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CHECK IT OUT!
Interview with JEAN DAYTON in the Children’s/YA section.

Congratulations to Dawn Sperber of Santa Fe, NM. Winner of our June Student Choice Contest.

WISH ON THE RING’S EYE

A RING, swaying on a strand of hair, high in a tree, hits against the trunk and makes a –ting. The blond knot unwinds, and the silver ring slips free. It’s falling …

Yesterday little Isobel, that faithful dreamer, that trying girl, carried the ring up to the tree’s top. On the highest thick branch, she sat dandling the ring on a strand of her hair, just swaying it back and forth like her own hypnotism. At dusk, putting her lips to the eye of the ring, she gave a kiss, and cast a wish that came through her like light through a keyhole. She imagined life passing as potently as it did while in the tree. She saw herself as a sun queen.

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Congratulations to Dawn Corrigan of Gulf Breeze, FL. Winner of our May Student Choice Contest.

TIMOTHY LEARY’S DEAD

When I was eight I understood pig Latin perfectly well. All children in my family did, as do, perhaps, all children everywhere. Nonetheless, my relatives were in the habit of using pig Latin when they wanted to have “adults only” conversations while children were present. We knew not to let on that we understood. It was our unspoken law, a way of being kind to the grownups.

On January 1, 1976, I broke this law.

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Congratulations to Jacob A. Boyd of Eugene, OR. Winner of our April Student Choice Contest.

HOW TO BE A GOOD PRISONER

The dungeon cell smelled awful. Helmut tossed hay from his bedding nest onto the shit in the back corner, then returned to his side of the kennel-size space and sat. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything but the iron bars was cobbled from black, rounded stones that gleamed with cold sweat. Helmut felt the stones like knuckles that jabbed into his pelvis, poked at his spine. As he repositioned himself, his eyes strayed toward Bowden, a thick-bellied man with a nose covered in red veins like the stitching on a wine sack. For the past two weeks Bowden had been Helmut’s cellmate. He lay face down near the bars.

The floor gently sloped toward the bars, and Helmut watched a trickle leave the back corner wend between the stones, and pool against Bowden’s cheek.

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Congratulations to Scott Akalis of Chicago, Illinois, winner of the March Student Contest.

ORION

It was a cool, cloudless night. I was outdoors and far from the city. My back lay against weeds, the kind that looked like flowers. They were brittle from an early frost and crunched as I squirmed.

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Congratulations to Sarina Dorie of Oregon City, Oregon, winner of the February Student Contest.

A GHOST’S GUIDE TO HAUNTING HUMANS

1. Make the first impression a lasting one. Do you really want to be the ghost known for tripping on ectoplasm as you make your big entrance? Take care in planning your first meet with your mortal ‘hauntees’.
2. Avoid clichés. Creaking stairs have been done. Moaning, wailing, shaking chains, leaving stains on carpets and saying, “Waaaaaah!” or “Ooooooh!” isn’t scary, it’s just pathetic. It reeks of amateur.

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Congratulations to Susan See of Seattle, Washington, winner of the December Student Contest.

GUM!

“Mark, what is our rule about gum in the classroom?” Mrs. Wilson pointed to the trash can by her desk.

For a split second Mark thought about the distance between his feet and Mrs. Wilson’s green running shoes, and his feet and the door. On a brown sandal day when Mrs. Wilson took her shoes off and rubbed her feet under her desk when she thought no one was looking, he and the gum might have made it to the hall before she caught them, but not on a green shoe day.

He spit the gum in his hand. He was especially sad to lose this piece. It was Super Huge Juicy Cherry gum, barely started. His crazy Uncle Morgan had given him just the one piece. Chew it with care, he had told Mark very seriously while making his eyes wobble in their sockets and pretending the end of his tongue was his upper lip.

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Congratulations to Timothy Marshal-Nichols of Merseyside, United Kingdom, winner of the December Student Contest.

AVOIDANCE

Nancy was still slumped over her steering wheel when the emergency services arrived. Still waiting she watched the blue flashing lights as they reflected in the night air. She did not want to look back. She did not want to see the cars, vans and lorries all crumpled behind her. She did not want to engage with the grieving parents and shocked holidaymakers. Somehow she found herself being escorted into the grassy bank at the side of the duel carriageway. She stood, motionless, not wanting to engage with the carnage.

She watched as the police officer talked in turn to the other survivors. And dreaded her turn. She watched as they pointed in her direction. Pointed to her faithful old blue saloon. Pointed her out. She dreaded those accusing fingers. She trued to edge away from the crowd. She desperately wanted to run, but feared running so much more than waiting.

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We had no winner for the month of November. Thank you for participating.

Congratulations to Aaron Polson of Lawrence, KS., winner of the October Student Contest.

DIFFERENT STRINGS

We found the other basement during a summer rainstorm while visiting Grandma J. Neither of us could pronounce Grandma’s real name, her Polish name. We knew the ‘j’made a ‘y’ sound. We knew she lived in a creepy house. We knew her backyard spanned three acres, an old corner lot on which Grandpa J, dead for ten years then, operated a service station. The station was gone, leaving a concrete slab. Weeds and unruly trees had conquered the three acres, knotting them in a mess of organic chaos.

Usually, we ran through the neighborhood with boys and girls who lived near Grandma, playing football or baseball in the quiet streets. Cloistered by the rain, Mother suggested we go to the attic and look for toys, some of the things she enjoyed as a child. Grandma’s attic wasn’t a pure attic, but an unfinished section of the second floor reached through a small door in the wall of one bedroom. Dust covered everything. Cobwebs threatened, but, in addition to a shared fear of spiders and birthday, Alice and I were curious. Curiosity trumped arachnophobia, especially for ten-year-olds. Grandma’s attic held treasures. The centerpiece was the cedar chest.

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Congratulations to Brian Ted Jones of Oklahoma City, OK., winner of the September Student Contest.

THE PERFORMER

Before any of us could so much as blink he’d swung his body around and grabbed the cigarette out of Joe Parker’s mouth. Joe said later he never touched his lips. Didn’t even graze’m.

Then, while we all just stood there, staring like dummies, he swung his arms down and forward, squatted, and made a move like he was jumping rope. He landed and put the cigarette between his lips and did this little tap dancey thing. He held his arms up, and his hands out.

“Ta da!” he said.

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