“Cora! Cora, lookit! Lookit me!” “Hey! Hey Cora! Look at me!” I looked up from my paperback. Somehow, Rose had hoisted herself up and into a little red wagon that stood by the fence. The little girl stood there, precarious but triumphant, her small arms stuck out to the sides for balance. I laughed inwardly at the look of mixed surprise and pride on my younger cousin’s sweet face. “Rose, honey, get down from there. Remember what happened last time?” I said, lifting her gently down from the wagon. “Uh huh,” said Rose rather sadly, fingering the small bruise on her forehead, obtained in a similar incident two days earlier. “I just like to be up high.” “I know you do, Rose, but it’s still dangerous. How do you think your mommy would feel if you fell down again?” Rose looked up at me seriously, considering. “Well, first she would be angry at me cause I’m not supposed to climb things. Then she’d yell at you for not taking care of me better. But after a while,” she proclaimed, brightening, “she would say that she was just glad I was safe and give me a Popsicle.” She looked up and grinned. “Can I have a Popsicle right now?” Not for the first time, I marveled at the four-year-old girl’s intellect. She was so observant for her age, sometimes it was frightening. “Not right now. Later, OK?” She nodded, then noticed something. “Cora, you brought your camera. Why,” she wondered aloud, “why did you bring your camera? Were you gonna take pictures?” “I thought I might, yes. Do you want me to take a picture of you, Rose?” The truth was that I had hoped to snap a few photos of my little cousin for my photography class. “Yeah! Yeah!” Scrambling excitedly, Rose ran to the fence. Turning around, she posed, one hand sassily placed on a little hip, the other thrown high, palm up, with the fingers trailing slightly, a movie star smile on her little face. Rose would have been a miniature model, if it weren’t for the knitted red-and-navy-blue sweater hanging around her torso in woolly folds. I resisted the urge to laugh, picked up my digital camera, and clicked. Rose dropped the model stance and dashed over to see the screen. We both laughed at the ridiculously adult pose. “I look funny, don’t I? Like the ladies in Mommy’s mazzageens. Is it later? Can I have a Popsicle now?” Reminding her for the hundredth time that it was mag-a-zines, not mazzageens, I ruffled my little cousin’s hair fondly. “No, it’s not quite later enough yet. Wait a little longer,” I said mildly, and returned to my book. Rose was truly a remarkable kid. For a few minutes, the small novel I held captured my attention. I leaned back in my cushioned lawn chair. Rose had settled comfortably down with a shovel and pail in the patch of dirt designated for her digging. I was sure she wouldn’t move for a while. Then suddenly, the cry came again. “Cora! Cora, lookit! Lookit me!” My head snapped up. Not the wagon again! But it wasn’t the wagon. It was Rose’s tree. Who knows how she did it? But in one way or another, Rose had climbed to a perilous perch again—when I looked up, her little body was wedged in a crook of the apple sapling her parents had planted when Rose was born. This was Rose’s tree, a monument to her life. She loved it fiercely and was never so happy as when she was, as now, nestled in its branches. My first instinct was to jump up and rescue my little cousin, but she looked perfectly safe and happy there in the tree, and I couldn’t resist the obviously perfect photo op. Snatching up my camera, I snapped a quick shot of the scene, then dropped my camera onto a cushion and lightly disentangled Rose from the tree. “Rose, I told you, no more climbing stuff!” I chided, a little more harshly than I intended. I could see my tone have an effect on her, her little shoulders sagging and her normally sparkling eyes downcast. I immediately felt guilty, gathering her up and whispering reassuring words in her little ear. “I’m sorry, Cora,” she said sadly. “I just wanted to see if I could get up by myself.” She brightened slightly. “You took a picture, didn’t you?” “I guess I did,” I said, remembering. Snapping the photo, jumping up and lifting Rose out of the tree were blended in my memory in one streamlined movement. I found it difficult to recall the moment of actually pressing the shutter button. I pulled up the photo on the small screen and looked for a long moment. In the photo, Rose’s knees were hooked over the spot where two of the branches met, her short little legs hooked over each other in a surprisingly ladylike manner. Her chubby left hand was coiled tightly around the nearest bough, and her right stuck out slightly in front, the elbow cupped between knee and branch. Rose’s face was turned straight toward the lens, and her crinkled eyes and half-grin made it seem as though she and I were sharing a secret or private joke—not funny enough to cause real laughter, but full of wit nonetheless. Looking at the surprisingly good picture, I struggled to make sense of my emotions. The picture made me want to laugh, but it strangely seemed to make me slightly sad as well. I knew that it was silly, but I had a sense that the tree, the one object Rose loved most, would one day be cut down. I wondered why this seemed so evident. At that moment, I knew I would save this photo. If future generations asked about it, the most truthful reply would be to say that this was Rose, that the picture summed up her as well as anything could. Because it did.
Family
Wings of Hope
A silent breeze whipped thirteen-year-old Amy’s light hair as she limped onto her porch. She grabbed the walking stick that rested against the side of the house and stood with its help. It made her feel old, but there was no way to get around without it. Ignoring her feelings of protest, she started off on the walk across a path in the woods that she took every morning. Her mother sent her on these missions to look for insects, which she studied. An entire room in their house was filled with dead bugs in glass cases, with the rare exception of a live one being examined. Amy slipped in through a space between two trees. The grass parted on each side to make way for a rough path. She walked down it, pushing debris aside with her stick. This was one of her easier days; sometimes the stick would catch on a root and make her trip. “Hey, Amy!” She turned around to see her little ten-year-old brother, Rick, making his way toward her. Swallowing her annoyance, she nudged aside a bush so he could get to her. Not waiting for her to ask, he continued, “Mom wants you to go a different route this time. She said she saw some rare bug somewhere else.” “Where?” she asked. He only shrugged. “She didn’t tell me.” “Um… OK.” Amy veered away from the path, and Rick trudged off in a different direction. She was about to warn him to be careful, but he had disappeared. He’s always so abrupt, she thought with a sigh. In her moment of panic, something landed on her arm Suddenly the sound of rushing water came to her ears. She halted, tensing. Hadn’t she promised herself never to go this way again? But she had no idea how to return to the path, or anywhere else for that matter. The only way to get back was from the area ahead. Taking a deep breath, she emerged into the less-wooded clearing before her. It all hit her like a tidal wave. The gurgling river. The sharp rocks. The broken string dangling from a tree close by. Her memory of that horrible day came back unbidden. She and Rick had been playing on the rope swing that the tree had once held up. Amy had taken a running start and launched herself in the air, grabbing the rope. It swung precariously for a second before snapping. Wailing in terror, she was flung into the river. Everything was hazy after that, except for the pain. Apparently her leg had hit a sharp rock and severely damaged the bone. In the hospital, she could hardly get up. Even now, almost a year later, she could only walk with this dumb stick. How could she have done something so brainless? Now her life was wrong forever. Amy was jolted out of her thoughts by a piercing scream. “Help!” At first she thought it must be her imagination. Then she saw the small, brown-haired form of her brother thrashing in the river as it carried him downstream. Her blue eyes widened in disbelief. Thoughts raced through her head as fast as the beating of her heart. What happened? How can this be happening? Would he be OK? “Help!” he called again. “Hold onto a rock!” she advised. Rick reached out, taking hold of a large stone. He managed to grab it, but it looked too slippery to support him for long. Amy’s thoughts kept bombarding her. There wasn’t time to get her parents. And none of the branches on the ground were long enough to reach him. In her moment of panic, something landed on her arm. She couldn’t help glancing at it. It was a butterfly with white stripes on its black wings and flashes of blue below them. Shock spread through her. Touching a butterfly could shorten its life. Either it didn’t know that… or it was bravely taking the risk. She should do the same. Amy gently shook the butterfly off and hurried down the shore. Her steps slowed when she reached the water. She flinched from cold and fear as it lapped against her feet, but she continued to go deeper. Before long she was almost up to her knees in water. Inching forward, she approached the stone that her brother was clinging to. “Grab my hand,” she told him. Wordlessly, Rick took it. His grip was surprisingly strong for a ten-year-old. Amy lugged him to the shore, fighting the current that threatened to drag them away. They both collapsed to their knees on land, panting and soaking wet. Amy got her breath back first. “What were you doing?” “I tried to cross the river,” he answered. “I thought I could get to the other side.” “Don’t ever do anything so stupid again,” she said. “I won’t,” promised Rick. She blinked. “I thought you would argue.” “I’m just glad I’m alive, I guess,” he responded. He drew in a chilled breath. “Let’s go home.” Amy stood up beside him. In the distance, she saw the butterfly that had landed on her, flying around a tree. A smile spread across her face as she realized the truth of her brother’s words. I shouldn’t be angry that my life won’t be the same again, she thought. I should be happy that I’m alive. Jenna Lasby, 13Austin, Texas Victoria D’Ascenzo, 11Lincoln University, Pennsylvania
Reject
Sometimes I sat on my bed, seething, and thinking, Why me? Reject. That’s what I was. My parents claimed that eight children in the house was too much for them to handle, and that they couldn’t support them all, so they sent me away to live with my grandparents. That wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, except that Granny and Gramps lived in Maine, thousands of miles away from my original home in Salem, Oregon. I only ever got to see my family at holidays, birthdays, and one month in the summer. And that wasn’t all that bothered me. It’s just, being sent away by your own parents, rejected from your own home, isn’t very comforting. In fact, it made me downright mad, and sad, and homesick. Even though I’ve been living at my grandparents’ house since I was four (I’m eleven now, almost twelve), and I don’t remember much of my other house, it still hurt to think that I was the one picked to be shipped off. I felt like an outcast. Sometimes I sat on my bed, seething, and thinking, Why me? Why couldn’t it have been one of my brothers, Carl the troublemaker maybe? Why did I have to be the one with the unfortunate fate? Whenever I asked my mother this, she just tersely told me, “Because you’re mature enough to deal with it,” and then changed the subject. But I was only four at the time. How could they have known I would be “mature”? Maybe they just chose me because, being the youngest in my family, I was too young to understand and wouldn’t put up a big fuss. I probably just thought I was going to see Granny and Gramps for a visit, and that in a week or two, my parents would come to pick me up and take me home again. Unfortunately, they never did. So now I was living in a little cottage by the sea and had a tiny bedroom in the attic with a little round porthole window, which I could look out of and see the ocean with its rolling lace-trimmed waves, spraying salty sea foam up into the misty air. And the gulls waddling across the beach and soaring in the ever-cloudy sky, squawking in gull language to each other about some fish they had found. I often sat and stared out that window, across the ocean, wishing I were back home with the rest of my family, and feeling lonely. And that’s what I was doing just then, looking glumly out of the porthole and feeling sorry for myself. I turned away from the window and glanced around my room. The ceiling took the shape of the roof, pointed at the top and slanting steeply down, so that I had to bend down or bump my head on one of the thick beams running down from the tip to the floor. This was also a hazard I had to remember when waking up in the morning. Even though my bed was pushed out slightly, I could still sit up in the morning and hurt myself. On the same wall as the porthole, I had an old mahogany desk that Gramps had given me when I first came here, along with a stack of stationery and writing utensils, though I couldn’t even read yet, much less write anything but a crude and barely recognizable version of my name. Now I used the desk all the time, journaling, drawing, and writing stories. That’s another thing: I loved to write. It was a way for me to escape my troubles and write about someone else’s, or create a world all of my own, one where no one was sent away by their family or forced to live feeling regret and longing all their life. It helped me express the way I felt about the world. When I was feeling angry, resentful, sad or confused, I would sit down and write, and it helped somehow. It was like giving away all of my unwanted emotions, like lifting a load of bricks off my shoulders. I emerged from my daydream when I heard my grandmother calling my name. She was yelling something about a phone. Oh, that’s right, it was time for the daily phone call to my home in Oregon. OK, so it wasn’t always daily, more like every other day, but daily phone call sounded better than every-other-daily phone call. I sighed and started down the rickety old staircase. I reached the bottom and briskly walked through the living room and into the kitchen, where Granny was frying scallops on the stove. My grandmother is younger than most grandmothers, only in her mid-sixties. She always said that was lucky because if she had been any older, she might not have agreed to take me in. I didn’t totally think it was so great because if she and Gramps hadn’t been able to house me, I might have stayed at my own home. But then again, my parents probably would’ve found some cousin to take me. Granny is only a few inches taller than me and has gray hair tied back into a loose bun. She has soft features and a very kind smile. Her skin is pale and slightly flabby in some places, but tough like an elephant’s. She is not hunched over at all and always likes to have her fingers moving, so I usually find her knitting, sewing, finger knitting, typing on her laptop, or just drumming her fingers on the kitchen counter. I said hello to her and she smiled at me and said, “Hello, Cincinnati.” I unhooked the phone from its place on the wall and stared somberly at the keypad. I always felt excited when I called, but a bit dejected too. I stared some more, as if willing the phone to disappear in my hands, but I knew it had to be done. I slowly punched the numbers
