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!o!ginal poems and

poems in"ired by o#ers

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is the ash.” Leonard Cohen

C H A P T E R O N E

T h e P r i c e o f I n d i v i d u a l i t yGenevieve Jaser, grade 9The woman with the orchid tucked behind her earDoesn’t care what people think of herParades through alleys and chooses her blossomCarries the bud carefully through the grass and placing it in her golden hairShe drops a seed into the soil, imagines the potential a sprout could bringShe has brought life into her gardenBut suddenly the grass trips herShe tumbles onto the dirt and holds her skinned kneesThe people stare and look her up and downWild daisies droop and die, as does her free spiritThe vile life of society judges even the most unique of charactersIs this how life is?But she, confidant, is not offended by the jealous eyesThe looks of envy are growing as she reveals her innocent soulHer valley is blossoming once againShe has beauty but not all people can see itAll the outsiders see is someone to put at the bottom of their listsTheir smirks are meant to poison her cheerful mindBut deep inside she knows that they’re jealousThey need people to put below themselvesTo feel that they are worth something—That is the price of being your own person

I ’ m N o t R e a l l y S u r e W h o I A mNoah Kim, grade 8I’m not really sure who I am,Changing constantly,Becoming my lies,Never myself,I’m the cool kid,The one who knows who he is,When the truth has never been so far away.I am my own god,I am the only one who can applaud myself,Fighting myself to find

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What I have been assignedTo do with my life.So when I grab the knife,And hold it to my forehead,And I start the bloodshed,That’s not the way it was supposed to be.Then when I see you curledIn your bed, innocence,I keep my silence.No one knows the secrets I hold.But behold,How we’ve all been cajoled,Patrolled, sold,It’s time to take our lives back.Now jump into the crack,Let’s take it back to the days,When our lives weren’t controlled,When social media wasn’t our foothold.Writing is dying 140 characters at a time.

S o m e P e o p l eLila Weiser, grade 9Some people live a beautiful lie,others just die a realistic death.Some people cherish their memories,others just wish time would pass.Some people smell the roses,others just itch and sneeze.Some people dance like no one is watching,others just sit and stare.Some people listen to the birds sing,others just close the window.Some people feel the rain,others just get wet.

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!novels, novellas, chapters, and

o#er excerpts

“I don’t have a name and I don’t have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.”

—William Saroyan

C H A P T E R T W O

L i v e W i t h T h a tMaddy Baer, grade 10He could smell her perfume. He could sense when she moved. Feel when she breathed. Right now, he could feel her terror. Her hate pulsed through his veins just as it did through hers. He could taste how she feared him, even loathed him.! “Come out, Catherine. I know you’re in here,” he called, and he felt her shud-der. He loved how frightened he made her, how weak and helpless she felt in his presence. Outside the chemistry room door, he could hear the faint pulse of the mu-sic. While all their classmates danced and laughed the night away, she was here, alone with him. Maybe that would have been more romantic if he hadn’t chased her here, and if she weren’t crouched behind a lab station...! He remembered another time when she had been crouched, hiding from him, when they had played together in grade school. It was third grade, and he had been blessed by Mrs. Hunan and the seating chart gods. That week he had been assigned the desk next to Catherine. He had sat down next to her, and she had smiled that perfect smile of hers, and he had smiled back. They talked all the time, and Mrs. Hu-nan threatened to move their seats on multiple occasions. One day at recess, she had asked him to play hide and seek with her friends. It was the best recess of his life. She had been so beautiful, even then. !! Click. Clack. His shoes laughed triumphantly with each step. He knew every inch closer to her made her heartbeat quicken and her perfect little hands sweat just a little more. “Come on, honey, just dance with me,” he taunted. ! He heard her breath, then her whisper: “P-p-p-p-please, George.” She took another deep breath. “Just let me go back out to the dance. We can dance out there, with everyone else.”! Bull, he thought. Bull. She’d just run to her friends, and the football team would tell him to back off if he came any closer to her. “I’m not that stupid, Catherine. You’ll just run away from me. You know how I hate it when you do that. Don’t make me angry, Catherine. You know how I get when I’m angry.” His fists clenched and his face reddened with impatience. !! She remembered when he had seemed like just another kid to her. When she had seen how sweet he could be, when they had been best friends. Elementary school had been the height of their friendship. They had played together a million times. She recalled one night when they had been watching a movie at her house and eating pizza. She had spilled tomato sauce onto the couch. She knew how angry her mother would be when she saw it, and George knew too. Her mother was particularly cruel in her punishments; she would have faced a night without dessert, which at the time was like the death penalty. So George had gone upstairs and taken the blame for her. She

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had never felt more loved in her life. But tonight he had shown her a different side of himself, one she had seen only a few times before: this side. The side of him that re-minded her of a villain from a horror movie.! “Please, George, you’re scaring me,” she whispered. ! She acted as if he didn’t already know that. Didn’t she see how he reveled in her terror? Suddenly, her voice was stronger. He knew she was thinking of her father, and the threat she had yet to act on. ! “George, if you keep scaring me, I’m going to tell my father, and he will take this very seriously, you know he will. I don’t want to have to do that, George, please don’t make me do that.” ! Now he was angry. Did she have to pull the daddy card every time? He recalled growing up with Catherine, all the good times they had had together. They had played together at the park, had countless movie nights, and raced in the streets. He would have done anything to make her smile, because he loved her smile. But as they say, all good things must come to an end. Catherine was beautiful and easy to talk to, while he was a little awkward and painfully shy. They had drifted apart in middle school and even farther apart in high school because of it. Everyone loved her, and that infuriated him. He had loved her first, before anyone else. Did that mean noth-ing to her? When he had tried time and again to approach her at school, he had been laughed off by her new friends. Even though she often looked like she wanted to stop them, she never did. She would look at him with her big green eyes, the ones he had fallen in love with that fateful day in third grade. She would start to say something, but every time, she would flash back to the first time her new friends had made fun of him. She remembered them saying that anyone who was friends with George had to be a loser. So she had kept her mouth shut. He had looked so hurt, but she had done nothing. She refused to talk to him. So George had started taking more drastic meas-ures to get her attention. Like tonight.! “Just because your daddy is a police officer doesn’t mean you get to ignore me. It doesn’t give you the right to treat people like dirt.” He was screaming now, spit-ting his words. “Don’t you remember how much fun we had when we were kids? If you just gave me a chance you would see.” He stopped speaking for a moment. She thought he looked almost… peaceful. Then he took a step out from behind the lab station and looked down at her. “But you won’t, and I hate to sound like a clichéd stalker, but don’t think that just because you don’t want me, I will ever stop wanting you.” He took a deep breath. His next words sounded like poetry in his head, and he could already taste how they would frighten her: “As long as I want you, no one else can have you.” He smiled a little smile at her. He felt her urge to cry. Slowly, she backed away and ducked behind another lab station.

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! “What? Am I that disgusting to you that you can’t even bear being near me?” George shouted. She blinked back tears and shook her head. He was yelling now; he felt as if each word he let rip from his lungs ripped out a little piece of his heart, the heart that died a little every time he saw her.! Her hands shook as she dialed. He was too busy screaming and threatening the lives of every boy she had ever talked to to notice. She hid her phone in her pocket and stole glances down at the screen. ! “Come on, Catherine,” he bellowed. “I came here to dance with you so that’s what I’m going to do.” He pushed over the lab stools in front of him and marched toward where she was hiding. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him.! “No!” she screamed. She kicked and writhed. She kicked him in the shin hard enough that he lost his grip for a moment and let go. She scrambled to the other side of the room. She picked up a scalpel and held it out shakily in front of her. “Don’t come any closer or I will use this,” she yelled. “I’m going to make my way over to the door, and I’m going to leave. You will not follow me. If you never speak to me again, I will never tell anyone about this. Okay, George?” She looked across the room at him. There was a dark look in his eyes.! “I’m never going to leave you alone. And if you can’t live with that, well, you’re not going to be able to live.” He picked up a glass beaker and examined it carefully. He caressed it for a moment, and then smashed it on the lab station in front of him. He took a shard slightly larger than her scalpel and held it out. The sides cut into his hands and blood began to drip down his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. Catherine bolted to the door and sprinted down the hallway. Her knife clattered to the floor behind her as he screamed in rage and took off after her.! She ran as fast as she could toward the gym doors. She could see people, her friends, through the tiny window in the door. She flashed back to all the times they had had together, laughing, talking, or watching movies. There was Laura, dancing with Alex. Man, that was going to piss Ally off. She could feel the safety and normality of them around her already. ! She heard George’s footsteps behind her echoing through the hallway and grabbed the door handle. She pulled back; she could feel her stomach rising to her throat when her pull was met with resistance. It was locked. The door to her survival was locked. Frantically, desperately, she pulled and then threw her weight against the door. He watched her struggle with a sick enjoyment. He slowed his steps and simply waltzed up behind her.! She looked to the big oak doors down the hall and knew it was too late to escape to the parking lot. She could try to run, but he would follow her. Strangely enough, the idea that only a wall separated her from help was less scary then being alone in a parking lot with George. She remembered being alone with him once, when they

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were little. They had been working on a project in 5th grade. It was a science project, about recycling. Everyone knew that George would get an A because he was the teacher’s favorite and a whiz at science. Every single kid in that class had begged George to let them be his partner. But he had chosen Catherine. She remembered how he had looked at her, even then.! “Well, Catherine, I guess this is it.” His chilling voice rang in her ears. “I’m so sorry you couldn’t love me like I love you. I didn’t want to have to do this.” He walked around her in a circle. He could tell she wanted to run to the parking lot; he could feel her muscles tensing, like a runner before a race. She twitched, as if she were going to run, but he grabbed her arm. “But like I said,” he laughed in delight at how stereotypical what he was about to say was, “if I can’t have you no one can.” He raised his shard of glass above his head and pinned her to the door. A drop of blood dripped off of his arm and landed on her porcelain cheek. He liked the contrast be-tween the rust of his blood and her perfection. She shuddered beneath his arm. He felt that shudder too, in his bones, and he loved it. She closed her eyes and... !I n t e r s t a t e F o r t yCamille Faucheux, grade 11At 9:15 pm., a shabbily dressed, college-aged man walks into the dingy unisex gas station bathroom and finds Death standing over a urinal. They exchange tense, terse pleasantries as the man crosses to the only sink—nothing but a quick nod of the head and a grunt of recognition from both sides—and positions himself shakily in front of the mirror. He washes his hands, managing to flinch only slightly (the plumbing here must run straight through the bowels of Hell itself), and pops another two ibuprofen tablets to dull the heartbeat-steady throb behind his eyes. His tongue tastes dry and sour, like bad coffee and lost sleep, and there’s a trembling in his legs that won’t go away. He’s staring into the cracked mirror and examining the fragments of his worn face when Death speaks up.! “You’re lost too, no?” Death says. They’re leaning over the urinal with one nebulous arm braced against the peeling yellow wall, staring intently into the drain as if the crusty stains ringing it carry some half-memory they’ve long been struggling to access. ! “I’m not lost,” the man snaps. He knows he sounds irritated, but really he’s just tired. “I don’t know where I am.” ! Death chuckles. The sound riles the hairs on the back of the man’s neck. “I suppose you aren’t aware of how many times I’ve heard that phrase and its numerous permutations over the course of my travels,” they say pleasantly. “Of course, it’s a

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false distinction—the kind in which no tangible observation is truly made. It’s meant to be…hmm… eccentric, perhaps?” ! The man sighs deeply. “I’m lost, then. But so are you, right?” He searches use-lessly in his pocket for his phone before remembering that he left it charging in the car. “If lost is even something you can be.” ! “By nature, I’m afraid.” ! The man avoids looking at Death as best he can. The air around them and the way he can only half see them out of the corner of his eye only serves to frustrate his headache. ! “I can only assume this is where I’m meant to be. I’m sorry. That must sound very pretentious to you.” Death’s voice is vaguely laced with passive aggression.! One of the stall doors behind the man whines open. The high, steady screech is followed by a harsh exhale and the echoing click of stiletto heels on the floor tiles. The man is only given a moment’s warning—“Heads up, SoHo boy”—before a woman in a tiered white dress and dagger-sharp winged eyeliner shoves him away from the sink. She mutters something vicious and profane to herself and washes off her hands like one would strangle a cat. Her large black handbag swings off the crook of her elbow, slamming into the porcelain of the sink with her every movement. The man glances at Death, intending to share a knowing look, but is met only with a blank and hollow stare.  ! The woman finally stands up and wipes her hands dry on the lace peplum of her dress. “What’s the time?” she demands. The man glances down at his watch, but Death beats him to it. ! “9:34 and ten seconds,” they say. The woman raises one thick, tailored eyebrow and leans against the sink in what looks like defeat. ! “Shit,” she breathes and begins to dig through her purse. “Anyone got a light?” ! “I assume you’re not speaking in a spiritual sense,” says Death. ! She gives him a tight and rueful smile. ! “Trust me, bones,” she says, fishing a single cigarette out of her bag, “I’ve spent more than enough time in the house of the lord. I’ve got all the goddamn light heaven’s got to shine.” The woman twirls the cigarette between her sloppily-painted fingers. ! The man extracts a lighter from his back pocket and hands it to the woman. She lights the cigarette and then rips it out from between her teeth. Her lips are a dark, glossy Bordeaux, like his mother’s favorite shoes. “I’m lost too,” she says. “My tin can of a car broke down. Something with the motor. I’dunno.” Pause. She takes a long drag, like she’s in even less of a hurry than her engine. “No service, either. It’s like Satan set up his own little shitting station.”

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! Death nods and chuckles to themself again, as if reveling in the punch line to a joke they never told. The sound breaks off into a tense, shared silence punctuated by the man uncomfortably twisting his hands in his pockets and the woman angrily suck-ing her cigarette. Finally, the woman slams her heel into the ground and whirls to face Death. ! “What’s the joke, bonebag?” she growls, not seeming to care that her response is minutes late. She can stare the figure down without flinching or showing any sign of dizziness.! “Hmm?” Death is still staring into the urinal drain. “Ah, nothing. I believe I just remembered something.” At long last, they detach their arm from the wall and shift to lean against the side of the urinal. “Perhaps I am the only one here who is exactly where I am meant to be.”! A light chill pinches the man’s spine. “What does that mean?” he asks. His mouth is still impossibly dry, but he doesn’t trust the tap-water enough to drink from it. Death declines to answer. He doesn’t pursue the question.! The woman turns, then, to him. “So, Tweedie, what crapshoot of nature brought you here?” ! He clears his throat with some effort. “Visiting family,” he says curtly, prefer-ring to keep the specifics heavily under cover. She narrows her eyes at him inscruta-bly. He stares her down, and she shrugs, digging back into her cigarette. ! “The strong, silent type, huh,” she says. Her lips twist sideways, and she casts her eyes at the floor. Her false lashes shadow the cliffs of her cheekbones dramati-cally. He wonders if she’s some kind of movie star; she dresses herself in the over-whelming air of a tabloid hog. “Well, I don’t mind telling, seeing as I’m likely gonna die here. I’m off towards New Rochelle. My beloved old pastor kicked it, and I’ve been cordially invited to attend the funeral.” Her voice momentarily assumes a mock-ingly haughty tone. ! “Ah,” he says, suddenly feeling very uneasy, “Sorry, I... wouldn’t have immedi-ately pinned you as being devout.” ! Her laugh is like broken glass. “Oh, hell. You’ve got it wrong. He was an abu-sive, homophobic creep. I’m just seizing the opportunity to piss on his fresh grave.”! Something about the bitter victory in her voice reminds him of a feeling he’s long lost contact with. He smiles despite himself. “Will Harrington,” he offers abruptly, holding out his arm.! She takes it firmly, quickly. Her fingernails dig painful furrows into the back of his hand. “Eloise Walt,” she says with a glossy, black-cherry grimace. Death says nothing.! It takes them all until at least 9:50 to realize that there is a fourth person in the bathroom.

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T h e T e e n a g e r , t h e C h e f , a n d t h e C h u r c h O r g a n i s tJill Giambruno, grade 12“Why hello there,” the church organist said as she stepped inside, smiling at the chef and the teenager already aboard the elevator. She was dressed modestly, knee-length pencil skirt and white button-up blouse, carrying sheet music; she had just come from church. The chef smiled in response (at least, the organist thought he might have smiled; his mouth was hidden by his moustache), and the teenager stared deso-lately at his own feet. The church organist pressed the button for the tenth floor.! “That’s a lovely shade of green,” the organist noted, gesturing to the teenager’s hair. His eyes flicked up to glare at her. “I think I had a car that color in high school,” she continued, ignoring the teenager’s heavy stare. “Isn’t that a lovely shade?” This comment was directed at the chef, who shrugged, his already fat cheeks rounding even more in a smile (oh, yes... the organist was sure it was a smile this time).! “I make a’ the pizza!” exclaimed the chef in an Italian accent so thick the organ-ist almost couldn’t understand him. The teenager rolled his eyes and moved a hand up to touch a piercing on his eyebrow. It was red and slightly swollen. Probably new.! “Is that a new piercing?” the organist asked, as nosey as ever. The clearly angsty teenager responded with a grumble of acknowledgement. The chef continued to smile like the Cheshire Cat. ! “Ah, you like a’ the pizza?” he asked, directing his question at the church or-ganist, who lit up at the acknowledgement. ! “Why yes! I do like the pizza!”! The teenager mumbled something under his breath that sounded like “Oh, God, shut up...”! The elevator door dinged, opening onto the ninth floor, and the teenager grabbed the chef’s hand. “Come on, Dad, this is our floor.” The chef waved his meaty hand at the church organist as they left, leaving her flabbergasted.

A b a n d o n e dEmily Ji, grade 9I watched the blurry figure of my mom fade away in the distance. I raised my hand in farewell; the gesture was not returned. Her comforting encouragement from the night before lingered in my ears. I placed my hand on the frost-covered window. A burning cold seared across my hand, like icy fire. The pain grew. I kept my hand there.! Don sat in the driver’s seat. He didn’t say anything to me as he stared straight ahead at the road, which was slathered with ice and snow from the recent storm. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned bright white.

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! I had never seen him before, until today. All I knew about him was that he knew my mom. I didn’t know if he liked her or hated her. I didn’t know the history of their relationship. I didn’t know how old he was. I didn’t even know where he was taking me. As a kid, you learn to stop asking questions. From the backseat, all I could see was the top of his head, which was covered with shiny, brown hair. He wore a faded corduroy jacket and dark brown pants. I waved at him. He didn’t look at me.! His expression was grim, and his mouth was set in a tight line. His grey eyes were no longer soft, like the melting snow. Instead, they glowed like deadly storm clouds do, right before the lightning strikes. I guess it was from anger. Or maybe sadness. As a kid, I didn’t know the difference. Maybe he was angry at my mom, or at me. Little did I know, he was angry at himself. ! I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered what my mom was thinking. I wondered what I should be thinking.! I remember the way my mom wouldn’t look at me after she had buckled my seat-belt. I remember how she didn’t even attempt to hug me one last time before we separated forever. I remember how she turned away when I waved goodbye.! My heart burned with the same icy fire that I had felt on my hand. Heat flared through my veins, and my chest froze. ! At the same time, I realized my hand was still on the window. The same window from which I had seen the last image of my mom. I painfully removed my hand and touched it with my finger. It was cold. As cold as death.! Life does not offer you many chances to select your own path. Fate prevents many things from going your way. However, you can choose whether to remember or to forget. You can choose the way you feel. You can choose who you love and who you hurt. In that moment, on that white winter day, I decided to forget. I decided to be angry.! My mom was someone I loved, and she promised to love me too. But you don’t just give something you love away. You don’t just dispose of it. Love is a gift not a burden. They say, if you love something, set it free. If it comes back, then it’s yours. But I wasn’t being set free. Leaving the only life I had ever known, I was now being bound forever. Shackled with the chains of fate. And I wasn’t planning on coming back.! As a child, you don’t know much. As a child, you overestimate yourself. And as a child, you think you’re invulnerable. Because I was only five, I knew better than to cry. Because I was only five, I believed that I was determined and strong enough not to. ! But because I was only five, I felt the hot waterfall of tears cascade down my face.

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F r e e F a l lIsabel Lichtman, grade 10Sometimes, it’s what is between the carefully ordered lines and set routines of our lives that matters the most. If you look past the cubicles, rules, and hierarchies of our lives, then you may find something that is truly worth living for. It took me thirteen years and one fateful day to come to this point. The point where my closed door be-gan to slowly creak open.! I’d say I was a rather average person living an average life. There were no tragic deaths in my family history, no serious illnesses or injuries. I lived with both my mom and my dad, as well as my brother Tommy. I had a group of five friends who I hung out with almost every weekend, and I did all right in school. I was, like I said, average. When you live an average life, you start to get used to normal, and you begin fear anything that’s a departure from the normal. So on the first day of eighth grade, I expected nothing more than a simple, average day. As you might have guessed, it was anything but.! It was an average day in Weston, Massachusetts. The sun was out, but it gave no real warmth. It smelled of wet leaves and of spicy fall air. The grass had recently lost its summer sheen, and the air had taken the blank, dreary look found in the eyes of students beginning school once again. It started off as just a normal bus ride. The “fresh meat” sixth graders squirming in their seats, preparing for a day that would surely be easier than they might imagine, seventh graders, happy not to be the new kids, and us, the eighth graders, already feeling done with middle school at the be-ginning of the year. At exactly 7:34, I boarded the bus and took a seat with my friend Katherine. We moved quickly through the standard first day conversation, then moved on to the real dirt.! “Did you hear what Sammy did over break? Bailey said that she got into a real club... like a nightclub! She always did look old for her age, I guess, but not that old,” Katherine said, one word flowing into another so her sentences sounded more like words. Katherine loved to talk and especially to gossip. I didn’t talk as much, but I didn’t mind the chatter. It gave me time to think and responding was always more work than listening. Her stories were the background music to my bus ride every morning. ! While Katherine spoke, I glanced around, finding the familiar faces of my fellow eighth graders. There was Jack, the tallest boy in the eighth grade, and unfortunately, also the worst basketball player; Mark, a pretty average guy unless you considered the fact that he had won the National Spelling Bee last year; and Mary, who was mean, unapproachable, and someone that all the older kids knew. Basically, you either wanted to be Mary’s best friend or avoid her altogether. She was infamous for the

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flagpole prank, in which, somehow, she had hoisted Jackie Smith onto the top of the flagpole and hung her by her underwear. It took the entire fire department and a cherry picker to get poor Jackie down, and it will probably take a lifetime to forget, but, of course, no one suspected or punished innocent little Mary. She was good at what she did and at pretty much everything else, too.! I was snapped back into reality with a jolt. Glancing up, I caught a glimpse of panic in the eyes of Betty, our faithful bus driver. I felt a bit of panic myself, a cold, shivery sensation, like a small cup of water dumped on my head, but it was soon over. Strangely, no one else seemed to have noticed the jolt, apart from Betty and myself. Obviously then it was nothing bad. Right? The bus was fine. Betty was fine. We were all fine. Right? I found Jack’s head, calmly bobbing a foot above the others, Mark studying Webster’s Dictionary, and Mary using her phone for god-knows-what. I felt a small shift, a nearly undetectable change in the air. A tiny and unidentifiable depar-ture from the normal, but the normal people on my normal bus in my normal town went on being normal. ! I looked over at Katherine, happily chattering away, and decided not to disturb her. Maybe I was just paranoid. Or maybe these jolts of our usually smooth bus were unusual after all. The usual roar of the engine hummed underneath me. But was it louder than usual? I turned my eyes towards the window out of habit and noticed that we were beginning our descent of Snowflake Hill, the largest hill in Weston. The Great Dane of slopes, Snowflake Hill was a legend. It had acquired its name from the grass surrounding the road. No matter what season, it was always pure white, like a newly fallen snow. It was the best skateboarding, rollerblading, or biking hill in the state and also the only way to get to Weston Middle School. Without driving through the woods, that is.! Betty made the wide turn that begins our usual trip down. The first sign was the fact that the blinker wouldn’t turn off. Not noticeable to us kids but a definite sign of malfunction. I watched as Betty fumbled with the many levers, her kind brown eyes confused and filled with silent terror. She tried to turn the wheel with no success. Her gloved hands slid across the huge wheel, slipping like a frog on ice. I was frozen, and I could do nothing but watch. ! There is a speed bump in the middle of Snowflake Hill to discourage stupid, speed-hungry teenagers from accelerating and losing control. Apparently, the bump is also a means of warning for helpless students on a bus hurtling down the largest hill in Massachusetts. We hit the bump like a tube hitting a huge wave in the middle of the ocean. Pavement, however, is much less forgiving than any water that I have ever seen. Students flew into the air, some tiny sixth graders hitting their heads on the ceiling, some falling into the aisle. I watched in complete bewilderment as Mary was thrown first against the window, then the front of the seat, and, at last, onto the

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floor of the aisle. It was like watching a toddler play around with a new set of rag dolls.  ! By instinct, I held tightly to the seat in front of me and hid behind it, trying and failing to tune out the screams of pain and terror on either side of me. It sounded like the soundtrack for a horror movie. Beside me, Katherine looked like a ghost, pale white skin, sweaty hands reaching for mine, glazed eyes. For once in her life, she had nothing to say. There is no preparation for an accident. It is what is sounds like: an accident. You never know when it is coming, and you can be sure it’s like nothing you have ever experienced before. There is no manual written about the proper ac-tion to take while a bus is hurtling down a hill.! As we picked up speed, I suddenly knew what it felt like to be an ant in an ant-hill, about to be crushed by an unsuspecting foot. We were speeding down the hill like a novice on skis, and the end was sure to come soon. I watched as my average classmates were thrown from their average lives into a situation that was anything but, and I watched them fail to fight the current.! I braced myself for the ultimate impact. Who knew if I would survive. Who knew if anyone would survive. I was scared out of my mind, but I also felt sort of like those spies in the movies—the ones who risk their lives every day to gain important infor-mation. They are probably always scared, but it is all right, because they are doing something intense and worthwhile. For the first time in my short, uneventful life, I was doing something that could make the headlines. It would be awful, but I was, for once, actually living on the edge. ! As we neared the end of the hill, like a big yellow arrow approaching the bullseye of a solid brick building, time froze. I could feel my heart beating in my chest and up through my ears. Around the bus, birds flew calmly, wings flapping on the windy day. They were calm and completely oriented in the air, while we were totally disoriented and slanted; our world was slanted. Mary lay in the aisle, shaking, limp, blood streaming from her nose. In this world, Mary, the toughest and most talented girl in the eighth grade, was weak. She was hurt, broken. And yet, no one noticed. In that moment of time, while birds were chirping, leaves were falling, and other students were arriving at school as usual, the passengers of bus 49 were frozen, shattered, and panicked. But I was not. I was ready.! The burning tires let out one last squeal of pain, and we all braced ourselves for the end. I glanced around at my fellow students with their eyes tightly shut and de-cided to keep mine open. If I was going to go out, I was going to end this average life with a bang. I gripped the dirty grey vinyl in front of me and grimaced about the way my life had turned around. Time seemed to speed up again, and then, with no warn-ing, we stopped. Had we hit? Was that it? I barely felt anything. Cautiously, I lifted my head, turning my eyes to peer over the seats. I was baffled by what I saw. Apart

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from Mary and a few other kids who had hit their heads, everyone was fine. Shaken up, but fine. I assessed the damage, my hands still quivering in anticipation of the crash. There was virtually none. A few dents in the ceiling, maybe some scratches from trees that we bumped past, but nothing that resembled the effects of a major bus crash. ! With a courage and confidence brand new to me, I leapt to my feet and stepped lightly around debris in the aisle. At the front of the bus, I took in Betty. Good old Betty, silent tears running down her face, mouth frozen in a straight line. Her eyes were those of a deer in the headlights. Her hand was stretched out, white knuckles gripping the brake. It was over, we were stopped, police cars were coming, but I could not see Betty moving her hand anytime soon. She had saved us, plain old Betty. ! Inside the bus, it was a scene of chaos, but on the outside, it was a normal fall day with fallen leaves, hazy skies, and the sounds of nature. Had the bus not been inches away from the wall of a building and had there not been dozens of crying teens inside, it would have looked like an average scene in the bus parking lot.! I took a seat on the curb, my mind too full to be held in the tight space of a school bus. What had just happened? Sure, the bus didn’t actually crash, but it had seemed as though my life had flashed in front of my eyes. I should be shaking like Mark, who was clutching his books to his chest, staring out the window but not really seeing, or injured like Mary, strong and then broken, or even crying like Jack, the gentle giant, unable comprehend what had just happened, unable to successfully take it in. But instead, I felt more at peace than ever before. Somehow, the change, the opposite of normal and a distortion of the life I once led, was strangely comforting. Like a sick sort of pleasure. I had been going through the motions and liking it. Un-inspired and inexperienced. I guess you just can’t wish for what you don’t know. But now I knew. Life was nothing without a little action and the threat of its suddenly being taken away. I had reached a turning point in my young life, and I knew I would never be the same. It took me thirteen years and one fateful day to come to this point. The point where my closed door began to slowly creak open.

W h i s p e r s i n a D r e a mOnyinye Nnodum, grade 9Egypt was always a fretful sleeper, her eyes closed tightly, her coffee colored face distorted and convulsed, as if she were being choked. She kicked all of her stuffed animals across the room. Her cover set was twisted around her long legs and arms. You always knew the climax of her terrors by the way she yelled, “Kenya!” But only the scariest, most terrifying dreams had her shrill screams echoing about the house. Knowing this, I still chose to enter her mind.

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! When I finally broke through the strong citadels that bordered her thoughts, I found myself standing on a field of red. The orangey sky looked as if the dreamscape sunset was nearing, although it was hard to tell because of the thick, red striations in the atmosphere.! Egypt wasn’t waking up soon, so I surveyed the surrounding area. There I saw her, hanging onto a loose brick on the skin of an abandoned building.! This was a weird dream. ! I heard soft squishes under my feet and became aware that I was walking on a river. It was blood red. Funny thing though, it didn’t smell like blood. I would know. It had a sweet, tangy aroma. Kind of like cranberry juice. I bent down and dipped my finger in the cool, cool liquid and tasted it. It was cranberry juice. Egypt hates cran-berry juice.! I walked up to her. “Hey, Geeg,” I said, hoping my pet name for her would ease the confusing situation. Surprisingly, she just said, “Wassup, Kenya?” ! “I need your help, baby girl.”! “You want Jamison?” she asked, as if she could read my mind when, in fact, it was the other way around.! “Yeah, you down?”! “Yes. Definitely,” she answered with finality. And that was that.! It took us seven weeks to track him down. Because it was such a hard project, we worked together, and it was as if I were still alive, as if we were the same sisters we had always been, as if I wasn’t dead. But I was, and that was why we were there. It was easy to ask around and find his hiding place. Egypt could look into your eyes and see your soul. When we found him she didn’t even have to ask, “Is that him?” She just knew. She was deep like that. I had to muster up some serious bravery to face him, even though he couldn’t see me, even though I was dead. Egypt was perfectly com-posed the whole time. Searching through records in his house, picking through his belongings. Even when we found my body in Jamison’s basement, wrapped in a black garbage bag, she kept her composure, trying to make sure I didn’t flip. Our bond was that strong. That’s how I could reveal myself to her in the dream. ! I always felt like the younger sister in our relationship. I looked up to her. She had those deep purple eyes that contrasted with her caramel skin and the midnight Senegalese twists uptop her head. Egypt had a regalness that I’d always admired. I never thought that she looked at me the way I saw her. Never, that is, until I died.! We had gone back to Jamison’s house to retrieve my body, when we caught him trying to throw me away. Again. I lost it. I was so angry that I caused a screaming wind to whip up and out of control. The basement darkened. My murderer looked up and went rigid. My emotions colored the room. Egypt’s attempts to calm me fell on deaf ears. Maroon dark fury lashed around in the impending twister I was creating.

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Crimson hatred joined the chaos, and soon, the space was transformed into a horror scene of flashing colors. I was certain that the imbecilic cretin saw me; my emotions were so raw and charged that I materialized momentarily. I frightened him so badly, he ran right into arms of the stunned police officers whom we’d called earlier. ! Only after Jamison was put in the cop car did I let go of my anger. The basement was in shambles. The complete opposite of its former organized glory. The pedo-philic pictures of young girls that he had neatly taped to a chalkboard on the back wall were now strewn clumsily around the room by the tornado that was my vehe-mence. ! Then Egypt, looking thirty years older than her thirteen, searched for a keep-sake of her dead sister among the remains. The strange picture wrenched my heart, breaking it beyond repair.! “Geeg, stop. You’re hurting yourself. You know that’s not me anymore; it’s a carcass. I can’t believe it—you look worse than I do. And I’m dead.”! “Hey,” Egypt said with tears in her eyes, “I love you more than my life. You know that right?”! “Course, love. I am a part of you. Never, ever forget that. I’m not leaving you. I’d rather give up eternity with God than leave—”! She cut me off. “Listen to me, Kenya.” Egypt had tears running down her cheeks. “You can’t ever give up God for me. Ever. I love you, but you need to go. Be happy.”! “Be healthy,” I sniffed, tears falling.! “Cheerios,” we said in unison for the last time.! Then Egypt did the most courageous thing I had ever seen her do. She let me go. And judging by the feeling of broken glass filling my heart, I guess I did too.

C a u s a l i t yBen Steiz, grade 11So the other day I had a thought: chocolate is really good. Yeah, that has nothing to do with this, but it really is.! Anyway, I was wandering along one fine day when I died. Or rather, I will be wandering along someday, and I will die. If you look past the fourth dimension, miniscule things like the sequence of events and causality start seeming meaningless. What did I/do I/will I mean by that? It’s a long story, which I have told/am telling/will tell you.! It all came together when I transcended the fourth dimension. Actually, come to think of it, I should probably start earlier than that. So a while ago I—what? You want me to tell you when this happened? Look, if you are going to interrupt me every five

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minutes… It’s not that I’m being ungracious to you for listening, but there is no real way to say when this began. It’s like looking at the empty space around you and pin-pointing the moment when space began. If you want an accurate stream of events, I can’t tell you the singular thing that happened; I need to tell you of the many various time streams that collided at that singular point. All right, let’s begin/continue/end:At one point in space-time, somewhat near to another space-time, on a road called I-95, there was a farm on which there was a goat.! In another point in space-time, God was watching and arranged the planets so that Quaoar and the Moon were conjunct in the 8th House.! In yet another point of space-time, I was walking along the side of the road, go-ing from one building to another. I was, of course, oblivious to the other points in space-time at that point in space-time. The me of farther along the timestream laughs at the me of earlier in the timestream’s limited vision. Anyway, I was walking along when I noticed a penny. I reached down to grab it.! Nearby, a lady was carrying around a Chihuahua named Fluffy—or as many of Fluffy’s caretakers called him, Fluffy the Terrible. In fact, Fluffy was the Antichrist, who was prophesied to return one day to bring about the apocalypse. Fluffy did not know this at the time.! A few minutes earlier, very high in the sky, a flock of falcons were migrating towards a plane. The commanding falcon’s scientific officer said to the flock leader that soon the entire flock would be killed by jet turbines, but he was ignored, as birds don’t have very complex minds. In desperation, the scientific officer launched his newborn egg towards a pack of pigeons, among whom he would grow to be a Jesus metaphor.! Meanwhile, the Gods of Olympus were laughing at my future misfortune. That’s not actually part of the story, but I thought I’d mention it. ! Anyway, alien conquerors appeared behind me through an interdimensional warphole to avenge the death of their Prince Blahblahblah, whom they wrongfully believed humanity had killed. In fact, the real killer of the good Prince Blahblahblah had been a Yam-Yam, a ferocious beast from the aliens’ homeworld that resembled an Earth canine. So transfixed was I by the penny that I did not notice.! The falcons flew into the jet turbine, which crashed, scaring the goat into charg-ing forward. The falcon’s egg landed on Fluffy, who went into a furious rage, scaring the alien conquerors who believed him to be a Yam-Yam. They quickly opened up another interdimensional warphole in order to escape. Meanwhile, the goat hit me just as I stood up from picking up the penny and careened me forward into the war-phole. The warphole interacted with my unfamiliar human DNA by sending me through all possible areas, transcending me all over the fourth dimension.

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! There, are you happy now? Can I get on with my eternal existence in mega-dimensional space-time? It’s like some people don’t even realize that my infinite time is precious.

A d v e n t u r e s o f a D o o r - t o - D o o r S a l e s m a nChris Vernal, grade 8Knock, knock. This is the moment everybody dreams of, the calm before the storm, the anticipation building. I knock again. This is the most exciting part of the job, the moment when time slows down and you know just what you have to do. Finally, I hear footsteps, tentative at first, but steadily growing faster and louder. This is it. This is my moment. The moment I’ve been training for. The door swings open, and the per-son I am waiting for appears. Showtime.! “Hello, fine sir. I am Gonzalo Fitzgerald from SpeedyVac, the revolutionary new vacuum that can clean your tree house twice as fast for half the cost. Yes, you heard me: twice as fast! And it can be yours today for only $29.95.” I can tell from the frightened look in the kid’s eyes that my sales pitch is working perfectly.! “Dirt, dust, food crumbs, anything! The SpeedyVac does it all. Is your tree house a mess? Well, not anymore! Just purchase the SpeedyVac today!” I have abso-lutely no doubt that the little kid would have bought a SpeedyVac if he hadn’t passed out. I leave him with my business card.! “Are you ready?” the pilot yells over the roaring wind and pounding rain.! “As ready as I’ll ever be!” I shout back. Then I leap out of the plane.! The wind rushes past my ears, drowning out even the roar of the biplane above me. The pouring rain beats down against my back as the wind whips me back and forth, out of control. My parachute automatically deploys, but the wind rips it off to the side, carrying me with it. I have no choice. I cut the parachute loose and fall one hundred feet towards the Pacific Ocean below.! I slice into the water, sinking deeper and deeper, until I kick back up to the sur-face. The first thing I see as I break the surface of the water is the towering light-house that stands on the small island in front of me. The second thing I see is my destination: the gift shop.! Kicking strongly, I soon reach the island and climb up onto the dock. That is probably a mistake. The dock is made of ancient wood, beaten and weathered by the ever-crashing waves. With every step I take, the planks creak and groan. I painstak-ingly walk across the dock and closer to my destination.! After what seems like hours, I finally make it across the dock and to the front door of the gift shop. The shop is in great condition, especially compared to the dock. Everything is freshly painted and new-looking. It even has a doorbell.

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! “That’s too bad,” I think, as I carefully put away my brand new, custom knock-ing gloves. I ring the doorbell, take a deep breath, and prepare to do my job. ! The door creaks open slowly, and a man appears. His face is weather-beaten, probably from years on the sea as a fisherman. His is around 55, with salt and pepper hair and a beard. “Yes,” he says slowly. His voice is deep and gravelly.! “Hello, sir. How are you today?” I begin. The man looks at me strangely, but I continue. “Are you having trouble cleaning your lighthouse? Is your lighthouse too big? No! Your power washer is too small!” The man starts to shut the door, but I wedge it open with my foot.! “Introducing,” I pause for dramatic effect, “the Superwash Power Washer!” The old man was really putting all his weight into the door, and my foot was going numb, but I didn’t stop. “Reach to the very top of your lighthouse without all those pesky ladders! And get the same, sparkling look from top to bottom. Normal power washers cost hundreds of dollars. But order today and pay only $99.99! But wait, there’s more! Buy in the next three days and receive four interchangeable nozzles. FREE!” ! The old man slams the door in my face. I assume this means he’s gone to get his wallet.

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!essays and o#er ephemera

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”—E.M. Foster

C H A P T E R T H R E E

N a t u r e ’ s B e a u t yJulia Gangemi, grade 6Shhh... listen. The rustling of wind in the leaves. The golden slant of sunlight, falling through the thick, heavy boughs of the ancient oak. The baby birds taking their first flight. The song sparrow who alights easily on a branch. Her song rings through the wood. Slowly but surely, bit by bit, a chorus of birds swells in a cacophony of joyful music. Tweet! Chirp! Cheep! Surrounding me, surrounding the wood, surrounding the world. ! The fox darts out from her den, a rust-colored streak across the earthen ground. In the pond a few yards away, a mother duck is teaching her ducklings to swim. “Quack, quack,” they peep to the neighboring crane. The crane, with his tall, thin legs, is condescending. He looks down his long beak at the ducklings, superior and majestic. They paddle by, oblivious. ! On the rock by the pond, a rattler watches hopefully, dismayed when they glide, the mother gracefully and the young hesitantly, to the safety of the far end. The mal-lard waits there, looking for all the world like a pompous guard dog. The eagle nest-ing high in the pine discourages the snake. With a disappointed rattle and a half-hearted hiss, he slithers off into the tall grass beyond the pond. ! In his absence, a chipmunk scuttles out from a nearby tree trunk to forage for nuts, which she finds and happily stuffs in her mouth. After a few minutes, her cheeks bulge comically. She scampers back to her hiding place, only to be replaced by a group of rabbits. ! Suddenly, they are startled by something in the woods. They raise their heads up, noses twitching in the sweet summer air, before bounding off, quick as lightning. They do not need to be startled, for it is only a herd of gentle deer, who spread out around the pond before moving on. The fawns are slower, but they stumble along behind the adults as fast as their spindly legs will carry them. Soon even their white spots are gone. And just in time. ! The sun is going down, the stars coming out. The dazzling brilliance of day is replaced by the cool, mysterious beauty of the night. Silver moonlight casts a dim glow on everything. Shadows lurk around every corner. The pond is now a pool of starlight, reflecting the deities of the sky. Now, the world is still beautiful, but differ-ent, and silent. ! Fox and her pups are snug in their den, their barks replaced by the shallow breaths of their sleep. The ducks and birds have withdrawn to their nests, making way for the creatures of night. “Hoo! Hoo!” High overhead, an owl unfurls his great wings and leaps from his nest. He hunts, soaring high above the sleeping forest,

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magnificent. The ease with which he swoops is inspiring, with which he dives, infatu-ating. He is the King of the Forest, the Emperor of the Woods. ! Other, less noble animals emerge from the trees as the sky continues to darken. The raccoon, a burglar in a striped mask, sneaks out, circling the pond before head-ing back to the trees. More beastly creatures, wolves, come out to play. Their howls, bloodcurdling, rough shrieks, rack the night. You can almost see the moon shiver with revulsion when he hears their hair-raising cries.! It stirs the poor fox pups in their sleep, causes the raccoon to start in fright, chills the whole forest to its very bones. Then the pack races on. The silence is eerie, broken every so often by the echoes of their howls. All of this, fearsome or otherwise, is beautiful. Pure, lovely nature, unbroken by pavement and population. Shhh... ! Listen.

Y o u A r e W h o Y o u T h i n k Y o u A r eAngela Ji, grade 7Most people feel worse about themselves when classmates laugh and pick on them, making fun of how they look or how they act. Their self-esteem lowers even more when rumors and lies about them fly through the grade. Gossip doesn’t help; it hurts. I can’t say that I haven’t experienced this before. I can’t say that I haven’t grown an-gry about this either.! Fourth grade was my worst year ever. That year, I remember being teased and picked on. I remember that my classmates laughed at me if I answered a question wrong. Because I became so afraid of being laughed at, I wouldn’t raise my hand in class. I have memories of sitting at a lunch table in the cafeteria and having peers come by and tease me until I gave up fighting back and ran for the bathroom. There I stayed, until the last ten minutes of lunch went by. That winter, on a nearby play-ground, my scarf caught on a branch while I was coughing. It felt like I was choking, but only two friends ran over to help me. Nobody else. Not even the two girls stand-ing nearby, pointing, whispering, and laughing at my coughing fit. Later that day, one of the girls slipped me a note that read, “Sorry about your neck. Maybe next time you shouldn’t bother coming to this playground. We’ll be sure you stay away from this place and stay safe.” They kept their word. When my two friends went back a few days later, the girls called them “little brats” and chased them away. ! I felt less confident about myself at the end of that year. Because I had been called so many names, I didn’t believe that I was nice, that I was talented, or that peo-ple liked who I was. My mother helped me by teaching me this: You are who you think you are. She told me to ignore the mean remarks and to believe in myself. I

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listened to her advice, and I felt more confident. I realized that I shouldn’t take my classmates’ words too seriously. Their main goal was to make me feel dejected.! This I believe: you are in charge of the judgments about yourself. No matter what the kids at school say about your appearance, your actions, or your personality, you should be confident enough to know yourself the way you see yourself. You are the one who should decide whether to listen to those comments or not. I have learned to ignore those cruel whispers and the rumors about me. Now when I hear other people talk about who I am in a cruel way, I ask myself, do I really care? The answer is always no. I am in charge of the judgments about myself.

8 : 1 8Hana Malik, grade 12There’s a man who takes the 8:18 train every Tuesday night. He gets on the train to Grand Central but gets off before he ever reaches there. I know because I get off at Grand Central, it’s the last stop, and he’s always already gone. His smell is what lin-gers, cold and refreshing, like a faucet spewing salt water and he the ocean no one can know the depth of. Though I’ve seen him a thousand times, I haven’t met him even once. I won’t say I look for him because I don’t know him, and looking for peo-ple you don’t know is asking for trouble.

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This edition of the Young Writers’ Institute anthology is the result of the dedication and diligence of many people. Our intrepid director Dr. Bryan Ripley Crandall coor-dinated, coached, cajoled, and kept his cool all summer long. He also demonstrated talents of which we were previously unaware, including, but not limited to, a distinct flair for improv. Our instructors, Justine Domuracki, Crystal Ferrandino, Alison Laturnau, Tony Mangano, and Shaun Mitchell, did yeoman’s work, helping our stu-dents find their unique and eloquent voices in poems and prose and 140 characters. Graduate student Emily Sawyer contributed enthusiasm and energy, and presenters Jack Powers and Sarah Darer Littman graciously gave their time and expertise, pro-viding both inspiration and guidance. Meanwhile, across the hall, Julie Roneson and Lynn Winslow worked tirelessly with teachers in the support of writing instruction. Although Lois Minto isn’t here to see the results, it was she who, for three years, compiled the anthologies and made the Young Writers’ Institutes and the work of the Connecticut Writing Project possible. In her absence, Ellen Israel held the whole enterprise together with Excel spreadsheets, a really big binder, and some string. We owe a debt of gratitude to these people and others, but most of all, this book is a product of the creativity and craft of our young writers. We never cease to be amazed by their capacity to harness the power of words for good and other endeavors.The 2013 Young and Young(er) Writers’ Institutes were made possible by generous donations and resources from Bank of America, Connecticut State Senator Bob Duff, and the National Writing Project.

Compilation copyright © 2013 Connecticut Writing Project-Fairfield; individual contributions are copyright © 2013 by the individual authors. Book design by Ellen Israel.

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