Lucia Moxey

Once she is completely calm, she turns to me and asks “Can I stay with you for a bit?”

I’m surprised. ‘She has never done that before. Why is she asking now?’ I think to myself, but I nod my head yes and pull out my homework again. Rafael slips out and returns with homework for himself, and for the next three hours, we relax in my room together, talking and laughing and working, a rare moment of unity.

My room, the one place in our house that has become a refuge for my siblings and I. For as long as I can remember, my room has always been the place we go to just to have some company with each other. I have a known penchant for cozy and soft things, and I have decorated the little space I have with pillows and blankets galore. If any sibling is having a bad day or needs to wind down, they come to my room, and the other sibling usually follows. Relaxing, we sit and talk about life or simply wind down. I do my homework, Hailee reads, Rafael plays a game. It’s frequent enough that it doesn’t feel strange, but rare enough so that it feels like you have to come when this unity does happen. Some of my earliest memories are from the traditions we have made in my room, such as meeting in my room before present time on Christmas morning, coming in when we want company, or bedtime tuck-ins when we were small. My sister and I used to have sleepover parties together when she was scared of the dark. I would wake up to her sleeping beside me without ever knowing when she came in. Once again, while we have had our ups and downs, our arguments and our reconciliations, they always took place in that room. No other place has ever given me the same feeling of peace, and while I’m biased, the memories, the pictures, the stories, the arguments, and the events that I so vividly remember having with my siblings will remain with me for the rest of my life, and the place that I shared these memories with is most important of all.

Down to the Lake

Lucia Moxey

Wrapped in our beach towels, my cousin Farah and I ran out of the house in our bathing suits, the air on the small Indiana lake pleasant but reeking of burned gunpowder. Even though it was not quite the 4th of July, the rim of the lake was laced with explosions of bright and booming fireworks that sparkled as they fell, mirrored by the waveless water. Grandma's cottage was overlooking the lake in a mosquito-swarmed, rural area mostly populated by the over-65 crowd, with modest lake houses and a sad-looking gravel-covered RV park a block or two from the water.

Grandma drove us down to the lake in her wobbly golf cart. These quick rides and our turns driving gave the visits a much-needed adrenaline boost. It was already around ten and some neighborhood kids and a few parents were watching the fireworks, both the official town show and the impromptu display by the locals. The adults were sitting on the benches with green paint peeling off on the “beach,” which is really just handfuls of sand, rocks, dead fish, and perhaps some hidden shards of glass– a sick fusion of a dumpster and a child's sandbox. Eventually, Farah and I waded into the small lake, which was tepidly warm, like a newborn baby's bath. I seemed to be the only one who felt uncomfortable in the browngreen probably polluted water. Perhaps my overly cautious mother was right when she would tell me this lake could contain poisonous blue-green algae.

“The seaweed here feels gross,” Farah said with a squirm.

“Let me feel it.” I touched it with my foot, shyly testing the slimy texture. By this time, we had attracted some of the locals, whole families, who were also touching their feet to this perplexing pile of slimy goop. Other than the fireworks, the mysteries of the lake were the only source of entertainment and adventure here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cornfields.