List of 20 news stories.

• Homework Help

  Ramey Harper-Mangels '21
  (As the lights rise, we see a split stage. On one side is Charlie’s room, as well as Charlie. This side of the stage is a bedroom. There is a desk upstage and a bed downstage, perhaps a chest of drawers or a bookshelf. Everything is neat and efficient. There are a modest number of scholastic awards, as well as a keyboard, music stands, and a couple of instruments. Charlie is working at the desk, and finishes with a flourish. Charlie sighs, stands, files the homework, then crashes on the bed exhausted...
  . . .

• no longer suspended in water

  Anonymous
  The steam surrounding me escapes through the open shower door. Stepping out, I am hit by a wall of cold air. My reflection catches me off guard and I shudder. There is a grown up staring back at me. As I reach for my towel, jarring nostalgia takes over. 

  I am six again. It’s bath time, and I watch my mother unplug the drain. The residue of the day, which was once on my skin, swirls into the abyss. I watch as my bath toys reach the bottom of the tub, along with my whole body. I am no longer suspended in water...
  . . .

• The Guardian

  Evan Migdole '22
  I’ve walked this route at least a hundred times, but this Friday afternoon was different. It started at lunch. My stomach felt strange as if a tornado had moved in and I could barely swallow my waffles and chicken nuggets. My friends were laughing about something, but I was so distracted by my own thoughts, that I wasn’t following the conversation. I usually try not to laugh or smile anyway because of my dimples. I’ve never liked them...
  . . .

• The Monster in the Woods

  Anonymous
  I’d waited a year to see the June sun reflect on the lake—the feeling it brought each summer was indescribable. I stared out the back seat window, letting my phone drop to my lap as the unparalleled sense of belonging overshadowed the blue light’s magnetism.

  “Honey,” my dad said in his irritating, sing-songy voice, “remember to write to us when you get the chance. Your sister cried every day last year because she missed you so much.”

  I stared over at Caroline, her innocent little pigtails protruding from her skull. I wanted to pull them...
  . . .

• Everest vs. the Willpower to Survive

  Arin Bhandari '23
  The clock strikes 1 PM on the upper slopes of Mount Everest as my teammates on the Adventure Consultants expedition and I are methodically climbing the Hillary Step by carefully placing our crampons, which are spikes attached to our shoes to improve traction, on the ice while secured to the rope. When I ascend the final few meters, I see that the summit ridge is covered by an unstable snow formation, which is when denser snow is on lighter snow.
  . . .

• House Haunters

  Lauren Sklarz '22
  The entire world was out of order. 

  This had happened before, but it never failed to catch Isabel off guard. For ten months, she had dealt with the mysterious destruction of expensive art and appliances and the god awful stench of smoke that lingered in the back of her throat. The agency had sent in top-level servicemen to watch for squatters, vandals, anything. But they had come up empty. 
  . . .

• How to Teach History

  Eesha Rao '22
  Harvard historian Donald Yacovone said, “white supremacy is a toxin. The older history textbooks were like syringes that injected the toxin of white supremacy into the mind of many generations of Americans.” Regardless of whether it is because of our history textbooks, our history curriculums, or even our history teachers, it is overwhelmingly obvious that we, the American youth, do not receive an adequate education in our history classrooms.
  . . .

• The Silence of Drowning

  Eesha Rao '22
  A personal flotation device is equipment designed to assist us to keep afloat in  water. Despite their primary use being only to help us, many times, we cast them aside saying that they are too restrictive and uncomfortable. We think that we couldn’t possibly need them because we already know how to swim. We believe that there isn’t any way we could drown because we know everything there is to know about staying afloat.
  . . .

• Untitled

  Eli Calderone '22
  He’d had a bad day and just needed something to make him feel better. He never intended to be stuck on a bridge in a city he didn’t recognize, hoping that someone would notice he was there. James barely knew how he got here. All he remembered was storming out of his house holding a duffel bag of clothes with his father shouting after him, getting on the train to god-knows-where, and then being woken up by the conductor, telling him that they had gotten to the last stop.
  . . .

• To Sing

  Prairie Resch '21
  Molly from the apartment above us is playing piano again, even though it’s long past dinnertime. I don’t recognize the song, but it’s a lovely, full sound, with a swelling of low chords that echoes into our apartment and a higher aria of notes that are harder to hear, but are still there if I listen closely.
  . . .

• Let it Smolder and Die out

  Anonymous
  I light the wick of the grey wax with a gas lighter. The intersection of two generations, yet I cannot define what generation is embodied by letter sealing wax, and defining the gas lighter is even more daunting; I envision my parents and the parents of my parents as children, holding the lighter, the flame reflecting a thousand times over in their eyes.
  . . .

• 56

  Emerson Holloway '18
  Do I dare

  Disturb the universe?
  
  A true story
  . . .

• An Impossible Dream

  Sophia Nuterangelo '20
  When you woke up this morning, your eyes opened, slowly.  You desperately wanted to go back to sleep.
  . . .

• Cleansing Piece

  Sasha Starovoitov '18
  You throw out your sheets. Tear them off the bed and bury your face in the soft cotton before dropping them into a black plastic bag and taking it to the curb.
  . . .

• Open Casket

  Naomi Tomlin '19
  In an hour, Owen’s mother will go into a coffin in the ground. He saw her when she had just died, lying in bed. Even though her eyes were closed, he could tell she wasn’t asleep.
  . . .

• The Fingerprints

  Jason Alfandre '18
  I had noticed him before. The boy, about our age, peering out of his third story attic window across the street. His face was pressed up against the pane, his hands flattened, palms open, almost as if he wanted to push the glass out to get a better view.
  . . .

• The Writer

  Noah Slager '19
  The boy sat in the corner of the library clutching his pen. He looked down and confirmed what he already knew: the open page of his pale yellow notebook was blank.
  . . .

• This is Me

  Solomon Aromolaran '17
  I am a medley. A mixture. A hodgepodge. I was born in the city of Abeokuta, Nigeria and I am a citizen of the United States. I would like to say that being born in a different part of the world makes me special, or the fact that I was born in a hospital room with no doctors present means I’m different...But, really, these events are like stories to me. I have no memory of being born, no memory of being sick, and no memory of living in Nigeria.
  . . .

• Woman

  Emma Denaples '19
  Wyoming, 1869

  The grasses are dying, or, maybe, already dead. They jab at Susan’s knees from underneath the blanket, as brittle and keen as straw. 

  And, yet, she kneels.
  . . .

• Ball is Life: a Brief Reflection on Ability and Other Factors Beyond our Control

  Phoebe Cardenas '17
  What people don’t realize when they wish to be a couple inches taller, is that a certain amount of awkwardness is inherent to the territory. The shift occurs sometime around puberty, when you wake up and your limbs are too big for your body. Suddenly, middle school hallways are an obstacle course for adolescents who don’t understand where their arms end.
  . . .