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2017 Teen Fiction Contest Winners GRADES 7-9 GENERAL FICTION First Place: The Crest By Imelda Donnelly Second Place: Nomads By Elizabeth Blackshire Third Place: Melting By Eleanor Peters GRADES 7-9 FLASH FICTION First Place: Before The Fall By Asha Buerk Second Place: A Solemn Lighthouse By Jack Huffman Third Place: The Cookie Jar By Nico Balint GRADES 7-9 FAN FICTION First Place: A Jester’s Origin By Fabrice Uwihirwe Second Place: Lucky Ones By Bailey Atkinson Third Place: Something Is…Different By Danika Vrtar GRADES 10-12 GENERAL FICTION First Place: Hide And Seek By Angela Lin Second Place: The Fall Of Pompeii By Rose Tyler Third Place: Stage Fright By Riley Bowman GRADES 10-12 FLASH FICTION First Place: Schuster By Philippa Zhang Second Place: Reflections By Elizabeth C. Hinkle Third Place: Routines For The Indifferent By Keress Ambrose Frey Weidner GRADES 10-12 FAN FICTION First Place: Star Wars: Shadows Of The Dark Side By Alexander Kinne Second Place: Change Of Heart By Allison Brewer Third Place: John, James, And David By Zachary Layman GRADES 7-9 GENERAL FICTION FIRST PLACE: THE CREST BY IMELDA DONNELLY The bitter, relentless ocean spray soaks my jeans and sneakers. I kick my shoe in the mud, watching the impression fill with water. Not too far away, my grandfather stands by the dock untying a small boat. No motor, no cover, not even a decent bench. The red paint on the boat is faded and the white lettering is chipped and stained a yellowish color. It used to say my name, Harry. But an “r” and the “y” are washed off, so it seems to be laughing at me. Har, har, har. The wind throws the fragile skeleton of the boat against the dock, hitting the same decade-old dent. My grandfather motions me over, yelling my name into the wailing wind. I trudge over to him and he motions me to climb on board, holding the fraying, dirty rope with his calloused, tanned hands. The smell is nothing I have encountered before. The fishiness is a given, but it smells burnt and baked into the wood, mixing with the mold that seems to be coming from underneath the bench. A cockroach skitters across my toe and I shiver. The bug doesn’t seem to be very happy with its surroundings either. My grandfather pushes away from the dock and guides the boat out into the churning, black ocean. I’m not sure why today is “the perfect weather” for fishing. Maybe it is because the fish cannot see through the dirty, violent waters and will unexpectedly catch themselves on our hooks. If one of us fell in, maybe we would have the same fate, bumping into a particularly hungry Great White. My grandfather doesn’t smile and he looks at me every so often with distaste. He is always unreadable, gruff and slightly grumpy. Today, the weather must have put him in a particularly sour mood. I keep checking my phone. Two more hours. One hour and fiftynine minutes. Fifty-eight. The boat smashes into a particularly large wave right at minute fifty-five and I am jostled from the bench onto the wooden floor. My phone flies out of my hand, making a perfect arc through the foggy, gray sky and plunk! It disappears beneath the waves. I exclaim loudly. “Grandfather! My phone! It has all my contacts and pictures and notes and… everything on it!” “Hmmm, pity. Well, I suppose you could try to jump in to get it. If you can’t find it, maybe you’ll be able to pass the time a different way. Perhaps, fish?” my grandfather says, making a jibe at me. I suppose I do feel a little guilty for not making an effort to spend time with him, but his insults at my plight make me boil. My eyes burn holes in his windbreaker, willing the wind to sweep him off his feet and into the water, so he meets the same fate as my phone. None of this would have happened if my mother hadn’t made me spend time with “lonely, old grandfather”. We hit another large bump and I right myself on the bench. Grandfather, however, has nothing to steady himself on and as is knocked off balance, staggering backwards towards the stern of the boat. He lets go of his paddle and it falls out of his hands, into the murky water. It becomes fainter and fainter as it swirls out of sight. My grandfather continues to flail and he falls sideways. I reach out and grab his wrist, jerking him away from the edge, but I jerk a little too hard. I hear a soft pop under my fingers and he curses out loud. He sinks down to the bench, holding his wrist. “Grandfather, are you ok? I was just trying to pull you in, I didn’t mean to hurt you!” I exclaim. He grinds his teeth together in pain and cradles his wrist. “Agh, erm. It-t’s ok son,” he chokes out. “Probably just a sprain. I’ll b-be fine.” He looks around the boat. It is hard to see through the downpour, but he seems really shocked. “Harry, what happened to the paddle…” The paddle? The paddle. The paddle! Shoot. “Grandfather, when you lost your balance, the paddle um, well, it fell in.” I squint through the driving rain, barely able to make out the blurry gray figure of the land. We are about a mile offshore. Then, Grandfather does a very strange thing. He doesn’t yell at me for failing to grab the paddle or look even remotely angry. My Grandfather begins to... laugh? I don’t recognize the sound at first, it’s one I’ve never heard before. It’s deep and low and comes in short barks, punctuating the eerie silence. I start to realize the absurdity of the situation. Grandfather has a sprained wrist, we’re cold and shivering in the heavy rain, I lost my phone, and we have no paddles or any way of getting back to shore. I guess the only thing you can do in this type of situation is laugh. Grandfather is bent over at the waist, shaking with the intensity of his laughs. I suppose when you haven’t even so much as smiled for decades, it’s a relief to let all of the tension out. Tears start to form in his eyes. They mix with the rain and then fall into the ocean, salt lost in salt. This image of my Grandfather crying triggers a memory from my childhood. I was about five years old and my younger sister had broken my toy dump truck, chewed the top right off. Naturally, I threw a tantrum but my grandfather pulled me aside and wiped away my tears. He didn’t say anything, just pulled a scrap piece of timber from his pocket. He worked at the lumberyard so he was always fiddling with a knife and the scraps he had picked up at work. He showed me how to scrape the wood so that the edges were smooth but textured. Slowly, the wood began to resemble a new bin that we attached onto the broken toy. That was the last day I saw him before Grandmother died. He didn’t come around much after that. “Grandfather, do you like this bench particularly?” I ask, motioning to the rotting piece of wood in front of us. “No, not particularly. What do you want with my bench?” He inquires, straightening up, wiping his face. “Do you have a pocket knife?” I already know the answer. He looks at me inquisitively but reaches into his pocket and hands me the knife. I grab the bench on one side, searching for a weak spot in the wood. It isn’t very hard because of how rotted and moldy it is. I bring my boot down upon it at the same time I pull up with my hands. Snap! The wood splinters and I wiggle and twist it until the other side cracks off of the boat as well. I sit down at the bottom of the boat and start to scrape barnacles and maggots and lichen off into the ocean. I split the wood in half, taking my pocket knife to smooth out the edges. I chip away at one side of the wood until it resembles a crude, large, spoon. A paddle. I do the same to the other piece of wood. All the while, Grandfather watches me with curiosity. I hand him his paddle and he grunts. “Didn’t know you still remembered,” he says softly. “Of course I do. I remember everything you taught me when I was younger. The whittling, the fishing, even the hunting, although I didn’t particularly enjoy that.” “You always were squeamish.” We both laugh and then sit in silence for a bit. Grandfather clears his throat before he speaks. “Well, you lead the way. Yeah, dip your paddle in just like that.” We match a rhythm and the silence between us is no longer uncomfortable or tense. It’s peaceful. Soon, the clouds begin to break. I look back at Grandfather and smile. He grins back at me and above us, the sun begins to shine. GRADES 7-9 GENERAL FICTION SECOND PLACE: NOMADS BY ELIZABETH BLACKSHIRE “Do you believe in second chances?” My sibling’s quiet voice drawls softly in my ear. We cradle each other under the cold plastic tarp, holding our youngest brother in our arms.

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