Shorts

The Zipper

By Benjamin Armstrong

The day smelt of warm pig dung when we walked towards the Zipper. The ride was old and felt as if it would crumble and kill all on board. We got into the cage, me blushing from this girl. Her ride bracelet, borrowed from a friend, fell from her tan wrist. My beating heart leaped from my crotch to throat.

There was silence.

The man looked at the bracelet then handed it back to her. We went into the sky and kissed.

Ben is a high school student who doesn’t do much other than write stories and play hockey.

My Name is Scout

By Scout Benson

My name has always been different. Someone’s dog is named Scout or their uncle is Scott. When I was younger kids would ask why I had a boy’s name, and adults have always been ecstatic to talk about To Kill a Mockingbird– a book so powerful it gave my name meaning I didn’t understand. So powerful, it often took me from Scout Benson- daughter of Doug and Heather, curious, confident, and bold- to Scout Finch- daughter of Atticus, curious, confident, and bold.

It was life changing to always be associated with this other child, who I was told I fit perfectly.

I bore the weight of this little girl on my own little girl’s shoulders. Her story changed the world. Would mine? My name is heavy. It means things to people. Things like innocence, or pain. My name reminds people of history. Battles fought and won, battles still being fought. Wrongs yet to be righted. A little girl in a world she didn’t understand. Much like I was. Much like I still am. My name is Scout Benson. I love my name. It gives me power. It is not a boy’s name, or your uncle Scott’s name, or a dog’s name. It is my name. A name I share with a little girl in a big story that touched millions. I want to be curious and confident and bold like her. My life is not a story, it is my life. But I too hope to touch millions someday.

Scout graduated from Springville High School in Utah in May of 2021. She enjoys expressing herself through writing about the world around her. Outdoors are one of her many passions, and her writing attempts to convey feelings and emotions that she finds and feels in her life.

I-270

By Grace Gent

it’s 8:17 on a Sunday night in May.
the sky is bright enough
blue enough
that if the moon wasn’t shining pale above us you’d think it was
mid-afternoon.
when i turn my head
pink swaths of cloud wrap around the horizon,
cradling the last rays of sun as they
sink
into the ground.
the endless rolling green of the foothills of appalachia stretch out beyond the dashboard.
my feet are tucked beneath me,
a book cushioned in my lap,
its pages soft from years of love.
my father sits behind the wheel of the jeep he cherishes so much,
singing softly to the songs he raised me on.
a guitar hums through the speakers,
strums of americana fill the car,
vibrating through the dust-laden seats.
my father turns 51 in three months.
in four, i’ll sit on the morning damp football field of my high school with the rest of my senior class.
the cicadas won’t be singing anymore,
their song passed onto the crickets and the morning doves.
in eight months, i’ll have sent out my transcripts
to the schools i hope to spend the next four years of my life at.
in 12 months, i’ll know which school that’ll be.
when my father turns 52,
i’ll be packing my bags,
leaving the blue grey room i grew up in
for the dust bunnies.

but for now, my father is 50. we ride through the mountains that the country forgets, and i watch their secrets pass by in the twilight. tonight, my father is whistling in tune with jason isbell and i am turning the pages of a novel. and though memory is a fickle thing that i am sure exists only to confuse me, i hope that if i return to these forests, these hills, these winding roads, i remember them beautiful, held close by the moon, the future stretching into the valleys below.

Grace Gent is a high school student from Northern Virginia. When she isn’t writing she can be found forcing her dad to take her on road trips and trying very hard to learn the guitar.

Under the Same Roof

By Eliana Goldenholz

Under the same roof is where I have been,
Surrounded constantly by my very own kin,
Pacing the same hall,
Staring at the same wall,
Watering the same single plant,
Hearing inside of me a chant,
“Go out!”
“Go out!”
“Without a doubt!”
“Let go of your anger, worries, and stress,
Just be free from your same old confining address!”
But I can not ignore reason and sense,
The ones to blame for my being tense.
They protest:
“This situation must be assessed!
Do not go out and have all your fun,
For we all must remember your safety is number one!
First check the data, tests, and results,
and learn the effects they have on kids and adults.”
This dispute goes on and on…
I expect it to continue until Covid is gone.

[By now, most people have gone back to their past routines, with minor changes. This is not the case for my family. We are still staying ‘under the same roof’ for much of the time. As I watch others have fun and go about their lives, as if there is no longer a terrible disease in our midst, I wish that I could go about that way too. But I cannot, and my family’s warnings echo in my head. I hope that other teens that are in a similar position read this poem and know that they are not alone.]

Eliana Goldenholz is a thirteen year old living in Brookline, MA. She loves to read both fiction and non-fiction books, as well as learn about a wide range of subjects including math, physics, computer coding, and English literature.

Our Hometown

By Christian Ash

In our hometown there were places––Real places: like the Taco Bell Burger King McDonald’s trifecta, where if we went late enough we could sometimes see the employees lighting up and smoking underage under parking lot streetlights; and the beat-up other Walgreens, where a big can of Arnold Palmer and a family size bag of those pretzels bites with the peanut butter inside only cost two seventy-nine in exact change; and the church/daycare parking lot where we used to play four-square and had our own ass handed to us again and again by merciless middle school boys who found puberty early and used it to cherry bomb that motherfucker so hard we didn’t have a cold chance in hell; and that secret bike trail that wasn’t really secret and is now an apartment complex haunted by the souls of Baja Blast-drinking sixteen-year-old jackasses pulling wheelies on their ghostly 12-speeds; and the old basketball court that stood next to the high school until orcish men wielding hard-hats and jackhammers came and tore it up to build a brick building with no windows and no doors, that black asphalt and triple-rimmed hoop now long, long gone—the faded white three-point arc and games of twenty-one existing only in memory like the taste of a root beer float; and let’s not forget the football bleachers so stereotypical I don’t need to remind you they had a specified section solely for the hopeless souls of pep band kids with braces and baritones, ADHD and saxophone reeds, converse kicks and splintery drumsticks, lonely oboes and sheet music with penciled-in quotes from Seneca, etc., etc.––those bleachers underneath which the virginities of many were (supposedly) lost, along with something else we didn’t even know we had but now we miss it like those Scooby-Doo fruit snacks that turned out to be too good for reality; and of course that hill behind the Honeywell smokestack, where once on an October midnight before the end of the world we licked cheap McDonald’s ice cream cones in the backseat of a beater, and for the first time saw our lives as bildungsromans building up to this exact moment, saw the honey-colored spirit egress not just with the smoke of Marlboros or blunts or bonfires, but with each new and frosting exhalation.

And now when we find ourselves back in our hometown, it’s just a town that used to be home.

Christian Ash was born and raised in suburban Minnesota, and currently attends Gustavus Adolphus College. In 2020, his fiction and poetry received awards as part of the Lawrence Owen Prizes in Creative Writing. Additionally, his work has been published in Kaleidzine Magazine and Firethorne Literary and Graphic Magazine.

2050

By Lydia Hessel-Robinson

Maeve traipses home, sweat pouring down her back. March wasn’t this warm when Mommy was a girl. No,— soft, cold flakes of snow blanketed the ground. At least, that’s what Mommy said.

Past the playground, children who don’t get a future. Past the two saplings. They never last; why does the city bother anymore? People drive under solar panels, coming home from jobs that are supposed to save the environment. But everybody will die within twenty years. Those jobs came too late. At least, that’s what the scientists said.

She doesn’t have any ambitions. Nothing matters if the water is going to swallow her whole. Or maybe she’ll shrivel up like a sun-dried tomato. At least she has twenty years to find her final words. There, that’s an ambition.

Her battered house leans on a useless little hill. She swings the swollen door open, watermarks higher each year. It’s a growth chart just like the one Mommy keeps for her. The water grows faster.

Mommy drags in the groceries, wearing her Yale shirt as if a fancy degree will protect her. She wants Maeve to attend Yale, but how can she if Connecticut drowned years ago?

“Maeve, a little help.”

Into the garage, heave bags to the kitchen. 75% recycled material, one bag brags. Oh, that’s the minimum, retorts another. 84%, how’s that! Food is stocked, one more week to live in Dumpster World. Maybe Maeve can find a clean planet all for herself. Ambition number two.

The sun disappears, a breeze kicks up. Mommy frowns.

“That’s weird. Storms weren’t predicted today.”

Maeve shivers. The storms are more often these days, Maeve overheard Daddy say one night. What will we do when the house floods? Where will we go?

Now the rain patters on the windows. It’s almost pleasant, except for Daddy’s words creeping up behind Maeve, ready to pounce if she gets too comfortable.

The rain turns into a tantrum. Dying trees lash the house, people duck through doors, and the wind howls. It’s never this bad. Mommy and Daddy hold Maeve close when she crawls into their bed that night.

In the morning, there is no sun, only wind and rain. The next day, too, and the next. Maeve stays upstairs because downstairs is a swimming pool.

On day six, no power.

Day ten, nothing to eat.

Day thirteen, no Mommy. No Daddy. It wasn’t twenty years, scientists. It wasn’t twenty years. She’s alone, words half-said, lost in water before she could finish.

Lydia Hessel-Robinson is a high school freshman in the Philadelphia area. Her work has previously been published in Philadelphia Stories, Jr., and Cricket magazine. She also loves to read and competes in horseback riding.