Awkward and shy, Ava’s only happiness comes from reading dictionaries and learning new words People are making room for me as I slither by. They are afraid to be “touched” by me. I quietly shuffle past, head down, eyes on the ground. As I enter my English classroom, someone yells, “Watch out!” Students laugh. My teacher, Mr. Gallagher, tries to quiet everyone down. I shrink, my stomach tightening, and hurry to the very back of the room, hunkering down low inside my big, black jacket. Hiding like a baby kangaroo in its mother’s pouch, I begin to feel safer. Slowly, I lug my 40-pound backpack onto my lap and relax when I feel its comforting weight. I know never to make any eye contact with the teacher because then he sometimes calls on me. And I definitely do not want that to happen. So I stare down at my feet for a minute, and then cautiously lift my head enough to look around my desk. “Pop quiz!” my teacher announces enthusiastically. All the other students sigh and moan, but I get pumped up. A test means no talking, and silent rooms with no talking are what I like the most. Then my teacher says, “Don’t worry! This isn’t going to be graded. This is just a pre-assessment for our next unit: Etymology!” I grin from ear to ear in my head, but my facial expression stays the same. It is a word test, and I love words. I love the way they look. I love the way they sound in my mouth. I even love the way they smell and taste. I don’t think anyone else knows that words have an odor and flavor, but I do. To me, each word is unique. I love to pore over dictionaries, spending hours at a time learning where words come from. I can instantly memorize everything that I read or see. Can other people do this as well? From what I have read, it seems that they can’t. I know my parents can’t, but they are unlike me in so many ways; this is just one more way. Slowly, I take out a pencil and wait for the quiz to be passed out. Mr. Gallagher hands me the quiz and smiles kindly at me. I don’t smile back. I just take the test and stare down at it. It really is all on etymology— where words come from. And even more than I love silent rooms, I love word origins. Even under my rough jacket, I notice that many students are glancing at each other’s answer sheets. But I know all the answers. I finish the quiz in five minutes flat. Then I crawl out of my chair and trudge to the front of the class to hand my paper in. When Mr. Gallagher sees me. His eyebrows rise. “Are you sure you’ve finished? Have you checked your work?” I nod. “Okay then.” I turn, slouching back into my chair, waiting for the time to pass. Staring at the clock, I wish the hour hand would move faster. Then I begin to daydream. I think about the clock and about the ancient Sumerians who gave us sexagesimal counting for time, and I begin to wonder about all the different kinds of counting and measuring we do. Our decimal system is Hindu-Arabic and we get inches and pounds from the United Kingdom, which uses the British Imperial System . . . I glance around at the other students. They seem to be having a challenging time with those problems. I am surprised and think that I may have gotten a high score on this quiz. But then, since I am so bored, my mind wanders off again. Suddenly, the bell rings. Everyone quickly passes their quiz in and hurries out the door. This is my last class of the day, so I go to the library and walk straight to the dictionary section. This is my daily schedule. I am so interested in learning new words that I can’t even keep track of my time. My parents let me stay because it keeps me occupied. And besides, they don’t really know what else to do with me. I know that I learn differently from other kids in my school. I just cannot concentrate at all during school except on things that I’m interested in. I don’t really care about school or tests in general because I’m not interested in them. I only do what I like to do. In math class, my mind wanders to thinking about how the words “integer” and “integral” are related. When I am in history class, instead of focusing on the chapter in my textbook about the Civil War, I have a debate in my head about whether or not the word, “Yankee” comes from Cherokee or Dutch. Things that I’m not interested in, I just can’t make myself do, no matter how hard I try. My grades are mostly C’s, but that’s only because the teachers feel bad for me. In most classes, I probably deserve F’s. I have never had friends. I don’t really know how to joke around and make small talk with the people around me. My feelings are all stuck inside, with no one to interact with. When I’ve tried, people just tease me. By now, I have stopped trying. The librarian has always been very kind to me. She understands my love of dictionaries and recommends good ones to me or tells me when a new dictionary has been bought. I feel safe in the library. I get to relax from my hard day with other students bullying me. I get to taste words and smell them. I get to be me. I also love to read other kinds of books, especially nonfiction books. But dictionaries are my first love. Some words I don’t like. For example, “chair.” That word tastes like cabbage to me, and I loathe cabbage. Other words
September 2019
Finding Self
Charcoal Evelyn Yao, 13Cerritos, CA
The Woolly Mammoth
A giant woolly mammoth and a young girl, both outcasts, become fast friends In a small, secluded, quiet place lived a giant woolly mammoth. The mammoth was a huge, brown, fluffy thing. His tusks were big and grand. They were as white as clouds. He looked very brave, but in reality he was a big softie. Though his heart was in in the right place, his mind was in the abyss. The mammoth lived in a petite school, where he was supposed to be raised as the guard animal. The headmaster, Mr. Krump, would try to train him, but it was useless considering he was not a smart beast. The school was an academy for the brilliant and only accepted those of high intellect. The school had no room for arts or creative thinking, just work. Inside the school, there were students who acted, talked, and did everything the same. They were bland. They only worked and never played. Their hearts were shriveled in despair. But, as you would expect, they were smart. Every day when they came out for breaks, they would sit and study. The woolly mammoth would often come close to the children, hoping, wishing someone would want to play or talk with him, but day after day the children would pass him by. The mammoth would ask, “Will you play with me? I am ever so lonely.” The children would always reply, “We have no time for play. We are too old for that. Leave us be!” It would forever be the same, he thought. Nothing would change. * * * Then one day a little girl came along. She was different from the rest. Her brown hair was smooth and shiny, and she wore a smile upon her pale, enlightened face. Her eyes glimmered with the color of the sea and changed depending on her mood. She was different, he could tell. She looked around instead of at her phone or her homework. The other students teased her as she walked toward him. She ignored them, continued on her way, and stopped in front of him. “Hello. How do you do?” she said cheerfully. “Fine, and you?” the mammoth replied. “I’m feeling yellow,” she exclaimed. “Yellow? You can’t feel yellow,” the mammoth said, confused. “Yellow is an adjective, so why can’t I be described by it? Yellow may mean a color to you, but it means an emotion to me,” she said. “And that emotion would be . . . ?” “Happy,” she said, “very happy.” The mammoth was intrigued. He wanted to learn more about these color emotions that he had never sensed before. They chatted for a while about the different shades of colors and what they meant. On a page of the girl’s notebook, they jotted down what each color was to them. Finally, as the clock struck 12:30, it was time to go to class. “We’ll meet tomorrow, yes?” she asked. “For sure,” he replied. As the girl faded out of sight, the mammoth knew that his life meant something. * * * As the girl walked away, on the depressing, wilting grass, she realized that she may not be lonely anymore. As the girl walked into the building, she noticed the headmaster staring at her darkly. Then he said, “You’re late. You weren’t talking to that beast of a mammoth? He’s very dangerous.” “No, sir I was not.” Then she shuffled to class with her head in her books. The headmaster, Mr. Krump, was a stern man with scrappy brown hair and a goatee. He wore very expensive glasses and a tuxedo. He often would stare at the young girl because he believed that, although she was smart, she could be a risk to the rest. * * * For the next few days, the new friends conversed during every break. They talked about the beautiful things they had seen, like the birds that played on the rooftop. The young girl impersonated her teachers and the kids who took their work way too seriously. She tried to make friends with them, but they would tell her they had no time. She would often tell the woolly mammoth jokes. There was one in particular he liked: What smells like rotten eggs and has the hair of an 80-year-old man? Mr. Krump. He would laugh so hard that the ground shook as he stomped his feet. * * * One day, they decided to try meditation because the young girl had had a stressful day. She was being bullied by the other students for hanging out with the mammoth instead of working and studying. Also, a teacher had confiscated her headband and earrings, because of their creativeness. They started to concentrate but the girl got tired and fell asleep on his ginormous foot. When she awoke, everyone was gone. The courtyard was empty and quiet. Then she realized what must have happened. She said sleepily, “I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m going to be late.” As she silently entered the building, she saw no sign of anyone, which meant she could go into class and say she was late because she had been in the bathroom. What she did not know was that Mr. Krump was watching everything from his surveillance cams in his office. He had a grimace upon his face. Mr. Krump knew he had let this go too far. The headmaster had seen the way the girl did not take homework as seriously as the other students, and how she always hung out with that stupid softie of a beast. He needed to stop this at once. The headmaster yelled through the open door to his secretary, “Call in Miss Herbert!” Miss Herbert was known for punishing children—especially creative children. Children who were creative took
