2024 National YoungArts Week Anthology + Catalogue

YoungArts

Anthology + Catalogue

Select works by the 2024 Winners with Distinction in Design, Photography, Visual Arts & Writing

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YoungArts

Anthology + Catalogue

Select works by the 2024 Winners with Distinction in Design, Photography, Visual Arts & Writing

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2024 National YoungArts Week T-Shirt Designed by Maria Useche (2017 YoungArts Winner in Design)

Acknowledgments We are thrilled to welcome you to this Anthology + Catalogue, comprising works by the 2024 YoungArts award winners with distinction in Design, Photography, Visual Arts and Writing. An affirmation of the caliber of their expressions, these editions are often the first opportunity for young artists to see their work published and represent a bold step toward a professional future in the arts.

Our work is a continuous process that depends upon the knowledge and commitment of a vast network of guest artists, teachers and educators.

We are grateful for the many partnerships and artists who have helped inspire this next generation of artists. We extend our gratitude to Anthology Editor, Jordan Levin and Exhibition Guest Curator, Laura Novoa.

This volume and National YoungArts Week programming are made possible with generous support from Anthropologie; Aon; Batchelor Foundation; State of Florida through the Division of Arts and Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts; The Kirk Foundation; Miami City Ballet; City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; the Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; Miami Downtown Development Authority; New World Symphony; Sidney and Florence Stern Family Foundation; Sandra and Tony Tamer; and the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation.

Please visit youngarts.org/donor-recognition for a complete list of donors.

Above all, we extend our sincerest gratitude to the artists featured. We dedicate this publication to you, your families, teachers and mentors.

Table of Contents Select Works Ana Sofia Aguilar-Arias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Juan Almader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Paola Alvarez Ramirez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Madison Barrentine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Danae Bell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Ariadna Bertran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Will Bigby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Mar Bradley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Hudson Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Iris Cai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Lauren Cheng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Katherine Chong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Raima Chowdhury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Kaylee Christiansen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Bryan Chung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Sun Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Aubry Deetjen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Hannah Demerritte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Anaïs Dufresne Powell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Katrine Eliev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Marianna Estupinan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Noel Etheridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Patrick Flanagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Sofia Fontenot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Iris Fu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Brian Guan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Kathleen Halley-Segal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Hannah Hong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Rosie Hong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Raynah Howard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Margaux Ip-Geisler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Hanji Jang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Fiona Jin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Jessie Leitzel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Jamie Jaehee Jung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Kiana Ketcham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Juri Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Logan Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Ariana Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Bailey Levy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Eboni Louigarde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Grace Marie Liu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Emily Maremont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Ian Ohara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Claire Pinkston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Kierra Reese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Olivia Romano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Brigette Roseman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Walter Sanmartin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Lemo Sekiguchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Claris Shin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Manola Silva-Hanson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Maggie Su . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Derek Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Colton Vance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Audie Waller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Bec Wenqian Wang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Margaret Whitten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Chloe Wong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Ming Wei Yeoh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Matthew Yu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

About YoungArts About YoungArts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Notable Winners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Guest Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Special Thanks to Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 National YoungArts Week Supporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 YoungArts Supporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 YoungArts Board of Trustees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

YoungArts Anthology + Catalogue

Select Works by the 2024 Winners with Distinction in Design, Photography, Visual Arts & Writing

Ana Sofia Aguilar-Arias

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Visual Arts Plano East Senior High School Plano, TX

Papa y el Sombrero Colombiano Oil on canvas 2022

Juan Almader

Design Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Los Angeles, CA

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“A stack of photos”-Look (1) Canvas and cotton 2023

Paola Alvarez Ramirez

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Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

Venus Bedsheets, lace, resin, plastic pearls, stuffing, synthetic hair, wire, spray paint 2023

Madison Barrentine

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Visual Arts Alabama School of Fine Arts Birmingham, AL

Two Surfaces Canvas, stuffing, acrylic, hand stitched embroidery 2023

Danae Bell

Design BellAcademy Homeschool Chandler, AZ

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System Ascension Fabric, handcuffs, spray paint, chains, police badge 2023

Ariadna Bertran

Visual Arts Design & Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

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In Another World Adobe Illustrator 2023

Will Bigby

Photography Flintridge Preparatory School La Cañada Flintridge, CA

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Flower Boy Digital photography 2023

Mar Bradley

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

Day Shift Most of Sal’s days began around six; this had been the natural case since about her preteens. Excluding exceptionally disruptive nights, she tended to wake before dawn, even on her days off, staying in bed with her eyes wide open as the sun crept into the room. She did her best to think of nothing during this time until Penny’s alarm went off around seven-thirty on the weekdays she slept over, which were most. Penny herself never actually got up when this alarm sounded, but she would roll over, away from Sal, slap the snooze button, then mutter something unintelligible before drifting off again. Sal liked to think she was telling her to “have a good day,” or something equally sweet, but she avoided ever clarifying with Penny, so she wouldn’t be expected to reply.

Sal got ready in the almost darkness, dressing and washing her face before moving to the small kitchen, where she’d sometimes make toast or a bowl of cereal. There were always fresh-cut flowers in a green vase on the small breakfast table, and Sal would refresh their water if needed. If she’d stayed the night, Penny would eventually join her, and by eight-thirty, she would call out ‘I love you’ as Sal left the apartment, though Sal never answered, always leaving too fast. Then Sal would go down to catch the bus, and by nine-thirty or so she would have arrived at the Melrose Funeral Home, a short walk from her stop.

When she came in, sometimes there was no one at the front desk. Sometimes there was a cat she didn’t know the name of, and sometimes there was Melvin, her boss, wearing an inappropriately colored silk shirt or blazer. Most often, however, she found Cyprus there, typing away or taking calls, some inoffensive instrumental music filling the waiting area. She’d guess the song as a greeting, he would smile at her, teeth white and spotless.

“Uh-huh,” he’d say. “I need to go more indie to surprise you huh?”

“You can always try. Send me the to-do list, yeah?”

“Of course. And good morning to you too!”

She’d laugh as best she could, walking past him to the right and searching for her keys before unlocking the “employeesonly door” and continuing down the hall. A small break room andMelvin’s office (door closed) branched off from there, and, at the end, the embalming and storage area. Sal liked this routine of constants. No matter what shoes she wore, they made the same soft sound against the floor. She could always hear the clock ticking in the break room. The hallway always smelled of something burnt or acidic in the air; formaldehyde or leftover popcorn from the night shift. She never saw the two employees who worked the night shift, though she noticed their presence in the mornings: the coffee machine’s filter was full of semi-fresh grounds, her tools had been moved. A water bottle or bag, things found and then gone the next day.

Yet always, once she stepped across the steel threshold into the back room, it was quiet, and she was alone. *** Sal hadn’t ever intended to be a mortician. She ended up in mortuary school because a high school biology teacher suggested it, probably as a joke about how silent she always was, even in the face of dissections, then she started working her five days a week because she’d once helped Melvin with his groceries. He’d been wearing a purple pinstripe blazer and fitted black pants and had said to her “oh can’t you help, my house isn’t too far.” She’d agreed to help, only learning ten minutes into the walk that his house was, in fact, quite far and up on a hill, and what he was really doing was recruiting. He’d asked her, as everyone seemed to at that time, what she was doing, then laughed at her high school tale.

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“Always an inclination towards death then?”

“Not really,” she’d said. The sun had hurt, bag handles digging further into her palms with every step. “Just… finding something to do. I’ve got a few months left until I earn my certificate, then I’ll be able to work longer. My girlfriend wants us to move in together, and I’d really prefer a better-paying job before that.” Her phone went off with an unknown alarm, and she stumbled, struggling to shut it off one-handed. He’d just hummed.

“I see. And are you proficient in makeup?” He hadn’t given her time to question. “It’s quite helpful to have such a skill set if you’re a mortician, you know. There’s always a need in parlors for someone to dress up the deceased the day of, but it’s not quite a full-time position.”

Sal herself had never done her own makeup. Her mother had loved the art of it, and she’d watched many people do their own, but in theory, she knew she could learn. Sal had always had steady hands. What, she thought, a horrific job it’d be.

“I guess I could—I guess I could figure it out,” she’d managed to say in between breaths. “Could you really?” He’d said this with a kind of wonder. “I’ve had so much trouble finding someone who wants to do it.”

They’d been nearly to the top, and Sal was acutely aware of her shirt plastered to her by sweat, and the tote bag filled with her own sparse groceries, bumping against her hip.

“I guess…” she’d trailed off as they finally reached the top of the hill, her eyes skipping over the street. In the distance was Sal’s apartment, its distinctive set of red-striped roof chairs shining in the light. A breeze had passed by, ruffling Sal’s hair. She needed to cut it soon. “Yeah, I probably could.” At her side, the man had given a sharp nod, inhaling deeply.

“Beautiful day for a walk, isn’t it?” he’d said. “Well, if you do learn, give me a call.”

Without another comment, he’d taken the groceries from her hands, placed a business card into her empty palm, then turned away and began to hike back down the hill in the same direction they’d come from. Sal had stared after him as he walked further and further.

She’d cursed him, then, a moment later, read his card— “Melvin you—” A week later, she’d called about the anticipated salary and landed the job in one fell swoop. *** Sal had gotten her mortuary license four months after being employed by Melvin, enabling her to complete both the surgical and cosmetic phases of embalming. Most often, still, she ended up with the majority of the cosmetic work, while the night shift did the strictly surgical parts, prepping the body to last and hiding any pre-death damage. On rare occasions, when she entered the building in the morning, Cyprus would wave her over excitedly, announcing “full case” as he handed her the file, meaning both surgery and cosmetics were up to her. She liked those days more, in a way. They felt clean and finite.

The surgical aspect was always easier than the cosmetic, just simple cleaning out and preserving. Empty the body of blood and liquids and replace them with embalming fluid. The night shift made their own mixture, a little heavy on the formaldehyde, and they seemed to be indecisive on what exactly her part in it all was. Sometimes she’d come in to find jaws wired shut right, other times the faces were harshly set, and at still other times, nothing had been down, leaving her to anchor their jaws shut in a calm smile. Frequently, she cursed the night shift when she checked her files in the morning, as nothing ever seemed finished.

It was always on her to do the final touch ups, makeup or surgical remedy. At the least, Melvin seemed to think she was good at it.

Mortuary cosmetics were one of the few skills Sal could say she had mastered. She knew how to pinch the face just right, how to pad the areas left gaunt by death, to give life again to the skin and hair. She kept things neutral and clean unless otherwise requested and would do her work in silence, in a brightly lit corner of the back room. The makeup was a presentational balance that she’d learned the basics of in mortuary school and perfected on her own time, often using Penny as her practice canvas during quiet evenings.

Sal herself didn’t wear make-up at all; her mother had never taught her how, and for years Sal refused to learn on her own, some kind of pseudo-feminist holdout she’d picked up as a tween. As a kid, she’d watched her mother get ready for events; there was a small blue stool in her mother’s bedroom reserved for Sal so that when Sal had gotten all dressed up, she could come to sit and watch her mother work. Her mother had been a makeup artist for some time as a young adult, and she’d kept the skills—her foundation always sat right, her blush and eyeshadow perfectly appropriate, and she always wore just the ‘slightest lipstick to smile better.’

There were too many formal family events throughout her childhood—glorified showcases—and so Sal often found herself on that blue stool. Even as she reached her teen years, she always ended up back there, watching, silent and almost unblinking as her mother went through the familiar motions. Things changed, of course, neatly segmenting their time. When Sal was seven, her mother went through a phase of green eyeshadow, a pale shade that she liked to blot on her lid and inner corners. When she was eleven, her mother obsessed over blush, and around thirteen, she became enamored with eyeliner. They always got compliments when they went out because—oh what a lovely mother-daughter pair, what beautiful style, what perfect make-up.

At some point during Sal’s junior year, her mother made the fateful decision to change her lipstick from a pink nude to a lighter shade. The day had been pale and hot, and they were going to the ballet with her aunt and uncle from out of town. Sal’s dress already felt too tight, old cap sleeves squeezing at her shoulders, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before her anxious sweat made the fabric’s texture unbearable. The new lipstick shade was more mature, her mother had said, more fitting for her age. Her smile had been wide but tense, lips stretched taut in pristine show, teeth shining.

Sal hadn’t cared for the color. It washed her mother out, and really, she suspected her mother never liked it either. *** Sal carefully combed through Penn’s hair, separating it into two sections before starting on the right. A five-strand braid was more complicated than she usually attempted, but it was still easy once she was in the rhythm, her fingers moving mindlessly.

The TV buzzed on in the background, and when Sal looked up, she found they were watching one of the 90s Addams Family movies.

She’d first watched some years ago, in high school maybe, in shitty quality on a free movie website off her tiny phone screen. Anjelica Huston starred as Morticia. They were at Penny’s apartment tonight, so it was her turn to pick the movie.

Penn tapped the back of her right hand, and she paused, then relaxed her grip, loosening the last couple of loops and then redoing them. Penn dropped her hand down and leaned back further. She said something.

“Huh?” Sal asked.

“Do you miss doing this on your own hair?”

“Eh, I don’t think so.” She spent another moment on it, then repeated the sentiment more surely. Any further explanation stuck in her throat. “Yeah, no, I really don’t.”

“Oh no hesitation, hm? Nothing else?” Her tone, which Sal thought was probably supposed to be teasing, fell flat. Almost aggressive.

Sal never had spectacularly long hair; despite her mother’s best prayers, it grew only to her upper back and was usually a

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mess. It tangled easily, curled in odd places, and never bent right beneath anyone’s hands but Sal’s own. Braiding it, she’d learned early, was the easiest way to “keep it out of sight and mind.” But when she’d shaved it all off at seventeen, it’d become even more of a problem. “Are you—are you goddamn serious, Sally?” her mother had asked from the bathroom door, fingers gripping the doorknob to the point of white knuckles.

“I liked to braid it, I mean I’d say I got pretty good at it, but I just don’t miss any of it. I like it as it is now.”

“Sal,” she’d corrected. Her hands had shook, still holding the clippers tight. Hair in a circle on the tile around her bare feet.

Polish all inappropriately chipped. “I told you it’s fucking Sal now.”

“No more?” Penn prodded again.

“What, you don’t like it short?”

“I just feel like you don’t tell me much. About anything back then I mean.”

“Eh, not much to tell. I was seventeen. I buzzed it. Made things clean.”

“That wasn’t really what I was asking, Sal.” There was a brief, almost expectant silence. Sal finished the right braid, stared at it, then started on the left one, moving faster.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, then.”

“I don’t want you to say anything specific—” Penn jerked forward, and her hair slipped out from between Sal’s fingers. “—I just wanted an answer. God.” Penn half twisted around to look at Sal, her shoulders hunching up tight with frustration.

Sal folded her hands together. She glanced at the screen again. Raul Julia? She knew him. A blonde woman entered, dressed in a startling pink. No idea what was going on there.

“I just—I don’t get why we have this conversation every week, Penn. I’m not withholding anything from you—” “Then where’s our apartment? Where’s our goddamn—” She stopped, pursing her lips into a straight line. Holding something in. Sal stared at her hands.

“I just need more money,” she said. “I need…”

“That’s what you’ve already said. Fucking years ago now I’m sure.”

“I know, and I need—I need enough—” her voice cracked, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Heard the catch in Penn’s breath, the one she knew would be here, then felt her stomach knot. “Two months. Give me another two months, until mid-year or so. Then we can go looking, okay?”

When she opened her eyes, Penn was facing the TV again.

Her half-unraveled braids hung loose, and, slowly, Sal reached out in apology. At the touch of her fingers, Penny slowly leaned back into her. Sal flattened her hands at the base of Penn’s skull, feeling the warmth. The heat. The tension of her scalp and the oil of her dark, dark hair. Her fingers trembled and she retracted them, just barely, before pressing them back down again.

“What movie even is this again?” Sal asked to lighten the tension, nudging Penn’s back with her knee and glancing to where the blonde woman spun in nauseating circles.

“Addams Family Values…” Penn’s voice warmed. “It’s the second one—insane that either of the movies got made, I think I’ve mentioned. And it was the last Raul Julia film released while he was still alive.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, you don’t even know—” Sal nodded along, losing track of what Penn was saying shortly into the sentence. Her ears rang with white noise, and as her mother breathed down her neck, she undid her work, re-parted Penn’s hair, and began, carefully, to braid again. *** The second alarm of Sal’s work day went off at one or one fifteen, depending on whichever she’d turned on, signaling that she needed to stop for lunch. She took her lunch on the secluded alley porch step just off the backroom, during which she would often type out a long text to Penn debating the merits of her job, then equally often delete it. On the rare occasion she sent it, Penn

would laugh, then be concerned, then send something consoling.

They’d plan something nice for the evening that never really played out. Clockwork. And then Sal would go back into the cold room.

If she could, she did most of her surgical duties before her lunch break, so that she didn’t return to the smell of formaldehyde right after food had settled in her stomach. She’d busy herself with face tape and hair and makeup until her alarm went off close to five, reminding her to leave in order to catch the fastest bus to her apartment. *** On Fridays, her leaving alarm went off at three forty-five, and she would pack her things and leave early from the back entrance. She never said goodbye, and Cyprus never asked why.

She caught the bus uptown, then walked another five minutes to a two-story, pale purple house. Ida, her therapist, had her office in a front corner, overlooking the quiet street. Sal was always early enough to see the client right before her time slot leave, usually a little sniffly from their session. “Evans?” Ida would then call a few minutes later, and Sal would hurry in with a short hello.

That Friday afternoon, it was raining, and Sal was still drying off when she sat down in the office, hugging herself slightly as the AC blasted.

“Some family has been trying to reach me lately,” she told Ida, forty minutes into their fifty-minute session.

Sal felt she had artfully wedged this statement in with utmost casualness, as it followed the rant about one of her coworkers leaving their (tuna salad) leftovers out on the Tuesday everyone was off, meaning the whole place smelled terrible when Sal came in the following morning. The smell had followed her all day, sticking to the lab coat she’d foolishly left out overnight. When she moved her gaze from her chair arm to her therapist, however, she found the statement was not received as casually as she’d hoped.

“And how’d that happen, Sal? Social media? Mail?” Leaned forward. Eyebrows tight.

“Facebook. I don’t even know why I have that account open, I thought I’d deactivated it, but then I got an email the other day that was like: Hey! Look at these messages from people you might know! I think there was my aunt and some random dude along with a ton of others. Didn’t even give me a preview of the messages, just a notice to try to make me log in I think.”

“Do you know why they’ve decided to reach out now out of all times? It’s been…five years now since you cut contact?”

“Eight sometime this week. She… I really left when it was finally getting warm. I’d just shaved my head maybe a week before? Spring behavior I guess. It was sprinkling then too.” Sal paused, picking at the rips in her jeans.

They sat in silence.

“Would you like to respond to these family members?” Ida finally asked.

“I mean—maybe?”

“You don’t sound very sure, Sal, and I don’t know how I feel about it either.” Ida leaned forward in her chair, clasping her hands over her notebook. “Have you thought about maybe talking about this with Penny? She might be able to give some more personal perspective.”

Sal looked up fully. Fibers fell through her fingers. Penny didn’t even know she went to therapy on Friday—Sal just hadn’t found the time to mention it in the past few months. Ida had the same look as always. Sal moved her gaze from Ida to the window, watching as a gray sedan went by with a border collie that had its head stuck out the window. The rain had picked up again, and the window was rolling up as if urging the dog to pull back inside.

“No. No to all of it. I didn’t. Don’t. Shit.” Sal paused. “Do you have any suggestions?” *** The front desk was empty on Wednesday, and when she entered the hallway, Melvin’s office door was open. She knew she wouldn’t make it past without him noticing, but she still flinched at the sound of her name.

“Heya, Sal, do you have a moment?”

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“Yeah sure.” She stepped in.

It was a small office due to the clutter taking up half the floor, and the walls were painted green. Several framed photos stared up at her from atop his desk, and she strongly suspected they were all of dead people. Melvin stood in the middle of a pile of papers and books.

“Would you be willing to come in a bit early to cover Cyprus’ job tomorrow?” he asked and held up his hands placatingly before Sal could even pull a face. “I know, it’s not your specialty, but he’s very sick—ate some of the night shift’s leftover tuna apparently. Called to say he was puking all over the place. Most of the preparations are made, you’d just need to help coordinate and do makeup. The body is already prepared—she arrived a few nights ago and Dave embalmed her, so tomorrow you would only have to do light makeup for her.”

His hands were still held up in the air. She just nodded, glancing at her phone as it rang with another presumed spam call from a local area code. Then a text from Penn, blinking brightly, and her eyes skipped over it with vague dread.

“Yeah. Sure.” *** Sal missed her bus that afternoon, and when she got home an hour later than usual, head swimming and hands shaking, she locked herself in the bathroom and threw up once in the toilet.

“You have work tomorrow?” Penny asked, brow wrinkled.

“Nothing too important,” Sal said, stabbing at her takeout noodles and managing a thin smile. “I’m thinking of taking a halfday anyway.”

They stayed up late, ending back with The Addams Family—the first one now because Sal swore she’d never seen it and Penny promised she’d remember, so they sat close together on the couch, a bowl of popcorn between them that Sal never touched. Her eyes were fixed on Anjelica Huston, on her thin neck, her dark dress, her red lips that never lost their thin smirk.

A coldness knotted at the top of her spine, and her eyes felt dry— sandpapery.

“Maybe you’re sick,” Penn suggested when Sal started to shiver. But it was okay, she said: she was just tired. Waiting. Penny’s hot hand rubbed across her shoulders, and as her eyes eased shut, the red blurred to nothing. *** On Thursday, Sal woke up on the couch to warm sunlight striping her body. From the kitchen, she could hear Penny and the soundtrack of the movie from the night before.

“Shit.” She stood up, stumbling to the bedroom. Her mouth was too dry. “Shit shit shit.”

A shirt off the floor, pants she’d left out a few days ago, a pair of decidedly inappropriately casual boots. She barged out the bedroom door a moment later, and Penn jumped, hip knocking against the kitchen table. Her speaker fell to the floor.

“What—Sal, are you—” “Late. I’m late.” Sal fumbled around for her keys. The boots dug uncomfortably into her heels. She’d picked the wrong socks.

“Your alarm didn’t go off. Why didn’t your alarm go off? Because of you I’m going to—” Her voice cracked. Her eyes were heating up, and she really didn’t have time for any of this “I have the day off from the shop—I thought I told you yesterday that I was going to the studio later.”

Sal found her keys, shoving them into her pocket victoriously before grabbing her coat. “I’m late,” she said again, then rushed out the door. She didn’t know the time, but she knew it was wrong. Penn yelled something after her as she sprinted towards the stairs.

Late, maybe. Late late late late late late. *** “I’m so sorry Melvin, I don’t know why I ended up—” She felt rumpled. Caustic.

“You’re fine, just fine. Here, you have about twenty minutes before we need to move the body to the viewing, so if you can manage, a quick job will be perfectly acceptable. Alright?” He was escorting her to the backroom, hand on her back, touch light.

ten.”

“Yeah I can do that, all good I promise.”

“Last name Reyno. First of the family will arrive at about

Melvin left, and she made her prep quick, hands moving faster than her head. Twenty minutes. She cracked the coffin open and paused at the face, then averted her eyes from the too pale lips. It was too much. The extra sleep was doing her in.

It looked like the hair was clean, so curling iron?

Straightener? Gel? Foundation— she gathered supplies. Eighteen minutes. She skimmed the woman’s file hurriedly, not finding any good notes on presentational wishes, and she realized she would have to make this up alone.

Sal applied the makeup on instinct, barely aware of her own hands. The woman’s face was already arranged in a small, almost shrewd smile, and she was dressed primly in a sharp black dress. The skin pads went first, up around the woman’s eyes and across her cheeks; she hadn’t been too elderly but her face was still sunken. Drying those took three minutes, blending the foundation another hasty two.

Everything she did came out subtle, soft and fine— respectable makeup for a respectable woman. Sal felt a pang of frustration that she had no more recent reference of what the woman should look like. Or was it anxiety, then? Fear? She didn’t know—everything was boiling up like acid reflux in her throat.

The skin beneath her hands was cold, and so was her neck, and the edge of the casket, and the lipstick tube she picked absentmindedly from the stand. It was a beige pink. Lipstick went last. The final touch, the ultimate step of her mother’s process before she sighed to herself and stood up, pulling her dress or blouse into place, hands flitting over herself like hummingbirds.

When Sal was young, her mother towered over her, but as she grew her perspective adjusted no matter her attempts to keep them level. Cupid bow lips pursed in mild displeasure, painted pale and mature, always sharp and perfectly presentable. Sal flipped through the file again, as if a photo with newer make-up would suddenly appear, and her eyes landed on the full name. Sandra Reyno. Below read a note of the maiden name: Evans.

“Come on, we’re running late,” her mother would say, no matter whether they were. “Shouldn’t have wasted so much time on this.” Sal never got a chance to argue. They didn’t talk like that.

The lipstick cap fell out of Sal’s jittering hands to the floor and she cursed once, staring at it. The silver blurred before her eyes, and as she reached for it, she slipped, banging her knees against the casket and then the hard tile floors. Her elbow hit her makeup tray as she went down, and it flipped up, products going everywhere with a loud clatter. Her ankle throbbed from where it was twisted uncomfortably beneath her, but she just bent forward, clawing at the tile in search of something she couldn’t see. As always, the room was freezing, still as dawn. And, as always, no one was there to hear as Sal opened her mouth and let out a high, warbling shriek not unlike a bird’s first cry. *** They got the casket into the viewing room with a few minutes to spare.

“The family will be in shortly, I believe, so keep an ear out for them, will you, dear?” Melvin asked as he vanished into the hallway. The florists must have come by while or before Sal did the make-up, and the room was packed with pink chrysanthemum arrangements, their smell heavy and nauseating. There was no blue stool, but there was an empty wooden chair before the casket where she sat gingerly. Sal stared at her face for a long moment, then leaned her head against her clasped hands, imitating prayer, though nothing came.

“Hello? Are you Cyprus?” someone asked from behind her.

Sal jolted up, chair knocking out from under her as she stood, and they both flinched.

“Oh sorry—” “No, I didn’t mean…”

Sal righted the stool first, slowly, but when she finally lifted her head, she didn’t recognize the man before her. Unconsciously, her shoulders relaxed, and she tried a smile. The stranger was

20

somewhere in his fifties with pronounced crow’s feet and pinkened eyes, hair long and pulled back, and wearing all black.

“Sorry–” Sal stopped and cleared her throat. “Are you here for the Reyno funeral? We’re only allowing the immediate family in at the moment.”

He shifted awkwardly.

“Oh…I was. I was Sandra’s husband. She was very dear to me.” His voice grew thick with each word, eyes clearly already gathering tears. “We only got married this past year.”

“Oh I wasn’t— I’m sorry, I’m Cyprus’ replacement, I wasn’t… wasn’t….”

She trailed off. He wasn’t looking at her— didn’t seem to see her at all. His eyes seemed to go everywhere but her face, and instead they were pointed down in what seemed to be permanent grief.

“My condolences,” she said. Her voice felt small, and she stepped aside, allowing him to move closer to the casket. He leaned over the body, unintentionally pushing aside the stool and bracing his hands against the edge. The husband stared down for several long seconds. Sal wondered what he saw first. Was it her face? Her pink lipstick? His wife, maybe?

“She looks beautiful,” he said quietly.

Sal didn’t reply. He let out a short, sharp breath, and she thought he might say something more, but when his shoulders began to shake, she slowly crept out of the viewing room, easing the door partially closed. She should leave; she really should, but her feet were rooted to the ground as she tried to fix her breathing, squeezing her eyes shut. The front door creaked open.

“Sally? Sally is that you?” Dread pooled high in her chest, nearly suffocating as it sank lower. Shit. She turned, scrambling, her aunt pulled her into a hug before she could say a word, her fine silk dress scratching Sal’s arms. “Is everything all right? I didn’t know if you’d—” Sal pushed her back, smiling shakily. Her aunt smelled like old perfume and oak and her husband’s cologne, just a little. Her hands were oily as they brushed over Sal’s arms.

“Something really urgent came up. I have to go fix it, but tell everyone I said hello and sorry and my condolences.”

“I—well I guess it’s alright Sally…you just…you look so much like her. Though you’re a bit of a mess, is everything—” She paused, brow pinching in haute concern as she got a good look at Sal. “Your hair still hasn’t grown out, is everything really alright? I know your mother said you had some accident but—I mean are you sure you can’t stay…”

“An accident?” A rush of heat went up the back of her neck. “What—” “Jonie? That you?”

Ethan emerged from the viewing, wiping at his face. Her aunt’s burning gaze left her. “Oh Ethan, here…”

Jonie moved to embrace him, and Sal backed towards the employee-only door.

“Yes, I’m just so sorry about it, it really was sudden. Have you had a chance to meet Sally? I didn’t know if Sandra had ever…”

“No, no she talked to me about her, and I tried to reach out recently, but I haven’t— I never met her.” Faster. Inches from the door. “Will she be here?”

“Oh you see she’s right—” Sal met Ethan’s eyes for a single second, and then she rushed through the door, ears ringing as it slammed shut. Down the hallway, Melvin’s office door closed, her shoes loud against the floor, louder than they should be, the smell of burnt popcorn.

When she reached the steel threshold, she barged through the door, expecting it to be as it should’ve been, always was. There should’ve been broken makeup on the floor, her bag thrown by the sink, an air of disturbance.

“Uh, hey, I guess? I don’t think this is how any first meeting should go.”

A new stranger crouched in the middle of the room, sweeping up the last of the glass. He wore all black, casual, and a familiar bag lay by Sal’s. It was one she recognized as having been left in the break room a few months ago, large and green with a

small yellow patch sewn to re-secure one of the straps. Sal had let it be, as she did all else, and it was gone the next day. Behind her, from down the hall, she could just hear muffled talking rise.

“You’re the night shift.”

“Yeah, half of it. I’m Dave. You’re day shift?”

“Sal. You’re night shift though so—” “I shouldn’t be here. Yeah yeah, sorry. Melvin called me in for a bonus shift. Said someone might need my assistance since Cyprus is out from uh, unfortunate events.”

“You poisoned him.” The words came out on autopilot and her tone wasn’t right. The room was jittering, white lights becoming brighter with each passing second. He laughed.

“My bad, I guess.” His gaze moved over her shoulder, then back. His eyes were alarming, calm yet warm. “Everything all right out there? You need to go home too?”

“Well, it’s…” She passed by him quickly to grab her bag, then moved towards the exit. Each step took more effort, a foreign weight welling up in her chest. “It’s…”

“Hey, man—” “My mom died,” she blurted, the exit door at her back. The floor tilted beneath her feet, and she couldn’t really distinguish anything about the night shift worker. She didn’t know what she wanted his expression to be, pity or sympathy or shock. She didn’t know what she wanted to hear, same as in the lobby. The talking was getting louder. That persistent heat ran up her neck, and she grasped at it, voice rising as well. “God my fucking—my aunt is out there, and she was asking me about an accident because apparently I had an accident when I was a teenager and I lost all my hair because of that, because god forbid my mother say I cut it—god forbid I let it go short or she lets it go bad or anyone can fucking know that I made the change. God forbid she was fucking honest for once about what she wanted, huh? Up until she died— up until—” Sal buried her face in her hands. Then wiped at her dry eyes. Unbidden came the image of Penny. Then the nausea. Then the voices in the hall. Melvin, voice high and apologetic. Her aunt, frantic, clinging to a thought of pretty blonde Sally, a girl still young and confused but with a beautiful, shiny-cut veneer, just like her mother. Always just like her fucking mother.

“Sorry,” Sal whispered. “I’ve gotta go, tell Melvin I was sick if he asks.”

She turned sharply towards the door, opening it to leave.

“I’ll take care of it, uh, day shift. You don’t gotta worry about anything.”

“Thanks,” Sal said, and then walked out, turning fast down toward the street before the door even slammed shut. The morning was still cool, spring on the cusp of summer, and it was a remarkably pretty day, especially for a walk—sunny with light cloud coverage that softened the glare. In her pocket, her phone rang, then stopped, then started ringing again. She didn’t know where she was going.

Sal stopped and called Penn. The phone rang, once, then twice, and then it was picked up, a crackle emanating as Penn swore and presumably dropped something.

“Sal—Sal are you there?”

“Oh uh, yeah, I’m here.”

“Something wrong? I thought you were busy all day. That’s how you made it sound.”

“I uh…My…Are you at my apartment?”

“No. You didn’t seem to want me there, so I went back to mine.”

Sal swallowed hard. It was starting to rain, light on her face. “Will you be there long?”

“At least for another few hours. The studio opens in the evening today since the dude who supervises got called in for his other job early. Why?” “Okay—would it be alright to come over? I wanna talk about uh, a couple of things, ya know my apartment’s lease—” “Will you talk to me about them? Actually? Will you talk to me about fucking any of it?”

Down the street, she spotted her bus pulling up. Sal

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breathed in, and there was still a whiff of formaldehyde and perfume. Then she exhaled. Inhaled again and smelled the rain. The warm asphalt. Everything else.

“Yeah I’ll…I’ll try, okay? I’ll really try. I’m sorry.” Her breath caught in her throat, and then she let it out in a rush that ached. “I love you, Penn.” And hung up before she got a response.

Sal began to walk again, then started to jog, then her feet began to move faster and she broke into a run without noticing.

Her boots sounded so loud against the pavement, echoing up to her. Every limb ached with the sudden movement, impact sending shocks of pain up her shin, but she didn’t stop. Was she crying?

She couldn’t tell; she hadn’t cried in the back room or in front of Ethan or even on the phone with Penn, so surely…surely… Sal had never cried in front of her mother, she realized, not since she was a small child, and maybe that was a petty thing to think about right then. Maybe it was nonsense to imagine it, the blue stool and her mother’s profile and the shiny pink lipstick of those early years.

In this moment, her mother didn’t say they were late or make any such comment about Sal at all. She just turned and grinned, freely.

“Would you like some?” she’d ask.

“Of course,” Sal would answer, and she’d be seven and seventeen and twenty-five: all of herself at once outgrown and perfectly situated in the stool. “I want to smile pretty like you too.”

A sob wrenched free of her throat, and Sal continued to sprint for her bus, not stopping for tears, or for pains, or for any passerby concern— sure that if she didn’t make it in time, if she missed this lonely, blue-red bus, then another would never come to take her home.

Hudson Brown

Photography St. Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX

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Untitled Photography 2023

Iris Cai Everything that grows is foreign Between the sky and our four green walls, light is the only tenant that knows how to leave.

Better for you to live a small life, my mother repeats.

Small enough to thin between the louver blinds, leaving my absence cast in rows on the popcornstudded ceiling. Today, we watch afternoon linger in every photograph, our hair the same washed-out red.

When apologies are too big for us to hold, I try to think about how I was once just a cell in her body, and the poetry she must have swallowed for me.

My mother worries I left her for dried ink, an age-old lie.

Yet all I am is her. We are both thinking about how we used to tease each other’s pronunciations, dictionary pages soft with summer rain.

How we fell asleep to the lull of the cicadas, minutes loose like baby teeth. We were force-fed enough until it grew bigger than we could ever be.

Until I grew into a series of unfinished dreams: scrapbook poems, wilted plane tickets. Side effects of all the hurt that comes with being. I want us to stop wanting. Bear the sky that hugs these eaves.

Restaurant kitchen dim with oil, iridescent scales in the sink from all the lives we gutted so we could live. I am sick of food chains, putting knife blades to mouths. In my hands, the fish splutters with skyline, also wanting. My mother tells me I smell foreign, which I translate as in transit, like an airport after all the people have left. I say I am driving to Los Angeles. Neither of us cry.

It rains when I leave. Lightning a hairline fissure somewhere behind us, so terribly small.

My mother nurses a mason jar between her hands, coaxes lamplight out of its grieving insides.

I used to catch fireflies in here, she finally says.

They always died before I could let them go.

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Poetry The Harker School San Jose, CA

Lauren Cheng

Design Burlingame High School Burlingame, CA

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646 Poster Adobe Photoshop, paper, colored pencil, iMac, typeface book 2023

Katherine Chong

25

Visual Arts Choate Rosemary Hall Wallingford, CT

The Death of a Native Tongue Laser-cut plexiglass, vellum, printed paper, dirt, spray paint, dictionary pages, yarn, resin, gouache, mulberry silk 2023

Raima Chowdhury

Visual Arts Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School New York, NY

26

Jhal Masala Oil on wood 2022

Kaylee Christiansen

27

Photography Lovejoy High School Lucas, TX

Structure Cyanotype collage 2023

Bryan Chung

Design Lakeside School Seattle, WA

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Doomsday Playing Cards Adobe Illustrator, Blender 2023

Sun Clark

Spoken Word Fine Arts Center Greenville, SC

Deaf Night The left-hand text is in ASL gloss. The right-hand text is the translated poem.

HOW-MUCH “STORE I GO” I WELCOME

How long does a person welcome

BEFORE NAME-me OCEAN-FIND-FISH

a sweet lie before they’re called gullible?

EAT-SWALLOW? BEFORE voice-LOCK?

Before they change worlds?

MY LANGUAGE THERE it-TELL-me WHERE PHONE-LINE SLEEP

There it is; my language, telling me where the phone line sleeps

SAME SUBWAY-under-GROUND

like a battering subway in the ground—

WHERE MOONRISE-MOONSET

where to find the horizon of a circle moon;

IN DARK BOAT or LIGHT LUCKY?

in the cradle of a dark belief

AND I LOOK-back MY NOW BECOME NOW #EURYDICE AWKWARD-WALK I LOOK-back-forward-MYSELF BUT WHAT? DOG CAN’T SLEEP? MOON-getting-stuck-under-the-horizon?

AGAIN++ PRESSURE++

or the bright arc of a lucky star?

I look back; a new Eurydice, my feet such clumsy, three pronged hooves.

I look back, and forward, and inside but I only find a restless dog, a circle moon stuck under the horizon.

Again, again, again; pushing down in pulses,

PRESSURE-heart-beating++

like fast-flowing beats of my heart.

WHEN MY HAND it-TELL-you

When my hands talk the pressure

my-heart-PRESSURE BLEED-out-ontoground YEAR++ BECOME DRY

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bleeds out in front of us.

It takes a few years to turn dry.

Aubry Deetjen

Design Los Angeles County High School for the Arts Los Angeles, CA

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Graffiti: Rough Sketches Vellum, pen, base croquis 2023

Hannah Demerritte

Visual Arts Miami Arts Charter School Miami, FL

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In Search of America’s Dream: Grandfather Acrylic on canvas 2023

Anaïs Dufresne Powell

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Photography American Heritage School Delray Beach, FL

Knowledge is Freedom, Freedom is Solitude-04 Medium format color film 2023

Katrine Eliev

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Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

Ducks Were Quiet at the Pond (II) Photograph of an archived photo print floating in a pond, painted with acrylic, in sugar 2023

Marianna Estupinan

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Photography University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School Program Winston-Salem, NC

Subtitles (1 of 5) Digital photography and audio recording 2023

Noel Etheridge

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Design Paxon School for Advanced Studies Jacksonville, FL

Jill Scrap denim fabric, gold safety pins, gold zippers, gold hardware nails, and pearl beads 2023

Patrick Flanagan

Photography St. Mark’s School of Texas Dallas, TX

When I left school, the classroom was replaced by a doctor’s office. I created my schedule to mimic school. Different appointments resembled different class periods. Textbooks turned into appointment notes. Tests transitioned to recovery goals. These files are my classmates. When I was the only one out of school and recovering from Long Covid, I often thought, “Why me?”. Why should I be picked out from everyone else and be made to suffer alone? The manila folders, stacked alphabetically in an infinitely increasing pile, reminded me that I’m not entirely alone. There are people out there going through things just like me, and even though we will not meet, we will always share that bond. I feel a responsibility to open up my file and share every detail of my experience so my classmates in suffering know they are not alone.

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“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone” Digital photography 2023

Sofia Fontenot

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

Magpie INT. JACK’S DINING ROOM - MORNING Jack (35) sits at his breakfast bar, eating a blueberry Pop- Tart with a fork and a knife. The bright blue kitchen is half filled with water, lapping at Jack’s waist as he forks a neat Pop-Tart slice into his mouth.

Jack’s bar stool bobs him gently up and down. His eyes glaze into the robin’s-egg wall of the living room. A plastic lemon juicer drifts past his elbow and out of the kitchen.

Against the robin’s-egg wall leans a bookshelf, whose lower, underwater shelves have been emptied. The top two shelves are overstuffed with books, framed photos on their sides, a wooden apple, a trophy.

A lick of water slides one of the books out of the shelf. Jack’s eyes refocus and he abruptly kicks away his bar stool. It floats into the corner.

No, no no no-!

JACK

Jack wades through the living room to the bookshelf and begins pulling books and frames out of the lower cubby and attempting to shove them into the upper one.

They don’t fit. The wooden apple bobs away to freedom. Jack snatches it back into the pile in his arms.

He shoves the pile into a precarious pyramid on top of the shelf. A sigh of relief.

A soggy rectangle slides into the newly emptied watery shelf. It’s a blueberry Pop-Tart with a corner missing.

No!!

JACK

EXT. JACK’S HOME - MID-MORNING It is a half-underwater house. The window boxes are growing various fungi and the garden path is lined with kelp.

In the distance, roofs and townhomes sprout out of the endless ocean like little volcanoes.

Some are connected with laundry lines drying pajamas and underwear. The sky is blue, interrupted by miniscule wisps of clouds.

Jack’s garage creaks. The door folds and groans as it is pushed upwards, and Jack stands triumphantly inside the garage, tie soggy.

INT. JACK’S GARAGE - MID-MORNING A seagull squawks somewhere. Jack climbs up a pile of algae- covered boxes to reach an oldfashioned wooden canoe strapped to the wall.

JACK Alright, old girl. Me and you again.

He pulls the canoe off the wall and balances it in the water, tying one end of the canoe’s rope to the canoe brace on the wall. Jack dashes inside.

The canoe bobs.

Jack returns, kicking open the door with his foot. His arms are filled with objects- the trophies and books that were on the shelf, along with a frilly pillow, a pair of tongs, and an extra tie. He dumps them into the canoe.

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The canoe dips ever so slightly.

Jack disappears back into the house, this time emerging wearing an overstuffed backpack laden with mugs on carabiners. He’s carrying a six-pack of Kleenex boxes, miraculously unsoaked.

Jack adds his treasures to the canoe. He looks at it for a moment, puts one foot in the canoe.

He stops.

JACK Nope, nope. Wait. Who’s missing...

Jack draws his foot back out and runs inside. He reappears holding an unplugged toaster like a baby, balancing it against his hip as he locks the door.

Carefully, Jack maneuvers himself and his toaster into the canoe. He unties the rope. Pushes off the wall.

EXT. JACK’S HOME - MID-MORNING Jack emerges from the garage, shielding his eyes from the unblinking sunlight. He scrounges in his canoe for a paddle and begins paddling with determination.

Jack hums to himself as he cuts through the water. Beneath him, the ocean is clear enough to see submerged stop signs and a kelp grove in a parking lot, a dozen feet below.

Jack passes under a laundry line and his humming escalates into song. It echoes off of the houses in a delayed harmony. Jack stops.

It is silent for miles.

EXT. OCEAN - NOON There are no townhomes anymore and no laundry lines. Treetops poke from the water like shrubs. A single billboard reads ‘SHACKLED BY YOUR SINS? JESUS SAVES,’ with a phone number at the bottom that is half-disintegrated by water.

Jack paddles past a pine tree, pulling a particularly large pinecone off the tree and tucking it under his seat.

He scans the horizon for more interesting trees, not noticing another boat that pulls up beside him. It’s a rowboat painted with sleepy eyes that scour the waterline. Meredith (70), an old woman with sun-damaged skin, sits inside. Clinging to the side of the boat is Cynthia (7), wearing fuchsia goggles and arm floaties.

Excuse me-

MEREDITH

Jack croaks in surprise, turning around and extensively clearing his throat.

MEREDITH Oh- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Meredith. I was just wondering... would you happen to have any sunscreen? We’re more than an hour out from the house and I just realized I didn’t bring any for Cynthia.

The little girl waves.

JACK Well, um, yes, I might...

Jack forages around in his backpack, rattling the mugs. He pulls out a crusty tube of sunscreen. The old woman holds out her hand to take it.

MEREDITH Oh, thank you so much. It’s just so much hotter than when I was a kid...

She trails off. Jack is looking at her empty hand, holding the sunscreen close to his chest.

The woman becomes flustered.

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MEREDITH I’m so sorry, it’s your sunscreen, of course, I shouldn’t have assumed...

She fakes a cough.

MEREDITH Um. Is there anything of ours I can give you? In exchange? For the sunscreen?

Jack keeps the sunscreen close as he cranes his neck to look inside Meredith’s boat. There is a small cooler, a green Thermos, a dog-eared novel, and a bright rumpled pile of Cynthia’s clothes.

JACK How about that Thermos?

Meredith is quiet.

MEREDITH Alright... it is full of lemonade at the moment.

I like lemonade.

JACK

Meredith hesitatingly picks up the Thermos.

MEREDITH Or what about a homemade sandwich?

I can have both?

Never mind.

JACK MEREDITH

Meredith passes the Thermos to Jack quickly and takes the sunscreen. Cynthia clambers back into the boat and pulls the sunscreen from Meredith’s hands to look at it.

Thank you. Goodbye.

MEREDITH

She kisses Cynthia’s forehead and smiles at her, deliberately avoiding looking at Jack.

Jack turns the Thermos over in his hands. He holds it up to the light. He stuffs it into the side pocket of his backpack, picks up his oars, and rows away. The sides of the canoe are more than halfway underwater.

EXT. OCEAN - AFTERNOON Downtown surrounds Jack. The skyscrapers outclimb the rising ocean, stretching hundreds of feet above the water. Some buildings are tipping sideways. People peer out of the windows like mice.

Jack whistles to himself, rowing underneath a glass walkway connecting two buildings.

Inside the walkway, a parade of kids press their faces against the glass to watch him pass. A middle aged woman coaxes them along.

Water laps gently on fifth-floor apartment porches. In one, a makeshift hydroponic garden grows lettuce and basil.

Jack turns a corner. A man (26) in waders stands on one of the porches with a cup of coffee.

Hey! Want a cat?

AIDAN

Jack nearly drops his oars.

Sorry?

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JACK

AIDAN You look like a cat kinda guy if I’ve ever seen one.

JACK

A cat?

AIDAN Well boy, do I have the cat for you! Must be lonely out there on the water all day, cat-less and... lonely.

JACK

Sorry?

Aidan takes a sip of his coffee. A woman (25) in rainboots opens the porch door and leans out.

FINN Aidan-- Oh, hi. Who’s this?

Aidan looks at Jack expectantly.

JACK

...Jack.

AIDAN Well, I was just offering Jack here a brand-new, free-of-charge cat.

Finn changes her posture and laughs.

FINN We’re gonna be moving up a floor soon cause the water’s getting into the carpet, but our neighbor’s allergic to cats. No one else in the complex will take him and we can’t stand to let him live here all wet by himself.

AIDAN Do you want to take him? I think he’d like getting to see the world in your little boat.

FINN Here, here, lemme get him.

Finn turns back inside the house, holding the door open with one foot and making clicky noises with her mouth. She comes back out carrying a slightly soggy cat with orange fur.

FINN This is Nelson. Isn’t he a sweetie?

Jack wobbles to his feet in his canoe and reaches a hand out to Nelson. Nelson licks Jack’s fingers.

Oh.

(reverent)

JACK

FINN You love him, don’t you?

Jack pulls his hand away and wipes the cat slobber on his pants.

JACK I can’t take him. He’ll be too sad on my boat; there’s no space.

There’s noJack peers inside the open door of the apartment and spots a fuzzy cat condo.

JACK There’s no cat climby tree! He’ll just be sitting in one place for days. Bored.

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AIDAN His cat tree will be half underwater in a few weeks. Wouldn’t he be happier on your boat, really experiencing the world?

Finn holds out Nelson by the armpits, waving him a little. Jack hesitantly takes Nelson into his arms. Nelson plops into the boat. It wobbles and sinks lower. Nelson spots a frilly pillow and curls up on top of it.

JACK He doesn’t need... anything?

Well...

FINN

Finn walks back into the apartment and comes out with a plastic tub of cat treats.

FINN For if you’re feeling fancy. He’ll eat pretty much anything you eat, long as there’s enough meat in it.

Jack stows the cat treats. Nelson looks up with a chirp when he hears the treats rattle.

No toys? Nothing?

JACK

FINN He does have quite a few toys... Why not? If you’re willing to take it.

Aidan has pre-emptively located a wicker basket of cat toys. He rifles through it, passing toys to Finn without looking up.

AIDAN Catnip mouse... that’s a fun one. Ooh, Mr. Sandy, gotta have him.

Does he need the fuzzy string?

FINN He doesn’t need the fuzzy string.

Finn deposits the selected toys onto Jack’s canoe. Nelson lazily paws at the catnip mouse.

AIDAN (voice breaking) Okay. See you, little man.

Bye, bye, babycakes.

FINN

AIDAN (to Jack) Thank you for doing this, man.

JACK No, no, happy to. Nelson seems like a good guy.

Aidan starts to cry. Finn hugs him.

He is.

AIDAN

Jack looks slightly uncomfortable. He offers a stunted wave goodbye and pats Nelson’s head, then picks up his oars and starts rowing away. Aidan and Finn watch them go from the apartment porch.

EXT. OCEAN - SUNSET Jack is out of the city. The ocean is flat for miles in front of him except for the canoe’s broken trail through the water. Nelson watches the ripples intently.

Jack sighs and stops paddling. The sunset reflects bright pink and orange on the surface of the water. He stares at it. His eyes glaze over.

41

Nelson interrupts the silence with a lengthy meow. An enormous foghorn blares in response from behind Jack. Jack jumps and a trickle of water enters the boat.

Approaching the canoe is a yacht, dotted with the brightly colored bodies of dancing people.

As the ship gets closer, upbeat dubstep music grows louder.

Everyone on the yacht is wearing wildly different clothing- some couples are in suits and soirée gowns, others in swimsuits. One girl with tattoos up her arms is grooving to the music in sweatpants.

A man in a Hawaiian shirt and jorts leans down to talk to Jack.

JOSHUA Hey, man. Woah, is that a cat? That’s so hilarious. I love it.

Nelson.

JACK

JOSHUA Nice to meet you, Nelson, I’m Josh.

JACK No. The cat. He’s Nelson.

Oh.

JOSHUA

(to Nelson) Nice to meet you, Nelson, I’m Josh. (to Jack) Haha, no, I’m just ‘Josh’ing you, man. Wanna join the party?

Jack picks up his wooden apple and turns it over in his hands.

JACK Sorry, not today. My boat could float away without me.

JOSHUA Aw, man. That’s a shame. We’re like, a legit organization. The PostApocalyptic Radical Traveling Isosceles Energetic Ravers Society.

The P-A-R-T-I-E-R-S. Pretty cool, huh?

JACK No, it’s- that sounds great. I’m just not, uh, ‘isosceles’ enough, I think, so I should probably...

JOSHUA All right, your choice. If you ever change your mind...

Oh wait! Don’t go anywhere, man.

Joshua squeezes through the wall of people and disappears. Jack tries to find something to look at. He scratches Nelson’s chin.

Joshua returns, holding a flute of champagne.

JOSHUA A farewell gift for the mysterious traveler.

Oh, thank you.

JACK

Jack leans forward to take the champagne flute. The rim of his boat is now nearly level with the water. Jack takes a sip of champagne.

JACK Mm. Thanks. See you around. I guess.

Joshua salutes as Jack holds the champagne between his knees and picks up his oars to paddle away. Without the light of the party boat, Jack can hardly be seen.

42

EXT. OCEAN - MORNING Jack is asleep on his canoe, slumped against his backpack. Nelson is sitting on his foot, also asleep. The boat is in a forest now and young pine tree tops peer above the water every few feet.

A harsh, grating bird call startles Jack awake. He opens his eyes groggily. A magpie is heading directly towards the boat.

Wh- hey! No, no, no!

JACK

The magpie lands on the rim of the canoe. They stare at each other.

Slowly, the boat dips to one side, submerging the magpie’s feet. Water trickles over the side of the boat, faster and faster until it is rushing inside and the canoe is tipping over. Jack grabs onto his backpack as he is pulled underwater.

Jack does not know which way is up. He thrusts his hand out of the water and it hits the cavern of the upside-down canoe. He continues flailing until he manages to find open air. It is sunny and breezy and he takes a deep breath.

A man (35) sits in a canoe with a cooler and a fishing rod. He is holding a soggy Nelson, who wears the expression of a weathered soldier.

THOMAS Woah. Want some help there? What happened?

Jack flails onto his righted canoe while Thomas holds it steady.

JACK (out of breath) Stupid... bird...

He sits up and spots all of his stuff, waterlogged and sinking around the canoe. He looks ready to jump overboard.

No!

JACK

Jack leans over to try and salvage anything he can. He picks up a still-floating wooden apple.

It drips onto his pants.

THOMAS Oh man. Was that all of your stuff?

Jack doesn’t say anything. Thomas passes Nelson back into Jack’s canoe.

THOMAS Listen, I don’t know what your situation is, but if you want, I’ve got a little tree house not far from here, and you can chill there for a bit? If you want?

Jack doesn’t look at him.

No thanks.

JACK

THOMAS Well, alright. I mean, can I give you anything? You need some food?

JACK How about your fishing rod?

43

Iris Fu

Visual Arts The Harker School San Jose, CA

44

taking photos of my mom as she’s angry at me for taking photos Digital photography 2023

Brian Guan

Play or Script Dublin High School Dublin, CA

MAYFLY Community pool. At least, the edge. Sitting, two boys: LEVI (19) and BEN (17).

Beer bottles, half empty. Nighttime.

LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

BEN LEVI BEN

We screwed her up so good.

Stop saying that.

We screwed her up so good.

Stop.

That pelt was the best thing ever. Bloody but it was like. Prettier somehow. Like she was painted, better than those stupid murals downtown; our shots were that good.

God you would’ve thought I was a real soldier already. God. That felt like fate. Or church.

You’re wrong, though.

About what.

Like. Like the murals aren’t stupid. And we didn’t screw her, all right? Screwing is ugly. Sin. We were hunting, which is okay because good men hunt all the time. But they don’t screw. We are. You’re a good man.

LEVI

BEN LEVI

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

45

(He takes a swig.)

Actually it’s not a her it’s an it. A deer. Not real. I don’t want to think of it like that.

Like some sort of desecration. Like I’ve damned myself. The way you talk we could’ve killed someone.

Please. Words don’t make a difference. And even if they do - for the record I said “screw her up” not “screw her”. Ha. For the record I know good men who have ugly sex everyday.

Really? Like who?

I don’t know. Like James Hartford. He was in my year so you don’t know him, but he gets around like crazy. He works at an autoshop, which is, you know. Basically a whorehouse.

That’s insane. He’s a real adult.

I mean he’s not going anywhere. Not like me.

Right. Right, a gap year’s more impressive.

You think so?

BEN

LEVI

BEN

No doubt. Anyone can work on cars, right? Get a job, get a girl pregnant. But you’re living. Not tied down. On edge. A pioneer.

God you’re so right. You’re so right. I can’t believe you haven’t graduated yet. You’re smarter than everyone I know.

Yeah. Thanks.

He looks down at his lap. LEVI doesn’t notice.

LEVI

BEN LEVI

When I join the military next year I swear. I’m gonna be the best damn American there is.

I know.

Gonna kill so many terrorists.

BEN laughs inadvertently.

LEVI BEN LEVI

What’s so funny.

Nothing.

No, tell me. What’s so funny.

Half a threat. BEN sobers up.

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN

I don’t know. You sounded like you were about to play Call of Duty or something.

Call of Duty’s great.

No, I know. Wasn’t a dig.

Whatever, man.

I believe you. Of course you’ll be an amazing soldier. You will. Screw them up.

LEVI

Okay.

A lull. Words feel wrong. In their place LEVI wraps his arm around BEN’s neck, trying to push him over the pool’s edge. BEN escapes, barely. LEVI laughs.

Reluctantly, BEN starts to laugh too.

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

46

You suck, Levi.

What? You wanted to learn how to swim, right?

Kinda.

Why else did you make me come here.

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to learn how to pray.

You don’t make sense when you’re drunk.

I’m not drunk.

I am.

(Beat.)

Okay. So what do you want to know?

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

BEN LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

Sorry?

About praying.

Oh. Well I didn’t mean it literally.

Then why’d you say it.

It was a euphemism.

A what?

Actually, fine. Tell me. How do you pray.

Um. I don’t know. Just, clear your head and say the words, I guess. “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...” Yada yada. You get it.

Huh. I could never pray like that.

It’s not hard. Just memorize better.

No, I know the words. It’s just. I don’t know how you empty your brain so easy. When I pray it feels like I’m lying.

I mean, just breathe and forget. I don’t know what else to tell you.

Maybe you’re just a good Christian.

Ha. I know that’s right.

Do you think I’m one?

Yeah, maybe.

(He thinks.)

You are, Ben. A pause. BEN speaks carefully.

BEN

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You know, that’s sort of why I don’t swim. Like, I can, technically. Well. It’s more fighting the water than anything, but.

LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN LEVI

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

48

Yeah?

Yeah. But lately... I don’t know. I can’t be underwater. When I am, I don’t think I’m real.

That’s stupid. Of course you’re still real. That’s, like, basic fucking physics.

But it doesn’t feel that way. When my head’s submerged, I’m not there, not really.

My thoughts replace me. It’s oppressive.

Water is oppressive.

Basically. I don’t know. I think. I think it’s more about being alone than anything else, really.

Is that why you cling to me all the time?

Shut up.

You know, maybe that’s why I don’t get you. I wish I could be alone. Ever since my dad passed my mom’s been on my ass all the time. God. Maybe she should’ve been the one to kill herself. (reconsidering) Actually no. My dad was worse.

You don’t mean that.

Don’t tell me what I mean.

I liked your dad.

You didn’t know him.

But he was a good preacher. He was the reason I started going back to church.

Sometimes when things get bad I still watch his sermons on YouTube.

You search him up? Perv.

Not like that. He just talked good, that’s all. Like there’s something bigger. He talked like he believed it. Before I spoke at the funeral, I listened to a couple of his preachings. For inspiration, you know? I wanted to do him right.

Well I can tell you that your speech was bullshit. Pretty, but bullshit.

Funny. I remember you were the only one paying attention. Seems like you were listening pretty good.

Maybe I was praying you would shut up.

You’re being mean.

LEVI

BEN LEVI

You’re being a girl.

(Beat.)

Men fight. They don’t surrender. My dad surrendered. Asshole. The only good thing he ever did was teach me how to hunt.

Yeah, I guess. Hunting’s fun.

It’s more than fun, though. It’s like how you talk about Dad’s sermons. That’s how I feel about hunting. Shooting a gun is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it’s more about- about knowing something right before it dies. Like stalking an animal... that’s the closest thing I’ve gotten to real sex. You’re watching them but they don’t know it. ThenHe cocks an imaginary gun and shoots. Pow! BEN laughs, joins him. Pow! Pow! Pow!

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

You’re screwed up.

I’m serious. It’s better than alcohol. It’s power. That’s real intimacy.

I think you might just be a sadist.

Please. You wouldn’t get it. I mean I like hunting with you, but objectively you suck.

How do I suck?

You can barely shoot. You always close your eyes before firing. You’re a pussy.

I’m not.

Pussy.

Stop.

Pussy.

BEN punches his shoulder. LEVI glares at him, then starts to snicker.

LEVI BEN LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

49

God damn. Even your punches are weak.

It’s weird. I didn’t know you were a virgin.

Who are you calling a virgin?

You just said it. That you haven’t had real sex before. I thought you did it with Abby sophomore year.

Please. No, uh, we didn’t. I don’t know why.

That’s surprising.

LEVI

BEN LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN

LEVI

BEN

You’re one to talk. You haven’t even had a girlfriend. You’re the virgin. You’re barely even a man.

That’s not true. I’ve had… opportunities.

Like what?

Like. Like Ellie Johnson. Few months ago someone told me she thought I was hot. I just didn’t follow up.

Why didn’t you say anything to her? Pussy.

I don’t know. I regret a lot of things. Like, I wish I hadn’t told you all that. I wish I’d said yes to Ellie. I wish I hadn’t shot that deer. (sing-song) Pussy…

I wish you would stop calling me that. I wish I could pray. I wish I hadn’t kissed you back at the funeral.

A slip up. Silence.

LEVI

BEN LEVI

BEN

(slowly) I thought you said we’d forget about that.

I know.

It was nothing, right? Like we agreed?

(BEN doesn’t respond.)

Right?

Yeah. Nothing.

BEN chugs the rest of his bottle. LEVI nods, clears his throat.

BEN LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN LEVI BEN

50

Levi, can we talkLook, I wanna go. So jump in already. Let’s get this over with. (taken aback) I don’t want to. I’m not ready yet.

You’ve had a lot of time to be ready.

Well I’m not.

I’m getting bored.

Fine. Go home. It’s whatever.

LEVI

BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

No. If I go home, then you’ve made me come here for no reason and you’ve wasted my time. You’re going in.

I thought you wanted to hang out.

You’re such a girl. Pussy.

I said stop saying that.

Pussy.

Shut up.

Pussy.

Fine. I’ll leave.

Don’t make me push you. I can screw you up.

BEN begins to laugh.

LEVI BEN

What’s so funny.

That’s what you want, right? You want to screw me up? I mean, you kissed me. You started it. So what? You screw animals and terrorists and now you’re gonna screw me? You’re gonna screwLEVI pushes BEN. He doesn’t fall in. Arms extend and suddenly they’re wrestling. At first LEVI tries to force BEN into the pool. Then it devolves into something more primal. BEN is pinned on his back. LEVI holds him down.

BEN

WHAT THE HELL. STOP. STOP. Tension, momentary. Then LEVI lets go. BEN stands up.

LEVI

BEN LEVI

(quietly) You shouldn’t have said that.

You shouldn’t haveI know.

Beat.

BEN

I take it back.

LEVI doesn’t respond.

BEN

(again) I take it back.

Still, nothing. Both boys look at the water.

LEVI

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Um. I’m gonna go. You good walking home.

BEN LEVI

Yeah.

Okay. I’ll see you at church, I guess.

LEVI gets up to leave.

BEN LEVI BEN

LEVI BEN LEVI BEN LEVI

Hey. I’m sorry.

That’s stupid.

I know what you mean. About hunting. I liked it, which I hate. That deer really was pretty.

Yeah. It was.

Do you think it was a sin? Killing it?

No. Do you think it hurt?

I don’t know. It’s a fucking deer. Doesn’t matter.

Pause. BEN nods.

BEN

Okay.

Okay.

(digesting)

LEVI leaves. BEN is alone. He watches the water. Himself, reflected. Then, a deep breath. He jumps in. Blackout.

52

Kathleen Halley-Segal

53

Visual Arts High School of American Studies at Lehman College New York, NY

The Grandmothers Chalk pastel on mixed media paper 2022

Hannah Hong

54

Visual Arts Grafton High School Yorktown, VA

Post-transition 汉服 (Hànfú) Acrylic paint, rice paper, lampblack ink sewn together using coffee filters and thread to form a traditional Chinese male garment with holes burnt 2023

Rosie Hong

Short Story Clements High School Sugar Land, TX

All Things Hollow Hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep —Ocean Vuong When the sparrow died, its body was lodged between the roots of a ginkgo sapling. When Popo saw this, she uprooted the carcass and took out a shovel, reminding me how dead things should always be buried in the ground. “That’s how we remember them,” she said, nestling the sparrow in the dirt, pulling its plumage back to reveal its underbelly. “So we won’t forget about them. Even things up there.” She believed that all dead things in the sky were eventually pulled down by gravity. “See this, Ying.”

She nudged the sparrow’s body, its ribs shuddering in defiance–too heavy to keep it afloat. “But sometimes, that doesn’t happen.” She warned me of a woman who ventured too far up there until she was pulled from Earth’s grasp. “That woman. I think that woman was your mother.”

My mother had left me when I was still a name in her womb. She had chased after a man that was supposedly my father–a man who couldn’t bear to watch my mother’s belly ripen into a daughter with his face. A few weeks after my mother vanished, Popo had found me wilting beside the supermarket.

Despite my raw body and tattered plumage, she immediately recognized me–folding in my right ear to reveal a large brown mole identical to hers. That day, Popo had cradled me in her arms, knocking in neighboring villages, begging if anyone had extra space in their home. “I am already in my 60’s. I can’t take care of a child,” she had argued. But when they all shook their heads, she reluctantly took me home, promising herself that she would raise a fledgling correctly this time–a fledgling who learned to take root in soil. A fledgling who sought after horror stories of her mother who became skybound for a man.

“What happens next?” I mouthed as Popo buried the carcass in a layer of mulch. “Does she eventually find him?” Popo tilted her head and curled her lips. I looked down at the sparrow, its half-lidded eyes and beak snapped open in hunger. It didn’t seem like it wanted to be remembered. *** Popo once told me that my bones were so weak they would snap if I met a bad husband. “I grew up with a body full of broken bones,” she said. When Popo was pregnant with my mother, her husband chickened out when he heard the news. “So that bastard abandoned us,” she cursed. “And left his untamed spirit with your mother.” With these stories, Popo did whatever she could to keep me in her grasp, so I wouldn’t end up like them.

In the supermarket, she leaned over me with one hand clutching a pouch of coins, the other knitted around my shoulder.

“Bié zǒu diū le,” she reminded me. “Your bones are hollow like those birds, so you must cling to me, or someone will sweep you out of my reach.” She taught me to plant my feet deep into the ground, latch my heels to earth because my bones were weightless. “Like this.” She nestled her feet into the supermarket’s freshly mopped floor, heels dragging behind her as she ventured through her routine of picking the best duck to roast in the oven.

I followed her, sliding my crooked legs along the aisles, then over the burning asphalt of the parking lot with one hand clasped in Popo’s pocket, the other attached to her wrists like the string of a helium balloon.

The pavement burns my soles. I’m heavier than a balloon.

Isn’t this excessive? When I complained to Popo, she always argued that this was better than getting my wings clipped like other girls. “They couldn’t go anywhere, cooped up in their bedrooms.” When I asked her what place was so morbid girls had

55

to be shackled to their beds, she pointed to somewhere above, tracing her fingers along half-mouthed syllables of “There, or there, or there.” From then on, I would peer at the skyline every time we left the supermarket, eyeing anything that recalled death, anything forbidden. I found myself tracing the bellies of sparrows darting boundless above. Their bones were raw and hollow like mine, but the sparrows flew by themselves. They clung to nothing but their own bodies.

At the dinner table, Popo took off her apron, her hands slicked with duck grease. She threaded her chopsticks through the roasted bird, peeling the skin to reveal white flesh. “Popo,” I tapped her arm. She plopped pieces of duck breast into my bowl. “How come the sparrows don’t hold onto anything?” Why can’t I venture away like them?

Popo lodged a duck bone between her gnarled teeth.

It snapped in her jaws. “This is what happens when a bird that cannot fly grows too ambitious.” She twisted the remaining joints with her thumb. A graveyard of broken bones piled up beside her, all hollowed from their memories. *** House sparrows abandon their nests two weeks after birth, only to return a few months later to lay a new brood. Popo warned me to never trust information like this on the internet, as all sparrows were liars, never circling back home. But sometimes, she secretly believed they did. She cracked the porch window half open at night and sprinkled roasted sunflower seeds on the doorstep in hopes of luring her daughter home. Every time, the squirrels would end up raiding the seeds, and Popo would dump a new bag before scanning the perimeter of the house for any signs of her daughter. When she came back empty-handed, she cursed my mother’s foolery, warning me with tales of girls mimicking sparrows. Girls who tried to pocket fistfuls of warmth from their youth in their bellies before taking off. “Stupid girls,” she spat, slamming the door of the pantry stocked with sunflower seeds, “become birds plagued with this kind of hunger.”

When I searched hunger online, I found images of skin thinning over bones, ribs unfurling from barren chests. When I asked Popo what hunger looked like in girls, she leaned over and grabbed a fistful of air under my ribs. “You can’t see it. Only feel it. It’s a kind of hunger that even mothers can’t satisfy for their daughters.” She described girls who grew up to be mothers with hollowed bodies that wanted to be warm and nested in a loving household like all sparrows seemed to be. Mothers who yearned for fleeting love from men they fawned over, so they blindly followed them. “They abandoned their memories, children, motherhood. You cannot try this, Ying. When your father left your mother, he took that feeling away. And look at where she is now.”

She pointed to the same place she always did, weaving her fingers through a film of clouds, then curling them into fists pressed against her chest. As if she was caught in this hunger herself. As if she was praying for her daughter to come home in the form of a sparrow–body whole and warm and loved–instead of a starved girl who looked too much like her.

That night, Popo pulled out a photo album tucked under the nightstand. It was so old the spine cracked every time she pressed her thumbs against a page. She started from the back and flipped through empty pages where photos used to be, then through photos of a teenager who looked too much like me–cheekbones sharpened into knives, torso twisted into an hourglass, plumage woven into two braids. She flipped to the front, tracing her fingers over the border of a photo. “Your mother,” she mouthed. “Wasn’t she pretty?”

In that photo, my mother was a girl halving mooncakes and popping peach soda by a creek. Her plumage was sheathed under her raincoat. Unlike other photos in the album, my mother’s belly was full and warm with sweets, not tattered or twisted or hollow. Wasn’t she pretty? I asked myself. What more could she have wanted?

From then on, I created tales of my mother’s childhood as bedtime stories–a girl cracking sunflower seeds by the doorstep while Popo combed and untangled her plumage behind her. In one scene, my mother and Popo sunbathed on the front porch, hair glued to their flushed cheeks, bellies bloated from gorging on watermelon, sticky beaks snapped shut. In another, my mother–a tamed fledgling who had yet to bear a child–learned with Popo how to build something whole. And in every scene, I asked my mother the same questions: Were your bones hollow from birth like mine? Do you remember? Are you still hungry?

I tried to answer them myself, clawing at sounds in my throat for any reason to explain my mother’s absence. Every time I answered, the words splintered into syllables, coughed up as sharp gasps of air. *** In all my dreams, a woman with my mother’s face leaned against the wall behind the supermarket. Her knees were tucked in to protect her pregnant womb. I was a fledgling, circling around the roof, the night lights flickering in familiarity. She unwound her body into something young–eyes half-lidded, mouth gaping open, ready to take flight. Her belly softened into something like a child’s, hollow enough to float. And as she unfolded from the earth, I saw what she left behind. A daughter–her back digging into the parking lot, arms stretched above, watching as her mother spiraled upward into something warm and pulsing and alive. As if, from the beginning, the daughter had already learned this hunger for the sky.

When I told Popo about these dreams, she cursed herself and told me that this was inevitable. No matter how much she warned me of the sky, like many girls, I still dreamed of it–dreamed of the same thing my mother did. “Dreamed of the same thing I did five decades ago. Girls wanted to be lost. Once girls experienced girlhood, they wouldn’t leave it.” Popo crouched beside me on the porch, retelling her girlhood in the past tense.

How, at that time, she was pregnant at fifteen with my mother, teetering between girl and motherhood. How girls like her who tasted motherhood wanted to revert back, to experience first love and egg yolk mooncakes again. And although Popo didn’t cave to temptation, my mother had seen the hunger through her. How Popo perched on the kitchen window every morning, watching mothers part with their daughters like a recurring dream. “Our hunger is searching for something we had, Ying. To make full from what’s hollow.” *** I searched my body for all things hollow–clenching my weightless wrists and snapping my beak open and closed when I lost Popo in the supermarket aisles–trying to find the place where hunger took root. I never found it because my hunger only appeared at night. It bloomed roots in my hands, bridged the space between my mother and I as I rummaged through traces of her in my dreams. When did hunger take her? Was my birth her sin? I would wake up with my clammy palms lifted toward the ceiling fan, sometimes reaching for my mother’s face, sometimes something faceless, sometimes a shadow.

By the time I opened the photo album, grime had filmed the cover. I flipped through the pages, picking out photos with my mother’s face. More than half of them were missing by now, including the one with the mooncakes and peach soda. When I showed Popo the empty pages, she admitted that she had tried to bury the photos under the ginkgo sapling. “To remember her,” she said, following me as I rushed to the backyard.

What do I remember? I bent over a barren patch of land, the scarf Popo had wrapped around me unraveling, wind whipping my right cheek. What can I remember now? The photos were gone, resurfacing every time it rained, carried away

56

by the wind until they too were skybound. *** In one dream, I snuck under the ginkgo sapling and dug out what was left of the sparrow. Water pooled between the roots where it was buried. I bent down and split open the tomb, fistfuls of mud sliding off my fingers. I uncovered the carcass of the sparrow, its plumage whittled into yarn. The sparrow’s bones were too heavy to keep it afloat, so I rewound its body and buried it back.

In another, I felt something pulsing through the mud.

The sparrow was whole and warm and breathing–a machine of hollowed bones. And as it pushed itself out of the ground, it split open its mud-caked wings, snapping its beak open in hunger.

Translations: Popo: Maternal grandmother Bié zǒu diū le: Don’t get lost

Raynah Howard

Spoken Word Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts New York, NY

connedtext Jack & Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water jack fell down and broke his crown and jill came tumbling after famous rhyme i’ll save my time but did you know that that was based on an execution? way back in ye old revolution the people were thrilled by the ways that they killed/liberated themselves from King Louis (Jack) and his queen Marie (Jill) their heads were free (still) from necks guillotined in their baskets that’s the broken crown Too bad it was drowned out by the pleas to censor it see the joy in response to oppression undergoes censor-ship i’m sure if Jack & Jill were black and killed it’d’ve won an oscar Not to underhand black creatives who fight back with stories of violence and honesty exposing truths we have yet to see that is exactly the right thing to do i’m just tired of it being the ONLY work society chooses to go through black art is multidimensional it exists beyond our suffering there’s black love black joy black excellence black limitless but “We cannot thrive, we simply persist” See, I didn’t write that even though I typed that it’s just from a d&d show ‘cause I’m nerdy like that and i’m using it to make my point cause i’m wordy, like that because despite my “non black” interests and my (artistic) indifference to the plight of black legitimacy i’m deserving of facts a space to state my name not plead my case but be dominant in a form and function in homage to creators prominent in the days before we had voices that were not begging for freedom Our art is beyond our suffering Our art is captured in black lover-ing In black hands holding each other after covering each other in kisses smothering each other in paint after project after project covering each other in dainty fabric tangling lasting love in melanated mouths but no black art is “Can you do it more urban?”

“Do it like you’re rapping.”

“Do it like your pants are sagging.”

“Can I see it more black-y?” (ahem) Ok I make rhythm out of nervousness refurbish scars hurl them stars at atomic speed splitting spit with my rhyming scheme my time to dream is constant unceasing mastering of worlds fantastical i make you trip with the way i understand iambic lines because i self identify as an issue beyond my femininity i am no tissue to be bunched up used thrown out mused at like a statue achoo sneeze somewhere else i’m not single use single through all my struggles so you can’t convince me that i need your validation to be seen you’re struggling to listen to my words just focus on the verse on the beats you can’t keep up with the black in me when there’s nothing there to slow me down just focus, on the black girl speeding through lines running out of time to breathe attacks the weaving patterns of mathematical hip hop flip flop from rhyme to rhyme switch timing flies faster than you’d believe and then she’s finished “Wow, that was so powerful but. What did you say?”

So I make it simple Because the speed of the rhythm that flows through my dimples is too complex people aren’t searching for black joy in black contexts so I take something familiar and switch it up call it a conned text

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(ahem) Jack and Jill went up the hill and died a violent death Janine and Jamal came up behind and kissed over their heads Their lips were brown and two toned, and their eyes filled flush with joy and a perfect kiss was captured ‘tween a black girl and black boy

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Margaux Ip-Geisler

Play or Script New Mexico School for the Arts Santa Fe, NM

YOU CATCH EM’ WE COOK EM’ Based on, a lobster INT. SEAFOOD MARKET - TANK - DAY The tank is barren with only the creeping algae decorating it and remnants of lobster antennae and pseudofeces floating around. The filter is broken and spits out brown water contaminating the tank to an even greater extent.

In the corner of the tank sits a LOBSTER named Freckles. Freckles is facing the glass, sitting still, and staring out into the market.

Freckles has a mostly dark shell with little vibrant specs of red scattered around.

Freckles has an extremely thin build with claws tied shut by a disintegrating green rubber band.

On the opposite side of the tank there is a much larger lobster clawing at the glass trying to find a grip. The tank sits in a seafood market.

Freckles turns around to face Lobster.

FRECKLES I don’t know how much longer I can take it. I am really going crazy now.

Lobster turns around but doesn’t respond. It then turns back around and continues clawing.

FRECKLES (CONT’D) You’re not even responding, I’m talking to myself. I mean that doesn’t really scream mental stability.

Lobster doesn’t respond, still busy clawing at the glass.

FRECKLES (CONT’D) It was bearable at first, I mean sure, the tank isn’t very spacious, and I can’t really do much at all with these rubber bands, but we got through it, together. Ever since Mae... my dear Mae...

Freckles stops talking and curls their tail under their body.

FRECKLES (CONT’D) It gets easier though. Whenever I remember that I am just in the waiting line for my inevitable meet with butter, a sense of relief washes over me. If it only weren’t for my tiny skeletal build, it would probably come a lot fasterLobster whips around.

LOBSTER Would you shut it already?

Freckles stares in disbelief.

LOBSTER (CONT’D) I know that you’re going through it right now and trust me I get it, but I am not going to die here, and neither will you, so will you give me a boost?

FRECKLES What’s the point. We’re never going to get out of here.

Lobster turns around and leans in, lowering its voice.

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LOBSTER Listen, I have known you for about 2 days but word around town is that you’ve been here for a month, is that right?

Well...

It’s true, isn’t it?

FRECKLES LOBSTER

FRECKLES You don’t know what I have been through. You don’t know who I have lost.

LOBSTER I know you have things to live for.

Like what?

Who is Mae?

FRECKLES LOBSTER

Freckles pauses and looks away.

LOBSTER (CONT’D) I mean for the two days that I’ve known you, you have not stopped talking about her to me, don’t I have the right to know?

FRECKLES I really don’t think that it’s any of your business, I mean I don’t REALLY know you. I don’t even know your name!

My name is Phoebe.

LOBSTER

PHOEBE pauses.

PHOEBE I love the color yellow, sometimes I even dream about a yellow world where everything is illuminated by sunshine, it makes me smile, Starfish is my favorite snack, especially the starfish with the spines along its back. IPhoebe stops and thinks.

PHOEBE (CONT’D) I have a baby out there you know? Their name is Lula, FRECKLES Lula... what a pretty name.

PHOEBE I need to survive for my baby and if I give up now, then I am giving up on Lula.

FRECKLES I wish I could help you.

PHOEBE But you can! We can get out of here and then maybe you can find Mae. She’s dead.

FRECKLES

They both pause.

FRECKLES (CONT’D) A man with a big beard came and took her from me along with every other lobster in this tank. I have nothing left to live for.

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PHOEBE Live for her. She wouldn’t want you to die in this shit hole, so if you’re not going to get out for yourself, get out for Mae. Freckles pauses to think but then tail-flips himself toward Phoebe.

All right... let’s go.

FRECKLES

Both Lobsters walk over to the wall with the filter on it. Freckles gives Phoebe a boost so they are just high enough to grab onto the filter.

Phoebe pulls themself up and hops out of the tank but before Freckles has time to follow, two people approach the tank.

Hurry Freckles!

PHOEBE

Phoebe hides and Freckles propels just high enough to reach the filter but is unable to grab on due to the green rubber bands restricting their claws. Freckles looks up to see a worker and the same Man with the big beard that took Mae. WORKER Are you sure you want this one sir? It’s kind of small.

The Big Bearded Man nods.

Ok I guess.

WORKER (CONT’D)

The worker bags up Freckles while they try to put up a fight, but with the rubber bands there’s not much that Freckles can do.

The Bearded Man grabs the bag containing Freckles from the worker, pays, and starts to walk out.

As they are walking, Freckles can see Phoebe scurrying across the floor and as soon as they are out of the doors a big crunch is heard.

WORKER (CONT’D) Aw shit! Larry get the mop, I stepped on a fucking lobster!

Rest in Peace Phoebe.

EXT. PARKING LOT - DAY The Man walks into the almost empty parking lot and tosses Freckles into the back seat of a disgustingly beat-up SUV. INT. CAR - DAY Freckles looks around trying to find any way to escape, not having given up yet.

The car starts and Freckles feels an undeniable sense of fear as they notice that littered around the car, are the same plastic bags from the seafood market, empty.

What a pig.

FRECKLES

Freckles feels the car pull out of the driveway and frantically searches for a way out. The window is open. That’s it!

All Freckles has to do is break though this plastic bag! Freckles scratches and scratches at the bag but is unable to break free due to, you guessed it, the green rubber bands.

Accepting defeat, Freckles starts to remember the last few moments with Mae. INT. SEAFOOD MARKET - TANK - DAY (FLASHBACK) The tank is the same as the present other than less creeping algae. Mae and Freckles are alone facing each other in the corner of the tank.

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I love you Freckles.

Don’t say that.

I love you.

MAE FRECKLES MAE

FRECKLES Don’t- don’t say that, we are getting out of here.

MAE (frantically) We aren’t! He has come back for us, I wish it wasn’t true, but it is, and you know it. These are our last moments together please don’t lie to yourself, we are no different than any other lobster and we are to meet the same fate as well, just please, pleaseI love you too.

FRECKLES

They embrace. The worker and the Bearded Man approach.

WORKER Ummmm so we’re actually low on bags, we only have one left and I’m not allowed to put two lobsters in the same bag. If you come back next week we will have more bags, also probably a better selection of lobsters, how does that sound?

The Man shakes his head.

WORKER (CONT’D) Ok well then unfortunately I can only bag one of ‘em.

The man nods and points at Mae. Both lobsters start scrambling around the tank not knowing what to do.

FRECKLES Why has God punished us so?

MAE (reassuring herself and freckles) It’s ok, it’s going to be ok.

The worker reaches into the tank and grabs Mae. MAE (CONT’D) Just promise me, Freckles promise me we will meet again, whether it be in this life or the next. I will wait for you and we will reunite. I will never ever let you goINT. CAR - DAY The car stops. It’s really over now. The backseat car door opens and as The Bearded Man grabs the bag, Freckles decides to close their eyes.

They figured that being boiled alive wouldn’t hurt as much with one less sense. Freckles starts to hear noises of the ocean.

FRECKLES This must be what dying feels like... it’s nice.

The bag is opened, and Freckles is dumped. As water surrounds them, it feels almost as if they are home.

MAE (O.S.) Freckles! Freckles you’re here! The Bearded Man came back for you! He saved us, can you believe it? He saved us all!

Freckles opens their eyes.

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EXT. OCEAN - DAY Freckles looks around to see that they are, in fact, back in the ocean! Multiple lobsters are embracing in the background and celebrating. Mae scurries towards Freckles carrying a BABY LOBSTER. MAE Oh my God it really is you!

Mae?

FRECKLES

MAE Yes Freckles it’s me! Oh my God you found me, I knew you would.

FRECKLES I-I found you-? I thought I was- I thought you wereMAE You thought the man ate me? Look at his car.

Freckles turns around to see the Bearded Man waving goodbye as he gets into his car which is actually covered in “save the lobsters” stickers.

FRECKLES Oh how I have missed you!

Freckles looks down and notices the baby lobster in Mae’s claws.

FRECKLES (CONT’D) And who is this little one?

This is Lula.

MAE

FRECKLES Lula... what a pretty name.

MAE When the bearded man brought us back, Lula was just sitting here, as if she was waiting for someone to come back, I have been taking care of her since.

Freckles starts crying.

MAE (CONT’D) Oh Freckles, what’s wrong?

FRECKLES Oh nothing, I’m just thinking of a dear friend.

The two lobsters embrace, and Mae notices Freckles’ claws still tightly bound by the green rubber bands.

MAE Oh I hate these things, let’s get them off.

Mae grabs the rubber bands and snaps them in half indicating that Freckles is finally free.

They embrace one last time now both free from their rubbery constraints.

I love you Freckles.

I love you Mae.

MAE (CONT’D) FRECKLES

They look at each other and all three lobsters start snapping their claws in celebration. Oh how nice it is to be wrong about everything.

FIN.

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Hanji Jang

Design Korea International School Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

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Slumbrous Picnic - The Jungle (Fashion Installation) 1 Quilted Polyester Fabric, Polyester Fabric, Rope 2023

Fiona Jin

Poetry Adlai E. Stevenson High School Lincolnshire, IL

someday i’ll throw fiona jin off a building

after Ocean Vuong / after Frank O’Hara / after Roger Reeves Lately, this is only my least violent death. Mind revolving to lead. I imagine knuckles as pennies rolling across pavement, this maw of a city, its electric teeth threading gold through an honorable burial. In this poem, we’ve descended . Blackened sewage gurgling through this ancient skeleton spit out your convulsing body of filth. & I ask you like metal in the absence of rain. Come sit with me . You, who learned jīn as danger, as the quivering tip of I am scared of death,of what might leak out. Here, this machine of flesh & bone & bruise has gone cold. Fiona, I won’t throw you over the railing because I can’t & never could.

Bite these words like ice cubes, won’t you—tell me this

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like a pistol, everything I touch lessening moonlit streets like slackening arms. Swallowed by a funeral veil of hair. In that story I am so far below the city we’re not even worthy of death of pipes that won’t take blood as rust but what is demonic? Your favorite rain jacket rippling on the hotel roof, thinning wind so raw it shivers a knife. Here is a secret: for all of my blades, I shall give you another: underneath my trembling, I—you—take these hands that are dusty fireworks & see How in our veins, the streetlights are free-falling.

Like a fighting chance: say someday I’ll love Fiona Jin.

Jessie Leitzel

Creative Nonficton Charleston County School of the Arts North Charleston, SC

The Deer I’ll Never Shoot “This is the Pennsylvania Game Commission, what can we do for you?”

I put down my coffee, press the receiver to my mouth. I can’t tell if her accent is north or west of Schuylkill Haven—there’s a tilt of the tongue, a dip in her vowels, as if with each word her voice is bending under the weight of loam. “Hello, I’m looking for information on getting a hunting license. Nonresident.”

“How old are you?” Keys clack somewhere beyond the receiver. I’ve forgotten to ask her name, and I curse myself for it.

“Eighteen.”

“Junior license number?”

“Never had one.”

There’s sequential backspacing, like she’s erasing an assumption. I wait for a breath.

“Was that a prerequisite?”

“No. State of birth?”

“Pennsylvania, near Allentown.”

“I have a cousin in Allentown.” Her voice is distant, like this was a connection she was making with a neighbor and not someone five hundred miles south.

“Everyone I meet seems to have a cousin in Allentown.”

She blows air through her nose, briefly and forcefully, and I can’t tell if I’ve crossed a line. I try to imagine her—how she’s sitting, the color of the mug next to her. I picture a ranger desk near the entrance of the forest, one with light wooden walls that smell like pine cones, as if they were ground into the foundation and seep from under her feet. I wonder if there’s a window above her desk. I wonder if each morning she notes the flies in the overhead light, their husks the size of a thumbnail. Maybe the sky has woken, or maybe it hasn’t. I wonder if she enjoys her job, if there are hunters that pass by her window each season, carrying metal jugs and airtight thermal blankets and camo, so much camo that if she wasn’t used to this specific line of trees they would be unnoticeable. I wonder if they walk by and raise a hand to her, and if she salutes back. I hope she loves this. I hope she opens the front door, especially on colder days; listens to the critters in the crawl space beneath her office, the trees as they rustle around her.

I’ve never been hunting. I’ve never been camping, either; though there was one Girl Scout trip where I set up other people’s tents, sticking the metal joints into each other like I knew what I was doing, like it was something that should’ve come naturally.

That doesn’t count, though. My father has told me stories of how our family camped, and each time, it is a series of silent things: waking before the sun, walking through the forest when the ground is damp and the world is cool from night. The pack along his spine, how the fabric spoons around the bone. Each step echoing through his boots, but to the forest, he is just one of thousands making his way between the trees, breathing out clouds of white, leaving a trace of his body in the morning frost.

My dad grew up hunting, brought his guns down south when we moved. He’s the luckier one, in this way: for eighteen sweet years, stumbling into morning with the trees just past his window. I imagine him, flat-chested, tugging on his shirt. I imagine him noting the white frost forming along the sidewalk just below, a sign of winter coming. He was able to open the door and simply be there, to take a few hops down the concrete steps and have a place in that forest, know that there is game just past the treeline and all he must do is wait until deer season begins and it will all be his. He will have the right to be there as if holding the wilderness in his palms, as if feeling this belonging curl into him.

“You said nonresident?”

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“Yes, ma’am.” There’s a scratchy cough on her end, and I tense, hearing my mistake. “We moved.”

“There’s an extra fee for nonresidents.”

“I know.” I could see it, the window in front of her, like it was my life and not hers. “I don’t mind.”

One fall turkey tag, one spring. One antlered deer. The people living in my hometown don’t rely on wildlife etiquette courses. The anatomy of the rifle is a lesson reserved for fathers.

At the opening of buck season, all the boys come to school and complain about the bristle of the hunt. How their fathers shook them from their beds, how the radio in the truck glowed an army green against the dark road ahead of them. They complain about the cold, how the early morning slaps them across the face. But secretly, these boys have waited twelve years for this, counting the seconds until their fathers were permitted by law to take them into the woods, the national forests, acres and acres of untouched land that belongs to them because their laminated cards say so.

They love this feeling most because they are entering a place where they belong. There are hunting perches built into the trees, game markers placed in the ground. They know that somewhere in these woods, there is a clearing that is theirs. Somewhere, there is a buck who will wear their tags, who will fall to them with all the dignity of an oak struck by lightning.

The deer I see every day in Charleston are not the same. Down here, they are everywhere: in between houses, walking in front of cars. My family and I live in one of those gated communities that imitate the woods; because suburbia is sprawling into the lowcountry’s forests, deer are forced to shelter here, in the open. It’s a biologist’s dream, how close you can come to them, how unafraid they are. I haven’t heard stories of people shooting them, and besides the fact that they would probably shoot right into someone’s window, I feel it’s because there’s no ritual to it. Part of hunting, I know, is the mastery of the hunt. Knowing which leaves to step on, how to place a hideout downwind. Memorizing the body language of the game who have sensed danger, and how to convince them they are wrong. In Charleston, we drive with our brights on, and the does stare at us with unimpressed eyes.

My brother is very into shooting things—was obsessed, for a time, with airsoft guns and the feeling of assembling a rifle. He and my father went as far as West Virginia for an Op, and all the way home they called and talked about the empty house they hid in, how all the ex-military wanted Jake on their teams because no one expected a thirteen-year-old to shoot with the precision he did. I still think about the image they gave me: these men running through the house, the thrill of the chase hot under their coats.

Once, in one of those spring break mornings when we were out of ways to entertain ourselves, I watched Jake point his pistol at a doe in our yard. They were everywhere that spring, the babies grown and no longer skittish, and they gathered in clusters along the road, stuck their mouths into the flowerpots on our porch. Jake stretched his arm and closed an eye, and a few of the deer stared back at him, their faces sleepy and bored. It was mildly entertaining, at most. I knew that this would have been too unsatisfactory for him, too unsatisfactory for anyone; where’s the thrill of the chase? Where’s the thin sweat blooming from the weight of the rifle, the strain of holding one’s breath for longer, longer still?

“Have you looked online at our website?” The typing has stopped, but only briefly, and then it is back again.

“I have, yes. It’s nice.”

“Do you have any licenses anywhere else?”

“I don’t, no.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t have any, I mean.” My nails pick at a spot on the countertop where the sealant has chipped, and it is like looking down through a shallow river, those stones that are too close to dry land to be disturbed by the velocity of the water, and yet are so brightly colored, all freckles covering the sand underneath. I think about tossing one back and forth in my mouth, the saltiness pooling under my tongue.

My dad and I took a trip to the North Carolina mountains a few months ago, up near Davidson College where the land dips down into Lake Norman. The weather was gorgeous; brisk mornings without the onslaught of snow. It’s wonderful to see how awake he is whenever we visit the mountains: he will fish until midnight, buy five packs of firewood too many. It’s like he’s come home. We were out on the porch of the cabin, each of us with a coffee in our hands, and he started telling me stories of hunting with his father. The stories he loves most aren’t the ones about the prize shots, the trophy tales; they are about what he didn’t shoot.

All of the stories I have about this ritual have been passed down through him. Every hunt I imagine is characterized by the intimacy he experienced, that intimacy that exists between a father and his son.

I know that one of the unspoken rules of deer season is that you don’t shoot doe. Even so, there is one cave drawing of a doe that won’t leave my mind. It’s from the Altamira Cave in Santillana del Mar, Spain, and she is beautifully drawn. Her stomach is white, and her pelt is a warm brown, as if heated underneath by a flame. Her body is diagonal to the floor of the cave, as if she is climbing down a mountain and has halted, alarmed, listening for danger. I am told that bucks are very rarely seen with their herds, but that does very rarely leave. There it is again—that never-ending, ancient symbolism. The Celts saw does as gateways to sanctity: just imagine them in the snow, weaving in and out of the trees on the forest’s border, the whiteness of their flanks the same as the garments of monarchs, of priests.

When I imagine myself hunting, I am with my father, and I am his son. As I am imagining this hunt, though, the deer that enters my mind is a doe. I can’t help but wonder if she is with me in the same way she was with the Celts, guarding the edges of their forests. She is there to make sure that men don’t venture where they’re not welcome, where they don’t belong. I don’t know why I keep coming back to this doe, who looks at me and the gun I don’t know how to use with an unvexed stare. Maybe the woods are sending me a message. Maybe the doe has smelled the femininity on my skin; maybe she knows that I am trying to experience an intimacy that can only exist between boys and their first hunt. She is telling me, go home, go home, as if I could ever admit that Pennsylvania is not my home anymore, as if I’m willing to say that this is not a body in which I’m allowed to linger.

“We tend to send people through the online portal,” the woman across the line tells me. Pennsylvanians would know her well enough to push open the door to her office, usher in their son to introduce him. She’d know their towns, know which corner of Schuylkill Haven they came from. I wish she’d tell me her name, so I can at least speak as if I’ve known her all this time, as if I’m following tradition instead of trying to learn more about it.

“I’m going to send you a quick link, and it’ll take you right to the site. Is the email you gave earlier okay?”

“Yes.” I want desperately to halt her and ask if I could just file here, now. In the background, she is typing, the keys huge and blocky in their clacking, and it’s almost as if she is recording this interaction, noting all the things I forgot to say, all the things I don’t know about this ritual.

In another world, one in which my parents didn’t move for better opportunities, I am twelve, and my dad is taking me hunting for the first time. The night is still black, and the houses around us are dormant in their brick. It is perfect weather—late November, the first day of game season. He starts the car, and I can feel the engine underneath us. We start up the slope, drive

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down Mahantongo until we hit the graveyard, where we turn left.

We pass the Dairy Queen and the diner that sells Jake’s favorite pickled beets. We take a right and are passing the car dealership, its secondhand engines shadows in the gloom, and soon we are at the intersection, to the left the Sheetz, and to the right the Dunkin Donuts where we will pick up a coffee and egg wraps, and straight ahead of us the mountains, quiet and dark and demanding. In this world, this morning, I am dressed in a camo shirt and in my head I am running through all of the things my dad told me about using a gun, where the safety is and how most of the day that safety should be on. In this world, our lips are warming from the heat of the eggs and we can hear the water bottles hitting each other, gently, when he presses on the gas and we pass out of Pottsville and into the morning, which is beginning to turn ice blue, the silhouette of the mountains becoming clearer, the sun yet to make the trees distinguishable but we know they are there because they have always been there. The mountains loom in all directions, pooling in our rearview mirror as if melting. My dad has coffee grounds on his breath, and I love the smell of it.

“Can I ask you a question, really quickly?”

“Mhmm,” she tells me. She wasn’t expecting the call to continue, I can tell, but she sounds genuine. I breathe in the warmth of her words, like she is a couple feet from me and the boyishness of the woods is all around me.

“What got you into hunting? I mean, what brought you to it?”

I can hear the creaking of what sounds like a wooden chair.

She isn’t typing anymore. It seems like she’s right there, in front of me, this nameless woman that I should know but don’t.

“I don’t hunt, actually.”

“Oh. No?” “No, I don’t.”

There’s silence, from both of us. I feel a lot smaller than I am. “Oh, okay.”

The chair creaks again, like she’s leaning forward. She says nothing.

I stare at the counter in front of me, all the browns that flow into each other. “Can I ask why?”

There’s a tired breath, a quick rustle of fabric. “I don’t know.

I never wanted to go.” She sounds a lot younger all of a sudden, and my mind shifts: a kid, a highschooler, maybe my age, on a weekend job, taking phone calls from people who are wondering about the woods and all the unattainable things in it. “My brothers go a lot.

A lot of my friends do, too. I just don’t get it. All that waiting, and they’re so cold, for what? They never shoot anything.”

I’m stunned. Blood is halting in my forearms where the counter is pressing up, and in my elbows, a deep ache builds.

“Oh.” She sighs, just a bit. The sound of a few keys, and a pause.

“Did you get the email?”

“Yes,” I tell her. I don’t bring the phone from my ear.

“Okay, good.” A beat. “Well, call back if you’re confused at all. I know the site’s a bit janky. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thank you,” I say, a formality. “Thanks.”

I hang up the phone before she does. I walk out to the foyer, stare out the windows. Up north, our house had a mail slot in the door, and if you opened the golden flap with your pinkie, you could stick your nose out, feel the burn of winter as it flew through the opening. Outside, there is a vast emptiness—no movement, no nothing. I am pissed off, I realize. All of the Saturdays I spend here, and this is the one where the deer are elsewhere, their flanks healthy and strong, colorful from the lack of stress. I’m cursing them for eating my mom’s flowers, the ones she planted and replanted and still, they were eaten down to the stem. I’m cursing my brother for not taking the shot. I’m cursing him for knowing where the safety is, for knowing what stubble on clothing feels like, for knowing what it feels like to hold one’s breath, to wait for the kill. I’m cursing my father for bringing his hunting rifles down with him. I’m cursing him for buying my brother camo, for taking interest in the sport, for buying cans of compressed air and silencers and heavy-duty slings. I’m cursing him for sharing this practice with me, instilling in me a need to belong to the types of

men who hunt simply to feel alive. I’m cursing myself, for being inside, for hiding. I still don’t have my hunting license, and I know that even if I had one, I wouldn’t be able to experience the ritual, it would never belong to me in the way it could have.

I take out my phone, find the email in my inbox. For a second, I stare at the logo of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

If I squint, it looks almost like an arrowhead, with a whitetail looking somewhere off in the distance, as if on high alert.

Somewhere in those mountains, past the Dunkin Donuts and the car dealership and my house on Mahantongo, there is a father teaching his son to hunt. The boy raises the gun, tilts his scope to the right. He wipes the dirt from his chin. His buck is meters from him, a breath. When he decides to pull the trigger, the feeling will be his.

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Jamie Jaehee Jung

Spoken Word Orange County School of the Arts Santa Ana, CA

Portrait of Words I remember seeing your paintings for the first time.

You dusted each canvas with the palm of your hand in practiced brushes as you told me the story of an artist before she became a mother.

A mother’s child is only her best portrait, so you painted layers over layers stuffing my cheeks fat with a smile, teeth straightened perfect, 눈 glistening brighter than the brightest noons of Winter, round tongue that will learn how to speak for you.

You never kept a mirror beside the easel Afraid reflections would puppet your hands Just for us to see ourselves in self portraits Chips of paint flake and fall over time So I grip your brushes in my hands but the Mirror denies my strokes so I grab a pencil And start scribbling instead.

I tell you Korean poetry can never sound beautiful.

I blame your language for my monotone voice, for stuttering syllables and tumbling conjugations.

The palette of this tongue is not enough for my painting.

I’m sorry.

Portraits shouldn’t need translating, but I am only cracked with dried paint and overdue words I’ve forgotten how to blend into sentences.

So, I color pages with metaphors and alliteration which in Korean are… in Korean are…

You see, 엄마, I call myself a 시인 poet, call me a 신 god.

My words sketch a world where you understand me, where I will find you in the audience, where I can perform this poem looking you in the eyes knowing for once I drew a bridge through the canvas.

눈 - eye, snow 엄마 - Mom 시인 - Poet 신 - God

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Kiana Ketcham

Photography Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School Brooklyn, NY

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Big Fete, Kingston, Jamaica Digital photography 2019

Juri Kim

Photography Marymount High School Los Angeles, CA

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Passing Moments Digital photography 2023

Logan Kim

Design La Canada High School La Canada Flintridge, CA

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New Foundations of Society Adobe Photoshop, cardboard, spray paint, found computer parts 2023

Ariana Lee Homeward Bound For Tai Nai Nai My Tai Nai Nai had a premonition that I would be a dancer. It happened in a flash, like the white-hot flash of too-hot water. Her feet burned, having been soaked in an herbal bath so that they would be malleable.

She didn’t complain because she was a girl. Four or seven or twelve. Too young. Blacking out from pain as her feet were broken into crescent moons and bound tightly. She understood that this was being a woman. She understood because of her mother.

She understood she was to be a mother. That bound feet would help her to be a mother. The spots in her vision danced like butterflies. Tai Nai Nai grew into stillness.

The intentional disabling of her feet made her dependent on her husband. Sometimes, she thought this life was death.

A coffin for her, a separate one for her feet. Pink coffins on my own feet two mothers later, my toes pointed into crescent moons, ribbons tucked neatly. She knew I would be a dancer. I wish I could tell Tai Nai Nai that the coffins around her great-granddaughter’s feet are there by choice, that they’re called pointe shoes.

Not a pain, but a passion. I wish to fly backwards in time.

Arriving with the grace of a monarch butterfly, I’d dance for her. She will say why did you come as a monarch.

I will say their migration is one of the greatest natural spectacles, that millions of them fly, that the journey is so long no single butterfly makes the northward trip home. Instead, it is the great-grandchildren that hatched in Mexico who return. I want her to understand what I’m really saying. She will ask what is Mexico. I will laugh. I will try to explain the border, all borders, and then immigrants, like her descendants will become.

Tai Nai Nai knew I would be a dancer—tell me about the dances, she will say. Tell me about this ballet. So I’m bound to talk about Madame Butterfly. A famous ballet about my country and the Japanese. And Tai Nai Nai does not yet know the entirety of what will happen between her country and the Japanese. The ballet ends with Madame killing herself, cutting her bloodline. Tai Nai Nai is horrified.

But don’t worry. Look at your great-granddaughter, our family’s uncut blood, my unbound feet. Look who found her way home.

TRANSLATION Tai Nai Nai: great-grandmother

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Poetry St. John’s School Houston, TX

Bailey Levy

Photography David Posnack Hebrew Day School Davie, FL

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Photo 4 Digital Photography 2023

Eboni Louigarde

Visual Arts University of North Carolina School of the Arts High School Program Winston-Salem, NC

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We are Woven By Blood Archival inkjet print, found materials, fabric, embroidery floss 2022

Grace Marie Liu Stop Motion – for R. The last time I see you, you’re stuffing your mouth with cotton until you bleed: beautiful, butterflied girl in the amber glow of a kitchen. Before, I meet you on the side of a freeway, scratching a lottery ticket with red nails, roadkill sandwiched between your Converses.

The wild bluegrass spills into you like rainwater. Oh, R. You should know at this point that love is something behind us. In August, I am knee-deep in the waters, salt in our mouths, and Cupid is light begging to be loved. You concede, push my head into a green mirage–your face vacant and our laughing trembling like a leaf.

If I’m being honest, I tried to wake you up every time. Your skeleton, dancing. Once I asked what it was like to kill. It’s easy, you said, to hit and run. In and out. Clean, like a knife. The last time I see you, the piss-yellow light slicing your face into halves, Frank Ocean hums on the radio. But what color were your eyes, exactly? Which is the same as saying: This is not an elegy.

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Poetry Greenhills School Ann Arbor, MI

Emily Maremont

Creative Nonfiction San Francisco University High School San Francisco, CA

Dry Ice In 1835, the French chemist Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier noticed that when he opened a container of liquid carbon dioxide, a solid ice that evaporates without melting had formed at the bottom. This solid form of CO2 would later become known as dry ice. Among its many uses, from refrigeration to theater smoke, dry ice made it possible for the long-term storage of specimens in cryobanks that help aspiring parents conceive children outside of traditional methods.

My mother chose my biological father from the online catalog on a cryobank website. At the time he became an anonymous donor, he was in medical school. In the report from the cryobank, the staff called him a “young George Clooney” and “the whole package”, with looks and a charming personality. He gave me thick brows, long lashes, and dark brown hair. Through him, I also inherited his mother’s singing voice. However, it turned out that the cryobank had missed some things about him.

Before my mother and five-year-old me joined my maternal grandmother in the Bay Area, we lived in an LA apartment complex. There was a pool in the back that was open during the summer. My mother would lay me on my back in the water and hold me up. Overstimulated, my hands would flap and I would squeal.

In elementary school, I developed an eye-twitch, repetitive hand-flexing, and impulsive deep breathing. When my mother and the mothers of my half siblings reported to the cryobank that their children had been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, the cryobank restricted my donor’s donations.

Every year of elementary school, my mother explained to my teacher not to take offense when I rolled my eyes or made a squealing sound in the middle of class. Of course, that didn’t stop the stares or questions from my classmates.

On Father’s Day, while everyone else was writing letters to their fathers, my teachers allowed me to write to whoever I wanted. Usually I wrote about a life I had dreamed up for him.

Sometimes he was a movie star, other times he was the king of a fictional kingdom, or Santa Claus.

In fourth grade, a teacher recommended to my mother that I get treatment for Tourette’s because my tics were disruptive during class. Mom took me to Habit Reversal Training (HRT). In HRT, I was split. On one side, the silence of the impulses I spent hours dutifully tallying in a little blue notebook my therapist gave me. On the other side, the praises from my mother and the therapist whenever I used the responses I was learning to beat down my impulses. One, two, three, four blinks per impulse. One, two, three, four breaths per impulse.

“You are so close to overcoming Tourette’s,” the therapist would say. My chest would swell with pride.

On one side, my anonymous donor and his family, a white vapor like dry ice when it evaporates. On the other side, my mother’s family, the constant presence that has raised me.

His name dropped into the private Facebook group for the parents of his offspring. The group had grown over the years, and so far I knew of at least thirty of my half siblings. I had only met a couple of them in awkward video calls. I do not know how the mothers of my half siblings found my donor. All I know is this: He is a doctor in Nevada, somewhere around Las Vegas. He has Tourette’s syndrome. And he doesn’t want contact with any of his offspring.

By that time in seventh grade, already burrowed into me was the idea that fighting Tourette’s was a feat of resilience, and a way to correct how my family and others were wronged. Learning

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that the “whole package” was only half full, I was only more determined to be unlike him in every possible way. *** My family and I boarded a plane to Las Vegas for my great aunt’s ninetieth birthday. I was thirteen, and it was my first time leaving California. I was too ecstatic to notice the rips in the seats or complain about the bitter airplane coffee. I sat on my hands so they wouldn’t flap and devoured the view from the oval window.

Mountains emerged from the haze. Compact, identical houses spanned miles. Las Vegas was a blur of tans, browns, and subtle reds. On the outskirts of the airport, palm trees stood against the barren sky. My ears popped as the plane touched down on the runway, speeding towards the terminal. For a split second I thought we would crash through The Strip. From a distance, the casinos looked like cardboard cut-outs from a children’s book.

Among the towers stood an immobile Ferris wheel, painted white.

Upon exiting the plane, video slot machines flashed in our faces, promising million-dollar jackpots. They jingled, chimed, and whirred. Wheels of fortune spun on screens. A store near our gate overflowed with baskets of candies in thin paper wrappers and the smell of caramel popcorn. People in hijabs, turbans, and cowboy hats milled around, their languages and accents made indistinguishable by the din of the terminal.

As we continued to baggage claim, we passed billboards showing women in bikinis lounging on beach chairs, a barechested man staring down his enemy in a boxing ring, and a magical card deck spread out on a table. Everything was vying for my attention. Nothing could keep my attention for very long. My hands flapped and my mouth opened. A couple people glanced over at me. I stuffed one hand in my jacket pocket, and the other I put over my mouth as if to cover a yawn.

We left the airport and joined the line along the curb to wait for a taxi. My eyes watered as the fumes of cigarette smoke blew in my face with the desert breeze. A taxi pulled up to the curb in front of us. My mother explained to the driver where we were going. He frowned and said he didn’t know that area. The couple behind us in line told him they were on their way to a resort. The driver smiled and opened the door of his vehicle for them.

We waited a couple more minutes in the heat and smoke before a car labeled “Desert Cab” pulled up in front of us. My mother repeated what she’d said to the previous driver. This one, a broad-shouldered man in his fifties wearing a T-shirt that said FIERCE, nodded in comprehension. Soon I was in the backseat of the taxi rumbling across a freeway that led straight into the mountains.

Our driver, Robert Takahashi, told us he’d been driving his cab for ten years. “The only constant thing in Las Vegas is change,” he said, as we passed fast food drive-throughs and rows of modern tan square houses. “The city is always reinventing itself.”

“What are those mountains called?” I asked.

“Those are the Spring Mountains. The jagged ones are relatively new. The rounded ones are older. That red tint comes from iron. You can see the layers that have built up over thousands of years. During winter they are capped with snow. But it isn’t cold enough, so they melt pretty quickly. Lots of coyotes and mountain lions live there.”

I could not imagine living creatures dwelling somewhere with no trees, no place to take refuge from the heat, not even prickly cacti. “How?” “There’s a forest way up there, on the other side.”

He dropped us off in front of the senior home, a flat

building overlooking a golf course. The jagged mountains did little to shield it from the sun. My mother took out her credit card to pay Robert, muttering under her breath that we were five minutes late. I decided it was the wrong time to ask her about the stop I wanted to make on the way back to the airport that evening. *** My great aunt’s party took place in the main room. The walls were covered with framed black-and-white photographs of young men and women, likely movie stars at their prime when my grandparents were teenagers. Round tables and velvet-seated chairs were positioned in a semi-circle, allowing a view of a screen broadcasting a slideshow with photographs of my great aunt throughout her life. Some I recognized. They stood on the mantel at home, above the fireplace my family did not use.

Most of the people in attendance were aunts, uncles, first and second cousins. People I’d grown up sharing dishes with at restaurants. People who had received birthday cards from me, who had given me birthday cards.

While many of my characteristics obviously came from my paternal side, I share a lot with my maternal side. The majority of the women at the gathering did not surpass a height of 5’3”. I am 5’0”, and that was the year I stopped growing. We have slight Devil’s peaks on our foreheads. We are life-long readers.

Even with all of those similarities, I still felt distant from the people I had known all my life. I imagined an alternate dining room, in which my donor, his brothers, and his parents sat around these tables. I saw myself laughing at something my donor said, and desperately wanted to know the inside joke that imaginary-me and my donor found so funny.

After answering my family’s questions about school, I sank into a chair in the corner of the dining room, watching my mother in conversation with my grandmother and my great aunt.

Their laughter at old-time family stories stretched out the minutes before the buffet opened and Mom migrated to the table where I was sitting.

As I rose to get food, I slid her the crinkled map directions to the medical center that had come up when I Googled my donor’s name. When I returned with my omelet, she was chatting with our cousins at another table. The map was folded neatly and set on my napkin. *** Our taxi stopped in front of a squat rectangular building at the side of the road the same color as the desert, made distinct only by the sign outside that declared it was a medical center.

Sensing me, the glass doors of the medical center split open. The women at the front desk of the lobby smiled sympathetically when I told her I would like to go to the ER. “What’s wrong, dear?”

I gave her a story about how one of the doctors had saved my aunt. Then I said his name aloud, three times, because the first two times were muffled. She typed something on her keyboard.

I rubbed my hands together, trying to get rid of the sweat. My eyelids tingled with the impulse to stretch out. I fought it. One, two, three, four blinks.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone by that name here. Maybe he works somewhere else?” Her voice sounded like one of those slot machines at the airport, which produce the same cheerful music regardless of whether you’ve won or lost.

“Oh, thank you.” I turned on my burning heels and left the medical center. I wondered why my donor wanted to work in a place of constant change and heat, and yet so cold in the way one could create a distance between oneself and the world just by going from one place to the next. *** I met twenty of my half siblings on Zoom at the height of the pandemic. Although I’d already seen some of their photos on Facebook, I did a double take as their faces popped up with the digital sound effect of a doorbell ringing. I was one of the youngest siblings; most of them were already in high school. We shared some of the same features, even the same interests, like writing and music. Like kids at a summer camp, we went through

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icebreakers. Would-you-rather, what would you do if you won a lottery, what would you take to a desert island.

We met only three times that summer, but it was enough to make me start questioning the shame I had been internalizing for years. Here were people who shared half of my genetic material. They’re smart, funny, and work hard at what they love to do. And some of them, like me, have Tourette’s.

I asked my mother for the report about my donor from the cryobank. She printed it out at her office, and I flipped through it. On the second page was a questionnaire. My mother dug up a compact disc and inserted it into the music player in the living room. I lay on my back on the couch, listening to my donor’s voice reading his answers.

A sense of self-worth, he said, when asked what advice he would give to his future children. People with a sense of worth have integrity because they don’t need to misrepresent themselves or their abilities. But it all starts early.

The recording halted as though it had slammed into a block of ice.

I was struck by the irony. If my donor had reported his Tourette’s, he would have been rejected by the cryobank. My half siblings and I wouldn’t exist. And so, he misrepresented his abilities.

Or, rather, his disabilities.

I felt like Thilorier, opening a container and finding a new substance inside that defied everything I had known about how I came to be.

But it all starts early. Those last words, a regret.

My mother ejected the disc from the music player and returned it to its paper sleeve with the cryobank logo.

My hands flapped, and I didn’t stop them.

Ian Ohara

Photography Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts New York, NY

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Like high Digital photography 2023

Claire Pinkston Black Jezebel Teaches Herself to Dance when you need me again, I’ll be on my back, the curve of my breast sharpening in the light of a burnt-out bulb. in the mirror, I rehearse myself bright again: a chipped tooth, a bitten-down nail. a smear of lipstick so red it swallows the night. my sisters and I walk the length of train tracks, hold ourselves between crosses of rust so deep we forget the taste of our blood. our prayers lodged in the cold place color fades to palm: to hold our heartbeat in the hushed moment before dress hits floor. to build a home a fingerswidth from carnage. I hubris, I church, Jezebel my only hymn–I have held your myths in my mouth and spat them back bloody. don’t you know? in the dark of dark, a flash of teeth gleams indistinguishable from blade. this world is too small to hold me and I have already dropped the match.

“Black Jezebel Teaches Herself to Dance” first appeared in The Offing online magazine on April 4, 2023

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Poetry Lycée Français de San Francisco San Francisco, CA

Kierra Reese

Visual Arts Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Jacksonville, FL

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I Am My Own Enemy Acrylic paint on canvas and thread 2022

Olivia Romano

Creative Nonfiction Loyola School New York, NY

Car Radio We were on a highway between New York City and Washington D.C. when my dad caused a car crash behind us. He had braked in traffic suddenly, agitated, his hands shaking––a rapid meter contrasted with the soft indie pop playing in my headphones.

I had learned to tune out most aspects of road trips with my family. I sucked on lollipops to ease the ache that stuck to the pit of my stomach, like gum I had swallowed years ago. I listened to you-wouldn’t-know-them music to avoid the slow, lilting jazz that painfully creaked from our radio, all string and wind instruments that seemed to hang onto every breath, as if slowly peeling off a band-aid. I closed my eyes, because unconsciousness was the only thing that would make the whole affair go by faster.

As the traffic loosened and our car sped away too quickly, a sickening crash echoed behind us, like the sound of two giant cymbals colliding and then imploding.

I yanked my headphones off, but I didn’t need to hear in order to understand my mother screaming at my father. My heart butterflied in my throat. I craned, trying to see the damage through the rear window, but the view was obstructed by our suitcases.

The car hit a bump some fifty feet away, but after that we were smoothly coasting towards D.C. *** Neither my father nor I were built for cars. I puked during my first long ride as a toddler, our weekend getaway upstate apparently enough to stimulate my chemoreceptor trigger zone.

After that, I couldn’t climb into the backseat without my nose wrinkling and bile rising in my throat. Road trips meant spending those hours silent, eyes shut so hard they hurt, noisecanceling headphones on, and a cherry-flavored hard candy slowly dissolving in my mouth.

My father never had any reason to learn how to drive.

Growing up in the Bronx, there was no need. His entire life was within his home, neighborhood, and school. His mother stayed home while his father worked at a cigarette holder factory; that was before people knew the health risks posed by smoking. They both puffed their lives away, until the nicotine clouds caught up to them and they both died, my grandfather from cancer and my grandmother from a heart attack, each of them lacking something in the chest.

The acrid stench of exhaust always lingers for a moment after a car speeds away. Secondhand cigarette smoke is the same, but addictive, electrifying nostrils and dopamine pathways even after it has withered someone else’s lungs. It tends to stay in families, where addiction can be passed down as easily as an heirloom watch. In a tiny apartment filled with cigarette smoke, where livelihoods came from the existence of that very roll of paper, it was unsurprising that my father would become a smoker himself.

My father smoked for most of his young adulthood, in a time and place where it probably gave him an edge, rebellious and a little bit cocky. But he quit long before I was born, and his days of smoking became a cautionary tale as I grew up.

Car rides were where I took an interest in music. Even without my headphones, songs would play on repeat in my head and my fingers would drum out the notes on an invisible piano.

When it was cold I would make breathy whistles between my teeth and let the window fog up.

Occasionally a finger would tap a rhythm on the inside of the door: tap tap tap, tap tap.

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My favorite music was pop that sounded neon; all synesthetic big beats and catchy tunes. The kind of music that had a big shining spotlight on it. It begs to be looked at more than listened to, but the sound itself grips you and makes you want to dance. Gossamer, like smoke, settling its sticky film over the creases of my brain. *** On one bitingly cold night, a couple years before the trip to D.C., my mind was preoccupied with a song that seemed to play in my head from beginning to end to beginning endlessly all evening.

My father gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled, breathing audibly weighed down, as if each breath was fighting against something in his lungs.

My mother said something about the drinks he’d had at dinner, but I was barely listening at this point. I stopped fixating on the earworm in my head, zeroing in on the labored breathing coming from the driver’s seat, which circulated in my ears. I had taken to worrying about my father recently, after I found out about his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Extrinsic ideas had begun to revolve around my family life; medication, depression, hallucinations. Most recently, drinking problems.

Addiction never truly leaves you. In many ways it’s a first love, the most attentive parent in the world; no matter how much time goes by, you can never leave it behind. It’s a hole that you start digging with your own two feet because the sand on your toes feels so nice, and by the time you know you’re sinking, you’re too far down to pull yourself out.

While my father could not abandon his sinkhole, I could decide to watch from the sidelines, far enough away that the ground wouldn’t give out under my feet.

We call performing music playing an instrument, but there was nothing playful about it when I started working over my piano obsessively, pounding out chords until my fingers cramped up. Playing music is the most detached way to be artistic; you can play Chopin or Bach beautifully without ever confronting the festering black hole inside of you. Constantly remaking someone else’s chords, Beethoven’s symphonious fury or his devotional madness. Translation instead of creation, cartography instead of discovery. The saying goes face the music, but that’s just it––I’m turning my back to myself. This simultaneously single-minded and apathetic philosophy began to eat away at my very core, until I hardly even cared about the music anymore. I only cared about not caring. *** Car rides on the weekends slowly came to a stop. My mother doesn’t drive, and after my father had multiple bouts of Parkinson’s symptoms while at the wheel, we resolved to stop going on road trips.

It can be difficult, to a thirteen-year-old, to tell the difference between a Parkinson’s patient and an alcoholic.

He got better, and made a show of pouring his alcohol into the kitchen sink. Red wine swirled the drain and tinted the stainless steel pink. Blamed his deteriorating ability to walk on one disease rather than the other.

And then he relapsed. By detaching from the betrayal, sadness, and shame that his addiction brought, I glued myself to my worry for him.

This apathy in me began to permeate the rest of my existence. The only music I listened to was mellow, soft, all vacillating on one note. Whispers in my ears to counteract the shouting in my home.

My dad moved out six months after the car crash. As I came to accept the situation, the pit inside me grew teeth, sharpening mostly at him.

The anger itself was an insatiable monster, but it was more parasitic than violent; it thrived off of what drained me and feasted on everything that didn’t. I harbored resentment towards everyone in my life, nursing that fury inside of me. It sang praises when I lashed out at friends. It was my only loyal friend when I pulled away from everyone else; it never truly left me alone. It was only satisfied when I had effectively disentangled myself from everything and everyone that once brought joy. The monster grew larger and stronger until it eventually consumed me whole.

Being consumed whole might imply that I simply disappeared, but that would be impossible. I am a human, more real and permanent than any emotion. While the monster was a personification of my anger, I am the personification of myself.

Once it reached a breaking point, my anger left me on a chilled autumn day like a storm subsiding to the sea. It had nothing left to take. A song I used to love came on one day, upbeat and bright. It reminded me of happier times, and the power I had to make a happier future for myself.

I still carry the burden of addiction. Research suggests that substance abuse is hereditary, a sick and twisted link between family members. A sort of “switch” that gets flipped one day, after one drink, or one cigarette. Maybe I won’t know the switch is flipped until I’m six feet underground.

I don’t need to learn how to drive, I will never risk a DUI. I live in New York City, where sidewalks, buses, and subways are at my disposal. Still, I don’t want to be under the influence at all, whether it’s alcohol’s or his. I don’t crave that freedom, but the idea of being at the wheel brings me back to that highway, or that dark winter road. If I could go back, I would tell my father to look at the destruction behind him, the tangle of flesh and steel. To face the music.

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Brigette Roseman

Visual Arts Miami Arts Charter School Miami, FL

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Familial Rhythms Oil on canvas 2023

Walter Sanmartin

Design Miami Arts Charter School Miami, FL

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Taking Up Space Jersey, PVC pipe 2023

Lemo Sekiguchi

Play or Script Los Altos High School Los Altos, CA

Yoshie Note: Everyone in Japan speaks Japanese, the dialogue is in Japanese.

FADE IN: INT. TOKYO HOUSE - YOSHIE’S ROOM - DAY (1952) WE SEE a beige colored bedroom with tatami floors, sliding doors made of wood and fusuma. There are two desks and a bunk bed pushed against the walls.

YOSHIE, 10, wakes up on the top of the bunk bed wearing cotton flower patterned pajamas.

MATSUE, 7, is Yoshie’s younger sister. She’s on the bottom bunk. She yawns and goes back to sleep.

Yoshie walks over to the bathroom to go through her morning routine by the sink - washes her face, combs her hair, and gets dressed in her white blouse and brown flare skirt.

MOM (O.S.) (from a distance) Yoshie! Matsue! Hurry up and eat!

Yoshie walks back to the bunk bed and wakes Matsue up. Matsue stares at Yoshie grumpily and pulls her blanket up.

YOSHIE Matsue, you gotta wake up!

INT. KITCHEN - DAY At the bottom of the stairs is KIYOKO (35), Yoshie’s mother. She wears a kimono with an apron on top. She puts cooked rice into a small bowl and places pickled plums on top.

Coming--

YOSHIE (O.S.) (from a distance)

Yoshie runs down the stairs for breakfast, and Matsue follows her.

Good morning!

MOM

Yoshie and Matsue pull a cushion by the chabudai (low table), as they sit on it in seiza posture.

YOSHIE AND MATSUE (Matsue: half-asleep) Good morning!

At the chabudai, YOSHIMATSU (45), Yoshie’s father, wears a white button up shirt with suit pants. He eats rice with whitebait fish as he catches up on the latest newspaper. Yoshie’s older brothers ARIYOSHI (20), SOKICHI (19), and KENKICHI (14) all eat rice with whitebait.

Kiyoko walks over to the chabudai, places chopsticks and the rice with the plums in front of Yoshie, and rice with whitebait in front of Matsue.

YOSHIE Thank you, oh that looks good!

Thanks--

(quietly)

MATUSE

Yoshie and Matsue grab the chopsticks and CLAPS their palms together.

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YOSHIE AND MATSUE Itadakimasu!

Yoshie grabs the rice with the plum using her chopsticks, placing it in her mouth. She takes a few bites.

CUT TO:

INT. Genkan (door hallway) - DAY

Yoshie grabs her brown randoseru (backpack) and puts it on her back. She kneels down to put her black leather shoes on. Matsue stands next to her trying to do the same.

YOSHIE We’re gonna head out now!

Mom walks over to the genkan.

MOM Have a great day at school!

Yoshie opens the door. Yoshie and Matsue wave back to Mom. Bye!

YOSHIE AND MATSUE

EXT. YOSHIE’S HOUSE - DAY Yoshie skips out to the front of their house. WE SEE Mom walking up to the front door by the genkan in her geta (sandals) as she holds the door.

Yoshie don’t run!

MOM

BLACK, the family’s jumpy black pointer dog swings his tail at Yoshie. She smiles and waves back.

Bye Black!

YOSHIE

Matsue looks at Black, laughing softly.

“TOKYO BOOGIE WOOGIE” by Shizuko Kasagi starts playing as WE SEE the title “Yoshie” INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY WE SEE a 4-2 sign and the bell RINGS. Inside the traditional 1950s Japanese classroom, students are at their own desks. Yoshie and the students bring out their homemade lunchboxes. WE SEE the different kinds of things inside the lunchboxes: rice with tsukemono or onigiris with vegetables and small portions of fish, eggs, or meat.

MR. FURUYA (27) is Yoshie’s teacher. He wears a business suit with a button up shirt and a necktie. He sits at his desk with his lunchbox in front of him.

Okay everybody--

MR. FURUYA

He CLAPS his palms together.

Itadakimasu!

MR. FURUYA

Yoshie and her classmates repeats, and CLAPS their palms together.

Itadakimasu!

CLASS

Yoshie and her class start digging their chopsticks into their lunchbox. Some classmates are looking over their shoulders at others’ lunch to see what they have for today, and some start to trade food.

MR. FURUYA Oh yes, before I forget, I have an announcement!

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BEAT The class looks around at each other, then comes back to face Mr. Furuya.

MR. FURUYA Starting tomorrow, the school’s going to serve you something called kyushoku so you’ll no longer need to bring homemade lunch!

Yoshie and her classmates all GASP at the pleasant surprise and turn to their neighbors.

KIYOUKO, 10, is the girl who sits next to Yoshie.

Really? I’m excited!

KIYOUKO

YOSHIE I know right, I wonder what they’re gonna serve!

CUT TO: INT. HALLWAY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - DAY The bell RINGS and WE SEE Yoshie walking (screen left) home. She leaves the frame, but then WE SEE Yoshie walking (screen right) into the classroom with Matsue. She’s dressed in a green skirt with a white blouse, carrying the brown randoseru on her back - it’s the next day.

INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY The school bell RINGS. Yoshie and a crowd of classmates stand at the front of the classroom near the door as Mr. Furuya pulls the FOOD CART (that holds three SILVER TUBS) into the classroom. The students’ eyes slowly open wide as they’re curious about what’s inside the silver tubs.

Mr. Furuya waves his hands telling them to move over to the other side of the classroom. The students walk back to their seats.

MR. FURUYA Okay class! I’ll be serving you today but from tomorrow, a table group will be assigned to serve throughout the week! Every week I’ll assign a different table group!

Mr. Furuya opens the lid of the silver tubs. From the first one he opens, WE SEE steamed vegetables.

BEAT Some students lift themselves up from the chairs, trying to get a good glance.

ITO (10), is Yoshie’s classmate. He sits across from her.

Oooo, nice!

ITO

Yoshie and Kiyouko turn their heads toward each other and laugh.

YOSHIE Oh yeah he’s right though, it looks good!

Mr. Furuya opens the lid of the second silver tub, and WE SEE WHALE KATSU. In the third silver tub, it’s SKIMMED POWDERED MILK. Students lift themselves even more from their chairs.

ITO Woah, it’s whale katsu!

BEAT Yoshie GULPS.

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SIMANE (10), is Yoshie’s classmate. He sits at the corner of the classroom.

SIMANE Really? I’ve always wanted to try that ever since I heard it on the radio!

The class turns their heads towards Simane, laughing. But Yoshie’s face stays still, TERRIFIED. Everything starts to slow down - the classmates’ running up to get food, the teacher serving them, the interactions between students, and students walking back to their seats. Yoshie’s disorientated, looking right and left as sweat drips down her head. She gets up and GULPS, walking over to the line. She grabs a plate. Mr. Furuya smiles at her as he places vegetables, whale katsu, and skimmed powdered milk onto her plate.

She walks back, and everyone is eating sarcastically, looking directly at Yoshie. She sits and looks down at the whale katsu, HORRIFIED as it’s bigger than the plate.

BEAT The WHALE katsu starts to animate into a blue children’s doodle with googly eyes. It starts to speak.

WHALE (nervously) No Yoshie! Please don’t eat me!

Yoshie’s eyes widen as she’s freaked!

She blinks repeatedly, and opens her eyes, but the whale is making a puppy face at her.

Yoshie hears WHISPERS of her classmates, HORIUCHI, MIZUOCHI, SIMANE, NAKANO. HORIUCHI What’s Yoshie gonna do?

MIZUOCHI Oh yeah doesn’t she not eat meat or something? (pauses) It’s weird...

The whispers starts to get louder and overlap.

That’s so bad.

SIMANE

NAKANO Such a waste of food.

She turns around left and right to look at them but they aren’t whispering about her - it’s all in her head. They’re just eating their whale katsu.

She moves the whale katsu to the side using her chopsticks. She grabs the vegetables instead, and eats.

Yoshie sees her classmates cleaning up their dishes. They run out of the classroom to go play in the courtyard. Others talk and laugh as they eat the whale katsu.

Yoshie sits still in her chair, looking down at her plate. Mr. Furuya notices Yoshie not touching her food. He stands up from his chair and walks over to her.

Mr. Furuya looks down at her with stingy eyes.

MR. FURUYA Why aren’t you eating the whale katsu? It’s the best partYoshie’s eyes are still on the plate.

YOSHIE (interrupting) I don’t want to eat the whale.

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MR. FURUYA Yoshie, even though it’s been years since the war ended, food shortages are still continuing...

I know but-

YOSHIE

MR. FURUYA (interrupting) Meat is so hard to find these days so we’re privileged to have whale katsu!

Mr. Furuya sighs and walks back to his desk in the classroom. He begins to grade papers.

Yoshie looks up and down to see if he’s watching her, as she grabs a white towel from her pocket. She wraps the katsu and places it in the towel. She puts it in her randoseru without him noticing.

She sees the skimmed powdered milk still sitting on her desk. She sighs as she holds it up to take a big GULP. She sticks her tongue out, it looks bumpy - the powdered milk left a rough texture.

Yoshie cleans her plate and runs out of the classroom to the courtyard.

Mr. Furuya notices and stops her.

MR. FURUYA Yoshie? What about the katsu? You need to finish it!

I ate it!

YOSHIE

MR. FURUYA Oh, alright go on then.

Yoshie continues to run out to the courtyard.

EXT. COURTYARD - DAY Dodgeball begins as teams are separated by gender. There’s two balls being used in the game. Yoshie runs into the girl’s side.

CUT TO: INT. HALLWAY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - DAY School Bell RINGS. Yoshie opens her randoseru to place her water bottle. She sniffs her nose, smelling something. She looks through her bag and sees the whale katsu from earlier.

Kiyouko, Ito, and other classmates walks towards her.

KIYOUKO Yoshie, are you ready to leave?

Yeah.

YOSHIE

She closes the bag and looks up to smile at the group. They walk out of the school and through the neighborhood of Nihonbashi.

EXT. FRONT YARD OF YOSHIE’S HOUSE - DAY Yoshie walks to the front of her house where Black runs up to her swinging his tail excitedly.

I missed you, buddy!

YOSHIE

Yoshie pets him. She remembers something, so she opens her randoseru and grabs her

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white towel. She unfolds it, and holds the whale katsue up to Black, waiting to see if he likes it.

BEAT Black starts licking the whale katsu, then biting into it. Shortly after, he starts munching at it.

YOSHIE (laughingly) You like it?

Yoshie knocks and Mom opens the front door.

YOSHIE I’m home!

Mom smiles.

How was school?

MOM

Yoshie puts her randoseru down on the genkan and walks over to the kitchen near the chabudai. Mom follows her.

YOSHIE School served whale katsu and skimmed powdered milk today.

I just fed the katsu to Black, but I had to drink the skimmed powdered milk...it was disgusting!

Yoshie’s mom turns around and faces her back to Yoshie. She starts cutting up vegetables.

MOM Oh Yoshie that’s too bad, I didn’t realize that it would be an issue.

Yoshie looks at her, confused.

What?

YOSHIE

MOM I guess you’ll have to deal with it and just eat the kyushoku they serve. You know that’s the real world right? When you get older, no one’s gonna help you. This is a good lesson Yoshie.

Yoshie starts to tear up in her eyes. She runs away to a different room. Mom turns around, confused where she went.

Yoshie?

MOM

INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY CUT TO: The bell RINGS. Yoshie is in line to get kyushoku as she holds the empty plate up to her chest. Her hands shake as she walks slowly in the moving line.

When Yoshie gets to the classmate who’s serving for the day, the classmate looks at her crookedly. The classmate hesitates but serves her the curry that contains pork.

As Yoshie walks back to her seat, the class looks at her weird.

She hears the WHISPERS all over again.

The whispers get louder and overlap with each other.

NAKANO Did you see what she was doing yesterday?

HORIUCHI I know right, it’s so bad.

MIZUOCHI

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Such a waste.

Yoshie looks back at the classmates, but they aren’t whispering about her - it’s all in her head.

WE SEE Ito turn his head over to Yoshie. He sees that she’s horrified to eat the pork.

Yoshie stays still as she looks down at the pork. After a while, she finally picks it up with her chopsticks. She holds it up to her open mouth and it gradually gets closer, but the mouth of the pork starts to animate and speak. (shouting) Yoshie, stop!

PORK

Yoshie’s eyes open wide, shocked.

INT. YOSHIE’S HOUSE - DAY CUT TO: Yoshie opens the front door abruptly, wearing her randoseru on her back. She runs into the genkan (hallway).

Mom!

(loudly)

YOSHIE

She runs into the kitchen where Mom is. She’s cutting vegetables again.

Yeah?

MOM

YOSHIE I told you yesterday how they served whale katsu right? And you told me to deal with it but-Mom turns around, facing her.

Yoshie starts to tear up.

YOSHIE But-- I don’t think I can.

Mom’s facial expression starts to droop. Yoshie looks down at the floor.

YOSHIE I’ve stuck with my belief of not eating animal products since I was a toddler, so it’s really important for me to keep doing so.

Mom wipes Yoshie’s tears.

MOM I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I had no idea how important this still was to you, thank you for telling me.

Mom smiles at Yoshie then pauses.

I think I have a plan.

MOM

INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY CUT TO: WE SEE the 4-2 class sign. The school bell RINGS as Mom walks through the classroom door.

MOM Hi Mr. Furuya? I’m Yoshie’s mother Kiyoko. Nice to meet you!

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MR. FURUYA Oh pleasure to meet you!

MOM So Yoshie told me what happened during lunch and I wanted to let you know that she has this belief of not eating animals products.

Mr. Furuya looks suprised.

MOM I let her be at home, not forcing her to eat anything she doesn’t want to but when this happened, I told her to deal with it-(pause) It seemed really important to her though since she’s stuck with it since she was a toddler-Mr. Furuya nods.

MOM So I’ll pack her an empty lunch box with glass bins every time animal products are scheduled on the kyushoku menu.

MR. FURUYA That’s so interesting, never heard anyone with that belief before...

But yes that’s okay, please make sure she brings it!

CUT TO: INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY School bell RINGS. Yoshie opens the empty lunch box, places the pork from the curry in her lunch box, and the skimmed powdered milk into the glass bins. As everyone else eats, focused on their food, Ito, whose all done with his food, looks over to Yoshie’s pork and what she’s doing.

CUT TO: EXT. FRONT YARD OF YOSHIE’S HOUSE - DAY Yoshie holds up the pork to Black as he munches it. Yoshie laughs. She pours the skimmed powdered milk from the glassvbins into his bowl and he starts licking it.

CUT TO: INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY Yoshie places the whale katsu into her empty lunch box and the skimmed powdered milk into the glass bins. Ito looks over again to see what she’s doing as everyone else eats their food. He tries to get out of his chair but he hesitates.

CUT TO: EXT. FRONT YARD OF YOSHIE’S HOUSE - DAY Yoshie laughs as Black munches on the whale katsu. He licks the milk in his bowl.

WE SEE Ito hiding from the corner of Yoshie’s house, as he smiles, watching what she’s doing.

CUT TO: INT. HALLWAY OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - DAY Yoshie changes from her uniform shoes to her leather brown shoes.

KIYOUKO You ready to leave, Yoshie?

Yeah, let’s go!

YOSHIE

EXT. NIHONBASHI, TOKYO NEIGHBORHOOD - DAY

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Yoshie, Kiyouko, Ito, and other classmates walks out of the school onto the Nihonbashi, Tokyo neighborhood.

Yoshie carries her randoseru on her back and holds two glass bins of skimmed milk.

ITO Where should we play later?

KIYOUKO Do you guys wanna come to my street?

YOSHIE I don’t think I can, I have dance lessoYoshie trips on a pebble. She falls, her stomach laying flat on the ground. The two glass bins also slips from her hand onto the ground, SHATTERING into pieces. The milk drips on the ground, soaking in.

Yoshie, are you okay?

Yeah--

KIYOUKO ITO

Yoshie lifts her head up, I think so...

YOSHIE

She lifts her body by pushing her hands off the ground.

WE SEE Yoshie’s legs covered in cuts. It’s bleeding, but the wounds aren’t too deep.

Ow--

YOSHIE

INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY CUT TO: WE SEE the 4-2 class sign. There are several students getting ready for class. Mr. Furuya sits on his desk, working. Ito abruptly runs into the classroom.

ITO (loudly) Mr. Furuya! Yoshie fell yesterday when we were walking home from school and since she was carrying those glass bins, it shattered everywhere!

Oh no! Is she okay?

MR. FURUYA

ITO I think so, she got some cuts and wounds but you should really reconsider what to do with those animal products she never eats.

Yoshie walks into the classroom.

Good morning!

YOSHIE

MR. FURUYA Good morning Yoshie, we were actually just talking about you, (Pause) Ito told me you fell yesterday?

Yoshie looks at Ito who’s looking down at the floor. Yoshie starts to blush, embarrassed.

YOSHIE

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(irritatedly) Ito, why did you tell him?

Yoshie looks back to Mr. Furuya.

I’m fine, Mr. Furuya.

YOSHIE

MR. FURUYA I know, but I don’t want you to get badly injured next time so I think it’s okay if you don’t bring home the skimmed powdered milk anymore?

Yoshie lightens up.

YOSHIE Oh really? Thank you Mr. Furuya!

CUT TO: INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY School bell RINGS. As Yoshie walks back with her lunch tray that includes whale katsu and vegetables, Ito comes up to her with his empty plate.

ITO Hey Yoshie? If you’re not gonna eat your whale katsu, can I have it?

Yoshie looks down at the floor, like she’s still holding a grudge against him.

Yeah sure, here.

YOSHIE

Yoshie uses her chopsticks to place the whale katsu onto his plate. She turns around and smiles.

CUT TO: INT. YOSHIE’S HOUSE - DAY Yoshie gets her empty lunchbox out of her randoseru and places it on the kitchen sink. She gives a light smile.

CUT TO: INT. 4-2 CLASSROOM - DAY School bell RINGS. Yoshie walks back to her desk with her lunch tray that includes whale katsu. Horiuchi walks up to her.

HORIUCHI Hey Yoshie, can I have your whale katsu?

THE SCREEN SPLITS INTO TWO Mizuochi walks up to her.

Can I?

MIZUOCHI

THE SCREEN SPLITS INTO THREE Simane walks up to her.

Can I? THE SCREEN SPLITS INTO FOUR Nakano walks up to her.

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SIMANE

NAKANO

Can I? Yoshie is stunned.

THE SCREEN GOES BACK TO NORMAL.

YOSHIE There’s too many of you.

At the same time the boys starts to argue to Yoshie why they deserve it.

YOSHIE (yelling) Be quiet! How about you guys play rock, paper, scissors-- the winner can have my whale katsu.

INT. BUILDING - DAY CUT TO: WE SEE a “Class of 1954 Elementary School Reunion” sign on the door.

WE SEE present day Yoshie (70s), Ito (70s), Horiuchi (70s), Mizuochi (70s), Simane (70s), and Nakano (70s) all gathering together, laughing.

YOSHIE That first rock, paper, scissors game, Simane won!

Did I? Oh yeah!

SIMANE (Pause)

NAKANO Yeah you were so happy that day. You told me you came home running around telling your mom all about it!

They all laugh.

FADE OUT.

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Claris Shin

Visual Arts Phillips Academy Andover Andover, MA

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A tool to learn about what naturalness is Stainless steel, ipad 2023

Manola Silva-Hanson

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Visual Arts New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

Captain Granola Acrylic on canvas paper, handmade paper, yarn, and fabric 2023

Maggie Su

Design Cary Academy Cary, NC

Raleigh Interdisciplinary Arts Center (2023) Physical Work, Acrylic Sheets, Spray paint, Plastic (12*28in) Inspired by my time at the YoungArts Lab, I decided to design a similar interdisciplinary art center for my local community that pays homage to the site’s railroad history.

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Raleigh Interdisciplinary Arts Center Digital rendering 2023

Derek Sun

Photography Edgemont Junior-Senior High School Scarsdale, NY

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Whisper Digital photography 2023

Colton Vance

Visual Arts Bondurant-Farrar High School Bondurant, IA

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Juxtapose Spray paint 2023

Audie Waller

Short Story South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities Greenville, SC

Altitude Sickness The mother and father had two children—twins, a girl and a boy. They raised them in a satisfactory neighborhood in Madison, Connecticut, not on the water but close to it. The useless fact that everyone seemed to need to know was that the brother had been the first born by several minutes. When prompted for this knowledge the sister often thought about lying, and she sometimes did.

The sister might have been referred to as a “free spirit.”

This would not be accurate. She spoke what came to mind, but this honesty did not free her. It was not the kind of honesty that told the truth. In order to avoid sharing the worrying and the troublesome, she put the worrying and the troublesome out of her mind. This avoidance was not purposeful; rather, it was internalized. She remained silent when she had nothing to say. She did only what she wanted to do, which turned out to be very many things. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to attend school somewhere warm. She wanted to get the uncomfortable things over with. She wanted to find love. She did find love, several times, and she held it until her arms grew tired then gently set it down, stroking its back and kissing the top of its head.

She knew many things about herself. One of these things was that she wanted children. She worked in several daycares as a teenager and majored in early elementary education at a school somewhere warm. She wanted to have them young, three or four of them, all clinging to her soft body and whispering pleasant secrets in her ear. The thing she loved most about children was talking to them. She would listen to the things they had to tell, all of them pure and selfish and none of them bad and evil. She would allow them to plant wet kisses on her cheeks and nestle themselves in her lap and pretend she was their mother. Sometimes she would pretend too.

Another thing she knew about herself was that she was a part of the ocean and nothing would ever change that. She was a sea-level child. The water had been a fact of life for her growing up, and it can be very easy to confuse a fact of life with an aspect of oneself. She thought about the ocean frequently. She dreamed about the ocean. As she climbed through life she cradled this part of herself close to her, holding it to her head like a wet rag when the heights began to make her ache.

The brother was very unlike his sister. He said mostly what others expected him to say. He did mostly what others encouraged and inspired him to do. His conformity allowed him much time with himself, inside himself. He confessed nothing and pondered everything. He always observed himself from above, as in a dream over which he had no power. He felt as though he did not know himself but knew the world very well, knew every place like the streets of his beachside hometown, knew every person like his own mother and father. He took risks. He left holes in walls in what he hoped was anger but knew, in a place beyond the crazed prattle of his inner monologue, was confusion and fear for everything, himself included, that he would never understand. He did things he was told were fun. He cheated on girlfriends. He snowboarded.

He took things from strangers. In his distrust of himself he found safety and comfort in the unknown. He had no taste for warmth.

Heat came with a security that made him restless, made him feel as though he were drinking it all into himself where it would boil his insides like an egg frying on a sidewalk, while from the outside, to everyone else, he would look just fine. He had no plans for the future. Sometimes he imagined that there was no future. He saw himself going to sleep one night and not waking up, not because he had died, but because he had disappeared, evaporated, departed easily and without drama, leaving behind only particles of fear and

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hatred like bits of mud in a dry puddle. Only when he was alone and uninhibited by the influence of all that was not himself did he think of his childhood, his home. Only when he was alone did he remember the ocean.

As the twins grew the family tried, on many occasions, to do family things. They ate meals together. They took trips. They threw birthday parties, big ones when the twins were younger to make them feel appreciated as something more than one single entity.

But something was spoiled each time, like one bad piece of fruit in an edible arrangement, and each time it was the mother or the brother who left the dinner table, stormed out of the hotel room, threw down their fork beside their half-eaten slice of cake. The father and sister would be left sitting at the table, or on the starched beds, or still picking at their cake. They would exchange knowing glances and then retreat to whatever sanctuary was available—in the sister’s earlier years this meant imaginary friends, who in later years became real friends to whom she assigned imaginary traits.

Once the twins got their drivers licenses, the brother stopped eating at home almost altogether.

There was a sweet sixteen girls’ trip to Paris which included the sister’s best friend and the best friend’s mother, and during which the mother and sister spoke little—the distractions were so many that the necessity for familial connection was far from paramount.

The twins had been in vitro—the mother had given birth to them but they were not biologically hers. She had tried very hard to feel the way mothers do when she held the children for the first time, their bodies covered in a wetness that belonged to her, cords hanging from their bellies that had joined them to her and to each other. In many ways, she succeeded. She was undoubtedly their mother, in every sense but one. She willed herself to overlook this final detachment, and, for the most part, she could. It was in moments of weakness, not pride, that this tugged at her the hardest, like the memory of a confession that changed the way one saw a person. She took credit for all of her children’s achievements, their intelligence, their gentleness and kindness, their strength. It was when they made a mistake, ignored her texts, cried without stopping, punched through the drywall in the garage, spilt a glass of water, that she silently cursed her husband and the woman whose genes had joined his to create children who would never be hers. And then there was the fact that their beauty—for they were beautiful—did not belong to her. As young children they had looked identical, always the same height, always thin and delicate, always with mauve circles beneath their arresting blue eyes. Their beauty followed them into man- and womanhood, and though they lost their striking similarities, they retained the mysticism and intangible togetherness that twins always seemed to possess. And the mother was responsible for none of it.

All the occasions, trips, gatherings, shared meals, shared secrets, jokes, serious conversations, uncomfortable confessions and every other kind of connection decreased steadily in number as the looming silhouette of college became clearer in the haze, solidified into something more than a mirage. The last hurrah, the final punctuation of eighteen years spent in the same house, spent as a family, was a road trip.

It was the end of summer, a few days before the sister and brother moved into their dorms, a few months before the mother and father signed the divorce papers. Their westmost stop was the Rockies, where they would drop the brother off in Boulder.

From there the remaining family members would drive toward the southeast, where they would leave the sister. Finally the mother and father would drive back north toward their two separate beds in

their big house. The sister and brother had a lot of belongings. This called for two cars. This divide seemed to stand for a deeper, more permanent kind of separation—of the mother and father from each other, of the sister and brother from their home, of the country from itself. The brother and mother stayed mostly in one car, the silver one, while the sister and father drove the green. The mother was left by herself at one point, and she felt as though some prophecy had come true, as though this—alone and uncomfortable in an unfamiliar place—had always been her final destination.

The mother and father had not done enough research and planning beforehand, even though they’d known the twins would do none. The family made only three stops on the way to the mountains. The first was Gettysburg, a shadeless field with dilapidated cannons and plaques only the father bothered to read.

The second was the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation— more interesting, at least, than Gettysburg, but requiring an unappreciated hour’s detour. The father claimed that he had always wanted to see Detroit, but the rest knew this to be a lie. They had thought to stop in Chicago, but this fell on the same day as Detroit and all but the father were in opposition. The third and final stop before the Rockies was Gretna, Nebraska’s famous landlocked lighthouse. Though small, there was a lake. The mother and father found it amusing. The brother found it impractical and thus pathetic—an ugly decoration in an ugly state.

“What’s the point?” he asked his family. “There’s no boats.”

“Does there have to be a point?” the mother said.

Climbing to the top and looking out on the water, the sister thought of the ocean.

Once in the mountains, the family stayed in a cabin. It was, for all practical purposes, in the middle of nowhere. There was no internet, no television. It was dark when they arrived, and the brother was shocked that the lights actually came on when the father flipped the switch.

There were only two bedrooms, so the brother and sister had to share. This was, to both of them, entirely unacceptable.

“He snores,” the sister said.

The mother answered her with a look that told of years spent in a bed with someone whose every action was a profound annoyance and whose every word was without substance.

“I don’t snore,” the brother said.

The following morning, the family took a hike. The brother put on his boots and the sister wore old sneakers. She tied the laces slowly; she had awoken with a headache. The mother put together picnic materials which the father carried in a large pack. In the light, even the sister could admit that the place was stunning. The dry wind, so different from the heavy one of her home, breathed through the trees. The sun stuttered between the pine needles in ripples. Running water was heard somewhere nearby. And the smell—fresh, old, ancient even, excitingly unfamiliar. The brother and sister exchanged a glance and the brother grinned, taking the lead though he did not know where he was going. The mother and father followed, and the sister fell behind, taking her time. Like this, the family made their way to Christmas Tree Rock.

For hikers, it was not a difficult hike. The members of this family were not hikers. The brother led the way, consulting the map with the father every now and then. The mother and sister lingered behind, the mother complaining passively in grunts and heavy breathing, the sister remaining silent, occasionally pressing her fingers to her forehead. Only the father tried to engage the group in conversation, and in this attempt he was hardly successful, eliciting the briefest of responses from only the mother, as the brother was too absorbed in the scenery to talk and the sister simply declined to.

Nearly an hour had passed when the family encountered a river. The water sounds had been intensifying throughout the walk, but they had seemed from the start to be creek-ish and small. This body of water, though shallow, was probably twenty feet across. It was magnificently clear and had the appearance of being breathtakingly cold. There were many potential stepping stones in the river, but they were all covered with moss and treacherouslooking.

Without speaking, the brother removed his shoes and socks

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and stepped into the water.

He laughed when he was met with the coldness—a sheer, satisfied laugh. The mother said something to him, and he mumbled an incoherent reply, not bothering to turn around. The father started over the stones. Sighing in aggravation, the mother followed. The father moved cautiously but quickly, timing his steps with precision.

The mother attempted to replicate this without success. She lost her balance several times, hopping awkwardly between the stones.

When she was a little more than halfway across she slipped and submerged her left foot in the water, cursing. While her family crossed the river, the sister skirted down the bank a short ways. Just around a bend in the stream, out of sight from the trail, was a tree fallen across the water. She climbed onto it and crossed with ease, meeting her family back on the trail with a triumphant smile.

The next hour or so consisted of the father’s occasional cheerful remarks, the mother’s dismayed vocalizations regarding her sopping shoe, and a ceaseless uphill climb. After a final scramble up a leafy bank, the family arrived at the peak. Christmas Tree Rock was named for the pine trees which grew from the soil-filled cracks on its surface. Or perhaps it was for its pointy silhouette as seen from the ground. None of them knew. The view was as could be expected—the kind of view that forced a person, no matter how cynical or unsentimental, to simply stand and look and think of nothing else, if only for a moment.

They laid out their picnic and ate. They sat on the flattest dry piece of ground, to the right of a large shelf of rock which blocked their eastward view. The sister thought that it was nice, with the sunlight soaking into their backs. She felt very close to the sun so high up; she thought of it as an eye that could look upon her more clearly now, that could see her for what she was.

The brother finished eating first, and he left the rest of his family sitting cross-legged on the rock face. He edged around the rock shelf where he could not be seen and discovered another flat area on the other side of it. On the edge of this face, growing outward over a vertical drop, was a pine larger than any of those where the rest of the family were. He moved toward it.

Shortly after the brother wandered away, the sister followed him. When she came around the rock shelf and saw him walking toward the edge, she made sure to stay quiet. He touched the large tree—almost impossibly large, the sister thought—and allowed his hands to become coated with sap and dirt and red bark bugs. He wrapped his hand around a branch just above his head and moved his feet to the very edge of the rock. He swung himself out, his toes perched on the edge, his weight hanging on the tree as his body curved into a parenthesis. He looked out and not down. He appeared as if he might allow his feet to fall away completely, allow himself to dangle one-handed over the cliff’s drop. He did not laugh, though he looked like he might.

The sister said his name. She said it plainly, without alarm or urgency. In one movement, not looking her way, the brother hoisted himself back onto the rock and released his grip on the tree. He wiped his hands on his pants, walked away from the edge and past his sister without a word.

As the family made their return to the cabin, the sister’s pain accumulated into a migraine, accompanied by a deep nausea, and she was afraid her picnic lunch might resurface. She told her family of this, and they said altitude could do that to a person.

Their words did nothing to ease the sickness, and the sister found them to be as dry as the air around her. As they reached the river once more the sun had begun to drop behind the mountains, and the sister began to grow very cold. She wanted to go home, and she wanted to say so, but she did not. It occurred to her then that home was something from the past and the far future, something she would have no defined conception of for years to come. It seemed to lie behind her, at the bottom of a cliff she had only just scaled, perhaps being tossed by angry waves among jagged and barnacle-infested rocks. And there she stood, her back turned to the precipice, looking only up, able to move only forward, to climb only higher.

Bec Wenqian Wang

Visual Arts Lovejoy High School New York, NY

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The Tiles Text sewn on translucent fabric overlaid on 81 tiles of images from camera roll 2023

Margaret Whitten

Visual Arts A&M Consolidated High School College Station, TX

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Map of Metamorphosing Mind Mixed media 2023

Chloe Wong At Yosemite, Dad Suggests Writing a Race Poem & replacing his name with 爸爸.

The Mirror Lake’s a frisbee, or an Oriental court fan.

The slate crags chambers for dragon orchestras.

The dogs with their heads in the ice aren’t dogs anymore—only metaphors in service of hurt.

When a kingbird alights beside a grinning baby, I write its wingspan as a strike of yellow blood. Dad hums this through the winter: good, very good, but / alter good to 很好. In the white water, there’s zero flotsam. I still dredge up my birth certificate.

Because it’s profitable to liken English lettering to a bloated lifeboat.

That, or a slow-rotting tongue.

I’m sixteen & understand that ethnic drift is the rage. That ethnic rage is the rage, since, nowadays, every Chinese girl’s got a sonnet crown about dumplings.

Here, I mention that my wasted Mandarin name means poet—minutia I can contrive to a symbol.

Well, Dad remarks, there’s something to be written about Dead Heritage & Assimilation, & though I’m not angry, I can always artifice the feeling.

Look: when the sun slumps its rays against the poplars just right, even they become part of this race poem.

And yet it’s weeks until spring.

Forgive me: I do love federal heartland. & forgive me: when a kingbird alights beside a grinning baby, I only want to think of the whetted arc of its feathers.

The wind blustering over acres.

Nothing more.

Translations: 爸爸 – Dad 很好 – Very good

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Poetry Arcadia High School Arcadia, CA

Ming Wei Yeoh

Short Story Minnetonka High School Minnetonka, MN

Sugar The cat had died sometime during the night, hours before Isabella had woken and discovered the stiff body still curled tightly beside her. Isabella’s job was in the next town over, in the big sausage factory, and every morning she left the house at 5 o’clock to catch the 5:15 bus, never a second later. So Malachi found a note in the kitchen—Sugar died. Please clean the bed and move her to the cellar—and a small mound, wrapped hastily in a blanket, waiting for him on his sister’s bed.

He kept a pocket of space between his chest and the dead cat as he made his way to the cellar. There was an awkward feeling he just couldn’t shake, like he was holding a piece of himself that had been stolen from him. He didn’t feel like crying. His face just scrunched up tightly until he reached the foot of the stairs.

Sugar’s body was just the right size to fit between the turnips and pickles, above the space that was typically stocked with firewood. Malachi never felt like chopping wood in this type of cold, when winter was supposed to have gone but had decided to drag its feet into the first weeks of spring. He noted to himself that Henrick, who owned the general store, might share some of his household supply for a couple of dollars.

The cat’s face was a small white patch in the dark, her eyes squeezed into two pink commas. Malachi could have sworn she was smiling. *** It was hours before Isabella returned, deep into the evening, with sausage juice sprinkled like rain on her skirt. At the dinner table, they stewed silently in each other’s company, eating the rice and steamed vegetables that Malachi had prepared.

“The right thing to do,” said Isabella, “would be to bury her with Papa.”

“Too cold. The ground’s as hard as a rock.”

“Then what do you propose?”

Malachi pictured the cat in his head. “We have the fireplace. Take this weekend and light her up, and it’ll be over in a couple of hours. Henrick’s got wood that I can borrow.”

“You expect a cat to burn properly in there?”

“I said Henrick’s got wood that I can borrow.”

“You’d need enough wood for a bonfire. It wouldn’t fit.”

“Sure it would.”

“In any case, it’s probably the least dignified way imaginable to put her to rest,” said Isabella. “She’s your cat.”

“She’s not mine.”

His sister stared at him sadly, or maybe coldly. He could never really tell which it was. “He’d want her to have a grave.

There’s got to be something you can do.”

“Something I can do? Seems like there’s always something I can do. Like digging and chopping wood and—” “And working, maybe, if you ever feel up for it,” she said, then blinked and clamped her mouth shut. Malachi’s face filled with heat.

After a moment, she stood and gathered her plate and silverware. “Thanks for the meal.” *** The following morning, she was gone again, and Malachi buried himself in his sketchpad. Dim and windy days like these were ideal for his work. Of course, Isabella didn’t like them because the sunlight was swallowed by the thick clouds, posing a threat to her vegetables. But she didn’t have the brain of an artist.

In the garden outside the window, pea plants and turnips protruded from the dirt, waving weakly at Malachi. Beyond the stone border were tufts and bunches of weeds, some with long spiky leaves and others that looked like little crowded colonies. He

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drew them, capturing the wildness and deadness in the strokes of his pencil.

A bit away from the vegetable garden, the weeds grew tall and tangled together. The stones that encircled them, barely visible, were the only remnant of the garden’s past splendor, thought Malachi. Looking at it, shapes from his childhood formed in his mind—the pale and frothy outlines of peonies and rose bushes, the tiny bodies of bumblebees as they dipped in and out of the blossoms. And Papa, hovering over the explosion of color, always pruning or shoveling or watering. Malachi’s pencil moved urgently, tracing the scene onto the paper.

What Isabella didn’t understand was that a cat was just a cat. Humans got graves and headstones and people to dig holes in the dirt for them because they had done things in life. They deserved all of it—whereas cats did nothing but sleep and bask and wait to be fed.

He finished the last graphite flicks of hair on the back of Papa’s head. The familiar, hulking figure brought back the scrunched expression to Malachi’s face. It seemed that at any moment, the smudged drawing would turn around and face him, and Malachi would feel that same old tightness in his nose preceding tears.

Stop crying, the drawing would say. If you’re a man, then stop crying.

His words were always chosen with sober care. This was a man who hated his son, and somehow, he was also the man who transformed into a fountain of knowledge when it came to flowers, whose hands became as delicate as a surgeon’s when he gardened. It was the same man who fawned over a stray kitten as though it were his own child. Malachi ripped out the page and crushed it into a ball.

He left the house and went to the general store, where he asked for as much firewood as Henrick could spare.

Eyeing him, Henrick heaved the logs onto the counter and said, “I hear it’ll warm up any day now.”

“No, I know. It’s that old cat,” said Malachi. “The ground’s frozen solid, so I figured I’d just burn her in the fireplace.”

“Your cat died?”

“Well, she was really my papa’s.”

“You mean Fred’s treasure?” The creases in Henrick’s old face opened up all of a sudden. “Well, that’s a real tragedy. I’d say your papa loved that cat as much as his own two children. I remember, he’d come in here on hot days with her running in on his heels and ask me, ‘John, mind if I borrow a dish of milk?’ And he’d stay right there until she’d finished the last drop.” He shook his head.

“Right,” said Malachi. “How much for all this?”

“Dime apiece is alright. Say, how’s your sister doing?

Remember to tell me how everything gets along.”

“How what gets along?”

“The garden,” said Henrick. “I always thought she was practical to the bone, but looks like she inherited Fred’s wild streak. His passion for flowers.”

“Isabella’s not really artistic,” Malachi said assuredly.

“Oh, but she came in here last week and bought all sorts of seeds. Peonies and white roses, mostly. Said she’s going to plant them as soon as the ground thaws.”

Buying flowers? He could hardly imagine Isabella—dull, grounded Isabella—partaking in something so lovely and lively.

So that’s what she’d been doing, he thought, all while prodding him about work. Scoffing at his art. The sour taste on his tongue intensified, thick and acidic.

Swallowing, he joked, “Maybe we can keep the cat around until then and she can find somewhere in the yard to stick her.”

He expected the old man to laugh, but Henrick only grunted. “You know, you say you’re burning that cat, but I think Fred would have wanted her right by his side. Maybe it’s none of my business.”

“He won’t mind,” said Malachi. The words left his mouth on a whim, fueled by his annoyance, in a tone he hadn’t quite intended to bite so hard. For a moment, Henrick didn’t say anything. When Malachi looked at him, the old man’s ordinarily cheery eyes were watching him steadily, suddenly soft and diluted.

“I’m sorry, son.”

Malachi eyed his feet, uncomfortable. “What, why?”

“Fred should have said that to you, but he never did. I believe he always wanted to. But there’s something you should understand.” He paused. “Well, you’re never going to get that apology. He’s gone now, and waiting around for him won’t do anybody any good.” He smiled sadly. “I wish you could’ve had one last talk with him, though.”

As the old man spoke, embarrassment swelled inside Malachi, pumping blood into his face until it burned. Some anger accompanied it as well. The old man’s words were condescending and full of pity, something he imagined Isabella was thinking every time she looked at him with those sad-cold eyes. You didn’t know Papa, Malachi wanted to say. You don’t know me, either.

But all that left his mouth was “Thanks for the wood.” He gathered the logs and left as quickly as he could, looking anywhere but the storekeeper’s eyes. *** As he sat thrusting logs into the fireplace, he thought of that day—many weeks after Papa’s death—when he’d visited his father for the first time. He remembered the wet feeling of the grass on his knees, and the moody spring sky that was the type of sky Papa hated most. For once, he hadn’t cried in front of Papa.

His face had only scrunched up tightly, and stayed that way as he knelt there, hour after hour. As the clouds grew dark and started to empty themselves onto the land, he remembered expecting to feel some sort of weight disappear off his shoulders, to breathe the icy air into lungs that no longer felt constantly compressed. But the shock, the brief feeling of victory, the confusion, and the anger he’d felt consecutively in these first few weeks had only evolved into a kind of heavy, hollow bitterness.

Now, he unraveled the blanket that Sugar was bundled in and placed her stiff body on the wood. What now? he thought. All that planning, all that nagging, and the old man still couldn’t point him in a proper direction. His head was spinning a little. He struck one match and tossed it into the fireplace, then another, and a third one, until the stack of firewood was blazing.

“What are you doing?”

He hadn’t heard Isabella enter through the front door. She was hugging a bag of gardening soil with wide eyes.

“Why are you here?” was all he could think to ask.

“I thought you’d be in your room,” she said quickly. “I mean, you’re usually drawing in your room at this time.” Her gaze fell on the flames blooming in the fireplace. “What are you doing?” she repeated.

“It’s not like you,” said Malachi, his voice rising, “to take a day off at all, let alone to use it for gardening. I heard from Henrick that you’re quite passionate now. Were you trying to keep it a secret?”

“Because I knew you’d react like this,” she said.

“You’d react this way if you were in my shoes. It’s easy, I suppose, to want to honor him and his garden when you were the one he loved.”

She let the soil fall to the floor with a thud. “Of course. He loved me so much that every word he directed at me was about you—teach Malachi this, make sure Malachi does that. I’m just stupid enough that I’m still here, taking care of you ten years after he died.”

“I didn’t ask to be taken care of,” he said, flushing red. “I’d never have stayed in this house if I’d known I’d be cooking and

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cleaning like a—a maid. I’m stuck here.”

“I’m stuck, too!” She sounded tired and desperate and alive. “Look at me. Buying soil and seeds to revive something he loved. Begging my brother not to burn his beloved cat. I wonder all the time why it always falls on me. But I remember that I do it because it’s right. Because he’s my papa, and because hating him ten years later would only be a waste of space in my heart.” She stared at the bright tendrils flicking in and out of the fireplace, then looked back at Malachi. “It’s time for you to realize you’re not a kid anymore.”

Malachi opened his mouth, but the flames had begun to lap closer and closer to his face, whooshing in his face like hot breath, and he moved back. The fire had started to spill out of the fireplace, spitting bright mouthfuls that singed little black holes into the rug. Isabella rushed to the kitchen, while Malachi stood and stomped frantically on the tiny fires that had sprouted all across the living room floor.

Isabella returned with a dish filled with water and emptied it onto the flames.

“Go!” she shouted, and for once, he listened.

They worked in silence. There was only the thud-thudthud of their shoes on the floor as they ran back and forth from the kitchen, and their heavy, rhythmic breathing as the fire crackled. Even once they’d put out the flames, they sat for a moment without speaking. Finally, Isabella crossed the room to the fireplace and nudged the wood aside. Something charred and misshapen was all that remained of Sugar’s body.

She drew in a sharp breath. “Malachi,” she said, “look at her.”

Malachi put his face in his hands and started to cry. *** His memory of the grave was fuzzy now, ten years later.

But standing before the headstone, it somehow felt as though he’d gone back in time to that day, the first and last time he’d visited this place. Some flowers Isabella had left the week before still lay at the base of the headstone. He set down the kettle and the basket he’d brought with him and replaced the wilting peonies with a fresh bouquet, a collection of all the flowers that Henrick had said were Papa’s favorites.

Malachi emptied the kettle onto the ground, watching the boiling water splash and hiss and seep into the dirt, thawing it gradually. After a few minutes, he prodded the ground with his foot, and started to dig. Nearby, a couple of robins had emerged with the morning sun. Their voices rang throughout the graveyard, above the dirt squelching and the clink-clink of the shovel. Malachi soaked in the sound, taking in deep lungfuls of spring air.

When he’d finished, he reached into the basket for Sugar, removing the blanket to reveal the disintegrating mass. He placed her gently in the dirt, and then closed his eyes and tilted his chin toward the clouds. He didn’t know what he was doing—praying or simply absorbing the morning sunshine. All he could think about was how warm the sun felt, filling him from head to toe.

Matthew Yu

Visual Arts The Woodlands College Park High School The Woodlands, TX

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The Fruit Sellers Mixed media: watercolor, gouache, paint marker, white ink, fountain pen 2023

YoungArts About

About YoungArts YoungArts—the national foundation for the advancement of artists—was established in 1981 by Lin and Ted Arison to identify exceptional young artists, amplify their potential, and invest in their lifelong creative freedom. YoungArts provides space, funding, mentorship, professional development and community throughout artists’ careers. Entrance into this prestigious organization starts with a highly competitive application for talented artists ages 15–18, or grades 10–12, in the United States that is judged by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through a rigorous adjudication process.

YoungArts award winners are further eligible for exclusive opportunities, including: nomination as a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, one of the nation’s highest honors for high school seniors; a wide range of creative development support including fellowships, residencies and awards; professional development programs offered in partnership with major institutions nationwide; additional financial support; and access to YoungArts Post, a private, online portal for YoungArts artists to connect, share their work and discover new opportunities.

Past YoungArts award winners include Daniel Arsham, Terence Blanchard, Camille A. Brown, Timothée Chalamet, Viola Davis, Amanda Gorman, Judith Hill, Jennifer Koh, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Andrew Rannells, Desmond Richardson and Hunter Schafer.

For more information, visit youngarts.org.

Join the conversation Instagram @youngarts YouTube @youngarts Facebook /youngartsfoundation Twitter @youngarts

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Notable Winners

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U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts YoungArts Guest Artist

†

Doug Aitken

Daniel Arsham

Hernan Bas

Terence Blanchard

Doug Blush

Camille A. Brown

Timothée Chalamet

Gerald Clayton

Viola Davis

Allegra Goodman

Amanda Gorman

Judith Hill

Jennifer Koh

Sarah Lamb

Tarell Alvin McCraney

Jason Moran

Eric Owens

Billy Porter

Andrew Rannells

Desmond Richardson

1997 Theater †

1986 Dance*†

Elizabeth Roe

Hunter Schafer

Kerry Washington

Chris Young

1986 Visual Arts†

1984 Film†

1983 Theater

1994 Classical Music*

1988 Voice†

2000 Classical Music*†

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1999 Visual Arts†

1997 Dance*†

1985 Writing *

1998 Dance*†

1987 Theater

2017 Design Arts

1996 Visual Arts

2013 Theater

2015 & 2016 Writing

1999 Theater †

1994 Theater †

1980 Classical Music†

2002 Jazz*†

2002 Voice†

1993 Jazz†

2003 Voice*†

Guest Artists Derrick Adams

Debbie Allen

Germane Barnes

Mikhail Baryshnikov

Endia Beal

Ignacio Berroa

Ron Carter

Ayodele Casel

Lisa Fischer

Renée Fleming

Frank Gehry

Nikki Giovanni

Marika Hughes

Bill T. Jones

Naeem Khan

Dr. Joan Morgan

José Parlá

Rosie Perez

Paula Scher

Jeanine Tesori

Hank Willis Thomas

Mickalene Thomas

B.D. Wong

Jeffrey Zeigler

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2024 Guest Artists Chip Abbott Dance Coach

Rick Delgado Film National Selection Panel, 1992 Film

Derrick Adams Visual Arts Guest Artist

Clinton Edward Dance Discipline Coordinator

Carl Allen Jazz Guest Artist

Diana Eusebio Design Discipline Coordinator, 2016 Design Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Marie Arago Photography National Selection Panel Leticia Bajuyo Visual Arts National Selection Panel Jenni Barber Theater National Selection Panel Germane Barnes Design Guest Artist Ignacio Berroa Jazz Guest Artist

Peter Jay Fernandez Theater National Selection Panel Jason Ferrante Voice National Selection Panel Vanessa Garcia Writing National Selection Panel Eric Gottesman Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Denyce Graves Voice Guest Artist

Corinne May Botz Photography National Selection Panel Chair, 1995 Photography & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Lois Greenfield Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Gail Boyd Voice Guest Artist

Chelsea Guo Voice Guest Artist

Kimberley Browning Film National Selection Panel Chair

Curry J. Hackett Design Guest Artist

Daveed Buzaglo Voice Discipline Coordinator, 2012 Voice

La Tanya Hall Voice National Selection Panel Chair

Elinor Carucci Photography Guest Artist

Sam Hamilton Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Devin Caserta Visual Arts Discipline Coordinator, 2006 Visual Arts

Rosie Herrera Dance National Selection Panel

Christopher Castellani Writing National Selection Panel Chair, 1990 & 1992 Writing

Reina Hidalgo Dance Coach

Robert Chambers Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Robert Hill Dance National Selection Panel

Max Chernin Theater National Selection Panel

Bertha Hope Jazz Guest Artist

Victoria Collado Writing Guest Artist

MaryAnn Hu Theater National Selection Panel Chair

Nicole Cooley Writing National Selection Panel, 1984 Writing & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Javon Jackson Jazz National Selection Panel Chair, 1983 Jazz

Lucia Cuba Design National Selection Panel Tanya Darby Jazz National Selection Panel Marshall Davis Jr. Dance Coach

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Cat Jimenez Photography National Selection Panel Modesto “Flako” Jimenez Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Christina Johnson Dance Coach

Loni Johnson Visual Arts National Selection Panel Chair

Lance Nguyen Anthropologie Design Guest Artist

Tanya Kalmanovitch Classical Music National Selection Panel

Billy Porter Aon Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Mitch Kaplan Writing Guest Artist

Marcus Quiniones Theater Coach

Dr. Leila Kelleher Design Guest Artist

Lee Quiñones Visual Arts Guest Artist

Yashua Klos Visual Arts National Selection Panel

Noel Quiñones Writing Guest Artist

Kokayi Voice Guest Artist

Aparna Ramaswamy Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Erika Lavinia Anthropologie Design Guest Artist

Ashwini Ramaswamy Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Joan Lader Theater and Voice Coach

Ranee Ramaswamy, Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Kathryn Lewek Voice Guest Artist

Christian Reátegui Jazz Discipline Coordinator

Yvonne Lin Design National Selection Panel

Rebecca Rigert Dance Coach

Marina Lomazov Classical Music National Selection Panel Chair

Christell Roach Writing Discipline Coordinator, 2015 Writing

Jeremy Manasia Jazz National Selection Panel

Sterling Rook Visual Arts Guest Artist

Delfeayo Marsalis Jazz Guest Artist

Anastasia Samoylova Photography Guest Artist

Michael McElroy Theater Guest Artist

Chris Sampson Voice National Selection Panel

Dianne McIntyre Dance Guest Artist

Marlon Saunders Voice Guest Artist

Alex Mediate Photography Discipline Coordinator, 2016 Photography

Vernon Scott Dance National Selection Panel Chair

Hollis Meminger Film National Selection Panel

Jason Seife Visual Arts Guest Artist

Ana Menéndez Writing Guest Artist

Juri Seo Classical Music National Selection Panel

Camila Meza Voice Guest Artist

Jean Shin Visual Arts Guest Artist, YoungArts Trustee, 1990 Winner in Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts

Aaron Miller Classical Music Discipline Coordinator, 1998 Classical Music Dr. Joan Morgan Writing Guest Artist , YoungArts Trustee Nicole Mujica Theater Discipline Coordinator Rashaad Newsome Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Laura Novoa Curator

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Laurie Simmons Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Troy Simmons Visual Arts Guest Artist Risa Steinberg Dance Coach DeLanna Studi Interdisciplinary Guest Artist

Grace Talusan Writing National Selection Panel Dr. Nadhi Thekkek Dance Coach Mickalene Thomas Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Tiffany Threadgould Design Guest Artist Demondrae Thurman Classical Music National Selection Panel Cristy Trabada Film Discipline Coordinator, 2016 Film Chat Travieso Design Arts National Selection Panel Chair, 2003 Visual Arts & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts Vân Ánh Võ Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Kate Wallich Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Stacie Aamon Yeldell Mindfulness Coach Jeffrey Zeigler Interdisciplinary Guest Artist Susan Zhang Classical Music Guest Artist

*as of 01/06/2023

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Special Thanks to Educators

YoungArts would like to acknowledge the following educators, named by the 2024 award winners. We can only do the work we do to identify, recognize and award outstanding students in the arts with the support and effort of educators, teachers, instructors, coaches, homeschoolers and arts practitioners.

Tim Abbott Lee Akamichi Jacqueline Akhmedova Alexandria Alkire Tiffany Alvarez-Thurman Jason Anderson Maggie Anderson Monica Anderson Eric Anderson James Antonucci Angela Apte Brad Arnold Lacy Austin Denis Azabagic Thom Babbes David Badgley Sam Bae Amy Barston Nina Barwell Michael Beaman Outspoken Emanulee Bean Donna Bender Bobbi Bennett Brennan Benson Sarah Blackman Tema Blackstone Laura Blau Hans Boepple Paige Borowski Colleen Bramucci Colby Brewer Susan Broad Laura Burdick David Burgest Sallie Byrd Joe Cabral Francesca Campos Tanya Carey Amber Carpenter Paul Carroll Elizabeth Chang Bradford Chase Hung Kuan Chen Michael Chipman Haejee Cho Peter Cirelli Tia Clark Ashley Clarke Ashley Cleveland Tom Colley Stephanie Copeland Chelsea Cushman Darren Dalton Darren Dalton Gussie Danches Kendall Davis Lesly Deschler Michael Dillow Pat Dortch Jessica Dunlap Patricia Duryea Oksana Ejokina Jennifer Elowitch Kate Engelkes

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We believe in encouraging the growth of the artist of the future

Aon Private Risk Management (APRM) is a leading global organization that offers extensive experience in servicing the personal insurance needs of successful families and their advisors. APRM provides highly specific risk solutions through specialty practice groups including, but not limited to the Art & Collections Practice, the Global Yacht Practice and Family Office Practice.

For more information please visit aon.com or contact Blythe Hogan at 212.441.2409.

Board of Trustees as of December 2023

Sarah Arison, Board Chair Richard Kohan, President of The Board Zuzanna Szadkowski,* Secretary Richard S. Wagman,† Treasurer Derrick Adams Doug Blush * Hampton Carney Linda Coll Natalie Diggins Kristy Edmunds Jonathan Flack Danielle Garno, Esq. Rosie Gordon-Wallace Michi Matter Jigarjian Jason Kraus Steven Marks, Esq. Lauren Matthiesen Michael McElroy * Dr. Joan Morgan John J. O’Neil, Esq. Glenda Pedroso Victoria Rogers Jean Shin * Sandra Tamer Debi Wisch Maurice M. Zarmati Trustees Emeritus Armando M. Codina Meryl Comer Justin DiCioccio Agnes Gund John J. Kauffman Dr. Ronald C. McCurdy Dr. Eduardo J. Padrón Desmond Richardson * Marcus Sheridan

* †

YoungArts award winner Trustee Emeritus

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We envision a world that embraces artists as vital to our humanity.

The artists of tomorrow need professional and creative development support today.

With the help of our community, YoungArts offers artists the tools they need to pursue a life in the arts, including a lifetime of training, funding, mentorship and community.

Make a contribution today.

Visit youngarts.org or scan the QR code below.

Thank you for empowering artists!

The National Foundation for the Advancement of Artists