I’m lying on my back in my grandfather’s orchard, staring up at the branches above me. It is one of the last days of summer. Already the days are shorter and the nights are cooler. Some kinds of apples are already ripe. Others will be ready to pick soon. I think of my grandmother’s apple pie, and how I used to make it with her. She died last year, before the apple harvest, and I have not had her pie since. I really miss her. I hear bees busily humming about, visiting the late summer flowers. Fall is quickly approaching, and the bees move from flower to flower, collecting pollen to make the sweet honey that they will dream about all winter. They are landing so softly on flowers that it barely makes the flowers dance. The gentle hum of their wings nearly lulls me to sleep. The sky is as blue as my grandfather’s eyes. Above me, big white clouds race across the sky like pieces of cotton blowing in the wind. I look for pictures in the clouds. One looks like a dog chasing after a ball. Another looks like a frog jumping off of a lily pad. School starts in another week, and time seems to have slowed down. I hear the branches moving in the closest tree. I look up and see a squirrel, flicking his bushy tail, his eyes happily laughing at me. I don’t know what he finds so funny. And then I see it, the perfect apple! Big, ripe, and juicy, it hangs far above my head. I scramble up the last few feet, and grab the shiny apple in my hands I scrape my hands on the rough bark of the trunk as I struggle to reach the lowest branch on the tree. I let go of the trunk and leap for the branch, an adrenaline rush temporarily conquering my fear of heights. I catch it in my hands and hang from it, slowly swinging, surprised that I have made it this far without falling. Slowly, painstakingly, I pull myself up onto the branch. Standing on the thickest part of it, closest to the tree, I look up. The apple is still far above me. I continue climbing higher, using the same tactic for every large branch that I meet. The smaller branches get in my way, scratching my face and tangling my long, black hair. I pass many beautiful apples, dripping with dew and warmed by the sun, but none are the perfect apple I am after. I scramble up the last few feet, and grab the shiny apple in my hands. My mouth begins to water. I can almost taste the apple, sweet and yet tart at the same time. Crisp… juicy… with a nice big… hole? A hole?! Now I know what the squirrel was laughing at. Over in the next tree, he chatters again. I throw the apple at him. Of course I miss. His eyes still smiling, he runs away, jumping from tree to tree across the orchard until I lose sight of him. “Sophie!” calls my grandfather. “Is that you?” I scamper down the tree, take his hand, and tell him all about my day as we walk through the orchard. We talk about apples, and squirrels, and Grandma. He tells me that he misses her too. He puts his rough, brown farmer’s hand around my shoulder and pulls me close. “You know, Sophie,” he says, “I spent the morning in the attic, and you’ll never guess what I found. It’s the recipe for Grandma’s apple pie. I used to help her make it sometimes. I can’t do it all alone, but you used to help her too. Maybe between the two of us, we can figure it out. Wanna try?” “But it won’t be the same without Grandma,” I tell him. “That’s true,” he says, “but nothing is the same without Grandma. Still, I don’t think that she would want us to never have another apple pie. What do you say?” I nod yes, and we walk towards home… towards an afternoon in the farmhouse kitchen, making Grandma’s famous apple pie. William Gwaltney, 10Englewood, Colorado
Family
The Old Farmhouse
The farmhouse was small and old. Its ancient yellow paint was peeling from the clapboard walls. Its black roof was worn and was missing some shingles and sagged in the middle, as if an elephant had once slept there. “I know it’s not perfect but it just needs a few homey touches,” my mom said, getting out of the car behind me. “A lot of homey touches,” I said huffily, dropping my bags on the ground. “This is all we can afford to live in right now and I know it’s hard on you and I’m sorry.” We unpacked in silence and when we were finished I sat drinking a cup of juice sulkily at the kitchen table. “Why don’t you go find something to do?” mom said, putting a box of cereal in a cupboard. “Like what?” I said gloomily. “Go exploring.” “Fine,” I said angrily, getting up and heading for the door. “Janie?” “What?” “Don’t forget a sweater.” “Whatever!” I said, grabbing a sweater off a chair and shoving it over my head. Then I strutted out of the house, slamming the screen door behind me. I heaved at the barn doors and they slid open. The first thing I noticed was the smell. The stench of rotting hay and dust filled the air and I sneezed. The barn was also dark. “I know it’s not perfect but it just needs a few homey touches,” my mom said I fished my flashlight out of my pocket and turned it on. That is when I realized how big the barn was. It seemed to stretch a mile back. On one side four stalls clung to the wall and on the far side a ladder led up to a hayloft. I headed to the ladder and examined it closely for loose or missing rungs. Surprisingly, it was almost perfectly intact. I climbed up into the loft. Nothing was there, only a few moldy hay bales. I climbed down the ladder and started to investigate the stalls. They were all the same: same bins, same moldy hay covering the ground. Just as I was leaving the last stall, something shiny caught my eye. It was a doorknob. I tried it and it opened. I cast the beam of my flashlight into the opening and saw stairs leading down into the earth. “Mom, Mom!” I yelled, running back to the house, forgetting about my anger about the move for the moment. Mom came running out and looked relieved to see I was OK. “Come on, I’ve got something to show you!” I called. It was a long walk down the stairs and it was freezing by the time we reached the bottom and I was glad I had brought my sweater. A small room was at the bottom of the stairs and Mom said, “Wow, this is really old. People a long time ago might have lived down here during storms. That is probably what it’s for.” I had remembered my anger and was being quiet again. ” This can be our own secret place,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder and squeezing me close to her. In that moment, I felt my anger evaporate completely and it was replaced by guilt. I realized I had been very selfish and had only been thinking about myself. The move had been as hard for her as it had been for me. Then I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I looked up and smiled at her. Shannon Halpin, 12Bow, Washington Min Joo Yi, 12Bellevue, Washington
The Summer Father Was Away
“Jo-bear, Jo!” a voice called. “Wake up, wake up—it’s just a bad dream.” “Where am I?” I awoke, puzzled, my eyes only half open. A familiar face hovered over me in the morning light, sun-bleached hair strewn across his forehead, and clear glacier-blue eyes. A boy about fifteen—my brother, Nathaniel. “Where are we going?” I questioned with a start. “Crazy with Maisy and Daisy!” Mama said. That was Dad’s favorite phrase—it meant that, as hard as we pushed, we would never pry it out of him. Our father, Matthew, was at war. It felt empty the three of us in the car without him. For a long time I could only hear the forlorn sound of the wind and the rhythm of the tires on the dirt road. “I wonder where Daddy is right now,” I asked. Sadness fell like a heavy blanket; I knew everyone was thinking about Daddy. I closed my eyes and imagined what he was doing, but the pictures were blurry: maybe he was listening to the scratchy sounds of the radio as he tried to stay awake on patrol. Maybe he was cleaning his rifle, rubbing oil on the barrel the way he’d shown me. Maybe he was writing us a letter, his flashlight getting dimmer and dimmer as the batteries faded. The summer cottage father loved so much looked gray and forgotten “We’re here!” my mother said, her voice filled with an enthusiasm I sensed was a little too fake. I was jostled out of my reverie. Rolling down the window I could hear the faint sound of sighing waves. Bunny rabbits, startled by the rough engine cutting through the silence, stopped to stare, then run. The summer cottage father loved so much looked gray and forgotten. The flowers he had planted drooped, no longer able to find the light of day. As we carried our bags through the door the sour scent of mothballs overwhelmed the comforting sea-salt smell of our summer home. “Let’s go straight to the beach,” my mother called. “Come on, it’ll be fun.” Nathaniel and I looked at each other—we both knew she was definitely trying too hard. “The sun’s not even out. It’ll be freezing in that water. I’d rather stay here.” “Fine—then I’ll just go by myself,” my mother said, “and I’ll bring those frozen Baby Ruths you love so much with me.” It wasn’t because of the candy that we gave in; it was for Mom, it was for how hard she was trying. I was pulled in our familiar red beach wagon down Tanglevine Lane next to vines of wild grapes. I was stuck between a mix of happy and sad, torn between two people, loving both equally Mom was chattering away about who knows what until, finally, we arrived. “Well, we’re here,” Nathaniel muttered, uncomfortably “Er—might as well go in the water.” At first my brother and I jumped the waves dutifully, skin white with goosebumps. But, as the waves got bigger, so did Nathaniel’s spirits. “Here comes a humongous one. I challenge you to dive under.” Breathing hard, I closed my eyes and prepared to dive. Suddenly I felt comforting arms lifting me—up, up, up—then throwing me across the waves. Exhilaration! I fell under the churning foam, the voices on the shore muffled. But I could hear my father’s voice above the rumble of the waves, “No matter where I am, no matter what I do, I’ll always hold you tight.” The thrill of it made me laugh out loud, the first time in six months. Even when I realized that it was my brother who’d lifted me up, and not Dad, it still made me happy. Out of the corner of my eye I saw—or maybe I was just imagining it?—Nathaniel’s lips (blue and chattering) curling up into a hint of a smile. “Who wants a frozen Baby Ruth?” my mother called. “Isn’t it wrong to feel so happy?” I blurted out when we plopped ourselves into the hammock we had made summers before. I looked at Nathaniel, his lips embedded in a thick layer of chocolate. I pointed and stifled a giggle. He flashed a quick, embarrassed smile, white teeth with chocolate frosting. “I’ve been waiting to feel like this since Father left—but I didn’t realize I could,” I said. “Jo-bear, get real,” Nathaniel said. “OK, maybe not since he left, but for a long time.” The thrill of it made me laugh out loud, the first time in six months I felt my mother’s fingers tuck my wet hair back behind one ear. “You’re my smart girl, aren’t you?” she said. The steady drumbeat of my heart, still pounding, rang in my ears. The hammock sighed contentedly as we swayed back and forth. “You can’t buy a day like this,” Nathaniel announced. It was a phrase Father used that always made us laugh. Before I knew it, he was pulling me across the beach on a boogie board. “Faster, faster,” I cried. This time, he, too, was cackling gleefully. I remember that summer—way more than the rest: father returned with war stories to tell us (with occasional sound effects from Nathaniel). That summer was the turning point of my life. That was the summer I learned that I could live with sadness and still find a spark of joy. Sariel Hana Friedman, 10Pacific Palisades, California Joanna Stanley, 13Seal Beach, California
