Non-Fiction

More Than Just a Number

By Alex Rojas

The A/C is always what hits me first. Every inch of my skin feeling that cold embrace as the smell of fries and onion rings takes care of my nose. The tables are all full, and a crazy kid or two dashes past me as I walk in. I see a familiar face all the way behind the counter smiling. “Number 35, ready,” comes out of the intercom in a bored voice. Before I even make it to the line that face already announces in that jolly Mexican voice of hers “chicken strips for Alejandro papas crispy.” I wait in line just for the sake of paying (though they would gladly let me pay for my food later) and having a quick chat about how our families are doing. It’s been like that since Louis’ Burgers opened nine years ago. Still coming all the time, still getting the same thing, still the same looks of confusion on the people’s faces.

When I’m waiting for my order I always know that what I’ll hear over the intercom isn’t “number 36” or anything boring like that. It’ll always be “Alejandro.” That’s right, they call me up by name when my food is ready. The people around me always have a funny look on their face, asking themselves why would that kid get called by name? It’s a brief curiosity- makes them think about the complexities and stories that might be going on in the lives of the others around them. It fades away quickly and they get back to munching on their burgers.

It’s a point of decent confusion when I bring my friends. “Did they just say Alejandro?” “Yeah, yeah they did.” “But, that’s not even your name. Why don’t they call you Alex?” “Cause I kind of like the longer version, I never get to be called that.” It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve gone there and all of the employees still call me Alejandro. In all honesty, it’s a nice feeling to hear it over the intercom, makes me feel special to have the monotonous pattern of “Number 33, 34, 35, 36…” broken up by me.

My parents enjoyed the history behind my name, Alex. It means protector of others in Greek, Alexo. Well known to just about anyone, it’s the shortened version of Alexander, a name that has been owned by eight popes, and many a king, including Alexander the Great himself. Nowadays a female named Alex isn’t very strange, but its traditional role was serving as a name for newborn Greco-Roman babies with aspirations of becoming soldiers. At the time, the most common of occupations for a white man, thus the name grew well in its crib, then disseminated through conquest. It’s very rare someone doesn’t know an Alex.

The name Alex has issues though, it’s so… normal. My name drifts into commonality, the usual, just one of many. Being forgotten is a thought that haunts me to my very core, and I try to avoid it all costs. Having a name like Alex makes that tough at times. Sometimes, I’d rather have a name like Ezekiel or Leonardo or something that you need to use your whole mouth for. I remember those people, and I’m sure when they feel the flip side of it, that their name is too long, they can shorten it to Zeke or Leo. But my full name is just Alex. I can’t nickname myself to something longer, that defeats the purpose. So when I hear that name over the intercom, Alejandro, it feels right, meaningful.

My parents though, attach my middle name to it. Alex-Enrique… Enrique. Something you can roll the r’s in and feel when you say. That’s not boring; the whole mouth is forced to leap into action, resulting in a more vivid memory. For a lot of kids the sound of their middle name erupting from the mouth of one of their parents makes them shiver. But… adding Enrique is a thing I enjoy, and most of the time to my parents that is my name.

It just makes it so much more interesting to add a little something. Replacing the x with a jandro or adding a whole Enrique. These things make the name different, more interesting, and memorable. Nobody in that restaurant will remember “number 34” or “number 35” and tie it to a pair of faces. But they will remember that little glitch in the matrix, that break in the infinite series, a kid’s name over the intercom.

Alex Rojas is a student with newspaper article experience and an active participant in the AP English classes offered at his high school. He’s been interested in mathematics since he was a child but recently has sparked an interest in the humanities after having an incredible professor.

Severe and Enduring

By Laura Ingram

The hospital windows gnash together like God’s overbite, the rain tapping her long fingers against the industrial glass. Sixteen girls and two boys sit cross-ankled on a stained sofa, heads bowed over their books as if in prayer; quiet enough to keep our misery immaculate. I, seventy pounds of gossamer and syncope knot my legs, thin as embroidery floss, in tattered children’s tights, search for my sternum beneath the grey shag sweater my friend outgrew in the third grade. One of the women who watches over the ward, Maria, an English major with a Spanish accent, lines us up by the dining room’s double doors for the second snack of the day. She snatches my scapula before I reach the patient refrigerator, pulls my brittle hair back into a braid, several strands slipping through her fingers towards the floor.

“Miss Laura. You know the rules. Don’t think staff has forgotten how much peanut butter you can shove under those pretty little fingernails. Sleeves up, hair back, hands on the table-top,” Maria says, toppling me into a chair at table one. I push away the plate of boost pudding and banana slices, appeal to the faint fluorescent lights for the apocalypse of my flickering pulse.

***

The doctors here worry I will fall and break my hip. I worry my friends will find out I am just stress fractures and semicolons and stop sending me cards covered in curves of cursive. Although on chair rest I’m not allowed to check the mail tray, Maria hands me a pastel paper stack every afternoon. Today there are eight envelopes; my grandmother detailing her Saturday of shelling butterbeans, several sets of haphazard heart sketches from my bespectacled boyfriend, thick packets of Harry Potter fan fiction from my friend Sorena, printed in ten-point Times New Roman to take up as little space on the page as possible.

I read over the wrinkled sheets curled into the coral couch cushion, small and displaced as a comma splice, tuck the hem of my sweater between my teeth so no one can hear me cry. Someone else cries in the rec room. It’s always someone else. The throw pillows are swirled with mascara stains. I don’t recognize the pitchy pleas I’ve plucked from my skull until the echo from the other room ends. I sound like a newborn, pink velour tongue velcroed to teeth, cries from my empty mouth almost inaudible, every hour bringing about the harshest hunger I’ve ever endured, yet live without words for.

Weigh-ins are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, just like the literature summer camp for high school students I’d been accepted into three months ago and now couldn’t attend because my parents had driven me to Durham two Tuesdays ago, a city grey as cardiac arrest, kept alive by the constant mumblings of machines, plastic clouds dripping down to the injected intersections like a normal saline line.

“It’s my body.” I said as my parents pull into patient parking. I don’t try to run, just cross my arms, ringing my forefinger and thumb around my bicep, fingertips touching, clasp and unclasp the Hello Kitty watch I wear just over my elbow. “I destroy it.” They popped the trunk anyway, pulled out swathes of chiffon from the children’s department of J. C. Penney and ushered me into the foyer with its fake blue fire where a freckled receptionist photographed my faded face for the patient portal system, the computer program where they log all our ugly numbers in pixilated, parallel lines.

We took the elevator upstairs. I watched my mouth not move in the shiny silver surface above the control panel. Dr. Stu, a Yankees fan with chapped cheeks tipped us toward the armchairs scattered across his cramped office. He sent my parents away with Jennie, my therapist, He steepled his fingers then, elbows on his knees, and told me that, according to my lab-work, my liver enzymes were elevated, a harbinger of multiple organ failure in anorexia nervosa, my neck cracking, eyes narrowed.

“You’re dying.” He said.

My chapped lips cracked and bled around chattering teeth. A half-smile. “I know.”

***

Weigh-ins are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, after we’ve pissed in a cup and before we’ve lined up for breakfast. A nurse with stained teeth and spotless scrubs smooths the backs of our green gowns as if she’s testing the temperature in a claw-footed tub. She’s checking our underwear for coin rolls, half pound weights, or even the neon magnets provided to each patient for the posting of printed Pinterest quotes and family pictures to the white boards in our Technicolor rooms, each with only one wall painted, doors propped open even we dress and undress, clasping our dresses and fists, always clenched, crouched, floral fabric covering the air-strike zones dog-eared on our skin, blue and marked as tattered atlas pages. I wait until the child psychiatrist calls my bulimic roommate to swap her pink pills for purple suppositories before I curl into the carpet, seeping across the floor like a coffee spill, do as many crunches as I can before I hear Maria’s wooden clogs clacking closer, no—closer, her acrylics clutching the pilling of my pink sweater. “That’s enough.” She says while I turn away, hollow cheek pressed against the ground, rug burn reddening as I let her roll me over, help me stand. Still, I shake my head.

It’s never enough.

***

Jennie, the therapist with hair the color of Nagasaki’s shroom, calls me out of art therapy, pulls the lump she snatched from my throat last session out of her pocket.

“Dr. Stu wants us to send you over to the ER.”

My hands, replaced with moths, flutter, light on my throat. I know completely that she means I’ll be strapped to a stretcher, that doctors who would never let me use their first names will snap their fingers, ask a nurse for a tray with a tube to thread through my nose and down my throat to feed me, revoke the sole, primal power shared between anorexics, suffragettes, and other wrongly imprisoned protestors—refusal. The roof of my mouth itches and my ears ring. “No.” I say, imagining uncooked eggs tossed between gleaming prison bars, Saint Catherine’s assertion she could live off the seven sacraments alone.

Jennie wraps a wisp of hair around her right ring finger. “You have the ability to stop him, not me.”

I stare at my hands, turn my palms up to watch my pulse waver at the wrist. “I can’t—I can’t eat. It’s like at school, I’d have a juice carton in the cafeteria, one with a little striped straw, or a single spoonful of ice cream straight from the container when I got home because yeah—I was hungry.” The syllables make the wrong shape in my mouth, isosceles. I start to cry. “I was hungry, but it didn’t matter! This is just who I am! Some girls have acrylic nails and chipped teeth, others have high ponytails and higher GPAs, or spiral notebooks and straight bangs. I have hungry.” I think I say, ears ringing, rubbing the fuzzy lanugo hairs on my arm the wrong way. Health class textbooks told me they grow in tufts to keep anorexics warm, but I shiver. I am so sharp. I am so cold.

Jennie uncrosses her ankles, eyes the box of colored Kleenex but doesn’t reach for it. Jennie thinks handing someone a tissue is asking them to clean up their mess. My parents think she is too liberal. Jennie has too many bumper stickers, is probably bisexual, and definitely swears a lot. I take two tissues unprompted, put them in my skirt pocket. I always keep things I think are pretty, usually whatever my mother would want to throw away from my school bag.

“Helen Keller could see that you’re anorexic, Laura. But Jesus, I’ve worked with teenage vanishing acts my entire career, and you aren’t just hungry. You have a vocabulary taller than World Book and Britannica combined. You save pink tissues and patterned paper scraps. Your mind is a mountain range. Your hands are paper cranes. You are starving for information, ravening on your knees for a world where the physics of absence is better understood, where you aren’t locked in a freezing hospital ward with a gang of girls who cry over soda crackers, or measuring yourself by how much space is left over after you scoot into the school bus seat.” She says, or maybe doesn’t say—everything’s stopped and static as a tornado watch, and I wilt, bones scattered like a jigsaw puzzle shaken onto a rug before it’s pored over and put together.

I know the theory of light and matter, the distance formula, at least three of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems, how to say “shit happens” in French and German, but I don’t know how to respond to this neurotic, weepy woman, so odd and determined. I spend the rest of our hour drawing wilted flowers in the dollar-store journal she gave me the day I admitted, hair hanging half-mast. She demands nothing else, walks me to my room with her fingers closed around my shoulder, heels clacking as she trots the other way.

I draw the blinds, cover my eyes with my hands and crawl beneath the quilt my mom made although it’s four in the afternoon.

I sleep through supper, chew my charred dreams.

Laura Ingram is a tiny girl with big glasses and bigger ideas. Her poetry and prose have been published in forty-three literary magazines, among them The Cactus Heart Review, Forest for the Trees, Teenage Wasteland, and Gravel Magazine. Laura is a creative writing student. Harry Styles once gave her his water bottle.

Snowless December

By Young Jin Kim

December should be cold. It should be drinking warm milk while cozying up next to the fireplace; looking out the window at millions of snowflakes whose intricate patterns you imagine you can see. It should be the merry blinking of Christmas lights set up way ahead of Christmas, and taping them around the house, so that it ends up looking like some fairy godmother’s retreat straight out of children’s tales. But to someone living in Singapore, a December like this one would be exactly that – a tale.

December here is nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the months, both in terms of the weather and the Zeitgeist. It’s still hot – the heavy, dense humidity suffocates just the same and induces a thin film of stickiness on every inch of skin not within an air-conditioned room. The rains become more frequent, and heavier, as if it’s an equator-bound country’s substitute for snow. We don’t wake up to a skinning of the surface, a peeling of a moist, moldy crust for the revelation of white baby skin. No, no such metamorphosis of nature occurs in December. We wake up and don’t waste time looking out the window. We brush our teeth instead.

Our holiday spirit is, at best, a weak imitation of Western culture, a counterfeit merriness you can only feel in mega shopping malls. Employees wearing Santa Claus hats, with huge fake grins and an especially servile attitude. Shops exhibiting plastic Christmas trees, dusty from being used year after year, positioned beside 50% sale boards so that the lucrative offer is sufficiently illuminated. There’s this place called Orchard where they deck the roadside greenery with all kinds of festive flotsam, stringing Angsanas trees together with colored ribbons until a sort of fabric arch forms above the streets. Orchard is the retail hub of Singapore.

No one prances around wishing everyone else a happy new year like how (we think) the shameless Caucasians do. No. We stand silently in public transport, blank-faced as usual, each immersed in his own world of problems.

I once encountered a group of Americans on the train. They were huge, and freckled, and loud – they had to stoop to fit inside the compartment, and their hands were like five sausages stuck onto a chunk of red meat. Every word they said came ripping out of their mouths, punctuating the air with exclamations and flamboyant tones. They oozed hedonism. Every move they made was done so with bravado, every expression of theirs conspicuous and alive. I glanced at the Singaporeans glumly regarding the foreigners. Their faces were etched with ennui; all their zest for life seemed to have been sucked away by the jolly Westerners. We were the living embodiments of taedium vitae; the polar opposite of our white counterparts.

I would often speculate, after a particularly moving movie or an encounter like the one above, about the cultural chasm between the Oriental and Occident countries. What was it about them that enabled them to so stirringly manifest their inner selves? Or maintain an optimism, unfounded or not, through thick and thin? Perhaps it was their tendency to break, ruthlessly and irrevocably, all social norms standing in their way. Their tendency to, with their special blend of emancipation and antinomianism, make me squirm and blush whenever I watch a Western flick with my parents. A liberation of the spirit from conservative mindsets may be the key to achieving their unbounded devil-may-care attitudes.

But devil-may-care is the last thing on Asian minds. We are stuffy, and stiff, and conform to rules that are decades old as if it is the only way to preserve our national identity. Elders being always right is de rigueur; subordinates being always wrong is in vogue. Eccentric dreams are condemned; we have to become a lawyer, doctor, or a disgrace to the family. Unlike the Western world, our countries are full of neither debauchees nor genii.

Maybe that’s why our Decembers are so stale and stagnant compared to theirs. We are a different people. Theirs is a world of possibilities and brightness, though their amorality may not always serve them well. Ours is a practical one tainted by realism. They can believe in Santa, and leave cookies and milk on the kitchen table, and taste the coldness of the North Pole in the candies from red cotton stockings. We can do none of that. I see Christmas as a day to convince my parents to buy something for me: “We’re supposed to give one another gifts today!”

“Supposed to”, my parents reply. “Not must”.

The more fortunate among us fly overseas in December – as if December is enjoyable in anywhere but home. I open the app where people show off their perfect lives and digitally perfect faces, and see my classmates in America, Germany, Italy, Switzerland. Tasting the snow they had never tasted; breathing in the minty air of winter countries; donning mittens and scarves for the first time in their lives. They’re happy there. Experiencing what they had never experienced before.

Others I find in libraries, diligently preparing for the future. They don’t care about it being a holiday, a time for recharging and fun. When we have our eyes on a goal, nothing can stop us.

December, for us, isn’t about celebration or creating the perfect Christmas atmosphere. It isn’t about enjoying the meteorological phenomena of our country or extravagant spending on fragile red and green trinkets or euphoric public exchanges. December, for us, is the last month of the year. It is the month that precedes a new year; a new year with new problems and new challenges. It is the month to learn what we did not have a chance to learn in the previous eleven months. The month to neatly tie up the bundle of a year. Boring, but practical. Colorless, but pragmatic.

Young Jin is a high school student in Singapore. He’s a bookophile – everything about books, especially the smells, fascinates him. Dog ears and creased spines are the banes of his life.He’s quite confused, for now, about what exactly he wants to write about. “Creative non fiction” has caught his is eye, but he doesn’t want to part with science writing or opinion pieces. He’s interested in Physics and programming, and one day wishes to make a physics simulation programme so that kids can avoid solving Newton Ian questions by hand.

Masking Authenticity

By Tamarah Wallace

Usually when someone who knows me well asks me “do you remember this or that?” I respond with a very sarcastic- “I don’t even remember which class this is, much less what the homework assignment was?” or “who are you again?” I do this because even though I might have remembered then, I do not always. In fact, my forgetful nature presents itself so often that I have decided to act upon my several months of AP Psych and diagnose myself with a very rare, chronic condition called “remembritus.” Therefore, since “remembritus” sweeps my memory clean every few seconds, it’s funny that I could even remember this recurringly random and cringe worthy memory.

It is an image of a paint-splattered, grinning little gremlin, of which I can only deduce is myself, and a decrepit looking paper mache mess with two eyes and a mouth hole cutout. I hold my creation up to my face, laughing hysterically as glue falls onto my no longer white shirt and proceed to make the most awful of sounds, which, could only have come from the deepest, darkest monster imaginable.

When I got home that Halloween, my heart swelled with pride for my little recycle bin masterpiece and I excitedly showed it to everyone I could steal attention from, but that night while I was alone in my darkened room, I had to call my parents to flip the mask on it’s back so that I could sleep.

A weird, unseemly memory of childhood exuberance. However, as I think of it now, in the social climate we all reside in, I fear that it is a memory we would not at all think random or weird. Because today, children are not the only ones who wear masks… and the scariest monsters will always be the ones we create- our social media profiles being no exception.

As we primp and preen, twist and tweak, we metaphorically rip our costumes out from underneath our beds and instead of wearing them for a night, we wear them for years at a time. While using social media we are able to create a perfect image of ourselves by filtering and editing all aspects of our lives until it’s this inauthentic variation. As a result, we compare ourselves to the inflated versions of others and aren’t able to express our true personalities, quietly facilitating negative psychological impacts.

So today, let’s fix that: let’s first aim to understand why we wear our Insta filters like it’s never ending Halloween, then determine the chilling effects of these personas, and finally muster up enough courage to open the closet door and take on our solutions.

“Somebody get the cam, looking so good we should be on Instagram.” That was part of a rap and no I’m not a rapper. I actually stole that line from a song aptly entitled Instagram by popular rapper, Destorm and probably botched the way in which he would have swaggered through that sentence. However, the idea behind including this line was not to launch my diggity dope rapping career but show something even more terrifying- that society is so deeply rooted in the ideology that we have to portray only what we think is the best form of ourselves online.

Dr. Kay Green of the Huffington Post coins the term “ideal self” which is defined as who we feel we should be and is usually driven by competition, achievement, and status. She goes on to explain that this ideal image is what most of us portray online rather than our actual attributes, characteristics, and personalities- all elements of ourselves that can’t be hidden in real life. And I mean hey, it is completely normal to filter, edit, or even tell a little white lie on our profiles because on social media, there are a lot of people out there who have never met you and have no conscience when it comes to judging you anonymously. So it’s a natural defense to slap on the filters, pixelate your face to the point of no return or pretend to be constantly in a good mood.

But we never think about how these defenses affect us personally. The unrealistic perfection portrayed is only maintained by consistently concealing your flaws. Clinical psychologist Craig Malkin concludes that these masks affect our relationships with ourselves and others deeply, because part of the way we develop a strong sense of self and identity is by being appreciated by others, including our flaws. The whole idea is that we need to feel positive emotion directed towards us with our flaws because without that, they aren’t really liking us, just the mask we’ve created. Malkin goes on to say that when we have negative reviews on our exaggerated profiles, we can’t help but to take them personally because it is still our account.

Additionally, posts on social media often present an idealized version of what is happening, what something looks like, or how things are going for someone. This can lead users to compare themselves to others and think less of their own lives. Recently, a team of government researchers in the UK surveyed social media users and 51% of those asked said that they felt a decline in confidence due to unfair comparisons to others online. Another study conducted by the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor reiterates the same sentiment by noting that avid users of Facebook were overall more discontented with their lives. This goes to show that when we compare our lives to those that seem of a higher magnitude, we second-guess our own, which can then lead to devastating effects such as depression and suicide as documented by a 2015 Pew Research Center report.

However, the thing is that when we combine these two social media issues, the need to inflate ourselves and act like Dr. Frankenstein and the need to compare ourselves to others, a distinct problem occurs. We base our lives off of other people who do the same as us- mask themselves.

As a teenager in this day and age, I can attest to the incessant pressure to post online. So much so that when I experienced the worst years of my life, my mother’s battle with cancer and resulting death, I could only share with my peers a plastic, filtered smile. And I am not simply sharing this information for pity points. I know what it felt like to feel completely alone, to scroll through my Instagram and see picture after post of my friends looking like they were having the time of their lives and wondering “Has anyone ever felt as sad as I do now?”

But what I’ve come to realize is that online photos are exaggerated and I have also come to notice that I love my life and everyone in this country should too. We all have food, shelter, and a chance to speak about the issues that we believe in- not everyone in the world has those comforts.

Now, I know what you’re thinking- this is a problem but don’t you dare advocate against my ability to post fire tweets. I know I sound like a seventeen-year-old grandmother/ caveman hybrid who is under the impression that the magic picture box, or as they say “computer”, is inherently evil and has people trapped inside of it. I know that trying to discredit and destroy social media is a cheesy, cliché, and quite frankly, impossible endeavor that you have probably heard a million times before. It is obvious that technology, particularly social media, is an entity that has simply become an integral part of most of our daily lives. However, with that said, the negative psychological effects cannot simply be ignored.

So I propose a solution- the mitigation of our masks. In authenticating the way we use social media, we can ultimately lessen its negative impact.

And this all begins with a second’s decision by us. Instead of opening our front facing cameras and immediately turning on the image perfecter, we need to be pleased with who we see staring back at us- unadulterated. Trying to use less of the filters and adornments that hide who we are from the world and embracing your true self is actually much easier than you think, now knowing that you will not only be improving your life but that of others as well. In the words of critically acclaimed author, J.K. Rowling, “The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as facts could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.” She and I agree in that we need to be able to love ourselves for who we are when we feel like the most hideous monsters in the world, because that is the only way we will have enough courage to take off our masks and live with authenticity.

Tamarah Wallace is a senior at Cooper City High School, where she presides over a plethora of clubs and organizations such as the National Honor Society and Model United Nations. In her free time, Tamarah enjoys editing for two critically- acclaimed publications- her school’s newspaper, The Lariat, and the Polyphony H.S., an international literary magazine. Furthermore, she has also accepted multiple state- wide, regional, and district awards for her literature as well as has written for the prestigious Miami Montage program.

The Grand Piano

By Almas Khan

I suppose the strong desire many parents have for their children to become doctors and engineers is somewhat justifiable. What is wrong with wanting your son or daughter to follow in your footsteps and be financially independent? Absolutely nothing (or so it seems). Your chosen field of study and your happiness are directly proportional. My parents will tell you this is how the world has always been structured. People in STEM will always be considered more successful than people in the arts, and the sun will always rise as Earth completes an axial rotation. My parents will also tell you how tragic it is to have a daughter who could read and do simple math by the age of three, has an IQ above 140, yet chooses to apply so much of her mind to “trivial” things (i.e. reading and painting for pleasure, watching a popular anime, learning phrases in Ancient Greek and Latin). Yet there remains a moment in my memory where I felt truly understood by them, and by extension felt the most powerful. It is secluded from the others, as if encased in glass.

The months that lead to this moment were unforgiving. Ramadan happened to coincide with my 4 final exams. I would quickly eat something with negligible nutritional value and have a strong cup of espresso at Iftar, then return to my bedroom to study until the early hours of the morning. It was a common occurrence for me to doze off at my desk, face touching a textbook that was undoubtedly a breeding ground for bacteria, the pen that I had been using lying somewhere on the floor. I was a creature made of sleep deprivation and anxiety. My parents noticed this, but weren’t concerned. I have always been prone to these kinds of fits, and they are both neurosurgeons – of course they’d be aware of any changes in their daughter’s health and address them if they were serious enough.

Exams inched closer. I began to daydream of summer. Two months between one school year and the next seemed vast in my mind. How much could I accomplish? I decided that I wanted to learn to play an instrument. Preferably the piano, as it had the widest range in pitch and involved both treble and bass clef notation. After I had written my last exam, I strode out of school with my calculator and pencil case in hand. My mother had parked nearby; I sat in the passenger seat of our black Chevrolet Camaro and braced myself to be interrogated. Predictably, I answered a set of questions about the length, difficulty, and composition of the exam. A few minutes into the drive home, the subject of our conversation became my Eid gift. I seized the opportunity and declared that I wanted piano lessons as my gift. My mother’s expression became thoughtful, and this incited excitement somewhere deep within my core. But she merely informed me that it would be a huge commitment and take away valuable time I should be using to study if I planned on getting a scholarship to university followed by an acceptance to medical school. Besides, she wanted to consult my father on the matter and get his opinion before making a decision. I’ll translate that: it meant “no”. I was distraught.

I didn’t mention the piano lessons again. I spent the first days of summer break volunteering at the hospital and sitting at the library, flipping through novel after novel. Eid approached, and my group of friends decided to host a party. I was horrified, yet I decided to put my introversion aside and attend. After the event, I planned to return to my bedroom, sip french vanilla coffee (my caffeine intake knows no bounds) and not see another human face for at least a week. Intent on making this vision a reality, I was striding purposefully up my house’s marble staircase when I caught a glimpse of something in our guest bedroom. My pulse began to bound. I flung the door completely open, gawked at the sight before me, and barely contained the urge to shriek. There was no longer any furniture or embellishments in the room. Except for the piano.

It was a stunning concoction of polished oak and gleaming keys that seemed to draw each ray of light in the room, begging me to press them. A collection of sheet music lay across the top. Beethoven’s 5th. Allegro Appassionato in B minor. Tchaikovsky’s Works. And a smaller slip of paper with a phone number and a name written in my father’s flowing, elegant handwriting: Alexandria Aguillard, piano instructor. My first coherent thought was “Is this a lucid dream?”. Then a sense of wild triumph ensued. I was victorious, my parents were beginning to listen to me and understand me as a person. They had finally embraced my interests, ambitions and desires. I grinned as I realized how much planning it must have involved. Purchasing the piano, deciding which classical pieces I’d enjoy playing the most, and finding an instructor offering lessons nearby. Not to mention arranging for me to be away from home as they cleared the guest bedroom and lugged it up the stairs. I was still surveying my surroundings in utter shock and awe when my parents traipsed into the room. Their smiles were so broad and bright that for an instant I was convinced I would be blinded.

Although it feels like ages have passed, this moment is engraved in my memory. And I believe it will remain so for my entire life, as my parents and I coming to a mutual understanding made me feel capable, teeming with untapped potential that no force could stop or overcome. I can attest to the fact that sometimes it is a thing as simple as acceptance that makes us feel the most powerful.

Almas Khan is a sixteen-year-old artist, aspiring author, and avid consumer of dark chocolates. She lives in a small Canadian city where she spends most of her time with her nose in a book, longs for a kitten, and does schoolwork.

Masada

By Becca Moszka

The drive was long and tiring; the early morning sun cast shadows on the mountain peaks as we navigated the sandy path. The bus windows were closed, and the air conditioner was on full blast as Alan, our tour guide, regaled us with the history of the Negev.

“The Negev is a desert region in southern Israel best known for its excruciating heat, large craters and canyons, and beautiful mountains,” he began, sounding as if he had swallowed an Israeli History Textbook. “This region takes up about half of Israel and is mostly uninhabited. The land was, at one point, home to our forefather Abraham himself.”

We all nodded along as Alan spoke, his Australian accent poking through his speech at different intervals. Mom appeared fascinated, her mouth ajar in a slight “o,” eyes wide and sparkling. My brother, Joel, was the only one to appear disinterested, head cast down at his phone, thumbs moving quickly over the keys as his head bobbed along to the music spilling out of his headphones.

As Alan spoke, I covered my mouth in a yawn, and mom leaned over to me and whispered, “You do know why we had to leave so early, right?”

Eyes watering, I shook my head.

“It’s because it’s so freaking hot on top of Masada. If we were going to climb it, we’d have had to leave even earlier, like, 4am, because that’s when it’s still kind of cool out. But we’re taking a cable car up to the top, so it’s okay to leave later. It’s still gonna be hot as hell, though.”

“Even at six in the morning?” I mumbled through another yawn.

“Even at six in the morning,” mom parroted. She grinned at me then, and I felt a surge of excitement waft through me upon seeing her eager smile.

“…And up there, you can see the homes of the Bedouins, who are less nomadic than they were in ancient times. Most live up there permanently now.” Alan pointed to a mountaintop, and sure enough, nestled deep in the rock, were several tents. I glanced over at Alan. His hat was tilted slightly to the left, and he looked as thrilled as mom appeared, despite probably having shown hundreds of tourists this exact sight before.

Mom turned to me again. “Aren’t you excited?” she asked, nudging me slightly. I nodded. I was, but somehow I couldn’t imagine the top of a mountain in Israel being anything but disgustingly hot and filled with crumbling rocks.

Mom had begun her planning of our trip to Israel years ago, researching the best tour guides and the best hotels and the must-sees of the country. My brother and I had watched as she grew giddier as the weeks flew by and the day of our trip grew near. “You’re going to love it,” she’d tell us, “you’ll be immersed in Jewish culture all day long. It’ll be wonderful.”

Joel and I had groaned in unison upon hearing that.

“…And, oh, there is so much history that comes just from this mountain alone! I mean, all of Israel has a rich history, but this place tells some great stories too.”

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, “isn’t it just a bunch of rocks?”

Mom started. “Of course not! Back in ancient times, there were bathhouses, living quarters, King Herod’s throne room-”

“Was there an ancient ice cream parlor too?”

Mom glared at me. She never was one for jokes, especially where Israel and Judaism were concerned. “You know what? You can just sit on this bus while everyone else goes to the top. They can appreciate the history and the scenery, and you can play on your phone.”

I rolled my eyes, looking down and fidgeting with the fringe on my shorts. “It was a joke.”

“Well, it wasn’t funny. You just can’t take your religion seriously, can you?”

Not really, I thought, thinking of all the times I had begged mom to let me stay home from Sunday school. What I said, however, was not as blunt. “I just don’t care about it as much as you; that’s all.”

I cringed, watching mom’s face turn red to match her manicured nails. Her eyes hardened, and I knew she was considering throwing me out the bus window.

“Sorry,” I muttered, quickly, to call off the rapidly approaching fury practically oozing from her stare. Mom grumbled in response, and I crossed my arms, determined not to speak to her for the remainder of the bus ride.

An hour later, Alan ushered us off the bus and onto the scorching pavement. My curls grew slick with sweat as I stood in the glaring sunlight.

As we walked towards the cable car, I glanced at mom: her gaze was softer, and the angry red lines etched in her forehead had begun to diminish. Sensing it was safe to speak to her now, I began, “So, you’ve climbed Masada before?”

Mom looked at me curiously-probably confused as to why I was suddenly speaking to her again-before answering. “Yes,” she responded carefully, “and it was absolutely beautiful.” She paused, and then, surprisingly, grinned. “Not as beautiful as the Golan Heights, of course, but still beautiful. The view was…hypnotic.”

I forced myself to hold back a snort. On the plane to Israel, mom had told me about this “revelation” she had when she went to Israel the first time. She’d always been passionate about her Jewish heritage, but had been skeptical about G-d and didn’t foster complete dedication to the Jewish homeland. Upon reaching the Golan Heights and seeing the vast, unprotected fields not immune to enemy fire even thousands of years after the Israelites had been led to the region, her mind had begun to stir, and suddenly she felt it: a strong tether to the area, a sense of devotion to the land of her ancestors.

“I felt as if G-d was with me at that moment,” she recalled, taking in the gently rolling plains, the olive trees in full bloom, and the Israeli farmers at the base of the hill. “I knew then that Israel would always be my home, a safe haven for me, and that it was my duty to protect the country at all costs.”

I had furrowed my brow as she said that, trying to conjure up the image of my mom, thirty years younger, standing on top of a large hill, curls blowing in the breeze as her revelation passed through her. It wasn’t an easy image to summon to mind, however-how could someone so young and so uncertain have such a profound awakening simply by standing on a hill? I ended up dismissing her words as mere over-dramatization. I wasn’t sure if I believed in G-d, let alone if I even wanted to be Jewish for the remainder of my life.

I wanted to tell mom that I didn’t believe revelations could occur, and that even if they could, they wouldn’t happen to me. I wasn’t very religious; I attended temple, but only to please mom. I enjoyed the Jewish holidays, Friday night services were sometimes bearable, and I loved Israel, but I was not completely and utterly devoted to my religion, like mom was. Revelations don’t happen to people who don’t really believe what their religion tells them, I thought.

We reached the top of the mountain a few minutes later, exiting the wonderfully cold cable car and setting our feet on the scorching mountaintop. The sun glared down on us, hot and bright, as we followed Alan across the rocky landscape. As he spoke, we found ourselves growing restless, downing our water bottles and frantically trying to keep ourselves cool. I slipped on my sunglasses and tied my hair up, groaning in fervent desperation as the last drop of water slipped out of my bottle and onto my tongue. “No more cold water up here,” Alan informed us, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, “you’ll have to wait till we get back down to the bottom.”

Alan led us to several stone benches, baking steadily in the late-July sunshine, and we gratefully took our seats, thankful, at the very least, that we no longer had to stand. Alan launched into a story of the history of Masada then, and I tried, with great difficulty, to listen as he spoke.

“…And my gosh, it was absolutely incredible. King Herod’s fortress had become a refuge for the Jews against the Romans. They had lost their Holy Temple, and Jerusalem was on fire, but for now, they were safe up here on Masada.” Alan gestured around us, and I thought, here? The Jews had been standing where I was now sitting?

“They were not safe for long, however. The Romans laid siege to Masada, and tried to catapult rocks up and destroy the fortress. But the Jews up here were strong and smart, and fought back with every ounce of energy they had, until, finally, the Romans broke through the fortress.”

I bit my lip, feeling as if I were listening more to an ancient legend than to a factual story. Was it just mere folklore? The way Alan spoke-eyes sparkling, hands waving wildly in the air-made me think it had to be the truth.

“And you know what the Jews did then?” We shook our heads. “They refused to be beaten by the Romans. They refused to be made slaves as they once were in the land of Egypt. So you know what they did? They destroyed the fortress, and then they killed themselves. Every last one of them-men, women, and children-dead. And when the Romans rushed up the mountainside and through the ruined fortress, all they found were the bodies of the Jews. Now, they could not be taken. They died bravely, preserving the freedom of the Jewish people.”

Alan let out a deep breath and lowered his hands to his sides as he finished speaking, all the finesse of a master storyteller. Everyone was silent, casting glances downward at the benches. I, however, turned to the side, wiping sweat off the bridge of my nose and sweeping my gaze over the top of the mountain. I stood up and walked to the edge of a precipice. Digging my feet into the gravel, I looked out at the desert that stretched on for miles, the sheer cliffs carved into mountainsides, the arid, barren nothingness that once held an entire community of people. It was pretty, I thought, despite seeming so empty, so endless. Miles below me, the ancient Romans had once stood, plotting exactly how to seize the fortress. And, up where I was now, the Jews had worked and hoped and prayed for salvation, sacrificing themselves when no other sort of strategy revealed itself. What was it like for the last person who killed himself? He had been forced to watch the Romans storm up Masada, and being the last one alive, made that incredible sacrifice completely and utterly alone, in the middle of a seemingly infinite desert. I shuddered slightly, shifting my feet against the gravel. Those people no longer had the freedom to attend temple; there’s had been burned down. They could not celebrate the Sabbath, nor indulge in the delectable foods served on Passover. Instead, they were forced to condemn themselves to death, allowing future generations to experience the freedom they so desperately desired.

Not fair, I thought. Not fair. Those people deserve justice for their sacrifices.

It wasn’t a revelation that occurred next, but more of a spark, igniting my insides, filling me up and keeping my body turned towards the open desert. I didn’t feel as if G-d was with me, like mom had said, but I did feel a powerful and irrevocable pull towards the Negev, as if I belonged there: a safe haven, as mom had called it.

I twisted the fringe of my shorts, finding myself oddly excited at the prospect of returning home and going to temple. It didn’t matter that I didn’t necessarily believe every aspect of the Jewish faith; what mattered was that I protected the rights of others to believe and practice that faith. I thought of Joel, who had been bored out of his skull during the story of Masada. When I turned to look at him, he appeared unfazed, as if the beauty of the desert paled in comparison to the delights of his video games. It was remarkable how he could be so unaffected by something so magnificent.

Even as I heard Alan telling everyone else to get up, that it was time to head back down the mountain and towards the Dead Sea, I stood unmoving, transfixed on the massive desert before me. It was, as mom had said, hypnotic; I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze from the sight before me.

“Come on, Rebecca, we’re leaving,” I heard mom call, but there was a pleasant lilt to her voice as she said it, as if she was smiling. As if she knew.

Someone came up behind me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. Somehow I knew it was Alan.

“Mesmerizing, huh?” he murmured, and, noting his word choice, I gave a small smile, but I don’t think he could see it.

“Nearly one thousand Jews died up here. Had they not done that, we might not be here today, you know?”

I nodded. I knew.

Becca is a freshman at Boston University. She has been writing short stories since she was eight years old, and spends the better part of her time reading anything she can get her hands on. Besides reading and writing, she enjoys watching Netflix, walking her dogs, and traveling.