Ems Write Around The Clock Pages

Spring 2017 Dear Reader, Twenty-nine years ago, a group of students came together to publish the very first Elisabeth Morrow School Literary magazine, Write Around the Clock. Over time, Write Around the Clock has grown into a highly-anticipated magazine that highlights a culmination of our school year. A collection of the pieces produced by Morrow House students, the magazine is the representation of our students’ boundless imagination, talent, and passion for literature and art.

As always, the WATC Editorial Team has never shown greater devotion to showcase the fine efforts of our writers and artists. The latest edition of Write Around the Clock is an spectacular achievement that we should all be proud of. We truly hope the tradition and spirit of the excellence of creative writing and art on our campus continues for many years to come.

We are now delighted to present to you, Write Around the Clock XXIX, and sincerely hope that you enjoy it!

Love, 2017 WATC Editorial Team

Art by Annabelle Xing

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~Table of Contents~ Scholastic Art and Writing Winners Fables

8

Poems from the Heart

93

Short Stories

113

Critical Essays

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Art by Annabelle Winston and Catalina de Alba

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Scholastic Art and Writing This year, Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards gave out 30 regional awards, 8 Gold Key Awards, 7 Silver Key Awards, and 15 Honorable Mentions, to 29 EMS 7th and 8th graders out of more than 330,000 submissions. Only the top 1% of regional Gold Key Awards were recognized at the national level and two 8th graders, Niki Eckert and Annabelle Xing, won National Silver Medals.

Scholastic National Silver Medalists “Thank You” Niki Eckert Passing through the yellow gate to the suddenly quiet community, each object I turned my head towards became a memory I had had with my grandmother. Every intricate memory came seeping through my brain simultaneously. The monotonous bumps on the newly paved black road reminded me of the countless times she would drive over them on the way to and from my elementary school, with me in the backseat singing along to “You’ve Got a Friend” by James Taylor. As we made our way around the golf course, toward the road that led to her now vacant property, I stared out my window trying to catch a still image of the moss-filled sidewalks, but kept losing my place after every two seconds and had to begin again. Although I was getting nauseous, my memory couldn’t help but bring me back to the private, undisturbed strolls we would take while I talked about every single little detail of my day. The memory abruptly stopped when I finally caught that motionless image of the sidewalk, which was for a moment accomplished, but I soon realized that the car had just stopped.

My mom and I stepped out of the car and looked upon the beige house that, although sealed with irreplaceable memories of my childhood, seemed barren and empty inside. As we walked in, we were greeted by the sounds of the raging alarm system, the woody smell of Grandmother’s Nakashima furniture, and the sight of my memory-filled surroundings. I turned the corner, and moved down the hallway toward my grandmother’s room where I had taken my first shower and driven my toy cars around, when something caught my eye. A photo. I picked it up, looked through the thick layer of dust resting on its once glossy finish, and it unexpectedly took me back to that day when everything changed. *** Driving down the highway had never felt so lonely before. Neither the sound of my mom’s seventies music, nor the simple, boring conversations I had with my mom were there to fill the empty space. When driving down US Interstate Ninety-Five, it was usually the signal that we were going down to the Rossmoor community village to visit my Grandma; but this time, both my mom and I knew that that was not our destination. I turned to my mom and said, “What’s wrong with Grandma?”

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My mom took a deep sigh and said, “I don’t know honey, but the doctors just called and told me that she was rushed to the hospital for a high fever, and now she is being tested.” At eleven years old, I couldn’t fully comprehend what to feel, but I felt something wrenching my heart.

After an hour and fifteen minutes which seemed more like four, we pulled into a colossal building that blinded me as the sun was reflected from it. As my mom walked through the automatic sliding doors, and I trailed behind her, I glanced up towards the fifty-foot ceilings with lights that illuminated the whole ground floor. While standing silently in the smoothly moving elevator, not once did I try to look at my mom, nor did she attempt to look at me.

All of ten seconds had passed when the elevator came to an abrupt stop, and the doors smoothly opened. My mom stepped out, and I followed quickly after. As soon as I stepped out, everything seemed darker than it once was just a few stories down. The plaster ceilings had shrunk from fifty to eight-foot ones and the room was no longer lit by the sunlight that naturally glared through the glass windows, but by long, occasionally flickering LED lights with a slight blue tint. Although I started walking closely behind my mom, I felt myself drifting farther and farther away from her steps, and my whole body started to tremble.

I stepped into the dark room. Grandma’s face, weary and fatigued, and with more apparent wrinkles, was completely covered with tubes, and I could only catch a glimpse of it. My ears were thronged by the sound of the BP monitors, and I began feeling nauseous. Then, starting to tremble even more, I ran out and found myself locked in the bathroom, fighting uncontrollable tears. Looking up at the dirty white ceiling, struggling to control my emotions, I forced myself out of the bathroom, wiping away the tears that I wished would magically become unnoticeable.

After dragging my feet down the fifty-foot hallway back to the room, I walked back in. This time, Grandma was awake but seemed more or less the same as the tubes were still draping from her mouth. I could hear my Mother saying, “It’s okay Mom, I’m right here.”

Grandma moaned an undecipherable sound, fragilely raised her bony arm, and pointed to her mouth ajar. My mother said, “Mom you can’t talk. There are tubes in your throat helping you breathe.”

Grandma’s arm lowered down just as slowly as it had risen up. I made my way to her side, and put my trembling, yet warm hand in her stiff, yet frigid one. I locked my brown, clear and wide eyes on her grey, cloudy and squinted ones and whispered a soft “I love you Grandma.” She gave my hand a faint squeeze and gradually closed her eyes. I sat there listening to the breathing machine mundanely making exaggerated breathing noises, as it supported the feeble breaths she took. Being asked to leave the room so the nurse could switch out the old, dirty tubes with new ones, my mom and I walked out and sat in the waiting room outside.

We sat quietly as the receptionists across from us took countless phone calls, and we listened to the squeaky bed wheels of at least twenty patients who were wheeled past us in their old and outdated hospital beds. I finally broke the silence and asked again, “What’s wrong with Grandma?”

My mom replied, “I talked to the doctor and he said that Grandma has something called aspirational pneumonia. But the good news is that she can go home today.”

Being eleven years old, in sixth grade, I was confused by what I had just heard, but asked the first thing that popped up in my head.

“Is Grandma going to die?” I asked.

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My mom grabbed my hand and said, “We shouldn’t think about that right now, honey.

We should just be grateful that we still have her right now.” From my judgement, I knew that meant an unwelcoming yes.

It had not been until this moment that I understood all the things Grandma had done for me. Not once had I grasped the difficulty, at eighty years old, of unexpectedly raising an adopted, three-year-old infant from China for three years. Not once had I cherished her fortysecond nightly phone calls, all involving the same questions and answers about nothing but my day. Not once had I appreciated her patience during the times she put up with me through my frequent temper tantrums, and she did everything I could have asked for and beyond. It had not been until this moment that I realized I had not thanked her once. I stood up from the chair and made my way back towards the glum room. About to speak, my mouth open for the words, I quickly shoved them back in when I noticed that Grandma had closed her eyes once again.

Two days later, Grandma had already been transferred back to her house, and was set up with her in-home hospital bed. My mom and I went to visit her and this time her mouth was free of tubes, and she seemed livelier than just two days ago in the gloomy hospital. Though she seemed more animated, I knew it was solely due to the fact that she was back in her own home, and not because she was getting any better. In fact, both my mom and I could sense her deterioration, as not only her complexion, but her whole composition appeared weighed down by her disease and old age. I laid myself down on her bed beside her, and she said with a coarse voice, “I love you, Niki.”

I reached for her hand, bruised by all the needles forcefully shoved into it, and squeezed it really tightly, as if it was the last time I would get to see or feel her. I replied, “I love you too, Grandma.” As we simultaneously shed tears, she grunted, “Will you get me some ice chips?”

I carefully got up, made my way towards the bucket filled with crushed ice, and fed her piece by piece. These ice chips were practically her only food, aside from a few soups, but even those would cause her pneumonia to get worse, as the disease caused all her food to go down the wrong pipe and into her lungs. I climbed back onto her bed, lied beside her, and it felt as if I were three years old again, lying in her real bed, not accompanied by an oxygen tank and monitors, being held by my right foot, as we both comforted each other to sleep. I reached for her hand again and held it in mine, and as if it were eight years ago. We both fell asleep to the tranquility we provided each other. *** Two weeks later, my Grandmother died in her bed at home at 2:10 p.m. with my mom at her side. As much as I had wanted to be there with her, I had felt almost a sense of embarrassment for never having given my full gratitude for all the things she did for me. The saying, “never take things for granted,” always seemed like a cliché to me, and I never thought to take it seriously. As a young girl I never thought I would ever be without her because, after all, she was my grandmother: no one could ever take her away. As a young girl, I could not understand what she truly did for me, yet even as an eleven year old, when I was capable of comprehending it, I still never found myself saying those words. Not until after she passed had it truly registered, and this responsibility for a lack of gratitude has weighed me down since. Filled with emptiness. Filled with unworthiness. Filled with remorse. Filled with an empty void where those simple words, “thank you,” could have filled. But death is permanent. It is gruesome. It is cold. It is all together permanently in the brain, gruesome on the body, and cold on the heart. But regret is much like death: it is irreversible.

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“Empty Spaces” Annabelle Xing When I returned to my grandparents’ the summer afterwards, everything just felt off.

When our car rolled into the street below the building, I squinted through the foggy glass into the gloomy, black night. A lamp with a broken light bulb at the bottom of the apartment building was flashing on and off. Usually, the lamp would cast two unwavering shadows: a big, still one and a small, pacing one. This time, there were none. Only as I approached the telecom, I heard a bark and then the loud pattering of paws against the stairs. Meimei came rushing down and, same as always, sniffed my feet and raced me up the ten sets of stairs to the door. Huffing, I pulled open the heavy metal door, and my grandma stood there with her arms open wide, ready to embrace me. Her eyes still crinkled at the edges, her mouth still set in a wide smile, but the emptiness of her smile was evidence. Their apartment still smelled the same and looked the same, but the feeling of it was all wrong.

The day after arriving, I went to his study. I pushed open the door, expecting everything to be gone with him. Yet his computer still had his unfinished Solitaire game opened, the cracked magnifying glass still lay there, his glasses were still folded, the blue ink pen was still uncapped, the notebook with its most recent scrabbles was open, the faint mark of his fingerprints was still on the receiver of the red touch-tone telephone, and even the silver arowanas were still swimming around in the fish tank.

In one of his bookshelves I found a picture of the entire family taken while on a cruise in Canada. As I picked it up, my little cousin ran over to me and saw the picture. He stared at me inquisitively and asked, “Are you looking for him?”

I looked down at him, silent. Without waiting for a reply, he gazed out the window and pointed towards the sky, “He’s on a plane to a very far away land, you know?”

Later that day, we drove to a memorial park. I stepped outside the car and breathed the fresh air. Trees and flowers dotted the bucolic landscape, and a huge mountain loomed in the distance. Small, rock-shaped speakers played slow, melancholy dirges. A small palace-like temple stood amidst the rows and rows of tombstones, one of which was made of black marble, carved with a simple phrase “In Loving Memory.” Shakily, I placed down a bouquet of white lilies and lit a match to a bundle of thin, sandalwood incenses. I stared down at a colorful headshot of him, and a single tear trickled down my face.

“Hi grandpa, it’s me. How have you been lately?” *** Ever since I was a little girl, I would always go back to a city near Shanghai, China to spend the summer with my grandparents and cousins. Each morning, my grandpa, our Pomeranian, Meimei, and I would wake up at seven to walk around the community park and come back home for breakfast, a tradition shared solely among the three of us. No matter what the weather was, there would be a group of elders doing Tai Chi to music and another group playing Chinese chess on a stone table, over which grandpa would often start off as a mere spectator but would somehow become the main commentator. Whenever someone made a flawed move, he would be the first to catch it and call it out.

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During the walk, our neighbors would always notice me, “Hey, here comes the favorite granddaughter!” It seems to be the tradition that the first grandchild is forever the grandparent’s favorite. Grandpa would nod and smile back with a great sense of pride and joy.

Then there was a purple-colored set of seesaws on the playground which I liked to go on with Meimei. The tiny dog was too light to stay on the seat and would keep slipping off. Grandpa would hold her up so she could stand firmly as the seesaw began to rock. Of course, I never realized that and laughed happily as the seesaw went up and down over and over again until I vaguely remember my grandma shouting at us from the apartment window to come back inside.

After breakfast, my grandpa and I would head over to his study, where he had a huge fish tank filled with long, silver arowanas, a plush, brown leather couch, and a glossy wooden table, organized with row after row of drawers. My grandpa constantly had something interesting there, like a pack of small exotic rocks he picked up on a business trip or a classic historical fiction novel a friend gave him. As a result, I was compelled to pull open all of them just to check.

“Baby, come over here!” my grandpa winked at me from across the office. “Look what I picked up.”

He opened a drawer and held up a pack of pink Hello Kitty marshmallows and bubblegum, something my grandma would never have allowed me to purchase at the convenience store, but only admire at a distance for a while. At that age, I was obsessed with anything Hello Kitty, and this was the “cutest” candy I had ever seen.

“Oh my god, grandpa, I love this so much! Thank you, thank you, and thank you!” I screamed with glee and ran to hug him. Suddenly, I heard someone rounding the corner and quickly stuffed the candy into my pocket.

“What’s with all the commotion?” my grandma asked suspiciously.

“I got this!” I produced the candy from my pocket and showed it to her.

At the sight of the candy, my grandma immediately scolded my grandpa: “Why would you buy her something so unhealthy?”

“But she wanted it and you wouldn’t let her get it. She’s only a little kid! A small treat won’t kill her,” my grandpa retorted.

“It doesn’t matter! Have you ever read the ingredient list?”

My fastidious grandma snatched the candy and began angrily listing all of the “hazardous chemicals and sugars.”

My feelings were ambiguous at the moment: I had pleased my grandma, but lost my prized possession and ratted out my grandpa. Later that night, however, the same pack of candy and gum was hidden discreetly underneath my pillow. *** It was a text message that brought the terrible news. My mom picked me up from school and was abnormally quiet. Usually she’d start pestering me with the exact same questions she had been asking since forever, like “so how was your day?” and “did you learn anything cool today?” My fifth-grade-self would usually reply with the same dull answer in a bored tone, “good” and “yeah.” It was such a pointless routine because we both knew the questions and answers by heart.

Perhaps she finally realized that and decided it was no longer worth asking. Without the “conversation,” the atmosphere felt anxious and awkward.

My mom drove silently for a few minutes and suddenly blurted out, “Annabelle, Grandpa’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone? Where’d he go?” I asked in confusion.

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My mom pulled up to the curb, turned around and said, “Gone is gone. He’s no longer with us, Annabelle.”

“But we were on the phone with him just two days ago!”

“I know, apparently it was a heart attack…… ” Her eyes began watering up and suddenly tears started pouring down. Even at ten years of age, I could sense that the burden of telling me had weighed down on her. She whipped back around as if the discussion had ended, pulled away from the curb and continued driving without a word.

My body began to tense up and freeze as it reacted to the shock. Everything came so abruptly that I simply couldn’t process anything. He was supposed to be with us travelling during spring break, but then he broke his ankle. The next thing I knew, he was in hospital rehab and could no longer travel. We already planned the trip to go back and see him in only forty days, but he just couldn’t wait for us. He left so hastily, without leaving any words behind.

The gloomy silence during the ride was so frustrating and miserable that I prayed for my mom to ask her questions just once more. I could’ve come up with paragraphs, essays, even epics for answers to fill the emptiness. In the back of my mind, a never-ending slideshow of image after image, video after video, filled only with memories of my grandpa, started to play.

Unconsciously, I shook my head, willing them to just disappear and leave me alone.

Arriving home, as my mom and dad rushed to secure the airline tickets for the next day, panic began to set in. It was towards the end of the school year. What about all the school days I’d have to miss for this week-long trip? What about my competition, piano and dance recital, and school exams that were already scheduled? My mind began to go blank.

A phone call to my grandma finally went through. “Let her keep all the good memories of grandpa. She does not need to go through this. The last thing that he would have wanted would be to have her miss school,” my grandma said.

So the adults decided that I would stay behind and not attend the funeral. I was slightly relieved, but at the same time a guilty feeling began to plague me: “I would never get to say goodbye to him. Will he be looking for his favorite granddaughter at his final farewell?”

“If grandpa has any unfinished conversation, he will find his way to deliver it to your dream,” my mom said, trying to comfort me. *** Yet a day passed, and another. He still hadn’t come. Soon, I entered into middle school.

My life got a lot more occupied with a hectic calendar filled with all sorts of activities. My competitive nature turned me into an unstoppable warrior, and I was determined to conquer every single exam and competition coming my way.

Going back to China for a carefree summer had become a luxury I could no longer afford. I had to bid farewell to the fun fishing trips, the relaxing vineyard visits, the thrilling amusement parks, and the popular treats at my favorite restaurant. Plus, nothing is the same without Grandpa anyway.

Two years later, I managed to find a few days’ break between two summer camps and flew to China with my dad. The day before heading back to the U.S., I went to visit my grandpa for the second time. The same ritual happened once more: I brought a fresh bouquet of white lilies, burned sandalwood incense, and greeted him, “It’s been three years grandpa, and I’ve missed you terribly. Do you not miss your favorite granddaughter?”

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That afternoon, however, I became terribly sick all of a sudden, so sick that all I remembered was hearing my dad scrambling to call the airline and change our itinerary at the very last minute.

A few days later, I woke up from the fever and my mom called me, crying hysterically, “I had a vivid dream, grandpa came to see you while you were sick and sleeping……”

“He did?!”

I finally realized that maybe being sick this time was meant to be. I was constantly running from one race to another, so fast that I never gave him a chance to catch up, until I was forced to stop.

Nevertheless, that didn’t change the fact that I had never gotten to say farewell to him, and our conversation was still left hanging. To me, the cruel truth lies there, unchangeable in glossy, cold marble: he is gone and is never going to be a part of my life again.

Not only was he the grand double doors to the escape of childhood, but he was also the symbol of a grandpa’s irreplaceable care and love. His once colorful and lively self is so inadequately represented with a flimsy and lifeless plastic picture, one that creates a hollow, black void in my heart.

Looking back, my trophies, my grades, what once mattered so much to a success-oriented child, became only a faded past. Only after three long years, do I realize how much I wish I could turn back time. I would exchange everything in a heartbeat just to see him one more time.

But death is ruthless and unforgiving, and so is regret.

Art by Annabelle Xing

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Scholastic Regional Gold Keys “The Horrors of Hurting a Hamster” Aidan Kim After a sleepless night spent rolling around in my bed, I walked into summer camp with dark circles around my eyes and a heavy heart. It was a great relief that no one had found out about my crime the day before, but every time I got even near the science classroom, I felt my guilt eating me up inside. For the rest of the summer, I avoided that room like it was the plague.

Aside from the necessary science classes, I tried not to go near it. On some days, I forgot about the incident; I talked and acted normally around my peers. But as soon as I neared the science classroom, I felt beads of cold sweat forming on my forehead, and I looked at the floor while talking. Could they see the truth in my face? Would I be able to lie if someone asked me what had happened?

When my mother signed me up for summer camp in the second grade, I felt like the world was over. I would have much rather stayed home and done normal kid stuff, like play Club Penguin or watch movies. But she was concerned that I would never go outdoors or do anything productive if she didn’t send me to this camp… and she was right. That’s why I was so upset. I didn’t want to risk heat stroke while “exploring nature” or bake cookies when we could have gotten Oreos from the supermarket. Summers were meant for cool, relaxing days indoors with the A/C on full blast and a funny movie playing on our flat screen. All she had to do was bring me snacks from time to time, but instead she went out and signed me up for this stupid summer camp.

During the daily three hours of summer camp, I kept my arms crossed and held a perpetual scowl on my face. Every hour went by so slowly, and I missed doing what I actually wanted to do.

The second period of every day was science class. The class was a little more tolerable compared to the others, since our teacher, Mrs. Milne, actually showed us some cool things. But I kept my sullen attitude; I was not easily impressed.

As Mrs. Milne took attendance, I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms.

“Here goes another wasted hour of my life,” I muttered. I turned my head and started talking to my friend Jonah about our igloos from Club Penguin. I completely ignored her instructions for the day. What finally interrupted our extremely important discussion on igloo décor, were the excited, high-pitched squeals of another classmate.

I immediately knew that we would be taking out the animals that day. It was not every day that we would take out the animals, and a buzz of excitement filled the room. Mrs. Milne actually had my attention.

As she proceeded to the cages, she slowly, too slowly, explained the do’s and don’ts of animal handling.

“Whatever you do, remember their cages and put them back in the right ones,” she explained.

I started growing impatient as she continued to explain the directions and safety measures we needed to take. I sat back in my chair and just didn’t listen. When we finally, finally, FINALLY, had the chance to get the animals, I ran to a hamster cage and looked around for the

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one I wanted to play with. I saw seven hamsters scrambling about, and I knew I had to be quick to actually get one in my hand. A hamster with black fur appeared to be sleeping. “That one would be the easiest to catch,” I thought to myself.

I moved two hamsters out of the way and picked up the black one with my hands, carefully cupping it in my palms. As I lifted my hands out of the cage, I could feel the hamster waking up and moving around, probably wondering why it was suddenly in a small, dark, and damp place. I slowly walked back to my table and put it down.

The hamster started scrambling about, curiously sniffing my pencils and my fingers with its nose. I stroked its black hair, staring at it. I started wondering if it was even aware of its own existence. I rolled it on its back and watched it struggle for a moment to get back on its legs. The hamster made me feel like God. I would keep the hamster fed, provide it with shelter, choose to keep it safe, and play around with it until I got bored.

And I did, fairly quickly. I wanted to replace my hamster with another one, so I returned it to its cage and got another one. I slowly scooped it up and held it in my palm. I could feel it struggling to break free, but I held my hands closed and proceeded to walk towards the cages.

I didn’t think twice before placing it back into the cage. As soon as it was safely back in a cage, I looked for the next one, searching for the next hamster that caught my eye. As soon as I eyed another one, I heard one of my classmates shrieking.

“A hamster is bleeding!” The other children started scrambling around the cage I had just left.

I immediately felt my stomach fall. I ran over to the cage and saw the hamster, the one with black fur, fighting with another hamster in the cage. Blood was dripping down its leg.

Mrs. Milne quickly ran over. “Aww,” she said. “This is what happens when you don’t remember to put the hamsters back in the right cages.” She swiftly took the black-haired hamster out and transferred it into the correct cage.

It was me. I put that hamster in the wrong cage. My palms grew sweaty and my mouth felt as if it were sewn shut. I never had felt so much guilt in my entire life. My heart was pounding out of my chest, and I wouldn’t look around, fearing that someone would recognize how I felt. Did anyone see me playing with the black-haired hamster? Did anyone see me putting it back in the wrong cage?

Mrs. Milne never specifically asked “Who did it?” but I know now that I should have taken responsibility for my actions. At the time, I was too immature to do it, and too afraid. I walked out of the classroom that day absolutely devastated, the color drained from my cheeks. When my mom asked me how my day went, I didn’t respond, and when I got back home, I spent the rest of the day in despair on my bed. Ever since that day, I could never walk near that classroom without suffering from a guilty heart and sorrow for that poor hamster.

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“The Circle” Ella Toback Amidst the bustle of downtown London, the faint smell of pipe smoke wafts through the air as I run briskly through the streets of two-story buildings. It is as if I were invisible. People left and right are going in all different directions. Suits and caps, petticoats and boots -- none are as fancy as mine. I feel the thick air above my head. My dress gets caught under the heels of my mid-day, patent leather shoes. There hasn’t been sun in almost a week. Carriages move across the winding, cobblestone roads, rushing to get to their destination. Shop signs blur by too fast to comprehend, not a moment to spare. Young children roam the crowded streets during their school lunch hour; jump ropes and cricket balls whiz past. The smell of freshly baked bread floats above my head as I pass the cafe, where the old baker is in the window, visiting with a customer. It’s never a time to skip the pleasantries. This time is an exception; I have to get as far away as I can.

I catch my breath, turn back and look at the scene behind me. It had changed since I last paid it any mind. In front of me is a new neighborhood of Victorian rowhouses. All the numbers, even on the right, odd on the left, have the same, brass, lion-shaped door-knockers. On my left, a widowed grandmother and young couple exit their house with a new baby girl in their arms, smiling and happy. Walking the other way, I smell the smoke from the chimneys and the fresh cut grass.

I need clothes. I can’t look like a princess and walk through downtown London. So I walk through the neighborhood, back into bustling London and into Harrod’s. I look for the stairs and make it to the common clothes floor. The salesperson notices me, and bows.

“Your Highness, what brings you here?”

“I need a gift for a friend.”

“All right, come with me.” I follow her through the formals department and down the hall into the sportswear. She gives me an outfit to try. I ask the price. She tells me it’s no charge and an honor to serve her royalty. I thank her and run out the back of the store to the neighborhoods again. I needed to find a public washroom to change my clothes. I run around the corner and trip on the edge of my dress. Then, I look up from the ground at a man in a white coat with slickedback, brown hair and square glasses, and everything goes dark. *** Waking up, I take in my surroundings. I find myself in a windowless, white-walled box. There is no possible way I could have gotten in here. I look down and see that I am in the new clothes I had just bought at Harrods. That means that somebody must have gotten me out of my waistcoat and dress. I attempt to stand up; unable to do so, I put my hands behind me and scoot around to see a black rectangle roughly the size of a person. Scooting closer to it, I examine it further but am unable to gather any more information on how or why it is there. Then, scooting close enough that I can touch it, I reach my hand out and experience black again. *** I find myself on another street corner, amidst a new London. It is the same London I had known, but this is more colorful and there are these motorized things driving along where the carriages once were. What happened to my London? And who are these people who roam the streets? I look left to downtown London and head back that way. I stop walking when I end up in

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a crowd of people. There are people everywhere, all in a herd, watching intently as a motorized thing brings a young woman and a man towards Westminster Abbey (where they coronate the Queen). Have they realized that I didn’t want the job of Queen? Have they asked someone else to do it? But there isn’t another woman on the list, unless they have enlisted some distant cousin that lives in Scotland. I attempt to push past a couple of people, and everybody's head turns.

Thirty-five thousand stares are on me all at once. Someone stops a motorized thing carrying a young couple, and a guard struts towards me.

“Who are you and what business do you seek with us?” The guard barks at my direction.

“I wish to speak with my mother, Queen Delancy Adams and my dying father, King Edward Adams. I am Princess Helena Adams, soon to be Queen.” Dead Silence. Nothing except a man with graying hair and tailcoat fainting and falling to the floor with a thump.

“Well, Miss Helena, King Edward died roughly 80 years ago. I’m not sure who you claim to be, but a Helena Adams was pronounced a missing person and dead at the age of 88 about 10 years ago,” he tells me. I can’t think any longer -- all I do is drop. Someone has meddled with something. This is not the same London I had left. I stand up and stare at the guard with my teary eyes.

“Sir, what year is it?”

“1953,” he states as if it is obvious and even someone mentally challenged would be able to identify. And then, I do the only thing I could do -- run. I run through the thousands of people here for the coronation. I run at lightning speed until I trip and fall. Then, I look up -- deja vu -the same white coat, slicked-back, brown hair and square glasses. It isn’t darkness that falls upon me this time, but anger that rips through me.

Oh, DON’T YOU DARE!” I exclaim.

“Uh, Miss He-” “NO, don’t even bother! I have this nagging suspicion it has been you behind my disappearance. It was you I saw right before I went into that white-walled room. TELL ME -was it YOU?” “I won’t tell you until you come with me, and then I’ll you the whole story.”

“Oooh, so it was you.”

“I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no.”

“TELL me the story.” I couldn’t let him take me somewhere, but I needed to know what had happened.

“Come with me, Miss Helena.”

He gives me his arm, and, hesitantly, I take it. I follow him through the empty streets of London. Coca Cola signs are in every window, advertisements for those motorized things. Cars (or so they were called) are on street corners, a couple of beggarly people sit under ragged blankets holding out their cups. Everything seems perpetual. Even though the day marks a new era for the country, it appears that people know what is going on; and the episode that I caused seems peculiar in their daily lives. After walking for about twenty minutes, we arrive at a small shack. It has a thatched roof, and the main frame of the house is wood. The front door is made of what looks like thick metal. The man brings me through the door and into the foyer. There is nothing but a dark room. I walk around, leaving the man leaning against a wall. I come to the shadows covering the far end of the room, and something blinks. I followed the blinking until I end up at an elevator. I jump when I hear a voice come from behind.

“I see you have found out my secret.”

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“And a shabby shack in an alleyway with an elevator in it is something to be secretive about!” I reply.

“Well, Miss Helena, you don’t know where the elevator leads.”

“What are you waiting for, Mister? Show me!” He jumps slightly from the directness of my tone, but goes to work finding the lights and calling the elevator. The light flashes again, brighter for a longer time, and the doors open. Inside is a glass rectangle fit for one person, maybe two. The man holds the door for me, and I skeptically walk in. He joins me in the cramped space and presses the only button on the panel. We ride in silence for about thirty seconds until the doors open. There it is: the room with white walls and the black door. This time the door is open and the room is unoccupied. On the left is a science lab with some bubbling beakers on marble tables donned with expensive, futuristic-looking machines that make beeping noises and flash bright lights.

“So it was you who brought me into this future? A vortex of some sort? What is this place?” I ask.

“Uh, well, you could call this a lair of some sort – a lab I guess.”

“Tell me, where are you from?” I ask incredulously.

“The year 2015.”

“That’s a number.”

“Wow! You’re good!”

“No, seriously, how did you get me to this place? I need the whole story.”

“All right. I was born in America. New York City to be exact. In 1990.”

“Hold on right here, so you mean you aren't even from this time, but you’re from a different millennium?”

“Yeah, you’ve got it right. Anyway, I had been told I was a prodigy of some sort, a genius. I had always been interested in the British monarchy and that is really when I began my research. I began in 2005 when I was fifteen years old, freshly out of university. I had been accepted three years early, and I had finished my degree that year. After graduating, I moved here to London to start my research. The research was attempting to find a way to travel through time to meet a person of the British Monarchy. After ten years of study and discovery, I was able to create the room you were in, the one I took you in. For my first test, I came here, to this very time and place, and I was amazed at the sights and the grand scale of the coronation. The experiment worked, and I transported myself back to 2015. My second experiment was the one where I went to 1874, and that is when I got you and brought you here. But the thing is, when I brought you here, it was as if the time was going as it always was, but the things that happened in your life were gone. The people related to you, your daughter and granddaughter, were still here, but because you didn’t exist in time anymore, they had no idea where they came from or who you were. That is why I have to get you back to exactly where you came from in order for you to accomplish everything that leads up to 1957, or to this place we are in time. Do you understand?”

“Well, I understand that you are some sort of genius from the future and you have to get me back to where I was when you kidnapped me and put me through your silly little machine.

But the real question is, how are you going to get me back?”

“My greatest machine goes through time when you have a hair of the maker: a hair of a person from the time you are in, mixed with the hair of the person you are trying to transport back to the past. In order for me to get you back to your place in time, you are going to have to go to Buckingham Palace to explain yourself to your descendants. Then you have to make sure

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they trust you enough to take a hair from their heads. Then you will be able to come back here to me, insert the hairs, and be on your way back to 1874.”

“Whoa, hold up. You are saying I have to go and rip hairs from their heads?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I am saying, just on a more amicable basis.”

“Then let’s get a move on. I want to be back as fast as possible.” As soon as those words leave my mouth, I make an exit towards the elevator. Following behind me, the man pushes the elevator button, and we make our way up the elevator and out of the mysterious shack and into the heart of London. All of the citizens are back on the streets, pretending like they haven’t been fazed by the recent events. We walk up the street until he stops us in front of a motorized vehicle, one of those “cars.” We drive until reaching the front gates of Buckingham Palace.

“I will be waiting right here for you,” he assures me.

“Okay, let’s go pull some hairs out!”

“Go get ‘em Miss Helena.” I turn around, not at all sure what he means and give him a look of confusion.

“Oh right, sorry, you wouldn’t know what that means. Knock ‘em dead.” Again I look at him, confused.

“Ah, forget it. Have a good time, Miss Helena.” And with that, I make my way towards the guards. As I get closer, I realize it is the same man I had spoken with earlier, regarding which year it was.”

“Ma’am, we meet again. I presume you would like to enter the Palace.”

“You are correct, Sir.” “Are you meeting with the Queen and her daughter, the successor?”

“Yes, I assume so.”

“Well, then right this way.” I follow him into my beloved home. It looks exactly the same as it had in 1874. I follow him down a hallway, the portrait hallway, where my bedroom is. My heart speeds up in my chest knowing I will be close to home. The guard opens the door, and I look up, seeing the door to my room. I thank him and make my way into the bedroom that had formerly been mine, now belonging to my daughter, I think. A girl sits, preoccupied on the bed, reading a novel.

“Miss? Who are you? And how did you get here?”

“That is a long story, but that is why I am here. I have been told that a man, a boy actually, had figured out a way to travel back in time. He had an obsession with us, British Royalty. He told me he came and saw your coronation and went back to his year -- 2015, it was.

His next mission was to take someone from the past and bring them to the future. And because he was obsessed with royalty, he went and took me from my year, 1874, and brought me here as an experiment. It had been arranged that I would marry a man I didn’t know, and that same day I was supposed to take the crown of England. And the only way he will be able to get me back in time is if I take one of your hairs, mix it with one of mine, and allow him to put our mixed hairs through a machine that will take me exactly to the point he took me from.”

“So, basically you are saying that you are my grandmother and are trapped in time until I give you one of my hairs?” she said in shock.

“You have that correct. What is your name?” I asked.

“Katerina. Yours?”

“Helena Adams. What about your mother?”

“She is called Adeline.”

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“I hope you understand and believe me. Do you mind if I take one of your hairs with me?”

“For some strange reason, I believe you. I think I see a striking resemblance between the two of us that gives me some comfort that you are telling the truth. I will give you one of my hairs -- under one condition.”

“What is that?”

“Will I get to see you again, Grandmother Helena?”

“Yes, Katerina, one day.” With those words, she comes up to me and holds her arms out and embraces me. She looks me once in the eye before pulling two of her hairs out and giving them to me.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Grandma.”

“You too, darling.” I turn on my heel and walk through the doors, where I join the guard, who escorts me out. We walk through the hallways and out the front door. Just as I am about to get in the car, he speaks up: “I never met a woman as peculiar as you, but it was a pleasure, Miss Helena.”

“Pleasure was mine, Sir. Have a nice day.” I get in the car and join Mister Scientist, as we make our way back through London. Passing the bustling streets, we finally make it to the shack, down the elevator shack and into the lab. I hand him the hairs, and he inserts them into a machine.

“Miss Helena, please go back into the room and sit in the middle, then I will give you the okay and you will make your way through the black door. Are you ready?”

“Yes. Oh, and before I forget, what is your name?”

“Smith,” he says meeting my eyes, “Alexander Smith.”

“Well, Mister Alexander Smith, it was a thrill to be part of your experiment.” He gives me the signal, and I walk through the door. *** There I am, primped and ready to be married. I stand right outside the doors to Westminster Abbey, my father in his wheelchair on my right and my mother, in all of her glory, on my left. I take a deep breath, situate my veil, turn to my right, nod at my father and smile at my mother. Right before I take my first step, my mother calls from behind me, “Are you ready, Helena?”

After all I have been through, I think I can handle a small wedding. “Yes, Mother. Let’s go get ‘em.”

“In Time for Supper” Teddy Diamond Fear. When you’re 13 there’s a lot to be afraid of. Awkward moments. Braces. Grades.

Will teachers like you? Will other people think you’re weird? Do you talk too much? Do you talk too little? Will your parents ground you? Will your parents be there for you? Who will love you when your parents aren’t there anymore? Who will you talk to when you have questions?

When you feel alone? How about war? Terrorism? Death?

Today, Jace was not as fearful as usual. Usually he was afraid of talking to a crowd. But not today. He was preparing for a big presentation. He just completed an enormous project combining history and technology. After researching life in a medieval village, he created a

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virtual reality program and game. His tech teacher gave him tremendous compliments, so he was flying high. No, he was not afraid. But maybe on this one day, he should have been very afraid.

It started out like a typical day, with Jace’s mom reminding him not to forget things.

“Be home in time for supper, Jace!” his mom shouted out the door. “And remember to bring your friends with you. They’re invited over tonight.”

“I know, mom! You’ve already told me that twice,” Jace shouted back. “Ugh.” He let out a sigh as the door closed behind him. “I wish she wouldn’t tell me what to do,” he mumbled.

Walking along his usual route to school, he stopped first at Helena’s house. Jace and Helena had been friends since kindergarten. Knocking on her door, he called out, “Helena! Time for school!”

“Ha-ha!” A voice giggled from behind. “I’m faster than you!”

“Helena! I’ll race ya to Stephen’s house!” Jace laughed.

“Already there!” Helena replied, her voice sounding farther away. “You’re just too slow, aren’t ya?”

“No! I’m not!” Jace yelled. “I’m just a little … uh … tired!” Jace let out a loud, long yawn.

“Yeah, right. You’re always tired!” Stephen’s voice echoed from the next house. As soon as Stephen moved into the neighborhood in second grade, the three of them became inseparable.

“Stephen!” shouted Jace.

“It’s true!” Stephen replied.

“Let’s just go to school,” Helena intervened.

On their way to school, Jace really did feel more tired than usual. An odd feeling nagged at him. He felt his energy being drained and began to fear why he was so tired. He went to sleep early, had a good breakfast, but was forgetting something. He forgot about fear. His presentation was tomorrow and he didn’t know if people would like it. He was no longer afraid of talking to a group of people. But he was concerned about his project, and decided he would make some edits after school. *** In the tech room after school, Jace was putting the final touches on his project. He made a few modifications to the program, adding some ingenious effects to make the village seem even more real. Stephen and Helena were hovering, giving bits of advice. Doing his best to ignore them, he tried to concentrate. “There! I think it’s finished!” he smiled from ear to ear with satisfaction. Eager and excited, his friends couldn’t wait to try it out. “We should be careful”, Jace advised. “It’s a new program, and we don’t know how it will play.” Just then, their tech teacher, Ms. Morgan, came in to check on them. She was thrilled and delighted as he described the upgrades to the program. She couldn’t wait to try it out. And without waiting, she slipped on her new and improved virtual reality glasses.

Jace warned, “Wait Ms. Morgan! Don’t…”

And with a flash and a crack she was gone!

Jace and the others jumped. His chair fell clattering to the floor. Motionless, they were all too shocked and terrified to scream.

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“What happened to Ms. Morgan? Where is she?” Jace finally found his voice, worried about his tech teacher.

“I don’t know, she just vanished,” Stephen replied.

“Stop! We shouldn’t panic!” Helena said, but she was shaking too. They didn’t know what to do. Should they run for help? To whom? And what should they say? Ms. Morgan put on the virtual glasses and disappeared? How ridiculous! Who would even believe them? Everyone would think it was a practical joke.

After a brief discussion, some deductive reasoning, and a few accusations and finger pointing, they decided that they were the only ones who could help. Even though they were more scared than they had ever been, they had to figure out what happened to Ms. Morgan. The only way to do that was to put on their own glasses and see what happens.

Finally, Jace bravely decided, “Let’s go and find Ms. Morgan!”

Standing in a circle, they each put out their left hand and held on to each other. With their right hands, on the count of three, they slipped on their glasses in unison. Immediately, they were suspended in an energy beam, plasma particles streaming. It felt like an episode of Star Trek. For an instant, the world tilted and they were weightless. Nothing but light. And then everything was dark. They hit the ground with a hard thump and were knocked unconscious. *** Jace, Helena and Stephen woke up in a rustic medieval-looking house, just like the houses in Jace’s virtual reality program. They were lying on straw beds.

“What? Where are we?” Jace sat up, confusion on his face.

“Don’t you remember? The glasses? Ms. Morgan?” Helena responded with a look of obviousness.

“Oh, right. Wait! Oh no! We’re in the program! We’re stuck in my history project!” he realized. “I did a pretty good job, too! The straw beds. The sound of horse’s hooves outside. It really smells and sounds like a medieval village.”

Standing near them, a tall robed man with silver hair was listening to their conversation.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” exclaimed Helena, startled.

Jace pondered, “I don’t remember creating you. But you do look a bit like the custodian at our school.”

“Maybe you were thinking of him when you created this program”, replied the man.

“And from what I heard, you think you have created this village. Yet, this world has been around for centuries. I am Cyrion, the village Prophesier, and my family has always had the part of Prophesier. As far back as I can remember, and we have very long lives, this village has lived in fear of Fear.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t fear just an idea?” Jace wondered. “And didn’t somebody once say ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’? I can’t remember who said that”.

“Yes. I’m sure someone did say that”, began Cyrion. “But in this village, the idea of fear turned into a part living, part dying Being because of the villagers. They lived in fear of the outside world. Until, one day, a mysterious hooded figure appeared at the entrance of the village.

He had learned that my family had a unique ability to use magic. Wanting power and knowledge, he demanded to see my grandfather, who was the Prophesier at that time. My grandfather was scared. The figure laughed scornfully, ‘You! You are making me stronger. Keep fearing me and

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I will become immortal. I am Fear!’ My grandfather didn’t know that once he was afraid, he couldn’t stop being afraid no matter what he did … Should I continue?”

“Yes, please!” they all replied.

“Alright, then”, continued Cyrion. “So, my grandfather was speechless. The Being said, ‘Exactly! You can’t stop no matter what you do!’ Suddenly, my grandfather collapsed cold on the floor. Fear, raging with power and greedily wanting more, shouted ‘Now! Where is your son?’ A voice thundered from above, ‘Here I am! Now, freeze!’ My father used his magic to direct an energy beam at Fear. ‘Noooo!’ Fear’s last words were cut short as the beam stopped the motion of whatever heart he had. My father then locked Fear up in a dungeon underneath the marble fountain at the heart of the village. The only way in was a key which he left with me.”

“Though trapped in the dungeon by our spells, Fear’s malice and thirst for revenge grew strong. He became like a hungry black hole, devouring light, energy and fear. But it could not be satisfied. Fear began to create smaller Beings. Projections of itself, monsters, minions of fear, reaching out into the village. They haunt our village, feeding his limitless hunger, consuming our fear. And now, Fear in his dark dungeon, strengthened by his minions, has become strong enough to create another key and may escape. There are now two key holes in the fountain -- one created by my father to access the dungeon and one created by the Being. When used together, they can create a portal. And I think it’s your only way home. The only problem is that you will have to get Fear’s key. It will not be an easy task.”

“We have to be FEARLESS!” Helena said confidently.

“How are we going to do that?!” Jace and Stephen replied.

“I will supply you with everything you will need.”

“Wait! What about Ms. Morgan!” Jace shouted, remembering why they came here.

“Ah, the adult who came here before you. She was taken by Fear’s minions, and is his hostage.” Cyrion said “No! Why?” They all clamored.

“For revenge, of course. He’s always wanted to capture people from other dimensions.

Now you have a second task.”

“Let’s go! The sooner the better.” Jace said, eager to start the quest.

“Wait!” Cyrion handed them a bag, “In this bag are weapons, supplies and snacks. There are challenges waiting for you in that dungeon, especially the challenge of Fear.”

“Like I said, FEARLESS!” Helena reminded them.

“Use the bronze-steel alloy swords. They are filled with magic power. The swords will destroy Fears minions easily, but it will require all three of you working together to defeat Fear itself. And by the way, magic alone is not enough. You must use logic, agility and above all courage.”

“Let’s go get Ms. Morgan and that key.” Jace called out with confidence.

Cyrion brought them to the fountain with their bags, and started to ready the keyhole.

Then he gently placed the key into the keyhole and turned the key. The fountain started glowing as it split in half and opened up into a dark spiraling staircase.

“Here. Take these.” He handed them each a lamp. “They will make your journey bright. As I told you, Fear absorbs all light. These lamps are enhanced with magic that will make them resistant to the power of Fear. Good luck! Use your items wisely.”

“Thanks!” they all said, as they started walking down the dark, damp staircase.

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The Fountain closed above them with a loud screech. It was pitch black. They all took out their lamps and the staircase was illuminated with a warm red glow. They all tried to keep calm and fearless as they descended down the dungeon staircase.

“Ow! Don’t pinch me Stephen. What’d you do that for?” Jace said angrily.

“I didn’t do anything!” Stephen replied.

“Jace! Why’d you push me?” Helena said angrily.

“I didn’t do anything either!” Jace shouted, his voice echoing down the staircase and coming back up again with twice the volume level.

“Maybe it was one of Fear’s minions that is trying to stop us.” Stephen deduced.

“Maybe.” Helena and Jace replied.

They headed down the long, dizzying, spiral staircase in hopes of finding their teacher and their way home. Finally reaching the bottom of the staircase, they found themselves in a huge empty room.

“Watch out!” Helena yelled as a black streak of nothingness sped by them.

“We need to be ready for them!” Jace recommended as he pulled his sword from the bag. The others followed.

“Good idea! But these things move too fast” Stephen said.

“Are you ready?” Stephen shouted. He swung the rope and pulled. “Swing!”

Helena and Jace raised their swords and swung. Clang! Their swords hit the wall with a loud sound that echoed through the dungeon.

“Swing as they head towards you” Stephen reminded them.

“Got it.” they said. The three of them swung their swords as fleeting dark shadows headed straight for them and monsters dissipated before their eyes in clouds of smoke.

“How many are there?” Helena questioned.

“So far only two, I think.” Stephen said, “They’re hard to see”.

Three more beings emerged from the shadows. Then another three out of another wall.

And soon they were surrounded by beings like black holes that suck up all light, energy and life.

They consume all fear. But Cyrion’s lamps stayed lit.

“I guess that answers our question.” Jace said. “There are none, but they are infinite.”

“How are we going to deal with this?” Stephen said.

Just then the beings on one wall made way and a shining black portal appeared.

The beings said in unison, “We will let you enter, for your teacher. But only two of you.

The third may only enter if he can defeat us all.”

“I’ll battle.” Jace bravely volunteered.

“What! Why would you sacrifice your life in a program?!” Helena and Stephen cried.

“Exactly! Maybe I’m not sacrificing anything if this is just a program.” Jace answered.

“I don’t get it.” Stephen said, confused.

“I understand. Jace is saying that since this is just virtual reality, we won’t actually die.”

Helena explained to Stephen.

“And even if I do die. It’s for a good cause.” Jace said, saddening the other two. “Go on.

Get our teacher back and go back home. Without me if necessary. And don’t worry about me. I’ll make it through.”

“Bye. Be careful! And good luck!” the other two said as they walked through the glowing portal. They looked behind them as the beings surrounded Jace and he raised his weapon. Then they disappeared. Stephen and Helena appeared in a dark room that smelled of fear.

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“Oh no my lantern is going out.” Jace mumbled. “Maybe I can distract them”, he thought to himself. He threw the lantern. It hit the ground and exploded in a shower of green liquid that seemed to hurt the minions and slowed them down. Jace slashed upwards, then sideways, his blade spinning and cutting through the darkness. Each one melting into a puddle of darkness that then evaporated. A doorway appeared. He stepped through. He appeared in a dark room where his teacher and two companions were huddling against a wall.

“What’s this? The third one made it through.” Fear said.

“Let my friends go! Now!” Jace yelled.

“You can’t kill me. Since I’m just an idea. So, no. Your friends are mine.” Fear taunted.

“Now!” Jace shouted. Glaring at Jace, Fear did not notice Helena’s blade until it was deep inside. A second blade, Stephen’s hit its mark.

“It won’t work…” Fear laughed, as Jace lunged forward.

“The only way to defeat fear is to be FEARLESS!” they all shouted as Fear melted into a black molten ooze.

“Let’s go home.” Helena said as she grabbed the key from the puddling remains of Fear.

And they started walking up the stairs in the dungeon, knowing that they got what they came here for. *** When they reached the top, Cyrion was waiting for them along with the rest of the village. Everyone rejoiced as the reign of Fear ended, and they were praised and congratulated for helping the village, and also helping themselves.

“Here, you’ll need these to return home,” smiled Cyrion, as he handed them their glasses.

“Thank you! I wondered what happened to those,” Jace replied gratefully.

“You are welcome back anytime, but I don’t believe those glasses will work the same way again.” Cyrion said.

Both keys were placed in their appropriate keyholes, and the fountain formed a shimmering portal back home. They said their farewells, put on their glasses, and jumped into the portal.

Feeling like their bodies had been pushed through a keyhole, they were back in the tech room. A bit dazed and dizzy, it took them a moment to get used to the classroom that was so familiar. Looking at one another, overjoyed, they started laughing. Without a word, it was understood that this adventure would remain their secret. After all, who would believe them anyway? As they turned to leave, standing in the doorway of the tech room, the custodian looked up from his duties and smiled, a twinkle in his eyes.

“You don’t really think …” began Jace, his eyes wide with curiosity. But he was cut off mid-sentence.

Ms. Morgan interrupted, “If you hurry home, you’ll be just in time for supper”.

“Bye Ms. Morgan! See you tomorrow!” they shouted, and they were off.

“You remember my mom invited you guys over for supper,” Jace said.

“We’ll race you there!” Stephen and Helena said.

“I’ll beat you this time!” and they raced off to Jace’s house. *** After supper, sitting on his front porch, the adventure fresh in his head, Jace examined his virtual reality glasses. He wondered, is the village real or imagined? Will Fear come back to the

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village? Does the program keep running when not in use? Maybe it doesn’t matter, because reality is what you think it is and what you make of it. And Fear is not something to be afraid of.

“Run” Josie Helm As I walk up the cracked pavement of my driveway, I inhale sharply, feeling the excruciating cold air burn my lungs. A hostile gust of wind causes my usually cheerful green shutters to angrily bang up against the shingled walls of my white house. The paint is peeling and the once fresh, green grass on the front lawn is now dead. I sigh despondently as I go up the front steps to the door of my house. I pull the keys out of my faded blue backpack, unlock the door and step inside the house. I take a sniff but I do not smell the welcoming aroma of meatloaf, which usually wafts through the house on Friday evenings before dinner. I guess Mom did not bother making it because Dad is not here to enjoy it with us. I try to push the thought of my father out of my mind.

“Hello?” I say, “Mom? Grandma? I’m home from school!” I walk into our small living room with its plain beige paint and boring brown rug to see my grandmother on our small couch.

She is gray-haired, wrinkly and plump, but to me she is beautiful. Her large, green eyes, sweet, tender voice and tinkling laugh fill many of my memories. Grandma is watching the news on our old television, which is the exact opposite of Samsung’s latest 48-inch flat-screen TV that everyone is talking about. Grandma slowly stands up to greet me gives me a strained smile, unlike the kind she usually gives me when I come home from school. However, a long, tight and loving hug makes up for her weary and false smile. I see in her round, shining green eyes that she is sad, but she is trying to keep her composure and stay strong for me. Like Dad, her eyes always serve as a snapshot of her emotions. Once again, I tell myself to stop thinking about Dad. “Where’s Mom?” I ask.

“She needed some time to herself, but she’s been alone in her bedroom for hours, so we should go up and say hi.” Grandma replies.

“Ok let’s go,” I say as I walk towards the stairs.

So I climb up the steps and Grandma slowly walks behind me. When I reach the second floor, I knock gently on Mom’s door, which is at the top of the stairs. When I hear a stifled sob and a soft “come in” I open the door and quietly walk in with my grandmother. I see Mom sitting criss-cross on her bed with a box of old photos next to her. Her usually cheery face is now tearstained and sad.

“Hey, Harp,” says Mom, using her endearing nickname for me, “Hi, Barbara,” she says to Grandma. “Why don’t you two come sit next to me.” So we walk over and I plop down next to Mom and Grandma sits down next to me. They both put their arms around me.

Grandma says, “Sweetie, I know that things have been hard for you lately. Your father’s death was the saddest thing that has ever happened to our family. I lost my son, your mom lost her husband and you lost your dad. We’ve only touched the subject lightly since his death a week ago, but I feel like we really need to talk this over.”

My body tightens and my stomach twists into a knot. Mom and Grandma know that I do not want to talk because doing so would deepen an already serious wound. I instinctively reach my hand up to my necklace, which I always nervously play with when difficult topics arise. The circular necklace is engraved with an “H” on the front. On the back, it says, “Love always, Dad.”

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“Harper,” my mom addresses me by my real name, instead of just “Harp,” so I know she means business, “Look, I know how you feel. I understand that you’re miserable about your father’s death. You’re upset that he passed away before you had the chance to resolve that ridiculous and pointless argument. You regret that it was the last time you spoke with him. Even so, we need to talk about it.”

“Mom, you really don’t know how I feel! Talking about problems doesn’t make things better! Touchy subjects shouldn’t be addressed! I acted so stupidly and argued with Dad, then he left to deliver some goods to California and died before we could make up! I don’t think that’s ever happened to you and if you really knew how I feel you wouldn’t make me talk about it! ” “Harp, I…” “I don’t want to hear it!” I shout. I storm out of the room and Mom follows. When I get to my room I slam the door before she can come in.”

“Susan, just let her be. She needs to cool down,” I hear Grandma say from the other room. I can’t cool down. I won’t cool down. It used to be that when Dad and I argued, I took it for granted that we would make up. But now our fight has turned into the worst regret of my life.

I recall my argument with Dad, and this time I don’t try to stop myself from thinking about it.

The day before Dad left to truck some goods to California, I received a horrific grade in English class on an essay about The Hobbit. I never remember getting a D before that day, but it is no surprise that my first D came from my English teacher, Mrs. McLeary. She acts as if I am the most vile creature she has ever laid eyes on and does everything possible to make my life miserable. She declared that I needed serious writing practice in front of the entire class, including the most vicious and popular clique in school. She slammed my paper down on the desk, and as soon as I saw the grade I began to cry. I heard the students trying to hold back giggles as the clique leader, Jessica Green, muttered something snarky under her breath. The crying grew from frustrated and embarrassed droplets to an angry and humiliated downpour.

“A hurricane could take lessons from you,” snorted Jessica. Her pathetic followers started laughing, which only made my tears flow faster and heavier.

At that moment, when I could no longer bear it, I grabbed the essay and ran. I dashed out the classroom door, downstairs to the first floor, through the hallway and out the door of the school. I flew down the road, and continued my sprinting pace until I reached home about 10 minutes later. Although my mother was surprised and slightly angry about my early arrival from school, she is a softy for tears and let me stay home. She phoned the school to let them know that I was safe at the house and then I told her what had had happened. She was completely sympathetic, and I felt better until Dad got home. When he heard the news, he was furious. He was not so angry about my grade, but he was upset that I ran from my teacher, my classmates, my school, my problem.

“Harper Elizabeth Kent! Receiving a D is no excuse to run from school! You cannot expect a problem to disappear because you run away from it! Although I do not approve of Mrs. McLeary’s actions, you cannot expect crying and running to be a solution to your crisis. If you continue running away - ” “Dad!!! I hate how you always lecture me about running away, but you’re gone every single day to make deliveries in your stupid truck!!!”

“Harper, I do that because it’s the only way for me to provide for you!”

“I DON’T CARE!” I ran up to my room and flung myself into my beanbag chair. I cried for hours until finally falling asleep in the chair. It dawns on me that I am in the same spot now.

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The next morning, when I woke up, Dad had already left for Paris. I was not so upset about it then. However, two days later when I was informed of his death, I was more depressed than I had been about the Mrs. McLeary incident. I knew it was not my fault he had a brain aneurysm, but I somehow felt guilty. I was more upset than I had ever been in my life. I am not feeling great now, either. I glance at my clock and suddenly realize that I have been up in my room for an hour. In addition, I am incredibly hungry. I go down to the kitchen, wiping my tearstained face, and smell the rich and welcoming aroma of my favorite dish, my mother’s meatloaf.

“Hey, Mom,” I say timidly.

“Hey, Harp. Feeling better?”

“Not really. I just feel kind of blah, if that’s a thing. But I’ll always be able to recognize the smell of your meatloaf, and I’m excited from that.” Mom smiles. I try to stay cool about the meatloaf, but inside, I am thrilled that the Friday night meatloaf tradition continues.

“I put it in the oven about 30 minutes ago, so I’ll take it out in about another 30. Until then I’m going to shower and relax; today has been sad and stressful, so I need to unwind.”

“Sounds good,” I respond, “I’ll be in my room napping.” I head upstairs, thankful that Mom did not bring up our earlier conversation. I lay down and in five minutes, I doze off. Crying makes a person especially exhausted…

I awake to the sound of a siren. Still only half awake, I run downstairs to see a man and a woman, who are clearly EMTs, helping mom outside. That snaps me into a state of total alertness. Grandma is already there, standing speechless with a terrified look on her face. Mom’s shirt is stained with what looks like meatloaf and she is taking deep breaths, trying to keep back tears.

“What happened?!” I scream.

“Mom, got burned,” Grandma explains, try to remain calm. “When she realized the meatloaf was burning, she rushed to get it out of the oven. She was not wearing potholders, and the dish was so hot that she dropped it, causing it to spill and burn her everywhere.” I do not know how to react. Now, I am the one who is speechless.

“Grab some necessities quickly; we’re leaving for the hospital in a few minutes.”

“No! I don’t want to go! Please don’t make me!” I shout. A little piece of me feels like I should go support Mom, but the rest of me is completely, totally, absolutely terrified. I cannot handle another sad situation.

“Honey, I know it’ll be hard, but I really think you should come along so we can support each other. It will be easier to get through this together.”

“Grandma, I’m really sorry, but I just can’t handle it. I’d really, really, really like to stay home.”

“Ok, hon, if that’s what you want. I’ll call and text periodically.” She blows me a kiss and rushes off.

When Grandma, Mom and the EMTs leave the house, I am ready to start crying, but the tears will not come. I have already wept so much this week. Even though I am overwhelmed, worried and sad, the tears just cannot drip down. There is still meatloaf on the ground, and the oven is open, so I decide to clean up the kitchen. Once I am finished, I decide to make myself some pasta because I cannot bring myself to use the oven. I eat a quiet and lonely dinner, waiting for Grandma to call or text. She often has trouble using her phone, so I expect it to be a while before she contacts me. Next, I clear my plate and tidy up my room. I realize that when Mom or Grandma tells me to clean up, I put it off and complain. However, now that they are gone and I have nobody telling me what to do, cleaning up seems like the right thing to do. I distract myself

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for a couple of hours with a good book, but I am interrupted by a text from Grandma. We need to spend the night. I’ll come to the home tomorrow around 10 to check in. Love you. I quickly respond, saying I love her too and decided to go to sleep. After a few hours of restlessness in bed, I finally drift off.

The next morning, I am not hungry when I wake up at 5:00. I go to the living room to watch TV, but I cannot concentrate. I keep thinking about Grandma and Mom. Although it was not her responsibility, Grandma went along with Mom to the hospital when she needed support.

How pathetic I was to stay home only because I was scared. This realization sends me into a spiral of thought and a state of fearlessness. I realize that I feel miserable, not only because my father died, my mother is in the hospital and I am a laughingstock at school. Trying to make these problems go away by ignoring them is only adding to my misery. Dad tried to teach me this before he died. Running away from a class, a teacher, a grade and an argument has not solved anything. If only I had stayed in class and spoken with Mrs. McLeary. If only I had not run away from Dad before he left for California. I realize that disagreements and disappointments are bound to occur, but what really matters is whether or not I resolve them.

Then I begin to think about other instances during which I have run away. They were not always significant, but I realize this trend has been occurring since I was little. For example at age 4, I used to run away from dinner whenever Mom tried to make me eat my vegetables. Once, when I accidentally broke a lamp at 6, and Dad asked me if I was okay, I hid in my closet for two hours. At age 10, I quit the soccer team when I miserably lost a game. Here I am now, at age 14, adding another link to a long chain of running away. I cannot do it again. My mother means the world to me and I will not run from her.

I jump up from the couch. I grab my cell phone and some cash from our family’s rainy day fund, knowing that today definitely counts as a rainy day. I call the taxi company, asking them to send a car immediately, and it arrives in 10 minutes.

“Fairview Regional Medical Center, please,” I say when the taxi arrives. When I get to the hospital in 15 minutes, I pay the fare and rush into the hospital. Right near the entrance sits a lady at a desk. I tell her that I want to visit Susan Kent, and after calling a doctor to ask for his approval, she leads me up to Mom’s room. I thank her and she leaves as I step into the room.

Mom’s area has been sectioned off from other patients by curtains, and Grandma sits beside her bed. I am relieved to find that color has returned to her face. The last time I saw her, her face looked paler than a ghost.

“Hey, sweetie,” Grandma says. “Nice surprise that you came! What’s up?”

“I’m ok. I felt like I needed to come visit Mom. I know now might not be a good time,” I say now addressing Mom, “but I really feel badly about our argument. Dad died before we made up, all because I ran away from him. I’m not going to run away from you and I will not move from this room until we’ve made up. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Honey, that’s so sweet,” Mom exclaims. “You don’t need to worry about losing me because I’m already getting better. Dad’s death was not your fault. Even though you never got to resolve your argument, he still loved you very much. That necklace he gave you says Love always, Dad. You’re wearing it right now, as always. It serves as a reminder that his love for you is unconditional. The same goes for me, Harp. I forgive you, and I’m sure Dad did too.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’m feeling better already.” Soon after our conversation, a doctor comes in and he brings good news.

“We’ve run some tests and examinations, and although your second degree burn was quite serious, we’ve confirmed that you can be released tomorrow!” he says. For the first time this

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week, we all rejoice and yell and hug and kiss. Although I usually run away from emotional situations, for the first time in what seems like forever, I stay.

“Invention of the Rubik’s Cube” Jack Kim It was a frigid November day in England and snow was falling heavily. The man sat aboard at his desk, deep in thought. He lived in a small town in London, but his house wasn’t anywhere near society. He lived away from town on a distant hill with his wife and son. He was an old inventor, and had his job for many years, yet he struggled to keep his career alive, for he had not produced any invention that became successful in almost three decades. The man had a receding, grey, hairline and wore khakis and a pinstripe, button- down shirt. To his left was a large stack of brown-yellow papers, and to his right were more papers, but these had been crumpled up, written on, full of scrapped ideas.

In prior years, this man had flourished as a young inventor. Everything he ever created had been very successful. He would have ideas to create all different kinds of toys and would have them marketed by toy manufacturers soon thereafter. Whenever Christmas came around, every child would be asking for the new toy the man had created, that was put into stores just that year. However, the man was entering year twenty-five as an inventor and the man’s business had slowed down. People lost interest in his style of inventions. They sought something new and fresh. He started to become overtaken by newer and younger inventors who would create bigger and grander things. The man was losing his business, his career, and all his ideas to these new inventors. He needed something that would catch the people’s eye. Something that would bring back the old-school style of inventions.

The man sat at his desk for hours. He would sketch something, look at it, then decided he didn’t like it and would throw it away. Hours would soon turn to days, and then days into weeks. The man had still no idea of anything. At the beginning of the fourth week, he sat down to start sketching some more ideas. He looked over to the left and saw that there were only about ten or so more sheets of paper remaining. The old man let out a long sigh, because he knew a solid day’s work couldn’t last on just a few papers. He would have to travel down to town to go purchase more, and it would be a long journey. It was 1974 at the time, but having a car was still a luxury to most. The average joe like this man would usually travel around using public transportation or just walk. It would take the whole day to go to town and come back on foot. And although there was a slight chance that he could catch a bus headed to town, there was no guarantee, and the man knew he couldn’t waste any of his time. He grabbed his hat, put on a coat, bid goodbye to his wife and left for town.

The man had been on the road for a just a few minutes when a bus came along the road. He was glad to see that it was going to town, which would save about half of his day because the snow falling wasn’t helping at all. His legs had already become worn out.

He got on the bus and paid a quarter for his ticket and took a seat. There was hardly anyone on the bus. He sat down and looked out the window. The snow was piling up quickly.

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It took the bus driver a while, but he eventually was able to start up the bus again (ever since the bus stopped to pick him up, the engine wouldn’t start, due to the freezing cold weather).

But the driver had the bus under his control again and began moving slowly, but surely. There was an occasional stall and stutter but the bus seemed to have been wired with the will to go on. The engine would stutter, then stop, then start again. It was a repeated process that the man would get used to and he eventually was able to ignore it. However, after an unusually long amount of time without an engine disturbance, there was a loud bang that came from the front.

The whole bus jerked forwards. The sound of glass breaking rang through the air. The man saw the driver’s unconscious body with the driver’s head laid down on the steering wheel, his eyes closed, and blood on his face. But he, too, had his equal share of pain. It felt as if his head was splitting open and all of his limbs were screaming with pain. His ears rang and his vision went blurry. He was on the ground. It took almost all his energy to put his feet under himself, and when he did, he saw flames and smoke through his cloudy vision. The man knew he couldn’t stay where he was, he knew the fire and smoke would kill him if he didn’t get off the bus. He dragged himself off the bus and fell face first into the snow. *** When the man came to his senses again, he saw people all around him through his still blurry vision. A bright light shone above his head, directly on his face.

“Where am I?” he croaked.

You’re at the hospital, honey,” someone with a gentle voice replied. “Just relax.”

The man didn’t know if he could trust these people, but decided it was the most logical thing to do. So he trusted them and fell back asleep.

The man woke up again and looked at his surroundings. He was in a small hospital room with one window to his right. Straight ahead was a grandfather clock with a clothes drawer besides it. He had a cast on both his arms and his left leg was being suspended from a sling that was connected to the ceiling. He saw an E.K.G. monitor next to him, keeping track of his heart rate.

After a few minutes had passed, a nurse came quietly into the room. She smiled when she saw him. She was holding a piece of paper.

“I understand you’re an inventor,” she said softly. “We found this in your jacket.”

She held out a piece of paper with an unfinished sketch.

“I was working on that. That’s my latest design.”

It was a small cross with square caps placed on the end of each side. She gave the man the paper and left. Not long after, she returned to break the bad news: Due to the lung injuries he received from the smoke on the bus, the man would have to remain lying down in order to avoid inevitable lung damage that would kill him in a more painful way.

Now the man knew his time remaining on earth was short, but he wanted to create one last thing before he departed. He wanted it to be special and have true meaning – it would be his last invention, after all.

Now, this man was born and raised in a very religious family. As a young boy he was told that life was the barrier between the human race on earth and God the father in heaven. He was taught that life was of no value, that the only value was God and reaching the afterlife; he was convinced this was true up until this point in his life. After his near-death experience, he realized that life was precious, for it could be taken at any moment, by anything, and very easily. For his new respect of life, he wanted to create something to honor and represent it.

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This is what the man created: He composed a cube base, made up of twenty-six different pieces. There were eight corner pieces. Six center pieces that never moved, and twelve edge pieces to complete the cube. Each of the six faces took a different color: red, green, yellow, blue, white, and orange. The puzzle was designed for each face to be able to turn either clockwise or counterclockwise which enabled the pieces on each face to be moved around or rearranged. The objective of the puzzle was to have the pieces all mixed up in random positions, and then to strategically rearrange them so that each color of every piece was on the same side using different sets of algorithms.

This is how the man created a lifelike invention: each piece was unique. They all had their own roles in completing the puzzle, just as everyone in life has a purpose. Also, the puzzle was difficult to solve, just like life, which always has problems to be solved. Finally, each piece had a different color, to represent the different nationalities of the world.

It had been a few days since he started working on the cube and over those last days, the man had become slower and weaker. He knew his time was coming to an end, so he worked as much as he could to complete his final creation. He finalized measurements of the pieces, and listed the materials needed to make the design. However, the only thing that remained unclear was the name of the design. The old man thought, and thought and thought, but nothing came to his mind.

After a hard day of working to perfect his final creation, the old inventor was tired and weary. His breaths were slow and long as he settled in for the night. He watched the E.K.G. monitor next to him; the lines were hardly moving up and down anymore, and he knew his time was drawing near. He closed his eyes, let his drowsiness overtake him, and fell asleep for the night.

The next day, the old man died at five in the morning. He had just barely made it through the night. As for his creation, he never did have a name for it. However, his friends and family named it after the old man. They named it the “Rubik’s Cube.” As the years went on, the man’s invention became popular- it sold in so many stores, the factories couldn’t produce enough to satisfy all the people who wanted it. Over time, however, after all the hype of the invention, many have forgotten the true meaning of the Rubik’s Cube. Many believe Rubik only created it as as a toy, others believe it was just something to save the man’s career from failing. However, a rare bunch believe they know the true meaning of the cube, that it was made to respect, honor, and appreciate something called life.

“182 Fairview Lane” Ina Musabegovic Two months ago they stabbed a sign in my front yard. Now the sign is plastered with the word “sold.”

DAY 1 At 12:22 the door swings open, and excited voices fill the cavernous area. Two girls jump onto the couch almost instinctively and throw their belongings onto it. Then a middle-aged woman comes in and chastises the girls, commanding them to take their belongings off.

“Girls, go and pick your rooms,” the mom says with a voice that's sweet, but demanding.

The older one picks the bigger room with tangerine wallpaper, which didn’t stay for long, and the younger picks the plain, unfinished room, which is practically as big. The mother immediately makes her way to the kitchen and runs her fingers along the smooth marble

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counters. She moves to the sink and watches the water flow as if she had never seen it flowing before. Next, the dad comes in. His monochrome outfit matches his personality. He smiles at his new house. Well actually, he smiles at me.

DAY 6 After a few days of paint jobs and decorating, our family settles in and reboots their life.

Their schedule is a repetitive one, and they all start and end their days with a family meal. In the meantime, the girls, whose names I recently discovered to be Jesse and Eliza, go to school, and the dad goes to his job, which requires an unflattering suit. The mom stays home and takes care of me and her children and me again and then the children come home, so it's them again then it's cooking, so then she needs to clean me again, then she needs to put the children to sleep. On the fridge, a schedule of the week’s lunches hangs, along with pictures that the girls made when they were little. They don’t make them anymore. Now the older one is occupied with doing her homework while she blasts music and doesn't actually do it. She makes a mess out of her room and doesn’t give a flying (a word that the mother hates) about keeping me clean. The younger daughter plays with her dolls and wipes boogers on my walls. We’re not friends.

DAY 10 The smaller child is “having problems at school,” which is mom code for she’s dumb.

Now Mrs. Addams drills math problems into her head. Ironically, she has to have recourse to the answer book for answers to some of her dumb daughter’s problems.

DAY 21 It's been 3 weeks and they bought a dog. This family is insane. I value myself as a good judge of character, and this dog isn't passing the test. The second they leave the house he starts peeing, and contrary to their beliefs, he does it on purpose. It’s outrageous how he gets away with the things that kids can’t get away with. Boogers are one thing, but bodily fluid takes it to a whole other level. They named him Norman (which unquestionably, is not a homonym for normal).

DAY 24 Unruly: 1. (adj) disorderly, disruptive and not amenable to discipline or control. 2. (n) Jesse Addams. That’s all.

DAY 25 I thought I was familiar with the term “birthday party” until today.

Adolescents (also known as #teens #teenlife #ilivetoimpressmyfreindsonsocialmedia #chipotle) fill the house. Uh oh. Self-consciousness floods my walls--as does acne-- and I can already see a big headache in my future. Jesse’s crew walks over to her, and the gossiping commences.

The one with burnt hair starts: “Look at her shoes, she borrowed them from her mother.”

The girl in the tight dress continues: “Where’s she going, a funeral?”

And they continue with their insensitive comments.

Jesse laughs. The girl hears nothing, but I’ve had it. Suddenly gravity acts differently and their drinks spill all over their shoes and dresses. This time, I laugh.

DAY 30 I spent today in reflection of the one month I’ve been with this family. I, who have been alive for many years, have seen people break, and seen great difficulty befall them. But I’ve never met people who have no problems at all, people that seem luckier than luck itself. All this family’s problems are shallow. And I mean very shallow. I want something deeper. They need something deeper.

DAY 31

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I am feeling very solemn after yesterday's thinking. And apparently, so is Mrs. Addams.

She spent the whole day crying about how “the world is falling apart.” I’m guessing she ordered a pair of shoes in the wrong size.

DAY 32 Mrs. Addams mother is in the hospital. I guess it wasn't the shoes. She breaks it to the children over dinner. I know they don’t care. They’re all infatuated with their own problems, and for the first time, I feel sympathy for Mrs. Addams.

She begins to bawl. I don't feel that much sympathy for her. Her husband puts his phone down and hugs her. He gives the children a look. They ignore him.

DAY 33 Family trip. To the hospital. Kinda sad. I don’t know. They don’t care (except the mom).

Should I care?

DAY 34 Mrs. Addams is announcing that her mother is coming to stay at their house. I swear I hear Jesse groan.

“Isn’t she, like, contagious or something?” Jesse whines.

“JESSE ADAMS, YOUR GRANDMOTHER IS DYING. You will spend her last days by her side.”

Jesse rolls her eyes.

“Without any parties,” says the mother. “Now go to your room.”

Jesse gets up unwillingly with a egocentric look on her face. No sympathy, no care.

DAY 36 Mrs. Lebeau arrives today. She wheels herself in, almost embarrassed. Jesse’s mom gives her a stern look and Jesse toddles over and gives a sad excuse of a hug. Sorrow seeps through my walls, and rain starts to patter on the roof.

DAY 40 Jesse is the first one to come home. She opens the door, immediately greeted by her stillenthusiastic-about-their-relationship grandmother.

“I have a lot of homework,” Jesse mumbles.

“Okay.”

Mrs. Labeau winces at the ground, in a way to make even the most pitiless person feel guilty.

“I’ll just be in the kitchen,” she says again.

Unexpectedly, Jesse comes with her.

Jesse helps her peel veggies, and a bond starts to form.

DAY 45 It’s been 5 days, and although the family has been almost as ignorant as usual, a spark of care has lighted the corner of Jesse’s eyes. She has been coming home rather early these past few days, and instead of locking herself in her room, she talks to her grandmother. Surprising.

DAY 46 “Thank you”, Mrs. Labeau says when Jesse voluntarily walks in with a steeping cup of tea. She even made it herself. (I’ll bet with the help of the microwave.)

“No problem. I heard you weren't feeling well.”

“I’ll be fine,” she utters, but with less confidence in her voice than Jesse anticipated.

Jesse sat on the corner of her bed, and they stared at the television without actually watching it.

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“I love you,” Jesse said.

“What was that?” Mrs. Labeau asked, but I knew she just wanted to hear it again.

“Nevermind,” Jesse responded.

DAY 50 October 31. Halloween. Also Mr. Addam's birthday. He still wears his suit. After the girls come home from school, there is a big fight. Eliza wants to go trick or treating, Jesse wants to go to a party, and their parents want to go to dinner. Quarreling begins and suddenly they fight like chickens, all absorbed in their own selfishness. None of them realize that Mrs. Labeau has come down with a fever.

DAY 51 At 5:55 AM, the entire family piles into the ambulance. Mrs. Addams is crying, and Jesse stares into space. Eliza doesn’t know what's happening, and Mr. Addams surveys his phone. Ten minutes ago, they found Mrs. Labeau lying on the floor. Not dead, but close. I was the only one who saw her fall. She was clutching her heart.

DAY 52 Mourning. That’s the word I hear. Last night, at 9:53, Mrs. Labeau died. They hug. I hug them.

DAY 60 Before they were like loose yarn, all over, doing what they want. Now they are a crochet, beautiful and unique, but held together, counting on each other. I am lucky to witness this transformation of people to humans. As I predicted, it takes a deep sorrow to find a deep happiness. Ever since Mrs. Labeau died, they notice how much they mean to each other, and the true definition of the word family; not a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, but connections and respect, and above all, love.

Scholastic Regional Silver Keys “The Baby of the Family” Garo Amerkanian My parents, my older brother, my newborn baby brother, and I walked out of the hospital. We were all so excited about the newest member of our family, Saro. Neither me nor my brother had ever taken care of a baby so much younger than us, so we were extremely excited to play with him. When we got home, we played with him and showed him around our house. Finally, we went to sleep, excited about our new family member.

The next day was extremely busy. Shant, my older brother, had to go to a hockey game, which my dad took him to because he was the coach. This left my mother, Saro, and myself at home. My mom said that she needed to catch up on paperwork for her patients, as she was an orthodontist. If she went upstairs to do paperwork, that would’ve left just me to take care of Saro for a couple of hours. I was far from willing to do this. I cried and cried about how it wasn’t fair that I had to take care of Saro while my family did other things. I cried for an entire half an hour about this. Why wouldn’t an older brother be willing to just play with his baby brother for a couple of hours? Is it really that much to ask?

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I had always been the youngest in my family. Until 2009, I never had to take care of anyone younger than me because there weren’t any younger relatives in my family. I was used to having people look out for me and do things for me without me ever returning the favor. Being the “baby” of the family for so long could never amount to anything good. Then, in May of 2009, my first younger cousin was born. I played with her and grew close to her. However, I was only seven when she was born, so I didn’t really have much responsibility. Yet, the fact that she was born instilled in me the idea of having someone younger than me in my family. Over the next three years, three more younger cousins were born. They were like younger siblings to me, but I was always aware that I wasn’t taking care of them, I was just playing with them.

I grew more and more open-minded about being an older cousin or an older member of my family. However, I still wasn’t open to not being the youngest of my immediate family, because I had been the youngest for so many years. I’m still not sure why I was so against it. I’m not sure whether it was selfishness or laziness, but I was. Being the youngest has its perks. It means getting attention. It means almost never being treated poorly. It means not being blamed.

It means getting sympathy from others. It isn’t bad at all. I guess I just wasn’t open to giving that up.

When Saro was born, I was forced into this position of an “older” sibling. My whole family structure changed, and I took the brunt of this change, which I obviously wasn’t ready for.

Yes, my parents had another child to take care of, but they were still parents. Yes, my brother now had another brother, but he was still an older brother, nothing else. And yes, I still had an older brother, but now I had a YOUNGER brother as well. This brought a ton of responsibility on me, which was something I was never used to. *** It was the day before Saro was supposed to be born: January 25th, 2013. I was in fourth grade. My friend Malachy and I were walking down the steps of Little School and talking about our music project.

“So, you’re coming over my house today, right?” I asked.

“Yup. I already have some ideas about some loops for our Egyptian music,” said Malachy.

“Oh really? Like what? I was looking through and I kind of like Tigris.”

“Yeah, I love that one! I think it would sound great with Egyptian Nile Darbouka.”

“Yeah, great idea,” I said.

When we got back to my house, we immediately went upstairs to my desk and worked on this Egyptian song. It wasn’t too hard of an assignment; we finished in about half an hour. After that, we started playing a new computer game that I had just gotten for Christmas. We got extremely caught up in this game and spent about 2 hours playing it. Then, out of nowhere, my mom came upstairs.

“Malachy, it’s time for you to go. I’ve called your mother,” she said. After Malachy left, my mom turned to me and said, “C’mon, Garo. We need to go to the hospital.”

The next twelve hours were a blur for me. All I remember is meeting my dad and Shant at the hospital, my grandmother picking Shant and me up from the hospital, and sleeping at her house.

I woke up with a clock in front of me: 5:01 a.m. Shant had already gotten up and was downstairs. I assumed it was time to go and meet our new sibling. On the way to the hospital, I stood on the fence of awakeness. I couldn’t sleep, yet couldn’t keep my eyes open. The tired side

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of me told me to sleep, and the excited part of me told me to stay up. As I was half-sleeping, I thought of possible names for my new sibling. This conversation had come up before in the months leading up to this day. If the baby was a boy, I wanted his name to be Saro, possibly because it was similar to my name. There was also something that I couldn’t pinpoint about the way the name hit my ear. However, if the baby was a girl, I had no idea what I wanted her name to be.

We finally reached the hospital and went inside. I was almost jumping up with excitement. When we reached the room where my mom, dad, and newborn sibling were, we found out that the baby was a boy and my parents had named him Saro. I was overcome with joy. Then, I was able to hold him. As his body fell into my hands, I also felt the weight of my responsibility for him fall into my hands. I can’t say that this was a saddening moment, but it was the first time I was able to comprehend that I was going to have to be an older brother. This moment changed how I have lived my life thus far. However, at the moment, all I could think about was not hurting Saro while holding him.

I spent the next two days at my grandmother’s house, telling myself I was ready for this enormous change in my life. By the end of these two days, I had convinced myself that I was ready to be an older brother and not be the youngest anymore. We left for the hospital to pick up my parents and Saro to go home.

We went home, we played with Saro, we slept, Shant and my dad went to a hockey game, my mom worked, and I cried. All of the emotions that I had been holding down by telling myself I was ready to change my life had erupted. I wasn’t ready. This meltdown was my rebellion to keep my way of life, but it was to no use. I was shoved into this new and unknown world. I went downstairs and played with Saro, alone. The way he looked at me, with big, curious, admiring eyes forced me to think back on why I had been crying. My mind opened up to the fact that being the mentor and teaching my younger sibling could be even better than my previous situation.

Throughout the past four years, my parents have constantly told me that I have played a vital role in my brother’s life. I have taught him so many things, from playing knee hockey to doing simple addition. The birth of Saro truly was a gift to me; he has taught me that being selfless is more important than being selfish. Who knows what could’ve become of me without him? Now, I fully believe I made the correct choice by becoming open minded to being an older sibling. I was reminded of this a couple of months ago, when Saro came up to me and said, “Garo, can you teach me about space and space rockets?” A single tear rolled down my cheek.

However, this time it wasn’t a tear of rebellion, it was a tear of joy and pride.

“The Lost Pen” Lori Hashasian I glanced down at the pen but didn’t process what it was; who knew it could cause so much trouble? We were in a small, crowded dressing room at the ZIL Cultural Center in Moscow, Russia. I was on a two week long trip to Russia and Armenia with Shushi, my Armenian dance group. The hardest thing about performing is that no matter what happens backstage, the show must go on. Your feelings have to take a backseat to the performance.

Backstage is always frantic: dancers dust their cheeks with blush, put hairspray on their silkystraight hair, tighten their belts, buckle their heels, or pace around nervously until the last second before the performance starts. With all this activity going on, it’s hard to use your best judgment.

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You have to do things as quickly as possible, and you don’t have time to think whether or not you are making the right decision, even if it’s just about a pen.

I just handed over the pen. If I had taken a moment to think about it, or even really looked at the pen, I would never have let it out of my possession. I didn’t realize what I’d done until the next day, when my dad opened up his backpack and realized that his father's Rotring pen was missing. I couldn’t fix the problem because I didn’t know about it until a day after it happened.

Although I tried my best, all my attempts to get the pen back were in vain.

I have never been someone who gets things done ahead of time. I frequently forget to pack things when I go on trips, as was the case this time. The morning of the performance, after straightening my hair and painting my nails red, I realized that I didn’t have a bag to put everything in. I had packed my suitcase and a smaller bag to carry around during the day, but I didn’t have anything that was the right size to fit all the items I needed. I had to leave the hotel in about an hour, so I started to panic.

“Mama, I don’t know where to put all my stuff for Shushi!” I cried. Luckily, my dad had brought a backpack with him as a carry-on and he emptied it out so that I could use it. The pen remained; tucked away in a pocket of the backpack. I stuffed the gray backpack with snacks, makeup, bobby pins and stockings. I never checked to make sure the backpack was fully emptied first, I just squeezed all my things inside. I lugged my backpack and garment bag, which was loaded with five heavy dresses, a few headpieces and two pairs of dance shoes, downstairs and shoved them onto the bus. I hugged both of my parents and waited as my dad snapped multiple photos of me. By the time the bus departed, half of it was filled with dancers and the other half with our baggage. I sat in the back of the bus with two of my friends talking as the bus bumped along the uneven road. This was our first performance of the trip, one we had been preparing for for months. We got to the ZIL Cultural Center around 10:00 A.M. even though our performance wasn’t until 7:00 P.M. We rushed off the bus, grabbed our bags and waited in the humid heat.

After making sure everybody was present, we proceeded into the air-conditioned building with cold tile floors and dropped all our bags in our assigned room backstage. I chatted with my friends as we ate pizza, having no idea what lay ahead of me that night. *** My Armenian dance teacher bustled into the room.

“Hurry up, akhcheegner! Come on, girls! We’re starting in ten minutes! Make sure your lipstick looks good!”

We all started hurrying around making last minute fixes to our hair and makeup and straightening each other’s costumes. One of the senior girls from the other dressing room came running into ours.

“Does anybody have a pen I could borrow?” she asked. A few heads turned but everybody was minding their own business. She was about to leave when, all of a sudden, I remembered seeing a pen in the backpack my dad had let me borrow.

“Here, I have one!” I shouted without giving it a second thought. I reached into the bag and pulled out one of the two pens in it. The Rotring was nestled into a pen pocket of the bag, right next to a black Sharpie marker. Had I reached a centimeter to the left, I would have given my friend the Sharpie and everything would have been fine. But I handed her the Rotring and continued struggling to get my dance shoes on.

I had never seen my dad with this pen before, but I later learned from him that there was a whole story behind it. My grandfather loved pens and had a collection of elegant ones. When

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my dad was in his twenties, my dad bought his father a black Rotring pen with a red circle on the top. My grandfather, of course, loved the pen and used it often. A while after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother found the Rotring and returned it to my dad. He kept it as a good luck charm and always carried it around in his briefcase. He also brought it with him on trips, which is why he had it with him in Russia. By carrying around this pen, my dad took his father with him wherever he went. When he found out I had lost the pen, my dad was distraught. He started yelling and everything turned to a blur. I started to think about the time I had lost my favorite doll, Molly. Molly came with me on every vacation, starting when my parents bought her for me in Maine. I was ten years old at Heathrow airport in London and wasn’t aware that I had dropped her until a few seconds later, a lady working there tapped my shoulder.

“Is this yours, sweetheart?” she asked.

“Yes!” I responded, excited to have my doll back.

“What do you say, Lori?” my mom asked me.

“Thank you,” I shyly told the lady.

A few minutes later, I dropped Molly again and didn’t realize. But this time, nobody came to tell me that she fell. When we got to the gate, I realized that I didn’t have Molly. Tears started streaming from my eyes.

“Mommy, I don’t know where Molly is!” I said, panicked.

“Did you drop her again, sweetie?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I responded between sniffles.

We went to the Lost and Found to see if anybody had brought Molly there, but with no luck. We eventually had to leave for our plane but my dad assured me that he would do everything he could to find Molly. He spent the weeks afterward calling the airport and asking if they had found my stuffed doll. All of a sudden, I realized what had just happened to my dad, and how similar the situation was to the one a few years ago with my doll.

“I’m so sorry, daddy,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what happened… I… I just… I didn’t even see the pen… I don’t even know what it looks like… I wouldn’t have given it away if I’d seen it… I’m so sorry!”

I started to cry again because I was so mad and upset at myself. Most people, at some point in their lives, have the horrible experience of losing a beloved object, but not everyone has the displeasure of losing someone else’s. “How could I have done this? How could I have lost the pen? What have I done?” I kept thinking to myself. The fact that I was the one who lost the pen made the situation ten times worse, because not only was my father in shreds, but I felt extremely guilty. I didn’t know how I would ever make it up to him, and if he would ever trust me with anything again.

“Who did you give it to?” my dad asked, desperate to get his pen back.

“It was Ani, one of the senior girls,” I responded.

“Why did you give it to her? What did she do with it?” my dad asked. “ I don’t know, daddy! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I have no idea why she wanted it or what she was going to do with it or what the pen looks like!” I shouted, annoyed that my dad didn’t understand.

“Lori, how could you not know? Why would you just hand somebody something without thinking, without even looking at it? That’s the part I don’t understand, you can’t just go around losing everything!” my dad shouted at me.

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“Honey, calm down, I’m sure it was just an accident. I don’t think she would have given the pen away if she knew what it was,” my mom interjected, trying to calm us down. “How about tomorrow morning, Lori will try to find out if Ani still has the pen.”

“Okay, I like that idea. Maybe she still has the pen, daddy,” I said, hopeful that this might be true.

The next morning, our group was gathered in the lobby of the Marriot hotel we were staying at, getting ready to tour Russia. I searched through the group of dancers, trying to spot the girl I’d leant the pen to. Finally I spotted Ani in the crowd and made my way to her.

“Umm, excuse me,” I said, tapping her shoulder.

“Oh, hi! Whats going on?” she responded. Her happy tone annoyed me, how could she not know what was going on?

“I was wondering, if by any chance, you happen to have the pen I gave you yesterday? It was my dad’s and I kind of lost it.”

“Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize that. I don’t have it, I was getting it for my friend, Narineh, so maybe she has it.”

“Alright, thank you so much,” I responded and left to go find Narineh.

I had a similar conversation with Narineh, but with no luck. Nobody knew where the pen was.

We were leaving Moscow the next day to fly to Yerevan, Armenia. I had failed my dad. I wasn’t able to find his pen and after that day, all my chances were over. I lost hope and went to tell my mom the news.

“I couldn’t find the pen,” I told her as a tear rolled down my cheek. “I asked Ani, who gave it to Narineh, who doesn’t have it.”

My mom put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, I know you didn’t do this on purpose. All that matters is that you understand that you made a mistake and did your best to find it. Daddy’s just a little upset because that was a very special pen for him. He’ll be okay, don’t worry,” she said. “There is nothing we can do about it now, so how about we forget about it and just enjoy the rest of this trip.”

“Alright, I’ll try. I just...I feel so bad about this,” I said.

“I know, Lori, I know,” she responded, stroking my hair. “It’s okay, I’ll tell daddy that you tried but nobody had it.”

After that, I tried to make myself feel better. “It’s actually kind of cool,” I thought.

“Medzhayrig’s pen is now somewhere in Russia.” I tried to assure myself that my grandfather would still love me even though I lost his pen that he would forgive me even though I had never met him. I tried to distract myself by laughing with my friends and enjoying the gorgeous views of Armenia, but the pen was always in the back of my mind. When I think of that trip, I don’t seem to remember all the fun times I had, the landmarks I visited, all I can think about is a pen.

“Too Late” Alexandros Paliouras I walked into Mrs. Keller’s second grade classroom wanting to cry my eyes out. I wanted to feel grief and pain and loss. Ray Bradbury said it best in Fahrenheit 451, “For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death.” That’s exactly how I felt. I wanted to be like the rest of my family and mourn his death, but I didn’t and I couldn’t. I

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was almost incapable of crying for him, no matter how much I knew I should. Later in the school day, I almost completely forgot about it. And I thought to myself, “This is good. I have passed the stage of sadness and depression, and entered into the stage of forever-lasting memory.” But the problem was right in front of me, and I was too blind to see it. I never went into the stage of sadness and depression. I skipped that part and jumped right into stage two, because I didn’t want to feel that sense of extreme loss, or I was incapable of feeling that sense of extreme loss. I didn’t even go to his funeral. I remember the day my father asking me if I wanted to go. It was a couple weeks after his death, and I was sitting on my couch, watching TV with the rest of my brothers. My father was dressed up in a suit and tie and my mother was dressed in a black dress.

They asked me while they were preparing to leave, but I replied I’d rather not because I would rather stay home and play on my computer than go to the funeral and watch everybody else cry, all my uncles and aunts, while I would just look around in confusion. They had probably known that I wasn’t as attached to him as they were, and that a funeral would be quite boring to a second grader.

I was just eight years old when they told me my grandfather had died. My father had left the States to go take care of my grandfather in Greece, who was quite ill back then. The way I saw it was that my dad would come back, my grandfather would get through it, and life would go on as it always had. But when my father came back he told us all the bad news; that my grandfather had died of natural causes in his sleep. When I first heard I felt some loss, but it felt more like I had lost a friend that I had known forever. But because he died when I was just eight years old, and he only spoke Greek, I really didn’t ever have a full on conversation with him.

The only things I knew about him were the stories my father told me. When I heard the news I thought about not being able to visit him in his house that was always hot, and dusty. Never spending the night sleeping in a bed that was too small to fit me and my brothers. Never seeing his smiling face again. Never taking that long drive to see him, and only him. Never saying hello to him again. Never saying goodbye. It wasn’t heartbreaking or unbelievably life changing, it was more like I was going to stop doing something that I have been doing since I was born. What was worse was the feeling I got when I knew that I wasn’t feeling the right emotion. I knew I was supposed to feel inexplicable pain and grief, but I wasn’t. It made me feel uncomfortable and unattached from everybody else in my family.

I remember seeing all these shows and movies on the TV about families that were separated, not because of somebody else, but of their own accord. And in every single show, this family was meant to be seen as “the dysfunctional family”. In other shows, all the families that weren’t separated were meant to be seen as “the perfect family”. I always heard my friends telling stories about activities they had done with their grandparents or their parents, I simply told them that I had never done any such activities. I never felt bad about it, or had any inkling that my family was in any way dysfunctional. I remember wishing that my family was like those families on TV, but whenever the opportunity arose, I turned it away without a moment’s consideration. But the real reason behind the unconscious separation of family members is lack of communication. Even the simplest of conversations everyday can make people become the closest of friends. And the lack of communicative interaction can cause people to become near strangers.

In most American stories, a grandson and his grandfather are supposed to be close, friends even. Not only was my situation different due to the inability to become close friends, but because I now see his passing as a missed opportunity. I feel that he was a man, with his own personal views and stories that he shared with many of those around him that would listen. And I

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was one of the unlucky few that couldn’t listen or ask about anything he had to say. It’s a shame that I never got to ask him about anything, or even answer the simplest of questions, such as, “How was your day? How is school? What are you learning? What do you what to be when you grow up? Do you like Greece?” because then I could honestly say that I remember a conversation we’d had. But I cannot say that I remember the sound of his voice, or even any of his personal interests.

It’s the simple things like these that cause people to simply fade from memory and eventually be forgotten. When my father dies, then it will be my brothers and I that are left with the responsibility of telling our children about him. What he liked to do, where he was born, where he lived, how old he was when he died. If I am unable to answer those questions then my children will little remember their great-grandfather. And the idea that his memory will not live on is unbelievably disheartening. Almost more heart-wrenching then when I heard that he had died, because I feel like I will have somehow disrespected him, or even dishonored his memory.

The last thing I remember about my grandfather’s death is that after the funeral, my father came home with a single framed picture of my grandfather. The picture showed my grandfather wearing a brown hat, and a brown vest with his fist raised in the air in triumph. In the picture he was not smiling but, rather, he was looking forward and slightly upwards. The photograph emanates a sense of power, strength, pride and glory. A fitting group of adjectives to describe a truly great man, whom I had the pleasure to be the grandson of, and the disappointment of never getting to know him. His name was Pantelis Paliouras, the same name as my eldest brother, and he died in January of 2010, at the age of 85. I will never forget that photograph, depicting a man who cared for his family as much as he cared for himself.

“Rima’s Prediction” Safia Singer-Pomerantz “One day I’ll be reading your published writing,” my teacher, Rima, said as she turned to me. It was the end of second grade, and I was almost eight years old. There was only one problem: I could barely read or write. All of the intricate, magical stories I had “written” up until this point had been dictated to my teachers or my parents, who would dutifully take down my narratives about snowflakes that could fly, witches who were hidden in the woods, or children who floated in the air like balloons. I had story after story and poem after poem inside of me, just waiting to come out, but I had no way of expressing them on my own.

It is true that most children don’t learn to fully read or write by eight years old, and a little guidance is still needed. However, my situation seemed more complex, more pressing, and even I felt something was not quite right. I struggled to write simple, three-letter words, and half of the words I tried to form were incomprehensible. My spelling lacked any pattern, like the first glance one takes at a game of Scrabble when only a jumble of letters exist. When I looked at a book the whole alphabet seemed to be stuck together, with no logical sense of beginning or end to the code, like a box of old gumdrops whose sticky candies of yellow, red, and green won’t come apart no matter how hard one shakes the cardboard. Some other kids at my progressive school were also slower to learn decoding, as the teaching methods for reading revolved around the “See It, Sing It, Say It Method,” of reciting word groups and engaging musically with them, rather than any formal phonics teaching. Still, I knew I was different, even from them, and I dreamed of the day that I would suddenly awake from this cloudy spell, and the written world around me would be transparent and clear; when I would no longer feel I was nursing a wound

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from the daily battles I did with words; when the fibrous scar tissue that was building up would become cool, smooth skin once more.

It was that same year that I learned I was dyslexic. Even though it was a word that I couldn’t yet spell, it was clear to me that I would need to work diligently to overcome this challenge, and that several more years would pass until I would read and write with fluency. I also learned that although my brain functioned differently than those of others, there were special abilities that accompanied this difference: the ability I had to easily memorize and recite Pablo Neruda poems when I was seven (memorization was my default mechanism), the knack I developed for drawing and photography and seeing the world via a unique lens, the way I was the first to learn a dance routine in my jazz class when I was eight years old (although letters signaled only a flurry of confusion, to me the beats all made sense), and the manner in which music flowed effortlessly from my fingers and through my body when I touched the keys of a piano or the strings of a cello, even though I couldn’t read the notes. These are the gifts of dyslexia, the special offerings of awareness and talent that take over in the same way that other senses are heightened when one loses sight or hearing.

But these gifts did not make my day-to-day existence any easier. I found that while at my progressive school, where everyone learned at her own pace and the lack of any yardsticks with which to measure progress was the norm, I was sheltered from the outside world of words.

However, whenever I ventured outside of those walls I entered into a place that perpetually surrounded me with letters that I could not decipher and messages that befuddled me wherever I went. Stop signs, advertisements, graffiti, and movie posters, surrounded seductively by lights, taunted me as they spelled out words that I found incomprehensible. The danger of decoding loomed everywhere, and those who could easily read didn’t seem to understand my fear and trepidation.

Yet, it wasn’t until a week-long summer camp that I attended at the American Museum of Natural History, that I realized the full weight of dyslexia. My instructor in this camp, a mild mannered and patient teacher, asked the group of campers to write a few observations about the first explorers of the South Pole in our individual journals. We had just watched a short movie about the explorers Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott and their expeditions to the tip of the earth, and now we were being asked to put some simple reflections down on paper. With pen in hand and the words barely flowing from my fingertips, I felt the heat of shame and a wave of surging fear, as a deep resonating silence, the type that makes one aware of every beat of the heart and every movement in the room, engulfed only me. The buzz of children in the room fell away, and I was alone in my head. In this space I held my secret carefully, so as not to expose myself, and hoped that I would not be discovered to be less than all the other kids, as they busily set to work on their journal entries while mine had just a drawing of a compass and a polar bear.

My own internal compass of shame drew me toward the teacher, to whom I gave an excuse that my stomach hurt, and I staggered out into the hallway to escape my inability to complete the task. It was now abundantly clear to me that my passion for storytelling and my love of books were being suffocated by this burden, while others around me delighted in the fulfillment and empowerment of the very things I was unable to do: read and write.

At home my parents would comfort me and assure me that I was intelligent and that I had ideas that mattered and had value. They let me know, that any way in which I could get these ideas out into the world was fine, whether by dictating them to an adult or expressing them through art. They told me about other people who had struggled with dyslexia and who had gone on to accomplish great things: Winston Churchill, Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, and the

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author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most of all, they continued to read to me. They read volumes of books, poems, and short stories because these were the things that mattered most to me and the things that I wanted to devour on my own, but could not. We read in the park, in the car, on the stoop of our brownstone, and in my bed at night with a book light guiding the way. We read Little Women, Little Men, The Secret Garden, Heidi, The Dreamer, The Mysterious Benedict Society, A Wrinkle in Time, and Madeline L'Engle's entire Time Quintet. They were my magicians who pulled rabbits from a hat where, for me, nothing existed. At the same time, I began the painstaking process of decoding written language and deciphering the music of phonics with a gifted teacher outside of school, Mindy, who understood how my brain worked and loved me because of it and not in spite of it.

Mindy was young and confident, firm and fair, and strong and forgiving, and with her leading me forward, I felt eager and I began to take risks. At first, the process of dissecting and conquering the written language Art by Ms. Woursell was an arduous and demanding one, but I was determined that, 2owith Mindy’s assistance, I would soon be equipped to tackle the alphabet and all that came after, and indeed I soon was. However, the process was not immediate, but rather took a herculean amount of effort, labor, and time. Mindy and I developed multiple tricks to cope with my challenges. I saw the letter “L” come to life through the way my left index finger and thumb created the shape when I held them to the sky. We created mnemonics for the letters “b” and “d” and she showed me how to line up numbers in organized and neat columns on graph paper so that I could begin to make sense of addition and subtraction. Mindy helped me work on my reading fluency by timing my reading of short passages over and over until I could master them in under a minute. I continued working over school and summer breaks, when my friends were all in the playground and I longed to be out there with them running through sprinklers and playing tag. In those days, such fulfillment was often postponed for me, as I continued to press on at a dizzying speed with letters and diphthongs dancing with a perpetual cadence in my head, twirling me in a tornado of words until I reached exhaustion.

On a daily basis things got easier. However, there were still episodes in which my weaknesses seeped through the small cracks of the freshly plastered walls of my new ability to read. Although I yearned to share my newly acquired knowledge, I still avoided moments of potential humiliation, such as volunteering to read passages aloud from books at school and watching foreign films with subtitles. There was also the time when my cousin, who is eighteen months younger than I am, usurped me as I read Morris the Artist to her baby brother and, without hesitation, read the word “cerulean,” when I stumbled over it and had no idea how to pronounce its soft “c” and multiple vowels. Yet, these moments were now fewer and more dispersed. I built up confidence at a new school, where decoding and reading were taken seriously and where teachers were patient but expected all of me that I could give. I learned to push myself to meet my own expectations, not just the expectations of someone else, and I also discovered how to be forgiving of myself if a passage took me longer to read than it might take others.

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Being dyslexic has given me the gift of patience. It has taught me humility, the utility of hard work, and the purpose of thoughtfulness and organization in the way I approach problem solving. It has also heightened my artistic sense and joy of creativity, and has shown me that passion and effort for the things I love and honesty about who I am win out over shame. My view of the world is unique. I still find expression in storytelling and words, rearranging and bending them to form different rhythms and sounds in my mind, and I still create poems and fiction, even though I need to consult spellcheck more times than I would like to admit.

Fulfilling Rima’s prediction was something I did last year, when a short story and poem I wrote were published in a teen literary magazine and were awarded the Editor’s Choice recognition. Rima’s offering of belief in me in that time long ago, when all seemed so far out of reach, buoyed me. Back then there was a sense of urgency in the stories I told. I would record them on a tiny hand held tape recorder, and I would desperately seek out anyone who would write them down for me because I had to; because my thoughts were stuck inside of me, bursting and clamoring to come out and come to life. Today, in spite of the way words once ricocheted in my mind and confounded me, there is now a sense of calm and dignity in the way I express my poems and stories, as I am able to find a voice for them on my own. That, after all, is what writers do: their voices tell their stories, their stories are their voices.

“How I Left this Island” Angelina Ferolie Only the seals, free and careless are not darkened by anything but the shark.

I sat on the bank of the dark gloomy beach, listening to the calls of the seagulls and thinking about how my mother’s favorite quote was so appropriate. A storm was coming to my island soon, I could feel it. Not a minute later I heard a warning blast of thunder and saw flash of bright white lightning. I looked darkly out at the raging grey sea and sighed, quickly getting up and brushing off the sand on my legs. I jogged back down the beach as the sea began to rise and crash, rain started pouring down on my dark, black hair.

After the rain became about ten times heavier, I began sprinting. I knew there wasn’t going to be a warm house or a dry towel waiting for me, but at least I would be out of the rain.

A red brick building came into view, its broken windows and snapping shutters were extremely foreboding, but I knew to go in. I ran up the cracked, concrete steps and opened up the faded white door. The others were huddled in the right corner sharing the only warmth they had.

It wasn’t as cold in the summer months, but now, in late February the wind howled furiously. I walked slowly towards the five of them, taking in their fearful stares.

“Hey, guys” I said with a cheerful tone “how about that wind?”

Amber, the little five-year old, began to cry, her wails didn’t even amount to the screaming of the wind. “I want mommy,” she said pitifully A pit of despair formed in my stomach as I thought about how our mother was ripped out of my hands and dragged under the water by a shark. Leaving us to fend for ourselves on a lonely, abandoned Island somewhere in Hawaii. Not to mention leaving me, the scared little girl with no courage, in charge.

“I know sweetie, I know,” I said as soothingly as possible trying to sound like mom did.

But I wasn’t her. I wasn’t brave or strong, and I certainly couldn’t calm Amber down.

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“I’m cold,” shivered Jade who just turned nine. She looked up at me with her dark green eyes and I looked away. I couldn’t bear to tell them what really happened to mom, so I had said she left.

I sat down next to them and took a deep breath, “sleep” I told them, choking back tears.

Savannah yawned and laid down, closing her eyes. I started to hum and soon after everyone else laid down as well. *** I awoke groggily, blinking the sleep from my eyes, I must have fallen asleep very late because I don’t even remember lying down. I gradually stood up and tiptoed across the room towards the door. It was warm now and the sun was streaming through the broken shutters. I slowly turned the rusty doorknob and made my way down the steps.

I began to make my way down to the coconut grove (our one and only source of food) when I heard Dawn.

“Hey! Wait up!” she called to me and ran to my side “Are you going to the coconut grove?”

“Yeah,” I said as I surveyed my twin angrily, “where were you last night when Amber was crying, and everyone needed you?”

She sighed, her eyes growing sad “A seal washed up on the beach, dead. The sharks are killing them.”

Dawn was the only one I trusted with the real story of Mom’s death.

“Oh,” I said sadly, she brushed a strand of white blond hair from her face and looked down.

“Come on, we’re here,” she said I nodded and walked up to the palm trees, watching their tall, green, fronds wave in the slight breeze. Some of the trees had fallen from the wind, and although I was sad to see them dying, I knew that it was good. I took the large fishing net I found on the beach out of my tattered pocket and began collecting the fallen coconuts. Dawn helped me.

We had collected about 20 of the less broken ones when I finally mustered up all the courage I had, and said “We need to leave the island.”

Brook looked relieved “I know,” she said “Come on. Let’s get back” We dragged the heavy bag of coconuts behind us as we walked down the beach, hardly speaking a word. I felt a pang of irrational fear.

I can’t do this, I can’t help them like I couldn’t help my mother. The coconuts will run out, the water will run out, and we won’t make it.

A small tear formed at the edge of my eye and I hastily wiped it away, I looked over at brook to see if she had noticed but she seemed to be too wrapped up in her own thoughts. *** When we arrived home, only Jade was awake. When she saw us she tiptoed over and whispered, “Coconuts mmmmmm…” The biting edge of sarcasm in her voice upset me. Once again the feeling of worthlessness filled me with a sense of dread.

“Fine,” Dawn retorted, anger evident on her face “Don’t eat” “I’m not that stupid,” Jade glared at Dawn and grabbed a coconut.

“Do you want me to open that for you?” I asked Jade “No,” was her only response

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Then, Savanah woke up yawning loudly, and, as a result, Amber woke up as well.

“Seals,” squeaked Amber “Yes, we can go see them,” I said quietly, the seals reminded me of mom.

“Yay!” shouted Savannah “Eat first” I said, as I opened up a coconut for Amber. She took it gratefully and began to eat the insides hungrily. I realized she must have been starving since we had nothing last night. I silently scolded myself for not remembering. Dawn must have noticed my scowl because she put her hand on my shoulder. *** “Come on,” Dawn said, picking up Amber “I see them!” Jade said The seals were small and dark grey, their coats shone in the wind and the basked in the sun happily. I smiled when I saw them and then frowned as I once again thought of the foreboding quote my mother always used. Amber wriggled out of Dawn's hands and ran to them.

We let her go. The seals, we knew were kind and gentle and often let us sit with them. I loved the seals and often wish I was one, because if I were I would be free of doubt. *** We had spent the afternoon with the seals, but now we were heading back to the house, Amber was yawning frequently on our trek back, so I picked her up and began to walk. She was heavy, and a dead wait in my arms as she fell asleep. I looked out into the calm horizon and sighed, but that happy smile quickly turned to an anxious gaze as I saw it… *** A large boat was approaching the shore and I yelled at Dawn to run, she saw it too. The hunters were coming for the seals…

I ran down the beach with Amber in my arms, she groaned in protest.

“Shh,” I said “No,” she wailed I covered her mouth with my hand and she complied, quietly staring up at me with her light, brown eyes. I heard shouts from the boat and urged the other girls on. I could see the house- we were at the steps- up the steps- in the house, safe.

But then it hit me, this was our ticket out of here, out of this god forsaken island. I knew we had to take it. I turned to Dawn, a single tear forming in my eye.

“We have to leave.” No longer was I the little scared girl, I was the girl who needed to protect her family. Who would do anything to keep them safe? I took one last look at the cowering seals and ran down the beach.

We. Were. Leaving.

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“Hellish Island” Michael Liu I looked up at my battered but trusty shack. Bright green littered the walls of my abode as a crimson red beetle skittered up the moss. I looked around. Nothing except a half-wrecked chair and a tap, about the size of a bathroom for a middle-class patrician. Our most prized possession glittered in the dark, placed on a granite shelf. Its crimson red gem filled me with hope for a better future for my wife and kids. Our Christian ways would finally be accepted. No more segregation. No more unfair executions. No more tortures and unjust killing. I will not tolerate this! I will not let my fellow Christians experience the excruciating pain that I went through! I clutched the firestone in my hand as the gem gave me a feeling of happiness and determination. I felt a stab of pain for my long-lost mother. I murmured, “I thought I had destroyed those emotions.”

A feeble voice called out, raw and dry, “Would you get some food?”

I nodded and walked out of my shack, but not before grabbing my amulet and cowl and saying goodbye to the rotten shack and my family. My children waved goodbye, my eyes deceiving me once again into hallucinating. It looked like my mom was here again. I pushed back the tears in my eyes as I trudged out into the dark, beautiful and beguiling day. The dark sky blended with the dark landscape as rain spattered the ground. My tattered cloak and cowl swished as the rain fell onto my mutilated back. A flashback exploded in my eyes as I relived the torture that my old master always loved. Acid, rocks, sticks, spears, or anything that could hurt, he bought to use against me, tormenting me every day. He unleashed his bloodhounds on me, strapping me to a pole for his sadistic mind to enjoy. One day, he poured salt and acid down my back and into my wounds for fun. I could only watch as my body burned and shifted. A wall bumped me back to reality. I shuddered in disgust. A tinge of pain struck through my bone-thin stomach. A Roman carriage shuffled through the tiny town as its wheels bent under the weight of 10 well-fed soldiers. I lowered my cowl and tried to sneak away. No doubt, they’re here because of my religion. I’ll follow Jesus no matter what. Caligula, you unworthy scum, I’ll destroy you and your son, Caesar, and free my people!

I trudged outside into the mushy ground as my boots sunk into the mud. A light squelching sound alerted the soldier and they shouted in an unintelligible language (The Royal Guard’s code). The soldiers ran at me, like bulls toward a moving target. The cowl was important to me, but not as important as my life. I flung it away, and it caught the wind, settling onto the ground. The guards were on my tail, charging forward like wild bulls. They somehow were running through the rain, wind and storm without problem. Soon enough, their trained legs overpowered my skinny limbs. They caught up and one jumped up flamboyantly, twisting and looping like a ballerina, and careened down onto me. I struggled, my appendages flailing as I tried to free myself, his meaty hands pinning me down. A gleaming point slipped next to my nape, a red trickling freely flowing down my neck. I immediately surrendered and stayed still; what would Martha and the kids do if I died? I saw an orangish-yellow glow light up the ground as I reached for it. The other scrawny guard picked it up and spoke in the common tongue, “Hmm… Do you want this? Do you?” As he dangled it in front of my face and swung it like a pendulum. I struggled to get it but his boot crashed down onto my spine and pushed me down in the dirt, worms crawling out of the holes in the mud. They grabbed me, put me in chains, and threw me onto the chariot.

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It was God knows how many days before we reached the town of Spiegerholosenschwine, a town influenced by German culture. Metal cuffs held me down.

Leather straps also bound me to the hard, wooden floor of the chariot. Lash marks spread out like hot magma across my back, with little patches of salt sprinkled in the wounds to make it more excruciating. They whipped their horses and laughed as the salt dug in, and my screams echoed and ricocheted around every location they visited. Inevitably, I would always black out. They wouldn’t even let me do that. When I either blacked out or tried to sleep, they would punch me ‘til I woke up. And so, the wounds and the black eyes kept coming. According to the lore, a time traveler got here from the future to make their history more interesting. They left me in the chariot, bruised and broken, yet still screaming for help. They rushed off, apparently not wanting to hear my high-pitched screaming. They went into the tavern for some ale (also brought here by the German). A young girl rushed up, wearing a slave tag with an engraving. “Salvation” was carved in into the metal. Salvation leaped up onto the chariot, with a knife in hand. For some reason her eyes flashed purple for just a second. Another one of my hallucinations. She couldn’t be any older than 17. She had that “thief” look, with some tattered clothes. She expertly cut my bindings with two daggers. I stood up slowly, as my limbs felt like they weren’t used in years.

She hurried me into a discreet street and then into a makeshift hideout within a destroyed wall. A hay pile was spread out across the floor, forming a protective carpet against the cold and wet floor.

It felt like years before I made an effort to converse. Hoarsely, my voice parched and cracking, I managed out, “Hey, why’d you save me? It’s got nothing in it for you.” The sound waves bent and bounced all over the stone bricks and echoed a few more times.

She grabbed some flint and some hay and started rubbing them against each other. “I’m taking you on a rebellion. You look pretty strong, and you seem to hate Caligula. And you want to protect your family and stop hate crimes.”

I stuttered out,” How do you know?”

She chuckled to herself. “You see, when my eyes flash purple, I’m reading someone’s mind.”

“What if I want to fight him myself and not join this crazy rebellion?” I muttered. She flashed out a knife, its gleaming steel blade glittering against the fire. The crimson beetle on the moss-encrusted walls started flashing in a variety of different colors, cycling through orange, blue and red. Suddenly I received a giant boost in energy. An image of my mom flashed in my mind. I jumped towards her, wrestling for the knife. She put it away, flashing her blindingly bright teeth in a smile.

“It was a joke. But please, we need to recruit more people for a better cause. We need to take over the corrupted empire, and we can use the Christians rage to help.” Her tone persuaded me but I didn’t want to reveal it just yet, and I set my jaw in a stubborn look. I fingered the red gem, smiling. It worked, granting me either invisibility or strength. The only downside would be the flashes of my mother in my head.

Minutes later, I was dragged by my collar into a weapon lover’s dream. Ebony shelves lined the walls made of turtle shells. Hell, this was as close to heaven as it gets! It was owned by a rich man, his name lining the walls. A skeleton I think was him was propped up against a chair in the corner with lines of ammo and guns, spears and swords around it. Apparently, the messed up German also brought guns to the Roman world. The only weapon I was comfortable with was the double dagger, due to my mom and dad teaching me to spar. They were both swordmasters on the side. I picked it off a wooden shelf, leather sheath smooth against my rough hands. The

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titanium gleamed as I swished it out and waved it around like a monkey with a banana. The handle felt so light. It melded with my hand, or so I thought. The daggers went a bit too fast and slashed a piece of her hair off. I thought, “Oh. Shizzle my dizzle.” The knife was pulled out and a trickle of blood flowed down my neck.

“Don’t do that again,” she projected into my mind. Well, a new ability.

5 days later, after tons of rigorous training, my back was sore. Even after all that mistreatment from my former master, it still hurt. I got pretty good with it. My daggers flew and flowed like paintbrushes.

Needing a reliable source of transport, we raided a stable full of horses. Pulling out my daggers, the men guarding the noble’s stable never saw it coming. Silent whispers of death permeated the night. We crept into the stable, and Salvation and I each mounted horses. I chose a snow white stallion with a beautiful mane. Mine was white, speckled with spots of black, while hers looked like a plain horse, brown and normal except for a giant pack on the side. We mounted our respective horses and my horse started bucking, while Salvation’s stood perfectly still. “Did I forget to tell you Snow is the most rebellious horse in the world? I’ll tell you now,” she said. My horse bucking and rearing, we traveled into the sunset, heading for the Colosseum The beautiful marble ceilings and structure of the Colosseum gleamed white in the sun, thousands of guards surrounding this marvelous structure. Salvation pulled out her magic pack and took out a ton of C4. Man, the Germans messed up our world. After about an hour, yes clocks were also in the giant magic pack, the sun set and made the sky beautiful. Just the right time for a fireworks display.

A giant fireball erupted from the arena, wiping out at least half of the army. The sky lit up in a plethora of colors. Red, brown and orange blended and contrasted with the dark background of the sky. I whooped and cheered, “Killing two birds with one stone! A genius idea, Salvation!”

The other half of the army swiveled their heads around almost instantly, and almost in sync. I grabbed a dagger from a fallen soldier and put the knife between my jaws. Two wasn’t enough for an army. Steel clanged and sparks flew as I danced through the army, daggers ripping out chunks of men and armor. A red stain splattered across the ground and my clothes as I ran through the hordes of soldiers. When the dust settled, men collapsed and blood ran down my shirt. I spit out my dagger and smiled. I had a knack for fighting.

We entered the colossal structure. The Prince of Rome, Caesar Caligula stood up. “Filthy scum, how dare you destroy half of our beautiful army and HOW DARE YOU CHALLENGE THE THRONE!” he thundered. He unsheathed his sword in a flash. “You will be one of the many people to have fallen beneath my blade. My 600th victim.” A blur streaked through the arena, throwing up bloody dust. My life flashed before my eyes as a curved blade stopped right before my head. “Let me enjoy this.” He whispered menacingly. I grabbed my three knives and ran straight at him, spinning like a tornado, ripping up all the sand in the arena, swerving right to go for his thigh. Swiveling his sword around, he created a vacuum. My daggers clanged and fell limply to the floor. His eyes lit up and a malicious smile overtook his face. He charged at me and I heard a squelching sound. My life flashed before my eyes. Me as a child, looking up with eyes of despair as my dad and mom were taken away, struggling as a scream permeated the air. I opened my eyes and looked up, blood dripping onto the sandy ground.

I saw the same tattered clothes that I had always seen. The rags that I had seen being worn for four weeks. Rage coursed through my veins, through my very skin. The primal rage inside me ignited in a blaze of anger. The body of Salvation, lifeless, with a horrible expression on her face as she screamed out in agony lay in front of me. I clenched my wrists and a maroon

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liquid flowed through my hand. It overtook me. All my senses were overwhelmed by a surge of power. The same crimson beetle I saw many times was climbing on the wall, glowing and shining brightly against the contrast of white. I looked down at my bottom half. I was disappearing; it somehow was created by my amulet, as a blood red glow pulsed down to my legs. I grinned viciously, as I knew it would be the last image Caesar would ever see.

A wail of rage escaped my invisible mouth as Caesar’s body was wracked with pain, his face frozen in a state of horror. “ARRRRR...GHHHH,” I screamed in rage, wild sounds erupting out of my mouth. Dashing back and circling around him, slicing up his appendages, dicing his shoulders, slashing across his back, I jumped on top of him, spinning like a force of nature. I leaped back onto the ground and sheathed my daggers, as Caesar exploded into a thousand pieces and a blood fountain erupted from his corpse. I reappeared into vision. Red liquid and tears seeped into my clothes. The king and his henchmen squealed like pigs and ran. I turned back and warned him menacingly, “Change the laws concerning Christianity, and I just might let you live.” He nodded, tears freely streaming down his face. Scared out of his boots, he ran. I needed to lay low for a while, staying in a humble makeshift abode of mine.

Picking Salvation off the bloody sand, I dug a little grave for her and carved up a gravestone. Engraved on it was: “Rest in peace Salvation. I didn’t know you for long but I’ve really connected with you. See you in Heaven. -Isaac.” My shoulders heaving, rain poured down, drenching every belonging I owned. I didn’t care. I didn’t care what happened to me. I didn’t care what happened to my belongings. All I knew was that I needed to mourn my friend. After an hour of grieving, my tears intertwining with the rain, I beckoned a nearby chariot, slowly got up to sit on it, and waved goodbye to the soil patch and decaying flesh that was once Salvation. I traveled back home. It was a long and weary ride, but I missed my family just as much as Salvation.

I entered the trusty shack, surprised to find out that my eldest son and my wife had found jobs because of the King removing the restriction on Christianity. My wife screamed in joy, “Isaac! I haven’t seen you in a while! Where have you been?”

“Well, I was off doing some errands.” I muttered. I couldn’t stand lying to my wife, but I had to.

“What could have made Caligula change his mind?” she said, joy lighting up her broken face.

“I don’t know. Huh.” I muttered with a smile on my face.

Scholastic Regional Honorable Mentions “The Mysterious Feeling” Mikayla Benson Regulations were a big part of my family. When your temper got out of hand, you were given the pain of passive silence as the disappointing eyes stare at you with dismay. You weren’t given any mocha chocolate cake after dinner, nor did you have an opportunity to engage in the dinner table discussions.

But this was different. There were no regulations. In fact, it was totally out of control. I always thought of his world as a place devoid of regulations, a place where everything you wanted was given to you. I would always compare my life to his, and how he always had

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everything that I ever wanted. I had to stay home and practice my violin when he got to go out for ice cream. He always ended up getting a new stuffed animal that I was begging my mom for.

She always said that I had to wait until Hanukkah.

I was seven when I heard that my cousin Ollie had something wrong with his brain. He was suffering in his no-regulations world. The only time he was punished was when he stole rainbow sprinkles from the pantry and denied it. The fit he threw when he realized he would not get to go to the Thomas the Train concert ensured that it was the last time he was punished.

I was there when he felt like nobody understood what he was feeling. He would roll around the expensive cowskin rug, screaming that he had this “mystery feeling” inside his head that made him angry. Most excuses were based off of this mystery feeling. “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” I would sing to him, as his salty tears rolled down his puffy face. My Broadway songs calmed him down, so I sang to him frequently or put on the Broadway soundtrack of The Sound of Music. I had a connection with him that no one could really understand. I didn’t understand it myself until much later. The only connection that I did understand was that our relationship was built upon me following along with his extravagant activities and desires while my moral compass kept him in line, away from his unruly intentions. I was his babysitter who also got the benefit of endless bags of candy and opportunities to see Broadway shows.

Even though I felt bad for him because of his condition, I became jealous of his “new” life without regulations, while my life remained the same, with regulations and rules. He would have ice cream for dinner and had so many toys that it suffocated me. When I was with Oliver, I was in my happy place. The endless trips to FAO Schwartz and the nightly trips for frozen yogurt shielded me from the realities of my own regulations in my immediate family.

My friendship with my cousin, although complicated, took over my entire view of my family. I believed that my family was too strict and Ollie’s family was all fun. I would always tell Ollie how lucky he was to be in such a fun family, but he always told me that I never saw their family during school days, and only during vacations. Even though he kept on telling me that, I never believed him, because he had only lived a life of freedom.

I was so frustrated by his unnecessary meltdowns that I would lock myself in the bathroom until he stopped crying. I didn’t understand how a privileged young boy that had Ben and Jerry’s ice cream stocked-up in his freezer every week could cry as much as he did. I didn’t understand why he didn’t want to listen to his parents when he could’ve gotten even more than he was given. Surrounded by a loving family who wanted to help him, Ollie never could appreciate what he had, because he didn’t know what he didn’t have. He was just the boy for his environment, and his environment was for just the boy.

Through years of unsettling outbursts, by the age of seven, I had helped Ollie find a vehicle for controlling his mystery feeling. For some incomprehensible reason, the sweet melodies of Broadway helped Oliver escape from the negative parts of his personality. Whenever I was with him, I replaced his negative outbursts with tunes from Rent and Hairspray. In times of the “mystery feeling”, he would sit by his satin-sheeted bed and would read all day about the rise of Julie Andrews. I began to wonder how this happened. Where did this come from? It was as if acting as someone else was Ollie’s escape from the world he thought was normal. The world of endless luxuries. When he wanted ice cream he would suddenly tell his mom that he was anxious, and he got ice cream. Who would want to escape that?

Although our relationship grew, a gulf opened up between us. As he matured, Ollie began to see that vast difference between us. I had standards and had a wider understanding of the world. Ollie, on the other hand, was unaware of the world outside his brownstone on Marlboro

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Street. His major relationships were with the help, who cleaned his house. Mine were with violin teachers, classmates, and parents.

At the age of ten, Ollie and I were together during a momentous section of our childhoods: sleep-away camp. Once my pink and black duffel bags were stuffed with green apple scented shampoo and rainbow, chevron comforters, Ollie and I set off for a two-week camp.

After two hours on a bus ride while listening to “Pippin”, we arrived in the middle of the Berkshires. My jaw had been aching from the new, tight, braces that had been glued onto my crooked teeth. Ollie and I were separated into different lunch tables within the yellowed wood cafeteria. We were given potato chips, and everyone started eating as if they had never seen food before. The chips helped each camper focus on eating rather than communicating with other kids. Food helped with the awkwardness. However, I wasn’t granted this gift from the chips, for my teeth felt as fragile as a glass bottle. On the way out of the cafeteria, Ollie and I made eye contact, and smiled slightly at each other.

As I walked into my cabin, I was afraid he’d tantrum all the time. Was he scared?

Disgusted by the amount of spiders? Or was he excited to be in an environment where not everything was sterilized? The walls of the cabin were crusted with sand and spider webs. The scaffolding was made of a dark wood that made the whole place dingy. I began to unpack my bags, and as I covered my pillow with my pastel-pink baby blanket, I began to grow nervous about this new step in Ollie’s life. Living without his mother or father to remind him to brush his teeth at the age of ten, and not being accustomed to boundaries of camp life was a potential disaster.

“So, how do you like it here?” I said, while walking to the cafeteria.

“A kid punched me yesterday, and told me I was horrible at basketball,” he said in a calm tone.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Are you okay? What did you say?” My mind was trying to figure how this happened and how he could be so calm. There was silence for a second. Ollie didn’t talk. It was as if he were a statue.

“I threw the basketball in his face and ran away,” he said in an ashamed and muffled voice.

“How could you do that? I mean, why did you throw a basketball at his face?” I said, trying to cover up my fury.

“I don’t understand people here,” he complained. “They always want to compromise and apologize, and no one except for me has the mystery feeling.”

“You’re not used to being around people who don’t know everything about you, Ollie.

You have to understand that. The world does not revolve around you.” I stormed away. *** “You guys ready?” Aunt Peggy said with excitement.

“Yeah,” Ollie and I said in perfect timing.

We were about to enter the world of the arts, the city of creativity, and the dome of acceptance: musical theatre camp. Both Ollie and I were hoping for a better experience than at our other camp. After all, everyone had the same passion for performing arts at this camp. After two weeks of dance combinations and octave scale exercises, people started coming up to me and complaining about Ollie.

“Liv, no offense, but Ollie is getting kinda annoying,” the dance captain said.

“Ollie keeps on messing with my bed in the cabin,” said the male lead.

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I started to get concerned with Ollie’s behavior. And worse than that, I started to feel a bit ashamed of him.

“Ollie, people are saying that you are bothering them. Is that true?” I asked him in a level voice.

“Oh, gosh,” he protested. “Why do you always have to act like my mom! You’re supposed to be cool and chill.”

He was trying to act cool, play it off. I had never seen him like this. I tried to influence him with model behavior, but he pretended that it meant nothing. The damaging comments kept on pouring down on me as if I were a mailbox that had not been emptied in a year. It was as if it was my fault that Ollie was acting a certain way. Every day, it became my constant job to console Ollie. He started pretending that he was the victim. He complained that people were avoiding him, and he wanted to go home because he couldn’t control his “mystery feeling”.

Growing even more agitated by the fact that he wanted to leave one of the most artistic places in the world, I finally cracked and let him fend for himself. I ended my mission to create regulations for him, so I let him loose into the world, where no one actually cared about how you were feeling. Ollie started to schedule daily visits with the camp guidance counselor. Half a week later, the parents of actors in our show started emailing the director with their grievances.

Phrases such as, “This child is not fit for this competitive environment,” or “I don’t want my daughter to be learning in this environment with such a child,” were passed through by email.

On a cold Michigan morning, my unit leader dragged me out of my cabin. As the dewy air made my hair frizz, we walked what felt like miles as she told me that there was a serious matter that the Head of Camper Affairs wanted to discuss with me. As we walked into the small cabin with music note decorations covering the walls, I saw stacks of files. They told me that Ollie had been skipping his daily medications. They said that a boy of his condition could not be helped at this camp. Ollie was to be sent home in a few hours. I couldn’t comprehend this situation. I tried to hold back my tears, but I couldn’t control myself. They were about to take Ollie away from me, and all I could feel was guilt over quitting on him. Although Ollie had been making my camp life nearly unbearable, he was still my cousin and his suffering was my suffering.

The really puzzling thing was that the Mystery Feeling hadn’t been felt recently. Ollie always said that the Mystery Feeling told him to do things he didn’t want to do. There was no excuse for his behavior. He didn’t even bother making one. Ollie's attitude and perspective hadn't changed. However, the way people were treated him did change. I began to recognize that there was no excuse for this. For the Mystery Feeling wasn’t a part of Ollie’s life now for two years. It was simply a matter of immaturity. The poor, innocent boy who couldn’t control himself had morphed into a crafty, young teenager who never considered anyone besides himself as important. The rules that were purposely removed from his life made him even more uncontrollable.

I was left alone with my tears. All my friends had moved on because of who my cousin was. They said that they felt uncomfortable around me because of Ollie’s history at camp. Many people said horrible things to me.

“I am so glad Oliver left, he was so annoying.”

“How could someone be such a freak!”

I was placed in what I thought was eternal loneliness. I walked alone. No one was there to join me when bursting into song on the way to the canteen. As I scanned through the music library, no ever ever dared talking to me. However, they always felt free to talk about me. I was

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engulfed in “my own little world.” The dark woods closed me in, but the birds were free to fly into the misty sky reflecting upon the lake.

After my last performance, I hopped into my dad’s blue car with leather lining and went to the airport. Oddly enough, this was my favorite part of my summer experience. It was just me on the highway, looking out the window while listening to Evita. My mind had been cleared of the woeful times during camp. After several packs of stale popcorn and two ginger ales we arrived. I was so excited to be home. After walking off the plane while feeling covered in travelscum, I saw him. He was wearing a Les Miserables shirt and had a smile as wide as the cheshire cat.

“Liv! You’re home, you’re home! I have made an itinerary for what we are going to do for the rest of the summer.”

Ollie was acting as if nothing had happened.

“I’m kinda tired,” I said. “I think I’m just want to go home right now.”

“Oh. Okay, that's fine too.”

What was with him? He had been kicked out of camp for not taking his medication and now he wanted to explain his itinerary? He had no idea the misery he had caused me. He seemed so enthusiastic and looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

I only had one more week before school would start and I didn’t want to deal with him.

The picket fence guarding my house was soon covered in hazel and yellow leaves. The dry and musty air gave me a slight cough, making me even more nervous for my next audition. *** I was able to get over Ollie’s intolerance for rules surprisingly quickly after getting caught up in the hectic time of autumn. On weekends, I spent as much time as I could with Ollie.

I taught him how to control his mind in different ways. I inspired him through music. Whenever there was a conflict, singing always made him relax and escape from every situation. The mood swings were not as frequent, and neither was the Mystery Feeling, thankfully. I was no longer the babysitter who got benefits. His condition had weakened and his every day was made more difficult by the catalog of school-time rules.

Everything went along as it always had until one day. The wind blew the autumn-gold painted fall leaves as they swirled to the ground. The smell of freshly-baked banana bread traveled up the stairs while I held a mug of Throat Coat Tea. The crackling fire from down stairs heated up my house as I began to feel that the fall was truly here. My white colonial house with a picket fence had just been decorated with pumpkins and the oven below my room began to heat up my floor. I heard my mom frantically calling my name.

“Olivia! Olivia! I need you now!”

Was I in trouble? I knew I had picked up my towel from the bathroom floor. I didn’t remember doing something out of line.

“Olivia. I think you are the only one that can get through to him,” my mom said, in a clear state of exasperation and near tears.

The state of my mother immediately alerted me that something was seriously wrong. As I raced down the stairs, my heart began beating as fast as a hummingbird's wings. I walked into the room, and I saw Ollie with a face puffy from crying. His hands were gripped around the side of the newly painted dresser. I had never seen him so completely beside himself. I understood what was happening.

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“Ollie, I need to you to think of the stage,” I said in a controlled voice, going through our routine. “Ok? I need you to focus on the warm lights that face the stage. Imagine you are feeling the thick velvet curtains that open and close after each act. Can you do that for me?”

“Mom took away my book. It's not fair! I want to read, I don’t want to go to sleep.”

“Ok, what are you feeling? Mad, confused?”

“I just want to read. I just want to read. I just want to read, and Mom said I can’t!” His voice began to get even more agitated and started to crescendo.

“I just want you to think of the stage Ollie. That’s all I’m asking.”

“She took away my book, she took away my book. I want my book!”

Ollie then closed his eyes and started to hum to himself. He was somewhere else. He was basking in applause. He was no longer tolerated, but adored. He wanted the sublime order of the stage. He wanted regulations. Finally, for the first time in years, I smiled at him.

Photograph by Shira Mandelzis

“For Every Victory, There is a Cost” Henry Choi It was that fatal night, where I got orders to wake my men for some sort of battle straight from the top. I roused them, shouting “Up and at it men! We got a battle to win!” After my men were fully awake, I myself went to gather my equipment. I grabbed my helmet and my rifle, ready to kill some Nazis. I led my unit to a large group of military personnel, who guided us onto a destroyer. U.S.S Tuscaloosa, I believe it was called. We set off and I asked my commanding officer where we were going. He turned toward me and asked me to inform my regiment. I asked him what I was to inform my unit. He said “We’re going to Omaha Beach.” I showed some surprise, then turned back and started to walk to where my unit was. It was time to break the news. I walked up to my men with a grim face, prepared to tell them the worst. I started with a simple, “Hey folks, I’ll give you 3 chances to guess where we’re heading.” My trusted sergeant, Surt, took a chance. He asked, “Paris?”

“Nope.”

“Luxembourg?”

“Surt, what is it with you and French places?”

“I dunno…” he murmured with a blushing face, I just thought there would be hot-” ”STOP, stop, stop, stop, stop!” I quickly yelled. “Surt, sometimes I wonder what goes on in your brain.”

“You don’t wanna know what’s in my mind, cap.”

“No I don’t. Now, we’re going to Omaha Beach, Normandy. We’re taking back Europe.” There was a moment of silence, then one of my men, Kai, I believe his name was, made a comment.

“Are you *censored* insane?!”

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“Nope, this was an order straight from the top, and we need to go through with it.”

“This is suicide.”

“Well too bad, I’m your commanding officer, and you must follow my orders.”

“You sound like my mom.”

“Shut up.”

Our conversation ensued for a while, with nobody getting the upper hand. Finally, I pulled out my gun. This was a joke, and we were all aware of that fact, but my unit lurched back in mock fear. “Oh no, is the big bad captain going to shoot us with his powerful gun?”

“I might, if you don’t shut up.”

“I alr-” An excited, yet scared voice shouted through the deck, “Omaha Beach is in sight!” This immediately put a halt to our conversation, the vibe of the destroyer immediately spiked to very tense, we were scared as *censored*. In fact, I think Surt peed himself. We went to the hangar and loaded onto the Higgins Boats. Our destination was Dog Green. My unit was in there with me, and I was thinking that we were invincible. That all changed as soon as we hit the water. The Germans immediately opened fire on us, downing a couple of Higgins Boats before they even reached the shore. We saw the shore was full of tank traps, meaning we had to exit before we got to suitable ground. Which also meant that we were sitting ducks as we waded toward shore. The one thing I didn’t consider was the opening hatch of the Higgins Boat. An officer yelled, “Open murder holes!” Carn pulled the lever to open the ‘murder hole’, and he was immediately killed.

Kai, York, and John were also immediately slaughtered, as they were right in front of the hatch.

The rest of us dived over the side and started wading to shore. I’d only been on this beach for 2 minutes, and I already wanted to go home. I pulled out my prized rifle, given to me by my dad, and I grabbed on to the silver cross necklace I had around my neck. I took cover behind a tank trap, aimed my rifle at a German in a machine gunner bunker, and fired. I hit my target, but another guy took his place 5 seconds later. In that brief time, I managed to run over to a little ditch near the barbed wire fence, where the machine guns couldn’t reach us. I yelled over to Surt, “Who’s left in our unit?!” He took his jolly little time, then he yelled back, “You, me, Lars, Janus, Billy, Rotter, and Alf!” “That’s it?!”

“Yep!” From the corner of my eye, I saw Rotter and Janus get murdered by machine gun fire. C and D company hit the ditch. They were also reduced by many men, there were only 10 of them left. “C and D, report!” I yelled. “This is Sergeant Oman of C company! We’ve lost 4 of our men, including our commanding officer!”

“This is Lieutenant Connor of D company! We’ve lost 5 of our guys, my sarge is still here, but we’re pinned down!”

“I can see that.” I responded dryly. “Okay, D and C Companies, get your mortars up here, my company, we’re gonna need to bust through that barbed wire!” The situation looked pretty bad, we were soaking wet, the majority of our men were dead, and we were most likely going to lose more trying to get through. As I predicted, when North and Kili went up to cut the wire, they were mowed down by machine gunfire. So here I was, not even drafted, by choice, in this mess. I grabbed my pistol and fired at the bunker a couple of times, knowing that it would do no good, but I was too panicked and frustrated to listen to reason. The firing stopped for a minute. It turns out, my bullet actually hit its target.

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We moved further in as the firing stopped. It resumed as fast as it stopped, and we dived for cover once again. The machine gun fire ripped into the ground right in front of us, but we were too entrenched for it to hit us. We moved again, but we lost 2 men on the way to the next trench. We dived for cover, as the bullets ripped at the ground once again. “Mortars!” I called out. 2 men with mortars stepped to the front of the trench. They set down their mortars, inserted a shell, then we all covered our ears as they fired. I guessed that the Germans instinctively dived for cover, so I ordered Billy and Lars to try and cut the wires. I instructed the mortarmen to keep firing, as cover fire, so Billy and Lars could cut the wires without getting mowed down. This worked for a bit, but Lars was killed, shot in multiple places. Billy broke through the fence, and we all ran for it. There were 10 of us left, rushing the bunkers. A bunch of people came out of the first bunker, raising their hands in defeat. We shot them down in cold blood anyway. Their bodies hit the ground with a thump, but did we have a care? Of course not, they kill us, we kill them.

We moved on to the next bunker, but this one was a bit harder to crack. We busted in the entrance, and one of the D company guys threw a grenade in there. We heard some shouting in German, and the explosion as the frag exploded. I was beginning to feel some qualms about this, as they were people too, but I reconsidered as I thought, “If they can slaughter us, we can slaughter them.” Hours later, the beach was cleared and the entire invasion force was landing on the shore. We secured the perimeter, the rush of activity on the beach was enormous, as troops rushed to clear the bodies and destroy the remainder of the tank traps so the space was clearer for more troops to land.

After another 8 hours or so, the entire beach was finally cleared, and troops were being sent into the mainland, we were gonna set camp further up. They assigned a new troop to me, the only guys left in my old one were Surt, Billy, and me. Everyone else was slaughtered by those vicious Germans. The new troops assigned to me were Tom, Corvac, Lewis, Tom (another), and Ryan. We were in our assigned tent, getting to know each other, when I was called by a superior officer. I rushed to the meeting tent, where they debriefed me of my task. My squad and I were to move further in, to pave the way for the main group. We were to move in an orderly fashion, clearing out the cities with a couple other regiments. I went back to my soldiers and told them this, and they all agreed it would be better than storming Omaha Beach. We made our way into our designated tent, and sat there for 10 minutes, just enjoying the comfiness of the tent. Omaha beach had really done a number on us. We were much more grateful for everything, even nonluxurious items. We had next to nothing during that battle, so this was a much appreciated environment.

“Casper’s Journey” Ian Choi It was a rainy afternoon in Manchester as Casper walked home from school. His feet always seemed to find a muddy puddle as he walked. The gloomy weather seemed to reflect off of his mood.

“Hey Casper, where do you think you’re going, mate? We haven’t finished!” a voice said from behind.

Casper turned around and found himself quickly surrounded. Two people quickly grabbed his arms and held him so he couldn’t move.

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“I challenged you to a match, but you never came! What did you have to do? Go home and change your diapers?” the bully taunted.

“Hey Gill, lay off will ya? We all know I would beat you anyway,” Casper fired back.

“You sound so sure about yourself. How ‘bout we do it now, right here?” Gill said.

“I’ve got better things to do than go against you, Gill. See you tomorrow at the pitch,” Casper murmured as he walked away. Gill and his gang looked at Casper with disgust and walked away.

The next day…

Today was the day. The Regional Cup Final. Casper leaped out of his bed and quickly washed the dirt of his cleats. He grabbed his shin guards and socks. He ate breakfast and walked to the field to practice. It was a clear Saturday morning, perfect for a game. Casper laid down the cones, set up the balls, and began his practice. With every touch of the ball, he trained and trained. Finally it was 1:00 p.m. and it was almost time for the game. Casper went back home and took a shower. He put on his cleats and shin guards and stepped onto the field. His team was already waiting for him.

“Good afternoon Casper, you’ll be playing your usual position as striker today. Marcus, you good to go? Alright boys, today’s the day! Today’s the day that we can show everyone that we are the best in the nation. Daniel, you’ll be playing center mid with Marcus and Gareth.

Michael and Will, you’ll be playing as center backs with David on your left and Matthew on your right. Now get out there and show ‘em what you’ve got!” said Coach Antoine.

“Hey Casper, ready to get demolished?” Gill yelled.

Casper ignored him and concentrated on the game.

“Fwee!” the whistle sharply called.

A couple of minutes after the second half…

“I have to score. It’s 2-2 and we’re losing possession more than we should,” Casper thought. He yelled for the ball and dribbled through the line of defenders. He dribbled the ball in the box and leaned his leg, ready to shoot. Suddenly, Casper found himself on the ground and Gill smirking over him. “Fwee!” the whistle blew. The referee presented a yellow card to Gill and gave the penalty. The entire field was tense. Slowly, Casper took a deep breath and waited for the whistle.

“Fwee!” the referee blew the whistle.

Casper shot and watched the ball slowly drift into the back of the net. He did it! Casper sank to the grass in disbelief and celebrated. He took a glance at Gill’s face and saw his dismay.

As the referee called the final whistle, Casper and his teammates lifted the Regional U13s Cup Trophy. Casper glanced over to the stands and saw his parents’ happy faces. But he noticed something. There were a group of scouts who were writing down something on their clipboards and occasionally glancing at him. After the game one of his teammates came up to him.

“Oi Casper! Those scouts over there, they were looking at you during the entire game!

Mate, you could be heading for the Prem!” he said. Casper remembered the scouts’ faces when he lifted that trophy. He thought for a moment and realized what he could achieve.

5 years later...

“Casper lemme talk to you for a minute son,” said Casper’s coach.

Casper followed him into his office.

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“Casper I’ve noticed the way you’ve played in our drills and practices. It’s time you progressed from this good old academy and head to the big boys,” said the coach.

“Wait really? I’m going to the Prem?” Casper exclaimed.

“That’s right son, good luck. Evan will help you with the health forms and everything you need to finish to move into the team,” the coach said smiling as Casper ran out the door.

“So Casper right? Let’s get your stuff sorted,” Evan informed him.

After all the forms were finished, Casper got on the bus to his house. When he got there he was greeted by his grinning parents. He noticed that his phone got a notification. It was a voice message: “Hello, is this Casper Smith? This is Arsenal F.C. and we are looking to sign you in our club. Would you care to come by Emirates Stadium?” He quickly sent a message back with his reply and attached his health forms.

Casper was so excited that he ran out the door for the train station without even packing his bags. On the way, he passed by the old field where he won the Regional Cup Final. Casper realized how many years has passed and remembered how much his parents supported him.

Then, he realized that he would be leaving his parents behind. Slowly, Casper walked back to the house and told his parents. Surprisingly, they said yes, and that they were very proud of him. He packed his bags and prepared to go to the train station. When Casper got to the station he realized that his train was already here. He hugged his parents and promised he would visit them whenever he could. And with that, Casper got on the train to London.

6 Hours Later…

Casper woke up and checked the time. It was 20 minutes until arrival time. He grabbed a quick drink of Red Bull and prepared to arrive in London. When the train finally stopped, he stepped out of the train and was greeted by the business of the London station. Casper quickly caught a bus that was headed for the Arsenal Training Centre in Hertfordshire. He arrived at the centre and bumped into someone, causing papers to fly.

“Oops, sorry lad, that was my fault, let me help you with your papers,” Casper said as he picked up the dropped papers. He noticed on the paper that it said Gill Taylor and that he didn’t pass the test.

“Oi, don’t read that,” Gill said. Gill’s eyes and Casper’s met and they recognized each other in an instant. Gill muttered something as he walked off but Casper was too shocked to understand what he said. After that Casper continued to walk forward.

“I can’t believe Gill tried to join Arsenal,” Casper thought. His thoughts were interrupted by someone calling his name.

“Casper? Casper Smith?” a man in an Arsenal training suit says “Yes sir that’s me,” Casper replies.

“Good, I am Adrian and I will be your coach today,” Adrian says “Coach? I’m already in the team?” Casper exclaims as they walk through the trophy hall.

“Well, not yet, but I’ll be acting like a coach. Our scouts have said great things about you, and today you are here to prove it,” Adrian explains.

Adrian and Casper arrive at the entrance of the locker rooms and stop.

“All right Casper, suit up,” Adrian tells him as he tosses some pants and an Arsenal training shirt identical to his.

After Casper finished changing, Adrian told him the first drill that he had to complete.

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“Okay Casper, This is a dribbling drill. I want you to dribble through all the six cones, get past the mannequin and dribble as fast as you can into the box, Adrian instructed.

Casper whizzed through the six cones, got past the mannequin and push all his energy to dribble into the box.

“Well done Casper! You’ve done it under twenty seconds! Now let’s see how comfortable with the ball you are,” Adrian said.

Casper began the second drill. Adrian threw the ball in the air and Casper would have to control it. He also showed Adrian his juggling skills and his touch. Casper then had to take freekicks and penalties. He also shot on the run and did volleys. After all the drills, Adrian finally told him that the session has ended. Casper headed to the locker room and there he took a shower. While he was taking a shower, he heard the door open. He saw two cleats and realized the person was wearing Puma evoTOUCH. Quickly, Casper dried himself and changing into his regular clothes. When he stepped out of the shower, he was face to face with Santi Cazorla, one of Arsenal’s famed midfielders. Casper opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.

“Sa-San-Santi Cazorla? I just have to say that I am a huge fan!” Casper exclaimed.

“Ahh, ¡Hola! ¿Comó te llamas?” Santi Cazorla replied in Spanish.

“I’m sorry I don’t understand Spanish,” Casper said.

“Oh. Hello! What’s your name?” Santi Cazorla said.

“My name is Casper! And well, I already know yours. I can’t explain how special this moment is. Can I have your autograph?” Casper said.

“Sí,” said Santi Cazorla, and he signed Casper’s shirt.

Casper left the locker room and met up with Adrian. Adrian told him that the results would be emailed to him tonight.

Casper left the training grounds with a grin on his face and booked a hotel for the night. It was almost dark so he quickly grabbed dinner and took a bus to his hotel. He went into his room and pulled out his laptop. Casper noticed he received an email from Arsenal.

He opened the email and his success in bold letters greeted him. The email contained the final applications needed to enter into the squad. The first thing that Casper did was call his parents. He told them what happened and that he got in Arsenal. His parents congratulated him and wished him the best. Casper took a shower and prepared to meet Arsene Wenger and get his contract for tomorrow.

After he finished all the paperwork, Casper was on the team and it was his first training day. After the weeks of training, his first game approached.

It was finally game day. Casper got onto the field with the rest of the team and was quickly greeted by the roar of the fans. The players lined up and prepared for kick off. The whistle blew! The game was off. Almost automatically, the opposition gets the ball and quickly work their way through the defense. Their striker shot and hit the post. The manager began to shout commands to everyone and soon we were on the attack again. Casper’s team managed to steal the ball back and counterattack. The right back dribbled past the line of defenders and scored. Casper looked at him in astonishment and congratulated him. The referee blew his whistle and it was half time. After the break, the second half started and Casper received the ball.

He passed the ball to the midfielder who passed back to him. Casper leaned for the shot but suddenly the defender crashed into him. Pain exploded all across his ankle and Casper went down. The medical team quickly rushed him away on a stretcher. Casper’s ankle was applied pressure and a bandage was wrapped around it. He sat down on the bench and painfully watched the game. Casper’s team won and one of his teammates helped him walk out of the stadium.

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Casper visited a doctor and was told that it would heal in 6 months. He grimaced as he walked into his apartment and went to bed.

3 months later...

Casper opened the door to his apartment and trained as much as he could with the bandage strapped tightly around his ankle. He trained and trained until finally he was starting for the North London Derby.

“It’s time to make my mark,” Casper thought. And with that, he continued training.

“Struggles are the Building Blocks of Life” Alexander Cox Getting in the car on the warm March day, thinking that everything was going to be alright and it was just another normal day, but I was wrong. My mom was usually a happy person, but that once warm, happy, welcoming face didn’t look so happy that day. Not knowing what to say, I got in the car with my mom and grandmother. My grandmother was rubbing her back while we were on our way to pick up my sister from school. I stayed silent, until I heard my grandmother say something, “Are you going to tell him?” Me being the annoying 10 year old I was, I said, “Tell me what?” My mom just looked at me and turned away. Then she said, “The police are coming to the house tonight.” I looked at her with anticipation, waiting for more information, then I heard, “to get your father.”

I knew that my parents were beginning to get a divorce, but at the time I wasn’t really too sure what that was. I knew it meant they wouldn’t be married anymore, but I didn’t know all the details. I was so unprepared and unaware for what was to come. I knew my parents had been fighting for a while, but it didn’t bother me. I remember the day my mom said she didn’t want to talk to my dad anymore. That hit me pretty hard, I didn’t know what it meant. I thought that the once noisy and happy house wasn’t going to be so happy anymore. My family tried their best to make me as happy as can be during that time, but that was a thought I just couldn’t ignore.

I had no idea what was going to happen. I would sit in my room and think about the worst possible scenarios. This just made everything worse for me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about what I thought. I just kept everything to myself. I frequently found myself worrying. This left me in a bad place, constantly thinking of the worst. I kept quiet, not wanting to lash out or cause problems. My silence wasn’t always the best solution.

Then the therapy started, this might have been the worst part of the whole process. Being forced to talk about something I never wanted to talk about. I walked in on the first day almost as if I was walking into the gates of hell. I had heard I was going to attend therapy, but not wanting to get in the middle of anything, I shut up and went. My first session went well. I found my way to wiggle around questions, not knowing where the information I gave her would be used. My next session was probably the worst of all. I had to go with my sister and my dad. Talking in front of them about this was the worst of my fears. I felt almost as if I was being exploited just for one parent or the other’s benefit. My sister understood how I felt. She and I had talked before, and I told her that I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it, so she would have to do most of the talking. She did, and I sat in the corner staying as quiet as possible. Then all of a sudden I heard, “What do you feel about what’s going on Alexander?” I looked over at my sister, hoping

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she would say something - there was silence. I looked at the woman in panic and said, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know” became a common response of mine. Although it never accomplished much other than helping me avoid things for the moment.

“Hey Xander who would you rather stay with.”

I would say, “I don’t know” “Xander how do you feel about therapy.”

Again the response would be, with a straight face, “I don’t know”.

This became my standard response; it was safe and got me out of having to speak any further.

Then the second round of therapy began, even worse than the first. Later on in the process my father began taking me to a new therapist because he noticed how much I despised my former therapist. This new therapist had obviously spoken to my father about the previous sessions, for our first conversation made it quite obvious. The first question was, “So how have you been lately.” My sister and I responded, “Good.” He then said, “Well Sofia, I know you have been going through a rough patch, but Alexander you’ve been perfectly fine.” With an indigent stare, I gave him a look with no response. In response he gave me a very perplexed look and went on with what he wanted to say. I ignored everyone in the room the rest of the time and sat thinking about what had just occurred. Then it hit me, because I had been to afraid to say anything about what was going on, everyone assumed I was doing just fine. I had to ignore this and be compliant with everything that was going on. So for the rest of my sessions I tried to seem as happy as possible no matter what was going on, or what I truly felt inside.

Fortunately, just about everyone involved in the process realized that I didn’t need therapy and I was soon spared this torture after I survived custody evaluations. There were two positive outcomes to the therapy experience: I knew that my sister would always protect me and be there when I needed her, and I learned that I was a very strong, well-adjusted person.

I never let any of these issues affect me away from home. Although there were days that were worse than others, I tried to block all of it out of my mind. I would ignore and forget about everything that was going on at home when I was at school. When people say school is like a second home that was truly the case during that time. I have always had great teachers and amazing friends, who gave me the support and distraction I needed.

I was recently talking to a friend of mine and somehow my parents’ divorce came up. I told him how long it took and his reaction shocked me. He said, “I thought that was only like a few months.” I looked at him with my mouth open and said, “Dude, it was 4 years.” My mother had also recently told me that my fourth grade teacher was surprised when she heard about the divorce because I never exhibited any behavior at school that would make anyone think I was anything but happy. I was astonished to hear this, but I was also proud of how I didn’t let anything get to me. I was able to control myself and my emotions, even though sometimes certain things drove me crazy at home.

I soon began to ignore what was going on at home and make myself feel almost as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. As the months went on, things gradually became better, for me that is. Even though things were getting better for me, I noticed that tensions gradually began to rise between my family members. What was going on was all anyone would talk about. Although there was lots of negativity surrounding me, I didn’t let it bring me down. If I let this negativity affective me it would make it almost impossible for me to ignore. It would be rather obvious to my peers if I let what was going on at home get to my head, and I didn’t want

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anyone around me to be affected by my problems and I didn’t want to be defined by them. I just wanted to be me, Alexander, same as always.

This period of four years was one of the toughest times of my life, but I can’t complain.

Although this was a very difficult time, it hasn’t affected me in the long term. I persevered through a tough time and everything turned out just fine. People would assume I wished this never happened, or that I want to completely forget. For a 13 year old I am very self-aware, I know how I handle stress and personal struggles, and this helps me deal with whatever challenges come my way. What I’m trying to say is that I am more resilient because of what I have been through. Life is going to have hard times and easy times, and if you’re resilient you can handle the hard times and come out stronger. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for this experience. Everyone struggles at some point in their lives, but it is what you learn from the struggle that makes you who you are.

“Surprise” Grace Lanava In those annoying high pitched voices all I hear every single day is “Aw, he’s so cute!

Can we please adopt him mom?”

“NO,” says that strict mother who can’t have one single dog hair on her furniture. All I do is sit in the tiny 3 foot wide cage all day long.

As you can tell, I am a “mall dog” as I like to call myself. I sit in a glassed space while people just look and take pictures of me. Sometimes they start crying, and honestly, I get really freaked out. I don’t get why I have to be bought for so much money, because I am pretty expensive. I mean, I’m just a puppy and I should be free for people to adopt me and give me a loving home, instead of this disgusting cage.

My daily routine is, get up, eat some food, go to the bathroom, probably sleep again, sit for about 7 hours, look at people through the glass, get fed again, and then get put in the back of the store after the mall closes. There are always those horrible days your friends/cagemates get bought. You finally get used to being stuffed in a small area with three other dogs, and then poof, they get whisked away by a new family. Whenever a family comes to buy one of the other dogs, I always think to myself, what did I do to not get bought by that family? Am I not cute enough?

Maybe people just want the perfect dogs, and I am far from perfect. I have been through not one, but two homes. I guess the family didn’t like me or something, so they just gave me back. I try to push those thoughts to the back of my head because I feel and know that one day, I will be bought by a loving family.

After ten minutes I fall asleep and wake up with another dog on top of me. I scoot out from under the dog and then I see a family of four, I’m guessing that the lady and the man were the parents of the two children standing with them, glaring at me. As I look into their eyes, I see a future of my own. I see a loving home with me having my own bed, and that family all to myself.

One of the young girls says, “Mommy, Daddy, look at this one, he is so cute and I really want to bring him home.” The mother walks over to the glass and looks down at me.

“Wow, that guy looks pretty cute and these dogs have it hard here, so I would definitely be interested in adopting him,” my eyes light up, “but we can’t just get him right now sweetie, come on” she says. Just like that, my slight thought about leaving this place drifts away.

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“Ok,” says the little child in a sad tone. Later that night I get put into the back of the store because the mall was closing and I fall asleep to the thoughts of never getting out of this place.

When I wake up I realize that I have been moved back into my little cage with three other dogs. Then suddenly I look back into the store, and see the same family that came to the mall yesterday, reading papers with that annoying lady that always picks me up so toddlers can pet me with their sticky hands. Five minutes later, they all walk over and open the cage that I am lying in, and the lady scoops me up and hands me to the family from yesterday. They play with me and hug me, and I can tell that this is going to be my new forever family After they finish hugging and petting me, they put me into a little blue bag with a rug for me to lie on. The man known as “Dad” holds the bag with me in it and the whole family walks to their car, and they put me in between the two little girls. The girl that looks older is called “Olivia” and the younger looking one is called “Annie.” It’s a fairly long drive home, but it’s ok because I am driving to my forever home.

We soon reach my new home and they pick me up and let me out of the bag. I stare at a suburban looking house and I think to myself, “Home-sweet-home.” They open the door and the whole house screams “Welcome Home!” and I just love it. I can’t wait to start my new life with this amazing family. The lady known as “Mom” says, “Oh come here little Dobby.” Well I guess that’s my new name, ok then. “Dobby” I say to myself. I guess I could live with that, well, I have to live with that. But my name isn’t as important as my new bed. I couldn't be happier. My own bed is the only thing I had really ever wanted, and a family I guess. I run to the bed and roll around in it and take in the feeling that I don’t EVER, and I mean EVER, have to go back into that disgusting glass cage.

Later, after staying in my bed the whole time, the family leaves, but I’m pretty used to being alone and I know that they will come right back for me in no time. I decide that in this time I will take a look around the house. I walk into the children’s bedroom and the pink on the walls almost blinds me. I’m guessing they share a room because there are two little beds in the corners of the room. Next, I walk into Mom and Dad’s room, but I get bored so I walk out and into the room with the television in it, which is the room with my bed in it. I walk on the bed and lay in it while falling asleep thinking about my new life.

I soon wake up because the alarm goes off and my family comes home. I sprint down the stairs to welcome them but something stops me on the stairs. I hear the sound of another dog walking, and then I hear a bark. I go down the stairs to find another dog with MY new family.

My head starts spinning, and I don’t know what to do so I start randomly barking. “Oh come on Dobby, we got you a new friend to play with” says Mom. “I don’t need a friend!” I say in my mind. The first time I finally get into a loving home, on the first day they bring home another dog.

The girls play with the dog, and the jealously riles up inside me. I go down to see all what she is all about and I’m guessing she is a husky because of her bright blue eyes and white fur.

She looked pretty chubby, but I guess that’s because she had been sitting in a shelter doing nothing. She had very tall ears and they kept calling her “Misty.” “Misty,” I say in my head in a confused tone. What is she, the setting on a hose?

“Kids, time to eat!” yells mom.

“Ok, Mommy,” one of the girls yells back. Since they eat at this time, I go upstairs to get to know my new sister. I go upstairs and the dog is sitting in MY bed. I can’t believe that this dog, who just got into this home, has the nerve, to sit in MY bed. Yes, MY bed. I just try to cut her some slack because she moved in about ten minutes ago, but she better learn that that is my

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bed. I go up to her and look her in the eyes. She barks. “Well isn’t it nice to see you too!” I say sarcastically in my mind.

About five minutes later, the whole family comes upstairs and goes to bed since it was already late. Now this night with my new “friend” was horrible. She didn’t get out of my bed once even when I tried to push her out. After probably twenty-minutes of trying to get “Misty,” or whatever her name is, out of my bed, I finally decided to just go in the bed and sleep right on top of her. Not even one second later, she sprinted out from under me. “Oh I know just how to get my way” I say in my head probably sounding like an evil villain. I have no idea how I am going to get through life with her around.

Throughout the next few days Misty and I kind of annoy each other here and there. First, she took my bed again, and the next day, she ate my food. I’m pretty sure she drinks all the water to annoy me too. Also, Mom took her to the park, and all the girls do is play with her. You could say that we are fighting for attention because, I hate to say it, but she is kind of taking away the attention from me. Now it feels like I am just the “old” dog. I try not to think negatively, so I go up to the girls to test if they really do love me. They immediately pick me up, put me on one of their beds, and start scratching me in my favorite spot. They really do know me well. “Dobby, you’re so cute I can’t even deal!” says Olivia.

“I know, right? I love him so much, don’t you know that Dobby!” says Annie in a high pitched voice. She kisses my head and they both hug me. Wow, they really do love me. I can’t believe that I wasted all my time getting riled up about how they didn’t love me. All I ever wanted was a home and after I finally get one, I make up stupid excuses to get mad over.

Misty soon jumps on the bed and lays right on top of me. The girls laugh and in my head I laugh too because I know Misty only does this as a joke. As you can tell I’m trying hard not to get too worked up about everything, because I know Misty only means well. “Oh Misty, you’re so silly!” says Annie laughing. Misty gets up and barks at me, and runs off the bed towards our toy box. She takes one toy and holds it in front of me. I go to grab it with my teeth, but she runs away and I see she wants to play. We chase after each other around the house and through every room. The girls yell “Go Dobby, go Misty!” and know that this is what a loving family looks like.

Later that night, I wake up to whimpering. I look over and see Misty sitting in the corner, and I sense that she is not feeling well. I immediately start barking, so Mom and Dad wake up, and they soon come into the room. I stop barking and the sounds of Misty’s whimpering fills the room. They go over to her and start saying “Misty, Misty, what’s wrong honey, come on let’s take you down stairs.” They pick her up and walk down stairs as I follow. I knew something wasn’t good. “I think we should take her to the vet now,” said Mom. “Ok, I will stay here with the girls,” replies Dad. The girls had heard their parents talking and me barking and came downstairs.

“What do you mean Daddy, why is she going to the vet?” asked Annie.

“Honey he’s not feeling well, so Mommy is just taking her for checkup, now go back to bed you two it’s late” answered Dad. “Ok,” said the two girls. Mom reached for the door handle with Misty in her arms, and I couldn’t resist, so I ran up to her and started jumping and crying.

“Aw, poor Dobby, I know you don’t want to see you friend leave but I promise she will come back soon,” said Mom in a reassuring voice. I didn’t realize how much I loved this dog until I knew that she could be gone forever.

All I could do was wait, so I sat by the door with dad until his phone buzzed.

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“Oh no, no, no, this can’t be happening” he said worriedly. My eyes rose immediately and I jumped to the couch and looked at his phone. It was like my heart stopped. It said “She is gone, but something happened so don’t tell the girls anything,” on the phone and it felt like there was a stop in time. I was very suspicious about the text, but I couldn’t get over the fact that she was actually gone forever.

For a long time I just sat, and anyway no one could see my emotions at this moment, so all I did was sit. I also thought about the poor little girl’s faces when they find out that their new, innocent dog had died. I was so confused at why this would happen to me and this poor family. I finally get to my new home with a new friend. I kinda fight with the dog, and ya, ya, but we finally are friends. Then the next day, she is out of my sight.

Mom comes home hours later when it is about 3 p.m. She carries a large blue bag that looks like the one I came in when I was adopted, but I see no Misty. Mom waves to Dad to come upstairs, and they walk up the stairs fast. I follow behind, but they immediately go into a room and shut the door right before I can walk in. They talk very silently until I hear what I think is a bark. I think I’m hallucinating, but then I hear two barks. I try to jam open the door with my head, and it finally opens to three puppies. I had never been so happy in my life

Art by Annabelle Xing

Art by Sydney Stern

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“Parents” Paige Lopez Julia was woken up by a loud banging noise. She blearily ran one hand down her tanned face, while simultaneously attempting to grab her glasses with her other hand. Suddenly, Julia’s younger brother Aaron ran into her room. He was a short adolescent male at 14 years old, with fairly tan skin and dark brown hair. He yelled at the top of his voice, “JULIA! MOM AND DAD ARE AT THE DOOR!” The young woman shot up and yelled, “Wait, what! Get your stuff together- we’re leaving now!”

Aaron ran out, and back inside again. “Here’s all of my stuff, plus your suitcase. I grabbed a few cans of corn, and a box of cereal. There’s also a few water bottles in there- two per person. We can re-fill them in bathrooms and stuff.”

Julia messed up her brother’s hair affectionately. “Good job kid. Couldja call Libitina and see if we could go over for a few days?” Aaron nodded, and ran down the hallway.

Julia looked outside. Their mother and father waited on the doorstep of their house, knocking on the door constantly.

Aaron came back into her room. “Libitina said we could come. She’s only a state over, right? We could take a cab…”

Julia frowned. Did she have enough money to pay for that long of a trip? Looking in a shoebox she had under her bed, she estimated about $3,000. Just enough to get us there, and a few extra dollars to sustain us for a few weeks. She smiled. “Sure Aaron, let's go. We’re leaving through the back door. We don’t want mom and dad to see us, right?”

Aaron nodded firmly and ran downstairs and onto the kitchen. Only one of their ‘friends’ was up at this time- Jacob. He was obsessed with all kinds of birds and often spent hours trying to spot nocturnal birds or bats during the night. He was currently yelling at Julia and Aaron’s parents because they were scaring all of the birds away.

Julia left a note to Jacob on the counter, saying that she and Aaron had to go and that there was money for one more month of rent in her bedroom. She then grabbed Aaron’s arm and ran out of the back door. They were running away… again. *** 12 hours later, Julia and Aaron were in front a small house in Sacramento. Suddenly, the front door flew open. A young woman, who looked around 20 years old, had long brown hair and pale skin, ran out of the house and to the taxi. Julia just managed to get out of the car to catch the woman.

“Hey, Julia! Hey, Aaron! Long time no see! The rooms are ready, just be careful of the other girl- Natalie. She kinda likes to avoid human contact, so she’ll be attempting to sneak around the house. The only problem with that is… she’s too tall to do that. So yeah. Just be warned of a tall, female brunette who will probably avoid you at high costs unless you’re watching anime.”

Libitina, was out of breath from her long spiel. Julia smiled. “Ok Libitina, we got it.

Thanks for letting us stay again! Which rooms are we?”

Libitina made a few hand gestures. The rooms in the back- the ones that have ladders attached to the windows. Easy escape, if you need it.

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Julia nodded, while Aaron looked confused behind her. The elder turned around to grab her bags and noticed her brother’s expression. “Aaron,” she laughed, “its sign language.

Remember? I can read sign language.”

Aaron still looked confused, and Julia shook her head. “Whatever. Anyways, we’re going inside. We have to set up, and then find a place for you to get an education.” *** Aaron had run out of the house, yelling, “YOU AREN’T MY MOM! YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! I’M 15 YEARS OLD! I CAN DO WHAT I WANT!” That was two hours ago.

Julia was frantic at this point because she just knew that Aaron would go to his new best friend’s house, and that the house was three hours away by foot, and she didn’t have enough money to take a taxi, and that Aaron had taken the only bike that they had.

Julia shook her head. She had to focus! In order to do anything, you had to have money.

So what was Julia doing? Getting a job! She was at a small bakery nearby Libitina’s house that had a ‘Help Wanted’ sign hanging on the door. It looks cozy… *** 30 minutes later, Julia walked down the street with a new job and lots of hope. The owner of the bakery was a man called Horace, who was in dire need of help. He’d asked Julia three questions- how good she was with people, how well she could follow a recipe, and how neat her handwriting was. After answering all of those questions, she was hired. Horace had told her to come back tomorrow with a white shirt and jeans, and her hair up in either a bun or a ponytail.

Julia shook her head. She should be worried about Aaron right now, not her job! When she got home, though, there it was: Aaron’s bike was sitting on the front doorstep, blocking the entrance. That’s when Julia noticed something was… off. The bike seat was higher than what Aaron could ride at, one of the pedals were missing, and the chain was hanging off of the gear. A small note was attached to the scuffed up handlebars.

Hello, Julia. We’re betting you’ve noticed that your dear Aaron is missing. Well, he’s with us, his loving parents. We hope you’ll join us at XX, Ramon St. We’re here in Sacramento with you.

Love, Mom and Dad. Julia shook with anger. Her mother and father had abused her for years, using the reasons that she ‘wasn’t paying attention to the rules’ or that she ‘was acting stupidly’ and ‘couldn’t get anything right’. The only reason why they never hurt Aaron was because Julia insisted that she take the blame. When they stopped it was because she ran away, taking her brother with her.

That was five years ago. Now, at 17 years old, they’d found her again. And they probably were going to hurt her brother. ***

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Aaron shook his head. Why is everything black? Why does my head hurt? He groggily attempted to feel around with his hands, only to realize that his hands were tied together. He frantically tried to shake his hands out of his bonds but failed miserably. Where am I? Aaron tried to think back to what he was doing before. He was biking home from his friend’s house because he was missing Julia, and then… nothing. He couldn’t remember anything besides riding home as fast as he could so he could get to Julia faster.

5 minutes later, by Aaron’s estimation, there was light again. He blinked his eyes attempting to adjust to the new light. A woman’s face swam into view. Why is everything so blurry?

A soft, soothing voice crooned, “Hello son. It’s been a long time since we’ve last seen each other. Maybe we should get to know each other better.” Mom? The woman’s face moved away, only to be replaced with a male’s. His father? Well, at least his eyesight was getting better…

His father spoke very gently. “Hello, Aaron. Long time no see, huh? Well, I hope you don’t run away again. I sure did miss you!”

The older male’s lips curled up into a sickeningly sweet smile. “I just hope you know, there will be a….punishment for running away with your sister.”

Aaron shivered. When did his father’s voice sound so threatening? “I… where are we?”

And when did my voice become so… weak? Julia, wherever you are, please come and help me! *** Julia growled a little bit under her breath. Libitina didn’t have enough money to sustain both Julia and Natalie for much longer, and admitted that she couldn’t kick Natalie outsupposedly, Libitina owed Natalie something. So of course, Libby would have to kick Julia out.

The elder woman had apologized over and over again, but Julia knew it had to be done. In one month, Julia would have to either leave by her own means, and face the risk of never seeing Aaron again, Julia could pay rent, (which would mean getting other work besides the bakery,) or Libitina would kick her out. Why, Libitina…

The young woman sighed and got up off her bed. She looked down at the note in her hand, wondering how long it would take to get to the address. I guess I could ask Libitina to use her computer…

A few minutes later, with the help of Google Maps, Julia located the house her parents were at. From the outside, it looked to be a nice one-story house with a stone exterior and lots of lights.

On the view in Google Maps, Julia could also see a couple of cameras around the perimeter of the house. Evidently, her parents had been planning to stay in this house for a long time, because the view was labeled as taken in 201X, while the year was 202X. Hmm, maybe that’s where they were planning to go to after the house in North Carolina. If I ever can see them without them hurting me, I think I’ll ask.

She shook her head. No talking to my parents again if I can help it. Wouldn’t want to be hurt again, would I? *** Aaron shivered, pulling his arms around himself. As soon as they had reached their new house, his father had started kicking and hitting him. The worst thing, though, was his mother.

She’d just stood there watching, saying that it was ‘for his own good’ and it would ‘teach him

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how to be perfect’. (He couldn’t say anything back- he was too busy screaming his lungs out from the never ending pain.) *** Her phone was ringing again. Julia groggily groped around for her phone. Eventually, she found it and brought her phone to her ear.

“Hello, Julia here. Anything I can do for you?”

Julia’s eyes flew open upon hearing the voice on the other side. “Hello, daughter. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Julia shot up, and angrily yelled into the phone, “What have you done to him?! What have you done to my brother?!”

Her mother airily stated, “Oh, just the same things we did to you. By the way, your brother looks so much older! So handsome… I bet the ladies are going crazy for him! I sure am glad that I’m here to watch over him!”

The younger woman growled into her phone. “You better not do anything else to him… or else I’ll-” Her sentence was cut off by her mother’s laughter. “Ahahah… C’mon honey, tell me.

What are you going to do? You really can’t do anything. I have your brother right here, and I could kill him at any time I want! All I want is for you to come back here. No complaining, no fighting back. Just you, and you alone. I’ll know if you call the police- and if you do, your brother’s good as dead. You know where to find us!”

The line went dead. Julia screamed in frustration.

Libitina poked her head into the room. “I heard something, is everything alright?”

Julia groaned into her hands. “I JUST HATE MY PARENTS SO MUCH. I mean, they were all right for the first seven years of my life, but then they decided ‘oh, yeah, my child’s not perfect, so let’s beat her into perfection’!

Of course, to them, a perfect child is just a little robot that gets straight A’s and doesn’t talk back or doesn’t talk at all and only talks to adults in an adult voice with adult vocabulary!”

Her voice rose at the end of her sentence, rising into a scream. “And I couldn’t let my parents beat up my brother, because he was just a little kid, so I would say that I did everything that he did wrong, and that would just cause more bruises and more questions, and then I started having to figure out how to put on makeup so that it wouldn’t show but Aaron knew pretty much everything and the only thing he didn’t know was where the injuries came from!”

Libitina’s mouth was hanging open. “Uh… you really do have a thing against your parents, don’t you?”

“YA THINK?! IT’S NOT LIKE I’VE JUST GONE ON A TWO MINUTE RANT ABOUT HOW MUCH I HATE THEM!” “Deep breaths Julia, deep breaths. Now. What’s going on? Can I help? If so, what’s your plan?”

As her breathing slowed down, Julia looked over at Libitina. “...I thought that I’d go over to my parents’ house with a knife or something and try to break my brother out of wherever he is. There isn’t really anything else I can do, besides give myself in and I don’t want to do that.”

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Libitina shrugged. “I mean, you could try to talk to Natalie because she knows stuff about pretty much all of the people in all of the houses around this area. Since she has time, she walks around like a stalker in a black hoodie and takes note of the different things about the houses and the people who live there. It’s really interesting- she learned about how to read people and how to tell stuff about people like Sherlock Holmes. I dunno where she learned all that stuff, thoughshe always awkwardly changes the subject. I think she also learned about pressure points or something, but I’m not sure. She’s really interesting.”

Julia stared at her friend in shock. The tall brunette she’d occasionally seen stalking around the house was essentially an emo-ish Sherlock Holmes? What?! *** Julia sighed. She’d just spent half an hour convincing Natalie to go with her to get her brother. After a surprisingly large amount of complaining, (“But think of the many ways it could go wrong!” “What if I die? WHAT IF YOU DIE?!”) Natalie finally made the decision to venture out on a journey with Julia. She had agreed under the conditions that she didn’t need to do anything besides tell Julia how to incapacitate her parents. (Natalie had given a demonstration earlier, showing Julia exactly how to kill people quickly. She shivered- that had been an… uncomfortable situation.) Now she had to figure out exactly how to get to Aaron while simultaneously not getting Natalie killed or herself. How, how, how…

Natalie poked her head into Julia’s room. “Hey Julia, I wanted to tell you that the two adults in XX, Ramon Street just left their house without the teenager. You said you were waiting for something like that to happen?”

Julia nodded and smiled. “Thanks, Natalie. Are you ready to go?”

Natalie seemed to crumple into herself. “Um… no?”

The older girl facepalmed. “Natalie,” she sighed, “What is it this time?” *** After another fifteen of Natalie complaining, Julia had finally dragged her to the house to try to get Aaron. They had somewhat broken in, (if finding the spare key underneath the flower pot in the front of the door and counted as breaking in,) and were now scouring the surprisingly large place for any hints of her brother. So far, they’d found nothing besides traces of blood in the living room. (Natalie had shrieked when she saw that…) They’d looked almost everywhere, except through the threatening metal door that supposedly led to the basement. (Julia refused to go down there until they’d finished searching the rest of the house.) Of course, the rest of the house had no hints of Aaron at all, so they were forced to go through the dark and imposing and definitely dangerous door. Julia slowly cracked open the door, and yelled into the darkness, “Aaron! Are you down there?”

A soft groan emanated from the darkness. “Ugh… who’s there? What’s going on?” The voice rose in pitch. “Mom? DAD?” A smile broke out on Julia’s face. “Aaron! It’s me! Julia!” She started to run down the steps and into the basement, forgetting the fact that she couldn’t see and therefore there was a large chance of her bumping into something and hurting herself.

Julia shrieked, tripped over the last step, and fell right into a body. WHO WHAT WHY HELP!

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“Julia? Are you ok? Do you need help? That’s a rhetorical question, I wouldn’t actually help you but it is polite to ask so… wait. You would've answered by now… I’m gonna try to turn on the lights first and then come downstairs, alright?” *** A voice whispered next to Julia’s ear. “That’s the friend that you brought along with you to help get your brother? Haha, she seems pretty useless. Well, at least she will be very soon, because if you can’t get her out of the house very quickly, there will be consequences. For instance, hurting your brother more. Or even hurting this new friend… Natalie, was it?”

Julia tried to drag herself away from her mother the person who was holding her. She whispered back, “Why are you even doing this? What’s the point of it all?” If I can stall her for long enough, maybe Natalie will get back, and she can help me!

“What’s the point? The point is that my beautiful children were not perfect, and therefore had to be made into works of art! Some say that that would make them like machines. I disagreeI think it’s perfection. Now. You either get your new ‘friend’ out of here in five minutes and make her stay away, or you could stay with me and see both your brother and this ‘Natalie’ get hurt just because of you.”

The youngest of the three suddenly yelled out, “JULIA? Where are you? I’m getting worried!”

Julia wrenched herself out of the person’s grip. “Fine. I’ll get Natalie out of here and then come back in five minutes.”

She could almost hear the smirk in the other’s voice as they said, “Good choice, my child.” *** As soon as she was let go, Julia dashed up the stairs. “Natalie! Turns out it wasn’t him! It was just a recording of him to make us think that he was there!”

Natalie ran back to the threatening metal door. “Are you sure? Maybe I should go down to check… after all, the lights were off, so how could you tell?”

Julia quickly fibbed, “I felt around with my hands and picked it up off the ground, but left it down there so that my mom and dad wouldn’t notice that something was wrong.”

The taller girl shrugged. “I still think I should go downstairs just because you don’t want me too. You saw something down there that you don’t want me to see, and you’re trying to get me out of the house. I’m betting that as soon as we’re far enough away that you’ll know that I’ll go back home, you’ll rush back to this house to do something down those stairs. So I’m going down there, and you’re not going to stop me.”

Julia gaped at Natalie. She knew that the weird weeb girl was like a Sherlock Holmes, but she didn’t know how spot on she was with her observations. “Wow… um… could you just not go down there, please? Pretty please?”

Natalie facepalmed. “I literally just told you that you’re not gonna stop me. Now you’re either gonna lead the way down there, or I’m going to go down there myself, and lock you out here. Are you coming?”

“Fine. But I’m telling you, be ready for, like, an attack or something. No telling what’ll be down there…”

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Natalie gave Julia an “are you kidding me” look. “You know, I have a phone. That has a flashlight app, that I’m going to use, so I don’t trip and fall down the steps. Because I’m smart that way.”

Julia started gobsmacked at her somewhat friend. “Um. I didn’t think about that.

Whoops.”

Suddenly, the metal door they were talking in front of creaked open. “Hello Julia, Natalie. Have a nice chat?” *** Aaron tried to loosen the gag in his mouth while simultaneously attempting to get his hands free. His mother, (why did he even call her that…) had made sure it’d be hard for him to get to his sister before leaving to confront whoever was upstairs. He heard little bits of conversation from the doorway (wherever that was…).

“Recording… left… out… far… not… stop… ready… going…”

Wait… what? Was Julia really leaving him there? He stopped struggling. Why did he even think that she would bother with him? He was too… imperfect, like his mother had said.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay here with them so that they could fix him. That would be nice…

That was when he heard a loud crash. *** “HOLY CRAP NATALIE WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER SHE JUST WANTED TO SAY HELLO-” “She wasn’t doing it politely and she was also planning to hit at least one of us, if not both of us, so I… incapacitated her. For a little bit. She’ll be fine… I hope. I think. Probably.

Maybe. … Probably not, but I don’t care.”

“NATALIE I HATED HER BUT STILL SHE WAS LIKE MY MOTHER I WANTED THAT TO BE MY MOMENT-” “Too bad you didn’t listen to me and get us downstairs earlier! I just saw the easiest possible solution and struck!”

“SERIOUSLY NATALIE- oh wait how did you do that I want to do that please teach me-” “Don’t you think it’d be a better idea to go downstairs and find out what happened down there, and then ask me about how I did it?”

“Oh wait, now that I think about it, that’s probably a more rational idea. So. Do you have your phone? So we can use the flashlight app thing that you mentioned?”

“Sure. Let me just… Ah! There. Now you may proceed, your highness. Please do so with utmost care, so that you do not trip and fall into another human being, or a ‘recording’ as you so eloquently put it.”

The pouting was almost tangible.

“You’re pouting again.”

“I am not pouting Natalie!”

There was a pause. Then, “Aaron! Are you down there? Please respond if you are!”

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Aaron let out a noncommittal grunt. “Who are you and what do you want? If you’re not going to help then go away.” Please let them be someone friendly, please let them be someone friendly… *** “Aaron! Are you down there? Please respond if you are!”

Julia shivered at the top of the stairs. She could see down to the end of the staircase, but nothing else. She heard a grunt from below them, and then, “Who are you and what do you want? If you’re not going to help then go away.”

A huge smile broke out on her face. “Aaron! It’s me, Julia! Again! I’m here with the person that’s also living in Libitina’s house- Natalie, remember her?”

She started to walk down the steps, Natalie right on her heels. “Bro! We’re coming downstairs now, don’t worry. Are you ok?”

She gasped at the sight that greeted her. Her brother was cuffed to a bed frame in the room, bruises littering all the skin that she could see. Thank goodness they didn’t bring out the knife… that would’ve taken forever to heal. She ran over to Aaron, grabbing a bobby pin from her hair and attempting to unlock the cuffs. With a loud click they came apart, and Aaron attempted to leap into her sister’s arms. (Of course, he failed terrifically—she just barely managed to catch him. Even then— the moment was touching.) “I missed you, sis…”

Natalie grinned, and then shrieked as she tripped over the prone body of the sibling’s mother. *** “You do know I still have to kick you out of my house, right?”

“Oh my god, Libitina, I already got a job, I can pay you at least a little bit for rent, and I just put my mom in jail. I mean, we still haven’t found my father, but c’mon!” “…You do realize I was joking, right?”

Art by Andrew Theberge

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“Not So Happy Feet” Sid Mehta Half crying on the inside, but trying not to display any fear on the outside, I looked down at my swollen, cut up, and dry feet.

“How long left, until we get back home,” I asked my grandmother in great pain, pushing back tears.

“Eh, maybe four kilometers,” she replied while walking next to me.

“Oh my gosh,” I said, “why are you doing this to… I mean why is this happening to me?”

I was unhappy, hurt, and barefoot, trudging through the litter-filled, dirty, and dry streets of India. *** I sprinted across the blazing marble floor from the temple’s gate towards the shoe rack, at the temple’s entrance. Only my toes met the gleaming floor. Everyone who visits this temple must take footwear off before entering. I felt like crying because the floor was so hot.

Frantically, took as big of a stride I could to reduce the sensation of heat in my feet. No one else standing barefoot seemed to be concerned, as they probably were used to the heat and did not usually wear shoes.

Finally, I made it back to the shoe rack, where the temple tour had begun and it could once and for all end. I was still jumping up and down, trying to keep my feet from burning, and my eyes darted around the outdoor rack for my pair of new Nike sandals. The 110-degree sun was beating down on me. My eyes darted everywhere. Starting to jump up and down even more, I paced the whole around the rack multiple times looking everywhere.

My brother walked over with a pair of shoes protecting his feet from the pavement.

“Where are my SANDALS?” I yelled at my brother.

“I don’t know, but sandals feel great,” replied my brother, laughing. I found nothing in this funny. I carefully inspected the spot where I had placed my sandals two hours ago. All the other shoes simply looked like old rags of leather. My sandals should have been easy to see, with their distinctive Nike logo, and how clean they looked compared to everything else.

My grandfather, who was acting as a tour guide for me, asked, “What’s taking so long, Sid?” “I’m not sure where my sandals are, I mean I left them right here,” I replied.

“Alright, grab someone else's, and let's get going.”

“No, seriously, what do I do? My feet are killing me, and I cannot find my sandals,” I said.

“Alright, big deal,” he said sarcastically while laughing. “Someone stole your shoes, so just steal someone else’s.”

“So, YOU, my grandfather want me to steal someone else’s property, but what about my shoes, and I can’t just steal someone else’s shoes,” I replied, confused. What was he saying, he’s my grandfather, isn’t he supposed to tell me not to steal?

“It’s just what you do here. Now put some shoes so we can leave.” I was now annoyed with my grandfather’s attitude, but I glanced around the rack, considering whether I should steal.

But the shoes on the rack were so old and worn and dusty. I did not want to put any of them on!

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“Gosh, I can’t steal any of the shoes, they are all so nasty. I think I’m just going barefoot” I said to my grandmother and grandfather, watching many pass the shoe rack on their way out, as if they did not own shoes.

“Alright, well that’s your loss,” my grandfather said, impatient now and trying to get everyone to leave the temple.

“Hey don’t say that,” my grandmother said. “I’m sorry your sandals were stolen.”

“Ya, whatever, what do you guys care, you already have shoes to wear,” I spat back at my grandparents rudely. This was going to be very embarrassing, walking on the sidewalk without shoes. My eleven-year-old self was on the verge of tears.

“Oh man, I need to take a picture of this one, it’ll be a good memory in a couple years,” said my brother, with a smirk running across his face. I was furious.

“HEY, he can’t say that to me,” I screamed, in search of sympathy from someone, but everyone laughed agreeing with him. I felt like a cave man trudging around with no shoes. Why did all of this happen to me? I asked myself as we left the gates of the temples.

The chaos of late morning filled the streets outside of the temple. People, mostly poor and haggard, with a few middle-class people in between, filled the streets. Small little autorickshaws were trying to navigate their ways through the bustling crowd. The streets did not have sidewalks, leaving people pouring into the streets. Off the roads were many seemingly homeless people were sitting under trees, and congregating around small tents for shelter. Some people also were trying to prepare street food to sell and earn a living in small huts off the road.

Many of the poor begged for coins, or other small amounts of money. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, I have a coin collection just to amuse myself. Farther off in the distance, people were showering (of course with shorts on) under a tree, using buckets and their own hands to carry water.

Glass, litter, and even old food filled up the street. I looked down trying to steer myself away from all these things lying on the street, but I also had to keep my head up to pilot myself through the crowds and make sure I did not lose my grandparents in the crowd. All of this was bothering me. I continued on silently, muting out the noises my brother and grandfather made behind me. I knew they were still engaged in a conversation regarding my feet.

Where they also thinking about the other feet around them? As I continued through the crowds of the city, I had time to stare at all the different people, and how they were presented. I wore an ironed, collared shirt, and a nice pair of clean jeans. Many people only wore simple pieces of tied cloth, and many poor people could not even afford a white undershirt. Here it was a privilege to have an undershirt! And then there were the shoes. People who had shoes had ragged old ones. The rest had none. Just like me.

“Are we close to the house yet?” I asked my grandmother who was next to me.

“Not yet, we still have some more walking,” she replied.

“Alright,” I responded quietly, straightening my back and continuing. My grandmother glanced in my direction, checking if I was ok. It turned out that without shoes I was not so different than many others on the road. I kept studying the road closely to make sure I would not step in the wrong place. But gradually it all seemed less fearful, even as my feet became dusty, cracked and numb.

“Oh man, I can’t wait to tell Mom about this,” my brother blurted, sneaking up from behind, still refusing to hide that smile. No longer angered or annoyed by his musings, I simply continued walking with a straight back up heading towards home.

6

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“Hey Girl” Alexa Mitumbili I skipped down the narrow pebble road as the sun began to set. The cherry blossoms that lined the road added a sense of splendor to the day.

“Hey, girl,” he said in his thick, unmistakable Trinidadian accent. I stopped and turned to him and took in his appearance. His sunny disposition shone through his heartfelt words, but from his slumped over posture and his sleep deprived eyes, I could tell he was tired. His blue jeans and white shirt were speckled with paint, a “mark of his trade.”

“Hey, Russell,” I said and waved at him. It was like this whenever I would pass by his house, never giving it a second thought. His smile did not crack; it was persistent. *** Russell had been with me since birth. He was my father's best friend, so he was there with my parents when I was born. My mom told me that his eyes were wide and filled with joyous tears when he first saw me. He brought me a fluffy blanket that was decorated with nursery rhymes, and on the back was my name, embroidered in big, black, bold cursive letters.

From then on, I slept with that blanket every night.

He lived four houses down the street, in a brick home decorated with many colors. In his backyard he had a large swing set. He would put me in the swing and push me. I yelled for him to push me harder so that I could go higher and higher. One time when he was pushing me and he said, “reach for the moon and if you miss you’ll land among the stars.” I was too young to understand what he meant. I thought I would actually be stuck in space with the stars, so I started to cry. He brought me back inside and made me chocolate milk and brought me cookies and soon the tears disappeared. He then laid me in front of his fireplace with my blanket while we watched my favorite cartoon, Sesame Street.

My earliest memories of Russell revolve around the energy he had when he was with the people that he cared most about. He brought out the best in people with his words of encouragement. I remember his decadent summer barbeques always being a hit with family and friends. The jerk chicken seasoned with spices from the islands and the sweet plantains always brought people together. We would play double dutch and draw on the street with chalk all day long. The nights would end with his uplifting stories and games of mancala while the adults danced to live, upbeat music.

When his cancer came back, it came back with vengeance. For weeks, I knew he was sick. He would cough and hack for hours on end. At some points it sounded like he was gasping for air. He could not tell his stories anymore. We tried to convince him to go to the doctor, but he wouldn't listen. He always avoided doctors because he associated doctors with bad news. He would always say that, “You go into the doctor's feeling bad and come out feeling worse.” He didn’t want medical care; he just wanted to be his own doctor. We finally convinced him to go, but it was to no avail, the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. They thought it might have had something to do with his lungs, but they weren't certain. This wasn’t good because of Russell’s past medical history. Previously he had asbestosis from his work in construction. His doctor suggested that he go and have an MRI. Russell was uncertain about it, but his daughter and my family pushed him because we knew something wasn’t right. At this point Russell knew that he had cancer, but he didn’t know it was too late. He was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.

They gave him six months to live. We were all distraught, but what could we do?

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His health was rapidly deteriorating.

We went in on a Thursday to see him at his house and we instantly noticed a notable change. When I walked into his room, Russell was lying down on his bed. His face had no color, his usually tamed facial hair had grown wild, his fingernails long and overgrown. He tried to sit up when he saw me, but failed. He then croaked, “Hey, girl,” as I walked to his bedside. His smile didn't reach his ears when he saw me. My heart broke a little, but I still Artwork by Annabelle Xing had faith that he would get better. We spent an hour together, making small talk. He would doze in and out of consciousness and had a whooping cough that would make me jump in my seat. Then his heart rate spiked. He was panting and breathing fast, sweat beading down his forehead. He tried to form sentences but they were jumbled and hard to understand. At this point, my parents made the decision to call 911. Many times before, his daughter tried to take him to the hospital, but he refused. He didn’t want to be hooked up to fluids and IV’s. Instead he came up with his own at home remedies. He didn’t want to go to the hospital because he knew he wouldn't be coming back. He would rather die at home than a strange place.

I sat on his front porch in his chair, as we waited for the ambulance to come. I heard the sirens from all the way down the street. The EMTs struggled to get him onto the stretcher. It took three men five minutes to simply transport him from his bed to the stretcher that was two feet away. Every time they simply touched him, I would hear him scream in agony. Then they lifted him in the back of the ambulance and they sped away.

The next day we went to visit him in the hospital. We arrived at the entrance of Hackensack Hospital, where the attendant gave us directions to Russell’s room. As we made our way upstairs, we were really nervous about what to expect. When we entered, other people were visiting him, but they left shortly after we got there. We closed the curtain so we could have some privacy. When we greeted Russell, we didn't get the response we were expecting. He spoke to us as if we were mere strangers. I held back tears. It was painful to see how much he had deteriorated. He gave us a very half-hearted smile, but he still seemed rather blank. We tried making conversation with him and kept it very simple so that he could understand. As we were talking to him, he curled his fingers around an imaginary glass and tilted it towards his mouth.

We realized he was thirsty so we offered him water. The nurse came in to do her rounds and to check up on him. I pulled her aside and asked her, “Why has his condition changed so much since yesterday?”

She then said that she couldn't really disclose this information because we were not immediate family. That's when I realized that his situation had become serious. By then I was so overwhelmed that we decided to leave.

I called his daughter late in the afternoon the next day to follow up on his condition. She told us the doctor had suggested that she make arrangements for hospice care for her father.

My mother received a phone call from his daughter in the early hours of Friday morning.

She informed us that if we wanted to come and say our last goodbyes, now was the time. He died before we left the house. I remember being overcome by my emotions. I was hysterical, unable to stop crying. I was in denial, not wanting to believe he was gone.

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I never fully appreciated what he had done with me. When I was sad, he would lay by me, rocking me into a state of comfort. When I was lost, he brought me onto the right track, guiding me to my success. When I was lonely, he would fill the empty void. He made me grateful for the people I have.

Russell was my first experience with death. I can’t believe that he is gone. He had been there for as long as I can remember and now he is gone, a mere figment of my memory.

“Saving Ellis” Olivia Muttart It was four days after my mother and I had heard on the radio that my father was dead.

He, along with all of his crew had drowned, and that is when my life came crashing down. We were packing to go live with my grandmother, because she was getting sick and needed help around the house. Now that my dad was gone my mother and I were eager to have some company. I was sitting on my bed, packing my bags when my mother came in and asked me if I was ready to go.

“Just a minute,” I said. ”I just need to double check everything.”

“Ok,” she sighed, “well hurry up. Your grandmother is waiting.”

My father’s compass was hanging around my neck and the keys to his boat were gently tucked into my back pocket. With a sigh, I sat up, took one last look around my room and walked towards one of the boxes. I bent down and looked at a picture of my mom and dad and me: we were all smiling, and laughing. It was the day my father got his boat. I was only a child then but I could remember it like it was yesterday. I took the photo with me and carried the box out to the car. My grandma was waiting there in front of the house with a loving smile and sadness in her eyes. I hated it! People who feel sorry for others are miserable, they have nothing else to do in life except mope around feeling sorry for someone else's loss! Why do they even care if it doesn’t effect them, I saw it as nosy and it was none of their business.

I got into the car and looked out into the distance hoping that this was all a bad dream I would soon wake up from. But that was only my fantasy, and I knew there wasn't anything I could do to change my father’s death. I still remember the day. My mother and I were in the kitchen cooking dinner with music playing on the radio. The song ended and the man on the radio started deliver about the morning news. I went to turn it down but my mother insisted on listening. If only we had known better, but how could we have known that my father wasn't coming home from overseas today and he had actually been dead for two days. I can still remember every single detail of my mother's expression when the radio announcer said that a group of marines sent overseas for three months had drowned. When he started to list the names of the men who drowned it all became a blur. I remember my mother slowly wiping the fine china clean, just as clearly as I remember her face becoming gray and the crash of the china falling to the floor and shattering when he said, “Jerry Miller, a loving husband and father. We are praying for his wife and daughter, Amy and Ellis Miller, we are sorry for all of your losses.”

I will never forget that day, the day when I cried for the first time in my life, but it will never happen again, because I have vowed never to truly love a single thing or person as I did my father ever, ever again.

The funeral ceremony was a complete waste of my time. All that happened was a bunch of people stood around using someone's death as an excuse to stuff themselves with carbs and

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calories they wouldn’t normally eat. While they talked about how well they knew the person who died or chatted with their friends and made you cry or laugh but not me. I was the one who stood in the corner, judging all those people because I knew that my mom and I were the only people who really knew my father. We had our perfect little family of just us three, but the universe just had to take the only thing we had away from us.

Now, as I sat on my couch looking out at the dim, flickering street lights, I can hear my mother's laugh and see my father cooking pancakes and making warm hot chocolate. It was the last Christmas my family had together before my father left the few months which turned out to be an eternity. It was then that I thought about that very day when my father was leaving, how he kissed my mother and how she cried, and how he promised me that he would come back. My father was a good man but nobody can change the fact that he is dead, not even me. I can’t stay here rotting like a pile of trash, I have to get out of this sick, sick world I’m living in. Without thinking, I grab my big green duffle bag and shove some clothes in it. I get dressed and take my dad’s boat keys off of my bedside table. I quietly sneak downstairs and grab some supplies and money and some camping gear. When I manage to get out of the house without my grandmother waking up from her spot on the couch I start heading towards any place where I can hide from my miserable life.

I’m down by the docks because it’s the only place I feel safe. I can hear the seagulls screeching and the ships swaying back and forth. The misty air feels cool and wet on my face and arms. I walk forward, step by step, not knowing where I’m going. The only thing I am sure of is that I am never, ever, turning back for home. The next thing I know it’s dark and I’m at a dead end. To the right of me is a car tire lot, and to my left is an old tackle bait shop called ‘Hanks Tackle Bait’ with a scary man holding a huge fish and smiling. Looking around I realize I can’t go back now that it was getting dark, so I turn towards the car tire lot, throw all my bags over the fence and start climbing. I find a few tires on the ground and use them to make a bed, I use my duffle as a pillow and fall asleep to the sound of the wind against my ear and the faint sound of waves crashing.

When I wake up, it takes me a while to realize that I’m not in the same place where I fell asleep. I am lying on an old mattress with a garbage bag wrapped tightly around me, like a blanket. There is a man sitting on a bucket flipped upside down and cooking over an open fire.

My mind suddenly goes crazy. Was I kidnapped? Am I being held hostage? What does this old man want from me?

“You finally woke up, eh? His words startle me and I jump a little.

I turn to face him and not knowing what to do I ask “Who are you? Why am I here?”

“The names Mr. Piers,” he replies, “You looked cold and wet and hungry and we can’t have the coyotes dragging you into the forest, never to be seen again.”

I shiver and reply, “I’m Ellis Miller. And so what if they did? No one would miss me anyway.”

“Well then Missy,” he heaves, “you and I have two very different opinions.”

“So…..” he pauses and then asks, “your dad’s a Marine, eh?” He asks, trying not to sound like some kind of crazy stalker. My eyes grow big and my jaw hangs wide open.

“How did you know that?!!” I sputter.

“It’s ok,” he says. “I overheard you muttering something about him drowning and how you will never turn back. Care to explain?” I sat there in awe, we stare back and forth at each other for a long time, until he finally says, “that’s ok, some things just aren’t meant for other

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people to know. Pardon my asking, it seems I meddle in other people's business when I shouldn’t,” He says with a sigh.

“Yes,” I answer feeling somewhat sorry for him. “my father was in the Marine force, but he is dead now. Whether I like it or not.” I started to get angry and my fists started to clench.

“Well,” he said getting up and handing me a stick with what looked like a miniature hot dog on the end. “Eat up, we have a big day ahead of us.” I stared at it for a while. He must have noticed because he coughed a little, and said uncomfortably, “Go on, it’s as scared of you as you are of it.” I laughed a little and took a bite, it tasted like old shoes and moldy cheese, but then I realized that is was the first time in a long time that I have laughed… or even smiled. I smiled again and said “mmm…,” trying to be nice. “It’s delicious!” trying to hide the half of it that I just couldn’t force down my throat without gagging, or causing a big scene.

He walks outside and when he realizes I’m not with him, he asks, “you coming or you gonna stay here and let the coyotes eat you alive?”

That being said, I scrambled to my feet and followed him outside. He starts walking through the towers of tires, I look back and see his house, which is just some tires stacked up on top of each other making a shelter with a bunch of other scraps to reinforce the shelter. And I can’t help but think about everything Mr. Piers has struggled with, yet, he is still probably the happiest person I’ve ever met.

We come to a fence and he stops, he opens the gate and we walk down a familiar street.

Sure enough, we pass ‘Hanks Tackle Bait’ and I couldn’t help but ask, “Where are we going?”

“Home,” he said.

“But didn’t we just come from your house?” I asked. He laughs a little, and I don’t understand how any part of this conversation is funny.

“Not my home,” he chuckles, “your home…...”

There is a very long pause and then I finally ask “How do you know where I live?”

“I noticed your address on your… unusually large duffle bag.” He said, gesturing to the big bulky bag that I was heaving along. I looked at it and then back at him, and then I just smiled, with my big white buck teeth grin. That is all I did until we turned the corner to my house. It was tall white and just the way it was the night I left, only this time there were two cop cars parked outside the front. I could tell this wouldn’t be one of those “oh, I’m just glad you’re safe situations.” I was in a whole lot of trouble. I wasn’t quite sure what to do so I just stood there, staring.

“Well…go on then,” Mr. Piers urged.

I turn to face him and say, “I’m gonna miss you,” I can’t believe that I actually said it but I did, and I meant every single word. I slowly walked a few paces and then turned.

“Thank you,” I said, then smiled at him one last time and started heading towards my house, ready for whatever was waiting for me.

“The Five Stages to Recovering from a Traumatic Experience” Melisa Nehrozoglu I. Shock I was hit by car. Yes, it felt like a dream. To this day, I struggle to process all the emotion I felt. Shock is Shock.

I was hastily walking on the sidewalk. It was a Friday afternoon in Rochester, New York.

I was on my way to a concert, to see one of my favorite bands with my dad. I remember buying

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the tickets four months ago, and now that the day was finally here, I couldn’t even express my excitement. Already, from a distance, I saw the venue, knowing what it looked like after researching it many times before. My dad and I were crossing a Wendy’s Drive-through exit, right when a car was exiting. I didn’t think the driver saw us. I was unsure about continuing my walk, but my dad, who was in front of me, insisted that we continue. Hesitantly, I attempted to cross. All of a sudden, I heard, not felt a thud, and with that, I felt like I was somersaulting on the ground. My eyes remained open throughout the event, but all I saw was the detail of the gravel on the road and the blinding sunlight. The movement stopped, after what felt like ages. My legs shook and shivered as if I was trapped in a room full of ice. I sat up from my almost face-down position. My first instinct was to scream, so all of New York would hear my helpless cries.

My scream attracted quite the amount of people. The woman at the gas station was the first one to find me. She had a towel in her hand, which confused me. That was until I felt the warm liquid dripping down my face, and in that moment, I felt like I was in an action movie. The rivulet of blood trickled down my head.

II. Anger Mixed with Guilt I was laid down on the ground, a towel on my aching head. My dad paced back and forth, on the phone with the ambulance. He was arguing with them because he wanted them to arrive as soon as possible. After he ended the phone call, he faced me, a distressed look on his face, and out came the question, “Why were you on the curb?”

“I’m sorry.”

At the moment, my thoughts were centered around how I upset my dad and disappointed him.

Through the entire process of being hit by a car, the shock of it, all I thought of was the look on his face. For months, I spent my mornings thinking of ways to apologize to my dad or to show him that I didn’t intend for this accident to happen. I offered to go to the movies with him or to go holiday gift shopping. I did anything to show I was a good kid.

Later on, when I thought of myself and how I acted, I turned red in the face. My jaw would clench at the thought of myself trying to impress him. While doing my homework, my train of thought would lead to these moments of guilt, causing my hands to place in fists while I wished I could have gone back in time and approach the situation differently.

The fact that I ever felt this situation was my fault makes me sick. My dad didn’t understand the emotion I was feeling, nobody did. Maybe I misunderstood his motives, but his words were one of many instances where he was just trying to look out for me. It didn’t work.

III. Attention-Seeking While laying in the hospital bed, all I wanted was to have my phone in my hands, to see if I had a lot of notifications. For some reason I thought that after my car accident, I would be all over the news and that people from school were already notified of it. When my dad handed me my phone, the first thing I did was open my messages. I thought of who I would want to tell about my accident first. When I chose someone, I took a picture of myself, me with a big cotton bandage on my brow, and sent it to the friend, with the message, “Hey, I got hit by a car.”

I laugh at myself every time I think back to that moment because I simply and flat-out told people that I was hit by a car. I needed them to know as soon as possible. I desired the feeling of knowing someone cared and that I was acknowledged by people. Around that time in

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sixth grade, I felt as if I didn’t have friends. I wasn’t a complete loner, but at times I felt left out and excluded and thought nobody would care if I transferred to another school. There was this need for attention after my accident, the need for support from a companion. However, it all felt unreal to me when I noticed how people who never spoke a word to me started asking me about the accident and my state of being, I could only think of one thing. People saw me as nothing until the accident. I was a car accident to them. Pity.

IV. Anxiety It was a few days after the accident. It was, in fact, my birthday. We were out in town to purchase a turntable for me as a birthday present. When we finished shopping, we were heading back to where our car was parked. We had to cross the street a couple of times to reach the parking lot and every time I dreaded it. I feared that the accident was going to happen again.

The feeling of this did not disappear for a while. I looked in every direction every five seconds to make sure, when crossing the street, I was in the ‘safe zone.’ Every step I took in a parking lot was a step full of fear. My head was filled with the thought, “will this next footstep take me to Whole Foods or the hospital?” The sounds of horns honking and cars screeching and wheels making contact with the road were the only thing my ears paid attention to. My mother’s voice speaking to me tuned out of me and there left was the screech, the honk, and my gasp in fear for me to hear.

V. Time and Normalcy It was about seven months after the accident. It was a Friday night and the family was watching a movie together. My dad wanted to take a picture of my scar to keep track of its recovery. He’s been doing this frequently since my stitches were removed. I’ve been getting irritated by him doing this for a while now. I just don’t like to be reminded about what happened.

I wanted to move on and push myself away from the anxiety that would hold me back from living life I always hated when my mom would try and bring up the accident into discussion. She would often instigate a discussion about it when in the car with me in complete silence. She brought up many ‘what if’ situations into the conversation. One of them always struck me: My mom told me, “If that car were to hit more of your body than just your leg, who knows what could have happened.”

“I could have possibly died.”

“Well I wouldn’t think like that-” “I could have died that day.”

“Okay...yeah, I guess, I don’t know.”

I was already crying, silently. I couldn’t think about what could possibly have occurred, but to think about what I will do to keep myself safe and be positive about the future.

A while after the accident, I realized the best way to recover from it was to simply live my life in the most normal way possible. I couldn’t have the fear of getting injured stuck in my head or else I wouldn’t be able to progress as an individual. I needed to cross the street to get to the other side. I needed to walk to the grocery store to buy food, not to fear another accident. I was able to strengthen myself more than a year later in the Summer of 2016.

It was around 10:30am on a Wednesday morning in Englewood, New Jersey. It was late July and I was to be at rehearsal by 11:00am. I was a part of the BergenPAC Summer musical

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Les Miserables. I was sitting at Starbucks with one of my friends I met at the rehearsal. We were conversing when I saw it was 10:45am. We then left and started walking to the theater. I’ve been doing this same routine since the beginning of July. The streets of Englewood are very narrow and are probably one of the most complicated ones I ever crossed. However, since I’ve been crossing the streets for about five weeks now, I have become so accustomed to it, I’ve been able to walk from the Starbucks to the theater with comfort.

After Summer break, I was proud of myself for being able to confidently and independently cross the streets and roam around town without constant fear. However, I came to the conclusion that I will never recover from the accident fully. I will always have the permanent damage of being extremely cautious of my surroundings.

My anxiety has, in a way, strengthened me and suppressed me as well. I was able to pay attention and be mature when walking around vehicles, but still, I would often be scared to take chances when crossing the street. Sometimes I wait for the light to turn red for me just so I can know that when it turns green again, I will have a lot of time to cross the street and not have to fear the light turning red while I’m still crossing.

I needed to have the support of family, friends, and most importantly, myself. I needed to have determination to not make myself better, but to accept myself and work through the obstacles in life that came my way. Trauma is an entire spectrum of emotions and reactions. It can often take someone forever to realize what effects trauma has left on them. For me, sometimes, I still can’t cross the street until the entire road is clear of cars.

A traumatic experience is like a dent on a car. It can damage the way you see yourself and how others see you. It does not damage you eternally, though; the outcome is never negative.

You eventually learn something about yourself, whether it be your strengths, weaknesses, or even a new part of your identity; it’s just like learning about the function of a car once it’s dented. Is it a strong one? Does it need to take more or less time to repair? What does it need to help it go through this rough patch?

Like damage to a car, like filing for a divorce, like losing someone important, you will most likely suffer and recover from at least five stages. Each and every one of those stages will check a box off in a part of your identity.

Trauma can only damage you so much. What you need to do is to acknowledge it, then overcome it, as if you were learning a valuable lesson.

“A Family that Runs Together” Kate Reilly A few months ago, my friend, Keara, and I were having a conversation through text (7:32 pm) Keara: "Doing anything on Saturday?"

(7:34 pm) Me: "Sorry, family running a 10k."

(7:34 pm) Keara: "Another one?"

I stared at Keara's last text. Until that moment, I had never thought about how much my family and I run together. Competing in races with my family was the norm. My family consists of my three siblings and my parents. I am the youngest of four, with all of us being three and a half to four years apart. With our diverse and busy lives, finding time to all get together is a difficult task. When we do come together, we find that running is a great bonding activity. We do not only enjoy the physical aspect of running, but we enjoy each other’s positive mentality and

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motivation toward one another. The sense of accomplishment after crossing the finish line of a race is also an awarding feeling. As a competitive and athletic bunch, our races have been a suitable activity that accommodates everyone’s interests.

Although participating in these family runs has felt like something we’ve been doing forever, this started about three or four years ago, when we were all home sitting around the dinner table and my sister shared an emotional story with us about her house advisor at Lawrenceville, where she attended high school. She was telling us about her house advisor’s two young daughters with whom she shared a close bond. “One of his children suffers from William’s Syndrome, a rare developmental disorder,” she told us. She mentioned that there was going to be a 10k to raise money for William’s Syndrome, and how we should all support her by partaking in the event. As enthusiastic I was about benefitting the cause, I was apprehensive about the thought of running a 10k, being that I had never even ran a 5k before. In a half joking manner, I said aloud to my family, “I’ll probably pass out before the third mile.” They all laughed, but in reality I wasn’t totally joking. My brother, Sean, knew I was a novice at long distance running, and willingly volunteered to run with me. Knowing that I would not be running alone, I felt better about participating in the race.

As the event grew closer, I tried to find ways to excuse myself from the race. I told my mom I was most likely going to be busy the day of the race, I told her I felt a cold coming on, and I told her I couldn’t run because I needed to rest for a soccer game the following day.

Whatever excuse I threw at my mom, she remained adamant on my commitment to support the cause by running with my family. Despite my hopes for some sort of natural disaster or catastrophe, we reached the day of the race. I woke up, at an abysmal early time, to a multitude of small sounds buzzing through my house. I could hear my mom and sister debating on what thermal socks to wear, the constant bounce of a soccer ball rhythmically hitting a kitchen cabinet, my dogs’ panting, and the beeping of my brother’s espresso machine. The rare occasion of my whole family being together and waking up at such an early hour would usually evoke feelings of excitement, in anticipation of a family vacation, but this morning was different. I was dreading the day ahead of me.

The wind was blowing through my hair, my hands were numb from the cold, my feet were sore from playing in a recent soccer game, and my head throbbed from the acrid odor of New York City. All I could see ahead of me were hundreds of people in running apparel, ready to begin the race. My anxiety had reached its zenith. My faith in myself was non-existent. I prepared myself for death. The blaring noise of an air horn that signaled the start of the race filled me with doubt. I started to lightly jog, and was already in pain. My stomach cramped up within the first few steps I took. I felt a sharp pain in my ankle, from previously spraining it. My family had begun to disperse among the crowd. I felt my stomach drop as I became surrounded by strangers. Someone then tapped me on my shoulder. I turned around and saw my older brother, Sean. I gained a sense of relief, knowing that he was staying true to his word.

Throughout the first mile, every part of my body was aching. I felt the pressure of keeping up with the countless amount of people around me. Somewhere in the second mile, my mind started to drift, forgetting about the pain I was in. I started to think about why I was running. Thoughts about my family and the young girl whom we were running for flooded my mind. I used these thoughts as motivation to continue the rhythm my body had been developing.

I began appreciating the scenery around me, consisting of a large, serene river, intricate bridges, and tall buildings. I got lost in the moment when suddenly I realized my brother was no longer by my side. I stepped to the side and looked around. My brother was nowhere to be seen. For a

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few seconds, my heart stopped. I stood there confused and panicked, hearing the loud footsteps of hundreds of people as vibrant colors of clothing were passing me. I was trying to determine if he had gone ahead or if he had fallen behind, but in my heart I knew he would never abandon me. As I frantically scanned the crowd, among the myriad of bobbing heads, I instantly recognized one that had thick, dark brown hair. As the head drew closer, I identified that it was Sean. I immediately became relaxed and was ready to continue running. I found it difficult to jump back into the mix, but insisted on returning to my brother. I could tell from his facial expressions that he was fighting just to keep up with me. Struggling to find the air to speak, I shouted to Sean, “Hey, are you okay?” He nodded his head and replied with sarcasm, “Never been better.” I laughed a little, but still knew he needed my help in order to finish the race. There were times when he was a few steps behind me. When this occurred, I grabbed his arm, pulled him forward and shouted, “Come on, you got it!”

By the fifth mile, Sean and I ran in tandem. I felt a strong presence of pride in my abilities to endure this challenging task and to help a family member. This realization fueled me to finish the race. As we approached the finish line, I could see my family, excitedly cheering us on. From the moment I stepped over that line, my body was overwhelmed with a feeling of joy. I could not control my exuberance. When my family reunited, I realized that I was proud of being a part of this unit. We are not only athletic, but we are compassionate and unconditionally supportive of each other. I regularly look back to this day, for it was the first time I truly understood what it meant to be a “Reilly.”

“Blindside” Joey Steiner Darkness, that's all I see. Ever since I was three years old I haven't been able to see the light of day or the glow of New York City at night. I've been told about it, but I can only hear the traffic rumble through the streets and my mother yelling, “Dinner time.” Although I have already memorized the entire pattern of my house, I cautiously step down the stairs. One by one they creek. With my hands, I see the dinner table. I sit down and smell the most delicious lasagna I've ever smelled. I smell my mother's radiant perfume as she places my dinner down. I say “Thank you,” and kiss her cheek, only missing her by a little. My little sister walks in. She shares my excitement for lasagna. I tell my mom to take a seat, she works too hard for us. “Are you girls ready for your first day of school tomorrow?” I immediately stop eating. “I’m not hungry,” I mumble. I start bringing my plate up to the sink and I hear my mom say, “Elisabeth, don't do that.” I turn around to where I assume she is sitting and scream, “Just because I’m blind doesn't mean I can’t do anything for myself!” I drop the plate and run upstairs trying to not trip over my own feet.

I wake up at 6:30 A.M. sharp. Aggravation fills me as I get dressed in the morning. My mother picks out my clothes for me. I trust her with my life, but sometimes I feel like she dresses me like a 6 year old. Still, I can’t be mad at her for all she’s done for me. I go downstairs and follow the smell of homemade pancakes. I sit down, already regretting the rest of my day. After I’m done my mom leads me to the car and we drive to the abyss. Middle school. My last year.

I walk to my first period class, with the help of the principal, who sees me as an interesting experiment to put in an 8th grade classroom. I get a seat in the back, because it's not like I’ll see the chalkboard anyways. I sit there feeling like someone had punched me in the 6

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stomach. I hear someone say my name. It sounds like it’s coming from the front corner of the room, and of course, I look in the wrong direction. The other kids all laugh. It's not my fault I can’t see them. My mom can’t afford the surgery. I hear footsteps leading right up to my desk. It is Rebecca, who is like a fruit with an army of fruit flies. She puts her hand on my desk.

“Oh look what we have here. Oh wait, you can’t look at anything,” she says with her high-pitched voice. I try and hold back my tears but it's impossible. The more she makes me cry the more confidence she gains. Once the teacher comes in, everyone acts like nothing happened.

I try to listen in class but there's no point. I won't be taking any test either way. The bell rings and I struggle to walk out the door. “Oh let me help you,” Rebecca says. She pushes me backwards into the wall and all her minions laugh. I slowly slide down the cold wall and wait for her to leave. I use my hand to find the door and wait for someone to help me. No one helps. I sit there, hiding until the last bell rings. I eventually find my way out by listening to my mom scream my name. She walks me to the car and helps me in. She takes a deep breath in and says, “So, how was school?” I start to cry. I scream at her saying, “Please just let me get the surgery!” She hits the brakes hard. She looks at me with sorrowful eyes and says, “I can't! I don't have 5,000 dollars. I'm sorry but we don't have enough money! I'm sorry I can’t make you happy!”

The rest of the car ride was silent. Ever since my dad left us my mom has been struggling financially. She pulls into the driveway and helps me out of the car. She walks me to my room and we both sit on my bed. She puts her arm around me and says, “I love you.” I give her a big hug to show her that I love her more.

I hear my phone buzzing on my side table. My mom hands me earphones that read my texts for me automatically. I put my earphones in one by one and turn them on. ”Text from, Unknown.” I wait for it to read the text. “Unknown says hello.” I ask my phone to reply with “Who is this?” Unknown says, “Don't worry about it.”

The next day of school is almost as bad as the first, but at least they don't make a massive joke about me. The second I walk out of the building, my phone rings. I wait until I'm home to listen to the messages.

My hands start to sweat. “Unknown says. I have money.” I’m wondering what it's trying to tell me. “Unknown says, I’m sorry.” I look up at my wall with a puzzled look on my face. “Text Unknown, For what?” I said. I never get a reply. I have this weird feeling inside of me and try to keep it in but i can’t. I yell to my mom in fear telling her to come to my room. She runs up the stairs as fast as she can, thinking that something bad had happened to me. “What... what...what's wrong? Are you ok? Do you need anything?” she says frantically. “Nothing I'm fine. It's just, there is someone who is texting me telling me they have money and I don't know what to do.”

My mom tells me she has an application on her phone that can track down unknown numbers.

“Come, let's get in the car and find out who is texting you.”

We take a step outside and my mom tells me there is a small paper bag tied with gray yarn. My mom picks it up and realizes it has the name Unknown written on it. She opens it and I hear the sound of the bag hitting the ground. “What?” I ask. “It's money. It's full of money!” she says incredulously. “5,000 dollars! Th-that’s enough for your surgery!” We both start crying tears of joy and she gives me the biggest hug. “Come on, let's go find this unknown.”

We arrive at our destination and my mom makes me wait in the car while she visits Unknown’s house. She rings the doorbell and someone opens the door. “Hi, I think your daughter left a very generous amount of money on my steps?” “Oh, you might want to speak with her yourself.” The woman calls down her daughter and my mom comes running back to the car. “Elisabeth, you need to come with me.” She helps me out of the car and walks me towards

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the door. “Hi, Elisabeth” I hear in a high-pitched voice. “Who is that?” I reply. “It's me, Unknown.” At that moment I felt like I was having a nightmare. “But, who are you?” I say.

“Rebecca.”

My jaw drops. I must be hearing things. Rebecca? Rebecca helped me? All of the sudden, I feel someone hugging me. It is her. I feel like she has really changed. I hug her back and I know from this day on, Rebecca and I will be best friends.

Photograph by Lori Hashasian

“Emergency! Sound the Alarm” Ella Toback It builds up, the pressure, it does.

“This is not what I wanted,” said She. The starting point, a random action.

Breaking down as the snowball rolls down the hill.

It becomes the next challenge, anger, it does.

Lips being bitten, “When can you make it stop?”

Balling of fists and tightening of chests.

How will its power decline?

The mountains, Can’t you hide behind them?

Not a mask, not an expression.

Around you the people feel the tension beneath your skin.

Hands by your side, becoming rigid you are.

A wanton strike on your mind, Who brings this on?

Secrets behind your back, Are they the ones in charge?

Shoulders rise, unconsciously, as collarbones become present.

You shut your eyes: Will someone be there to catch you?

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Knuckles become white, you shut your eyes tight.

Cycling, dangerous thoughts are.

A black room, these thoughts are carried out.

No exit sign can be found.

You notice, next you are up over your head.

Out of control, the spiraling turns.

Where will you go?

Fables “The Man and the Dragon” Luke Davis In the kingdom of Duradan, a dragon is on the loose. A farmer and his friends make a bet that the dragon isn’t real and is just a trick to get all the thieves and scoundrels out of the city. If he flees because of the dragon, he loses the bet. Only a few days later, the dragon comes and takes three villagers away. The farmer doesn’t believe it, as no one has actually seen the dragon, though they know it is not in its cave where it usually resides.

“Tis’ only a boat accident,” he says.

People are starting to flee, but because of his stubbornness and thirst for money the farmer stays. The next day, the Dragon sets half of the city on fire.

“Tis’ only a cooking fire that spread,” said the farmer. Secretly, he was very scared, but he did not show it as he wanted to win the money. The next day, the city was abandoned. The dragon knew the farmer was there, cowering in fear. The dragon was enraged at this man’s stupidity and thirst for money. He set the house where the man was hiding on fire and the man perished in the flames. As you can imagine, he didn’t win the bet either.

Artwork by Luke Davis

Moral: Don’t let money and stubbornness control you.

“Peacock and Elephant” Jaden Pitts Peacock and Elephant lived in the woods. Peacock was looking at itself and said, “I am so beautiful that I am the best creature in the animal kingdom!”

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Elephant heard what Peacock was saying and came up to Peacock and said, “You are not the best creature in the animal kingdom.” ”Peacock said, “I am the best animal because of my beautiful feathers!” ”Elephant said, “No I am the best, because I am smart and clever. But Peacock didn’t listen so Elephant and Peacock went back and forth saying who is the best and in what way.

Finally again Elephant said, “I may not have your beautiful feathers but I am smart!”

That’s why I am the best creature in the animal kingdom.” Peacock listened that time and ran like a rabbit into the forest without an answer. That’s why “Good looks aren’t everything.”

Moral: Good looks aren’t everything

“King Lion and Fox” Lily Gee Lion was always boasting of his silky fur and his flowy mane. As the king of the jungle, no one would dare argue with him. All but one. Fox had been fed up with Lion’s blabbering on.

For Fox has ratty, fur and his tail was filled with flies and dirt. He knew Lion had never thought of anyone but himself. One day at the pond, Lion was relaxing. He was telling himself, “I consider my animals of the jungle in luck. For they have a handsome leader to look at, while I am looking down at old, ratty faces. Fox was on his daily walk, and he happened to overhear Lion. He couldn’t stand Lion any longer, so he gave Lion a piece of his mind. “Hello Lion! I happened to hear you talking to yourself. And I really don’t look like much. I don’t have your glossy, fine coat, but I am a very intelligent creature. For you have no more wit than a chicken, while I know as much as a hawk.” The Lion was so embarrassed he never boasted about his good looks to anyone ever again.

Moral: Good looks are not always everything.

“The Miner and the Diamond” Christopher Couri It happened that a miner in 1848 went mining with his trustworthy donkey named Bill.

Little does the miner know that he will stumble across great fortune. It was about quitting time and the miner only got enough gold to pay for one meal. He was being very pessimistic about finding a lot of gold. Then he saw a clear crystal in the side of the mine. The miner was the only one in the mine. He went over to discover it was a diamond. He yelped in happiness. He hugged his donkey in disbelief. He was screaming and yelling so loudly that the folks outside even came into the mine to see what all the ruckus was. Everyone was friends with the miner and they were all so happy for him, until he started bragging about how rich he was. He always would talk about how he was richer than everyone else. Then the townsfolk had enough. So during the night, all the town folk had a meeting about him. They decided to send robbers to take the diamond and his donkey. In the morning he was left speechless with nothing but the clothes on his back. They never saw him again.

Moral: If you gloat, you will be left with no friends

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“The Dog, the Squirrel, and the Mouse” Anika Gandhi Every morning the dog would set out into the woods to chase the squirrel. One day the dog caught the squirrel.

The squirrel said to the dog, “Whatever have I done to you that now you want to eat me?”

The dog said, “Well you have not done anything, but you just looked so delicious. But since you have not done any harm to me I must let you go.”

The next day the squirrel went out to find lunch and he caught a mouse. The mouse said, “What have I done to you that has made you want to eat me?”

The squirrel remembered earlier he was in the same situation as the mouse and how he did not get eaten. So he did to others what he wanted done unto him.

Moral: Do to others what you want others to do onto you.

“The Lion and The Ant” Davor Valdich Once there was a Lion strolling by when he saw an ant walking past him. He then roared, “What animal dares to defy me, the king of the jungle?”

The ant thought about his answer and then replied to the lion, “It is me the ant, and I can dare to defy you for my kind has survived since the dinosaurs were walking this earth, acting like kings, just like you think you are.”

“I do not pretend to be a king, I am one.” The lion rudely replied to the ant.

“The dinosaurs said that too, but once the storms came and the asteroid did, the were all destroyed.” The lion was sick of his rudeness, so he just walked away turning his head. That night a ferocious storm came, and the lion thought to prove himself by going out into the storm when it was at it’s worst. When the storm was as horrible as it ever was, the lion jumped into the storm, and he found himself stuck in a ditch, and he stayed there the whole night. In the morning the ant found him, and said to him, “Do truly think you’re the king of the jungle now?” The lion replied, “No, I apologize to you, you truly are a very powerful creature.” The ant replied, “Thank you, now I will get you out of here.”

“But how if you are only an ant?”

“Do not forget, lion, we are very strong creatures.” Then, one thousand ants gathered around the lion and pushed him out of the ditch, and the lion learned his lesson to never underestimate anyone again.

Moral: Don’t underestimate something because of its size.

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“Tod the Rabbit and the Red Fox” Benjamin Lefkowitz Once upon a time there was a rabbit named Tod. Tod lived in the woods with his rabbit family. This family was very scared of the Red Fox family. The two families were enemies. In addition, the Rabbit family was very scared of the Red Fox family because they were very aggressive with Tod and the family. They wanted Tod to fight the youngest red fox in the family Red. Red was Tod’s age they went to the animal school in the woods. One day, Tod was in the woods walking and he saw Red. They both were walking to Anilak School.

Red said to Tod, ‘’Do you want to come to my house to play after school?’ We have been enemies for too long. I now would like to be your friend.”

Tod answered, ‘’I guess I can come to your house to play. We can be friends.”

Later after school Red and Tod went to Red’s house. All of Red’s family was in the house. They all were very nice to Tod in the beginning when they were playing, but then they took Tod outside. They surrounded him in a big circle, so Tod could not run away.

When Tod was in the circle he said to the foxes, “What are you doing?’’

The foxes replied, “Eating you!’’

After that Tod tried to run away but he couldn’t. Now Tod knew that he should have not trusted the foxes because they were his enemies. The foxes ate Tod. Moral: Never trust an enemy

Artwork by Luke Davis

“The Pegasus and The Knights” Aidan Herrera A very vain Pegasus loved his wings but hated his legs. One day he was flying across the castle and out of nowhere there was a horde of knights with cannons and nets coming strangely at him.

Pegasus asked, “What is the big commotion?”

The knights then started to yell and run towards him. He thought about the situation surrounding him and realized that he was in trouble. He flapped his wings as hard as he could and went to his cove and hid. After hiding in his cove for a long time he was scared and flew out of sight. He had to remain unseen the next 3 days. Pegasus couldn't stay out of sight for much

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longer and went to get a drink. He went to get something to drink, and out of nowhere the soldiers came out again. They caught his beautiful wings, but not his legs. He kicked and kicked until he broke free. His wings were broken but he could still run. He ran away scared and never was seen again.

Moral: Use is of more importance of an ornament

Art by Ethan Gail

“The Crow and the Mouse Family” Max Baly The crow was a good creature and liked to help Art by Luke Davis people. One day a family of mice came by and they were carrying bags and could not find one of the bags in the tall grass.

The mouse father asked the crow, “Have you seen a bag anywhere in this grass?”

The crow went to look for the bag and found a bag.

He brought it back to the mouse, but the mouse said, “This is not my bag. This bag is much nicer than my bag and has more riches in it than mine did.”

The crow went back and found father mouse’s bag. The crow gave him the bag and the mouse family went on their way.

The next day, the mother mouse went back and dropped her bag into the grass on purpose. She asked the crow if he could find her bag. The crow found a bag that was much better than her bag and had more riches in it. The crow brought the bag to mother mouse.

Mother mouse said, “Yes, that’s my bag!” But what she didn’t know was that the crow saw her dropping the bag into the grass. The crow did not give her the nicer bag or find her bag for her. She went home with nothing.

Moral: Honesty is the best policy.

“Jaden”

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Katherine Danforth Jaden was so excited because she just milked 20 gallons of milk from her cow and got eggs from her chickens. She set them down on the table Jaden went over to the eggs and started to count how many eggs she found. She found 98 eggs, and decided she would sell them for $100 each and for the milk $100 per gallon. She would have $9,800 for her eggs and $2,000 for her milk, so in total she would have $11,800 for the cute purse she wanted and the dress for the dance. She wanted to sell all of her eggs and her milk because she needed the money to get the dress. Jaden went off to the store and got what she wanted and came back home. Before she sold the milk and eggs she started to move the eggs and the milk and it all fell. The eggs cracked and the milk spilled. Now she lost all of her money.

Moral: Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

“The Chicken, The Pig, and The Fox” Vera Iliadi A chicken and a fox were partners in a project. The project was to find a way to make their wood a better place. Later that day a pig showed up. The chicken didn’t like the pig. She thought he was disgusting and looked weird. The chicken wanted to go to the mayor and say that the pig was causing trouble in their group, but the pig was doing nothing at all. The next day the chicken went up to the fox and said, “Oh can you please go up to the mayor and say that the pig is causing trouble.”

The fox replied, “ But the pig is not doing anything wrong,” she said in a clever voice.

The chicken decided to go to lion who was the mayor. The chicken said, “The pig is disgusting and weird and he is causing trouble, so can you please take him off our team?”

The lion said, “I’m sorry but now he is a citizen and every citizen has to participate in the project. Plus, there is no room for the pig in another group.”

“What!” the chicken said. “ We don’t have room in our team.”

“Oh you do. You only have two animals and all the other groups have three.”

“Fine, but can I trade the pig with the unicorn?,” said the chicken.

“No!” said the lion. The chicken went back to her group and a surprise was waiting for her. Fox and the pig were already done with the project, so the chicken wound up left out of the group because she had been so snobby about wanting to exclude the pig.

Moral: If you exclude others based on how they look, you can also be excluded.

“The Fox and the Deer” William Helm Once upon a time, there was a boastful and untruthful fox named Mr. Fox. One day, he got news that his grandmother was sick so he decided to visit her, but he told all of the Animals in the forest that he was going on an adventure around the world.

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When he got back from the visit, he told a crowd of the animals, “I went sailing across the sea, I climbed up and around mountains, I dueled rival foxes, and I went swimming across a big and rough lake!”

In the crowd of animals was a humble, but adventurous deer. He said, “Oh my Mr. Fox, you must’ve had a wonderful time. You must come and take us on your next great venture!’

Once he said it, there was a great murmur around the crowd. The animals started begging for Mr. Fox to take them on his next journey, and he reluctantly said yes. The next day, all of the animals went on a boat for Mr. Fox to sail, but he did not know how to sail. Once he got out on water, the boat crashed and the deer had to get them all to safety. Once they got back home, all of the animals wanted Mr. Fox to climb the tallest mountain in the forest. He tried to, but his feet got stuck in a crack in the mountain, and he fell to the ground. Luckily, the deer was there to catch him. Next, the animals got a big and tough fox for Mr. Fox to duel. When he got there, Mr. Fox badly lost and was severely injured, but deer came and helped him get better. In spite of Mr. Fox’s previous failures, the animals believed that he was a hero, so they got him to swim in a cold and rough lake. He swam about a meter, but then he drowned in the ice, cold, lake. Just like the last three times, deer came to the rescue and saved fox. After four failures, the animals of the forest realized that Mr. Fox was a lying fraud and they decided to banish him from the forest. They never saw him again.

Moral: Do not to lie and boast, or else something bad will happen to you.

Artwork by Parisa Verma

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Poems from the Heart “I Am�

Jaden Pitts I am Colorful I wonder why people are rude I hear the ocean crashing I see a black and white world I am Colorful.

I pretend to be on Broadway I feel my costume tight around my body I touch the Broadway lights I worry about something bad I cry about fear I am Colorful.

I understand people I say hello I dream of happiness I try to make people laugh I hope for happiness I am Colorful.

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Photograph by Annabelle Xing

“I Am” Rani Ogden I am hopeful in everything I wonder what causes everyone’s actions I hear whispers and gossip I see a world of good and evil I want to overcome the evil surrounding me I am hopeful in everything I pretend to not care what people think of me I feel bad when people don’t like me I rely on my family when I need someone to turn to I worry that my actions don’t matter I cry when my emotions take over my body I am hopeful in everything I understand that I can’t change the world I say what I believe in I dream of becoming someone helpful I try to understand everything around me I hope I can be stronger than I am now I am hopeful in everything

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“I Am” Luke Davis I am part of a new generation I wonder if we will survive I hear words filled with hatred and spite I see a world filled with violence I am scared I want peace I pretend that we are all okay I feel that our world will collapse I touch the earth I worry that we can’t do anything I cry for our struggles I am scared I understand that we can build this world up again I say that we can I dream of a perfect world I try to help I hope we succeed I am scared

“Contemplations” Paige Lopez mask learn to hide your feelings under masks under fake laughter under bad jokes and terrible puns under smiling faces filled with hope and then take it off when you are alone with no one to see the reality trust learn to trust only the people you know will stay quiet

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you know can help you you know you can take the mask off with you know you can cry with the ones who will support you no matter how bad things are friends who can you trust not to tell the others about everything the crying the hoping the wishing the dreaming and also the screaming the nightmares the despair the loneliness help tears and pain and despair and then and then friends filled with hope and love dreams dreams of wishes wishes of dreams all filled with hope and wonder only to be crushed by reality fear lying awake thinking scared because of darkness

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spiders heights clowns blood yourself death regret thinking about the past mistakes choices ideas hopes decisions that you didn’t make but you wish you did death maybe a hope maybe a fear maybe something in between the only thing that is certain in our lives is death a permanent ending to us to our ideas to our memories to our friendships to anything and everything that might just might make us worth something love perhaps the only other thing besides death that we can look forward to that we can hope for that we can fear unknowing of who

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we’ll love only knowing that maybe just maybe somebody’s waiting for you

Photograph by Safia Singer-Pomerantz

“Winter” Rani Ogden The icicles are as sharp as knives, Cold winds start to arrive, The snow is a large sea of white, Hope I don’t get frostbite, The aroma of hot chocolate speaks softly, We build a snowman named Frosty, When I fall on the snow it feels like a cushion, Then we had another snowman making competition, I almost won but there was one problem, My cousin’s snowman looked pretty awesome.

We had a snowball fight, After that, I nearly got frostbite.

Now it is time for the day to say goodbye Wow, doesn't time fly, I am looking at the sparkling night sky, It is so beautiful I almost cried.

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“Peep Haikus” Tessa Li Perfect for Easter Pink, yellow, purple and green Marshmallows are great Peeps in twinkie cars Frosting on the cake race track Tell me who will win Peeps on a green vine They’re not ready for picking Is it almost time?

Peeps on a green screen They are going to be filmed Lights, Camera, Action!

Baking peeps in cake Jelly beans are on the top Yummy, yummy treat

“Acrostic Peep Poem” Tessa Li Purple and blue Excellent for a rainy day Easter treat Pink and yellow Sweet to eat

“Birds and Butterflies”

Artwork by ?

Maddy Goldstein Shall I compare birds to a butterfly, They’re strong and fly swiftly and gracefully, Although butterflies do not fly as high, Birds fly so quickly and so hastily.

So when the sun reaches day, they go out,

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And then go hunting for food and water, The birds look all over without a doubt, As the bright sun gets hotter and hotter.

Butterflies are delicate and pretty, They are careful, and watch out for others, You may see them flying round the city, They fly away with mothers and brothers.

Birds are soft and they fly fast in the air, And butterflies fly soft and smooth with care.

“The Only Thing to Fear, is Fear” Sami Rowbottom Across the world, Near your country, Around the corner, Outside your house, Below the surface, Concerning thoughts Throughout our minds, Within our heads, Past our brains, Beyond our words, Out our mouths, Among us all, Inside you and me, Fear…

“The Woods” Maeve Goldman My bare ankles tingle as vibrant, red, orange and yellow leaves, Fly down from a tall birch tree, Knocking into each other trying to be the first to meet me, The wind sings crisp short tunes, Brushing my hair and chilling my toes, Until I dance, fly, fall, spinning across the earth, Soaring through the sky until I fall to the ground, The sky spins like a blue, yellow, windmill with hints of white, Threatening to crash down on me with every spin, Birds dance through the windmill as agile as the wind, The day weeps as night falls and birds start to vanish, I jump over twigs and moss leaving the forest,

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Singing with fireflies behind me.

“I Could Never Write a Poem” Grant Goldman I could not write a poem Not even come close Every time I tried Something would go wrong Too long, too short could never get it right Never could never will To hard to write Harder to right than a fifty page essay Too much work I wish I could, but I never would, How do I write a poem Is it really that hard I will never know because I can't write one though Wish I could, but can't, it’s way to hard How I wish I could, why can't I I am still trying to write this poem Took me all my life but I will complete this So finally I will complete my goal to write a poem But still I can’t write a poem No matter how I try I could never get it right Oh, how I wish I could write a poem Still too hard but maybe I could if someone helped I tried to get someone to help, it took couple of years Finally, I wrote a poem, telling a story Story was me trying to write a poem That took more than fifty years Finally, I finished it took all my life but I did it

“A Prepositions Poem” Michael O’Brien Out of the earth's clasp Into the unknown Outside of imagination Underneath the earth Over the sun Past the Milky Way Inside the capsule to his glory day Until landing and feeling like a million dollars Near the end of his mission

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Above him by a dark shadow Against his horror Inside the ship at the “launch” button BOOM!

“The Feeling” Yoel Zachariah Past the darkness Into the light Above the fear Among the fright Through the dread Above the sorrow Past the Depression Through the Misery Among the Melancholy Beneath the unhappiness Into the discouragement Within the Anger Joy!!!

Inspired by the Greeks “How Medusa’s Head Got in the Sky” Parisa Verma Medusa, known as the monstrous gorgon, eyes flaming with rage and a look of sickening fury, was once not a monster of her domain, but a charming person who was full of jubilation.

Being caught in Athena’s temple infuriated the goddess, enough to give the girl a horrible punishment: one look into Medusa’s eyes and a shock of petrification would run through your body.

Night fell upon Athens, an eerie wind blew across the fields, Medusa was lurking. She held a sword, recently sharpened. Approaching a marble statue of the patron goddess, she slashed her sword right through the middle. An uncanny shriek was heard, sharper than the blade she held in her talons, from the green fertile mountain known as Mount Olympus. Medusa dropped the sword, cutting across blades of grass and ran like the wind, far from Athens.

Medusa, already being a horrifying monster, was cursed with the most nefarious of punishments ever thought of by the Greeks; she was to become a constellation in the vast sky, never to return to Earth again. Take a glance into the dark, mysterious world known as space, and perhaps you will distinguish the constellation known as Medusa’s Head.

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“Persephone at the Mall” Corrado Buzzerio My irresponsible daughter going places I tell her not to go, but, of course, she doesn’t listen. *UGH*. My daughter goes to the mall and I tell her not to go in isle 14h, but what does she do? She goes there. Then Hades comes and takes her. I need a glass of wine. I love my daughter but she never listens to me. What if Hades cuts Persephone's ponytail off? Does he know how many hours I spent combing her hair. I will sue you, Hades! Hopefully, she doesn’t eat anything in Hades because then she’ll stay there forever. I’m calling up Zeus to get her back to me. Hopefully he picks up, it always goes to voicemail. Those Samsungs never work.

Finally, Zeus picks up the phone and says he’s going to Hades as fast as he can.

Hopefully Persephone doesn’t get hungry before he answers. Teenagers, so irresponsible.

Hopefully no one sneaks her a few pomegranate seeds, her favorite food. I’m calling Zeus to see if he’s near Hades.

He picks up and it sounded like Broadway on New Year’s Eve. I can barely hear him but he said something about a pomegranate, the number six, and something about a Big Mac. He came back with my daughter and bad news:Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds. That means she’s spending her winter break from school in Hades with no phone, tablet, laptop, computer, friend, or her makeup studio.

“A Greek Tragedy” Julian Tashjian The characters in this Greek tragedy are Mr. and Ms. Thermopyles and their sons Zenon and Alexandros. They also have a daughter, Cassandra. Also appearing are the goddesses Athena and Demeter. The Athenian king declared every family must give one son for the war.

The mother and father agonize about which son should go to war and which one should stay to farm. The two brothers decide to go to Athena's temple to seek direction from her. Athena says the stronger one will die in war. So they arm wrestle, and it is a tie. Then they go to Demeter’s Temple and ask which one should stay. Demeter says the one that is more flexible shouldn’t go to war. The brothers compete to see which one is more flexible, and they are equally flexible.

The gods start fighting about which should go. Athena tries giving herself strength and strategy and misses and hits one of the brothers. Next, Demeter tries giving Athena a flexible piece of rubber but misses and hits the other brother. But he does not turn into a piece of rubber; he stays the same but is super flexible. The brothers go back to the temples and get the same answers. So they arm wrestle again to see who is more flexible. The brother who was hit by Athena wins the arm wrestling, and the other brother wins the flexibility contest. So the stronger brother is going to go to war but kills himself instead so he does not have to fight. The other brother must now go to war but kills himself too. Then the daughter kills herself because she lost her brothers. Then the mom kills herself because she lost her children. The king comes to decide which brother will go to war, but his family is destroyed. He says to the king, “I am the only one left,” and the king replies, “You will do.” On the ship to war, the father jumps off and drowns himself.

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“The Teen Who Got His Hands Stuck in the Steering Wheel of a Car While Driving It” Tibet Yakut I am Phaeton. My father is Apollo, and I love hanging out with my friend, Epaphus.

Yesterday, I turned sixteen, and my father got me a car. I wished for a red Tesla. My friend also turned sixteen, and he wished for a red Ferrari.

I got my car! I was so excited because I got a Tesla! Just what I wanted. Epaphus and I went to Dave and Busters to celebrate because he also got a car. We played the ping pong ball bounce game, and we played milk jug toss. While we were at the basketball games section, he dared me to beat his all time score of two hundred. If I couldn’t score two hundred in three tries, I would need to drive around the world in one day. On the first try I got ninety-six, on the second try I got one hundred seventy-eight, and amazingly, on the third try I got one hundred ninetynine. I couldn’t believe that I would need to drive around the world in one day. I went into my car and drove really fast across the highway, through the fields, and over the water. I was enjoying the ride, but I was also getting a little hungry, so I drove even faster. While I was driving, I accidentally got my hands stuck in the steering wheel. While I was twisting and turning my hands to free them, I clicked a button and the car zoomed up a hill and started flying into space. I was terrified because I thought I was going to suffocate.

When my father gave me this new car, he didn’t tell me that it also controlled how hot and cold the Earth gets. So the closer I got to Earth, volcanoes started erupting, people started melting, and houses burned. When I got further away from Earth, oceans started freezing and icebergs were created. I saw Earth in destruction; it looked terrible. I wondered how I would get off the car.

While I was flying up and down, I saw Zeus on Mount Olympus. He looked down at Earth and up at me. I don’t think he knew who I was, for he shot me with his gun. I couldn’t believe it! On my sixteenth birthday I got a new car that controlled how hot and how cold Earth was, and I died because of it. Now, I am down in Hades just roaming around. It is boring down here.

“Demeter and Persephone from Demeter’s Point of View” Eli Nelson So imagine you're a mom who's PROUD to be a mother; your daughter is everything you want to be. She’s beautiful, happy, and ok at her job, but THEN, your uncle goes and takes her to his house and makes her his queen. Messed up, right? Well, my name is Demeter. I am the goddess of the harvest and this is my story.

It all started when Persephone, my daughter, went off a little too far from the house where she saw a bush that she had not noticed before and went to inspect it. But then my uncle, HADES, came in his chariot and CAPTURED my daughter. I was horrified when she didn’t come home that night. I was scared for my daughter. I rode off on my chariot, a gift from Poseidon my GOOD uncle, and went around Pan’s wood looking for Persephone. My bird friends told me Hades took her. Then a boy started laughing at me! ME! DEMETER, QUEEN OF THE HARVEST! So being a goddess, I turned him into a lizard. It was coming his way. I

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sped to Mount Olympus, screaming, “JUSTICE!” I told Zeus my problem, and he said I should have peace. PEACE!? My daughter is LITERALLY living in hell and you want me to chill? My child is the goddess of Spring, and now she lives in the epitome of darkness. He tells me that Hades is a good match. I would like you to think of a way that the goddess of SPRING and the god of DARKNESS and the underworld are a good match.

Then I noticed something. Zeus had a different thunderbolt in his hands; his thunderbolt was jeweled, decorated with gold and silver. Hades must have BRIBED Zeus to give him MY daughter, HIS daughter! Horrible. I was so unbelievably MAD that winter reigned on the earth for weeks. Then, finally! Zeus thought, “OK she’s mad. MAYBE I did something wrong here.”

So one day when he woke up hearing my cries of lamentation, pain, and hunger, he came down to me and proposed that he would talk to Hades and try to negotiate a way for me to have my daughter back.

However, he reminded me about “The Law of Abode,” meaning that If Persephone had anything to eat down there in Hades, which I told him she didn’t, she would have to stay down there forever. So Zeus whistled to Hermes to escort me down to the Underworld. But, during that time, my daughter was tricked! Remember that boy that I turned into a lizard? Well, it turns out that while Persephone was down there, he fed her six pomegranate seeds, and Hermes caught them in the act! Zeus offered a compromise. “Persephone shall stay in the Underworld for six months, representing the six seeds she has consumed.” And that is why we have six months of winter when my daughter Persephone leaves me.

“How the Diadem Got in the Sky” Michelle Kim Amongst the grand villas and the mansions located in Athens was a small house not fit for the grand street. In the house dwelled a little girl by the name of Penelope and her mother, Persephone, and her sister, Hestia. The father had been missing for years, and not a single clue was found. Since the absence of the father, Persephone was not able to find an occupation, so the family suffered from the lack of food and clothes.

One day, when Penelope and Hestia went out to the market to buy some olives, Penelope saw a beautiful diadem. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, and she knew that her family was too poor to afford it, but she couldn’t help but stare at the beautiful tiara. “What are you staring at, Penelope?” Hestia asked. But Penelope was too embarrassed to mention anything about the diadem, so she just simply said, “Nothing.”

Days went by and Penelope couldn’t stop thinking about the diadem she saw at the market. “If only I had the diadem...” was all she had been dreaming about. She prayed to Athena, asking her to help her get the diadem she saw days ago. But Hestia noticed that her sister Penelope hadn’t been herself for the last few days and wanted to help her beloved sister. Sadly, Penelope never spoke a word to Hestia and Persephone, even though they pleaded with her to say something.

Penelope did not eat or drink and just thought about the diadem. Soon she got ill due to starvation and dehydration. Hestia and Persephone did whatever they could, but Penelope’s illness only got worse. One rainy night, while Persephone went out to buy some medicine for her daughter, Hestia stepped into her sister’s room. “Penelope,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

Hestia walked gently across the room. “Hestia, I thought that I would spend more time with you, but.. But I just think that I do not have much time to live.” Tears were rolling down from

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Penelope’s eyes. “What are you talking about Penelope? Mother is going to get some medicine, and you will feel better, and then we can spend loads of time together. Penelope? Penelope?”

Hestia inquired but the young girl was in Hades’ realm. Hestia shook Penelope, but her skin was cold as ice, and her heart was still as stone. Holding her dead sister’s hand, Hestia sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

Athena saw Penelope dead and threw the diadem she always wanted in the sky as a reward.

Penelope was kind-hearted and was patient and loyal; Athena wanted to reward her for her kind deeds. Even today, when we look up the sky, we still remember Penelope and the diadem she always wanted.

“Alexander the Great” Maggie Zhang Alexander the Great, the King of Macedonia and conqueror of the Persian Empire, is considered one of the greatest military geniuses of all times. He was born in 356 BC in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia. Alexander the Great acted heroically by demonstrating ambition, strength, perseverance, fearlessness, cohesiveness and confidence, but the most valuable to him was his fearlessness.

Alexander the Great always showed amazing courage in battle, always appeared in the forefront of the fighting, or in the central part of the battle between the two sides. Because he was always at the front, Alexander suffered several injuries. His head and neck were hit in the Granicus River, he hurt his leg in Yisou, was shot in the shoulders in Gaza, and broke his bone in Turkey. The most serious injury was in India, when his lungs were pierced by an arrow. In many siege battles, he was the first person to rush on the wall.

The second time Alexander the Great was fearless was in a battle with Darius at Issus.

Darius had two hundred thousand soldiers but Alexander only had forty thousand soldiers.

Darius thought he would be the winner. Alexander also believed that the Persian army was really strong. He thought he had only one chance to win; that was to assault the road and grasp the Persian emperor. Forty thousand people to carry out a charge should be enough, and Alexander decided to gamble. This is a typical Alexander-style battle - after a rigorous calculation of gambling. At last, Alexander’s calculation was right; when forty thousand people started assaulting, the power was really amazing.

At Granicus, Alexander the Great won again. In this war, Alexander was leading the army as usual, he killed two governors of Persia, and his helmet and hat were also hacked by one of the Persian governors. Another governor of the Persian army was killed by Alexander's men when he was attacked behind Alexander. He showed fearlessness again in this battle.

Alexander was the greatest military strategist in Europe, and his appearance ended the complaints of Europeans being bullied by Asians. When he was twenty he made history and showed his superior ability in battle. Thirteen years later, when he suddenly died, he left an unparalleled empire, but the empire soon fell apart. It seems that the empire was only willing to exist for Alexander. With his own dauntless spirit, he eradicated all the fears of danger in his mind - this ability may be the most valuable of all. There are other great emperors that created history, but in all these thousands of years, the person who can take the honor is Alexander the Great, a person who only lived for war.

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“Mother’s Warnings” Dream Champell-Aldrich The girl finally got her driver’s license.

She felt invincible, like Icarus, soaring silently and swiftly through the sky Until she recklessly sped around a razor-edged corner As fast as lightning.

Her car: obliterated.

Her mother’s warnings rushed into her head Telling her not to be like Icarus, Telling her not to disobey.

Wrapped in the arms of the monstrous fire, She felt the heat of the sun.

Like Icarus.

“My Ithaca” Caylem Kingman Dabbing the paint onto the canvas, Sketching the images in my head into the book, Picking up the perfect lightweight pencil, Erasing the mistakes with my beat up eraser, Starting a new piece of art.

Finally finishing a beautiful watercolor painting, Patiently waiting for the oil paint to dry, Gliding the oil pastels against the paper, Smudging the colors together, Winning an award for my artwork.

Looking through my first sketches, And thinking about all I've accomplished.

My Ithaca: becoming an artist.

“Finding Ithaca” Esmé Talenfeld I had lived there my whole life, In my room with my sister.

But I grew to the forest And waterfall behind my house.

But I learned that people move and grow; I had a new house, but not a new home.

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I knew then, that you may live somewhere, But the building may lack the heart of a home.

So I remembered where I felt safe: In a classroom writing about ladybugs and elephants, Playful arguments, we never fought.

Rainbow rugs and loft beds and chalkboards We’re always safe, But I’m not there anymore.

I remembered getting older, Being smarter and learning more; Being slowly introduced to the real world.

I stood on a chair and showed the class how to hem a skirt.

We typed as fast as we could And didn’t care about mistakes.

Back when we didn’t think, That’s when I was at home.

Now I feel older, People tell me I grew up too quickly.

I know that finding your Ithaca Is just as important as the journey, And just as much as the destination.

My Ithaca is more of a time When there is quiet, And I can remember what home feels like.

“My Ithaca” Keren Mandelzis My Ithaca is where it is freezing outside, but my joy keeps me warm, where the thrill of speed and agility blocks out all negativity, and fills me with a sense of wonderment, My Ithaca is my second-home, for almost all of my life, either going out to help teach or riding freely down the mountain, ignoring all dangers of falling around me, focusing on the trail ahead, the frigid wind blowing on my face.

Waking up early to be on the trails, seeing the empty mountain before it fills, My Ithaca fills me with the combination of the warmth of the day,

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and the cool of night, riding the lift for 7 years now, the sun shines down but gives no warmth, yet all the warmth I need is in the comfort of the snow, for my Ithaca is Windham Mountain.

“Ithaca” Delilah Cohen Ithaca is a safe place.

Ithaca might be one’s home.

Ithaca might be one’s favorite place.

Ithaca might be a person or pet.

Ithaca might be a hobby or passion.

One day I want to be an artist; That is my Ithaca.

Sometimes I make mistakes.

Sometimes my drawing doesn’t turn out exactly how I imagined it.

But one needs to be frustrated For that is how improvement is made.

One cannot learn if one always succeeds.

I hope my journey to Ithaca is long and difficult For once I reach Ithaca, Even if it isn’t how I imagined it would be, I will still have had the journey.

“My Ithaca” Toirasia Taylor Photograph by Annabelle Xing

Wake up early Get everything together Jump into an uber Drive to the airport.

Run to security Place our bags on the bag checker Walk to the seating area Get on the plane.

Go to my seat Put my bags above of my seat

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Sit down Watch a movie and wait to land.

I land in Hawaii Get my bags Get off of the plane Find a car to go to my hotel.

Arrive at my hotel Smell the island air Watch the dolphins jump out of the water Go in the pool Finally Relax!!

“Ithaca Inspired Poem” Ely Hamani The destination is not always what matters I will encounter many things on my journey, I can not go on a journey without wanting to go to a destination And I can not go to a destination without a journey.

Even if the journey is dreadful and miserable, My destination might be worth the trip.

If I go on a cruise to the Bahamas, I am going to see many wonderful creatures on my way.

I might find a dolphin or even a whale, And I also will see the beautiful ocean And maybe even a beautiful sunset.

Wherever I am going on planet Earth I’ll remember that the trip is half the adventure.

“Biking With a Friend” Aden Gold Aidan and Aden were smoothly riding on a path along the river Feeling like kings who had just conquered their enemies. an exhilarating time Speeding down the narrow trail like race horses reaching

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the finish line.

Two innocent boys returning from the trail passed a sign right at the beginning of the trail that said in BIG, BOLD LETTERS, NO BIKING ALLOWED ON THE TRAIL! Their hearts sank, The consequences would be harsh, VERY, VERY, VERY, HARSH. Filled with guilt, not understanding why they didn’t see the sign before.

Or had they?

Were they two Icaruses that day?

“My Home: My Ithaca” Shira Mandelzis My Ithaca is where the heat of the sun pours down like a waterfall.

My Ithaca is where the language is quick, the flip-flops flip, and the food cooks with steam rising up towards the sky, filling the streets with a wonderful aroma.

My Ithaca is where people go to pray at the wall of hope and dreams, tucking their prayers into crack full with wishes.

My Ithaca is home.

My Ithaca is Israel.

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“My Ithaca�

Anya Hajjar I feel calm and settled inside.

The soft light shining onto the room.

Although it seems extremely quiet, who knows what ideas will enter the room?

The soft touch of my pillow, the warmth of my bed.

Thick feathery curtains, just holding back the light of the sparse forest.

The beautiful view of tall protective trees.

Light trees with their green leaves and buds starting to bloom. The clear blue sky, the musical friendly chirping of the birds.

The inviting creek flowing with fresh water, fuzzy grass. I feel safe, happy and comforted. A sense of recognition, yet excitement, for who knows what new things await in the safety of my home.

Where else could this magical place be?

Where all these elements come together, than my very own room.

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Short Stories “Great Depression Diary” Catalina de Alba 2/13/1936 Dear Diary, Today my parents found out that the bank took all that they were going to use for my collage.

Now I can’t go to college so I have to find a job somewhere in this big City.

All for today, Elizabeth Adams 2/14/1936 Dear Diary, Today I went to many different job interviews. I went to a dinner called the “Night Stop” and they said they could send me a letter in a few days if I got the job. The same thing happened with a family called the Johnsons which the job would be to take care of their children. They have two beautiful daughters named Clementine and Marguerite. I hope I get the job because I really would enjoy working with them. They offered me $50 dollars per day that I work with them!

Let you know what happens, Elizabeth Adams 2/16/1936 Dear Diary, Today I got the two letters I was expecting from the dinner and the Johnsons. I got accepted at both! I think I am going to decline the dinners offer. So I am going to the Johnsons tomorrow to discuss the details. I am so excited that I am going to be working with them!

So excited, Elizabeth Adams 2/17/1936 Dear Diary, I meet with the Johnsons today and they as excited as I am to work with them. I will start working with them tomorrow. My parents are very happy for me but, they seem to get more worried every day. They are afraid that their money is in the wrong hands. I plan to use the money I earn with the Johnsons to pay my college and to share ¼ of the money with my family.

Nervous, Elizabeth Adams 2/18/1936 Dear Diary, Today was my first day of work with the Johnsons. They girls were so polite and they asked me if I wanted to play with them. Of course I did. They were so enchanting I hope that I can be a good role model for them and encourage them to work hard in the future.

Role Model, Elizabeth Adams

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2/19/1936 Dear Diary, I overheard my parents talking about how they can’t afford me living in the same house. So even though they have not told me I can’t live there I told the Johnsons about the situation and they said I could live with them as long as also I also did housekeeping work along with babysitting the girls. The girls are very excited about me living with them.

Living by myself, Elizabeth Adams 2/26/1936 Dear Diary, It has been my first full week living with the Johnsons. They have treated me with respect. They are really kind. Tomorrow is Clementines 8th birthday so we are throwing her a surprise party when she comes back from school. Even though I have only been with her for a week and a half I feel like she is the sister I always wanted.

Lost Sister, Elizabeth Adams

“My Kingdom” Aristotelis Paliouras Once upon a time, there was a kingdom in Spain that was named kingdom of Rudan and that was one of the richest kingdoms in Spain. That’s where I come in, I’m Gabriel. My father is the King of the Rudan, and is always telling my brother and I that when one of us becomes king, we need to be as good as he is, even though he isn’t a good king because he always fought with other kingdoms and made horrible trades. When I become king, I think I will make my kingdom very happy and be a very good king. My brother Alexander and I always play together, and we are talk about who will become the king when my father dies. We both say that we won’t be mad over who he chooses. But, secretly, I want to kill him. My plan is to hire a wizard, named Shazam, who will tell me how to kill my brother and make it look like I didn’t do it. When my father dies, I will be the greatest king that Rudan has ever seen! My plan is to steal my dad's sword and kill Alexander, then put it back so it looks like my father did it and, immediately afterwards, I will become the king.

Now, I feel very bad that I killed Alexander. It is not fun because I have no one to talk to except people who aren’t really my friends.

“Competitions”

By William Helm This might just be one of my big pet peeves, but ever since I was little, people have always made things a big competition. Sometimes, I understand people's reasonings. For example, Monopoly, or a basketball game; you need a winner in order for the game to end. But still, sometimes people get overly competitive for little games. If we were having a fun game of, let's say, catch, sometimes people will just take things too far and do whatever they can to win, even though it's just a game of catch. But that's not just it. When you are saying things that are

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good and bad, someone always will try to make your news feel inferior. For example, when I got a phone for my birthday, someone said, good for you, but my cousin got two phones and an iPad for her birthday, so... boom! Or when I sprained my knee and had to use crutches for a month, someone said, "That's nothing compared to me. My grandmother's nephew's cousin's exgirlfriend's, personal trainer's dog's ex-owner once removed was in a full body cast for a year!" I just think, why can't everyone be happy for what they have, and sad for their own losses, or at least their grandmother's nephew's cousin's ex-girlfriend's, personal trainer's dog's ex-owner once removed losses. Like I said, this might just be a big pet peeve of mine, but it is still just so annoying how people can be so competitive about the stupidest things.

“The Third Phase” Paige Lopez She’d decided to move to a new table, so that everything she had would fit. The new table wasn’t very sturdy, with very shaky legs and a warped tabletop.

Her new open computer was moved first, now only embellished with gold tape. Earbuds were dangling from the port. On the screen were a couple of tabs- Archive of Our Own, Shamchat, and Youtube- the websites she visited most. On a different window, Google Drive and Google Classroom were also opened up.

A piece of paper sat atop the computer, with small pictures on it symbolizing her closest friends. A small pixelated heart, a pair of headphones, a set of skis, the word ‘TRIGGERED’ written largely, a potato, and a volleyball.

The black Kumon bag had been moved as well. It was lighter now, because it didn’t have the reading section in it.

The girl had forgotten the piano- again. It was worse now, because there were two instruments on top of it. She had gained a viola in the past year.

Three notebooks were thrown in a pile on top of the table. They were filled with amazing amounts of procrastination and doodles. A new set of colored pencils were also haphazardly flung onto the wobbly table.

Her favorite books were all digital, now. They were either located on her new phone or her computer. Each book had been read over and over, but held no signs of wear.

A rather large pile of earbuds was sitting on the keyboard of the laptop, ready to be used by her and her friends. A couple looked a bit worn, but looked generally ok.

She looked at the rather small pile on the shaky table, and decided to fall asleep underneath it. She needed more sleep, anyways…

“Perun” Thomas Vukic Perun was digging in his backyard when he found a glowing green gem buried underground. He picked up the crystal and saw that it was attached to the top of a staff. He picked it up and he wondered if it would sell for any money at town. He went down to town and went to the trader’s tent.

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When he walked inside the tent he immediately noticed all the gems and valuable items.

The trader said that his name is Nala. Perun showed Nala the staff, and he said he did not know what the gem or staff was worth. Perun was very frustrated. He stormed out of the tent and he was going to go straight home.

But he was stopped by the local storyteller Ratna. Ratna fiercely asked “Where did you get that staff?”

Perun said “I found it while digging in my backyard, while looking for metals.”

“Do you know what this means, and what you finding that staff symbolizes?” returned Ratna. Perun had no idea what he meant, and he shook his head.

“It means that you are a wizard.” Perun was very puzzled. He did not believe Ratna, but he did know that wizards used to carry staffs.

“How do you know this?” asked Perun.

“I know this because I am a wizard too.” replied Ratna.

“How do I know you are not lying?” asked Perun.

Ratna went into his home and then came back out and replied “Because I have a staff too.”

He carried a staff almost identical to the one that Perun had found. The only major difference was the crystal on top. Perun’s was a hue of bright green, while Ratna’s was a color of dark red. “You were not lying.” remarked Perun.

“You thought I was a liar?”

“Well I just did not believe you.”

“I know what I have to do” said Ratna. “I have to train you to become a wizard.” Perun was excited and scared at the same time. Ratna told him to follow, they went to a spot in the middle of the woods.

“Every wizard has a staff, using magic is much easier when using through the crystal on your staff. Your crystal provides energy for when you need it. When you use magic, you also lose some of your energy. Magic has laws and rules. All of that is in this book called Sessalam you can spend your spare time reading it.”

“To cast a spell you think what you want the spell to do. For example if you think raise this stone, then the stone you want to raise will do so.”

Here is a book of some examples of what spells you can cast. “At the beginning of the book you have the spells that require the least amount of energy, at the back you have the spells that require the most amount of energy. Think the words stone rise while focusing on this pebble.” He handed him a pebble and thought the words and the pebble just wobbled.

“Just keep on trying that and soon you will get the hang of it.”

“Now let’s move on to combat.” said Ratna. “All wizards fight with their staff. Let’s see what you got.” Perun started with a quick jab to Ratna’s belly which he parried easily. Then Ratna turned around his staff quickly and easily disarmed Perun then Ratna spun around and jabbed Perun in the stomach with the butt end of his staff.

Perun went flying back 10 feet and just before he was going to hit the ground he started levitating in midair, and then was released and he hit the ground. “How did you hit me back so far?” asked Perun?

“The crystal can conjure magic on its own. It can throw back objects, shake the ground, and shoot a plasma beam.”

“How do you do it?” asked Perun.

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“You just think about what you want the crystal to do and it does it. It requires no effort at all.”

Perun tried and Ratna was right, it required no effort at all. They spent the next hour sparring. Ratna taught him when to use the crystal magic while fighting. He taught him some elegant fighting techniques. “I prefer a sword.” said Perun.

“Every wizard has to fight with his staff.” This time Perun overtook Ratna in their fight.

That was the first time he had done so.

“Good, now again.” said Ratna.

This time Perun was not so lucky he ended up backed up to a tree with Ratna pointing the gem of his staff at his exposed neck. That was the final round of sparring and then they moved on to practicing magic. The first 20 times he tried the pebble just wobbled. But one time the pebble rose 1 inch into the air. He released the spell and it fell back down.

He felt a sudden decrease in his energy when he released the spell. The next times he tried it became more and more easy the more he did it. Soon he was too tired to go on any longer so he went back to his home and slept. He woke up to a dull morning. He used magic to lift the pebble he practiced with yesterday.

He went down to town straight to Ratna’s house. He knocked on the door and Ratna said to come in. He noticed Ratna’s staff leaning against a corner next to his stove. He and Ratna ate some beans and pork, and then they went off to train.

They started by sparring and Ratna did not beat him as consistently this time. Perun won 5 rounds by the end of their sparring. They moved on to magic and Perun found lifting the pebble much easier. He also practiced propelling objects backwards with his staff. He sent a big rock flying 10 feet with the magic from the crystal. He would not have been able to move the rock without the staff.

He went back to his house propped up his staff on the wall and went to bed. He woke up to someone rapping on the door. He got up put on some clothes and went to the door. He saw Ratna there and he opened the door.

“COME ON WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!!!!” Shouted Ratna.

“What is it?” Replied Perun “THE WIZARD KILLERS, THEY ARE HERE!!!!”

Perun knew what the wizard killers are. The king sent them whenever a wizard found his staff, or a potential wizard was born. They were twisted creatures who walked around with a hunch, they had the mouth of an alligator, but the body of a human. People are there favorite food to eat.

They ran past their spot in the woods and farther than Perun had ever gone before. They went to the deserts called The Goldmoor Deserts.

“How are we going the cross this? It must be at least 20 miles across.”

“We will cross on horseback. On the opposite side of the desert is the hiding place of The Deepmage. They are the surviving wizards of the king’s wrath. We have to make it there if we are going to survive. ” They went to the stables and got 2 horses and they started their journey. It took many days of hard work, but they made it. It was a 30-mile-high mountain that showed no sign of people living inside it.

“How do we get inside it?” asked Perun.

“We speak our names to the front of the mountain.”

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They spoke their names to the mountain, and to Perun’s surprise a door made entirely out of stone swung open. There was a tunnel covered in slime and mud. The mud had entirely dried out, and it looked like it dried out a while ago. The tunnel was dark and he could see nothing except darkness inside.

Suddenly Ratna’s hand lit up. He grinned, and they went down the tunnel. He felt something fall of his neck, on his hand was a glob of slime. They spent the next hour walking down the tunnel. At the end they found that the entire mountain was hollow.

To Be Continued……

Art by Katherine Danforth

“Cinderella’s Twist” Charlotte Hyman Part One: Once upon a time, in a lovely town there was a a little girl, her name was Cinderella. One day Cinderella’s father went out into the town at night, and he never came back (little did Cinderella know well it will say later in the story so just wait a bit longer). The next day she screamed his name, but he never answered. Then a woman walked into her house and said, “Hello. You must be Cinderella!” I’m your new stepmother, she said in a lovely voice.

However, little did Cinderella know that her stepmother was evil. Then two little girls walked in behind her and smiled. “Hello,” they said and Cinderella responded in an awkward voice, “Hello?” but little did she know they were evil just like their mother. Later Cinderella went to talk to her new stepmother. She said, “Hi I would like to speak to you” the stepmother responded “Oh hi I didn’t know you were there” she said “Do you know my name”? Cinderella said “No” What is it?” My name is Lady Tremaine. I thought you would know that by now? No sorry, she said in a shy voice. Oh I forgot to tell you I’m so sorry about your father. Did he mention that we were dating? “No” Cinderella replied he didn’t tell my anything about that, he only told me about how he met a nice woman and that he and her were going to be friends. Anyway I wanted to ask if you are going to stay here? “Yes I am” Lady Tremaine said, I want to tell you the living situations. So the two girls will be in your room and I’ll get your father’s room and you will get the attic. “What?” said Cinderella I think that I should stay in my room and we’ll find a different room for the girls? “Oh sweetie I think that we will do the way that I want ok?” Ok she said in a sad voice but can I keep my bed that I have, because it’s nice and big? “No we will keep your bed for one of my girls and get another bed for my other girl. You will get the bed or other furniture in the attic. “But” Cinderella says with a sigh “No no no don’t say anything” Lady Tremaine put her finger over her mouth. Cinderella I love your hair, and how it’s so pretty while

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Lady Tremaine said that Cinderella stared at her in a mean face. When the time passed and it became night Cinderella walked up to the attic door and opened it she hadn’t been up there in ages when she walked in there was a bird flying around in circles. She walked up the creaky staircase, and dusted off the furniture she had found earlier that day. She had known that the attic was haunted by ghosts so she ran back to the start of the door and called out for Lady Tremaine.

Lady Tremaine heard the call and came up the stairs from where she had sat downstairs. She said, “What is it, do you need anything?” “Yes” Cinderella said in a panting voice. “Ok what is it?” Lady Tremaine said, “Well in there is a bird that is flying everywhere.” “Ok, just walk in and I’ll get it out for you” Cinderella walked in and Lady Tremaine locked the door.

Part Two: Cinderella screamed to let her out but Lady Tremaine wouldn’t let her out. A couple of weeks went by and Cinderella started to notice what Lady Tremaine did was so evil and one day if that door was open she would do horrible things to Lady Tremaine and her two little girls. A few years later Cinderella had grown into an adult, but still Lady Tremaine would never ever let her out. But one day while Cinderella was on her little bed she had found the locked door had opened, and even when she had tried and tried to open it, now it would open? It made no sense to her. Suddenly the door flew open and Lady Tremaine was standing there holding the key up towards the sky. “Why did you open the door?” Cinderella asked, “because we have to go to a ball tonight and it said that if everyone doesn’t go they will be forced to look through everyone’s stuff including me.” “And that's the reason, just that” cinderella said in a nasty voice “Yes that’s it”. “Oh so you didn’t just want to let me out, you just didn’t want the guards to search the house” meanwhile Cinderella was walking close to Lady Tremaine, Lady Tremaine walked back one step. “Well do you have a dress for me” Cinderella said. “Of course, it’s just not the best, mine will be the best out of all. Well come downstairs and see it”. “Ok what does it look like?” “It is yellow and pink.” “What, I hate pink, grows.” “To bad, anyway I don’t care if you like it or not.” “fine, I don’t even care.” Cinderella said on a rude voice, I think that it to mean because they let her out.

Part Three: When Cinderella walked down the stairs the two girls that once had been children had grown and said, “Hi do you remember us” said one of the girls “Yes of course you're both Lady Tremaine’s daughters. “Yes we are, but we call her mom”. “Girls why are you talking to that disgrace” lady Tremaine said in a rude voice. “Ok we won’t talk to her”. “Good, but when we go to the ball we all have to talk to her”. “Why we don’t want to talk to her anymore?” The little girls said. This is the night of the ball. “Are you ready?” Lady said Tremaine in a impatient voice. “Yes we are, but Cinderella isn’t” said the two daughters that said it in a worried voice. So Lady Tremaine went up the stairs and talked to her and said, “You know that when you told me about your dad and how he never came back, well I forgot to tell you that I killed him so I could get this land?” “You did what? Cinderella said in a astonished voice why would you do that I thought you were dating?” “Well I know we were dating but he was getting boring, and he was just not that fun anymore.” “So you just decided that you wanted to kill him, even if he had a child. You still wouldn’t care.” “Yes well look I know that your father had a child with his other wife, but well you see I didn’t care. “Fine Cinderella walked away with a stomp, and with her dress on.” “I’m coming children Lady Tremaine walked down the stairs with her beautiful dress on, Hello. Well why are you just standing there and not moving?” “Ok mama we are coming.” As the girls and Lady Tremaine walked out Cinderella said, “I’ll be there very

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soon, just leave without me.” “Ok, will just be there.” “Ok, it will just be about twenty-five minutes (and that’s just the same time she arrived, just then the carriage left).”

Part Four: “Finally I’m alone.” Then a tiny fairy came flying by, she finally became bigger (like a human size). “Hello”, she said in a nice voice, Cinderella know that she was a fairy. But she was actually a fake good fairy (so she was a bad fairy). She told Cinderella that she was here to make her beautiful (you know her dress and shoes, of course). The fairy had made Cinderella’s dress already so she was off to the shoes. When she made the shoes she had Cinderella take her shoes off so she could work her magic. “Ok,” she said, “Know your shoes are ready, so put them on.” “Ok,” Cinderella said so she put them on one at a time. Cinderella finally got into a carriage then rode away, Cinderella said to the carriage man “off to the ball.” When Cinderella got there the palace guard opened the gates and said have fun, “I will, thank you.” But we all know that the shoes were made by an evil fairy, so of course Cinderella would be evil now, but no one knows.

Part Five: Suddenly Cinderella walked inside of the ball on the terrace, as if she were royal (but she wasn’t). “Hello my lady,” a man that was not the prince said in a gentle voice.

Finally Cinderella spotted the prince and immediately rushed over and said, “Hi your majesty,” “Hello, what’s your name?” “Cinderella said, while her step family were looking at her.”

Meanwhile Cinderella and the Prince were dancing on his ball room floor. Then the music started and the Prince ask “Would you malady like to dance with the soon to be king?” “But of course.” as the sister and Lady Tremaine look Cinderella took the prince out of the ball room and soon they would go outside where Cinderella told the prince that she had loved him, so Cinderella also made the prince love her too. “Let's go inside.” “Ok,” (said the prince in a comb).

They walked into the ball and Cinderella’s step family went home. So Cinderella know that she had the prince alone. Cinderella told the prince that he wanted to marry her right, so the prince said what she wanted him to say. The next day Cinderella had already moved in with the prince (and yes they were already married). But we all now that she was evil now so what do you think she was going to do next? Oh and I can’t tell you, and sorry.

Part Six: So in the night while the prince was sleeping Cinderella slipped into the King’s room and poisoned him. The next day the prince had learned what happened. Later in the day the prince was crowned king. But we all know that Cinderella was thrusts for power, and that she had to get it. One day Cinderella went to her old house alone and took Lady Tremaine's poison, for tomorrow. In the night Cinderella couldn’t sleep, so she had walked into the kitchen and asked the maid to cook her something, but the maid didn’t want to. Because of what she had heard about Cinderella, so the maid said, “Your majesty I don’t think you should eat right now, because your breakfast won’t be eaten.” “Fine, I will go back to bed then. See you in the morning.” so Cinderella went to bed and she finally fell asleep. In the morning Cinderella woke up early so she decided to poison the King right then, and so Cinderella took out the bottle of poison that was once Lady Tremaine and stuffed it down the King’s throat. Finally Cinderella left the room after she left a maid walked in the room and saw so she ran to get Cinderella and tell her the news. She found Cinderella and told her, Cinderella started to cry (but we know that it was fake) she walked into their room and cried again. She called the village to come and she stood on the terrace telling the information. And they lived happily ever after (but not that happily because Cinderella was ruling)

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Critical Essays Scholastic Regional Silver Key “The Brutal Dehumanization of Slaves and Slaveowners” Kate Reilly The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written from the perspective of a slave who lived in the mid 1800’s, focuses on the hardships of slavery Douglass and others encountered throughout their lives. Born a slave, Douglass grew up without a natural family structure and he lacked the privilege of knowing the key components of his identity. Slave owners thought of their slaves more as livestock than as human beings, and managed them as such. The treatment slaves received from their owners took an emotional, spiritual, and physical toll on them. With the intention of depriving slaves of positive human characteristics and knowledge to ensure dependency and fear, slave owners thought they were only dehumanizing their slaves, but in reality, the slave owners themselves also experienced the harsh, psychologically corrupting effects of slavery.

Slaveowners went to great lengths to disrupt the families of slaves in an attempt to take away any sources of information for them. Douglass shared, “My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant - before I knew her as my mother” (Douglass 20). By isolating mothers and their infants from each other, owners took away a direct source of their background and identity, and forced the slaves to focus more on physical growth rather than emotional growth, making them stronger and more obedient workers to the only “family” they knew, their owner.

After the death of Frederick Douglass’s mother, he states, “Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (21). Douglass’ emotionless reaction to the death of his mother shows the goal of the slaveowners, which was to take away any emotional connections between mothers and their children. If Douglass had any emotional connections with his mother, her death would have had a more profound effect on his productivity, which slave owners did not want.

By depriving slaves of an identity, a major aspect of what differentiates humans from animals, slave owners forced their slaves to identify only with them, their masters. Douglass stated, “By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant” (19).

Douglass equated slaves to horses to exemplify the basic personal information masters kept from their slaves. Slave owners felt that slaves should not have the right to know their own age because they thought that if slaves knew this information about themselves they would begin to feel more human.

The way slaveowners treated their slaves impacted their mentality, spirituality and physicality, breaking them on the inside. “Mr Covey [one of Douglass’ slave owners] succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit” (74). Slave owners thought all slaves lacked motivation to work and, as a result, slaves were brutally beaten. Describing one of his beatings, Douglass states, “Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting my back, causing

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the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.” (70). In addition to suffering physical abuse, Douglass also suffered emotional abuse. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (74) The parallel structure in Douglass’s voice demonstrates the repetition of predicate adjectives, showing how every part of his being was destroyed from the dehumanizing treatment he received, leaving him as nothing but a brute. The physical scars Douglass had were small in comparison to the emotional scarring he experienced.

The irony of slaveholders dehumanizing their slaves is that the slaveholders were actually dehumanizing themselves at the same time. “Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him” (69). Mr. Covey’s thoughts revolved around his own appearance and reputation. He lived in a self-focused bubble, losing sight of those around him, and missing out on the world. By constantly focusing on his outer identity, Mr. Covey completely forgot about his inner identity. He was known as a “nigger breaker” (69). By attaining such a reputation, Mr. Covey caused people to disregard his positive qualities and only know him for his negative features.

Slaves were treated in a barbaric manner and slave owners believed that by treating their slaves so cruelly, they would gain respect and loyalty from them. The fear of the slaves appealed to their masters. They felt as if intimidating and frightening their slaves would result in them being too scared to disobey their masters’ orders. Slaveholders also robbed their slaves of positive human attributes, in an attempt to make them more devoted to their job of serving for them. In their minds, slaves should not have any knowledge or happiness beyond working. Slave owners thought knowledge and happiness were negative distractions that deterred slaves from their responsibilities. Slaveholders physically and mentally dehumanized their slaves in hopes of keeping them on task and obtaining reverence, but they didn’t realize that they also dehumanized themselves to an even higher degree.

“Ulysses The Wisest of Them All” Jonathan Kae The names Alexander, Hannibal, and Napoleon bring to mind heroes with outstanding cleverness, bravery, and leadership. Ulysses is ranked among them. Ancient Greek heroes demonstrate these traits. While leadership and bravery are crucial qualities of an ancient Greek hero, in Bernard Evslin’s The Adventures of Ulysses he implies that cleverness is the key to Ulysses’ methods to overcome challenges.

Ulysses demonstrates his cleverness when he outsmarts Polyphemus. For example, Ulysses gives strong wine to Polyphemus to make him drunk. Ulysses wants Polyphemus to be drunk so he isn’t 100% focused (page 21). Then, Ulysses tells Polyphemus that his name is Nobody (page 21). While Polyphemus sleeps, Ulysses stabs his eye (page 23). Finally, Ulysses makes his men ride under the goats’ bellies to get out of the cave (page 24). Ulysses needs a safe way out and uses Polyphemus’s own blindness to his advantage. After the other cyclopes of the island arrive, they ask him, “Who has done it? Who has blinded you?” (page 25). He replies that nobody poked out my eye! To his dismay, the Cyclopes all go away in laughter. Ulysses uses his cunning to escape a disastrous situation.

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As the story progresses, Ulysses shows his cleverness again when he avoids another neardeath situation. As Ulysses nears Charybdis taking her morning drink, she pulls him and his raft into the whirlpool. Ulysses recognizes that he won’t survive. Although he is in great pain, he jumps onto a rock and waits until his raft returns from Charybdis’ belly (page 104). As he rides for the next 10 days, he creates a spear out of timbers from his raft (page 105). Evslin writes, “With his knife he cut a long splinter from the timbers and shaped it into a lance,” (page 105).

Once Ulysses gains his raft and a spear, he wanders the sea, hungry for food. While he pretends to be dead, he baits gulls to peck at his dead body. Ulysses jumps up and strangles their necks, eating them raw (page 105). The maestro of the battlefield has used his intelligence once again to escape death.

Finally, Ulysses displays cleverness when he creates a plan to be reunited with Penelope.

When Ulysses first returns to Ithaca, he dresses up as a beggar and goes to Eumaeus’s house, because he knows that Eumaeus will treat a beggar well and to see if he can trust him to help kill Penelope's suitors (page 148). He then gathers Eumaeus and his son, Telemachus, to observe the suitors. Dressed as a beggar, Ulysses completes tasks for many suitors to learn who their leader is. Telemachus then asks Ulysses to come with him to Penelope who wants to know if Ulysses is alive. There, Ulysses cleverly tells Penelope that Ulysses had told him that the man fit to marry her was to bend and shoot his bow. He tells her, “I wish I could send her this advice: Let her take a man who can bend my bow,”(page 163). She believes him and holds a contest. Ulysses knows that only he can do it. (page 163). He waits till everyone has gone and asks if he can attempt it.

He then starts shooting all the suitors (page 168). In the end, the creator of the Trojan horse succeeds and happily reunites with Penelope again all due to his clever plan.

Ulysses demonstrates his cleverness time and time again, escaping death from mythical creatures and reuniting with his wife. The songwriter Bob Dylan said, “A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.” Ulysses shows that he understands when he vows to bring all his men back home to Ithaca, instead of only himself. Although heroes are well known for being strong and fierce, they aren’t perfect; every hero has flaws, such as Achilles’ rage, Jason’s love for women, Theseus’s lies for success, and Ulysses’ hubris, but an imperfection did not stop him from achieving his goals. It is no wonder that Ulysses is remembered as a paragon of a terrific hero. Is it no wonder that Ulysses’ travels progress forwards?

“The Effect of Sit-Ins on the Civil Rights Movement” Alexandros Paliouras The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s in the United States was a revolutionary movement to end segregation throughout the American South and bring about racial equality for the oppressed African-American community. The movement is famous for its astounding success, the bravery and determination of the participants, and the movement’s nonviolent nature. The Civil Rights Movement was not just one protest, nor was it one impulsive rush of emotion, but rather a carefully thought out series of events that were meant to bring justice to the African-American community after so many years of segregation, racism, and prejudice in the American South. These events included the Freedom Rides, many marches and speeches, and the Sit-ins movement of the 1960’s. Sit-ins were an effective method of protest during the Civil Rights Movement because of the organized strategy, grassroots appeal to youth, and the influence of the media.

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The sit-ins movement in particular caused the most students to get involved in large numbers while utilizing the nonviolent strategy to prove to the general public that segregation was unjust. The sit-ins movement was mainly focused on desegregating lunch counters in the South. The beginning of the sit-ins movement was on February 1, 1960, at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first members of the sit-in were Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond, four African-American college students from the nearby North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. The sit-ins movement was inspired by a similar protest used in Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent independence movement in India. In fact, the nonviolent nature of all Martin Luther King Jr.’s actions during the Civil Rights Movement were inspired by the actions and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. The sit-in at Woolworth’s was not the first sit-in used for the Civil Rights Movement, but it was the most inspiring and had the greatest repercussions of them all, as it started an entire movement that lasted for a whole year.

The success of the movement was largely accountable to the organization of each sit-in and the nonviolent strategy that was used. The organization was largely courtesy of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which was responsible for organizing and planning each sit-in. They were also responsible for planning the sit-ins prior to the Greensboro sit-in that took place in Chicago. CORE not only organized each sit-in, but they had nonviolence training sessions to ensure the success of not only each individual sit-in, but the movement itself. CORE was well awarjinkmpl,;e that if even one participant of the sit-ins was to retaliate with violence or even give any kind of negative response, it would undermine the whole movement and their efforts would be in vain. Of course it’s a very difficult task to ensure that all participants would be able to endure threats, various projectiles, and physical violence without any type of reaction, whether that reaction be verbal or physical. Yet another effect of the sit-ins was disproving all the myths that were used to justify Jim Crow laws in the South. Myths of such background included that African-Americans are not as civilized as whites, have a much more barbaric and aggressive nature, and are on a different level of not only intelligence, but competence. The debunking of such myths was critical in the success of the sit-ins movement, or any movement of a similar nature even.

The length of the movement as well as the popularity can be credited to the young African-American community, as they were the ones bringing renewed dedication, determination, and commitment to every single protest. Most of the participants, if not all of them, were students and teachers from historically black colleges. Students rushed by the hundreds to participate because with this new method of peaceful protest they would not have to leave their hometown, and they would be making a massive impact on the Civil Rights Movement. These students saw an opportunity to change how the rest of the United States viewed the African-American community, and all they had to do was sit down at a lunch counter and place an order. Student involvement was critical to the duration of the movement because with hundreds of new, eager members comes renewed energy and renewed determination. The reason that this movement was so appealing to college students in particular, was because as they mature they seek new ways to become independent, and this movement gave them an opportunity to stand up for what they believe in as well as make a difference and be remembered for it. The consequences of being arrested and physically or verbally harassed was of lesser importance than the rectification of the injustices that the African-American community had to endure for centuries. This explains why after just four days 300 students from North Carolina

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Agricultural and Technical State University had banded together to join the movement and solidify their stance against the unjust Jim Crow laws prohibiting integrated lunch counters.

Another reason for the movement’s success is the intentional manipulation of the media.

CORE knew that these events would be televised and all over the newspapers, just like all the other previous protests had. They knew that if the general public saw the protesters sitting patiently, waiting for the food they had ordered alongside the white people who were screaming insults and threats, throwing ketchup and mustard and physically attacking the protesters with their fists, batons and other such weapons, the general public would be empathetically drawn towards backing the protesters rather than opposing them. It is a natural human instinct that is just as innate as common sense, the ability to differentiate between the good and the bad. And proving that both whites and blacks can be good and bad was crucial in the entire Civil Rights Movement. They were trying to stop the assumption that blacks were only bad and incapable of being well behaved. CORE also wanted the media to show the public all the similarities between blacks and whites. Blacks are just as capable of sitting down and ordering a cup of coffee as whites are. Blacks are just as capable of behaving themselves as whites are. Blacks are just as capable of taking action as whites are. CORE’s clever use of the media as a resource left a lasting trail of positive results after the end of the sit-ins movement.

The sit-ins movement only lasted as long as it did and was as successful as it was due to the organization, appeal to youth and the influence of the media. After the sit-ins movement had given way to the Freedom Rides, lunch counters all over the United States were desegregated forever. So not only was the main goal of the sit-ins movement achieved without violence, but it led to many new improvements to the entire Civil Rights Movement as well. The sit-ins movement led to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which was an organization made up only of students who were much less patient for results and much less willing to compromise for justice. The SNCC went on to be one of the major protest organization groups throughout the entire Civil Rights Movement. The sit-ins movement also demonstrated the power the African-American community held. It showed that the AfricanAmerican community was no longer willing to settle for less, and they had the means to achieve equality. Sit-ins have been used as an effective method of protest by several different groups that found a need for protest ever since they first became popular in 1960.

Photograph by Safia Singer-Pomerantz

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