Third place in the Fall 2019 Personal Narrative Contest with the Society of Young Inklings. A summer in rural China teaches the narrator not to take her life for granted This summer, I was in the Liangshan mountains in rural Sichuan, China, for camp. At first, it seemed like an ordinary place, but those ten days taught me what gratitude is. Liangshan is a historically poor county. Isolated by mountains, it was the last place in China to banish slavery. High illiteracy rates and AIDS have plagued it for years, keeping its inhabitants in a long cycle of poverty. Most of its population are of Yi descent, a minority ethnic group in China. They earn meager wages as farmers, maids, or janitors. My camp, BLOOM, consisted of more than 100 kids. It was founded by a charity organization in an effort to offer more educational opportunities to kids in the mountains. Half of the campers are from big cities like New York, Toronto, and Shanghai. The other half are from Liangshan. We were paired up, and the kids from cities tutor the local kids in English for two hours a day. As city kids, we learned about Yi culture, took guitar classes, arts and crafts, softball lessons, and more. Most of the money we paid for the camp went to nearby schools, and the teachers and counselors were all volunteers. When I first arrived at the high school where the camp was located, I was instantly aware of the cracked tile floors, the dirty windows, and the creaky, flimsy doors. My roommates quickly helped me with my heavy suitcase, set up my sleeping linens, and showed me how to use a mosquito net. The dorms were bright, but the floors were always muddy, no matter how many times we tried mopping them. We were to sleep on wooden planks and shower with ice-cold water in the public bathhouse. Each small room housed seven or eight people. It was uncomfortable, but I was resolved not to complain about any of it. If the Liangshan kids had to live like this all year, I had no excuse for whining. Over the next few days, my roommates and I quickly developed a collegial closeness that I’ve seldom experienced before. We shared inside jokes, told ghost stories, and talked late into the night every day. I felt like I belonged, even though they sometimes said things that I didn’t understand. Sometimes I couldn’t express myself in Chinese, and they’d all listen as I grasped for the right words, guessing at what I meant. They never seemed annoyed and explained everything with infinite patience. I was shocked to learn that none of my Liangshan friends had seen the ocean or been on a boat or plane. But we complained about homework and getting up early in the morning just like I did with my friends in New York. The kids there were just like me. It was so easy to connect with each other, despite our differences. On the second night, we had a discussion activity. A few campers, chosen at random, sat in the front of the lecture hall and answered a simple question: “What would you do with 100 yuan (about $15)?” Most kids wished for new clothes, books, or food. When it came to Gujin, a girl from Liangshan, she spoke with confidence and pride. “My father works as a janitor. It doesn’t pay very well. He comes home very late at night, always exhausted. I know that every cent is the result of his hard work, and I am lucky to have parents who care for me.” She paused. “If I had 100 yuan, I would give it to my dad to take some pressure off his shoulders and to help pay the bills. Thank you.” Applause erupted from the lecture hall. I knew plenty of people at home who took their parents for granted. To some extent, I realized that I, too, was not fully grateful for all that my parents had done for me. I had never once worried about how I would afford food or lost sleep over the bills. That was all taken care of for me. Many of the kids around me knew what it felt like to go hungry at night, but they didn’t pity themselves. Instead, they seemed even more steadfastly determined and thankful for everything they had. It was rare to find such personalities. A few days later, I asked my friend Anai about her family. She was a quiet girl who had a habit of speaking softly with a warm accent. “I have four siblings. My mom has to tend to the farm all day. If she has extra time, she finds work doing other people’s laundry,” she said. “What about your dad?” I asked. “He passed away two years ago,” she said, suddenly seeming distant. I felt immediate regret for the question, and I bit my lip, not knowing what to say. She just shrugged. “I never really had a connection with him. He didn’t talk to us. When my mom made a little money, she would have to hide it because otherwise my dad would just go out and buy liquor and drink until the money ran out again. I didn’t like him because he never cared about us. But he was still my father.” “I’m so sorry,” I murmured. She shrugged again, and we sat in silence. On the sixth day, all the big-city kids went on a trip to a Yi village in the heart of the mountains. It was home to a boy named Geizuo. He went to our camp and was a tall, calm volunteer from the high school we were living in. BLOOM had raised enough money to send Geizuo to a private school in Changshu, a city near Shanghai, and was trying to do the same for many other kids in Liangshan. We boarded the bus around noon, expecting a two-hour drive. Four

Second place in the Fall 2019 Personal Narrative Contest with the Society of Young Inklings. A foggy bus ride home invokes a dreamy state of mind The long, yellow school bus is full of noise—laughing, yelling, chatting, gossiping, squealing, groaning, and singing (a bunch of third-graders, all of whom are rather loud and out of tune). Kids shout across the narrow aisle, crowding over iPads and other electronics and noisily chattering away. I quietly stare out the window, watching the crowded roads as the bus zooms by. Cars swarm the busy intersection and large, green route signs hang overhead proclaiming “Boulevard This” or “Lane That” in shiny, white lettering. There is noise outside the bus as well as in—honking, beeping, shouting, car engines, and the occasional urgent wail of an ambulance or cheerful chirp of a bird in a nearby tree. Cars zip by at breakneck speed, flashing white lights in front and reddish-yellow in the back. Nobody on the road is dawdling around or wasting time. Everyone on the busy road seems to have a place to be, a person to be, a thing that must be done. In the distance is the skyline of the city of Philadelphia—bright, massive, crowded with skyscrapers and normal-sized houses alike. Although the intersection is all very interesting, it isn’t what I’m watching. I’ve been on this homeward-bound school bus route precisely 157 times (and counting) every Friday for the past four-and-a-half-ish years. It’s safe to say that I’m familiar enough with this particular intersection. What I’m really staring at through the window is the fog. A thick white blanket of fog hangs over Philadelphia and seemingly everywhere around it, stretching out as far as the eye can see. There isn’t a trace of blue in the sky, and judging from the gloomy whiteness, it almost seems like there never was. The fog is so moist that the bus’s windows, one for every seat, have misted over. It’s so thick that it hangs in the air damply, temporarily shielding Philadelphia’s citizens and tourists from any view of the outside world. But it doesn’t just hang in the air either. It is the air, and it is the sky, and it is stretched out for miles and miles of white nothingness. A little bit of fog once in a while is natural, but this fog has beaten the standards. Fog like this? In San Francisco, maybe. In Philadelphia? Absolutely not. If only everyone knew that they were so beautiful and twirling and alive. The bus jerks to a halt in front of the first stop, scaring the bejeezus out of me. That just goes to show what happens when I get lost in thought. About a third of the bus’s contents file out to greet parents. I remain sitting in my seat, staring outthe window after a quick recollection. My bus stop isn’t yet, though I’m grateful for 45 percent less noise than before. My stop is one of the last, and I probably won’t arrive there for another 40 minutes. I stare out the window again, into the hazy fog, just as the school bus veers off. I see you, the fog seems to say. I gaze back intently. I undo and redo my knotted, brown ponytail and sigh. I undo it, redo it again, undo it, redo it again. Sometimes I seem to be flowing with nervous energy, and the only thing I can do about it is keep my hands busy. For that reason, I make sure to have a hair tie with me at all times. My eyes wander back to the window and my brain drifts back to my day, reflecting on everything that happened. Today we had a field trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which was pretty much our whole school day. We went because of what our class is studying in social studies, which is the Golden Age of Islam. The museum had an interesting display of Islamic art, which included mosaic wall tile patterns and lots of beautiful carpets. The mosaics spoke to me the most, though. They were beautiful glimmering turquoise, full of spiraling shapes and patterns. Now, staring at the bland whiteness stretching through the sky, I was longing for the splash of gorgeous colors and shapes. After our class got back to school from the museum, our teacher pointed out all the different features that appeared in Islamic art. There were patterns, shapes, and symmetry, blossoming floral designs, tiny figures of people and animals, and once in a while, flowing Arabic calligraphy. One thing my teacher told us about really stood ought to me, though. She used two words to describe the spiraling lines that seemed to weave in and out through everything else, two words that sang to me like graceful angels— swirling arabesques. Swirling arabesques. Those words reminded me of dancing ballerinas, twirling with flouncy full skirts. Swirling arabesques. They reminded me of the rising of the sun in the morning, warm on my face the second before I opened my eyes. Swirling arabesques. They reminded me of crowds among crowds of exuberant people, cheering and supporting each other and staying strong for something they believed in. Swirling arabesques reminded me of a phoenix emerging anew from the ashes, soon to regrow its vibrant plumage and begin life again. My writing brain had started to whir the second I had heard those words. They were so beautiful, so meant to be, but I didn’t think I would ever write something that dramatic. Still, they tasted good in my mouth. I could feel them breathing, every bit as alive as I was. I think. If only everyone knew that they were so beautiful and twirling and alive. I stare once again at the endless white sky and sigh, but a content sigh. Despite the sort of miserable blandness of the white heavens, the sky has almost done me a favor. The sad, dreary fog forced me to think about

Winner of the Fall 2019 Personal Narrative Contest with the Society of Young Inklings. A new friendship forms after a harrowing shared experience “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” Clap, clap! “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” Clap, clap! We were dancing on the mat in the kindergarten classroom. Music was blasting from our teacher’s magical silver box, which was sitting in the corner on a little plastic chair. Our teacher, Ms. Winnie, stood facing us while we danced, swaying to the music and clapping her hands along with us. Clap, clap! I loved dancing time. Other than playtime, it was my favorite time of day. “If you’re happy and you know it, stomp your feet!” Stomp, stomp! I turned around to see how my friends were getting along. Ella, instead of stomping her feet, was hopping on one, her waist-length, jet-black hair flapping around her shoulders. Ava, the resident drama queen and aspiring secret agent, spun around and twirled, her light-brown pigtails flopping behind her. We had all pretty much forgotten what movement we were supposed to be making at this point, and we probably didn’t care. I watched as a familiar figure with curly, dirty-blonde hair came stomping over to us. It was Chloe. She was the oldest kid in the class (she had turned six in November), as well as the first to lose a baby tooth. All of this gave Chloe status in the classroom, and she was in charge. It just seemed to make sense that way. If Chloe told us to do something or to refrain from doing something, we would do what she said; and if she made a decision for us, then we would accept it. I didn’t particularly like Chloe. But I knew as well as anyone else that she was our leader. And the leader got to choose who got to use the heart stencil when we were in the art center. People were always scrambling over one another to get to that stencil. Nearly every time, she got to it first, but she never kept it for herself. Each time, she gave it to a different person, and if you weren’t chosen, you weren’t allowed to complain because “you get what you get and you don’t get upset,” even if you were. “If you’re happy and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you’re happy and you know it, shout—” I raised my hand suddenly. “Ms. Winnie?” “Yes, Kate?” our teacher replied. She leaned down slightly in order to meet my gaze. “I have to go to the bathroom.” “All right,” said Ms. Winnie. She scanned the group of my still-dancing classmates shouting, “Hooray!” whenever the song told them to do so. She stood there for what seemed to me like a very long time, her gaze flicking over each of her students, considering them individually, for the sole purpose of selecting them to be my bathroom buddy. It was one of the classroom rules that anyone who needed to use the restroom would have to cross the hall with a bathroom buddy. It would have to be another girl, of course. If not one of my two friends, then maybe one of the louder, more eccentric girls like Olivia, who was obsessed with horses, or Jeanne, who wanted to be an astronaut and was very firm in her belief that a zillion was the biggest number. I wouldn’t really mind being with any of the girls in the class, as long as it wasn’t someone who had virtually no respect for me, someone whose name was . . . “Chloe,” said Ms. Winnie. “Can you go to the bathroom with Kate?” Chloe stopped dancing. “Okay,” she said, staring directly at the teacher without even stopping to glance at me. She didn’t look me in the eye as she crossed the carpet to where I was standing and slipped her hand into mine. Ms. Winnie, seemingly glad that neither of us had expressed any open hostility, only said one more thing to us: “Go to the bathroom and come right back.” “We will,” said Chloe, before I could respond. As we made our way across the kindergarten classroom, I made a note of how awkward it was to hold Chloe’s hand. There was no comfort in it; she held it loosely, barely grasping my hand in hers, and walked just a tiny bit ahead of me so it felt like she was pulling me along. She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her. Neither of us said a word as we opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, letting the music fade away as the door swung slowly closed, falling back into position with a click. A few minutes later, I was washing my hands, pretending not to be listening to a conversation between two fifth-grade girls. Both seemed indescribably tall. One of them was blonde, standing with her back to the pink tiles on the wall, wedged into the corner of the bathroom. The other was shorter, with darker skin and curly hair and eyelashes. They were discussing some other girl in their class whose friendship they were deciding whether or not to prematurely end. I wondered how their teacher had ever allowed them to be bathroom buddies—they certainly weren’t coming right back. It was all I could do not to cry. I wanted Chloe to see that I wasn’t a baby. I thought about the way they had looked at me as I dried my hands with a brown paper towel. It was the way I felt when older kids ignored me on the playground or when Chloe started a conversation at the snack table about how many teeth we had lost and left me out completely. I remembered something Ava had told me when we were sitting on the swing set on a lazy Friday when neither of