Journey
I sat down on the ragged floor, each individual carpet fiber seemingly prickling my skin with every movement. There I waited for a few minutes until everyone else had settled in around me. Eventually, the room softened, and the only sounds that echoed about the room were that of a book opening, pages turning, and eventually, a voice began. Every word hung in the air, a constant lullaby that sang a story. I looked around and every other child had their eyes affixed to the ground; seemingly inattentive, but truthfully, all of us imagined a story behind those simple words. All the books I’d known before were grammar workbooks or boring, education-based school stories. But to hear my 5th-grade teacher Mrs. McDowell narrate The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau, 2003) introduced me to a field of books I had not yet known existed. I realized that the current set of school-based books I knew completely omit or watered down the captivating adventures that did interest me. That beyond our bland textbooks sat an entirely undiscovered world to me.
Months later I found myself staring at the walls of our elementary school. They were dotted in decorative streamers and ribbons dyed bright red. Numerous signs and posters across the school all pointed towards the library, for it was the return of the Scholastic Book Fair. The few days it was to remain open, and the grandeur of coming only once a year gave it a sense of novelty that, regardless of one’s interest in books, turned the library into the central hub of the school. Every year I had ignored the book fair aside from the spectacle that came from the physical transformation of what we regularly knew as a bustling array of different colors. However, that year something changed. Walking among the shelves I scanned each title, read each summary, all with a singular goal in mind, to satiate my newfound interest in books. I oddly felt at peace sifting through each different title with the constant white noise of people talking and moving out and about in the background. I was deeply rooted in the history behind WW2 as I was fascinated by the scale of it, and the sense of brutal reality that came with every movie, game, and other forms of media surrounding it. Naturally, as I examined the aisles in front of me, my eyes fell upon one title: Prisoner B-3087 (Alan Gratz, 2013).
Around this time I was just getting into music as well. I could only enjoy instrumentals as I found lyrical songs to be flavorless and distracting. Despite this, one evening at home I was seated at my desk bored out of mind. I mindlessly browsed the internet on the family laptop and in time, landed on YouTube where there was one thing that stood out among the sea of randomness that was the front page: “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons. Slow, deliberate shots panned out over the barren wasteland; each changing, individual pixel converging with the lyrics that struck pride within myself. As I listened I could not help but fall in love with the song. Though I didn’t know it then, that song was my gateway into lyrical music; this was the first song of what later would become three thousand. For each song after, I sat contemplating the lyrics, but absorbing the meaning; knowing that these lyrics could describe my mood and express my feelings, and for when they couldn’t in words, the sounds could.
The following summer I took to the public library. It was the first time I had been there in ages, as the only times I’d been there before was when my dad needed to pick up or drop off a book. This time, however, I had walked in through those doors with purpose, and a sense of reinvigoration towards books. Piloting myself towards the historical fiction section, every breath I inhaled had lingerings of earthy grain and with every step I took, I felt more at peace. The crisp aroma of inked pages seeped out of every book I ruffled through. Still not satisfied, I went to the young adult section where I scanned hundreds of titles, all arranged on foreboding shelves almost twice my height. My hand reached out and ran across the weathered spines of all shelved books until I found The Child Thief (Dan Smith, 2012). It was the first book I’d ever gotten outside of a school setting and my love for reading blossomed. Not only did the books’ morbid reality and gruesome depiction of war set my favored genre in stone, this also marked the first of many visits to the library.
My first-period class in 10th grade was marked by AP World History. The lectures were boring and I nodded off so many times that whenever I regained consciousness and looked up, the teacher’s eyes, without fail, always met mine. Despite its tiresome nature, I still found enjoyment in the overall historical-based concept of the class and when our teacher announced our final project would be a scripted, historical fiction group video about a general era in history, I was ecstatic. Someone suggested doing the role of female scientists and how despite gender expectations of women at the time, they had a consistent trend of publishing groundbreaking research (proving their stake in the male-dominated scientific world). Seeing as we had no other ideas at the time, we all went along with it. Our spin on it would be all major scientists ranging from Isaac Newton to Niels Bohr (all living in the same timeline) with Marie Curie being bullied by all the other scientists. However, she would still end up prevailing in the end anyway — a classic underdog story. Except there was one glaring problem: no one in our group was female and no one wanted to play the role of Marie Curie. I was, against my will, made to play Marie Curie. Seeing this, I wanted to make it as fun as possible and opted to make a diss track against the other scientists. For the first time, I was writing something that was more than just a simple text assignment. I was writing lyrics to a song, fusing scientific accomplishments with inflammatory remarks.
Diss track
A year later I found myself in my English class sitting at a desk desecrated with pencil drawings. We were required to create a comic of a chapter from The Book Thief and after, analyze the events and their overall meanings. A portion of the grade was dependent on our creativity — both for the comic and essay — but I sank in my chair knowing I didn't have the creativity that this project required. But under forced motivation of acquiring the grade, and the inherent advantage I had from already having read The Book Thief a few years prior, I began work. Night after night I toiled at my desk storyboarding, drafting, and coloring. The side of my palm was stained by the lead of my pencil, every stroke smearing more gray debris across the page. The different colors seemingly laminated my hand and eraser shavings scattered across my lap. The comic, finally, was completed. Now, forever etched into that paper is a chapter of Liesel Meminger’s life, but also imprinted, one of mine.
A year later I was planted behind a computer screen. My eyes were glazed over and the only semblance of consciousness I had was occasionally nodding along to the words said by my English teacher. “For next week’s essay…,” he said. I perked up, fully alert. Everyone else was visibly groaning in their cameras. In my classes before I dreaded that word as it meant long, sleepless nights and over-analysis of different texts or commentary of events from my life. It meant being able to express myself through complex language and acutely describing or analyzing in resourceful manners. But there was something amiss about this time; it didn’t quite feel like my classes before.I felt bold. My eyes fell from the screen to the keyboard below. The different numbers and keys spread across an electronic board, all in which I had full control over. For the first time, I felt confident and capable in my literary skills and couldn’t help smirking.
Works Cited
DuPrau, Jeanne. The City of Ember. Random House, 2003.
Gratz, Alan. Prisoner B-3087. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2018.
Imagine Dragons - It's Time (Official Music Video), YouTube, 18 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=sENM2wA_FTg.
Smith, Dan. The Child Thief. Pegasus Crime, an Imprint of Pegasus Books, 2014.
