Isabella Nogueira, Senior at Lucy Beckham High School

Teacher Brooke Casperson

Perseverance and Evolution

My life has been a never-ending lesson of perseverance. I was almost 10. I hadn't lost all my baby teeth yet; I had just bobbed my brown hair right under my ears. Then my mom made the decision to move her, me, and my sister away from my hometown, friends, my father, and my childhood home. We only lived two hours away, but for me, we had crossed mountains and oceans to get to my new home. This was the catalyst, the start of my journey. I felt like my world was ending, which was a feeling I’d get a lot more comfortable with going forward.  

I gave up on school; the concept of homework was lost to my poor memory. My mom was too busy keeping a roof over our heads to notice me struggling with my, at the time, undiagnosed ADHD and its side effects. Being twelve and dealing with chronic depression and anxiety plus being in middle school figuring out who I was, wasn't fun. 

Covid hit at the end of my 8th grade year. But my life changed when I was a freshman. I fell into a nearly inescapable depression towards the end of 2020. Everything accumulated on a night 5 days before my 15th birthday, but first, I need to introduce Charlie. 

For years, my little sister, Gabby, begged for a kitten. We had a cat, but she was always outside, and Gabby wanted a kitten of her own. So, we got Charlie for Gabby’s 11th birthday. He is the most incredible cat I’ve ever had. His little smile, his love for cuddles, and his heart full of love brought new life to our family. But I was still trapped. That night in December, I felt like a failure. I wasn’t good enough, I was too weird, annoying, untalented, and worthless. My brain was broken. Every single time I tried climbing out of the void I was in; some new darkness would pull me down. Clouds of negativity swirled around in my mind as I reached for a pill bottle, crying, but I shook the bottle a little too loudly. I heard a gentle mew and turned to see I had woken Charlie up. Just seeing me made him so happy, his purrs traveled across the room and punctured my weak little heart. I paused, looked at the bottle, looked back at him, his purrs increasing in volume. I looked at the bottle again, my eyes swelling with tears, and I put the bottle back. I curled up to him, his sweet purrs, like a lullaby, soothed my mind long enough to put me to sleep. 

February 18, 2021, I woke up in a great mood, went to school unusually cheerful, and was greeted by my best friend surprising me with a little stuffed frog, which made me giddy all day. I think that was the best day of school I ever had. I got home, did a little of the online equivalent of window shopping, and actually got started on my schoolwork. And then the fire alarm went off. I rolled my eyes, thinking my sister triggered it with her mediocre cooking skills, until I saw her and my mom running into my mom’s room. I followed in curiosity and immediately panicked at the sight of my mother's closet spontaneously on fire. 

I ran full speed outside to the apartment's fire extinguisher, waiting for help and for someone to call 911. I handed the extinguisher to my mother. It was dead. I ran back outside. Our neighbor came with his extinguisher to help. I hobbled on the beat-up road, barefoot, to get another one. Our neighbor’s extinguisher was dead too, and by the time I got back, it was too late. My mom’s room was filled with demonic fog, I dashed to grab my bookbag and caught a breath of that soul sucking smoke. I pulled my sister out of our room in a blind panic. She was trying to get Charlie. I screamed for the fire department to save him. I kept rationalizing that he was a cat, he’d be fine, everything would be fine. 

5 years in that apartment, it was a crappy apartment, but my mom spent so much time and money making it home, and now, it was all gone. Charlie was 9 months old. He died hiding under my bed, scared, and alone, and it was all my fault. 

My mind went into autopilot in an effort to protect myself from myself. I had no feeling, but the most basic emotions and reacted completely on impulse. I used to feel like I was consumed by a void, but now I had become it.  

Sophomore year starts and I get quarantined for a whole month, my mom almost dies on Gabby’s birthday and the husk that I had become pushed all of my friends away. But things were looking up. I fell in love with acting and got into our school's first musical. I co-founded our school's colour guard and fell in love with that. Starting my Junior year, I even helped create the Rocketry Club! Most importantly, I broke free from the autopilot. It took two years and a failed relationship, but... I woke up. I’m alive again.  

There’s an important part of my story I saved for last. At about 1:00 in the morning, February 19th, 2021, a litter of kittens were born. After a series of events, which I refuse to believe were coincidences, we ended up adopting two brothers: Bobby and Loki, and my healing journey wouldn’t be what it was if not for them. We recently got a new kitten too, Athena!! 

As much as the fire was destructive it was crucial to my evolution and growth as a person. I’m now a Senior, I’m growing out my now auburn hair, I’m turning in assignments on time, I reconnected with my old friends and I’m healing, finally, after so much pain, I’m healing. 

Acadia Reynolds, Junior at Charleston County School of the Arts

Teacher Danielle Detiberus

Summer Days

From the age of five onwards, my parents sent me off to my grandparents’ house during the summer, to spend a couple weeks exploring the woods and helping my grandpa with his farm. Those days are defined in my memory by my grandmother’s unending attempts to convert me to Christianity. She would read aloud from the bible when I was in the room, and the TV was constantly playing grainy recordings of Tammy Faye Messner—at least until my grandmother, Edith, found out that Tammy supported LGBT rights. Then Ms. Messner was never seen again.  

I was raised atheist by my parents, and my mother had forbidden Edith from taking me to church, but Edith just got around that by sending me to Sunday school.  

The teacher, James, had a strange fascination with Hell. He spent hours describing the tortures that souls underwent there, making funny noises that were meant to replicate the sounds of screams and bones breaking.  

Edith told him about my atheism in a whisper, like it was some dirty secret, with one handheld up to her face, sheltering her words from prying eyes, and the other holding my hand.  

The next Sunday, he called me up to the front of the class, standing at the front of the room with his arms crossed while the five or so other children in the room stared at me.  

Edith never called him by his name, he was just “a man of God.” That’s what he was, for sure, a man of God, with a real sense for justice, so he put his hands on my shoulders and told the class that I was already damned.  

“She’s going to be flayed,” James said, not looking at me.  

He pressed his fingers into my arm, hard enough to hurt. “They’re going to peel her skin like an onion.” 

He pointed straight up. “Right?”  

The class mumbled an affirmative; he wasn’t satisfied with that.  

“Right?” James said, louder, nodding when he got a chorus of agreements. 

He let go of me, pushed me back towards my seat, then clapped his hands together in front of my face. “All your bones crushed just like that.” He said it quietly, just for me. 

I went back to Edith’s house that day and told her that I changed my mind, I believed in God, just so long as I didn’t have to go back. I’d be a good Christian girl, I’d be whatever she wanted me to be.  

I came out to Edith as bisexual when I was fifteen.  

“What?” she peered over her reading glasses. 

“You know,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. “I… play for both teams.” At that point, the Sunday school incident had faded into distant memory, and I was holding onto the faint hope that Edith would take the news well.  

“Come here,” Edith said after a moment, gesturing imperiously at me like a queen at court, confident that she would get her way as she always did.  

She led me into the hallway, then pointed at the carpeted floor. “Get on your knees and pray,” she said, her voice as hard and immutable as it had always been. Edith was not someone who was ever refused.  

“Absolutely not,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I didn’t move.  

“Get down on your knees and pray,” she said again, and it wasn’t a request.  

I got down on my knees and prayed, God rest my soul. Edith covered my eyes with her palms, her skin dry and flaking, our breathing the only sound.  

Last Thanksgiving, my cousins and Edith rented a house by the beach, a hulking thing with chipped blue paint on the ceiling and a porch that sagged towards the ocean. When the food was finished, we all went out to play soccer with a deflated ball that made a noise like a scream whenever we kicked it.  

I could tell that Edith was declining. The cancer that she barely survived, the pneumonia that left her lungs weakened, her weak bones that fracture when she’s hugged too hard, it was all coming back with interest. The shifting of the sand made it too unstable for her to walk on, so she hobbled down the boardwalk that led to the start of the pier with the help of my shoulder and her cane. Edith sat at the end of the wood with a megaphone that she’d stolen from the neighbor and called out rule violations and the winner of each game, smiling along with the rest of us.  

She braided my hair when we got back inside, with a hard-bristled brush that she’d owned for two decades. She detangled it carefully, with patience and some sort of lotion from a tiny red bottle that smelled like pomegranates. Despite the tremors that shook her hands, Edith was gentler than I had ever known her to be. All her energy was spent on staying alive, and she had nothing left to hate me with.  

Christmas Eve was the coldest day of that year, the fountain in front of the church frozen in movement and icicles hanging from the trees. I spent it in church with Edith. I was given a candle to light, and I warmed my hands over the flame while the low hum of a hundred people praying became a litany in the air. The streets were deserted by the time we walked home, and Edith gripped my scorched hand with all the strength that her brittle bones could muster.  

“I’m so glad you’re finally on the path of God,” she said, utterly sincere. “I love you.”  

She had a habit of talking like a priest and meaning every word, with her old-blood Spartanburg accent drawing out her vowels in long lines.  

“Love you too,” I said, and it might have even been true. 

Heaven Damien Sims, Sophomore at Burke High School

Teacher Cassie Keene

Palmetto

I was out of school for a whole month in a facility that surprisingly wasn’t as far as the cops drove me. This facility is called “Palmetto”...



Although my mom made the ‘crazy’ house seem bad, it was actually quite fun and the food was better than her cooking. They also respected my vegan diet and gave me fake eggs and not real ones. They may taste like plastic, but I rather that and not a baby bird…



Enough on eggs, more on the experience.



The first time I got there it looked like a desert, or a plain… But with grass? I did see the city bridge and some houses but they were over the alligator infested waters. Once I got an okay look outside, I got inside this small building and I didn’t really a good look, but I thought it was a prison or dog shelter from the way the plastic panel separated the officer and me with a counter under it. They told me to place my belongings on the tray and so I did. I went into the waiting room which looked a little… Fancy… pane glass windows, white walls, two sorted bathrooms with black doors, marbled flooring and a small cactus plant named Nemo on the table where another teenager sat down drawing…



That's when my name was called even before I sat down.



“Xania Zan?”



I hate when they don’t say my name right… XOLA XAN... That is my name. I sat down in a chair in the small gray room. Honestly I didn’t like the room - the small window, a bookshelf to my right that was off center and no books at all. The floor was covered with a rug. I don’t think it was ACTUALLY yarn. And it was probably this lady’s hopes and dreams. That was all in her room besides that computer every doctor has… She was also rude.



She scoffed at me when I asked, “how many months?” She can’t really get mad, she was pregnant. She told the other person, but got mad when I asked. Oh well.



After she took my picture and literally ‘shooed’ me out of her room with her hands I was back in the clean room where I WANTED to be instead. Then before I could talk to the other girl I was being dragged to the new ‘house’ that I was staying in for two weeks. Once I got inside, I liked it better. It looked a lot like my old room in West Ashley! Brown wooden polished flooring, beige creamy walls, and a random wooden pillar which I didn't have back then but I always wanted one. The eating room was visible and looked the same as the ‘living room’ but it had a tv and crayons, markers too! No pencils though… I was then greeted with a small empty book with “XXan” on it and a little black girl who looked like little O from “Odd Squad.” Honestly, she wasn't a good person before she left but I’ll skip that.



The front desk lady told me we were having broccoli which is my favorite! It's like they knew! Then the girl that was in the same waiting room as me appeared. She really was nice and very stable. She told me how she got here and honestly; I would have slammed my door too if someone broke my phone for forgetting to charge the dang controllers! It's stupid…



I came here ‘cause my stepbrother was nagging me at church. I kept pleading with him to leave me be. I told my stepdad. I told my mom. I EVEN TOLD THE PASTOR AND THE DOG! No one told him to stop, but they told me to move away… I did that… He follows… So, I snapped and cursed out a whole tornado. That's when everyone yelled at me but never told him to stop pestering me… So, I ran across the street, nearly getting hit by a truck, “I don’t care!” is what I said before going to the mental hospital. I had to stay here for a few weeks and surprisingly I wanted to stay.



The food was breathtaking… in the morning: eggs, bacon, pancakes or waffles in the afternoon: Ribs, broccoli, smashed potatoes, and corn. Then at night it was a big treat! I don’t even wanna tell anyone what it was! This didn’t seem like a mental facility! This was a break from humanity!
They even had therapy for everyone including me. It was relaxing, especially with the nice smell of lavender alone in my room.



The frogs chirping and the fireflies I caught outside, eating their leaves and glowing in the glass bottle that looked like an ‘old timey’ honey jar.


I closed my eyes as my wind chime sang outside my window next to everyone else’s.