shock. What’s wrong with you?”

The man leaned back, his forehead creasing. “No, it’s not that. You’re perfectly aware of yourself and if anything you seem… annoyed. Inconvenienced.”

“When is death convenient for the bereaved?”

The man smiled.

Inappropriate, she thought.

“Hardly ever, I’d say, but usually people are more devastated than they are…worried about their schedule.”

“How do you know I’m on a schedule?”

“Everyone is, sweetheart, and you’ve been glancing down at your wrist incessantly since you got here.”

Her eyebrows raised. “You’ve been spying on me?”

“No, I’ve been watching you. You’re very pretty.”

“Thank you,” she deadpanned.

He smiled again. “My name is Roger. I can leave if you’d like.”

She said nothing except, “Victoria.”

He raised the bottle of wine and inclined his head, and she automatically raised her glass for him to fill.

“You’re three glasses in without a meal,” he warned, but continued pouring.

“I’m just being polite.”

He laughed. “So are you not heartbroken, Victoria?”

She was silent for a moment, fidgeting with her dress hem. Roger watched her, his face growing more solemn.

“You’re right,” she finally said. “I am…inconvenienced. I don’t think that makes me a bad person, because you see, we’d only been an item for a few weeks. I hadn’t met his folks, he hadn’t met mine— actually, he was supposed to accompany me to a dance with another couple in an hour. I was looking forward to it. My friends are very particular, but they would have loved Harrison.”

“J’accuse. You were looking to show poor Harrison off!” Roger declared.

Victoria’s mouth popped open. “What?”

“He whisks you from a lavish, romantic restaurant to a party with your friends, to late night drinks where he offers to pay— and you win.”

Victoria pursed her lips. “All right. And I suppose that makes me a bad person, then.”

32 Roger leaned forward, his face shape changing as he moved into different shadows—the candle on the table made him darker, sharper, more challenging. “It makes you a calculating person, not yet a bad one.”

“Yet?” Roger winked. “Well, I just met you, Victoria.”

For the first time, Victoria smiled. Genuinely.

“My friends aren’t as bad as I’m making it sound. I’m sure if I just told them Harrison died, they’d believe me, let me off the hook,” she said, reaching into the breadbasket. “I suspect that they’ll suspect I was making him up all along.”

“Well, they’ll see it in the papers, won’t they?”

Victoria shook her head. “Who reads the obits? Besides, it’ll take days to appear, he wasn’t old enough to have one prepared…”

“Shame. May that be a lesson to us all.”

“What’s the lesson?”

“Write your memoirs before anything happens to you, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Victoria echoed, drumming her fingers on the table. She glanced down at her watch, and noticed she had only forty minutes to get to her friends.

“Do you always pick your partners based on what your friends will think of them?” Roger asked.

Victoria hesitated. “Did you know—In places like China, and India—people still have arranged marriage, like the kind we got rid of ages ago, the kind where you don’t get a say at all, you just get assigned to someone. It’s up to your parents to pick someone for you. And you know, I read a study—that when marriages begin that way, when you’re not allowed to divorce and you’re just stuck with a stranger— those marriages tend to be happier in the long run, and I thought—well, my friends know me better than anyone else, and so if they like him, I must like him too.”

“But this is America,” Roger protested.

Victoria rolled her eyes. “I’m aware. But look around you, really look. Every marriage is arranged, in some sort of way.”

Roger frowned and Victoria pointed to the table beside them.

“That man has been fidgeting with a box in his trouser pocket for ages, and he’s just ordered a round of champagne. He’s fairly confident she’ll say yes, and I’m sure there’s love there, but he’s orchestrated the environment around his proposal in such a way that she cannot help but be manipulated over salmon by that chandelier, by the violinists, by the prices he’s willing to pay for her to eat. She’s forced to feel love, and she doesn’t even realize it.”

Before Victoria could even finish, a waiter came around with two champagne flutes, setting one down carefully in front of the woman and another down in front of the man. They watch as her eyes slide down the flute to the gems nestled at the bottom, and she gasps. The man fumbles out of his seat and kneels in front of her, and she launches herself at him as the other diners erupt in applause.

Roger turned back to Victoria, his eyebrows slightly raised. She wonders if he’s impressed with her.

“Now, would she have said yes if he’d asked in bed one sleepy morning? If he’d knelt down on a sewage grate in the freezing cold? I don’t know.” Victoria eyes them again, the woman fawning over the ring and the man dabbing his forehead. “But he chose this restaurant—out of respect to their relationship, granted, but also to send a message, that this is the way it’s supposed to be.”

Roger shook his head. “That’s quite different from India, though. Arranged with no say, out of your hands.”

“The world tells us we need to marry,” Victoria said. “It’s a rule, it’s a definite—it’s out of our hands in that way. We look for

33 people who can match or raise our own quality of life—like parents in India—and if we’re lucky enough to survive a year-long courtship we get married out of expectation. Maybe love has something to do with it, and maybe it’s all just pretend. In a way, it doesn’t matter who we are with or who we end up with, because society has more or less already chosen it for us.”

Roger sat back emphatically, a bemused smile gracing his features. He looks softer under the chandelier. “Then I could be Harrison.”

Victoria blinked. “What?”

“If the person you are with—the person you kiss, the person you sleep with, the person you dance with, the person you take to meet your friends—if he is as good as a stranger, what’s the difference?” Roger pushed back his chair and walked around to Victoria. “Harrison died, yes, tragic, but he was effectively a stranger to you. What’s the harm in replacing him with another one?”

He held out his hand.

“Ma’am?”

Victoria whipped around to face her waiter, looking at her fearfully.

“Yes, what is it?”

“I just wanted to say…I’m truly sorry for your loss, but we…we do have to clear the table.”

Victoria sighed and stood, slinging her purse over her shoulder and slipping into her coat.

“I was just leaving anyway.”

“Would you like us to call a cab? The charge is on the house.”

Victoria smiled gratefully—what she hoped was grateful—but shook her head.

“That’s awfully sweet, but I’m getting a ride.”

The waiter faltered.

“Erm—from whom, ma’am?”

Victoria turned around, looking out into the restaurant.

Love shined through the cracks in the teeth of the women laughing at their husbands, their partners, their lovers, and love heated the cheeks of the young and the shy, and love unraveled the seams of the well-worn seats at oft-sat tables.

Love held out its hand for even the simplest of people, and it was offering a hand to her.

“Ma’am?”

“On second thought,” Victoria said, turning slowly back, “the cab sounds lovely.”

34

Untitled

Michelle Rouse

35

Archer

Sasha Kostenko

36

Ode to Bras Rachel Johns

Oh bra, you spend your days Supporting my bust and resting on my shoulders Enabling me, a woman, to fit into modern American society How you wrap yourself around me, Unnoticed until you're not there, And yet when you are there You're scorned by the same people that would oppose me not having you There are entire clothing sections and stores dedicated to you High end fashion shows, even And yet my teachers The very individuals I'm supposed to look up to and learn from Cower from you Because how dare I, a student, an educated individual, have to wear a bra?

How dare I, a valued member of society, have breasts?

It's unnatural!

Say men and women are equal all you want, But femininity is not welcome.

This has, after all, always been man's field So how should I, a woman with breasts, and long hair, and periods Belong My bra, they've already banned you, I'm sorry I have to hide you now Cover you up from the world Because it can't bear to be reminded That it has to let women in sometimes Because it can't bear to be reminded That I am a woman That I am smart That I am strong That I am worthy That I am a woman with breasts and a bra Without time to cover you up because I have so many more important things to worry about

37

Untitled

Pauline Pauwels

38

Rejection

Sasha Kostenko

I remember you standing amidst an empty room - angel hair the color of the wind and the breath of the sky and the warmth of all the words you’ve spoken and left unspoken throwing your face into disfigured shadows. The broken light spilling through the curtains illuminated you, and suddenly I saw you for what you were.

What does a child feel when their mother cries? The dam that lifts the weight of the world off helpless backs, roaring floodwaters ripping muddy riverbanks from the land and crushing them into murky oblivion. Scorn for the weak, spoils to the victor. The briny liquid of the flood rises up so high it leaks drop by drop into my mouth, trickles down my throat and sticks to the branches of my lungs. I know it won’t let go because when I gasp for breath it never, ever leaves.

But all I’m doing is standing in that empty room, me and you and the whole world falling in around us. A crying mother is simultaneously the most silent sound, the one that you hear but aren’t sure is really there, you can’t believe is really there – and the loudest, the one that with the force of a hundred atomic bombs rips through buildings and peels layers of protective armor and flesh from the shaking skeletons of those who witness it. I’m four years old, and I don’t know why my mother is crying. I don’t want to know. If I find out, some brick wall will be brought down, and I don’t think my two hands can build it up again.

They don’t teach you conflict resolution when you need it. There is nobody to teach a toddler how to breathe above the rainstorm and thunder and hurricane of their parents’ harsh words, hidden always beneath touches and side glances and words that spit like rattlesnake venom. Trapped between two fronts of war that rage and surge like ocean tides, there’s nothing left to do but hold your head with clenched fists and bear it as brine floods every crevice of unprotected skin, and soaks into your pores, and floods your bloodstream and becomes more part of you than the surging rivers of blood that you were born with. The sugar words that follow are like the feeling when you ride your bike over the edge of a cliff. You move so fast to escape the shadows that, when they’re gone, you’re suspended in mid-air and struggling to grow the wings you should have already had.

Love. Love is sugar words and angel hair and the breath of the sky and the warmth of all the words you’ve spoken and left unspoken. It’s guilty looks when the fight has passed – it isn’t over, it’s never over. But your heart skips a beat when you realize what you’ve spoken can never be revoked. It’s hurt that lingers for years. Love is scars.

I know love because I’ve felt love. Isn’t this love? Every day I cling to the hope that yes, this is real, this is real, and I’m not some lunatic psychopath because my parents never taught me how to love. Of course they taught me how to love. And I know love is sugar words and believing when no-one else will, and the feeling of my mother’s angel hair when I hold her head and her four-year-old daughter comforts her when her husband is the weight of the world.

Father, the day I came out to you, I felt like every star in the night sky turned its cold and uncaring gaze upon the earth.

Each pinprick of distant light was a sunbeam that burned right through me. It hurt so much, my voice shook and my breathing was labored and I wanted to curl up on the asphalt by the driveway and become sucked dry of emotion, dead, dead, dead. Two glasses deep in wine is the only time you open up to me. I open up while drunk on starlight.

You tell me, some people are just born this way. When I confess to you of liking my best friend, you sigh and scratch your neck and don’t meet my eyes. You tell me it’s fine. You tell me you don’t care.

God, how I want you to care. I know you care. The world is sweeping you off your feet, but many times do I remember you telling me I’m everything to you? You care and you care deeply. But I want my confession to bring you on the brink of rage,

39 such rage that you set fire to the sky and bring wrath upon me that blazes like thunder and lightning, that burns away the floodwater clinging to my lungs, that shrivels me inside like the ashes of a mountain aspen on the face of a wildfire that destroys the entire world. I want you to cry me a river so wide and so deep that not even Moses could cross from shore to shore. I want for your rage to infect the world, because that’s love. I know it’s love because I’ve felt love. I know because I fell in love with my best friend, and the world didn’t care. The world didn’t blink an eye, in fact. It went along its merry business like it does every other day of the year. And the next day, father, you forgot I ever told you in the first place.

I didn’t want this to be a gay poem. I guess that’s just the way love works. When it’s there, you can’t help but recognize it because it tears at your carcass and it hurts so bad but you don’t want it to stop. But you do want it to stop, because love drove your family apart, and now you see your father on Thursdays and weekends and holidays and forget your favorite bracelet at his house but every time you try to look for it you forget and come back home before remembering why you left in the first place.

We lived in two apartments before my mother bought a house. I curled up in the squares of light on the carpet by the windows like a stray cat looking for a warm bed for the night, and because I thought I felt something there in the cracks and corners no-one wanted but the spiders. Under the bedsheets reading books and trying to sleep and staring at the ceiling. African flutes and glossy leaves that spill when you water them and copper pennies floating in fish tanks, old TVs and too-small dining-room tables and marble floors that make toy cars go crooked when you drive over them. Maybe there was something there. Maybe there was a family for us to find, seeking solitude half-way across the world.

I wonder what might have happened had I come out in the city where my mother was born. Some small town no-one here would ever care about. The Far East, my textbooks call it, so far east that it doesn’t even get a name. A speck of a star of a solar system some corner in the vast abyss of space and I choose to love it and hate it and wonder what it feels like to be hunted in the dead of the night because of love. I know love because I’ve felt it, and if my father hadn’t gotten that job offer, I would be shot.

I don’t tell her. I don’t come out to the woman with angel hair the color of the wind and the breath of the sky and the warmth of all the words she’s spoken and left unspoken; the woman who fled the husband who is the weight of the world, a man two glasses deep in wine, and born this way, and who drove my family apart and who would give anything to keep it together. The man who didn’t care, but would sell the world for me. I come out to him because if I come out to my mother all I see is the broken light thrown by the curtains and walls crumbling around me. I see flecks of stardust through the cracks and scrape them shut with mortar, heart hammering a war beat in my chest.

I tell my friends that I can’t feel emotions. Sunbeams and floodwater and wildfire. No, I don’t know them. I cough up brine and nurse third-degree burns and panic when my fingers find a hole square down the middle of my chest, from when the stars burned themselves into me when I got drunk on their frigid light and two empty glasses of nothing. I wear drama masks and get a minor role in the school play, probably because I’ve never been good at faking something so powerful it ended life as I knew it and broke me in ways I never knew it could.

8th grade art class I sit and stare and feel guilty and I don’t know why.

9th grade I snap into consciousness, waking from a daydream I no longer have the luxury of living. To open the double doors is to stop me in my tracks, put on a front I dug up in my mother’s closet. Did you know we’re the same size now? I’m four years old and slip on her black high-heels. She isn’t home.

I’m guilty again. I’m furious. There is no way in the entire universe for me to repay a debt this big. How do you repay some

40 one for the stars and the sun? Darkness and the moon reflecting in puddles, poppies and dandelions, the weeds springing up in our driveway, hot dusty metal before the car wash, striped shirts and popped collars and torn jeans and dirty converse, and the taste of cherries and skin-on-skin and the feeling in my heart when my 9th grade crush walks past me in the hallway and I feel something impossible? 9 months is all it took to create a universe. I don’t know if I want the universe to stay.

10th grade is my layer year. Layers of clothing and blankets and hurricane-force winds at over 70 mph that will bowl you over if you come any closer, friend, because I’m sick and tired of sunbeams and floodwater and wildfire and brine in my lungs and my parents only seeing each other once a year. I’m sick of shaking every time the words are on the tip of my tongue and I bite them back so hard I draw blood and hot drinks aggravate the hurt. Why can’t I just be proper? Ask you out to the school dance, take you to see the stars that made me who I am but aren’t even looking, share drinks and swim at the pool but not in the ocean because the brine makes me choke? Why can’t the cyclone ever stop, its water from a broken dam and words unspoken that I can’t ever seem to say either? All I want to do is fall in love. After all, everyone else seems to know how.

Here’s how it’s going to happen.

It’s a cloudless day. No thunderclouds or hurricane warnings, no wildfire climbing hillsides to engulf the world in flames, because the universe knows how important this moment is, and because I am the universe, it would never threaten to endanger it.

You’re dressed the same way you were the day I realized you were everything. You don’t stand out from the crowd when you’re in one, but right now there’s no-one but us on the hill-top for you to disappear into, no broken light thrown by the curtains, no floodwater to wash the thoughts away. I don’t remember who I was when I was four. I think you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

The words come so easy, I wonder why I’ve never said them before.

“I love you.”

And you smile.

41

Orbit

Anna Cheng

42

Untitled

Jaishree Gupta

Pantoum: Bees Jessica Jenkens

Bees are the worst and best of things They fly around terrorizing us They fly around using their tiny wings I wish that they were open to discuss They fly around terrorizing us I wish they would stay away from me I wish that they were open to discuss The merits of just staying in their tree I wish they would stay away from me On this matter bees I must advise The merits of just staying in their tree They don't ever seem to realize On this matter bees I must advise They should fly far above me in the sky They don't ever seem to realize They won't sting me and therefore they won't die!

43

44

Inside the Attic Marisa Bishop

“Don’t go in the attic!” Those were the five chilling words that I persistently heard my parents shout ever since I was five years old. Now, I am seventeen years old, but I was never the only one who was warned not to go into the attic under any circumstance; it was forbidden. Also, my five siblings were threatened to never enter; however, none of us understood why we could not step foot into the attic. Sure, we asked our parents plenty of times, but their response was always “must you need a reason for everything?” Being the obedient children that we were, none of us dared to enter the attic although the curiosity was present. As I grew older, my curiosity became more and more intense. Obviously, there was something in the attic that our parents didn’t want us to discover, but we did not understand what we should not observe or why we should not view it.

Now that I think about it, there are plenty of things that are unknown about my house and family.

I guess some would say that my family was certainly abnormal. First, we resided in a house that was a 100-year-old mansion that contained many secret spots which were always stored with my parents’ papers and other “random” boxes of information. I did not have a chance to investigate and read any of the papers because my parents watched us like a hawk. I remember when my sister read some of the papers, and my parents refused to provide her dinner for a week. I do not think they were actually mad at her; I presume they wanted to use her as an example for the rest of us. Second, we were a fairly large family, yet none of us looked anything alike. Frequently, people uttered things like “wow! None of you look alike. Are you actually related?” Immediately, my parents answered with “yea, they all inherited different traits from both sides of the family.” I guess I never thought much about it; except, the fact that they were right- not any of us looked alike. I did not really question whether or not we were related because my parents always made us feel that we were all loved equally. I sensed that we were not related, and I did not remember a time when we were not a family. Third, we were not the traditional family because my parents left for long periods of time and a strict woman, who we just called Nanny, monitored, cooked, and cleaned for us. We never knew for certain where our parents travelled, and often times, we woke up to realize that the nanny resided with us for an extended period of time. It happened so frequently that we grew accustomed to it. In addition, we never exactly knew when we were going to have another sibling. Sometimes, my parents left for a long time and returned with a one-month baby, and other times they left for a long time and did not return with anyone.

Nonetheless, you probably want to hear more about the attic! As I mentioned previously, entrance to the attic was definitely a challenging task, not only because our house was enormous and had many levels, but because someone was always around to watch our every move. I knew that the best time to go into the attic was when my parents were gone and my siblings were out of sight. Unfortunately, Nanny had 1,000 eyes and could observe each of us at all times. At this point, I knew that Nanny was my sole obstacle, the only one who was going to impede my entrance to the attic. As I crept up the creaking spiral staircase, I entered my parents’ vacated room and into their bathroom where I frantically searched for medicines in the cabinet. I reached towards the back of the cabinet and found a tiny box that was labeled “Temazepam”. I turned the box and squinted my eyes as I read the purpose and side effects of Temazepam. “For the use of insomniacs. Only take one.” Quickly, I slipped two tablets into my pocket before shoving medicines back into the cabinet. Then, I knew that I had to act normal so Nanny would not suspect that I was up to something, but I had to make enough noise to attract her attention. As I headed towards the kitchen, I noticed that she was tuned into some pathetic game show like all senior citizens seem to watch. The only way to get her attention was by dropping a few pans. “What are you doing?” she shouted.

“I’m just making a cup of tea. Would you like a cup too?” I yelled from the kitchen.

“Yes, that would be great!”

45 Slowly, I slipped the two Temazepam tablets from my pocket into the tiny white teacup and quickly stirred it with a teaspoon.

Slowly and cautiously, I eased into the living room where Nanny was watching TV. “Here you go! I hope you like it,” I added with a slight smirk.

“Thank you!”

Just like the bottle promised, within a matter of minutes, Nanny fell asleep on the couch. My work was done: my parents were not home, Nanny was asleep, and my siblings were busy and out of my way. I tiptoed upstairs to the attic and attempted to gently push the door. Of course, my parents locked the door! Frantically, I searched to determine where they could have key out of the moist soil and anxiously brushed the soil off. I knew that this key would answer all the questions that I had about the peculiar attic. Although I was a bit nervous, I was more than ready to see what secrets the attic held. I shoved the key into the lock and pushed against the door, and instantly, the nippy air and stale aroma exited the room. The ancient room was pitch black, so, I timidly felt around the wall for a light switch. As the lights flickered, what once had been a complete secret in the family had been exposed and stood back in shock.

First, I was unsure what the meaning was of all the things I was looking at: filled boxes that were stacked to the ceiling, newspaper clippings and maps pinned to the wall, a giant calendar on a table, a massive file cabinet. Unsure as to what I discovered, I moved closer to the wall so I could investigate the newspaper clippings.

“MOST WANTED in Wisconsin: The Lytles are suspected of more than a dozen unsuccessful kidnappings and six successful kidnappings. If you find them or have any information regarding their location, please contact the Wisconsin Police Department immediately.”

I moved to the next wall where my five siblings’ and my baby picture were pinned to a map. I scavenged to find which baby looked most like me. As my eyes slowly studied the picture that was located in Michigan, I noticed that underneath the white bordered picture, “Box 2c” was lightly written. I examined the room and found a box that was under a number of other boxes and labeled 2c in big red letters. At this point, I was anxious, curious, and shocked; so, carelessly, I pulled the box from underneath the stack, threw the lid to the side, and pulled out numerous papers. I gasped and took a deep breath. Of course, the pictures were troubling; picture after picture, I was an infant in the arms of some other people or at the hospital.

As I pieced the puzzle together, I determined that my siblings and I were kidnapped. I experienced anger like a blazing fire pit that erupted from my eyes. A piercing cry engulfed the attic. I contemplated if I should contact the police department. As my body trembled, I realized that this was the only family I knew. I wondered what will happen to my younger siblings if my parents go to prison. I pondered why I disobeyed my parents’ command to NEVER enter the attic.

I began to feel like I did not know who I should believe about things. I did not know if I was more disappointed that my parents kidnapped all of us or that they attempted to keep it a secret for years. Either way, I was beyond shocked to what I learned. Of course, I studied the information and took multiple pictures of the documents on my phone. Hours went by but somehow I was unaware of how much time I had left until someone would discover that I was missing. Hesitantly, I put down the folders, closed the box, and stumbled out of the attic.

Then, my therapist interrupted me. “Can you pause for a second. I have that all written down, but can you tell me about how the items that were in the attic have affected your life? Also, how have you been recovering since your sessions with me and the medicine that was prescribed?”

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Mackenzie Newman

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Mackenzie Newman

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Dante’s Inferno Kelly Bright

Nightmare

Sam Stanforth The Nightmare floats adrift in the Dreamlands, Born of lunatic scholars who wished, Desperately, to see what should not be seen.

To line one’s brain with eyes!

To transcend humanity!

Oh, what a noble cause!

A deluded ritual grants audience With ascendant beings, and plunges The school into the Nightmare.

A Hunter, drenched in sanguine reds, Stalks the street for signs of the scourge.

The line between man and beast is blurred, And the Hunt begins again, as it always has.

Tonight, of all nights, is ripe for transcendence.

Fighting through scourge-stricken beasts – Or are they really beasts? – The Hunter fights, finding but not seeking truth, Dragged into the eldritch Nightmare.

A disgraced queen, last of her line, Cries at the blood-red moon.

And as she cries, her child, Ungodly thing that it is, cries too.

The Ritual gives and the Ritual takes away, And the Nightmare shifts and churns unending.

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Lindsey LaSasso I don’t believe in ghosts but there you are standing right in front of me watching me with those piercing eyes I don’t believe in ghosts But I sense your hand On the small of my back Just like it used to be I don’t believe in ghosts But I hear you whispering The beautiful words You used to say Back when you loved me I don’t believe in ghosts But your lips are on mine And I can feel your body pressed up against me I don’t believe in ghosts But I feel your hand in mine Your eyes staring into mine Your heart beating with mine I don’t believe in ghosts Because just like I didn’t believe in you You didn’t believe in me.

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Morgan White

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Alex Bandong

How We Met

Tatiana Bohorquez We met exactly 83 days, 52 minutes, and 6 seconds ago I was walking to work and she to the coffee shop I “dropped” my wallet wanting her to think as if I didn’t know And I waited for her to call out “sir” so I could stop Holding her hand out, she offered it back to me I saw her lips moving but I couldn’t make out a word All I could see were eyes that opened a soul that’s carefree Not entrapped by steel bars of a cage, a free bird A concept I have always dreamed of since the age of 18 But my suit stained with corruption has become my new skin Sitting in a box all day, making phone calls to convene My only way of escape is at the bottom of a bottle of gin Yet, looking in her eyes I can feel that bottle crack Perhaps there more to life than a layer of glass The possibility of a white, picket-fenced house in a cul de sac Maybe even go to church during Sunday morning mass

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54

Bubbles

Liya Chen

An Ode to the Passenger Seat Kelly Bright

From this single position, the universe pervades.

A profusion of stars satiating a single sky, Evanescence in effervescence.

A spectrum of bands line the edge, Everything that beauty is and ever will be, Contained within this tiny frame.

Solid windows keeping us unscathed, Keeping us excited, Keeping us dancing between a sort of lucid dream, And a sort of distorted reality.

Barely awake, Barely asleep.

It elicits unparalleled conversation, Human connection analyzing human connection, Constantly kinematic, yet all just potential.

From this single position, we defy dimension.

We go places we've never been, See those we've yet to meet.

We can exist in the past, Present, And future.

Simultaneously.

The power of control exercised without risk.

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56

Betraying the Sea Kelly Bright

I never thought I would betray the sea.

Fracture our promise through its very core The essence of beauty was clear to me My once fulfilled self, yearns for something more Music from shells no longer ring as sweet I've left the soothing mix of salt and air And abandoned the sand against my feet Forgot a sky I thought could not compare The sacred vow between us is broken I've found another shade to admire Easier to leave with words unspoken But I cannot hide my new desire I betrayed the sea when I saw her eyes So blue, so green, my God, they mvesmerize.

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Alex Bandong

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Lenny's Way Hanna Saklad

Lenny doesn't eat much lately.

He slouches in his chair His head lolls forward He's growing thin.

I worry, so I spoon him soup.

He practically spits it out But really it just dribbles down his chin And drips onto the napkin in his lap I put it there.

Lenny doesn't sleep much lately.

He stays right in his chair His eyes are glossy He's never relaxed.

I worry, so I carry him to bed.

He drags his feet along the way But really, he doesn't move at all And gravitates toward the floor I lay him down.

Lenny doesn't speak much lately.

He exists silently His mouth gapes open He keeps his thoughts a secret.

I worry, so I make conversation.

He never responds But sometimes he belches And lets out putrid air I fall quiet.

Lenny doesn't smell good lately.

He never takes a shower His morning routine is broken He is going rotten.

I worry, so I sponge him down.

He lets me do it But his skin isn't dirty And it doesn't help I fill the house with flowers.

Lenny doesn't breathe much lately.

He doesn't gasp or sputter His chest stays still He has abstained from air.

I worry, so I perform CPR. He ignores me But head flops sideways And he stares elsewhere I give up.

Lenny's heart doesn't beat much lately.

He keeps it silent in his chest.

His blood is cold and still.

He has forsaken life.

I worry, so I call the doctor.

He tells me Lenny's gone But Lenny's still lain down And he hasn't moved an inch I disregard the crazy doctor.

Lenny's skin doesn't tan much lately.

He never goes outdoors His hue is a shadow of blue He has become ghostly pale.

I worry, so I call the taxidermist.

He tells me it's unorthodox But he's up to the job And I must give a pretty penny I pay up.

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60

Forgotten Memories Cameron Latta

The cold presented a unique opportunity for Johnny. He didn’t remember how he got here, and he didn’t remember exactly what here was. But Johnny knew one thing: always trust mama. Mama had some unique sayings. Brush your teeth, brush your hair and always be presentable. Never trust the skin when cooking – no matter how perfect, it’s only the first layer. Watch your mouth and watch your eyes – control these and never fear. But Mama would have wanted him safe. At least Mama brought back good feelings, warm feelings. Where was Mama?

A scream pierces the night. He looked left, and then he looked right. He saw nothing - that sounded like mama.

Maybe Lynn was playing some tricks again?

Johnny exhaled, his breath forming a steaming mist. Mama was a good thing in Johnny’s life, always looking out for him, always helping him. If only Lynn was just a bit nicer to her. Lynn was always a mean person, playing nasty tricks on mama and him. But Lynn cared for him as well. Lynn was just about the only person Johnny knew just as well as mama.

Mama may have been his bestest friend, but Lynn was his favorite protector. Don’t ya’ll mess with Johnny. Otherwise I’ll be coming for you. Lynn was always there for him, when mama couldn’t be. Why didn’t mama like her?

Giggles sounded nearby. Johnny whipped around, looking for the source, but never finding it. “Oh, poor Johnny.

Don’t you worry. I’m just over here.”

Johnny shuddered. He hugged his jacket closer to his chest, before turning to his side. Hopefully the warmth would stay a little longer. Johnny remembered a little better. Mama and Lynn had vanished, but… there was another. Daddy? No, Daddy was gone way before then. Johnny didn’t remember much of Daddy. Johnny always thought fondly of him, though.

Johnny sat crying in the corner. A shadow covered the light from the door. “Man up, son. Sometimes, you got to show them they don’t matter.” Johnny always did wonder where Daddy went.

Another scream rent the air, gruffer than the first. Johnny turned to look around, but all he saw were shadows. The giggled sounded again. “That’s right Johnny. Just stay hidden. I’ll take care of everything you need.”

Johnny cried out in fear, startled from his restless slumber. Johnny didn’t like those memories. They always scared him. He never knew what happened to mama, or Lynn, or papa. He didn’t like not knowing. Johnny closed his eyes once more.

Crying pierced the distance, leading Johnny onward. Wailing, sobbing cries, pleas for mercy left the captors. Johnny didn’t understand – why were they crying?

Johnny’s eyes leaked tears before bursting open. Mama, Lyn, Papa – something happened. What was it, what was it, what was it?! Johnny took a deep breath. Calm, Johnny, calm. Think. Relax. Remember. And it flowed.

Why were they crying? The two people - Mama? Lynn? – were staring at the figure of another. To their right, a man paced across the ground. He stopped, and mad cackling burst forth, insanity echoing in his statements.

“Poor Charles, thought he could run. Thought he could hide.” The figure paused to chuckled. “Well, serves him right. No one can hide from me, the great Montierre.” The figure began to pace back and forth.

“You’re mad!” The two people had huddled too close together on the ground, and Johnny could no longer discern who was who. Montierre looks back at them before smiling.

“Aren’t we all, sweetheart.” Johnny flinches in disgust, but remains quiet. “It’s the madness that keeps us company in the lonely abyss. And it’s something Charles forgot. Oh, but the madness didn’t forget him.” The man burst into his highpitched laughter once more, grating on Johnny’s mind. It’s almost enough to-

61

Johnny awoke, screaming again. The barren glade where he resided was fairly isolated from humanity. Why had he come here? It was strangely familiar. Wait! This was- Johnny looked to the edge of the circle, at a gnarled oak with two familiar stains of blood. Why were Johnny sees the man standing there, blood dripping from his knife. Mama- mama was- Johnny stifled the thought.

All he could do was look as Montierre’s arm raised, and raised. Oh god no, no please no! Johnny rushed forward, but it’s all for naught. Lynn’s arm seemed so weak, so powerless, held out as if the knife it held had not pierced Montierre’s side.

Johnny almost began to cry, before he double-taked.

Montierre’s knife had not pierced Lynn! She was okay! Johnny rushed to her, but stopped short. There was something different about Lynn.

Johnny turned slightly, and saw the few drops of blood in the center of the clearing. Something had happened. Something important. But the cold chilled Johnny to the bone, and he no longer could think so well. What had happened? Why could he not remember?!

Lynn looked different, gazing at the knife. Johnny didn’t care.

“Lynn!” He shouted. She startled at the sound of her own name, and hastily drew her knife at the approaching Johnny.

Johnny didn’t hesitate – this was Lynn. His best protector. His arms extended and he closed the distance. Lynn’s arm swung and- silky blackness.

Come on, come on, come on! What was it?! Johnny trembles in the icy clearing, the red patches alternating between their crimson hue and grassy nature. Johnny collapses, landing in a pile of limbs. What had happened? Why couldn’t he remember?! Where was Lynn?!

Johnny woke up to find the Lynn gone. Mama was- no, Johnny didn’t want to think about mama. Lynn was still alive. He needed to find her. Montierre’s cooling corpse still leaked onto the ground, but traces of Lynn could still be found. The cold was ever-present. When did it get so cold? Johnny didn’t remember, but at least it presented a unique opportunity.

Johnny sat up fully. He had to find Lynn. Where had she gone? Looking around the clearing, he saw a little path behind him. Maybe she went there? Johnny walked forward.

“Lynn? Lynn?” Johnny shouted. The trees were leaning closer, on the path. Dark overarching talons waiting for their prey.

Johnny cringed. He didn’t like this path, but he had to find Lynn.

Johnny darted through a small opening in the trees appeared in front of him. Never had he been so glad to feel the dark, grey light on his face.

“Lynn?” Johnny called out. He was scared. So, so scared. His feet tremble, his arms shake, and his heart furiously pounds in his chest. Something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right at all. Johnny looked around the smaller clearing. Black bushes had pushed through the ground, and their glistening red berries, appearing every bit as sweet as cherries, were protected by the claw-like branches of the dead trees right behind them.

“Hehehehe!” Johnny jumped at the sudden giggle in his ear, whipping his face around to encounter darkness. Johnny stumbled back. The path was gone. Where had it gone?

“Hehehe!” The giggle echoes around the clearing, the moon had vanished behind the trees, and murky darkness covered the sky, blotting out the stars. Johnny whimpered. Where was Lynn?

“Oh, poor Johnny. I’m right here.” Johnny twisted around, relieved eyes looking for Lynn’s face in the forest. But where was she?

“I told you, I’m right here Johnny.” Johnny spun again, desperate eyes looking for Lynn, before encountering a stiff resis-

tance.62 Johnny fell as he looked in front of him, at Lynn – but not Lynn. Lynn was protective, nice on occasions. This monster was absolutely loathsome, dark claws instead of nails, white eyes instead of colored, and a crooked, twisted smile on its face.

“Who- who are you?” Johnny couldn’t believe his eyes. This wasn’t Lynn. This couldn’t be her.

“Oh silly boy. I am Lynn, Lynn unrestrained by your pesky ‘Mama’” Lynn was never this mean. Never this cruel.

“You’re not Lynn! There’s no way you could be her!” Johnny had to believe. Lynn was the only one left. She couldn’t have been twisted into this creature. Johnny backed away as Not-Lynn reached forward, sharpened claws glistening with dried blood. Why was their blood?

“Oh Johnny. Poor, delusional Johnny. I hope you had a nice life. It’s mine now.” Johnny furrowed his brow in confusion, as Lynn withdrew her dripping claw. Why was itThe room held a scattering of toys, Legos laced the floor and Johnny rested on his bed. His eyes opened before he blinked. A flash of white, before his eyes opened to reveal a black iris. He grinned cruelly. What trouble could he get up to today?

Untitled Liya Chen

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Ero Dragon

Sasha Kostenko

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THOUGHT PROCESSES Anna Cheng PERHAPS OUR DREAMS ARE DUSTY MEMORIES OF BLUE AND GREEN swirling in the dark recesses of our minds what if the Earth did not have a sufficient atmosphere that we could live in? then we would not be here, my mother replies. our stars are balls of fire, gases. red giants, supernovas. tiny blue stars, black holes. we are the things that we dream of WE ARE MADE OF STAR STUFF, dear Romeo. the things we dream of? my mother asks me. perhaps not, then. i answer.

HOW GLORIOUS THE UNIVERSE IS, AND US IN IT, ROTATING AROUND A FIERY HOT BALL OF CARBON HELIUM HYDROGEN IRON MAGNESIUM NEON NITROGEN OXYGEN SILICON SULFUR! mostly hydrogen, my mother says. about seventy percent, in fact. why is the center of the milky way a black hole? i cannot answer that, my mother says. i do not know.

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Jaishree Gupta

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Prologue from Star FighterAnna Cheng

From the ashes of the slowly dying planet, two countries rose up to fight. There were not many resources left. That was what the fight was for. It was too hard to colonize the many moons surrounding the planet, as they had to have supplies periodically shipped- the stuff they didn’t have or couldn’t make or grow themselves under the bio-domes of the moons.

In the warzone, shots fly around the ship as the pilot narrowly misses a laser beam. The gunner yells through the comm, telling the pilot to be more careful. The pilot agrees. Then, the pilot sees an enemy ship behind them, about to shoot. The red laser beams are powering up. She yells over the comm for the gunner. Behind you! But the gunner is too late. The enemy ship shoots. It hits one of the wings. The gunner cries out in a terrified voice for the pilot to abort, abort now. They crash onto a nearby remote moon. The other ships in their fleet are now too far away to contact, even with the farthest-reaching distress call, but the pilot and the gunner try anyway. It doesn’t matter. They crash-land onto the hard, rocky surface of the moon with only one functioning wing on the ship. The gunner passes out.

Mission aborted.

For the rest of the story visit: https://www.wattpad.com/story/92966309-star-fighter

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Mackenzie Newman

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Mackenzie Newman

Who She Is Julia Gong

She hands out daggers If I catch it, I succeed If I’m caught off guard I bleed.

She dances with spears My shrieks and screams And falling dreams are Her music.

She knits with arrows If she makes me a sweater, I wear it with gloves And a bulletproof vest.

Her Achilles’ tendon is as hard as rock And her eyes are dripping flames She rubs a spark on all her words That quietly call me names.

Her whispers target my lonely ears And seep beneath my shieldless skin But before her voice got deep enough I dodged it, smiling grim— I stopped her arrow burning hot And cast it to the side Flinching, I waved to her through the mirror And put her back inside.

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Deming Haines

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From left to right: Sasha Kostenko, Lucy Daley, Charlie East, Rachel Blum, Esra Balkas, Mohala Kaliebe, Mr. Urioste Not pictured: Margaret Velto, Evan Ehrhardt