Moving-New-Home

After moving from a small town in Canada to a big U.S. city, Gale struggles to adapt Gale was a late sleeper. She had always been. It was just her way of responding to the weekend. But for some reason, she felt as if she wanted to get up now. And what made it odder was that it was the last day of summer vacation. Typically, she would have crammed as much late-sleeping into the day as she could, but no. She was getting up right now. Gale rolled out of bed (getting her blankets tangled around herself in the process) and fell to the floor, letting out an involuntary groan. She sat up and looked around. Her room was clean and tidy as always. On one side of the room there were two windows, both of them a quarter of the way open, and beside her bed was a green crate that served as a bedside table. A few feet away from the foot of the bed, mounted on the wall, was an ugly white wire shelf. On it were all sorts of things, from kindergarten artwork to baseball trophies. Gale turned on her fan. Summers in Houston could be hot. She then pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and yanked her long black hair into a ponytail. Gale thumped down the stairs, clearing the last four in a massive leap and checked the breadbox for sliced bread. It was the only kind she would willingly digest. “Gay-o,” yelled Violet, Gale’s twoyear- old sister, as she charged into the kitchen. She wrapped her arms around Gale’s legs, preventing her from moving. Gale, ignoring her human barnacle, pivoted and grabbed a jar of peanut butter. Early on, she had learned that it was no use asking her sister to stop. Violet would just laugh maniacally like a tiny Disney villain and hold tighter. Siblings were odd that way. Gale layered her peanut butter about an inch thick on her toast. She had a bit of a peanut butter problem. She bit into her toast and instantly found her teeth stuck together. After finishing her toast, she licked the peanut butter off of her fingers to make sure they were clean. Gale pried her sister off her legs and dashed outside to enjoy the warm summer air and flopped down onto the grass. She missed her old home. Gale hated living in Houston. She just wasn’t a city person. They used to live in British Columbia, Canada. “They” being Gale, her mom, and her dad. Violet hadn’t been born yet. Her home had been in a small town by the sea. It rained all through the year and never snowed. But she loved her old home. She remembered the chipped brown paint of the house, the front door with the big silver knocker, and most of all, the big balcony where she used to imagine that she was a wildlife photographer. She had always been more secure with animals than her friends. She was different from them in that. While they all dreamed of being astronauts and police officers when they grew up, all she wanted to do was to be romping through the woods with her friends, the animals. They had lived on the outskirts of town. Their house had been surrounded by pines. Back on the west coast, conifers were everywhere. They were lush green due to all the rain. Green, the color of the docks with all the boats moored to them. Green, the color of the sea. Green, the color of the grass on their lawn after a rainstorm. Green was everything back there. She needed to be walking through the woods, rain pattering on her hood, legs soaked. She remembered her friends, the gray jays. Whenever she went outside, she would bring a couple of nuts in her pocket in case she saw one. Then, she would hold out her hand; they would land on it and start poking around. They would pick up the nut and fly away. Fly away. They would fly away just like she flew away to Houston. She had always preferred sailing. Gale’s family had owned a small canoe. By the time she was eight, she knew all the strokes and could paddle effectively. By the time she was 10, she was allowed to go out on the ocean by herself. She would bring her fishing rod, but always spincast with it. She refused to learn any other technique. Back then she had a routine. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays were for homework. Thursdays were free. Fridays were for baseball practice and Saturdays were the games. But her favorite days of all were Sundays. Fishing days. In the morning, Gale and her family would go to church. Afterward, she would dash outdoors, untie the boat from the dock, and paddle out as far as she could. Then she would start fishing. She could almost smell the salty air, feel the paddle in her hands, see the fish swimming in the murky water. That was her old life. “Gay-o”! yelled the unmistakable voice of Violet. She stopped when she saw the expression on Gale’s face. “Miss home?” asked Violet, wrapping her pudgy arms around her. “Yeah,” said Gale. “Yeah, I do.” Sascha Farmer, 12Northampton, MA Oishee Sinharay, 11Pennington, NJ

A girl needs the courage to face a new home and a new school all the way across the country I only felt like myself when I was listening to stories. It was no surprise, really. Words were my sanctuary. I had never been good at making real friends, but those in books had always welcomed me with open arms. I had lived in the same town my whole life, and the friend I had had since preschool had moved away the previous summer. We hadn’t seen each other since. Books were different. They never moved away. They always stood beside me. My cousin was my only real friend. She was six years older than I was, the kind of person to whom words come as easily as breath. She always told me stories. We used to sit outside on the porch, which wrapped around the back of my house, in the sky-blue hammock that hung between two of the posts. When I was smaller and too young to get into it on my own, my cousin would lift me onto it, nearly tossing me off again when she got on herself, causing the hammock to sway back and forth like a ship on a stormy sea. We sometimes took ice-cream sandwiches outside, or bags of pretzels, or carrot sticks, and we’d munch on them and watch the butterflies and bees dart among the brightly colored flowers of the garden. On windy days, we’d bring a kite and watch the breeze play with the kite tails as it dipped and dived through the air. She used to tell me stories: fantastical tales of other worlds which could only be reached through mirrors, of lands of eternal snow and ice and sun. She would describe the blaze of a sunset over a restless sea and the patterns of the stars seen from the highest tower of a castle perched on the tip of the world. Sometimes, she read to me from books with bright illustrations painted on the covers. But usually, she would tell stories that didn’t come from a book. These were the ones that spun images of fantasy in my mind—of a princess in an azure gown with a bronze-plumed bird perched on her hand, or a forest-green dragon reclining on a vast horde of treasure, or a wizard in starry robes watching a phoenix circle in the sky. There was a land among the clouds where only fairies lived, one story began. An elven girl once floated on a raft down a river of light that ended in the stars, went another. The daughter of the king did not plan on being trapped in the tower for long, began a third. These days were perfect. They were the times I savored, the moments I wished could last forever. But nothing can. It was June. I had turned 12 a few days before. We were moving, my parents said, to the other side of the country. They said I would make new friends, that our new home would be even better than where we lived now. But my cousin was different. I knew no friend could ever replace her. *          *          * We sat in the hammock as we had so many times, with the wind swaying us back and forth and sunlight playing on butterfly wings as they fluttered through the flowers. My cousin told me that she’d be going to college soon. She said she’d write. I knew she would. But no words could change the miles that would stretch between us, a void wider than the sea. She seemed to sense my thoughts, because she said, “Penelope, have I ever told you about the girl who went on a quest to find a feather but found something much more important?” I shook my head. “No? Well, in a far-off land where trees speak in the language of wind, where magic is more natural than earth and sea and sky, there was an elven girl with moon-black hair who was afraid of change, of the shifting future and the uncertainty of what would come next. There was loneliness and fear in that world as much as in this one, and for her, she had a name to lay upon it. For all the elves go on a quest when they turn 13, and she knew hers would change her life forever. “Her 13th birthday dawned on a sunny day, with bluebirds and orioles singing sweetly in the trees. And she learned her quest would be to find the silver feather that the phoenix Avis left when she was reborn from fire on the top of Blue Mountain, whose cliffs reared high above the clouds. “The elven girl embarked on her journey, as tradition decreed. She scaled Blue Mountain by way of a forgotten road. She faced ancient monsters, outwitted cruel thieves, and went long days without food or drink. After the sun had risen and set more times than she could count, she reached the fabled place. She looked high and low, but she found no silver feather, nor any sign that it had ever been. All there was, was a bracelet made of cedar beads, one of which was shaped in the form of a dragon. She took it back with her, but she knew she had failed. “When she returned home, ashamed and uncertain, she was greeted by the sage of her village. The girl told him of her failure, expecting to be rebuked or worse, but the old man simply smiled. “‘Why do you cry, child?’ he asked, and to the elven girl’s dismay, she realized tears were indeed running down her cheeks. She bit her lip and tried to keep her voice from trembling. “‘Because I have failed my family.’ “The sage laughed, a low, husky sound, like the rustle of dry rushes on a riverbank. ‘You have found what you needed most,’ he