Pandora's Box Winter 2019 by Pandora's Box Creative Magazine

PA ND OR Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; S

Pandoraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Box Creative Magazine winter 2019

Cover Photo: Glaciers in Alaska Anand Parikh

s each snowflake slowly meets its inevitable fate on the ground, it adds to the growing blanket of snow. In the same way, each piece in Pandora’s Box Winter 2019 issue offers an intricate insight into the human spirit and creative expression, and together, the collective issue is a peek into the culmination of the reflective and thoughtful nature of the Gunn High School student body. This issue contains over 50 pieces of creative literary works, ranging from prose and poetry to artistic works and photography. Thank you to all of our contributors for boldly and bravely sharing new worlds of creativity and inspiration; without you, none of this would be possible. I would like to express my immense gratitude to our officer team for devoting countless hours to not just the production of the publication itself, but also to dedicating themselves to creating an encouraging environment that embodies the spirit of Pandora’s Box. A special thank you to Mr. Dunlap for his generous time, support, and guidance. As we transition from winter to spring, we look forward to setting new goals as well as passing on the Pandora’s Box legacy. Like the melting of frost on leaves to early morning spring dew, like finding new meaning in a story that you have read before, we invite you to flip through the Winter 2019 issue and enjoy an eclectic mixture of innovation and nostalgia that offers a new powerful perspective on the human experience. Yours, Rida Khawaja Editor-in-Chief 2019-20

Table of Contents Photography driftin

Alaska

Tori Fong

Anand Parikh Untitled 1 Marek Hertzler Untitled Jonathan Fang i should’ve bought the almond cake Tori Fong Untitled 2 Marek Hertzler Untitled 3 Marek Hertzler San Fransisco Anand Parikh Untitled 4 Marek Hertzler アニキ Foothill

Jay Li

Wendy Xiong Untitled 5 Marek Hertzler Field of Wonder Wendy Xiong Mt. Rainier Wendy Xiong Serenity Wendy Xiong victorian gothic vibes Tori Fong Untitled Anand Parikh Untitled 6 Marek Hertzler

Art

Sugar Prints

8 9 12 15 27 32 33 34 36 37 38 39 42 42 43 45 50 67

11 Livia Bednarz Anthony Pan

Mandela Effect

Shannon Lin drip Untitled

Kendra S.

Annabel Lee Eye Candy Clarine Kim Ornate Redux Livia Bednarz 3 a.m. Shannon Lin

Poetry

Goodbye Quentin Swindells I did it! Clair Koo The Final Hymn Quentin Swindells Sunscreen Punscreen Clair Koo If I were a... Clair Koo Cry of the Lone Wolf George Cai to a place Liza Kolbasov for the ones that fell silently Jessica Wang Rye and Riot Vincent Lomeland

Prose

Black Hat Rory Gross LOBSTER and the many problems with laptops Saumya Singhal I am Zula Emma Butner Boxes Tori Fong Paper Swans Joshua Yang The Younger One (Three Hours Away

28 31 40 48 68

6 10 14 16 20 29 48 66 67

24 30 46 51 54 58

Lillian Fong

Goodbye Quentin Swindells

I walk along the wooden boards Nearing evermore the Woeful waves of farewell And I hesitate. The sun, the sand The wind, urging me towards Those drafts who will Push, pull, tumble me forwards â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Forever onwards. Time lapses, My vision fades. So too the ululations in my brain. The sun sets solemn, Past the sea to its future; I glom my final glance and Submerge myself 6

To those crystalline waters: Shivery, ticklish, unwelcome. I say goodbye to My bygone memories And I tumble far from The sunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s homely rays, Into the glum blue Undulations of tomorrow.

driftin Tori Fong

Alaska Anand Parikh Looking for bears but ending up with eagles

I did it! Claire Koo

I kicked a ball, It shot up the stairs, Rolled down the hall, Eh, who cares? I threw a pebble Into the sea; It made a ripple Whoop de dee! I hit a wall, Cause I didn’t look. No, not at all, I’m reading a book. I blew a bubble, To have some fun, Won’t you bring trouble? No, my homework’s done. I kicked a ball, I threw a pebble, I hit a wall, I blew a bubble. Look at all the things I did, No one died Heaven forbid! So, why don’t you go give it a try?

Sugar Livia Bednarz 11

Untitled 1 Marek Hertzler

The Final Hymn Quentin Swindells

In broken moonlight The lonesome bird sung treble Through frozen swaths Of soft r‘morse. The waning moon lay stark, Its might renounced below a Blanket covert of Sepulchral dark, where Village shadow Onward wept, while the three ‘clock silence ‘round houses o’er-swept. No fair Hymn nor song Could assuage the solemn air to which mournful Music abated, ceded to Vibration, to Whisper, to Silence it faded. 14

Untitled Jonathan Fang 15

Sunscreen Punscreen Clair Koo I went to the beach, And put on sunscreen, When a kid screeched, Let’s play Punscreen! The rules of the game, Were pretty fair, All you needed to name, Were puns about skincare! Why not make puns, About the sea? I’ve got tons, Let’s go on a spree! You’re seasick! Take a pocean! Did you hear About her promocean? Let minnow, If you calm your emoceans. 16

Oh! It a-piers There’s a commocean! I want to sleep, I feel lazsea You have scruvy? Take Vitamin Sea! Stop your dreaming, There’s no fantasea Oh, goodness my! This is getting out of sand! Don’t krill our vibe, We haven’t even tanned!

Prints Anthony Pan An experimental form study with the purpose of understanding composition, curvatures, and mediums. 19

If I were a... Clair Koo

If I were an ant, I’d march straight in a line, Towards a tasty plant, To where I would dine. If I were an ant, if I were an ant.

If I were a bee, I’d pollinate a tree, And fly until the sea, Was all that I could see. If I were a bee, if I were a bee. If I were a car, I’d race down the track, With me as the star, The rest behind my back. If I were a car, if I were a car. If I were a dog, I’d bark all day long, Scare a small frog, And howl a sad song. If I were a dog, if I were a dog. 20

If I were an ear, My life would be hard, ‘Cause all I would hear, Are bugs in the yard. If I were an ear, if I were an ear. And now that I’ve done, The first five letters, Have some fun, After all, that’s all that really matters.

Mandela Effect Shannon Lin

Black Hat Rory Gross

Thump, thump, thump. The businessman could feel his heart beating steadily with clock-like precision. And if he wanted a second opinion, he could always check his smart watch, his smartphone, virtual assistant, or refrigerator. Life was good for this businessman, and he thought good thoughts as he fell asleep. He knew he would be woken up at just the right time, picked to match his sleeping pattern, and calculated to give him optimum rest and energy. And he knew that his breakfast, also calculated to give him ideal nutrition, would be taken from his smart fridge and automatically cooked to perfection. If he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel like getting out of bed, his bed would raise one side of the frame using hydraulics, and gently roll him onto his recliner, which had positioned itself just so. His recliner, like almost everything else in his house, had a computer, wheels, cameras, batteries, and internet integration. The recliner would make its way down stairs, then it would dump him on to the couch. His TV would see him there and turn itself on to the news, while from hidden speakers, his favorite morning tunes would start to play. Like almost everything in his life, this businessmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house was so full of technology that instead of pointing out what was technology, it made more sense to point out what wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t technology. Almost nothing manual remained. His glasses had smart lenses, his shoes a built in massager, his clothes knew when they needed to be washed, even his toilet used the latest sensing and cleaning technology. Everything necessary for life had technology. The best part of it was that because everything was connected, his clothes could tell the

washing machine to pick them up, the sink could tell the dish-washer to clean itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plates, and his virtual assistant could order him a ride to work. Life outside his house was good as well. With self driving cars, hover-planes, and levitating trains, transportation was at its peak of excellence. Animals were genetically modified to produce more meat, and wore tracking tags at all times. Plants were also genetically modified to provide the most nutrition and to be resistant to insects and diseases. Above him, the weather was controlled by a vast array of climate altering satellites. Below him, seismic technicnology neutralized the slightest tremor. All in all, the world was happy, people were happy, and it was a good time to be alive. While the businessman slumbered, thinking happy thoughts, somewhere in the world, probably China, Russia, or North Korea, in a mostly empty coffee shop sat another man. The coffee shop had a dozen tables and was medium in size, with a row of floor to ceiling windows on one side and a register at the other. He had chosen the only corner of the shop without a security camera. This man wore dark clothes and a hoodie. He sat with his back to the wall in the corner, facing towards the windows and the rest of the shop. There was something different about this man. The glasses perched on his nose had regular lenses in them, and his shoes, regular soles. His clothes lacked the usual sensors and he carried no phone. His one piece of technology was his laptop, custom built from old scrap parts. To the unsuspecting eye, this was an ordinary businessman answering emails while sipping a cup of coffee. However, behind the curtain, he was a self-employed hacker. Eight days previously, he had received a request from an anonymous client, offering the largest sum of money he had ever seen. The hackerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intentions were to fulfill the clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s request, get paid, and get out, all anonymously. As the businessman drowsed on, the hacker finished his final preparations. Then, with sweaty, shaking hands, he exe-

cuted three commands and glanced quickly to make sure his botnet was responding. He shut his laptop and walked out the door. Minutes later, a wave of panic spread through every single government agency and all hell broke loose upon the world. As it turns out, the businessman at home, sleeping in bed, would never wake up. It started with the weather. The climate satellites lost connection. Text messages and phone calls weren’t going through. Soon, the entire internet was in a fist fight. Amazon’s servers were jabbing Google’s servers for requests, and Google’s servers were jabbing the U.S. Government’s servers for requests. Quickly, the entire internet, and everything controlled by it, was in chaos. The temperature at the polar caps rose to eighty degrees, while at the equator it was twenty below zero. Animals went crazy, crashing into fences, trees and each other as their tracking tags malfunctioned. Self-driving cars went insane, as some screeched to a halt, while others accelerated to full speed. Cars went careening off into ditches, and slammed into other cars. Planes plummeted into the ground, whistling like missles, and exploding in massive fireballs. The seismic control system became deranged. Tectonic plates were forced in one direction and then another, colliding and smashing until they destroyed the system controlling them. Massive earthquakes struck across the country, and tsunamis hit the coast. First responders could do nothing but try to save themselves as massive wildfires raged on, growing stronger by the minute, and hail, the size of cars, rained down upon helpless people. Sirens, screams, shrieks. The businessman lay slumped on his bed, his smart-pacemaker dead in his chest. But this time there was no way for him to know. Not his watch, not his phone, not his refrigerator . . . and no virtual assistant to wake him up. Ten billion people created and sustained the world. One man had taken it all down . . .

i shouldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve bought the almond cake Tori Fong 27

drip Kendra S. 28

Cry of the Lone Wolf George Cai At Nighttime The Lone Wolf strides Up the mountainside To Reach Before Midnight Standing Upon a Cliff Inches from the edge Looking at the Rift Bravely and swift Winter is near The increasing fear the pack will thrive the lone will die Upon the moon A shouting cry the hunt is soon Will I survive?

LOBSTER

and the many problems with laptops Saumya Singhal It is commonly known that most newer laptops are thinner than older laptops. Graphing this relationship shows a correlation: as laptops get newer, they get thinner. However, it is logically impossible for things to get newer - they only get older. Taking the inverse, we conclude that as laptops get older, they get fatter. This may alarm many laptops owners, who, naturally, would want the problem solved. The problem has been diagnosed as Laptop OBeSiTy disordER, or LOBSTER for short. A cure to this disorder has been proven to be nonexistent by Darwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Law of Innovation1. LOBSTER has been found to be the result of a virus found in all laptops: imperfection. However, it is not imperfection alone that causes this disorder. It is the lack of resistance in the laptop production process to fix this imperfection. This lack of resistance has been diagnosed as Automatic Imperfection Decimating Syndrome, or AIDS Alpha. Many of the greatest minds of society have strived hard to prevent LOBSTER in laptops, but have failed to do so without revealing themselves as carriers of the AIDS Alpha virus. Thus, the problems with laptops can never be truly solved unless they are completely knocked out of existence.

Darwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Law of Innovation states that as technology advances, smaller innovations will outlive their larger opponents. 30

Untitled Annabel Lee

Untitled 2 Marek Hertzler

Untitled 3 Marek Hertzler 33

San Francisco Anand Parikh Climbing mountains to get over the bridge 35

Untitled 4 Marek Hertzler

アニキ Jay Li

Foothill Wendy Xiong

Untitled 5 Marek Hertzler

Eye Candy Clarine Kim

42 Mt. Rainier Wendy Xiong

Field of Wonder Wendy Xiong

Serenity Wendy Xiong

victorian gothic vibes Tori Fong 45

I am Zula Emma Butner

I open my eyes and hands to let glitter jump from my palms like Spiderman’s webs. It comes out in a magical mess of glittery blue. I leap from my fairy mattress and skip to the flowery bathroom. I love flowers and rainbows. I look deep into my rainbow eyes because that’s what people do on TV. I hop over to the kitchen in my fairy wings and tell Mom that I want rainbow waffles like Dad’s special. “Again?” Mom groans. “We ate waffles yesterday.” “That’s the tea,” I respond. Mom thinks I say tea for everything, but I just really like waffles; they don’t get stuck in the gap where my front teeth used to be. I suddenly get up and look outside at the darker than usual sky. The rain is back. “I can’t go to school!” I shriek. “Zula, honey, I know you don’t love the rain but you have to go to school, it’s only your second day of preschool.” “When I live in my cloud castle, I’ll tell the rain that it has to stop so that rainbows can live in the sky. That’s the tea,” I say grumpily. For the rest of the bleak morning, I try convincing Mom to let me stay home in the warmth and play with Charles. That’s my unicorn who has a rainbow horn on his forehead. “You can’t make me go! It’ll get my wings wet! If we go, Charles won’t see me today! The rain will kill me!” I scream and then flop on the tile floor, limp. Mom sighs and just picks me up, she sets me in my purple chair. “You’re bending my wings!” I squirm. Mom picks me up and moves to take the cloth wings off. I let a short yelp loose into her face. “Zula! There’s a rip! I need to fix them for you,” Mom tries to reason, but I scream in her face until she sets me down without ruining my sparkly wings. 46

When it’s time to go, I start wailing again. Mom is trying to force me to go out the door into the acid rain. Mom heaves me over her shoulder like Dad did and I try grabbing anything I can hold onto. I stretch for the sturdy white pole in our hallway. When I miss, I brush the picture frame with Dad and Mom in it, toppling it to the ground which leaves a large crack in the floor running in between my parents. In a panic, glitter shoots out of my hands. Mom grabs a yellow umbrella, trying to balance me as I wiggle, attempting to crawl out of her arms. Mom is really strong. I can feel icy drops weeping on me from under the umbrella, and I scream and shake even more. My heart starts beating really fast, and I squeeze my eyes shut wanting to be out of the rain. My eyes are closed so hard that I can see little white dots in my vision. “Baby, we’re in the car! Stop yelling!” Mom yells over me. My screams fade as I slump in my red car seat. I watch the droplets stream down the window in disgust. Those things took Dad away. They’re so selfish but I’m going to go find him in the sky one day. That’s where Mom says he went.

to a place Liza Kolbasov which isn’t really a place, the way home isn’t really home, and when we say we’re homesick, what we really mean is peoplesick, or lovesick. i. we sip pomegranate juice on dirty floor with heart buried under. plant sunflowers even though they don’t belong here. ii. follow a stray cat down the block. iii. learn to miss the beat of our own silence. iv. catch ourselves slipping, the way air falls out between teeth, forgetting to shut the door behind. v. listen to the sound of sneakers on concrete; count the lasts with fingers tapping on the insides of our palms. vi. today, dusk tastes sun-bleached. and today, i am homesick. 48

Ornate Redux Livia Bednarz

4949

Untitled Anand Parikh

Boxes Tori Fong

Let’s keep looking. The soft whisper of the girl entices me, pushing me to forgo the thought of giving up. I continue my arch, rummaging through the boxes that litter the floor of the small crawl space. Clouds of dust percolate into the musty air when my hands displace the heavy layer that rests upon the brown cardboard. I fight the urge to sneeze as I unfold the flaps of the box. What’s inside? I look to my left to see the young boy, his arms crossed impatiently, one condescending eyebrow raised. My eyes roll at his cynicism, then refocus to the contents of the newly opened box. Titles of pristine books, untouched by time, stare back at me. I turn back to the boy just in time to catch the deep sigh he releases in disappointment. The petite girl pats him on his arm since she cannot reach his shoulder, her touch causing him to relax. Don’t worry, we’ll find it. His arms unfold to hang at his sides, but his expression remains doubtful. Nodding in agreement, I move onto the next box. Nothing but plates and various sets of decorative silverware. The following box has sweaters; its successor smells of the old paint that occupies it. 51 51

What if we can’t find it? His voice cuts through the silence that hangs over us. I hesitate to reply. While there are no real consequences should the box go unfound, my obligation to my siblings overrides such a possibility. “I will find it,” I assure them—and myself. As I move on to the next box, the girl tucks her soft blonde hair behind her ears and turns to the boy. It’s fine, we don’t have to find it. Stop being so demanding. He looks at her indignantly. But it’s important. Why don’t you care more? Because we don’t need it, ok? Stop stressing out. Her harsh reprimand cause him shrink back, shuffling his feet sheepishly. Although five years his junior, she still possesses the skill to produce a wave of regret that crashes into him and knocks him off his feet. Glancing at my tarnished watch that adorns my left wrist, my heart begins to pump faster in my chest. Only a few hours until we lose this opportunity. My search becomes more vigorous; I rip open the boxes rather than preserving their otherwise untouched condition. An hour passes with no success, and even the girl grows impatient. They had to have put it up here! she cries. Where else would it be? the boy chimes in. “I don’t know,” I say, “but I’m trying my best. I care about this just as much as you two do, ok?” The two grumble and nod, a rare occurrence in which they agree. Both were opinionated far beyond I ever had been, and often disagreement brought loud arguments that ended in punishment for both. Yet they had an unbreakable bond that acted as their lifeline; one could not survive without the other. The long hand makes its way around the scratched watch face, indicating that a measly two hours remain. Soon a cloud of irritability hangs over us, and I open boxes in tense silence. A path has been cleared through the attic, marked by half-closed boxes with handprints where my haste brushed the dust layer off. I reach the corner of the attic, where the boxes turn into trunks of clothes. Some are locked, and I can only pray that they are not the proprietor of our treasure.

52 52

A brassy trunk catches my eye, and rather than continue my methodical search, I impulsively move the crates on top of it and dust off the top. Lifting the heavy lid, I peer in as the heads of my siblings join mine. They stare as I reach inside and pull out the thick, leather-bound book. My hands shake as I blow the dust off the front cover and open it. On the first page under the yellowed photo, “the Hartwright Family” resides in sprawling cursive. Together we breathe a sigh of relief; we have succeeded. Turn the page, I wanna see more! The girl excitedly nudges the boy, who already has a large smile on his face. They both crane their necks to catch a glimpse of my baby photos, which I quickly flip through. We pause at the boy’s baby photo, then again to look at the begrudging expression I sported on the first day of sixth grade in the photo next to the girl’s baby photos. We keep going, until I find the last page with something on it. I’m alarmingly far from the end. My hands shake so much that I can no longer hold onto the album as my eyes settle onto the single photo on the page. The photograph takes over my vision, consumes my mind, and I’m seventeen again. My eyes flutter open. Sirens scream and people yell, but I cannot focus on them, because there is something far more important to attend to. “Leslie? Thomas? Where are you?” I call out. My hands fumble as I struggle to unbuckle the seatbelt. I try to turn around but my body doesn’t turn that far, and the pain is too great to wiggle out of my confinement. Suddenly hands are helping mine, and I am freed. I try to fight the arms pulling me out of the window, but they overpower me and place me gently onto a stretcher. I cry out again, but am too far away from the car. A voice behind me speaks in a low tone, but I can make out the words. “Quinn Hartwright, seventeen...the only one alive...brother and sister died upon impact.” Tears stream down my face as I stare at the photograph. Underneath, in the same scrawled handwriting, it’s titled “Leslie (6), Thomas (11), and Quinn (17), first day of school.” My finger strokes their blissfully unaware faces. Suddenly, I am alone in the attic, surrounded by boxes of memories. 53 53

Paper Swans Joshua Yang

I met him under the harsh glare of the halogen streetlights lining the street we both lived on. He looked a little nervous, pacing back and forth withhis arms tightly tucked in front of him as if protecting himself against the monsters from stories we had told each other as children. But then again, he had been like that, ever since his father—never his dad, always his father—had decided to pack his bags one day and leave the house which had yellow walls and red roof tiles and that reminded us of his mom’s traditional egg-and-tomato soup she always made us when we were together. A brief, hurried greeting, and we set off into the darkened street, walking quickly to fight off the chill of the cold October air. I asked him how his mom—never his mother, always his mom—was doing, because I hadn’t seen her in so long and she didn’t come out into their little garden anymore to water the cucumber and sunflower plants she had painstakingly grown. “She’s fine,” came the distant, curt reply. That was something else new after his father had left the house: a closed, snipped off little soundbite of speech spoken so fast you couldn’t even see his lips moving. We had studied enjambment in the poetry unit of English class, and I wondered if this was the enjambment of human speech, a thought abruptly cut off in the middle of one line and continued on in the next line, but I knew it couldn’t be, because that next line wouldn’t ever come. “I don’t see her anymore,” I said. “She’s fine,” he repeated. “She just stays upstairs now.” # The last time I had seen his mom was during the June of two years ago, when she came to our house after dinner, 54

asking to see me. I thought she looked strange because she normally had pearls around her neck and her hair in a perfect ponytail (oh, if only my hair could be braided that easily!) and just the lightest, most delicate touch of makeup. Yet when she knocked on our door that day, she looked harried and lost, a lone sailor lost at sea. That made me think of Hemingway and his old man who ended up with just a fish skeleton for his efforts, and I felt bad for her. We went to her house and I thought maybe she wanted me to talk to her son but he wasn’t there and neither was his father, because he was already gone by that point. She told me to go up the ornate, marble staircase that led upstairs and I asked her if that was ok, because I thought upstairs was off-limits but she said just go, I’ll be right behind you. Her voice shook a little as she spoke. Upstairs was the one forbidden place where the Nerf gun battles and Lego skyscrapers of our childhood weren’t allowed to spill over into. Upstairs was a mysterious land of danger and horror, the realm of the Bloody Mary ghost and the horribly-disfigured Phantom of the Opera we had once read about in a book somewhere. Upstairs was the unknown darkness pushing against the light of downstairs, a frightening array of half-hyperbolical terrors (another word I had learned from English: hyperbole) against the smell of his mom’s chicken cooking in the oven and the sound of his father’s car pulling into the driveway and the sight of the brightly lit fake Christmas tree in the corner of the room (which I hadn’t seen for the past three Christmases and I was going to ask about but it was still June and Christmas was months away). I had once asked him what was actually upstairs, and he said nothing special. Just his bedroom and his parents’, one for each of them because mom said it was better that she didn’t sleep with his father. He had giggled then, because he said he knew the secret to babies and life and 55

maybe mom didn’t want to give him a sibling. What a shame, he said, because he’d be a great older brother. But then he cheered up and said it was ok because I was like his little sister anyways. All of these thoughts ran wildly and fluidly through my mind as I ascended the staircase, my footsteps thudding just a little on each apprehensive step I took. The two of us, his mom and I, passed through an open doorway into his room. Behind me, I heard the sharp click of a light switch, and a single dim, orange-yellow light on the ceiling flickered to life, bringing his room into view. I had never been there before, but I knew it was his because the small bedroom was beyond messy: half-folded clothes were strewn haphazardly on the bed and a cluttered bookshelf was pushed against one wall. I asked what we were doing here, and his mom said he had lost something in his room and maybe I could help him find it and she described a little exacto knife that was somewhere in this room, the urgency in her tone stopping any questions from being asked. I had started with the bookshelf. There were many mementos and items I recognized: the souvenirs I had given him and the discarded packaging of an old Christmas gift and a worn, crinkled thank-you card. Things I had even forgotten we’d passed between each other. I re-opened the very same gift boxes I had packaged myself, just in case the knife was inside. I brushed aside delicately folded origami swans perched meticulously on a shelf—the swans that I had given him, the swans that I didn’t even know he kept, the swans I thought he carelessly tossed aside without a second thought. I did all this with a little sadness, because it had been a long time since I had the patience to fold a pieceinto a delicate swan and I wondered if he missed getting my swans. But then again, he hadn’t spoken about it, so maybe he didn’t miss them. 56

In the dusk of that June evening, the dimly-lit room had become unbearably hot, and it was with sweat pouring over our faces and backs that his mom thought to try the drawer under his desk. A moment of silence and— “I found it,” she announced to the room, and I looked at what she held in her hand out of curiosity. His mom just stood there, rocking slightly back and forth. Finally, she said perhaps it was better that I leave and to tell my mom she said hi: the last words she would speak to me in two years. # Under the halogen streetlights, I thought about telling him how I did go upstairs once and about the real-life monsters and demons I had found, the demons I didn’t realize existed until much later, but instead I silently took his hand in the silky-smooth darkness that pooled between the cones of light on our shared street. One thousand silent words passed between us in the stillness of the air. I traced my fingers over the scars on his wrist that he said had come from when he tripped and fell, and I thought about the first time I had ever seen him cry, when the two of us had ventured to the little stream in the park two blocks north and we had tried putting my paper swans into the water, but the delicate origami had quickly sunk, swept gone by the incessant current. I know he would tell me not to worry and that everything was fine, and maybe it would be and maybe it wouldn’t, but that was ok because I knew he would keep the paper swans I made on a shelf upstairs in the darkness.

The Younger One (Three Hours Away) Lillian Fong

The day my brother leaves for college, it doesn’t feel like a big deal. At least, not to me. It feels like maybe he’s only gone on a short trip, or something. My parents, however, feel the full weight of him moving out. “Do you want to come with us?” my mother asks me a few days before they leave. “I have to get ready for school. And you’ll be gone for a couple days, won’t you?” “He’s your brother. And he won’t be living here anymore. Are you sure you don’t want to spare a few days for him?” I shake my head. “I’ll just like, FaceTime him and stuff. He won’t be that far anyway. San Luis Obispo is only like three hours away.” My mother nods. She looks a little disappointed, probably in me. I’m usually the one she’s disappointed in, anyway. This is our family dynamic. My mother dotes on my brother, because she worries about him, even though there’s nothing to worry about. He has good grades, good friends, and an acceptance letter from CalPoly. I have decent grades, great friends, and a college list I’ve been planning since freshman year. The only reason she worries about me less is because I’m the second child. I think it’s because she’s still unsure of what steps she’s taking with him, but she thinks she’ll have it figured out by the time it’s my turn. But now that my brother is going to college, I think she worries about him even more. So the day he leaves, I give him a hug and watch the car drive away. 58

About a week and a half later, I’m starting to regret not going to move him in. I wander around the house, somewhat marvelling at how much bigger and quieter it feels without him around. Our house is all white walls and hardwood floors, and the longer I’m in it without the sounds of another life form, the more it starts to feel like a pristine museum. When I have the house to myself when I get home from school, it feels like an empty shell. I invite people over to fill the space, because without them, my voice seems to echo off every white wall. “Is Alex home?” my friend Melissa asks as I lead her into the kitchen. “No, he’s at college, remember?” I say. “He left, like, almost two weeks ago.” “Oh, yeah. But you get the house pretty much to yourself, right? I would love that.” “For like, three hours. Then my mom comes home and it’s all, ‘are you doing your homework? Can you start the laundry?’” She grimaces a little. “Yeah, I guess it’s rough if you have to do all his chores and stuff. But trust me, I would give anything for three quiet hours without my siblings.” Melissa has three younger siblings, and there’s always at least one of them in the house at the same time. But she doesn’t get that three hours feels like the entire school year when you wish that someone else was around. So I invite more people over, sometimes three or four at a time. They help fill the emptiness, at least for a little while. Talking and laughing and just hanging out with friends was something I did without my brother before he left, so it returns a sense of normality to my daily life. I start to realize how much I took my brother’s presence for granted. He used to be a fixture in my life, someone I could trust to always be there. One evening, I’m going downstairs for dinner when I pass his bedroom. 59

“Dinner,” I call, tapping on the door. I stand there for a second, maybe two, before I realize my mistake and continue downstairs, embarrassed. April.

Alex got accepted into CalPoly on a Thursday in

“Hey, Rachel! Rachel, come here!” he had called from his room. “Why do you have that look on your face?” I said when I walked in. He was smiling from ear to ear, his eyes crinkling happily at the corners. “Look at this!” He held his laptop up towards me. “I got into CalPoly!” California Polytechnic State University has been my brother’s dream school since he started high school and decided he wanted to go into engineering. And after all the hard work he’d put in over the last four years, no one could say he didn’t deserve it. “Wait, what?” I grabbed it from him and scanned the screen. “No way, Alex! This is awesome!” We both stayed still for a moment, him in his desk chair and me standing. Then I leaned forward and put my arms around him. “I’m proud of you,” I said to him. “Yeah,” he said, then pulled away. “Rachel, can you go get Mom?” I scoffed. “Go get her yourself, Mr. Polytechnic. It’s your acceptance letter.” “Fine. But once I’m gone, you’re gonna be the one doing all the chores, so...” “You have to live on your own and do all your own chores.” “Okay, okay. You’ll probably barely notice I’m gone anyway, Miss Social Butterfly.” He got up and moved towards the door, laptop in hand. 61

“Alex?” He turned to face me again. “I really am proud of you.” Two weeks later, Alex FaceTimes me when I get home from school. “I need help,” I say. “I have no idea how to do any of this.” I hold up my math notebook for him to see. “Junior year... This is pre-calc, right?” He squints at my notebook through the camera. “Were you not paying attention in class again or something?” “I was! It just kind of... goes over my head.” He starts explaining the numbers and variables to me, and it feels a little like when he lived at home. I’ve never been good at math. My parents tried to help me when I was younger, but as we both got older, they started to say, “Ask your brother” more and more often. So it kind of became our thing, to have him help me with math. And half the time we would bicker through it, him asking how many more ways he needed to explain it and me defending myself and telling him he wasn’t making any sense. But it was our thing, because otherwise he was doing some math-science thing or I was hanging out with friends or organizing club activities. “Crap, Rachel, I have to go,” he says about twenty minutes later. “I have a class in like, ten minutes.” “Okay,” I say. “I’ll talk to you later.” When he hangs up, the house falls quiet again. I keep expecting to hear his footsteps coming down the hall, or him tapping away at his computer when I pass his room. It’s the little things that just became background noise in my head that I miss. I try calling him again a week later, but he doesn’t pick up. From the amount of communication he’s had with me, at least, he seems to be settling in well. He talks to my 62

mom and dad more frequently, I know, but it makes me mad at myself for missing him when he doesn’t seem to miss me. Obviously there were times when we fought— how could there not be? All siblings fight. But I also knew that we had a better sibling relationship than a lot of people. We didn’t resent each other. He looked out for me, and I would look up to him, regardless of how much time we actually spent with each other. I stop inviting so many people over. They’re supposed to be filling the space, but it doesn’t really work. “Have you talked to your brother lately?” Mom asks one night at dinner. “Not really. He’s always busy when I try.” “Try after dinner. I don’t think he has a class this evening.” “But he might have something else going on.” “He’s your brother, Rachel,” Dad says. “He should be finding time to talk to you.” “Well, that sounds like his problem, not mine.” “Rachel.” Dad puts his utensils down and looks at me. At least someone in this house is looking at me. “Just try after dinner, okay?” So I do, and he actually answers the call. “Where have you been?” I ask. “Uh, college, last time I checked,” he says. He sits at his desk, working on something. “No, I mean, why are you never picking up when I call?” “I have class. And a lot of other stuff to do. I have to do all my own chores, remember?” He looks away from the camera and starts scribbling something down. “I still need help with my math homework,” I say. “Okay, okay. I’ll help you tomorrow.” “Will you actually answer my call?” I’m only half teasing. 63

“Yeah of course.” He’s still scribbling away. “Just don’t call until after five, okay? I have class.” “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” “Bye. And tell Mom and Dad I say hi.” The thing is, when you miss someone, you miss all the good things about them, and your mind ignores the bad things about them. Like I don’t miss how Alex spent most of his time in his room studying, or how he wouldn’t always say hi to me in the halls at school, or when he would take our shared car out without telling me and ruin some of my plans, and especially not when we would fight. But I do miss him just being in the house, and knowing he’s only a door away if I ever really need something. I kind of miss having someone to fight with. I call him the next day, and he does pick up. After that, he starts answering my calls more often, but I call less often too. Some of the busy days at school, I do forget that he’s away, just a little bit. But when I get home and I’m left to sit in a house that feels too big for one person, of course I remember. “Do you miss home at all?” I blurt out one October day over the phone. Now we’ve only been talking once every week and a half or so. So far our conversation has mainly consisted of me saying stuff and him grunting, looking at whatever he’s working on, and it’s getting frustrating. His eyes widen a little, surprised, and he looks at me for the first time since he answered the call. “I mean, sometimes. Why?” “It just seems like you don’t, and I was wondering, is all.” He goes silent. We are not the type of siblings with big emotional confrontations. “I wish I could have a taco or something from home. Dining hall food is sad.” This is as much of an ‘I miss you’ as I’ll get from him. Brothers don’t outright say that kind of 64

thing. Him saying her misses food is the equivalent of him saying he misses home, and that’s good enough for me right now. “Of course it’s sad. It’s a college dining hall,” is what I say. He rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the sympathy,” he says, then checks his watch. “I have to get going soon. Eat a taco for me or something.” “If it means I get more tacos, sure.” He makes a face at me and reaches forward to hang up. “Wait, Alex?” His outstretched arm pauses. “You have to return my calls and stuff. Just so I know that you’re not, you know, dead in a ditch or something.” “And so you can actually do your math homework?” “That too.” “I’ll talk to you next week, Rachel,” he says, and then hangs up. I come away from the conversation feeling different than I have recently. Knowing that Alex is okay, but also that he’s not so busy that he doesn’t miss home. He’ll be back for Thanksgiving in a few weeks, and by then I’ll probably remember all the things I didn’t like about having a brother. But you know. That’s just the way it is with siblings.

For the ones that fell silently Jessica Wang Once, a little star Shot across the sky, A sky awash with A waterfall of blue. It fell screaming; It fell far; In a fiery mess, It fell Silently. And no one looked up Into that clear blue sky. And no one saw The struggle Of the little star As it fell into The arms Of endless space.

6666

The sky bright with day Did not betray The slightest ordeal of That little star. Outshone by the sun, The moon, The planets, It fell Silently. And the sky impassively Turned its rounds, Revealing the underbelly Of the night: All of the stars Aligned to attention, But who noticed the void of That one little star?

Untitled 6 Marek Hertzler

Rye and Riot Vincent Lomeland

He walks in seas of atropine and cries For things he cannot see. He dreams of dust, Of marbled shapes that take the form of kids With wings and ichor streams. He dreams of youth, A great bubbling cream that burns his skin and Seals his lips, for they sink into the black Abyss. They taint their words and point their teeth. They age from nymphs, lepidopterous beings, Into vulgar, flawed, deplorable things. He speaks of things he cannot see, of youth And anonymity. He screams, he lies, Of kids sent to the stars, catasterized. His hands, his lips, they bleed the prophecies Of ecstasy. He waits, he cries, singing For his unclean angels a cacophony. They smile, granting him their theophany.

3 A.M. Shannon Lin

Winter 2019 Staff & Contributors Editor-in-Chief: Rida Khawaja Vice President: Liza Kolbasov Layout Officers: Lillian Fong, Melissa Ding Managing Officers: Daniel Barszczak, Aarohi Gupta Fundraising Officers: Ruhi Mistry, Jonathan Fang Publicity Officers: Sulaiman Khawaja Club Advisor: Mr. Dunlap Rotational Layout Members: Tori Fong, Sarah Siemsgluess Key Contributors: Jay Li, Lillian Fong, Tori Fong

Pandora’s Box Creative Magazine has been a part of Henry M. Gunn High School’s student community for over 20 years. We are a student-run literary & creative magazine, featuring work by student artists, poets, writers, and photographers. Pandora’s Box provides an outlet for students to explore their creativity and showcase their talent.

Pandora's Box Winter 2019

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