Category: themed issue

[[Winner of the 2016 Hub City Teen Writers Contest]]

The burning boy had been on the news for years now.  Every morning, right after I grab a banana from our sorry excuse for a fruit basket and right before I slip into my ratty sneakers to walk four and a half blocks to school, I make sure to glance at the TV.  My grandmother always sits on the left end of the love seat facing the rickety old television set, walker set out before her and shoes placed inches away, right off the rug.  God bless her soul, should she ever decide to move and allow me to see the whole TV from the door without blocking the bottom right corner.  But, I’m never too worried about her.  For the past four years, all of America has only been worried about the burning boy.

This morning, Anderson Cooper straightened his papers and takes a shuddering breath as he looks into the camera.  Everyone always gets a little nervous when they talk about the burning boy.  “Four years ago, second grader Wallace Trevor was burned alive in a car accident that killed both of his parents and his younger brother.”

My fingers tighten around the banana.  An old, familiar chill, one that was born four years ago, the night Wallace’s burnt body was on the news for the first time, crawls up my back and houses itself into my neck.

“With third degree burns on 75% of his body, Wallace shouldn’t have made it alive through the accident, according to Dr. Courtier,” Anderson continued. “Miraculously, however, he was able to survive Hundreds of operations and countless hours of excruciating pain later, here we are, on January 16^th, 2017, witnessing Wallace step foot out of the hospital for the first time in four years.”

Like that, I forget all about school.  I forget that if I’m late one more time, I’ll be cited for detention.  I forget that I have a surprise birthday party for a teacher that I have to attend.  I forget it all as I step around the couch to sit beside my grandmother and my eyes fixate on Wallace on the TV screen.

I like his shirt, is the first thing that comes to mind, as my eyes glaze over his Avengers shirt and shift to the rest of him.  He stands on the front steps of the children’s hospital, holding the hand of his 22-year-old sister, the only family he has left.  And they look so happy.  His sister has tears in her eyes.  She’s a round women, wearing a matching shirt and a long, black skirt with frills that should’ve been left in the last decade but at the moment, no one cares.  We’re all happy for her, happy for her and her brother.  Wallace Trevor, the burning boy.

He’s 11 years old now.  His arms are wiry and the small patch of black hair he has is matted with sweat as he stands in the Orleans heat.  For four years, the stories of all his operations were everywhere and now, everyone can see their results.  To say he looks good would be putting it nicely.  Grafts had to be taken from any salvageable parts of his body to create and plaster the skin over his burns.  Doctors flew in from all over the world to give this boy at least a semblance of the handsome face he once had.  But that’s all it really is, a semblance, and not the best one.  Tight, shiny skin is stretched over his face and his arms, the only naked parts of his body to the cameras at the moment.  Over the years, some people could barely stand the sight of him because in full honesty, it was alien, to look like that.  “If this is a price for his life,” his sister said defensively into the cameras one day two years ago when the rest of America was asking if she was happy with how her brother was looking after all the surgeries, “then, I will pay it over and over and over again.”

Rectangular glasses are perches on Wallace’s’ nose. With one hand tight in his sister’s, he smiles, stretching the new skin on his face, and shies behind her frilly skirt. And like that, tears spring up in my eyes.  My trembling hand finds my mouth and I press down to keep from sobbing. Four years we were all rooting for this boy to live. Four years we only saw blurry pictures of the operating room.  Four years we lived off of a photography of him on his sixth birthday to pass the time. And here we all are, watching our alien hero standing on the steps of an Orleans hospital, shy and wiry and eleven years old with a brand new set of skin. And I promise you, cross my heart and hope to die, that right now, he’s the most beautiful boy on the face of the planet.

So what if I might have to pass on the opportunity of going to college to take care of my grandmother?  So what if my father lives in the Hamptons now and left us in this old townhouse in Baltimore after the divorce? So what if I can barely keep a C in Calculus? So what? So what? So what?

Right now, I’m looking at Wallace Trevor, a boy I don’t know, a boy whose story is reverberating through the chests of everyone in the world, a boy I’ve been stealing fleeting glances at on the TV for four years, and I’m seeing him smile and hid behind his sister and looking absolutely alien, and right now, I’m the happiest person in the world.

[[First Runner-Up in the 2016 Hub City Teen Writers Contest]]

Lungs ache. Eyes squeeze shut. From the fourth bedroom on the right, a fit of coughing erupts, echoing down the hall and across the ears of the orphanage. Beneath her sleepy tangle of sheets, a young Julianne stirs at the sharpness of the noise. She is only two rooms away, and miraculously, the only girl of nine woken. She suspects that the boys in the next room over have not been woken either, despite their greater proximity to the sound. Maybe the others have simply gotten used to the constant buzz of hacking and groaning, or maybe they’re just too tired to care. She yearns for the day that she too can sleep through the bitter breach of silence.

Suddenly, a new noise arises. A commotion of sorts. Muffled voices, shuffling feet. The floorboards moan throughout the building. She waits for the all too familiar sound, and soon enough, it comes. A rhythmic rapping against splintered wood. The metallic click of an unlocked door. Heavy steps into the house. Julianne quietly shakes off the linens that hold her to the bed, and sneaks toward her bedroom door. It is poorly fitted to the frame, and allows her a small opening, out which she can peer into the hall. Lining her eye up with the luminescent gap, she spies the source of the footsteps. Lead by Miss Marie, the makeshift mother of all the children, a large man is marching up the hall. She recognizes him as the hospital man. Miss Marie says that he takes the children to the hospital when they get too sick to stay at the orphanage. Julianne decided long ago that if she ever had to go to the hospital, she’d request that a less-scary man take her, preferably one that wasn’t at least twice her height. As Miss Marie and the hospital man make it to the last room on the right, the thought strikes Julianne that one of her friends is about to leave the orphanage. The children who go to the hospital never seem to return. Miss Marie had once explained that they go to a new home once they’re all better again. She was happy to hear this at the time, but now, the permanence of her friends departure seems to finally sink in. She simply must go and say goodbye.

Slipping down the carpeted hall undetected, Julianne heads to the room that the hospital man has just entered. The door reads infirmary. She sighs, wondering why adults must use such terribly large words for such easily phrased things. It is simply a sick-people room. Easy as that. Pressing against the door, Julianne walks confidently into the room. But perhaps a bit too confidently, as she walks straight into none other than the gigantic hospital man himself.

“This ain’t no place for a child miss.” His gravelly voice declares through his nest of a beard. Julianne springs back in shock.

“I… I sure am sorry sir,” she replies, voice shaking, “I only wanted to say goodbye, if you could just show me where…” But suddenly, she sees him. The child departing to the hospital, asleep in the hospital man’s arms. A freckled little boy by the name of Henry. He’s only been in the orphanage for a little while, but Julianne can’t help but feel as if she’s known him all her life. “Sir…” she continues, “do you think you could wake him just long enough for a goodbye?” He says nothing, simply glancing back as Miss Marie, who has been standing silently behind him for the entire ordeal.

“Go to bed, Julianne.” Miss Marie says, voice faltering as she speaks.

“But Miss Marie, I just-”

“I said go to bed Julianne! Now!” Miss Marie has never raised her voice like that, at least not at Julianne. But despite the sheer volume of the command, Julianne can’t help but feel that the underlying tone was something other than anger. She doesn’t dare look deeper.

“Yes ma’am. Goodbye Sir, Goodbye Henry.” The hospital man nods solemnly in response, and Miss Marie simply turns away.

As Julianne walks back to her room, a whisper catches her attention. The voice is calling her name. It’s coming from the boy’s room. Turning back to be sure Miss Marie isn’t watching, she follows the calls into the bedroom. As she enters, she finds fifteen pairs of wide eyes staring back at her.

“Julie!” someone calls.

“Did you anger Miss Marie?” asks another.

“Shh! She’s right down the hall,” Julianne whispers, “keep it down or she’ll really get angry.” The boys all nod in compliance. Julianne smiles at their willingness to obey, despite the fact that she seems to be the youngest in the room.

“So,” she begins, “ it all started when I saw Miss Marie and the hospital man walking down the hall to the sick-kids room, and-”

“Who on earth is the hospital man?” a voice interrupts, much to Julianne’s disapproval.

“The man who takes all the sick kids to the hospital, obviously.”

“You think Miss Marie can afford to send us to a hospital?” another voice laughs grimly. “She can barely afford to put food on the table!”

“That’s enough, Thomas,” one of the oldest boys interjects, placing a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder. Thomas shrugs it off.

“Are you all just going to stand here and let her believe the fairytales Miss Marie has shoved into her head?” continues Thomas. “How come Julianne doesn’t have to face the truth like the rest of us?”

“She’s young,” the older boy replies, “it’s simply the innocence of a child’s mind.” Julianne’s face drops.

“I’m old enough to know!” she exclaims, drawing a silence from the room. The older boy shakes his head, but Thomas flashes a devious grin.

“If you insist,” he whispers. And before anyone can stop him, he’s at Julianne’s side, hands cupped to whisper into her ear. “There is no hospital, Julianne. That man’s taking them to the morgue.”

[[Second Runner-Up in the 2016 Hub City Teen Writers Contest]]

Honestly, the fantasies in my head are far more interesting than real life.  Though to be fair, I spend more of my time in them than I do the real world.  Like right now, even as I sit in the orthodontist waiting room, I am also in another land with Sir Connor, my best friend and constant companion. Quite possibly my only friend.

My mother interrupts my musing.  “Are you nervous?” I can hear the tension in her voice.  “Not really,” I say.  As I’ve never seen braces before, I’m not entirely sure what they are.  And it’s rather difficult to fear something when you don’t know what you’re supposed to be afraid of.  “Are you sure?” she insists, and Connor and I both laugh.

“I’m sure, Mom.  Trust me, I’ll be fine.”  I was more nervous during my first appointment, when I wasn’t entirely sure how the orthodontist would react to my vision impairment.  When I was afraid he would treat me like the last one, who had acted as though I was less than human.  I fiddle with my cane as Mom continues rambling.  “I know it’ll be uncomfortable at first, but you’ll grow used to them. And it’s only for a few years at most.”  “You sound more nervous that I am.”

“It’s a mother’s job to worry,” she says.  Feeling rather bad, I hold my hand out. She takes it and gives it a squeeze.  “But I’m sure it will be fine.  Most people have to get braces.”  “I’m sure it will be too,” I say.  We sit in silence for a few minutes, and I let myself draw into Connor’s world.  I hear whispers and feel my mother bristle, but I ignore it all.  I’m used to it.  They follow my everywhere.  After all, a blind blue-haired fourteen-year-old girl is bound to seem out-of-place.  But I have grown accustomed to it, and so I pay no attention until I feel a tap on my shoulder.  “Why is your hair blue if you can’t see it?”  The voice is a young one, maybe five years old. Though it takes me out of Connor’s world, I am not irritated.  I enjoy making up silly reasons for children.  So I lean toward her and lower my voice.  “It’s because that ridiculous dragon made it so.”  “What? How could a dragon turn your hair blue?” She sounds confused.  “It’s a really long story,” I sigh.  I lean back I my chair.  “I’m not sure you’d want to hear it.”  “Oh, yes I do!” Without any warning, I feel her crawl onto my lap.  Mom’s grip on my hand tightens. “Larina…”she says quietly.  But I pull away to hold the young girl.

“If you insist,” I say.  “Last year I was battling a dragon with my good friend Sir Connor the knight.  The nasty thing had stolen all of the chocolate chip cookies in the town, which of course made everyone very upset.  So we got on the back of Connor’s horse and rode to the dragon’s castle.”  “The dragon lived in a castle?” she asks.

“Why, of course it did!  I laugh.  “Where else would a dragon live?  Anyway, we rode to his castle and knocked on the door.  The dragon itself didn’t answer, it was much too busy for that.  But a little girl, maybe five years old, answered instead.  Her voice was soft and sweet like a light breeze, and I instantly took a liking to her.  As did Sir Connor, of course.  She asked what we were there for and I told her of our problem. She seemed greatly troubled, saying the dragon was a good master and he would never dream of doing such a thing without reason.  So she led us inside and we found ourselves in an audience with a dragon.”

“Wow!” she says in awe, and Connor squeezes my hand.  I squeeze his back and continue weaving my tale.

“The dragon’s voice was loud and booming, and Sir Connor informed me he took up half the room.  At first we tried being diplomatic, and carefully explained exactly what the problem was.  The dragon did not seem troubled one bit, claiming the cookies were now rightfully his.  We tried again, but he could not be moved.  I felt Connor stiffen at my side, and before I could react, he was challenging the dragon to a duel! They went at it for a minute until I realized the room was beginning to grow very hot.  I jumped on Connor, avoiding his sword, and saved him from the scorch of the dragon’s flame.  I began to grow angry, and would you like to know what that means?” There’s a pause, and I feel her nod. I lower my voice to a whisper.  “It activates my magic.  All blind people have it, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” I say.  “But unfortunately it comes with dreadful side effects. Being angry, I did not fully think through my actions. And so I cast a spell that would make the beast the size of a kitten.  But it also turned my hair blue.”

Before I can tell her what happened next, we are interrupted.  “Helen, Dr. Yoon is ready to see you.”  “Well, that’s my sister.  I better go,” the girl says, and she wiggles off my lap. She pauses.  “Did that really happen?”

“Sort of,” I admit.  “Sir Connor is real to me, but maybe not anyone else.  And I dyed my hair blue so people would stop asking about my blindness.”

“Oh.” She considers it.  “You should write a book.”

“A book?” I repeat. “Why?”

“Because you’d be good at it,” she says.  “I know some of my friends would want to hear stories about what it’s like to be blind.”  And she walks away, leaving Mom squeezing one hand and Connor the other.  I am alone with my thoughts once again, and I think maybe not everyone is all that bad.