The Communicator • A Student Voice

The stars were so bright. They glinted through the crack between Lisa’s curtains. Some nights it bothered her; she would roll over to her other side an stare at her wall, examining the small imperfections in her fathers paint job. Other nights they were comforting though. Especially nights after she had reread an email from her brother. The stars always reminded her of him. More…

She gently sifted a few pebbles and some dirt, with her bare toes, as she stood on the path. Her feet were quite little, as was the rest of her. Barely standing five and a half feet tall, she gazed up at the tallest maple on her property with eyes as green as the leaves.

Her blonde hair reached down towards her lower back, and her muscles were relaxed when a feeling of overpowering awe traveled through her. Her thin pink nightgown restlessly danced on small gusts of wind as minutes, or maybe hours – she couldn’t have said which – passed. The whole time was spent admiring each and every different leaf, and groove in the bark, every texture and symmetry, every aspect of the tree until she was at last just admiring it’s vastness. More…

“Save me, Mary!”

Mary fell to her hands and knees in the soil and reached down to her screaming brother. She knew her brand new dress was ruined now, but she never liked it anyway.

“Can you grab my hand, Matthew?”

The boy jumped, arms stretched and palms white with strain, but his hands met only the moist and earthy walls of the ditch. He yelled, voice cracking, “Go get Daddy!”

“You shouldn’t ‘ve been playing near the big ditch! Mommy said so, Matthew! This is your fault!”

“I’m sorry!” The boy’s face was caked with filth now, the tears running down his cheeks leaving gaps like rivers.

“It’s gonna be dark soon! I can’t see anything!”

“Mary! Go find Daddy, quick! Please! Please!” Matthew’s knees buckled, and he wept, wiping his nose on his bare arm.

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Following a yellow brick road is never a good idea- this has been proven time and time again. You’re suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to sing, are surrounded by talking animals and inanimate objects, much like in Wonderland, really. You’re constantly being yelled at by little men behind curtains, and forced to kill supposedly evil witches via melting. An atrocious act, I assure you.

So when I was awakened suddenly on a Saturday morning (literally at 12:01 am), and informed that I had to travel to Crimson, by following the long yellow (yes, yellow!) brick road that ran through our barely there town, not only was I skeptical, I was hysterical. Of course this was a prank! There was no way I’d ever follow a yellow brick road, and there was definitely no way I was going to Crimson, which was apparently impossible to reach on foot; you actually could only get there by train. I ignored my brother’s insistence and went back to sleep, only to be woken again by a gallon of ice cubes being dumped on me. My brother is quite obviously not the image of subtlety – but then, he never has been. He stood at the end of my bed, hands on his bony hips, glaring at me.

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If ever there had been a time where it might have been useful for her to be able to hear as well as a bat, or be able to run at supersonic speed, or to fly, or to turn invisible, it might have been now, but it probably wasn’t. Neither May was in any mortal danger, nor was anyone around her. Though it would be incredibly entertaining to jump out of the window at this point, it would serve no other purpose than to be exactly that, entertaining. May and Andree both agreed that using superpowers just for that sake was hardly a just reason.

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She was helping out at the elementary school where her brother went. His class was in recess right now and all the children were in the schoolyard. There were two sets of swings, one that stood in the middle of the playground, and one that was at the edge, near the woods and the trail that was adjacent to the school. A few of the children ran around, some tossed a ball back and forth, a small disabled girl named Amy sat on the gravel and built a city out of rocks, others swung. Her brother was one of those, but he sat alone, swinging on the far swing on the back swing set, closest to the woods.

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My mom says there

were two swans on the

Huron River yesterday

biting

with webs

on feathers

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