The airport is packed. It’s so hot! I wish they had air-conditioning inside the Managua airport. Managua is the capital of Nicaragua. It’s nighttime. I can’t believe it can be this hot at night. I don’t want to know how hot it gets to be during the day. When the porter is taking our bags to the exit of the airport, I notice a stand with all these cool toys. I try to convince my dad to buy me a toy, but he refuses. Instead he gives me forty dollars, telling me that I have to spend it on something special. We walk out of the airport, when suddenly all these children come rushing to me and my family. We’re now surrounded by kids my age and younger trying to sell me gum. My mom tells me to follow her. I get into the car sadly. The image of all these kids trying to sell me items is stuck in my head. I try to picture me and my friends selling gum to people. I can’t. Our hotel is nice. The people there are friendly. Our room is tiny, but we have a big window. My mom says Nicaragua has changed since she had been here last. I ask her how Nicaragua was when she was growing up. She tells me it’s too late and that I have to go to bed. But I can’t. How can I go to bed with the images of those kids? How can I? Just when I think I’ll never fall asleep, I do. On the way out I reach into my pocket to get my money. I give it to the boy selling flowers The next day my mom wants to go to a restaurant she read about for lunch. My dad has to go to the lobby to rent a car. We meet him down in the lobby for breakfast, and then we go to the mall across the street to get some clothes for the hot weather. The mall has all the stores that are in the U.S. but it’s run down. I see a horsey ride that is missing its nose. The area around it is all messed up and dirty. It makes me want to leave. Later we get into the car that we rented and head for the restaurant that my mom wanted to go to. I can see the soldiers patrolling the streets. We’re at a red light, when all of a sudden all these kids come rushing to our car. They offer to wash our windshields and try to sell us gum. The kids look sad. Some of the bigger boys sniff glue. I wonder why? My mom tells me that sniffing glue kills hunger and brain cells. I can’t believe that these kids have to work. It’s not fair. Kids like me have play dates, go to the movies and stuff like that, while these kids just try to get food on their tables. Why don’t I have to go and sell gum? I want to give these kids all they ever wanted, but I can’t. It makes me feel powerless. I want to give them my whole piggy bank. We’re in the restaurant, but I can’t eat. The restaurant is adobe red. The food is good. People are eating gallo pinto. A guitar player comes to play us some mariachi music. Everyone is laughing and having fun, but I’m just playing with my food. My mom looks concerned. She knows what’s bothering me. My mom says that I can’t fix everything. I don’t want to believe her. Through the whole meal, I notice a kid outside of the restaurant trying to sell flowers. He’s short, about five years old, and has a hopeful and stubborn look on his face. No one is buying the flowers. Then I remember the forty dollars that my dad gave me so I could buy a souvenir. My dad pays the check. After the waitress returns with my dad’s credit card, we thank her. On the way out I reach into my pocket to get my money I give it to the boy selling flowers. He offers me a flower, but I refuse. He joyfully walks away I smile, wishing I could do this to whomever I want. I tell my mom that I can fix some things. Andreas Freund, 11San Francisco, California Zachary MeyerShelby Township, Michigan
November/December 2006
Tested Dreams
A nine-year-old girl sat on her parents’ bedroom window seat looking out at the stormy, gray sky It’s going to rain, thought the girl. It’s going to mimic how I feel. Slowly the girl lowered her tear-filled brown eyes to her right knee. It felt a little better now, but just a day earlier she had to be carried off her beloved tennis court because her knee had been so inflamed it could not support her weight. Blinking back her tears, the girl looked back out the window. It was now pouring so hard that not even the other townhomes across the street could be seen. The girl smiled briefly. Let it rain, she thought as her mind wandered back to yesterday’s tennis match. It had been a tough match. No doubt about that. She was playing a boy almost twice her age when a searing pain went through her right knee. Thinking she had just stepped wrong, she shrugged it off like any other self-respecting tennis player would. That was a mistake. A mistake she would have to live with for a long time. As the match continued, the pain in her right knee worsened, but she fought through it. In her mind, there was no greater shame than saying the words “I quit.” The girl looked down at her knee and wiped a stray tear off her face. That had been her second mistake. She had not believed in the saying, “Discretion is the better part of valor,” and for that she had paid. Resuming her gaze at the pouring rain outside the window, she remembered the last point in the match. The point when she knew she had to stop. She remembered swallowing hard as she readied herself for the return of service while trying to block out the throbbing pain from her knee. She just had to finish the game. She just had to play one more point. It’s going to rain, thought the girl It’s going to mimic how I feel “No, I didn’t,” whispered the girl, “I didn’t have too. I could have just walked away and retired from the match then and there.” The girl sighed as she repositioned herself on the ledge. “But I couldn’t,” as she paused, a tiny flicker of flame briefly appeared in her brown eyes, “I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give up.” Still maintaining her gaze out the window, she recalled the memories of that one last point. How she had painfully dragged her leg to return the tennis balls. How she eventually had made an error ending the point and the game. But even with all that, the girl thought the toughest thing in the match was to say the words “I retire” to her opponent. She had never quit before, and she hoped she would never have to again. Those two little words were painful to say, almost more painful than her knee, and they had left a bad taste in her mouth. The girl looked away from the window to look at her injured knee. Oh, how could you do this to me! she thought venomously. Who knows when I can play again because of you! The girl swallowed hard, fighting to hold back her tears. She loved tennis and who knew how long this injury, this first injury, would keep her away from her beloved sport. Then, for the first time, it hit her. Injuries are a part of sports. They are what make you or break you. They define your career. They test your love for the game and the will that you have for fulfilling your dreams. And, in some cases, they can even force you to form new loves and new dreams. But this was not truly a bad injury. It was one of those injuries that was to test her. Test her love and devotion to her tennis. And, it was with this new realization that she made another one. If she truly loved tennis, if she truly wanted to play again, she would not be sitting up on this ledge moping, but downstairs icing her knee and preparing for her eventual return to the tennis court. “I will come back,” began the girl strongly. “No matter what’s wrong with my knee, I won’t let it stop me.” The girl then raised her head to once again look out the window. The pouring rain had stopped, and amongst what remained of the ugly, gray clouds, a beautiful rainbow was forming in the sky. The girl smiled at this, for now the sky was mimicking her new feelings; feelings not of despair or of self-pity but of strength and determination to return, no matter what, to her precious sport. “And when I come back,” continued the girl softly, an indescribable glow in her brown eyes, “I’m going to be better than ever.” And with that the girl got up off the ledge and headed downstairs to get ice for her knee, for now instead of moping she would work as hard as she could to really come back better than ever. Dominique Maria Spera,13Altamonte Springs, Florida Leyla Akay,10Sewickley, Pennsylvania
The Rhyming Season
The Rhyming Season, by Edward Averett; Clarion Books: New York, zoo5; $16 When Brenda Jacobsen’s brother Benny died, basketball was never the same again. It wasn’t just basketball that changed. Her mom and dad didn’t get along well and then the lumber mill shut down. The whole town just seemed upside-down, especially when Brenda’s high school basketball coach left for a better job at a college. I can relate to Brenda on how sad, upset, and even a little mad she felt. I used to be in gymnastics and one day my coach just didn’t come to practice. Of course there were other coaches there, but I felt like he had just deserted me. He hadn’t told anyone about his leaving. It was strange, like he all of a sudden didn’t care about gymnastics. I haven’t heard from him since he left. Brenda’s coach didn’t leave without telling all the girls goodbye, but Brenda was still pretty upset. The dreams of all the girls on the basketball team, of making it to state and winning first place, seemed to be dashed after Mrs. Cochran, their previous coach, left. Especially when they get their English teacher as a coach. With her coach calling her Emily Dickinson, Brenda begins to learn a new way of playing basketball. This book showed me how new ways and ideas that you don’t agree with aren’t always bad. Even though you may think they are at first, try them out and you may be surprised at the results. I take piano lessons and sometimes I don’t want to try new things, I’d rather just stick with how I was previously doing it. I think that was probably how Brenda felt. The new way of playing basketball that Brenda learned is saying poetry at the foul line. “Poetry at the foul line?!” I agreed with Brenda and her teammates, thinking that was ridiculous. But, as I read on, I began to understand, just as Brenda began to understand. The poetry seemed to make all the team’s winning dreams come true and shots flow through their bodies. It almost seemed like magic poetry; it worked wonders. Before reading this book, poetry never meant something to me, it was just verses about a particular subject. This book definitely gave me a new perspective. It seemed to say that poetry could guide you places. It showed me what poetry really is: someone’s feelings written down to help other people understand the thing that he or she is writing about. Brenda, now called Emily Dickinson by her coach, is taught the same thing I was. She also learns how her life is like Ms. Dickinson’s and how she can learn to change it. One point in the book that I thought should have been better was the ending. It seemed like author, Edward Averett, should have gone on with the story, like he cut it off at a sudden point. Besides that, this book is very well written and even if, like me, you don’t really enjoy basketball, you will still enjoy this book. Alexis Colleen Hosticka,12West Chicago, Illinois
