The Winners
Romance 2024
Category 11-13
The Echo of Us
I never thought it would happen to me. I always figured that if it happened to my friends, I’d support them. Why wouldn’t I? As I get ready to go out, I can feel something changing inside of me. Like a shard of ice is melting away in my heart.
I step out of my room and into the kitchen, catching my reflection in the window. I gaze at my braided hair, a beautiful ash brown shade, contrasting with my electric blue eyes and freckled face. A year ago, I never would’ve walked around showing my face, preferring to cover myself and hide behind baggy clothes and floppy hats. I hid myself because people would make fun of my freckles. Now, I purposely French braided my hair behind me letting the light shine on my bare face. Now, I wear jeans with hearts on them and a tight purple tank top. I enter the kitchen and find my brother sitting at the counter. My brother goes, “Hey Blair, where are you going so dressed up?” “Shut up Adrian.” I grumble already irritated. “Aw, come on, I’ve never seen you dressed up like that, you usually wear baggy, dark clothes” he snickers, walking out of the kitchen. “Don’t let him get to you honey. I think you look wonderful.” I turn as my mother walks to the fridge. “Thanks Mama, I’m happy you like it.”
Fifteen minutes later, I walk onto the school football field and look around trying to tell what's what, until I see Ryan standing over at one of the goals, holding a ball. I wave and walk over, feeling a summer breeze tickle my cheeks, “Ready?” Ryan asks, grinning slyly. “Ready” I grin back.
See, Ryan thinks that I’ve never played football and was offended when I said so, forcing me to come here to school on a Saturday evening to learn. I’m great at playing, but honestly, I just want us to spend some time together. Ryan passes me the ball and tells me to try scoring, carefully explaining how to properly kick the ball. I smile mischievously and score a goal, making it hit the two posts and enter the net.
I turn and gracefully curtsy saying, “Oh yeah, I got called for the Vancouver female under sixteen national team. I’m an ace at football.” Laughing, Ryan tackles me to the ground, as if wanting revenge. We scuffle on the floor for a minute and end up panting, facing each other lying on our sides. I find myself looking into her sage green eyes, tucking her thick black hair behind her ears, uncovering the vitiligo that spans her right eye, bright against her warm beige skin. “What are you doing?” she whispers, “This” I breathe, leaning forward to press my lips on hers. I hear her gasp, scared she’ll run away, until she kisses me back harder. Suddenly, the piece of ice in my heart breaks and for the first time ever, I feel free.
Author: Clea Mia Tabet
Category 14-18
Dual observing
She is staring weirdly at me. Again.
Why at me?
Why not at the teacher trying her best to teach? Or at the laptop splayed open in front of the girl, brightly presenting a blank Word document. Maybe that’s why she isn’t trying to type down anything that the teacher is saying, the screen is too bright for comfortable use.
Frowning, I open the email app of my own laptop. The Word document on which I was jotting down notes is covered by the email prompt. While still listening to the teacher rambling, I start writing a short email. Something brief, to both not miss too much of the lesson, and to also not force the girl staring at me to look at her way too bright screen for far too long.
In a few minutes of fast typing, the following email is created:
“Bianca,
Your screen is too bright. If you want, I can help you make it less hurtful to use, after classes.
From Vasile”
Extremely informal, but I wasn’t going to waste time making it more formal. To be honest, I would have used a messaging app, if I had Bianca’s contacts in any of the messaging apps I use. Only way I can contact her digitally is through the automated email system of the school, that shows each person’s school email if you type it. Bianca’s peripheral vision is bothered by a bright red notification pop-up appearing on the mostly white screen of her laptop. This pop-up gets her attention.
It doesn’t take long for a similar, but far less bright, notification pop-up to appear on my own screen. Making me switch between applications again.
“Sure.”
She didn’t even bother using the standard email format. Whatever, it was a very informal conversation.
I just hope adjusting the brightness of her computer will be the only thing on my scheduleafter classes.
****
“And there.” I tell Bianca, after taking my hands off her laptop. “Now your screen is killing your eyes way more slowly.”
“That is…An interesting way to put it.” The girl responded, her voice barely audible.
“Well, that is exactly what it was doing to your eyes.” I reply, while leaning back on my chair. Through years of constant practice, I can stay still while balancing myself on only the hind legs of a chair. Bianca seems really interested about this. “I’ll never understand how you could stare at that thing for more than five minutes without looking away: I sure couldn’t.”
“I guess…I just got used to it.” She replies.
I stand up. “Well, we have a crap ton of homework, so I’m taking my leave.” I then announce, informing her of the mountain of homework five consecutive teachers had built onto our workload, considering that she didn’t appear to be paying attention during classes today..
“We have homework…?” She asks, as I go get my things. “W-wait, that’s not important right now!” She then shouts, surprising me: Bianca usually speaks at a low volume.
“What do you mean-“ I start asking, while facing her, but she interrupts me:
“I love you!” She shouts, then covers her mouth with both of her hands. Shocked at the confession she just made.
“Wha-“ I’m just as shocked. Ok, maybe even more so. Then, realisations flood my mind.
Staring at me for hours. Sitting next to me whenever the opportunity arose. Vasile, you idiot-
“No no no-“ Bianca continues before I can say anything. “I mean, I wanted to say that, b-but, I had an entire speech prepared-“
We then both, just…Stand there in silence. Bianca mentally fretting over the words she has not said, while I try to regain my bearing.
“Ok.” I say, once somewhat of a bearing has returned to my mind. “You can still do your speech, even if you got the order wrong.”
“R-right, so, erm-” She takes my proposal at face value, despite stumbling to form a reply. “I like how, you, like, somehow manage to be cool, despite being, erm, w-weird…Yeah…”
I’m weird…? Yeah, I guess so. There is no neurotypical explanation for some of my actions and thoughts.
“Which for, f-for, for-” Bianca stumbles for a bit. “For m-me, a weird girl!” She then gains bravado. Good for her, for both gaining bravado and being open about her weirdness. “Is an inspi, inspi-”
“Inspiration.” I help her say the word she’s struggling with.
“Exactly! You’re that to me! And I hope to be like you, someday!” Bianca confesses, shocking me once again. Someone wishes to be more like me??
Bianca stops talking, her que that the speech has ended. “Wow.” I react to it. “Well…I’ve always planned on dating the first girl that approaches me, so…Sure.”
Her jaws drop wide open. “Just like that?!?”
Yeah.
Just like that
Author: Lupașcu Ștefan Andrei
The Beholder
Category 19-26
I live a fragile emptiness, these days. Memories seep through the cracks of my feeble façade, and the hollowness inside me fills itself with tears I am powerless to stop. I look unto the world like through thick glass, listen to it like through wads of cotton in my ears. When it rains, the droplets land on me and I let them; when the wind is blowing, I sway with the trees. How do you live with a constant vacancy accompanying you everywhere? How do you stop loving someone when it feels like all you are is that love? My lips don’t remember the shape of my smile – only hers, when she’d press it against me. My eyes don’t remember a time where they didn’t see her everywhere: the flowers on the kitchen counter, the scarf on the backrest of the chair, the apple tree outside. The sound that fills these rooms isn’t my breathing, or my steps as I walk through the emptiness – it’s her laugh. But it’s an unbearable paradox: her presence and her absence, my love and her death. I have spent all my life within her world, and I don’t know where I am now. I don’t recognise these walls when they aren’t a background to her. Reality is torn between what was and what isn’t anymore, and I live in both. I live in neither. I am struggling for air, I am embraced by a terrible cold, I am drowning. I cannot choose the present when my anchor is in the past. Its iron hooks clawing for purchase as I am moved forward unrelentingly by time, leaving a gaping line of red hot pain across my soul every inch it moves. Uprooting everything. I attempt to pull myself free of time’s grasp, to go back to it, to stop this laceration: I go to hear her words again, even if only through a letter.
My darling, I miss you so very much here. I know I haven’t been gone long, but every moment spent apart from you feels like a moment I am missing the opportunity to tell you that I love you. I’ll make up for a couple of times here: I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. More than anyone can ever fathom, more than any love story has ever been able to tell, more every second than the last. I swear I will kiss you so hard once I get home, you have no idea. I will kiss you like waves crashing onto the cliffside. And then, when I have taken away your breath, I will kiss you like a flower blossoming in Spring. Remember to water the flowers while I’m gone, or I’ll be mad at you. For more than five minutes this time, I promise. Appreciate our garden, tend to our apple tree. When I’m gone, I want you to remember me with a rose in your hand, with the stars in your eyes, with the sun on your skin. And know: that’s what loving you feels like to me. I hope that loving me feels similarly, so that you may love me even when I’m not there. I love you more than these words say – the task of expressing something so grand is too ambitious a feat for a mere letter by my hand. Even in a thousand words I couldn’t show my love in its full glory, but who would I be if I didn’t try, again and again?
Sincerely and forever yours,
Silvia
Her voice. Her hand holding the pen and writing down these beautiful thoughts. Her hair falling into her face as she writes. All gone. I hold the letter close to my heart, but its ink doesn’t warm me like her arms would. What stays is the flowers, her scarf, our apple tree. Spring – how dare it be Spring without her? Angry steps bring me out back, into our garden. My hand pushes open the door with thunderous force and then, finally, my feet reach the soft grass outside. I don’t know what I wanted to achieve. Did I want to yell at the plants, at the ground, at the sky, for being there when she’s not? For being beautiful? I thought the world was supposed to go grey when your soulmate is dead. Why is it still all so beautiful? I want to yell, but I don’t. My body shakes with a silent sob instead. Tears paint my cheeks, a landscape of pain – hot rivers on my face. Without noticing it, I have fallen to my knees. The sun on my skin, a whole different kind of warmth. Gentle in committing the violence of shining on me and not her. Of being there to caress my face in her stead. Her words echo in my mind, a strange mixture of her voice and mine. Stars in my eyes, a rose in my hand... I’ll love her forever. But she is beauty. I expected the world to be ugly, hideous, without her – like it was before I met her. But she taught me to see every small miracle, and I can’t unteach myself that. I will always watch the way the sunrays turn the leaves a lighter green as they shine through; the way butterflies fill the air with colour in Summer; the way grass can be so soft to lie on, the way the earth can be so warm; the way lightning dances from one cloud to the next, the most ephemeral spectacle; the way the stars and the moon hang immobile, suspended in the dark, witnesses of every solitude. She pried me open so the sun would touch my heart, and closing myself is an impossibility. I have tried, tried so hard to withstand the beauty, to hide from it in her absence; I only wanted to remember the beauty of her presence. But I can’t help it – she is beauty. I cannot love her without also loving this world.
Author: Tamara Beck
Next Competition
