Issue Sixteen

In Transit

By Phoebe Houser

Fire streaked through the dusky horizons, swirling reds and golds amid wisps of spectral smoke. The sky was a collision— a clash of vibrancy and terror and ruin. It spoke of longing, the sort which holds no object, yet does not loosen its grip for want of one. It was a brutal, unforgiving sky, and yet, gazing at it from the aegis of a window, its viewers found it muted— docile, even. Two of the youngest found their eyes drooping as they sat huddled closely together in the backseat.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” murmured the woman behind the driver’s wheel.

The girl sitting next to her nodded, tapping her fingers against the glass. Outside, she could see her own reflection in the rearview mirror. She saw the way her hair drooped, clinging to her head at all the wrong angles. She saw the way her skin bickered quietly with the outside world, rising and stinging as though its bitter quarrel was with its own form. She saw herself, her own, expressionless eyes peering back at her. And she could not look away.

The woman glanced over. “It really is a stunning one,” she tried again. Her tone was enthused, although, admittedly, her actual impressions of the heavenly display were substantially more subdued.

“Yeah,” the girl said, her tone more of dismissal than agreement.

Fingers drummed against the steering wheel. From the backseat, a muffled grumble emerged from the younger of the two children when the older shifted in her seat. The engine made all the sounds that are eventually forgotten on a long trip, intricate hums and heartbeats which eventually fade into obscurity.

“Allison,” the woman in the front seat said softly. The girl, Allison, who had begun to reach for the radio, left her hand suspended in the air as she shifted her eyes towards her mother. There was something about her voice— something gentle, painfully intimate, which pulled her back into reality. Or, at least, whatever sort of reality could exist there, in this dreamscape of a moment, with fiery skies and dozing siblings and a world that sped past their windows like a memory sooner forgotten than it was conjured.

Allison glanced back at her sleeping sisters. “Sorry,” she muttered, withdrawing her hand. “I forgot.”

Her mother shook her head. She had not meant to extract an apology. What she wanted was her daughter’s voice. She wanted to know how her day had been. She wanted to know what she was thinking when she sat there and stared out the window like that. She wanted Allison to know that she loved her, and that she had her father’s eyes. Eyes that she had once thought she would never see again.

She knew the look of sadness in those eyes. And it terrified her.

“Allison,” her mother said again.

“Yeah?”

Mother looked to daughter. Then back to the road. “Sit up straight, okay?”

Allison nodded. And slowly, slowly, her eyes drifted back towards the window. Back towards the deep brown of her eyes which her mother so cherished. Against the canvas of towering gray buildings and skyscraping lights, she watched the ghost of her reflection fade, and fade, and fade into obscurity.

From another set of eyes, the same vision, of cityscapes and lights and phantasmic reflections, sat planted decidedly ahead of the dark and winding road. Another car, of similar size and similar speed, raced in the opposite direction. The backseat was empty— that is, empty of life, rather than of empty of substance. Old toys, broken car seats, and more fast food packaging that could have been from just one, or even a week’s worth of meals, littered every inch of the vehicle. The man in the front seat seemed to care very little, however. If the smell of old food and unwashed cloth bothered him, there would be no telling from his expression.

As something vibrated next to him, he reached over to turn down the radio. Without taking his eyes off the road, he traced the tiny tremors back to their source with one fumbling hand, then brought it to his ears.

“Laura,” he said, not missing a beat. His voice was more prayer than greeting.

He let his eyes rest gently on the horizon as he listened, caressing the city’s outline with his eyes as distant words fell like petals upon his ears. When he spoke again, his smile was just as much a note in his voice as a fixture on his face. “I’m on my way home now. Tell the boys I’m almost home.”

The phone fell gently back to the seat. And then, once again, it was just he and the road. The radio still hummed with a muffled chatter, a song so quiet that its words were nearly impossible to discern. The man did not reach over to restore the volume. In his head, he could only hear the echo of his own voice. I’m almost home.

Outside, the passionate hues of the sky had gradually darkened, granting a stage upon which the first eager stars began to burn. A certain serenity glazed over the chaos of the fading day, and yet, the sun still peaked over the bustling earth. The day was not over quite yet.

A man, rather young, but rather more worn in appearance, did not seem to share this view, however. At least, his heavy eyelids most certainly did not. Against his will, he found them slowly shutting, more than once, before he forced them open with a jolt. He had already burned through three cups of coffee. He shouldn’t be tired. He couldn’t be tired. It was still an hour longer before he was home. Although he was far too close to warrant stopping, the distance seemed almost unbearable as he shifted in his seat. The car, which had been freezing only minutes ago, was now unbearable hot. Agitated, the man tried to find a more comfortable position, but to no avail.

The world around him was vast, or so the setting sun seemed to suggest. And yet, from a seat that was just a couple centimeters too narrow, a car that was just a few inches too small, and a road that was entirely too full of nameless and faceless people with so many places to be, everything just felt small. Too, too small.

When the cars in front of him stopped, the man slammed on the wheel. Once. Then again, then again. A tear escaped, then another. Everything began to spiral. He would be home later, and his mother would be angry, again, and he would have to listen to a month’s worth of scolding, again, and he wouldn’t have time to start any of the many tasks that he knew needed to be done by the end of the week. Time was running out, and time was taking away every hope he had of a night, just one night, of respite. And he had no choice but to sit, to sit and watch it flee.

He hated his job. And he hated his home. And he hated that he had to go to either.

He did not make the turn to drive back to his old neighborhood that night. He missed the turn, and he kept going. He kept going and going into the night, until his eyelids closed and he couldn’t find the strength to open them.

The sound of horn filled the darkening night, then the sound of a startled engine and a startled voice. Finally, a deafening crash. As the sun ended its journey across the sky, so too did the young man and his companion in the wreckage. Fire flooded the night sky.

Perhaps, the next day, a woman and her daughter would reconcile on a crowded road. Perhaps, a man would kiss his wife in the passenger seat as his kids protested from the back. Perhaps, a tired young man would return home to sleep. Perhaps everyone would go back to their jobs, to their families, and to their lives, unaffected by a distant collision.

No matter what, rest assured, the road would hold something new tomorrow.

Phoebe Houser was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and is currently a senior in high school. She has loved writing since she was in second grade, and doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.

They Could See Themselves

By Arden Yum

The watercolor sky of each seemingly endless June day bled into the next. The sun turned the other girls red and left their skin bruised and tender. They slathered on aloe vera and emptied cans of spray-on sunscreen, but flakes of flesh still ended up on the front porch and in the bathroom sink. I did the same; smeared on layers of protection against the angry sun, anxiously waiting for my skin to get burned too. I felt the suffocating weight of warm air on my face and a stream of water droplets rushed from the roots of my hair to the back of my neck, but the pain did not come. Instead, I glittered in the sunlight and could see my pale skin darken into the sweet honey of summer. The sunscreen I had used to guard myself dripped away until my body shifted into shadow.

Two girls posed for a picture on the front steps of the bunk. I drifted into a corner and pretended to reorganize the pairs of sneakers lined up by the door. My head swiveled around periodically, waited for a half-second to be invited into the exclusive photoshoot, then went back to occupying myself with more arbitrary tasks. The girls held clenched, closed mouth smiles. They stuck their elbows out and threw their shoulders back. Their arms were wrapped around each other, but one girl’s fingers barely grazed the other’s back. They stood perfectly still while drops of sweat collected into shallow puddles on the ground. After a single click of the shutter, their shoulders slumped back down. They started to fake laugh for a second pose and soon their forced giggles grew into uncontrollable laughter. Another click. One girl rushed around to the back of the camera to see what she looked like.

She let out a high pitched cry for help. Her voice was burdened by the agony of summer heat and the insecurities she tried so hard to suppress. She hated the way that her eyes narrowed into dark slits whenever her smile was genuine. She complained to her friend that it made her look Asian. She said Asian like she was spitting out rotten food. The disgust in her voice sent an earthquake through my spine. Could she see me? Did it matter? I stood speechless on the porch. Her words took refuge inside of my mind. My tan skin blended into the wooden walls and I hoped that if I closed my eyes she wouldn’t be there when I opened them. I stopped adjusting the shoes and kicking the dirt into piles. I walked into the corner of wet towels and bathing suits and tried to take up as little space as possible. Thick teardrops rolled down my cheeks but I couldn’t lift my hand high enough to wipe them away.

The sun dried my tears and left thin lines of salt on my face. I positioned my head towards the shade so my eyes wouldn’t squint. Every muscle moved with calculated caution. I stared at my arms. Now they looked like they had been muddied and no matter how hard I scrubbed, the layers of contaminated skin refused to fall off. I ran my fingers across my eyelids and failed to find the same deep-set eye creases and long lashes that the other girls had. I silently cursed the sun for making me different. They were beautiful in a way that I could never be. Yes, they burned. But they burned together.

As the day faded into night I sat on the front porch and watched streams of girls walk by and gossip and giggle. One girl’s face blurred into another whenever I took a second to blink. They didn’t need to look at their arms or trace their eyelashes. They could see themselves by watching each other. There was a security in their sameness but they paid no attention to it. Some girls sat down next to me to see the stars, and I half smiled at them. Their eyes were pointed in every direction but somehow avoided contact with mine. I retreated into the darkness. In the midst of our closeness, I was still inevitably alone. The sun rose the next morning and my fingers trembled because they were scared to touch the light.

Arden Yum is a junior at Trinity School in New York City. Her favorite subjects are Latin, English, and Math. She enjoys photography, teaching, and oatmeal. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards.

Becoming Nancy

By Yuwei Dou

At age thirteen, I lived on the fifth floor of Ya Qing Court, a grey apartment building with many windows that overlooked the street. There, we called the smog over the city the yellow dragon because it made the sky perpetually yellow, and people often wore masks outside. A few Yang trees sat across the Beijing street in a courtyard. On the ground floors of apartment buildings were shops where vendors from the country sold candied fruit called tanghulu and guokui pork pancake. Multi-colored awnings always flapped in the wind, and old men sat in their rickshaws waiting to carry passengers to their destinations. Down the street, my school was a complex of sterile white buildings that resembled a jail. Whenever I left the streets and entered the gates of No. 241 middle school, I felt as if I were leaving freedom and entering a courthouse where a strict jury would judge me.

In that school, our teachers were our guides, judges, prosecutors, and executioners. They wielded immense power. One winter, I made Ms. Liu’s face turn red when I privately corrected her use of future tense in English. She sent me outside without a coat, and I stood there for twelve hours shivering in the snow. Often children stood with me who were also sent outside to stand in the snow. Sometimes I could see a hundred children, standing in a line outside, shivering, contemplating their mistakes.

In school, I knew a girl named Nancy. She was the kind of girl who would not eat her hot pot and dumplings outside like the other women while the men ate inside, as was common in Chinese culture. She insisted on eating at the table with the men. She loved hip-hop dancing and ping-pong. While the rest of us left our hair black, Nancy died her hair golden. Her legs were pale and long. Nancy always smelled like laundry detergent, as if her clothes were cleaner than ours. Unlike most of us, she was an Opera God: kind and good and gave everyone luck. Each day, she would encourage her friends: Keep working hard! Have a good day! We lived in a bamboo-steamer-like environment, where every kind word was a cure for death.

Naturally, she didn’t belong in this place. Nancy was like the tiger locked in the zoo. While the rest of us understood our cages, Nancy seemed to quietly pace crazily. We all should have noticed when she began to change.

One day, she stopped smiling. When the teacher called on her, she stood up and said nothing. I thought she was having her period, but then I was too worried about my own problems to help.

On a Wednesday when we arrived at the school, news that Nancy was missing spread quickly on campus. That day, the rain and clouds converged to form a grey dragon in the sky. The whole day, teachers didn’t seem to notice her absence. Even our counselor ate her sandwich in her office and watched television operas. But we students secretly thought Nancy had run away to another city, like Holden in Catcher in the Rye, and would be back. But Nancy’s tall, lean figure remained noticeably absent.

Two days later, I read about her in the city newspaper. They didn’t mention Nancy’s name to protect her identity, but we all knew.

Rumors spread that Nancy was staying in a shabby motel. I knew the place. From traffic and pollution, the outside wall of the motel long ago turned from white to dirty yellow and was covered with patches of small ads. From her boyfriend, I found out that Nancy was smoking marijuana, playing games on her phone, and eating the 3-for-$1 mysterious-meat pancakes sold on the street.

While riding the bus one day to the library, I passed the motel and saw Nancy wearing our school’s uniform, but it was oil stained. Her pants looked wet as if she’d washed them but didn’t have a dryer. Without shoes on, she was standing at the door of her motel room. She gazed straight ahead, and her normally happy eyes looked as if they held a secret. Her long hair looked like that of a homeless woman. For weeks, she stayed there in that terrible motel, skipping school, smoking marijuana, and setting a bad example for all of us. She was my hero. When our teachers weren’t around, some of us said quietly to each other, “I want to be Nancy, even for one day. One hour. So I can stop studying for just a little while.” When we said those words, our faces looked like those of mischievous, scared children. Secretly, we spoke about the joy of playing soccer on a field under the pleasant sunshine or riding the Cinderella’s Secret Palace at Disneyland in Shanghai.

But our words changed when teachers’ pets interjected: “Nancy was such a bad girl. Ms. Lee cannot get the extra prize this month for being a good teacher. We will never be like Nancy!” But secretly, we were all Nancy. We all felt that hidden desire to throw away our futures to go lie in some dingy motel, where life was devoid of pressure, where mysterious meat pancakes were better than egg tarts from Crazy Bakery and unending school. To us, that terrible, frightening life was better than the one we lived every day.

The situation changed when the principal cornered Nancy’s boyfriend and threatened to beat him if he didn’t tell her where Nancy was hiding out. Pretty soon, the police were dragging Nancy into the principal’s office. I remember watching the armed officers escort her across the blacktop to the office. Like a criminal, she looked at her feet the whole time. Her face looked sick, weak, dirty, and wild. I could see a tear in her shirt and her pants, as if she’d run through trees to escape judgment, as if she had been willing to risk harm rather than return.

Later I heard that the principal beat Nancy with her bare hands, screaming, “You’ve hurt our reputation! Now the education government is punishing us by taking money from our school!” When Nancy arrived home, her dad beat her so angrily that he injured her leg. Beatings were normal in China. Parents and teachers beat their children as a way of teaching them life experience. Later that week, at her apartment, Nancy stood on the ledge of the window, but her parents stopped her. She tried to grab a knife, but her parents took her to the hospital, where she lived in a small, dark, windowless room for seven days, like an animal in a cage.

I never saw Nancy again and she never returned to school, but we still talk about her. She lives on in my mind, and I’m sure she lives on in the minds of other students who want freedom. Sometimes when I study biology for 20 hours straight and I feel evil in my brain, I throw my book across the room. I turn on my music, and for ten minutes I become Nancy. I become her.

As a senior at Amador Valley High School, Yuwei is a creative writer, student journalist, and page editor of the Amador Valley journalism class. She is actively involved in school and enjoys being part of the community. Yuwei is a professional Chinese Zither player, —a 21-string traditional Chinese Instrument almost 2000 years old— which she has done since the age of four and passed Level 10 at 11 years old. She enjoys doing competitions and won first place in the National Chinese Zither Competition from 2009 to 2016. She also writes her own zither pieces included: Summer; That year, that river; Childhood; Homeland grassland, Homeland river, etc. As a member of High School Music Collaborative and the leader of PLAY Chinese Ensemble, Yuwei enjoys using music to share the joy and happiness to other people in the community. Although English is her second language and she just came to America three years ago, she has already won the Scholastic Writing Contest, Bay Area Book Festival Writing Competition, and the Tri-Valley High School Writing Competition as the only double winner.She always tries her best to make the school and the Pleasanton Unified School District better as a leader in LINK, an active member in Pleasanton SIAC and a student representative in LCAC and DCLC. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music, reading books and cycling.

How Sisters See

By Lum Chi

Note: Independent study, Last interview, hardest interview. Interviewees anonymous. Study: How discrimination affects minority twins.

Interviewer: I put you and your sister in separate rooms for a reason. I want to interview you both individually so I can hear your own authentic answers. What I’m going to do now is ask you a series of questions. Take them seriously and be as honest as possible. First question: what do you think of the phrase ‘let there be light?’

Sister 1: Honestly, it was a mistake that He left us alone. Light is always supposed to be pure. So, why create light when it would be tainted? I don’t understand. I mean if our creator formed another world would he create another human race or hope that we learn? With this world’s seemingly new and more demented version of morality, I’m starting to believe that darkness is becoming synonymous with light. Children in cages, refusing to prevent another school shooting, considering miscarriages a crime . . . how could I not believe otherwise? There was already Noah’s Ark, who says there won’t be another.

Sister 2: I think it’s beautiful. He trusts us to achieve the eternal. Not like we need to, though, because already light is eternal. Cruelty has repeatedly found ways to thicken out and swallow a majority of humanity. But specks of morality are always found. Look at history, reflect on your life, go through religious scriptures, and observe the progress we’ve made. I sound naïve, but really I’m speaking the language of common sense because if that isn’t true then why hasn’t the world shriveled yet?

Interviewer: There’s a stranger next to you. How would you interact with them?

Sister 1: Why do I have to interact? I’m not an idiot. In the classroom we’re taught to put ourselves first and yet society scorns us if we do. Women are no exception to this rule. Selflessness is important, but so is selfishness. What if I have a sore throat that’s so bad that if I speak I lose my voice forever? What if I’m in the middle of sending an extremely important text message? What if I’m having a really bad day? Perform anything but selflessness and you’re scorned for it. If that’s the case, then scorn me.

Sister 2: Did you ask this question to my sister? I bet she overreacted. We’re pretty different did you notice? Selflessness can get overrated sometimes. No, that’s not the right word for it . . . overpraised? I’d forget that, though, if I acknowledged said stranger. How different would we be in comparison to each other? Would we have a lot in common? They have a story; at least in that aspect we’re similar. They could be a potential friend or lover. You never really know with strangers. So, I guess I’d talk to them.

Interviewer: The news is on.

Sister 1: I listen with my eyes and with my ears because that’s all I can do—reflect on the twisted evil consuming this world. Bickering over policy making. Grown men controlling bodies through bills. I’m confused but I get it. I scream, — but more at myself. I’m a kid, incapable of understanding. So I can’t do anything, right? Change the world? They say we can’t; yet they rely on us. I say bullshit. Stop relying on us. Stop pushing the problems you’ve created onto us. Sometimes silence can be change. Let them, those past generations, suffer with what they started.

Sister 2: I turn it off. Every flicker of the screen depicts corruption, which dims the hope that I know is still lingering in this world. I don’t bother questioning. Questioning creates frustration and frustration leads to anger. But sometimes I do break. I scream at the news not me. I throw the remote once the screen blinks into blackness. It’s just not worth watching. It’s never worth watching.

Interviewer: Why do you view the world the way you do?

Sister 1: My teachers never liked me in pre-school because my skin was darker than a Hershey’s chocolate bar. At least, that’s what one of my classmates told me. You remember that? The funny thing is, I still question how to react to that. Sometimes I imagine flipping him off. But other times I imagine thanking him. If not for his harsh comment then I never would’ve woken up. I walk into an ice cream parlor with Mom and people would stare at us as if they’d never seen a fucking human being before. Back then I thought it was because we had stains on our shirts or something. But since that classmate of mine told me what he thought, I understood that the only stain that we had was not looking like them.

Eventually, I started asking why because I was stupid enough to hope that the explanations would debunk what he’d told me. To some I look like a monkey. Our president says we belong in our shithole countries. But it’s not like I can go back to my country because European exploitation drove it into fucking war. Like I fucking want to stay here. I wear my natural hair to work and I risk being fired. I was even unfortunate enough to get a brother. I yell at him when he puts his hood up, snap at him when he plays with a toy gun. Some say I sound harsh but I only do it because I love him. Sorry, I sound like an angry black woman don’t I? Look . . . I’ve tried to view the world otherwise. I’ve tried to view the world like my sister, beautiful, happy and whatnot. I still wake up trying. But then I step outside my door and the world gives me reasons why I should stop.

Sister 2: My friend once told me that I could push the night sky into retirement. I assume it’s because of how dark I am. I was . . . what in elementary school? Because I loved nighttime I took my friend’s comment lightly. But my sister didn’t. Instead she just stormed off. I thought she was overreacting. She always does. I remember I’d always ask her to play dolls with me but she never did because she thought it was too childish. Yeah, I know. And we were kids. Of course, you already know that. But I look back now and I understand. I wasn’t like her. Whenever my teacher told my class that we could pick partners, I was always alone. I became so desperate at one point that I started asking the guys to be my partner. How do you think that went . . .?

I’m no different than anybody else. As kids, most of us are naïve and innocent before seeing the world for what it is. It’s just a matter of how we react to it. I’m shopping with my friends and I notice that a security guard is watching not us but me. Strangers would pull at my curls. I look at mothers holding their children with this affection in their eyes. Sometimes I see myself through them. I’m a mother holding my own kid. But I’m not just looking at them with affection. I’m scared. They’d be a newborn but already I’d be imagining what I should say if they started wishing that they were white or how I should react if I got a call telling me that they were arrested or killed. I mean . . . I try not to fuss over that, though. The world sucks but it’s not going to change if I keep hating the people in it. It just . . . won’t.

Interviewer: How do you view your sister?

Sister 1: I pity her. I like to think that it’s people like her that are too good for this world. But I’ve noticed how she chooses to stay in the ignorance marinating her. Her head isn’t even above water. This world will eventually swallow her and it won’t spit out her bones. Her mouth will turn on her, her emotions will betray her. She can care but on judgment day her costs and losses will be extortionate. She’s seventeen now. This is no longer childhood innocence. It’s not cute anymore. She’s not cute anymore. God, I just don’t understand her. She needs to stop forcing her eyes closed.

Sister 2: Honestly . . . she confuses me. She’s always pushing herself to see things she doesn’t have to see. Anger literally fleshes out her heart and boils her blood. It’s like a cloud that surrounds her. I mean, the water that clumps in her eyes isn’t even prompted by sadness anymore. It’s all anger. I’m scared for her. She wants change but . . . with her quick maturity came an inevitable cynicism. She needs to take a break for once or else she’ll suffocate herself before the world does.

Interviewer: Do you have any hope for the world?

Sister 1: Solutions you mean or punishment? Hope is too infuriatingly overused. It can be good but sometimes it makes people unbearably naïve. What is hope gonna do for us? Is it going to stop global warming? Of course not. Fuck hope.

Sister 2: My sister or the world? It’s on and off. But I’d like to say yes. Without it comes a loss of motivation and inspiration and world changers. People would become apathetic and with that “fuck everything” mentality nothing would get solved anymore.

Interviewer: Is there any additional information you’d like to mention?

Sister 1: Yes actually. I want you to remember something, especially after this interview. Don’t ever compare me to her.

Sister 2: Even before this interview I’m sure you already knew this but . . . I’m not and I won’t ever be like my sister and I’d appreciate it if you remembered that, Fiona.

Interviewer: Thank you for your time.

Interviewer Signature: Fiona Ngu Interviewer Status: Older Sister

Lum Chi is a high school senior who’s been awarded a Gold Key and American Voices Nomination for her fiction pieces in the Scholastic writing awards. Her work has also been published by the Minnesota Writing Project and by the K’in literary journal. Currently, she is busy traditionally publishing a three-part young adult novel. When she’s not busy writing, she’s either locked in her bedroom curled up with a good book or binge-watching anime.

Insatiable

By Kathleen Mollinedo

He decided to celebrate. There had been a new addition to the family. It sat at the kitchen table, lapping up spilled milk with a tongue like long, twisted licorice, which shone darkly under the kitchen lights. He had welcomed it into his life only a few short days ago, and already it had eaten dead patches into the air in his home.
Sometimes, he wondered if the dead patches had something to do with Lily. She was the one who had stood in those places, painting her poems onto the walls like protection spells. Now, when he came too close, his lungs collapsed in on themselves. There was no more oxygen left to breathe.
He didn’t mind the empty air that much. At least now he wasn’t so lonely. The creature was not him, or the friendly neighbor who brought over frozen casseroles, or his worried cousin, or Lily. And yet, it deserved a feast. He shuffled through the chest in what was once their room for something he could give it. It would eat anything, but he wanted it to be full. Soon, dying plants and dog-eared books stacked up on the table, and it wrapped its mouth around them all, gurgling. Sharp book corners pressed against the thin skin of its mouth. The crunch of their spines was deafening, and by the time its jaw could close, he was once again standing in empty air. The ground wobbled beneath him, and there was a short knock at the door. It was too late. The celebration could no longer be stopped. He had piled on letters and bedsheets, paintbrushes and tubes of lipstick, all one final, graceful meal. The knocking was only getting louder. Then, he heard the handle turn.

“Please shut the door,” he called. The beast finished off the last drops of ink, and footsteps creaked through the floor.

“Shut the door,” he called more desperately, barely able to breathe. No one was supposed to be there. “Shut the door!”
No one should have been there but the creature. He set a palm flat on the table, then an arm. There was only one way to finish the feast.

Kate Mollinedo is a sophomore currently studying creative writing in the Pacific Northwest. She is the founder of New Lore Magazine, and enjoys translating Wikipedia articles and making films in her spare time.

Dear Bo

By Yingtong Guo

Remember when Aiona and I thought you were dying? The big kids kept breaking up, so they tattooed your body with the names of their lost loves. Viscous sap seeped from your freshest scars, and we stored grass and mud in a first-aid kit in case you needed surgery. We named you Bo because it was etched into the most exposed and vulnerable part of your roots.

A few years later, Aiona and I drifted apart – she liked singing, but I liked reading. Liking turned to loving when I discovered Harry Potter during lunch break on a warm Monday, slouched against your trunk. I can still smell the mildewy scent of your soil-clad twigs, mingled with the cool fragrance of magnolia flowers in elusive wafts of summer freshness. I shopped with Harry and Hagrid for school supplies on Diagon Alley, peaking through the store façade of Flourish & Blotts, where leather-brown tomes like giant chocolates were stacked to the ceiling in rickety spirals. Under the invisibility cloak, I snuck into the Restricted Section of Hogwarts Library to unravel the purpose of the Philosopher’s Stone. When the school bell shook me back into the muggle world, I picked up one of your fallen twigs before running off to my afternoon class. I had a magical wand now – English Oak, 10’’, unicorn hair, unyielding flexibility, I imagined – and was expecting my Hogwarts acceptance. Although I never received that Hogwarts Express train ticket, I returned every day to read and dream in your protective shade – my Platform 9 ¾ to the universe of magic.

After I had finished the entire series in my native Dutch, I learnt that Hogwarts’ headmaster Perkamentus, meaning parchment, was named Dumbledore, meaning bumblebee, in the original English. I was angry with the translators – a humming old wizard with twinkling eyes and a jolly laugh should not be called a shriveled piece of goatskin! English works needed to be read in English, and as my vocabulary expanded, I gained access to a wealth of English literature, diaries and memoirs, and popular science.

Over the years, I forged bonds with the downtrodden and forgotten characters I read about not because I understood them, but because I was stunned by the profound humanity in their isolation, their resilience, and their complicity in their tragic downfall. There was 13-year-old Theodore Decker, who drifted through cities full of nastiness and apathy in search of a home, weighed down by his nagging guilt for an unspeakable theft. There was 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove, who descended into a madness that delivered her from the endless sneers of more beautiful and more eloquent people, and from her burning desire for the bluest eyes. But there was also 36-year-old Humbert Humbert, a vile man with a ruinous, excuseless, but sickeningly passionate heart that coaxed him into child rape, barely possible to like yet uncomfortably hard to judge. If you were an orphan, a lunatic, or a deviant, these characters asked me in unison, would you do better?

In moments like these, I could neither invent an answer nor turn the page. So, I would take a nap under your awning of leaves until your shadow blackened the sunlit insides of my drowsy eyelids. I would roll over to the left and roll over to the right, but you turned and turned as time passed by, chasing me around like a tireless clock-hand, blocking the light and absorbing the warmth from my furry mattress of matted grass.

Sit up and keep reading, you commanded. But this time, a different author, a different subject, and a different genre. So, I read the works of activists who had suffered much but complained little and of scientists who had discovered much but shared everything. Malala Yousafzai, for example, lost the left side of her face during a Taliban shooting in her school bus, while Nelson Mandela sacrificed 27 years of his freedom to a 56-square-feet cell on Robben Island. Their narratives were authentic, generous, and filled with hope, and they showed me that we choose the interpretation of our past that lays out the blueprint for our future.

Carl Sagan, Michio Kaku, and Stephen Hawking took me on an exciting journey through black holes, parallel universes, space clouds, and, finally, back to the pale blue dot that is planet Earth – our mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam – as captured by the imaging system of Voyager 1. Their tales of pink skies, cannibalistic pulsars, and planets made out of solid diamond filled me with wondrous questions. Some inspired a quick web search. Others introduced the very next chapter.

Despite astronomers’ warnings against anything-centrism, many of my fascinations and obsessions had less to do with deep space and more to do with human history. From the 2 million animal species on planet Earth, how did we end up at the top of the food chain? Why did we give up the carefree romanticism of hunting and gathering for a sedentary life in destitute villages? These questions had their answers hidden in the fields of biology, psychology, and anthropology, and I looked for them in the writings of Richard Dawkins and Noah Harari.

For 10 years, Bo, you have shielded me from sunshine and drizzle so that I could live inside the pages of my newest conquests from the school library. Thank you for allowing me to meet Harry, experience joys and sorrows with Malala and Mandela, explore space-time, reflect on the heritage of our tribal ancestors, and be an inveterate reader. I wish you lots of sunlight, water, and nutrients in 2019!

Green kisses,
Yingtong

Yingtong Guo is an emerging writer and undergraduate student
pursuing a double major in biology and PPE (philosophy, politics, and
economics) at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been
published in Deerfield Magazine and Pacific Ties Magazine. She lives
in Leuven, Belgium.