Category / Nonfiction / 2020 / Spring 2020 / 2020 / Spring 2020 Young Artists / Young Artist
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Seven Minute Mile – Reed Luppens
0 min: 00 sec It’s 37 degrees out but it doesn’t feel cold to me for some reason. My stomach is twisted in knots. The runners around me are getting warmed up… some jogging, some sprinting. I don’t want to waste my energy so I concentrate my thoughts on the race. I walk up to…
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Cancer Root – Harrison Pyros
The summer I planted bougainvillea in our backyard, my father was diagnosed with cancer. From the cheery associate at Lowe’s, I learned bougainvillea was a rapid-growing, hard-to-kill type of plant, perfect for swallowing up the ugly cement wall behind our house. I watered and watched the raspy green vines crawl their way across the wall,…
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6:40 am – Olivia Edwards
6.40 am It’s time. I must have dozed off before dinner. I was in the wrong bed. My sister was next to me, asleep. The lights were off and the sky was dark. It was 2 am. I was wide awake. This was my chance. — Here I am, sitting in my car. I’m trying…
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In Mr. Eliot’s Neighborhood – Linda Critchfield
There’s a particular sadness that comes on the last day of a journey. On this last morning I stopped in at St. Stephen’s, a church I happened upon while searching for a post office. It was just another building I might have walked past without a second thought but for a red and gold sign…
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The Day I Become a Hero (Almost) – Thomas Davison
What is a Hero? What does it mean to be truly brave or to show real courage? According to a famous John Wayne quote “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” I have often wondered if an act of bravery demonstrated by a person with a complete absence of fear, is truly an…
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The Opened Bottle – H.R. Deutsch
I always vowed to myself that I would never take them, those pills tucked away in a maroon bag. I left them in the farthest corner of a dusty unused drawer. As long as they were out of sight, they were out of my mind as a viable option. I’m strong enough, I told myself…
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The Things You Taught Me – Anne Marie DeVito
You taught me I am my most beautiful self in the first light of morning sun. You taught me the words of Roy, Gibran, Lahiri. You taught me orchids need bright, indirect sunlight with an ice cube dropped in the soil each week. You taught me when I missed you, I should look to the…
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Rehab: The Overdoser – Tom Scanlon
The first time I saw CF, he was in bed. It was shortly after my 3 p.m. swing shift start, and the com log notes warned me that this new guy was having severe withdrawal symptoms. I popped my head into the room, briefly introduced myself and asked how he was doing. “I’m sick,” he…
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A Pleasant Hike – Lucas Selby
Staring over the rim of the gorge, my only thought was, Well this sucks. Twenty assorted Boy Scouts mulled around, checking each other’s gear, tightening ropes on backpacks, and filling bottles and mouths with water. My borrowed backpack was already slung over my shoulders and buckled tightly in some very uncomfortable places. Every time I…
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Lucy’s Game – Nicole Spradling
Lucy would stick her long, blonde nose as close to our own noses as possible without touching, and stare straight into us from her own deep, black eyes. After a few short sniffs, she would nudge her head toward us, encouraging us to pet her soft head. When we finally acquiesced, and were sufficiently distracted,…
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The Best Part – Nicole Zelniker
Julian Humes, a black man from Durham, North Carolina, was in sixth grade when he first thought about the implications of being involved with someone of another race. That was when Julian, now 22, told his father that a white classmate had a crush on him. “The first thing he said was, ‘That’s nice and…
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The Stranger and the Twenty dollar Bill – Johanna Kopp
The world was black outside my windows, and my body ached for more sleep, but I willed my arms to push my body away from the warm, soft bed, and my legs to carry me to the kitchen. Looking the part was every bit as important as the rest, so while I swallowed large gulps…
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Prone to Exaggeration – Gregg Murray
Exaggeration is a funny word. It’s got five syllables and all sorts of letters. Its spelling is flat-out excessive. Perhaps that’s the point of the extra g, to indicate excess. In that sense you could say it’s performative; it exaggerates itself. It takes water that’s merely room temperature and either scalds it or freezes it.…
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Shaw’s Dream – Paul Rondema
Shaw’s Dream George Bernard Shaw (the screenwriter for My Fair Lady and from whom the ancient Greeks derived their myth of Pygmalion) had a deep and abiding love of the English language. That love was so intense, so incendiary, that upon his death he wished to be buried in nothing but words.…
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Pictures in My Heart
Author: Siqi Liu Grade: 11 at Naperville Central High School 1st place Live Arts Contest Pictures in My Heart As I walked home from school one dreary afternoon, the usual pool of black liquid and human waste sitting outside my apartment building caught my eye. There was a fresh green leaf that somehow got mixed…
