“Really? You will teach me how to play?” he asked, not believing Kevin jumped out of bed and pulled at the curtains to open them. He glanced outside and groaned. The sun was not yet over the horizon, but snow was falling very heavily and the wind was whipping the trees back and forth. The snow was so thick he couldn’t even see the houses on the other side of the street. Kevin threw himself back on the bed and tried to console himself. Grabbing his iPod off the nightstand nearby, Kevin checked it for messages. There was one new message. Please no, he prayed silently, and he opened the text. The text was exactly what he didn’t want to read. School canceled and that meant no basketball. Today was the last basketball game and Kevin was looking forward to it and now there had to be a snowstorm. “Drat!” Kevin mumbled to himself. Kevin had been out all season from the first game with a broken wrist, and now with a few days of practice under his belt he was going to play in tonight’s final game of the season. Or he was, until school was canceled. Kevin dragged himself out of bed and slouched down the stairs to the main floor where his mother was busy making breakfast. The pancakes and bacon didn’t improve his mood, even though they were his favorite meal. Kevin just sat in his chair, moodily staring at the wall. His dad thumped down the stairs wearing a suit and a tie and rubbing his head with a grimace on his face. “Hit my head on the low ceiling again,” Kevin’s father replied to his wife’s inquiring look. Mr. Hargrove was six-foot-ten and very muscular. He dropped his tall ungainly figure into a chair and settled himself down to a plateful of pancakes and bacon. He was halfway done with his plate of breakfast when he noticed that Kevin had eaten nothing. Kevin was tall like his father already at six-foot-one in eighth grade. “Canceled?” Mr. Hargrove asked his wife. She nodded and turned back to the griddle silently. Kevin looked up from his plate and asked, “May I be excused? I’m not hungry.” “Not hungry?” his mother asked, pretending to be surprised. “You know I made this especially for you. I want you to at least eat one pancake and one piece of bacon.” Kevin broke off a tiny piece of bacon and a slightly larger piece of pancake, swallowed them quickly, and washed them down with a glass of orange juice. “Now?” he asked. “Fine, whatever,” his mother replied impatiently. “Go.” Kevin pushed his chair back and walked upstairs. As soon as he left, Mrs. Hargrove turned to her husband with a sad look. Mr. Hargrove stood up and took his wife’s hand. “You know how much this means to him, Mary.” She nodded and said, “Yes, I know, especially after what it meant to you, Tim.” Mr. Hargrove nodded. He knew what she was talking about. He had been a star in the NBA, but in his third year he had a career-ending injury during a game, injuring his spine so that he could never play again. Kevin had this dream that he could be a star like his father, only without injuring himself. Kevin was only in eighth grade and was better than any boy his age at basketball, and that is why it bothered him so much to have been injured in the first game. Kevin made himself go downstairs about fifteen minutes later. His parents were talking by the garage door and stopped when they saw him approaching. As he came to say goodbye to his father, his parents came to a silent agreement. “ Kevin,” Mother said slowly, “how about you drive along with your father to his work and use the gym next door? You can spend the entire day there. Here is some money,” Mrs. Hargrove said, handing him ten dollars, “to buy lunch with at the Pizza Hut next door. Will you be OK being there by yourself?” Kevin nodded. He had spent many days in that gym all by himself in the summer when his mother worked and he wasn’t at any of his friends’ houses. “All right then,” his father clapped. “I definitely don’t want to be late for my meeting, so let’s get going.” Kevin grabbed his basketball and hopped in the car with his father. A few minutes later Kevin stretched as he stepped out of the red Corvette his father drove. “See ya, Dad,” Kevin called as he slammed the door and his father pulled away around the corner. Kevin opened the door to the building, showed his pass to the clerk, and walked on to the gym. A fun day in the gym by myself, thought Kevin. He was wrong about one thing. He wouldn’t be alone. As he walked through the open door to the gym it seemed empty, as usual. He ran to barely behind the three-point line, lined up, and, with perfect form, took a shot. Swish! “Yes!” he muttered to himself and ran to get the ball. After three more shots he was startled by someone standing up from under the bleachers on the left. “AHH!” Kevin shouted. “Don’t do that!” he said, startled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” said the boy. The boy’s voice sounded different from any voice Kevin had heard before. “Well, what were you doing under there? Did you drop your phone?” Kevin asked. “No,” the boy replied. “I was just looking for something to do.” “Oh,” Kevin replied. The other boy came and stood a few feet away from Kevin. Kevin had to stop himself from pinching his nose at the smell of the other boy. He smelled like he hadn’t taken a shower in months. Kevin didn’t recognize him from the school he went to. Kevin just tried to keep the conversation going. “Where
November/December 2014
The Children of the King
The Children of the King, by Sonya Hartnett; Candlewick Press: Somerville, Massachusetts, 2014; $16.99 It is too dangerous to stay in London. The threat of bombs falling overhead is constant, and now that France has fallen, Cecily’s parents are getting worried. So they decide to send Cecily and her brother Jeremy (along with their mother) to their Uncle Peregrine’s house until it’s “safe” enough. Although Cecily is perfectly happy to stay with her favorite uncle, Jeremy is frustrated. He feels like he’s not a child anymore at the age of fourteen and should help with the war. He wants to do anything, anything to help, which leads to reckless decisions later on. If you haven’t realized it yet, it’s World War II, and reckless decisions can end you up in situations you don’t want to be in. Especially when you are on the battlefield, and your only decision is to kill—or be killed. This isn’t the first book I have read about World War II, and it certainly won’t be the last. How can I read about such horrible times? How do I stand to listen to those terrifying stories? Because these stories are in my blood. My mom grew up in the Soviet Union. As you can expect, so did her parents, my grandparents. So did my great-grandparents. Yes. My great-grandparents on my mother’s side, two of whom are alive now, lived in the Soviet Union during World War II. To top it off, they were Jewish, and they were each very young then, high-schoolers at most. As you can expect, they each had their very own interesting story that happened during that time. One of my great-grandfathers fled to a safer part of the country, where he finished school and started going to the university when he was only sixteen. My great-grandmothers also fled to different parts of the country, where they could be safe and sound from the Nazis. Meanwhile, my other great-grandfather, who was only eighteen, got automatically signed up to fight in the war. He doesn’t tell anyone what happened during those times, but I can only imagine how horrible it was. I read these stories so I can know what was happening on other sides of the globe during this dreadful period of time. Stories of bombs, murder, and loss, but they are connected to me, and all of us, through our blood. We must know our history. During this time, many children got separated from their parents. May was one of these children. She was sent alone to the countryside, to be taken as part of a new family until it was safe enough for her to go home. She was an evacuee, and if she wasn’t taken by a family, who knows what would have happened to her. So it’s lucky for her that Cecily spots her and decides that she would make a good friend. They take May to their home, and everyone quickly adapts to the new lifestyle. Well, except for Jeremy. He still feels helpless in the war and doesn’t like the feeling. Then one day, Jeremy runs off to London. With no one knowing where he was, when he was coming back, or if he was even safe, the two girls got worried, and not only about him. Would he come back? And who were the two boys hiding in the woods? This was a wonderful book, and the thrill it gave me as I read it was also. I’d recommend it to anyone, anywhere. Nicole Cooper, 11Urbana, Illinois
Baking Cookies
Since the beginning of time itself, my mom, my sister, and I have baked chocolate-chip cookies. They’re not amazing or perfect and definitely not round, but to us they’re as good as paradise. We bake them all the time, on rainy evenings, or mopey afternoons, or cozy Sunday mornings. If you scavenged through our kitchen and found that cookbook, in its rightful place beside the toaster, you would see the recipe forever open to that spot. You would see the splattered batter marks. You could even count the thousand chocolaty fingerprints. Today, we will bake them again, stirring up all our memories in the mixing bowl. We cascade into the kitchen, hollering and whooping and turning on cheerful music. We all dance, and Zoe sings, her sweet melodies rising into the air. We do a lot of things, but mostly, we bake. I dump in teaspoon after teaspoon. Cup after cup. I add vanilla, contemplate, and then add more. We pull out ingredients from cupboards. Flour flies, and batter drips. All the while my dog licks up the mess. Spatter, lick, spatter, lick. It goes on like this for a while until we have successfully put the pan into the oven. We stare in, oohing and aahing at the soon-to-be cookies. Now all there is left to do is wait. And check the timer, and wait. And peer in through the oven glass and wait. And wait. With nimble fingers, my mom pulls our legendary cookies from the oven. They are the yummiest shade of buttery brown. The chips are melted completely, mixed into the soft cookie. Perfect. Only then does my dad come down to admire. Only then does my sister stop texting. Now, it is time for our little feast. I add vanilla, contemplate, and then add more When I was little, and Zoe was little, we would pretend to have tea parties. I would lay out a pink crocheted blanket, on which we’d all sit, as if on a picnic. We’d sip milk from small teacups, and talk in English accents. My sister and I were usually princesses, and my mom, the queen. Now, as time progresses and we are all too old for make-believe, my family sits at the kitchen counter, just our plain old selves. We guzzle cookies, not trying to be proper or princess-like. We talk too. About regular things, about school, about what we’ll cook next. It usually turns out to be those same cookies. About past and future, and right now. Maybe we don’t play pretend anymore, but I’m sure we love these cookies as much as any queen of England ever could. Maybe even more. Ennya Papastoitsis, 11Watertown, Massachusetts Onalee Higgins, 13Galesville, Wisconsin
