I have one of those faces. The kind everyone finds familiar. Two or three times a week someone will ask me if I didn’t bunk with them at girl scout camp, or if I didn’t attend that poetry workshop last summer, or whether I go to a yoga class at the rec. center.
Continue reading...»Archive for the ‘Young Adult’ Category
Free
| by Kate Larkindale |
At first glimpse, the car is not ominous. Nothing about it suggests that it might change my life, although it is the kind of car you’d notice even if this weren’t a small town where everyone knows everyone else. The chrome gleams and flashes in the afternoon sun. Every head turns to look as it passes slowly down Main, all glossy black paint and white-wall tires. I’m standing outside the post office and can’t see the driver at first with the sunlight bouncing off the windshield, blinding me. As the car cruises by, I catch a glimpse of him through the too-long dark hair that hangs down over my eyes. It’s not much: a worn-leather-jacketed elbow poking through the open window, the impression of a large man, well built and disguising the fact he’s balding by shaving his head. A shrill laugh shatters my thoughts with its familiarity and I let my eyes slide past to him to see my mother in the passenger seat. I turn my gaze back to the driver and find myself staring into a pair of green eyes that perfectly match my own.
Continue reading...»Branded in Gray
| by Dawn Allen |
I’ve learned two things about prison life. First, never let them see you sweat. Cons love victims. Second, never make eye contact because the only thing worse than being seen as a victim is to be seen as an aggressor. Prison life is full of oxymorons, lose-lose situations. Under the circumstances, I’ve been lucky. IRead more…
Hero for Hire
| by Milo James Fowler |
It’s like a new car or a girlfriend. You know how sometimes you really want something, and you want it so bad, you know your life will finally be complete once you get it? Well, that’s how much I’ve always wanted a Samurai sword. Blame it on Akira Kurosawa or Tom Cruise, but I’ve justRead more…
Sacrificial Doves
| by Leah Kohn |
Officially they were called foundlings. We called them freaks. They went to the same school as us, but we hardly ever saw them. They had their own classroom, on the other side of the building, which none of us had ever entered. They did not eat lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of us.Read more…
The Day After Valentine’s
| by Loretta Sylvestre |
Our tiny house had thin walls. Not long ago I used to fall asleep at night to the sound of my mom humming in the kitchen, my dad’s news show mumbling on the TV, and my brother tapping out his email in the bedroom next to mine. Now, thin walls only meant that even thoughRead more…
A Loser at Age Thirteen
| by Annette Pasternak |
I racked my brain for a title for this essay topic, “Who Am I?” I know you are big on titles Mrs. Kelley, so if you don’t like this one I thought of two alternates. So please if you are going to grade me down because of this one, I’ll tell you the others andRead more…
The Good Unicorn
| by Andrea Bodel |
Levani heard the shout of her master and threw herself into the harness. She pulled with her whole mind, her whole being, knowing that she alone could wrestle the giant log to the top of the mountain. When it reached the crest, it would be cut neatly and nailed together into more profitable goods. “GoodRead more…
Bliss
| by Janelle Ross |
My mom is a clown. Yep, red rubber nose, orange wig, funny clothes – the whole nine yards. And if that’s not bad enough, my gran is a motorcycle riding social worker with tattoos from one end of her body to the other. She works at a women’s shelter. Imagine my life.
Footsteps
| by Megan Arkenberg |
Beryl´s footsteps are very heavy. The whole floor shakes as she moves around, and doors rattle in their frames. I often wonder that she doesn´t notice these things, but then again, her eyes are not blind like mine.