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Ed works at a typical bakery in a typical hispanic neighborhood. All he does is run the cash register. He's eighteen, college was approaching soon, and he needed to earn and save up as much money as possible. His parents would help him out with the tuition and he did get some scholarships but Ed wanted to earn a little more money. Just in case.
"Disculpe, adonde esta el baño?" 
"I'm sorry. What did you say?"
"El baño. Adonde esta el baño?"
"Oh! Okay, yeah I don't speak Spanish but I'll fetch someone who does. Excuse me." He quickly runs into the kitchen looking for Carlos.
"Carlos? Carlos? There's some old lady out there that doesn't speak english. Go help me out, yeah?"
When Carlos doesn't respond Ed concludes he must be in the bathroom or something. He goes back outside where the old-lady waits impatiently.
"I'm sorry. I'm waiting for Carlos, he can- Oh look there he is!"
Carlos walks in from the kitchen with flour all over his apron and face. His parents immigrated from Mexico when he was young, so of course he speaks Spanish fluently.
"Hi. Hola señora como le puedo ayudar?" Carlos says as he pulls Ed back from the counter.
The Spanish continues and Ed just stands there feeling like an idiot. He took Spanish in elementary school but it never really quite stuck with him. He regrets not taking Spanish again in high school because it seem as though he's going to need it a lot in the future.
When the old lady walks out of the bathroom she gives Ed a glare and says "El nopal en la frente y le da pena hablar la lengua de su raiz" Ed just smiles back at her.
"What did she say?"
"Err. It's kinda offensive. She said 'The cactus on his forehead and he's ashamed to speak his native tongue.' Basically you're ashamed of being Mexican."
"Oh." Ed says. A horrible feeling starts to creep up on Ed.
"I mean she has a point. You're Mexican-American. Spanish should be you're first language and you should always go around helping those who don't speak English. Did your parents never speak to you in Spanish?"
"No. They don't speak Spanish."
"What kind of Mexicans are you?" says Carlos as he walks back to the kitchen.
"What do you want for lunch?" yells Ed.
"Some Tamales from the street vendor outside would be nice."
"Wait, those are the wrapped thingie-majigs, right?"
Carlos walk out of the kitchen and glares at Ed.
"Seriously?"
"Is that a yes?"
"Just go," Carlos says as he rolls his eyes.

When Ed gets home he goes straight to his room. He sits on his bed and just stares at the one picture on his wall. It was a family portrait taken when he was just 5 months old. His father stands behind his mother who is holding him. They wear casual clothing and are full of smiles.
"Ed! Come eat dinner! We bought some Chinese food,"  yells his mom.
"Okay!" Ed yells back.
He wishes it was his actual mom yelling at him to eat dinner. It's not that he doesn't love his adopted mother, but it would be nice to hear his biological mother's voice. Hear her yell to him in Spanish to come eat a delicious Mexican dinner. Then listen to his father turn the radio up with some Spanish music. He imagines all this and hopes his parents listen to him when he says "Mom, Dad....I might not speak Spanish or know anything about the Mexican culture but I will make you proud. I'll go to college and will never forget where I came from. I'll always be your son Eduardo."

Waiting outside the E.R

I hide behind the rusty black van and look at her. She’s on her tippy-toes reaching for the sky as if she’s about to hug it. Her eyes are closed. Her shirt is pulled up to cover her mouth and nose. She wears the same old worn-down purple vans; something I never would have noticed underground. She looks almost exactly like she did ten years ago, just a bit taller with a more tired look on her face. After a few seconds she stops hugging the sky and begins to look my way. I stop looking at her and begin my way towards the large boulder that is the entrance to the tunnel. I get there in fifteen long steps. I go around where another boulder leans against the bigger boulder. I lift it, revealing the tunnel, and begin to climb down. It’s about twenty feet deep. When I get to the bottom I sprint towards my family’s division. Our family division is our home. It literally is just a small square area with black bed sheets that work as walls. In it fits just three people, which is a crowd. I’ve been living in this underground haven for years ever since they lied to us when they said they had space for the middle class in the other safe haven. I know my way around the underground haven like the back of my hand.

When I get there I push the bedsheet aside quickly lay down next to my younger brother who’s merely ten years old. He’s tall for his age and ridiculously skinny; not because there isn’t enough food in the world. In fact there’s more than enough food. The problem is that the food that was once deemed healthy quickly became a health hazard due to all the strange chemicals the ingredients were exposed to in order for the ingredients to become cheap and abundant. The little healthy food left went to the lucky ones. The ones who made it into the other world. Bad news happens when we humans want more for less. I lay wide awake waiting to hear her running across my division to her own division.

An hour passes by and no footsteps have been heard. I start to get worry. Did she wander off somewhere else? Did she get lost? No, that’s a ridiculous thought. She knows this place just as well as I do. Should I go look for her?

I start to get up when I hear a sigh.

“Where are you going?” ask my younger brother.

“Nowhere. Now go to sleep,” I reply.

“How can you be going nowhere? Take me with you,” he says. He’s fully awake.

“No, you know it’s dangerous to go aboveground.”

“You were planning to go aboveground!?”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t tell anyone and go to sleep!”

I probably shouldn’t have mentioned where I was going, especially since going aboveground is incredibly dangerous. I push him down and lay a blanket on him. I can’t see I a thing but I can sense him closing his eyes and preparing to go to sleep. I don’t put my shoes on to avoid making noise. I run and as I get near the tunnel exit I hear coughing.

She’s leaning against the rungs of the ladder, her head down, hand over her mouth stained red, and her eyes closed. I’m paralyzed and can’t think. She looks up with her eyes wide opened. She tries to stand tall but she can’t. She’s weak. How can she go from being so alive and free to weak and fragile? I step closer and offer my hand.

“No, I don’t want to spread whatever sickness I have to you,” she croaks.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve been outside just as long as you have.”

She shakes her hand and begins to walk with her hand against the wall for support. A few steps forward and she falls to the ground.

I run to her and help her up. I put her arm over my shoulder and begin to run dragging her along. I take her to my division.

“Mom. MOM! Get the first aid kit!”

“What? What’s going on? Who is this?”

“Doesn’t matter she needs help!”

My younger brother lights a candle and my mother digs up the first aid kit that we hide with our few belongings. First aid kits are scarce so we have to hide ours to avoid it being stolen.

“A girl? This won’t do. Go outside and wait with your brother.”

“Outside? As in...outside?” ask my brother with a glint of excitement in his eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Now go. We might be in a tight space here but it doesn’t mean we have to abandon the idea of privacy. Where did she come from that she’s coughing blood?”

“Outside,” I respond. I receive a glare from my mother that means I just earned myself a good scolding.

We wait outside our division. The movements of the shadows inside the division make me nervous. I hear more coughing and my mother’s soothing voice. Moments later all the rustling stops. My mother comes outside and joins my brother and I without saying a word. I fall asleep without requesting an answer.

*SHORT STORY TO BE NAMED #1

“One, two, THREE!”, her conscience yells. On three she jumps in the air and begins to flip backwards in a straight position. Two milliseconds later she assumes she hit a vertical body position in the air and so she begins to twist. Full twisting layouts are scary and the only place she'd ever do it is on a trampoline. She twisted a bit too early so her landing was a little off; but it’s okay because at least she’s still alive. She starts to cough and she realizes that must be a cue that it’s time to go in. She sighs, pulls up her shirt to cover her mouth and nose, and begins to climb out of her trampoline. She steps into her brand-new purple Vans.  It’s dark out and a plane is flying across the purple sky filled with gray smoke.  Planes to the young teenage girl are a real interesting thing. Planes are a reminder that there always is a place to escape the stressful city, whether it's another country or a completely different world. She stretches her arms out and goes on her tippy-toes as if she’s about to hug the sky. She starts to imagine stars in the sky, the kind of stars she sees in paintings and imagines when she reads books.The sky rejects her hug and so she walks away into her home, oblivious to the fact she stepped on several cockroaches and other insects that no one knows the names to.
Walking into the kitchen she begins to smell instant noodles cooking in the microwave and hears flies being swatted somewhere in the living room. Her mom is sitting on the table with her laptop watching the news next to the plastic tree that gives off a Wifi signal. Her mom hates laptops because they're bulky. But because she accidently dropped her VT500 Instant Update tablet a while ago (and broke it comepletely) she has to go back to using an old-style laptop. She looks up to see her daughter.

“Tired yet?” she asks.

“A bit. There’s a cockroach on your shoulder,” responds the girl. The mother sighs and calmly flicks off the cockroach. It lands on the table.

“That’s cute. It looks like a baby cockroach”, she says as she closes her laptop and inserts it in a purple silicone laptop sleeve.  Without a moments hesitation the mother slams her laptop on the table, instantly killing the cockroach.

“Did you know they might have found a place for us?” says the mother. She grabs the cockroach and tosses it in the trash.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh! You know! This is all we talk about nowadays. This world no longer is a suitable place to live in and luckily space travel and accommodation has become a possibility! Water from Europa, oxygen from some planet that will be delivered from some sort of machine, and food made simply out of lab. It’ll be cheap and abundant!” She smiles and starts to open up her laptop.

“Mom, did we actually try and save the Earth? I mean, were we truly not aware of the patch of garbage the size of Texas in the ocean until last year? And how could we not have noticed all these animals going extinct before the cockroach infestation? And the asthma rates going up due to air pollution. Did we actually not know? Or did we turn a blind eye?”

“Sweetheart we did everything we could have done to save the Earth,” the mother says as she slides over her laptop to show the girl the new spaceship built for the middle-class to live in space.

“That’s what they wants us to think,” the girl whispers under her breath.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. Sooner or later we’ll be on our way to a more sustainable place. A new world we can call our own.”

“Are you sure we’re not just going around destroying life carelessly for our convenience?”

“Well, I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do. Hey look! What a gorgeous plane! It has purple headlights! Move the Wifi tree will you? It’s about to cover up the view.”

Wifi trees are nothing like the trees the girl sees in old movies and pictures. The leaves are made out of lime green plastic and the thin trunk is made of marooned-colored aluminum.Some sort of thing inside the tree gives off the Wifi signal. It stands at about five feet just to give it a sort of realistic look. The girl walks over to the tree and pushes it about a foot to the right. She thinks about what her mother said and tries to make sense of it. Afterwards she walks to the living room where her father is swatting flies.

“Stupid flies!” He smacks his hands across the wall killing two flies at once. The fly swatter lays at the ground broken in half.

"Haha! That's two!

“What did they ever do to you?” whispers the girl underneath her breath.

"Is that 6 on the floor? Add 2 to that and that's a total of 7! Honey! I just killed seven flies in less than 5 minutes!" her father yells.

" Eight," says the girl with a sigh.

3+4=6

“3+4 equals 6,” says my teacher. She wrinkles her nose to push her glasses up unto the bridge of her nose... gosh that annoys me. Staying after school and seeing her do it a couple more hundred times infuriates me! “Yes? Do you get it now?” she says with a glare. No! No I don’t get it! I don’t understand! Well, actually, I see why she might believe that three plus four is six but it doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t see the logic. Why can’t three plus four equal seven instead? Why do we start counting on the number that our finger is placed on and not on the preceding number? Who made all these rules up? I hate first grade! “You still look awfully confused, are you confused?” she says. I give her a glare that can stabbed an eye out. She doesn’t notice. Instead she takes out her VT500 (Virtual teacher version 500) from her purse under the table. The VT500 is small, portable, and shaped like those ancient tablets, it also has made a teacher’s job effortless. No that’s an understatement. The VT500 has become every student’s teacher, so in reality there is no need for human teachers. The VT500 starts playing a video explaining why four plus three equals six. Once the video ended my “teacher”, while wrinkling her nose, asks once again if I understand. She should worry about getting new glasses instead. There’s no point trying to convince me about something that I don’t believe is true. I didn’t feel like staying in that classroom another minute so I lie and say I completely get it. I stand up from the chair I was sitting in across from my teacher and start to walk away.

I go home and experiment with counting using jellybeans I found on the kitchen table. I go to my room and spill the bag of jellybeans all over my bed. After putting a few in my mouth I grab two red jellybeans and four blue jellybeans. I mix them together and count. Six. Four plus two equals six. I remove one jellybean. Five. Five is the sum of three and two. I jump off my bed and decide to pay my mom a visit in her room. As I walk in the VT Kitchen Experience automatically pauses the video it was playing on how to make healthy food choices when buying microwave food. My mom turns around and I ask her what two plus four is. “Two plus four? Woah, I haven’t done addition in a long time but I believe two plus four is five. Am I right? Let’s check my answer using a calculator.” I sigh and walk out just as my mom pulls her sleeve up to use the calculator that is on her phone watch. It’s disappointing having to rely on technology so much.

Everyone believes that four plus two equals five. But no one understands or questions why. If no one understands and questions why then... does he/she who questions why have an advantage over society? Is what I know to be true actually be false? It's a scary question, but it's definitely a possibility. A society that is wrong on something as simple as counting is bound to make enormous mistakes when it comes to bigger issues. If ever I wish to manipulate society I know it will be incredibly easy with no limit to what I can do, which is why this counting mistake will be my secret. I may be small but I have big ideas.

Principles to keep

Principles have never been something I have really thought about.  The only thing my parents have ever repeatedly told me, to make sure I never forget, is to remember where I come from. But that's not a principle that really has impacted me as much. That doesn't mean I don't think it's important. It's very important, but then again, if we go far back enough, don't we all come from the same place?  I, instead, like to, as Dory from Finding Nemo put it, "just keep swimming". "Just keep swimming" is basically another way of saying "go with the flow" and "don't give up". As much as we may roll our eyes when we hear this being told to us, it's really something that I repeatively tell myself and it's become a principle that I hold. It applies to everything. School, gymnastics, and that 8k that I recently ran (I REALLY hate running by the way). Everyone has reached a breaking point once and that's when we all need that little voice in our head that pushes us to keep going by saying "Don't give up". "Keep trying" is also something that's important. It's hard to imagine a world where everyone stops trying after the first failed attempt. Where would we be? Nowhere.

(I hate swimming too by the way. Oh, the irony. I admire you swimmers though. I would never be able to swim across a pool five billion times. That is why I am a gymnast.)

d(^.^)b

I am Thankful for ...

I am thankful for the peers that surround me in my wonderful seat. Sofia, Rosalina, Elizaberth, Imani, Amanda, Jennifer, Bing, Jonathan, and both Stephanie L. and Ashley C. who aren't in this class but I just need to mention them! They are super amazing and I would be totally lost in class if it wasn't without them. Especially Sofia! I have multiple classes with Sofia and I hope to experience more ridiculous moments with her! Elizaberth and I had almost identical schedules last year and we've had those ridiculous moments as well. Even though Jesse mocks me for being super forgetful and irresponsible at times he has been super helpful and it's thanks to him I'm surviving Mandarin! Amanda, even though we don't know each other too well, you are hilarious and I hope we get to know each other better. Jennifer! I enjoy reading you're works and I hope we get to know each other even more throughout this year as well! I give thanks to all my peers that are helping me survive my high school years! You guys are amazing! Oh and thank you to all my teachers for just being both patient and awesome with me! Happy Thanksgiving!

Edgar Allan Poe

The first thing I question when I read a work of Edgar Allan Poe is what inspired him to create such stories full of supernatural components and ideas that go against society norms. Reading his biography I get a clue. At first I suspected that his military life might have been the main component to such dark stories, but then, upon reading that Poe's life is filled with sorrow, death of loved ones, and neglection, I realize that maybe it's not so much his military experience but his life that's filled with with ups and downs (mostly downs though). Poe lost his parents when he was just three and was taken to a rich tobacco man who neglected Poe in an indirect and strange way. He sent Poe to college with almost no money causing him to go into a major debt. He remarried without telling Poe and ,when the time of his death came, left Poe out of his will. To go along with such neglection Poe also lost his wife, step-mother, and brother. The depression that came with such tragic events can be seen in most, if not all, of  his work; such as the story of Ligeia. Ligeia is a story of a man deeply in love with a woman who later dies causing him to be depressed. He then moves and finds another woman, whom he doesn't feel as strongly about as Ligeia. This story strongly correlates with his own life when his first wife dies.
On a different note, is it just me or is there a sense of insanity in every work of Poe? It's rather inevitable for Poe to not become a bit insane. The amount of depression that must have accumulated over the years of such unfortunate events must have led Poe to experience some sort of insanity. Just a random thought to think about. :)