Jaslyn Kwan, 12 (Palo Alto, CA) The Sky’s the Limit Jaslyn Kwan, 12 Goodbye San Francisco, hello Tampa! Ever since COVID-19 started, I had been stuck at home along with everyone else. Being able to finally travel to places other than the local grocery store gave me a feeling of freedom. I was heading off to compete in the United States (US) Finals for the prestigious ballet competition, Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP). Excited, I made a long packing list as soon as I got the invitation and started gathering items daily – casual tops and leggings, toothbrush, hair accessories, shoes, makeup, a dress for the award ceremony, etc. Not until the day of departure did I realize that I still hadn’t packed everything! I ended up rushing to finish ten minutes before we left for the airport. I was throwing everything into my bright yellow suitcase, triple-checking my long checklist, wondering why I didn’t do this earlier, and before we knew it, we were off. When we boarded onto the plane, it dawned on me how I would be staring at the back of a seat during the whole flight, unable to move left or right, the whole time getting squished. Gazing at my phone for what seemed like hours, bored out of my mind, I came to wonder why time crawled so slowly. After a few dreadful hours, I finally got comfortable in my seat. Looking out the window, the sky was filled with fluffy clouds – they looked as if they were meant to be danced on. The golden sun was about to set, colorful brush strokes painted across the sky – at last, everything was perfect. I felt so refreshed when I stood up for the first time in 5 hours. Thrilled to see my friends, I jumped into a taxi as fast as I could – hotel, here I come! After meeting up with my friends in the hotel lobby, my mom and I went to the 6th floor. The second we stepped foot into our room, we looked around only to see that the ground was dirty, the room was smaller than expected, and a COCKROACH was on my bed! Having a phobia of bugs, I screamed so loud that I didn’t even hear my mom shushing me. I woke up from my first night only to feel an annoying itch on my thumb. That’s when I saw 3 huge bright red bug bites on the bottom of my thumb! I hated this hotel more than ever and just wanted to get out as fast as possible. Tiptoeing around the dirty floor, I got ready for my dance, and fled the room for a warm-up class. At the end, I came to realize that my mom had already packed up all our belongings and moved to another hotel! When I saw our new room for the first time, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Everything about it was pristine: the furniture was clean as a whistle, the carpet nicely vacuumed, the mattress as white as snow, and no dust anywhere. I felt like the most fortunate girl in the world. The day of competitions and master classes finally arrived. Jaslyn at the YAGP Finals After a light breakfast, focused and determined, I started intensely stretching and conditioning for the upcoming events. In the class, I glanced around and saw so many gifted girls from all around the US in the room. I have to work even harder than these girls to make an impression, I thought. Squeezing my muscles, I did the first plié (bending my knees) as the professional photographer came up to me, attempting to find the right angle for a photo. Looking straight and smiling, I tried my best to hold in my excitement. I was also hoping that the one judge in the room could see me and notice how hard I was working. After a long but exhilarating class, I was pumped to go on stage – the big moment. Backstage, there were several heavy black curtains hung from the ceiling, a little table with a lonely lamp, and a tall slender woman in all black – black shirt, pants, microphone, and clipboard. I figured she was the stage manager. I gave her my number for my dance, and off I went for Open Stage, a time to practice on the real stage. Marking my grande jeté (a split jump), I was surrounded by all these talented girls rehearsing quadruple pirouettes, high arabesques, and such crazy jumps. I couldn’t help but think, “What if I do bad? What if I fall?” I didn’t know what to expect – anything could happen. Even though you may not get the best placement, it only matters that you tried your best, I thought, trying to reassure myself. Jaslyn performing Soon enough, it was time to perform. Dressed in my rhinestone-embellished all white tutu with a cream scarf covering my arms, I laced my pointe shoes and immersed myself into a shadow – the character of my variation, La Bayadere. As I danced, I felt like I was flying on the clouds I saw earlier on the plane. It was like nothing could stop me – not even a little stumble. Gliding down the last diagonal of relevés (rising onto pointe), I was so excited and relieved to hit my last pose. Bowing to the audience’s applause felt like a weight had just been lifted off my shoulders. Then came the most intense part of this experience; it was time to see if I made it into the final round of competitions. I sat on the bed at 10pm into the night, exhausted, staring at my mom’s computer screen, butterflies flying in my stomach. The anticipation was killing me. All sorts of emotions kicked in as the final scores were about to come out. Soon, however, I couldn’t wait any longer and dozed off on my mom’s shoulder. That night, I dreamt about
Personal Narrative
Reflecting on a Fault, a personal narrative by Ismini Vasiloglou, 12
Ismini Vasiloglou, 12 (Atlanta, GA) Reflecting on a Fault Ismini Vasiloglou, 12 It is always so very effortless to start. Ideas jumble around my head in whirlwinds, forming a cacophony of inspiration and infectious excitement. They fill my mind with a buzzing need I cannot ignore. To pick up a pencil is to breathe, to eat. It is an instinctual, primitive impulse, an irresistible temptation which I dare not resist. To pick up a pencil is to live. Yet things are not quite so simple. I paint an image of perfection, harmonious cooperation between pen and mind that does not last. As sentences form in my head, they struggle to ink into existence. My fingers feel weighty as my mind races past my poor, struggling fingers that can only type so fast. It is the tortoise and the hare, but in this story, the hare never sleeps; he only moves faster and faster until he stops and swerves in another direction. Half-finished stories sigh in silence, abandoned for new ideas. They sit lazily in their Untitled documents, waiting for fragments of a lost dream to return to me. They wait to be shaped and molded and typed on a page into a story worthy of the name. Only I am too afraid to steal the reins from the procrastinating beast which has conquered my world. I watch my characters silently sleep in their half-filled pages, weeping at their unresolved conflicts. I watch my settings sink into despair as they are overrun with my neglectful weeds. This is my fault. I know. Despite my teachers’ and parents’ beliefs, I do understand; my mind is a realm entirely within my reach. I can, technically, finish a story, but I can’t seem to fight my own laziness. This beast, this nemesis, was spawned from my very soul, and it is almost impossible to defeat oneself. Procrastination is a far more powerful enemy than any superhuman storybook villain. I know, I know, there are no excuses; there are no rightful reasons for my actions. Words have given me a chance at wings, but I have taken them too quickly without helping them to fully form. Now all I have is an extra weight on my shoulders as I fall asleep each night. It is not right to say there is a beast or a tortoise and a hare. There is only me. We all have our own self-imposed struggles and this is mine: an inability to finish, to see through long-term projects. And my failures affect others, too: the princess who has yet to escape her ivory tower, the citizens whose dictator’s cruel regime still reigns unchallenged, the captain lost at sea, doomed to never again set foot on land, and all of the other tales I have deserted so quickly that not a word of them was written, not a paragraph or a single page. However, I have come to a simple, comforting conclusion; my progress will not be instantaneous, for I cannot change overnight. I can, however, start small. I can start by finishing this reflection, just one letter, one word, one sentence at a time. This is me. Imperfect, flawed me. But I can grow. I can change—I am still malleable. I can take these wings words have lent me, mend them from their broken, unfinished state, take flight and soar.
Happiness Comes to America
All names in this story have been changed for privacy. A few years ago my mom and dad, my two older brothers, and I moved from a refugee camp in Tanzania to Chicago. Now I’m eleven years old. My name is Happiness. One Sunday night I sat down on my usual pillow on the couch between Mama’s legs so she could fix my hair. She divided it into skinny braids and then pulled them into an elastic band on top of my head. “OK, I’m done,” she said. (Sometimes she does talk to me in English instead of Kirundi.) I ran to the bathroom and checked in the mirror. I felt sad. Mama has time to do my hair just once a week, so I would be looking like this till the next Saturday or Sunday. I didn’t say anything to Mama. I just put on my pajamas and went to bed, hoping that everything would be OK in the morning. The next day I went to school with all the braids sticking up. I wanted to sit by my friends Daniella and Ruby, but my teacher asked me to sit between Rosa and Miguel instead. While we waited for class to start, we played a game. But then Miguel began making little jokes about my hair. “Your hair looks like an onion,” he said. “Some kind of vegetable. No, it looks like a tomato!” I wanted to cry. But I just stayed quiet. All day I thought about it. During the passing period I told Ruby and Daniella what Miguel had said. “Don’t worry about it,” they told me. “Just forget about it.” But I couldn’t forget. Things got worse. Our friend Akilah came up to us and said, “Happiness! Did you forget that this was Picture Day?” I looked around and realized that my friends were all wearing their favorite clothes. I was just wearing my school uniform. Oh no! Now I felt as if a bunch of worms had started dancing in my stomach. That afternoon, while we were in line for the pictures, another friend, Julia, comforted me. “Nobody cares if you have a bad hairstyle,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.” When I was in front of the camera, I wanted to put my hands up and cover my hair. But the photographer and her helper wouldn’t let me. They told me to smile, so I smiled. Sort of. Luckily, for the rest of that week no one teased me about that hairstyle. And I found two ways to make things better. Number one, I took in what my friends had told me: Don’t worry. Just let it go. Number two, on Saturday I got permission to use the computer at home, and I searched online to find a hairstyle I liked. I asked Mama to fix my hair that way, and she did. Now we do this every weekend. Mama is really very talented with hair. Happiness Neema, 11 Chicago, ILKigoma, Tanzania This story was published in the June 2021 issue of Stone Soup Magazine
