After much anticipation, we are extremely proud to present the top three fiction placers in our Hypertext High School Writers Contest! Below you will find an excerpt of each piece and a link to the full publication on Hypernova Lit, our sister site publishing the work of teenagers. Enjoy these stunning works. We feel so lucky to have the chance to cast light on such talented young authors.
First Place: Vanilla Summer by Shannon Sommers
Paige’s heart beats under the Hamptons sky like trembling hands against a wooden table. She remembers this feeling during the year, when something makes her chest seize up and she digs her nails into her palms. She thinks about how the sun wraps around her, enthralls her, warm over her ribcage like the unspooling of molasses. She tells herself that this is the only reason she stays best friends with Marley: for the summers, going out east from the city in the first week of August.
Paige remembers them there when they were little, how they giggled the entire way out, the trip feeling infinitely shorter than it was, like time was not consistent but slowed down when they wanted it to. They first started taking the yearly trips in the second grade. They sat poolside and talked in between splashes about life at home, everything seeming more transparent from a distance. If Marley hated someone, she spilled gossip over the smell of chlorine, and Paige swore that she felt the same way. The two of them were linked together, in summer and in feeling, swimming on years of history with the promise of more to come.
Second Place: It’s All in the Family by Emily Yin
Lucy inhaled and forgot to exhale. Lucy carried words in her mouth, stillborn, and never noticed the blood. Lucy watched people leave in trains and coffins. Lucy never knew what she was mourning. She grew up in a world where children and undertakers were on a first-name basis, where memorial events drew larger crowds than birthday parties, and came to inherit its loss.
When Lucy was six, her brother found Auntie Sue hanging from a rope in the attic. Usually Jude never said anything besides ‘shut up’ and ‘go away’, but that day his voice was swollen with grief. Lucy asked what was wrong.
“She hanged herself, honey.” Vera attempted stoicism but couldn’t quite keep her lips from quivering.
“Mom,” Jude broke in, “keep it PG for Lucy.”
Vera shook her head sadly. “We can’t hide the facts of life from her anymore.”
Third Place: Five Feet from the Door by Dahlia Marcia
There was a little house in the middle of nowhere. It was two stories high and made of lovely red bricks with white shutters. Surrounding the house were fields of golden wheat and wild flowers. In front of the house was a packed dirt road that went on and on until it disappeared into the horizon.
A girl lives in this house. Her name is Holly. Holly loves her house. She also loves the glowing sun, and the wind that sways the wheat in the fields. But Holly loves her house more when her brother Andrew comes home. Holly has never left her house. She stares out the window, wondering what a cool breeze feels like, what the birds sound like, if moonlight feels the same as sunlight, and how dirt feels against bare feet.
Holly knows what flowers smell like, but she longs to pull them out of the ground herself, not wait until Andrew comes and brings them inside for her.