We reminded them that they were a bit late. We laughed I sit at the computer, trying to think of memories to write about. I stare out the window. Then I hear “Crazy Baby,” a techno song by Nightcore II. It comes from our iMac computer upstairs. I start to think about Elliot, about the things he used to do with me when he finished his homework to entertain ourselves. We used to play together with my collection of stuffed animals. He made up the Animal Galaxy, an entire galaxy inhabited by only animals. They had tons of weird, science-fictiony gadgets like The Royal Chair, a chair that could play movies and serve food. He drew awesome spaceships and designed all the spaceships in the Animal Galaxy. I remember how he could turn anything I owned into a machine. He turned my toy golf club into a ray gun and my gel pen case into a keyboard. I remember we used to pretend that my bunk bed was a spaceship. Elliot played the captain, I played the first officer, and our toy bunnies played the pilot and the other officers. Once, Elliot and I pretended that our ship crashed into an abandoned spaceship and our ship became stuck to it. “Board the abandoned ship and self-destruct it,” commanded Elliot. “But, captain,” I objected, “if we blow up the other ship and the ships are connected, won’t we blow up in the process?” Captain Elliot saw my reasoning and canceled the order. We’d have sleepovers on my bunk bed and we’d stay up almost all night talking. One night there was a thunderstorm. A thunderclap shook the house and rattled the radiator. Both of us woke up, extremely scared. “When I count to three, we call for Mom,” Elliot said quietly. “1, 2, 3… MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!” That made us feel better, but we still ran to our parents’ bedroom. I remember one night, before Christmas, we tried to stay up till midnight. We tried sneaking downstairs to get playing cards, with our bathrobes draped over us like invisibility cloaks from Harry Potter. We said Merry Christmas to each other at midnight, then talked a bit. Five minutes after midnight, our parents came in and said Merry Christmas to us. We reminded them that they were a bit late. We laughed. Nowadays, Elliot doesn’t play with me as much, one reason being that we both have lots of homework, the other being that we’ve both grown up now. I’m eleven years old, in my first year of middle school. Elliot is fifteen years old, in his freshman year at high school. Usually, he’s at the computer, chatting on Facebook, playing computer games, maybe doing his homework. He always uses the iMac, which means I usually have to type up reports on our old, slow, Microsoft computer. Most weekdays, after school, he stays at the high school to talk with friends until around six-thirty pm. Also, during dinner, he usually gets a plate, fills it up with a good amount of food, then takes it to the computer either to talk to friends on Facebook or watch Bleach, a Japanese anime. When I’m around him, I feel scared, scared that he’ll lash out at me and yell. When I look at old pictures of him when he was younger, I’m reminded of the carefree, happy, playful kid he once was. Mom says he’s going through a stage. She says that we have to live with it, to get through it. However, I know that deep inside of him, he is still happy and playful, like before. It may seem like he doesn’t care about me anymore, but he’s my brother and siblings love each other. Even if he accidentally told a friend’s dad that I was ten and he said he doesn’t keep track of how old I am, I know that, inside, he cares for me and loves me. I feel like I’m a Pokemon trainer and Elliot is one of my Pokemon. Pokemon change their personality when they evolve. I feel that after Elliot “evolved,” his personality changed, too. I know what I should do about Elliot: don’t annoy him, let him rest a bit before I start talking to him, and wait for him to evolve again. When he evolves, hopefully we’ll become a great team. After thinking back, I found a notebook lying next to the computer. I opened it and found a map of the Animal Galaxy. I looked at the various planets: Bonar, Meoin, Cheezta, Squeakerain, Dragonia, Velveteen… I turned the page and found various drawings of spaceships, like a Bomber, Royal Transport, O-wings, E-wings… So many memories and only one memoir to write… Which one should I write about? I thought. I had an idea, why not write about every one I can remember? With that, I sat down and began to type. Natalie Han, 11Lexington Massachusetts Byron Otis, 13Keller, Texas
Family
The Water Gun Fight
There he was, looking the other way! “Splat!” A blast of cold water slapped my bare arm. Gasping, I quickly whirled around to catch the source of the attack. I faced a familiar face with dark brown eyes, dark uncombed hair that stuck out in every direction, and a big, playful smile. It couldn’t be anyone but my older brother, Paul. “Fight, or prepare to die!” he yelled, trying to make his voice sound raspy and evil. I giggled at the fake pirate voice he made, knowing that this threat was coming all along. The clues were simple, it was a hot, humid day and my brother and I were very bored. It was too hot to be outside, too hot to be inside, too hot to be anywhere. Our parents had gone to attend a school PTA meeting and had left me in the supervision of my older brother. Was this a good decision? I wasn’t so sure. “Hmm,” I said, deciding which risk I should take, “dying” or fighting. “Fight!” I decided, grinning. “Good choice,” my brother said in the raspy pirate voice. He threw me a water gun filled with water. “I’ll stay in the back and you go to the front,” he declared. I nodded and ran as fast as I could to the front of the house. “Ready?” I heard my brother call. “Yeah!” I answered. The fight began! After a few seconds of waiting behind a tall pine tree, I crept up to the side of the house, my water gun up, ready to fire. Cautiously, I took a quick glance of the front of the house, searching for my brother. There he was, looking the other way! A perfect chance, I thought to myself. I silently tiptoed towards my brother to get a more accurate shot and then started spurting water at his back. He yelled in shock and, as quick as lightning, he spun around like a top and then started pumping water at me like a maniac. There was water everywhere! Then, I was out of water. “Hey! Wait!” I yelled, trying to avoid water gushing into my mouth. My brother stopped. He was grinning so wide that all I could see was a row of big, white teeth, like a shark that’s just about to eat you whole. His eyes glittered with delight like stars in the night sky. His wet, dark brown hair was plastered down to his head, which made it look like he had a hat on. “I’m out of water!” I exclaimed. “So am I,” my brother replied. We walked towards the water hose to refill our guns. That was when I realized I was drenched from head to toe. Although it was a bright sunny day, I was freezing. My wet clothes were stuck to my skin, making me even colder. As my brother refilled his gun, he asked in a concerned tone, “Are you cold? Do you want to go in now?” “Well, it is kind of cold…” I started. Suddenly, he stopped the hose and poured all the water out of the gun. “Let’s go in, your lips are turning blue.” “What?” I exclaimed. “What about our game?” I couldn’t help but sound disappointed. My brother pulled me into the house. He got a big, fuzzy blanket and threw it over me. It draped over my face. “Hey!” I yelled playfully, pulling the blanket back over my head. “Whoops,” he said in a funny clown voice. He got out one of my mom’s finest cups and a tea bag. He filled the cup with hot water and dropped the tea bag in the cup. He said, “Care for some biscuits and truffles?” I giggled and was about to answer when I heard a rattle of keys and the click of the key turning in the keyhole. The door opened and in came our parents. “Hi Paul, hi Isabel,” my mom said. Then she asked, “Why are you all wet?” My brother and I shared a quick glance. “No reason,” we said at the same time. Isabel Won, 11Belle Mead, New Jersey Katherine Wang, 13Tampa, Florida
No Time to Twirl
My mom gets the camera out, ready to get the perfect shot for our summer photo book “Ewww! Its guts and internal juices are dripping down the driveway!” my sister would screech in a squeaky six-year-old voice. “Yeah, and now they’re dripping on you!” I said, while shoving half of the dead corpse in her face. “Girls, stop playing with our dinner. We have to eat those,” my grandmom would say. My sister would be temporarily quiet and listen, while I would get the knife, hammer, and cutting board out. Ready to kill crabs. Every summer we go down to the Jersey Shore. We do a gazillion things there. Go to the boardwalk, the beach, the pool, buy hermit crabs, go out to dinner almost every night, go for bike rides and so much more. Although the restaurants are very good and I wind up eating too much and regretting it, those meals are never the perfect meal. The perfect meal is one that is homemade. It takes all day to make it and it never lets you down. It always tastes the same, smells the same, and looks the same. I know this sounds cheesy, but it is because it really is made with love. My grandmother stands there creating the gravy all day long, adding spices, continually stirring, bringing that wooden spoon to her mouth, tasting it, and adding some more spices, and after about five hours it is perfect. Early in the morning, on a day we’ve been waiting for, my sister, my pop-pop, and I get in his blue Escalade and drive to the fish market. The ride is long, but my sister and I sit in those large leather seats and talk about how good the macaroni is going to be and thinking of good names to give to the crabs before we kill them. After hours of driving, or at least that is what it seems to us, we eagerly hop out of the car. As soon as we walk into the store a strong whiff of sea enters our nostrils; the smell of so much salt stings our noses. My pop-pop walks to the front counter to secure our dinner while my sister and I usually play-fight with the figurines of shrimp and lobsters. After we get bored with that, we can be found pressing our noses against the glass of the lobster tanks. If one squirms just a little, we both scream. Just as quickly we are shushed by the creepy old guy in the back corner cutting off fish heads. Usually by that time my pop-pop has finished up with our “live” purchase. The hard-shell crabs are in a gigantic brown paper bag that wiggles every ten seconds and has wet splotches of what we think is pee. The ride home is longer. Olivia and I sneakily turn up the AC and point the fans at each other and turn the seat warmers on and off. These games cause lots of laughter, which often gets us yelled at because Pop-Pop isn’t fond of giddiness. The need to be silent causes even more laughter. But we would be startled to silence when the bag in the back rustled. This past year, when we got home, my grandmom and my mom were waiting on the driveway with a large knife, tongs, hammer, cutting board, and a huge pot. We immediately got into our positions; Olivia and I would grab a hammer, and my grandmom would get a crab out of the moving bag, sometimes bringing out several as they hold onto each other for dear life or like monkeys in a barrel. My mom gets the camera out, ready to get the perfect shot for our summer photo book. My sister and I decided to name the first crab Alvin; we always name the crabs in alphabetic order. We felt bad for the Y and Z, since we only ordered 24 crabs, leaving two crabs to share four letters. My grandmom would carefully line up the knife on the crab, right between the eyes; he knew his destiny and attempted freedom to no avail. I usually had the honor of going first, since my sister was too chicken. I smacked that hammer down like a fly swatter on an annoying mosquito, splitting the crab in half in one swoop. My grandmom would pick up the crab halves and toss them into the pot. Although they were dead they still managed to move a tiny bit, which fascinated me. We continued on killing them: Betty, Carlos, Daniel, Emma. Ryan would go run behind our mom and hug her legs while my grandmom would grab the crabs and the execution continued. Swoosh. Right down the middle. It’s quick and painless. After some time, I was brave enough to pick up a crab half. I remember being so proud. Showing it off like a badge of honor. Dancing with it and shoving it in my sister’s face, saying, “Hey, Olivia… here comes the crab!” and “Ahhh, there’s a crab on your head!” By that time, I was almost on the ground laughing, and she was crying, which only made me want to tease her more. But, as usual, I would get scolded and drop the crab back in pot. After killing our last crab, Yolanda-Zack, my grandmom would walk straight to the laundry room sink to begin the cleaning. The cleaning takes a long time; we disappear, leaving my grandmom to do the dirty work. She has to peel the shells off and get the yuck out. Then, in a big pot she puts crushed tomatoes, oil, salt, pepper, garlic, onions, basil, oregano, a little sugar, and of course, the crabs. Being a good Italian cook, she doesn’t use exact measurements. She lets that cook, stirring when necessary. After a while, the smell in that kitchen is indescribable. She says that’s all she does but I don’t believe her, there is some culinary magic going
