The summer before my ninth grade year, I spent a month at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, also known as CTY. When I arrived,...

“I thought we were friends?” she asked, sounding more like an accusation. We were inseparable friends. It was suffocating, her jealousy...

May 22 2016 Before I turned 6, I used to think about dying. Not seriously of course. Only in the way that if I died before I turned 6,...

The lunch line is barely moving. Freshmen who know it isn’t their lunch period yet shoulder past seniors who roll their eyes, already...

The noon summer sun glares through the bus window, and tints the world a garish yellow. The lead-like sunlight is ladening, layer over...

Crunch. Textured rocks smash across the earth’s pavement. My classmates enthusiastically create “skin colored paints” from cream-colored...

I had been going to my therapist every-other-week for about two months, and I could probably count the total words he said on two hands....

There is foundation caked in the grooves of my face. The sweat soaks into the crumbling, dried liquid, but it doesn’t ease the...

Drivers Ed Test 1 Name: Isabel E. Chaplain Grade: 10 Worksheet #: 1 Driver Ed score of 80% or better to pass classroom instruction....

[A p p r e c i a t i o n] The metal dabba reclines at the edge of the shelf, daring to tip over the periphery just as my mother clasps...

Dear Trailblazer, Middle school is behind you, the whole sky in front. This week you saw the total solar eclipse. Paper eclipse glasses...

Lan•guage (lan’gwij) n. 1. A form of communication conveyed by speech, writing, and gesture. Language was just this: another word out of...

I wait behind an obese security guard who the lady at the register knows as a regular. He orders his ground beef, and I tell the lady why...

I can see the girl I knew unfurl out of your body like the smoke of the cigarettes you used to burn, tendrils of ash and dust left to...

Last summer, I met a boy who wrote a poem about painting a mural with his blood. A crimson first impression flowed off the page like...

In Chinese legends, mantou resembled a barbarian’s head thrown into the violent waters of the Lushui. They were buns shaped like human...

The first burial I ever went to was that of my lolo. It was January, but it was still relatively warm, the way it had been all winter....

In the early morning, when the sun is beginning to fringe the edges of the sky heading to school and wasting six hours within the...

Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes you have the ability to forget the big picture, the simple actions, white-out the faces, take away...

The kitchen hasn’t been renovated yet. A row of happy-face stickers is plastered across the cabinet, some of them drooping, some of them...