TTTESSERAESSERAESSERA Community School of NaplesCommunity School of NaplesCommunity School of Naples

Spring 2012Spring 2012Spring 2012

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Acknowledgements

Cover Art Jessica Glas

Faculty Advisors

Jennifer Gaye Michael Levine

Student Assistants Annie Rosenblum

Laura Zion

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tes·se·ra (n.) a small block of stone, tile, glass or other material

used in making a mosaic.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Literary Selections “For the Sake of Posterity” 8 Natalie Van Brunt |essay “The Yellow Clapboard House” 16 Carrie Fowle |poem “Wind” 18 Jane Raskauskas | essay “This Isn’t the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida” 20 Conor Gleeson |essay “Our Equals” 23 Madi Hampton |essay “My Grandfather and I” 26 Ryan Egdes | essay “Old Photographs” 29 Zita Prutos |poem “Watson Lake” 31 Annie Rosenblum |essay “Found Poem” 35 Savannah Glasglow | poem

Playing with Fire” 36 Hunter Martin& Caitlin Schwartz |short story

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“Devin’s Polished New Look” 38 Noelle Lindemann |essay “The Golden Rooster” 44 Anthony Vernava |poem “This I Believe” 45 Pierce Gleeson |essay “Eagle” 47 Jimmy Fleming |poem “Revulsion” 48 Piercarlo Biancardi & Chase Kaufmann |short story “Epiphany” 50 Patrick Wilkins |essay Art Selections “Crayons” 15 Allie Diamond |photograph “Me and My Horse” 17 Adrienne Gilhart |painting “Sunset” 19 Adrienne Gilhart |painting “Sailing Symmetry” 30 Savannah Glasglow | photograph

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“Sunglasses in the Grass” 34 Mika Crespo |photograph “Smoke” 37 Savannah Glasglow |photograph “The Path” 46 Gabi Goodrich |photograph “The Wave” 51 Savannah Glasglow |photograph

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For the Sake of Posterity By Natalie Van Brunt

In our home, “cake mix” was a dirty word.

Grocery store frosting was the devil’s elixir, and the concept of cookies from a tube was completely for-eign. Our countertops boasted no coffeemaker nor toaster oven, but rather boasted Kitchen Aid mixers and food processors. Betty Crocker wrote cook-books, not instructions for adding oil to powdered brownies. These rules comprised the world of bak-ers, where “from scratch” had no antonym. During March of my sophomore year, I did a head count of the different varieties of homemade cupcakes in our fridge and freezer. Eleven. Come holiday season, this number would easily increase tenfold.

I had been raised with these traditional, do-mestic principles as the mini sous chef to my mother. On weekends, she would attack her well-thumbed recipe collection and slave over the appli-ances while I sat on the counter and “helped” by gradually eating all the batter off a spoon, eyes wide at the magical transformations that would occur be-fore me. In time, I memorized her repetitive actions and could manage to crack an egg or to measure flour independently. With an arsenal of acquired skills, I began my reign over the kitchen.

Despite my ingrained ability to produce sugar laced bites of heaven, I lacked the patience and artistic eye for pleasing presentation. Though deli-cious, the frosting on my cupcakes always fell flat, and the shapes of my cookies always ran beyond their intended borders. However, this talent for elaborate decoration was found in my friend Allie, a

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girl who knew no difference between a croissant and a Crescent roll. She built houses out of Belgian waf-fles at IHOP and drew elaborate works of art with whipped cream, but had difficulty with her kitchen toaster. As a team, we were sure we could create the perfect pastry chef: one with the gift of creation and the other decoration.

During late nights of homework procrastina-tion and internet grazing, we would send each other pictures of extravagant desserts and delicacies, de-claring that we needed to create them in our lives.

“Operation: Dimple My Thighs. I will not be complete until I have cookie dough stuffed in a cake nestled in pie crust.”

“I think I’d be perfectly content living in a Cinnabon. I need nothing more than gallons of cream cheese frosting. Let’s make this possible now, please.”

After months of these types of exchanges, we stumbled upon a photograph of a six layer cake in which each layer projected a different color of the rainbow. The cake was immaculate in every sense of the word, stacked and layered to the utmost preci-sion. The inside hid under a smooth and delicate white butter cream that concealed the vibrant and striking interior. This served as the ultimate inspira-tion we needed to finally act upon our words, the push to get us going. We finally meshed our talents and made this our mission.

On a July afternoon she came to my house, both of us overly confident in our amateur abilities. Her mom’s birthday was in the coming week, and we figured that supplied a suitable excuse to recreate the object of our dreams. In the kitchen, I had laid

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out the supplies we needed. The counters were coated with over a dozen sticks of butter, multiple containers of dry ingredients, and a myriad of as-sorted food colorings. With frilly aprons strapped onto us like metal armor, we prepared to attack, wielding our whisks as we embarked on our quest.

The exposition of our journey flew by with deceptive ease. The cake emerged from the same humble beginnings as all simple cakes: a batch of vanilla batter. Whipping this up was a perfunctory task, and I went through the mechanical motions as I had so many times before. While I mixed, Allie perched herself on a nearby stool and watched, pro-viding comedic commentary and licking the spatula each time I placed it down.

“Y’all, we fixin’ to make some real buttery lovin’ here,” she announced in a Paula Deen drawl. Somehow, this short Filipino with a childish face had no trouble embodying a nurturing southern woman well-padded by rich food. Her round eyes widened and she plastered on a phony, eerie smile. “Fo’get the cholesterol, the fat puts the love in yo’ heart.”

She flipped the mixer speed as I turned my back, treated every sharp tool as a toy, and sifted through our utensil drawer.

“I’m starting to fear the things you could do to me with these, you sick freak,” she whispered as she questioned the purpose of turkey basters and flour sifters. I felt myself stepping into my mother’s former role, commanding the appliances and enjoy-ing the sideshow antics, while Allie had become the little Natalie, standing by solely for entertainment and batter swiping purposes.

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Once all the ingredients had been thoroughly incorporated and Allie had taken a satisfactory share of the creation, we divvied it up into six smaller bowls as evenly as we could. We then dribbled var-ied food coloring into each, fervently stirring with shining spoons until each section displayed a vibrant monochromatic shade. We greased six individual cake pans and distributed our batter into them. They appeared level and even, the perfect building blocks for our cake tower. We placed them in the oven at 375°, content with our work and certain we were in the process of creating a masterpiece for all to adore.

While our layers bubbled up in their infer-nos, we progressed to the icing: a white chocolate buttercream. I lingered over a pot on the stove, babysitting boiling milk and sugar with a watchful eye, as Allie took her task of chopping the chocolate to heart, placing each tiny square into a miniature stack. Our instructions were simple, our jobs mun-dane. We weren’t required to do anything fancy, so we assumed that everything would turn out just as the recipe stated it would. We had learned to use a spoon and knife long ago, so surely we were well-trained masters. Allie sang throughout it all, belting out nonsensical songs about butter in her powerful, velvety voice. With every note I laughed, both amused by her behavior and confused by what was possibly running through her head. Eventually, we merged our carefully executed efforts, preparing to witness a unified mixture ideal for coating our cake.

Instead, we discovered that Texas tempera-tures are less than ideal for rich, thick, concoctions. Our toil was in vain. We had on our hands a runny liquid that poured off the spatula no matter how

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many cups of powdered sugar I added in despera-tion.

“It moves too fast! Stop the flood. Stop the flood! The levees will not withstand this!” she cried over my shoulder.

The icing was shoved in the freezer. I par-tially hoped this would create a workable consis-tency, but mainly just didn’t want to look at the mess we’d created. We were puppets, the victims of exter-nal forces far greater than our own. Our spirits were crushed; the careful planning was worthless.

Allie flopped onto the sofa, throwing the whole force of her body to collapse into the cush-ions.

“I just wanna watch Tyra and feel like a ca-pable human being!” she whined, refusing to step back into the calamity that had grown in my kitchen.

“Get your lazy self up,” I pleaded, “for the sake of posterity.”

This had become a recurring joke between us, the notion that everything we did was for the future generations that would want to be deeply en-grossed in our lives. Every picture taken, every token saved, every Facebook message exchanged was a record of who we were, that hopefully showed those who stumbled upon it that we were something mag-nificent.

In reality, posterity was not my current prior-ity, and I wanted nothing more than to abandon the project and join her in mocking people on television with problems more absurd and amusing than ours.

The incessant oven timer aggressively yanked us out of our self pity and demanded our attention. It beeped with fury, taunting that we still

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had much more suffering ahead. Brimming with hope, we turned to our now baked cakes and flipped each layer out of its pan, only to see that they were paper thin, unlike the luscious, supple pieces of the photo. Stuck by another blow to the heart, our con-fidence dwindled.

During this fiasco, our icing congealed only slightly and was now reminiscent of the Elmer’s glue we’d grown accustomed to in elementary school. Impatient, we chose to use it anyway. On a kitchen plate we laid down the first violet piece, then spooned some frosting over top. We repeated the procedure with the remaining blue, green, yellow, orange, and red components, our fingers crossed the whole time. With each layer, the icing oozed out the sides and failed to act as the reliable adhesive it was intended to be. The layers naturally slid away from each other, forming the culinary leaning tower of Pisa.

“Oh no!” Allie would bellow in a comedic baritone as she contorted her face into a stereotypi-cal horror movie expression.

“Would you shut up and help?” I pleaded, trying to maintain some semblance of control. The front I put up was weak, however, and giggles slipped out between my stern commands as I re-signed to our blossoming disaster.

To cover our flawed creation, we dumped the remaining icing over the top and let it spill over the edges. It concealed nothing; the vibrant shades still poked through and the uneven layers were obvi-ous. The entire plate was buried under a sheet of white goop. Our Martha Stewart cards were revoked.

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The picture we tried to mimic boasted a thick, fluffy coat of frosting that kept the outside crisp and clean. Ours, with a sheer, dripping mess on top, looked just like its ugly step-sister. We at-tempted to hide our flaws and emptied an entire container of rainbow sprinkles on the convex top. Simple beauty was no longer attainable, so tacky and obnoxious was the only option.

We retreated from our work and collapsed on the couch, completely puzzled as to why we failed to create the picture-perfect cake. We were certain we had acted as experts, and had carried out the tasks with delicacy and finesse. We peered into the kitchen to inspect our construction, and could not help but laugh. The cake was lopsided and un-professional, certainly not capable impressing pos-terity. If anything, we had made more art of the kitchen itself, which displayed butter handprints on every surface, a mountain of dishes in the sink, and a heart drawn in a pile of flour on the island. I had crusted eggs in my hair, and Allie donned frosting freckles coating every inch of skin. We were con-vinced our actions were perfect, but in reality we had done nothing but create a mess of epic proportions.

Regardless, we were proud. We had dedi-cated five hours of constant effort into our project, enjoying the experience the whole time. As we con-structed our intended masterpiece, we were com-pletely oblivious to everything around us. Our focus was on the journey itself; we were drawn to the process of baking the cake, but the end result really didn’t matter that much. The cake was fleeting; it would be consumed later that week and live on only in the pictures we took. The experiences, the memo-

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ries, and the food coloring stains on our granite, however, were permanent. We were the only audi-ence that mattered; posterity meant nothing. If we felt our cake was perfect, it would be. And in fact, as Allie’s mom blew out the candles and sliced into the side, the messy sprinkles and uneven layers went un-noticed. Our enthusiasm had baked its way in as well, like the underlying, secret ingredient that ulti-mately makes the dish delectable. Allie Diamond

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The Yellow Clapboard House By Carrie Fowle

The yellow clapboard house covered in vines The neighborhood mystery Deathly quiet Deathly still Never abandoned Yet he sits empty No car in the drive No kids in the yard Never a twig out of place And yet never a face mowing Nine years passed since he and I were first introduced He a stately house With purple flowers in the yard He a stately house With a hill to bike down He a stately house Never for sale No one home I passed him today And forgot the busy street behind And looked upon The yellow clapboard house covered in vines.

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Adrienne Gilhart

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Wind By Jane Raskauskas

Driving up to Mont Saint-Michel, my jaw dropped. I never knew a place this magical looking could ever actually exist. The city was made out of stone and there was a church on top. Jumping out of the car, the cool wind wrapped around my body, making me slip back into my jacket. As soon as I entered the city made of stone, I was amazed to see how much life lived inside of those stone walls. The smell of fresh crepes filled the air as I strolled through the streets. My mother snapped millions of pictures of my siblings and me and tried to get my father to be in some, but he refused. Their arguing was in the very back of my mind, like music playing softly in the distance. I noticed a tiny hole in the wall that was a post office. A mailman placed mail into the slot and I immediately pictured myself receiving mail from this specific mailbox. As the night began to fall, we ate dinner at a world famous omelet place in the city. The omelets were too big to even imag-ine eating entirely. I ordered an extremely overpriced potato omelet that had maybe two pieces of potato in it, but those two pieces of potato satisfied my stomach. By the time we left the restaurant, we headed to a tour of the church. Soon the tour began and I couldn’t believe how beautiful the inside of the church was. As we walked inside, it was damp and cold. Candles were lit and someone was playing the cello softly, creating new background music. I traveled through the twisted hallways into different rooms, each holding a surprise. Everything amazed me, but when we

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reached the last place on the tour, I became breath-less. It was the roof; open space was the only thing I could see for miles. The wind whirled around me whipping my hair in every direction. The wind howled in my ears, but it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. Chills struck me at first be-cause I thought I was cold, but then I realized I got chills because I was in God’s presence. Standing on the roof on Mont Saint-Michel, I was with God. God swirled all around me, letting me know I wasn’t alone. I connected with God, maybe I had doubted his strength before, but now I knew he was real and was the strongest force known. In this moment, I came to realize that wind, is really just God’s love. I can’t always see it, but I can always feel it.

Adrienne Gilhart

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This Isn’t the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida

By Conor Gleeson I have a friend who stops by on the week-ends to hang out with myself and my roommate (also we drive across town and pretend to run away from cyclopean monstrosities). He’s a laser techni-cian, which fits right in with our fantasy writer and helicopter pilot/five star chef/martial artist/son of a Hawaiian stripper ninja princess (I’m not freaking kidding; my friend is nuts). Anyway, it happens that said friend sometimes gets a horrible hankering for steak. I am not a steak fan. In fact, I am not a beef fan, but hey, some people like that sort of thing and more power to them. I prefer to keep my Thaxto-nian colon as intact as I can in preparation for its eventual attempts to strangulate me with misshapen clumps of cancerous cells. This particular evening, he wants steak. Not having any, we proceed to hit every steak restaurant in town. We traveled to about four, all of whom were out of steak, before I started to have a panic attack. They’re also all full with a forty minute wait list at least, and I can’t wait in a restaurant. I’ve got horrible autism issues in regards to that sort of thing (you should see what happens when I have to go to a gas station I’ve never been to before). He motions with his hand and says it’s fine, we’ll go out tomor-row, but no. In my autistic brain, I promised steak, and that means a freaking steak place. I run through the roster and suddenly remember one. I head down towards the 417 and past the junk dealer, beyond the warehouse church, and

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instead of driving towards Oviedo, I veer off the road to a place where street lights do not shine. In the deep shadows I cruise, my car clattering with the sound of insects off the windshield and the roar of loose dirt beneath it. Both of my passengers begin to get worried. It’s been ten years, but I still remember the way. We pass by trailers and decaying orange groves, flashing through a tunnel of swirling Spanish moss so thick it resembles bleak polyps in the depths of some ancient terror’s digestive tract. I turn at the airboat ride sign and plunge into a parking lot half buried in swamp. The dim light of the restaurant cuts through the night. We get out, and there is a lake off to the side, and what sur-rounds us is the very depth of Florida. He’s got to get out carefully but gets pushed out by my room-mate. He staggers around for a moment, almost in awe and rage. “This is it!” he shouts, waving his arms, “This is the end!” “The end of what?” my roommate asks. “The end of Florida! You’ve taken me to the Steak Restaurant at the End of Florida,” he screams again, and motions to the lake, “that is the edge of reality, the end of civilization. Over that way, right there, on the map, they’ll have written ‘Here Be Dragons!’” I turn my head around. He’s pointing at the gator pen, which he can’t see from where he’s at. “You’re gesturing at the gator pen, you know, “ I respond. “And that’s my point!” he shouts again. I want to tell him that this isn’t the Steak

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Restaurant at the End of Florida, since that honor belongs to the Miccosukee restaurant, but we ap-proach the entrance anyway. There’s a brief moment of fear, since the glass windows are covered in so many midges it looks like gray carpet curtains from a distance, and the porch functions like an airlock to keep them out. We get inside, sit down, and wait for twenty minutes for the server. They have no steak, either. They ran out five minutes ago, in fact. He screams. I bought a grill on Sunday.

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Our Equals By Madi Hampton

As my red truck rolled up to my campsite, I jumped out of the bed and ran to my uncle as he finished my tent. “This is your luxury suite for the next thirty-six hours or so!” my dad said, proudly gesturing to the tiny gray tent behind him. I didn’t care that it was tiny or that it was so old that my grandparents had used it to camp out before a Bob Dylan concert, because I knew that I would be sleeping that night anyways. “Here, help me set up these other tents for the rest of the family, and then we can get out the four wheelers,” my dad said, offering me a pole to help set up the tents. There was no way to tell time up there, in those South Dakota Black Hills, but for about the next hour, my dad and I set up the tents for my brother, mom, cousin, aunt, and uncle. They all were meeting us at our site later, because they all had other commitments such as tennis and work. After tents were pitched, we turned to the red truck and the old horse trailer being towed be-hind it. We looked at each other and knew what was coming next. “GO!” we both yelled, sprinting to the horse trailer and hopping on each of our four wheel-ers. Every year we raced to the same spot on the hills, and every year, my dad had won, but not this year. I was determined to beat him. According to the four wheeler, I was at a speed of twenty miles per hour, but I thought I was going one million miles a second. I just know that I was going to win this year! With every jump and

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bump on the unmarked trail, excitement flowed through my veins just a little faster. Everything was going by so fast now. The trees were all a blur. I could-n't’ see my dad, but I could hear the engine of his ma-chine right behind me. Here it was, the finish line. I saw the upcoming highway. It was coming towards me so fast that one couldn’t make out the difference from the gray of the road and the flourishing green on the forest floor, especially with the setting sun giving hardly any light. With a last jump of my four –wheeler over a fallen tree, I landed. The landing was all but graceful, but I won. I had beaten my pops for the first time. I flung my fists up in the air for a victory scream and I turned to my dad to wallow in my victory. At this time I saw it. My dad had his hand in the air to signal si-lence, but he wasn’t looking at me. No, he was looking to his right. At first I didn’t realize what it was, so I dismounted my four-wheeler and walked toward him. As soon as I saw what he was looking at, I stopped. Everything was still. Everything was silent. It was as if the irrational and thunderous world had stopped spin-ning for just that moment so that this moment could be perfect. The white-tailed deer just looked at me, and back to my dad and back to me. Its muscles were re-laxed, and its fawns were standing towards me, as if ready to walk to me. Everything was silent. The sky was a carroty hue from the setting sun. The deer were our friends, our equals. Out there, on that highway in the middle of South Dakota, it didn’t matter that I had a 3.4 GPA or that the price of gas has risen 5 cents. All that mattered was that these animals were our equals. They didn’t care what color our skin was, or that my jeans weren't designer. All that matters was that we were just

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animals, like them. We were not any better than them, we were just animals. But then this still moment was broken. Shat-tered right there. A single moment of the sweetest per-fection slipped through my fingers when a motorcycle came roaring down the road. It was cutting the silence of the forest, leaving a broken path between society and the animals. This symbol of “humane dominance” scared the deer and reminded me of the harsh world I live in. That night, I sat outside of my old tent, staring into the fire, with a pen in my hand and a notebook sitting on the ground. ( I always carried a pen and pa-per with me, because I believe the best way to contem-plate is to write it down). I began to think about what I saw earlier that day. Animals and humans, why are hu-mans any better? What sets us apart? Why do we treat animals so poorly? However my biggest question came that night while lying in my tent. As I closed my eyes to sleep, my mind began to wander. I followed it thorough all the places it ex-plored. I went to prehistoric places, where humans were on the bottom of the food chain; I went to early American history where Native Americans and animals lived as one, and I went to my time, where an animal is something that can be tossed aside and treated how-ever. After my time, my mind didn’t know where to go. It didn’t know what was next. That’s when my question emerged. What is next for society? What will happen when the animals are gone and we make ani-mals of ourselves?

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My Grandfather and I By Ryan Egdes

One cool morning in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, my grandfather and I sat atop the high-est deck of the house. We sat in silence every morn-ing and watched the goings on down below us, the lifeguards training, the joggers racing from one jetty to the next, the lone surfer waiting for a good wave. As we sat without a sound, watching people live their lives, looking down on them like some sort of god, we sat in complete and utter silence. The fiery sun was hovering over the Atlantic Ocean, which looked as if it could go on forever. We could see a fishing boat bobbing in the water, far in the distance. A pod of dolphins swam past the shoreline. Without anything being said, we had a full conversation. Sounds of the waves crashing, gulls speaking, he called my name. “Ryan...look at the horizon, it continues on forever and ever.” I glanced at my smiling grandfa-ther, wondering where he was going with this one. My grandfather had a knack for going off on phi-losophical tangents all the time. I sometimes doubted that he actually knew what he was saying but the look that he had in his eyes this time said otherwise. Most times when my grandfather spoke, it wasn’t to be ignored. I had to listen. “It represents your young life. It can go any-where and there are millions of opportunities for you.” I gazed at him staring into the shimmering wa-ter, as I tried to figure out what he meant. “Never say that you can’t do anything because you really, truly can.” He turned to me, chuckled at the con-

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fused look on my face and said, “Just think about it.” I went through out the rest of the day con-templating what he had told me. It wasn’t until that night, awake in my bed, that I really understood what he meant. I lay in bed and listened to the sounds of the world outside my window. The cars whizzing by, the bike speeding home, the Nardi’s Party Bus dropping off those too drunk to drive, all the same sounds I had been hearing for years. These are not the same people driving by that I had been hearing since I was born. Those people were gone. It was new people with new thoughts and new ideas. All this got me thinking and put me in a very phi-losophical mood. I looked deep into my head to find what I really thought about what my grandfather said. I thought he meant that with hard work I could do anything and everything. From going to the col-lege I wanted, to becoming a multi-millionaire. He proclaimed I could do anything I wanted, as long as I put my mind to it. I had always believed that every-thing happened by chance, and not at all by choice, but this conversation with my grandfather made me realize what I had to do to achieve the goals I wanted to in life. I sat with him again the next morning. The same joggers jogged, the same surfers surfed, the same waves crashed. It seemed as if this moment and yesterday had warped. I was waiting for him to ask. I knew him too well to know that he wouldn’t just ask that type of question and not to follow up with what I thought. The only sound audible to us was the ocean’s waves crashing. After about fifteen minutes, he

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asked, “What do you think?” I promptly answered, “ With hard work, I could overcome any obstacle and reach any goal.” He looked at me, laughed and then smiled. He didn’t say anything at that moment, but just kept grinning and staring into the deep blue ocean. Was I right? What was he thinking? Did he agree? The suspense and the silence were killing me. His eyes had the same glimmer that was reflecting off the water of the Atlantic Ocean. I could see the bright sun in his eyes. Every year since this conversation when I go back to Long Beach Island, I sit and think about my grandfather, and most of the time, I have a feeling he was looking at something completely different.

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Old Photographs By Zita Prutos

Tiny Nancy Evelyn with two names more than some. Her small polished Mary Janes holding her cold feet that needed to grow to fill those scuffed shoes that support her. Lacking the somber gaze of her oldest brother, his face foggy in her memory. Frosted forests, her winter wonderland was no longer Robbie’s haven. Not young, not old enough, not even tall enough to un-cuff his father’s jeans. Forced to smile with the tree he himself had slain. Young Robbie afraid of his burdens while little Nancy Evelyn happy to hold small branches.

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Savannah Glasglow

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Watson Lake By Annie Rosenblum

There was nothing better than sitting on the

wooden bench outside of the Walgreens on Barfield Drive and sipping an ice cold Arizona green tea on a steaming summer afternoon. That day, a shiny blue Cadillac pulled into a parking space right in front of our bench and my friend Bri and I lazily lifted our heads up to see who was getting out of this strange car. Around Marco everyone knows everyone and unfamiliar cars definitely don’t go unnoticed, espe-cially a royal blue Caddy.

A plump, stout women of about forty got out and smiled at us from behind her big, round sunglasses. Bri and I nodded our heads and smiled and went back to absent-mindedly staring at wispy white clouds and sweating out our green tea.

“Hello girls!” the woman called out. Both of our heads snapped up in attention at this unexpected greeting. “Hi there!” we said back in unison. “What are you girls up to?”

“Uh, not much, just chillin’?” “Ah, I remember when I was younger and

my friends and I would ride around Marco looking for stuff to do.” she said as a nostalgic look passed dreamily over her face. “You know, we all used to ride down to Watson and splash some water on us to cool down, it’s the only source of freshwater on the whole island.”

“No way? You mean Watson Road by In-dian Hill?” I asked, incredulous that I must have passed this little lake so many times and never really stopped to acknowledge it.

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“That’s the one!” she cried. “Our old history teacher once told us that when you splash the water on you, a good thing will happen in your life. You guys should check it out.” “Yeah totally, thanks! We’ve got nothing bet-ter to do,” Bri answered, bobbing her head in excite-ment. “Alright, you girls have fun and be careful!” she said, flashing a bright smile as she turned to walk inside. I looked at Bri with raised eyebrows and she just shrugged. So in unspoken agreement we kicked up our kick stands, hopped on our bikes, and rode off to find the legendary Watson Lake. We pedaled as fast as we could, without any fear of what could possibly be waiting at this lake by the plotting of that strange woman. The only thing our eighth grade minds cared about was the deli-cious steady breeze biking supplied as we pedaled onward down Barfield, past the Kwik stop, Publix, the Marco Island Florist, and the creepy old run-down garage where all the old men hang out and talk about cars. Soon, Watson Drive began rapidly ap-proaching and we made a left and pedaled as hard as we could up the steep incline, scouring each side of the street for the lake. Just as we were passing the Davis’ house we noticed the reflection of trees and sky rippling in the water behind their neighbor’s house. We jumped off our bikes and they roughly clattered onto the rocks. I led the way around the back of the house (we actually cut through their lanai but no one has to know that) to find a safe place where the grassy ledge gently merged into water. To our surprise, a small rickety wooden bridge was sus-pended over the water with the other side ending on

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a small grassy island about the size of a dining room table. With looks of disbelief and amazement at this little island that neither we, nor any of our friends had ever seen before, we ran to the foot of the bridge and stopped just short of it to make sure it was safe. Testing each step carefully and avoiding sticky spider webs we made our way across the bridge and found ourselves standing in the middle of this awkward little island. We knelt down and swirled our fingers around curiously in the murky water, not sure what we should do. Then for what-ever reason, some kind of un-earthly force must have come over me, I laid out flat on my stomach and dunked my entire head under. I came up laugh-ing hysterically as Bri looked at me, mouth agape, in shock. But a smile began to creep across her face and she eventually dunked her head under, too. We sat and talked for what seemed like hours on our little island and as the sky began to grow orange we made our way back to the road and hopped on our bikes and pedaled home.

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Mika Crespo

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Found Poem* By Savannah Glasglow

Every romantic foible Painfully obvious Unconscious in Sign language It’s perplexing in a bigger Way Eyes Fixed on the foam In my cup Eyes Fiery and red Deep messages were Purely an invention *Found poems are created using phrases and words from the text of another work. Writers cobble together ideas and images to create something new.

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Playing With Fire By Hunter Martin and Caitlin Schwartz

So my mom always told me not to play with fire, but when I am trying to make moves on the new, smokin’ hot girl in school, Flanary, I do what I can to impress her. I’ve been told I’m a pretty good-looking kid and that my hair has a natural swag. I wash it twice a day, Pantene Ice Shine all day every day— you know anything to keep my locks lookin’ luscious. I’ve also been told that when the sun hits my hair at the right spot, it is as if the angels are singing at the gates of Heaven… well, that’s what mom says at least. Anyways, enough about my good looks; truth be told, I was getting cold feet with the thought of asking Flanary out so I thought that the best way to wheel her into my arms would be to invite all of my friends, including Flanary, to my house this weekend for a hangout sesh... It is practically a date. So I figured I would light up the bonfire, kick back, and let my voice work its magic. Seeing that I am the one and only, J. Biebs, I have a reputation to keep with the ladies to make them experience the ultimate Bieber Fever. “It’s Friday, Friday, gonna get down on Fri-day…!” Just kidding, that witch will never be as famous as me! I’m freshening up, AKA blow-drying the locks and finishing with extra tight-hold hairspray before the crew comes over. Martha, my personal chef, just whipped me up some good old Spongebob, Kraft Mac and Cheese to satisfy my grumbling tummy. The door bell rings, I give one last good spray to hold my hair up; I open the door and the only thing I see is one fine lookin’ girl standing in the doorway with a beautiful pink dress on that takes my breath away. It is getting late, almost 8:30 PM, and I still have not made my moves. So far, all we have done is sit around a bonfire and talk about our math teacher and how he runs everywhere he goes. The boys and I decided

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to lighten this party up and bust out with the classic Axe fire stunt. Now, I know what you all are thinking, “Oooooo the Axe fire stunt,” but it has never failed to impress. So I’m thoroughly spraying down my left arm, more than I usually do when I am pulling this stunt, and I slowly bring my hand towards the fire before I swipe it through. I looked away to make sure Flanary was watch-ing. I run my hand through the fire only to realize that I have not run my fingers through my hair in over thirty seconds. Unconsciously, I run my burning hand through my hair and before I know it, my hair had gone up in flames. My massive amount of hairspray literally back-fired on me. Instantly I leaped, screaming like a little girl, into the pool to find all of my hair, money, and career gone. I cried and cried and cried and cried. I knew what I had to do to fix the situation, something that I never thought I would have to do… I was going to have to get a wig; I added it to my mom’s grocery list. I most definitely learned my lesson with fire and gave up on my dreams with Flanary… she told me that going bald at fourteen was not hip. She must not have the Bieber Fever.

Savannah Glasglow

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Devin’s Polished New Look By Noelle Lindeman

There it was. On the top shelf of the dresser in her closet. My mother’s makeup bag: Why was it up there?

Well, it all started a week ago when my mother completely overreacted upon finding me smearing her best lipstick all over the mirror. I don’t really see what the big deal was. Still, with that, she put her makeup bag up there and it’s stayed there since. Standing at a miniscule three foot nine, me trying to climb that dresser was, in my opinion, equivalent to someone trying to scale a mountain. Impossible. It was too far away to reach, and I won-dered in awe how on Earth my mother reached up there. With it being miles away, I shrugged off the idea of trying to reach the bag, and decided I would try to scavenge for some makeup of my own.

Being the very mature age of seven, I had snubbed Barbie dolls and discovered my new love for makeup instead. It all started two and a half weeks before when I came to the realization Play-Doh was much too babyish for me. I watched wide eyed, mouth open, as my mother carefully applied Great Lash mascara to her pale blonde eye lashes. I was mystified at how she had transformed from my mom to this movie star with just the contents of what was in this Vera Bradley bag. I needed that. So, I decided right then and there that somehow, some-way, I would get my hands on some makeup. With excitement and determination I leaped towards my play room, giggling the entire time. The play room had just been cleaned by our nanny, but I

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didn’t give it a second thought as I proceeded to rip apart the entire room again. I emptied out bins full of toys, puzzles, and board games, but there wasn’t eye shadow, blush, or even Chap Stick anywhere. As I got to the last bin, I couldn’t help but feel hope-less, but there, at the bottom of the bin was a perfect little glass bottle of fire truck red nail polish. I greed-ily snatched the little bottle and squealed in delight as I rubbed my fingers over the smooth glass. It was the most beautiful color I had ever seen. To me, it was close enough to makeup.

I sloppily painted my nails at my Little Tike’s desk, the crimson paint spilling everywhere. When I had finished, I admired my newly painted finger and toe nails. It was all over my hands and some had splattered onto my clothes but I didn’t care, the pol-ish was so shimmery and red. While I waited for my nails to dry my three year old sister, Devin, plopped down in front of her Beanie Babies, and started to play. As I looked at her, I felt a mischievous smile begin to creep on my face.

“Hey Dev, wanna play makeover?” I said, already walking over to her.

“Okay!” She said grinning naively. She had no idea what she was getting herself into.

“Okay, well first of all you have to put on this dress!” I replied, flushed with excitement.

Devin furrowed her brow at how old and worn the dress was but reluctantly slid it on. “Why do I have to wear this?” Devin asked, as she pulled up the too long sleeves of my play wedding dress, which had a rip under the armpit, and had begun yellowing from so many washes. “Because,” I said exasperated, “you have to

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look pretty when we go show Mom your new look.” “Oh,” she said, apparently satisfied. “Good, now hold still while I do your hair.”

I retorted, annoyed. I started brushing the knots out of her white blonde hair as she winced with every stroke. After, I twisted her thin hair into a bun and proceeded to wash her face, which at the time was always in a state of stickiness.

“Time for makeup!” I said confidently and brought my face close to her to see what I would do. “Slap your cheeks.” I commanded. Devin’s eyes wid-ened with confusion.

“What? Why?” She asked skeptically. With a drawn out sigh I explained to her how we didn’t have any blush, so in order to make her cheeks pink, she would have to slap them to get the blood rush-ing to her cheeks. She had a quizzical look on her face and I could tell she still wasn’t convinced, so I took matters into my own hands, literally. I grabbed both her chubby cheeks in my hands and pinched them as hard as I could. Stunned, her head whipped back, followed by her face crumpling as fat wet tears began to roll down her cheeks. Frightened my mom would hear, I quickly made cooing and shushing noises, telling her how pretty she would look when it was over and how “beauty was pain.” When she had calmed down, her cheeks were splotchy, but hey at least they were red.

“Eye shadow!” I chirped, popping the cap off a bright blue magic marker.

“That’s not eye shadow.” She deadpanned. “It’ll work!” I replied, “Don’t you trust me?” Without hesitation, she quickly nodded her

head. She closed her eyes as I began to draw on her

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lids, scrunching her eyes every time I pressed too hard. When I took a step away to get a good look at her, I winced when I saw how unevenly I had put it on.

“Am I done now?” She asked, frustrated with how long this was taking.

“Not yet, now shush, I have to concentrate.” I snapped at her. She gave a quick sigh and eye roll but obediently shut her mouth. “Your lips aren’t red enough.” I said matter-of-factly. But what could I use as lipstick? I searched around the room, my eyes landing on the little glass bottle of bright red nail polish. “Devin make sure to keep your lips together as tight as you can, and don’t open them for any-thing!” I commanded as I unscrewed the bottle of nail polish and wiped off the excess. “Noelle, I don’t think we should be doing this,” Devin stated uneasily. “You’ll be okay, Devin, I swear. Now hold- still!” Devin was frantically jerking her head away from the nail polish wand every time I tried to bring it closer to her. “Noelle, we shouldn’t be doing this,” she whined. I pulled Devin’s head up so that her eyes were level with mine. “Do you trust me?” I asked solemnly. “Yes,” she said completely serious. “Great! Now hold still!” I said, my severity melting away, bringing the wand, dripping with pol-ish closer to her mouth.

“What if I have to breathe?” She whined at

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me. Frustrated, I looked at her and said, “Breathe

through your nose!” I began to lacquer the nail polish on her little

heart shaped lips as her freckled nose wrinkled at the stinging smell of alcohol. When I had finished ex-pertly painting her lips I smiled wide and told her I was all done. She grinned and started to squeal when I saw that there was nail polish all over her teeth and even some on her tongue. I felt the blood drain from my face.

“What? What is it?” She said, her little voice rising.

Wordlessly, I grabbed her hand to march her into the bathroom. We were almost there, when my mother appeared.

She just about had a heart attack. Her eyes bulged out of her sockets while her mouth was opening and closing like a fish on land. She tried say-ing a thousand things at once, which resulted in only short, choppy sputtering noises falling out of her mouth. After she got over the initial shock, she picked Devin up and rushed her to the sink demand-ing she wash her mouth out with soap to get all the paint off. Devin began to screech and sob hysteri-cally because she saw how panicked my mom was. I tried to slyly slink out of the kitchen, when my mom grabbed my wrist and demanded I tell her what hap-pened.

“We were just playing makeover, nothing bad.” I mumbled, refusing to make eye contact.

She looked at me with a stony face, with no traces of a smile appearing. She finished washing up Devin and then took her to the hospital just to make

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sure she hadn’t consumed any of it. Two hours later, they came home, Devin was happily sucking on a lollipop and my mom looked exhausted.

“You’re punished.” She stated without mak-ing eye contact. Before I could object, she had al-ready shut her bedroom door. ` My sister instinctively knew it was wrong, but still let me put toxic nail polish all over her mouth. Even though she didn’t want to, she went through with it because I was older, and to her, that classified me as wiser. Not the case. I wasn’t allowed to touch makeup for a long time after that. I soon grew out of my makeup phase and have even given up wearing it to school because I don’t have time and I think I look better without it.

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The Golden Rooster By Anthony Vernava

We played around In the back yard With the thick ferns Watching the trees All of a sudden Time stopped for a moment And we saw a golden rooster As time was restored We found ourselves running, Chasing the young bird, It was agile and brawny We ran and ran Until we reached the river When the rooster was swept away By the steadfast currents Then a loud whistle Called us back to our master Into the pen Once again.

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This I Believe By Pierce Gleeson

Recently, I stumbled upon an interesting website that was designed to slide through different objects to give a sense of scale to the universe. It was an enormous slideshow, showing hundreds of objects, from stars to mountains to sand. The scale was truly breathtaking. Starting with the entire uni-verse, the site allowed me to zoom in to the size of an ant and smaller. Earth was billions of times smaller than the universe; humans, trillions. The point of the site was that the universe is huge, and we know so little of it, both the vastness of space and the spaces between the atoms of our own bod-ies. Large swaths of blank areas dominated both ends of the presentation. I had a bit of an epiphany then, for though I’d heard it for years, it really struck me how lucky I was that somehow life had formed on this planet, and somehow I had been born out of a line of ancestors going back all the way to the first little bacteria in the primordial ooze.

My experience on this page cemented a be-lief that I have been nursing for some time that in the grand scheme of things, I (and the entire world) am virtually inconsequential. However, I don’t be-lieve that life is meaningless. Because of the pure chaos, the million possibilities narrowing down to one outcome that resulted in my life, and that of countless others, life is all the more precious. I shouldn’t waste it living the life others expect me to live. I shouldn’t sweat the small things like grades. And above all, neither I, nor anyone else should fear death, because it is inevitable, and it is just a return

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to the beginning, to the Earth. But here is the problem: I do all of these

things. I’m going to graduate high school and go to college somewhere, and get a job; I’ll worry about my grades until the day I graduate; and there will always be that fear of the great beyond. But no mat-ter what anybody says, he, too does all of these things to some extent. It’s the human condition, to want to fit in, to worry, and to fear the unknown. Life is something different though. Life is the con-nections between people, the moments in between the minutes, and the impact left on this world. I be-lieve that life is the act of surmounting these basic human reactions, and accepting yourself and the world for how it is.

Gabi Goodrich

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Eagle By Jimmy Fleming

Suddenly, I hear the sound of a crowned eagle. It shatters the calm of the forest. Soaring through the sky his presence is regal. His outstanding grace makes me aware I am a tourist. He jerked his head down searching for prey. Then he barreled down to the ground with the

confidence of many years. Building up his speed his confidence never swayed. Then he dipped below the trees and disappeared. He reappeared with a large rat between his claws. Then landed on his perch flipping his prey into his jaws. The blood on his beak was his only flaw. He lets out one might screech. I turn my head and continue to roam. Leaving this creature and his home.

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Revulsion By Chase Kaufmann and Piercarlo Biancardi

The revulsion, which creeps over me at the

mere inkling of them, is almost too much to conceal from my face. How can they go about, knowing what filth they put into their body, and pretend that nothing is askew? To think that they are the same as I—what drivel. I don’t know why I even waste my time thinking of those people, if that’s what they are, people. One can never be too sure. I'm talking, of course, about the processed food consumers. Fake meats, fake cheeses, fake juices, treats with high fructose corn syrup: they love it all. They even feed it to their young. Imagine growing up on factory-made food, high cholesterol by the age of 11, first heart attack at 15; they never had a chance. I almost feel bad for them, almost. But I am here on more important business than to bother myself with people whose existence is so inconsequential. I am here today, in this infested market, to buy the first batch of the farm-raised, 100% organic, supreme- tasting parsnips. Such an elegant vegetable the pars-nip is. With its elegant form and sweet carrot-like taste, the parsnip is the grandest, nay, most extrava-gantly divine vegetable in existence. None of those processed-food eating savages could ever appreciate such elegance in a food. So you could imagine my utter fury at the spectacle I discovered in front of the stand that held my precious parsnips. I have al-ways allowed these, these freaks to go about their grotesque ways, trying to ignore them as much as possible, but this is going too far. Lying at the feet of my precious vegetable was the evidence of their

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crime, their shopping list. I can no longer sit back idly and allow such barbarity to contaminate my or-ganic foods. As I was reaching down to pick up the list, I felt a sharp pain on the back of head and eve-rything went black. I awoke to the most horrific scene imaginable, a most confusing sight. Before me was the silhouette of a cloaked figure, sling shot in hand as if he had just struck down the mighty Goli-ath. Somehow this figure seemed familiar, but from where? Then as he extended his finger towards me, motioning for the crumpled list I still clenched in my hand, it dawned on me. The infamous PFK! How could it be that the Processed Food Killer is in my grocery store? Never have I been so stricken with terror as I lay on the floor. But this feeling was irra-tional. I had nothing to fear. The PFK only killed the processed food consumers without shedding a tear. But as he continued to beckon, the fear re-turned. The list in my hand was going to get me burned. I handed him the note and with his sling, he pulled back the rope and let it fling.

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Epiphany By Patrick Wilkins

Over the summer of 2009, I had an epiph-any. I was going to die. I had this realization on my cousin’s tire swing in Chicago. I was being spun in circles and hitting my bare feet on the rigid bark of an oak tree. Every time I tried to slow down, I spun even faster. I knew I was going to have to let go, but I couldn’t see anything because I was spinning too fast. I pulled myself as close as I could to the tire. I pulled one leg out of the middle at a time. I closed my eyes and let go. At that moment in mid-air, I saw every-thing differently. I can still see the ridiculous hat and shoes my cousin was wearing. Tommy was in his orange, black, and green Osiris skateboarding shoes trying to follow the current trend. The last thing I saw during my mid-air epiphany was the side of that oak. As the oak defaced my left side, I felt nothing. I opened my eyes as I lay there and saw only me; I was outside the world, outside everything, ex-cept me. For the first time ever, I was inside myself. I awoke with fake blood streaming down the side of my fake face. I felt no pain or anger. I felt better than ever. “Get inside! You’re bleeding bad!” Tommy screamed in my face as I lay there. Suddenly a land-slide of agony smacked me across the face. I got up yelling in confusion. “I will die!” I said with bold confidence. I cannot explain to you my purpose; but I know how I will die. I will drop-in on a wave in Teahupoo, close my eyes and fall backwards.

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Savannah Glasglow