I sprout,
Take months to grow, But eventually, Turn into a beautiful creation, A creation of life, Beauty, That is what I am, I enjoy the beams of sunlight, And April showers. Can you tell me, What am I?
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No one needs to tell me,
What is right or wrong, Especially, How I should be dressed, If I want to wear a red hat, Let me, It is me being me, If you judge me, I will not care, I am unique, I stand out on my own, do you? I need no side comments, Or unpleasant remarks, Relax and, Watch me be me, I am doing no harm, Life is already hard as it is, So let me be happy, Let me live the way I want. A beauty that blooms in many colors to please:
Orange, yellow, purple, pink, even red. Quite known to put even the harshest at ease. Sought by few, happiness received, all dead. Often seen to help the badly sick and deathly weary, Great taste, style, perpetual, and known to all, She made an impact to help every Joe and Mary. Are there bad sides to even recall? In fact, she caused an abundance of trouble. Aches,restlessness, vomiting, and pain. She leaves many of her victims to mumble, Too late to realize that there is no gain. She brings to the family much sadness and only harm, Leaving nothing but a needle in the arm. All that Benedict Cain could hear was the hum of fluorescent lights. Hum, hum, humming. It was a tiresome sound, and he was very, very tired. He liked to tell himself that he helped put people to sleep. He liked to tell himself a lot of things. Benedict Cain liked to tell himself that he was the strongest, the smartest, the only one whose judgment was not jaded by emotions or selfishness. He especially liked to tell himself that his judgment was final. Oh, how he loved finality. The sound of throat crushed under knife, protest against darkness, the corrupt dropping, the gasp gone for good – all sounds that he just adored, sounds that were irreversible. Benedict Cain did not like the hum of fluorescent lights because it just kept going and going. He liked it when things ended. He liked endings. Benedict Cain turned off the lights. He could still hear the humming coming from the city around him. It was the sound of people just going on and on. Hum, hum, humming. Benedict Cain sat in the darkness, dreaming of the last fight, a sudden crunch, and then silence. He dreamed of the final ending.
He had not awoken because he did not sleep. Not really. Benedict Cain liked the city in the early morning. He would leave his apartment and, in the silence, pretend that he was the last man left on Earth. Everyone else had gotten what they deserved, and he, the only right one, was left to his thoughts. Benedict Cain loved the subway most of all. All the tunnels under the ground were dark. This particular morning, he walked through the tunnels looking for rats. Sometimes the last man on Earth got bored, and Benedict Cain did allow himself to have fun. He would catch two rats and take them home with him. Then he would put them in a sound proof cage he had built as a prototype. He would peak in occasionally through the little window, and wait to see which rat would try to eat the other one first. That rat would be allowed its freedom because it had betrayed its dark and gross kind. He would take the winning rat, hold it up to his face, and stare into the mirror with it. Benedict Cain knew that he was a very unassuming man. He was ugly because his face was not perfectly symmetrical. That did not bother him. He did not need anyone to look at his face anyway. He was short and thin, which worked well. He could follow people for long periods of time, but because he was small he went almost undetected or registered. Still, when people did look at him, Cain noted, they looked away very quickly. There was something about him that people, according to the few people he had ever spoken to, found off putting. He knew what it was: his eyes. They were the lightest shade of blue, almost white. They were very striking. When he looked in the mirror with his rat, he smiled at his eyes. The only part of his appearance that matched his interior, they looked like the eyes of a powerful man, and they were. Benedict Cain liked the idea that some people’s last sight would be his ocean blue eyes. Benedict Cain liked to imagine that as he walked through the subway, the rats could only see his blue eyes, and that they were so grand that they shone like headlights, which would make him a train. More machine than man, this idea quite appealed to him. His head snapped forward intently when the sound began. It was so familiar. It was a scream. There was someone else in the subway. They were screaming “Help. Help me. Oh god, someone help me.” The scream was loud and shrill. It was agitating, and more god than machine, Benedict Cain decided to silence whatever was producing it. He walked towards the sound, his hands covering his ears, but it stabbed through his flesh. He just wanted silence. Why do they scream? Cain had often wondered this. The first time he pulled his knife, the girl had screamed. This had surprised him so that he almost dissected the girl as if he could find the answer inside. Benedict Cain hypothesized that it was just another example of the foolish things that humans had not come to turns with. Cain had concluded that there were some unpleasantries that people simply denied. It seemed evident to Cain that: firstly, everyone must die. Also, if he was able to abduct or trick his victim into the darkness, and they screamed, no one would come. People, or normal people, were afraid of the dark. Besides, it seemed like people were screaming so much that everyone had lost interest in investigating the cause. Simply put, people may hear a victim scream, but they will never stop it. The scream is, as are most human things, pointless. Benedict Cain did realize that he was now going through the darkness to get to the cause of the scream, but that was different. He was different. Up ahead, Benedict Cain could see figures. One was on the ground, covering its face. The other was standing up and kicking the other hard. Benedict Cain wondered what kind of shoes that one had. Would they be washable? Would some of the blood soak through? At this thought of blood, his hand instinctively went into his jacket pocket and felt the cold metal. He kept it hidden so that it would not shine in the darkness. He did not want to reveal himself, not yet. The figures were arguing. “She was mine. God damn it, and you slept with her.” The figure yelled, landing a kick right in the stomach of the other. “Help! Help! I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.” “I’ll kill you.” Benedict Cain recognized urgency in that phrase. Whenever he said that, it was flat. It was a statement, one that an apathetic judge would give. This figure however, spat it out red hot. In his voice was the passion that the masses so greedily entertained themselves with. In that voice was the disgusting sound of caring. Cain decided that it would not be enough to just take out the screamer, but also the one who made him scream. The world, his world, did not need any more passion. The man on the ground seemed to have passed out or something, the screaming had stopped, but he did not look like a corpse. Yet. “Did you hear me?” The angry one yelled. “I said that I’ll kill ya.” “Pity.” Said Benedict Cain. He watched the man stiffen, go all rigid. Benedict Cain observed, not for the first time, that both rats and humans look the same when they are afraid. “Who said that?” The man asked the darkness, and to Cain this seemed as pointless as a scream. Why would the name of his murderer matter to the body? “What I mean is, now that he is unconscious and all, we will not get to see the look on his face right before. I bet you his eyes would have bulged out and his lips would have started to move and then stopped, like he has no words left. I bet you that he would have been so pale, so afraid.” “I wouldn’t have killed him” The man said in a strange way that was like a mixture of someone trying to convince a jury and someone trying to confess to a priest. “Not really.” “Oh, I know,” said Benedict Cain. “Ok, so that you have no need to tell on me, sir. There is no need to go to the police.” “Why would I ever go to the police?” Cain asked, beginning to have some fun. “I wouldn’t want to give them any help in finding the corpse.” “Wait, what corpse?” Benedict Cain drank up the silence after that question. He could see the man’s legs begin to tremor, as if he was going to run somewhere. Cain knew that he would not run. The man was glued to the sport because of the blood and the darkness. Besides. Cain found that with most humans, as long as you told them to stay, they would. Cain now walked up behind the man, his knife drawn. He wanted to see the man’s face, and have the man look into the eyes. So he got close. He was not at all surprised how easily the man let Cain walk up towards him and press the blade against his throat. Cain could almost feel his pulse. It was disgusting and enthralling at the same time. Benedict Cain was about to do it, the motion that felt more natural to him than any other thing in this world. Then he saw it. There, sticking out of this man’s pocket was a gun. Cain swiftly reached for it. Cain took the man’s last hope in his hand and laughed. At first, Benedict Cain laughed that the man had not be clever enough to use the weapon. Then he laughed about how he, Benedict Cain, had so easily beaten death again just by his sheer charisma. Then his face contorted into a sinister smile. This man could have actually killed the other one. Benedict Cain had an idea. “Do you want to live?” Cain asked. He knew that the man would say yes, although he was not sure exactly why this would be the strangers response. It was not like the man was going to do something with his life anyway. “Yes.” “Then I have a proposition. If you kill your friend over there, I may just let you go.” A rat scurried by, and Cain wanted to catch it and force it to watch this perfection. “Why?” “You brought the gun.” Cain said. “Is it loaded?” and he held it to the man’s chest, looked at his face, and he knew it was. “You brought the gun, and you were going to do it anyway. So do it now.” “No.” The man said, but even while doing this he held out his hand. Cain reached into his other pocket and pulled out a smaller knife. This way, the man would have to feel the warm blood coming out. The man bent down, so that his face was right next to his victim’s. He began to pray, but Cain pressed the gun to his head. Prayer was a more ridiculous form of screaming, and Cain would not have false idols mentioned in his presence. The man nicked himself on the knife, and for a second stared at his own hand as if he had never seen blood before. Then, on his knees, he looked up at Cain. His eyes were wide, and his lips started to move but had nothing to say. Then, very quickly he turned around. He forced the knife down with his entire body as if gravity was not on his side. He hit the man’s shoulder. “You need to do it again.” Cain said. The man fought to get the knife out of the shoulder, and when he finally did, it was not with any King Arthur grandness. The man looked around in the darkness, as if searching for knights and not just night. And then, again, he turned to what, presumably, used to be his friend. And he stabbed him. And he stabbed him. He did it twice, and was going back for a third when, Cain noticed, the victims eyes burst open, as if pain had awaken him. The victim looked up at his murderer and said nothing. There was a finality in the note of his last breath that Benedict Cain wanted to savor it forever. Then the deed was done. “You did well.” With this Cain collected his knife back. He then grabbed the man by the shoulder. Benedict Cain remembered his rats and the new cage. “Come on pet. You’ve earned this. You can stay in the box, and if you promise to be very quiet, I might let you live to the end.” I suppose that the sun did rise that day, but in those tunnels, with those rats, one would never have been able to tell. Rip my heart out,
Tear at my eyes, This is all your fault, You and your lies. If you want to find pain…
Be tricked by a rose’s beauty If you want to find pain… Listen to Three Days Grace, and hear Adam’s stories If you want to find pain… Look at the world around you If you want to find pain… Be fooled, listen, and look in every corner and crack I’m falling
falling falling. the colors hurry by rushing rushing rushing, Nothing but a blur. I’m falling falling falling, But I’m smiling. Air rushes past soaring soaring soaring Lights flash, and the sky lightens, and I realize that I am not, indeed, falling falling falling. But instead, I am flying flying High above the trees Never to come down. Dee Adcock is the epitome of what government officials should be. He is well versed in an array of topics that greatly impact the 13th district: The immediate terrorist threats and pending ice age are examples of such issues we must all be aware of. If you believed any part of this was false, then you can see how flawed Jenkintown’s information can be. We should research our questions more thoroughly, I mean, it’s not Adcock’s fault he misheard the question, we should’ve supplied easier ones! I don’t understand the backlash he received from the Ebola question. He was correct in all his statements, the U.S. did only possess one anti-Ebola vaccine. This is incredibly dangerous considering TWO people contracted this virus: We didn’t have enough for both of them! By some miracle they survived, yet in a separate situation, a slimy piece of humanity was wiped from the Earth, thankfully. The other three (two) most important issues affecting our district are as follows: we must get our economy “going and growing” and protect against the dozens of terrorist attacks committed daily on our local soil. Thankfully, that faked Times cover was wrong, and that soil has not frozen over. I am proud to have given Adcock the opportunity to educate our school and score his first touchdown. I am left with a single question. WHERE’S JEN??? Hold on... here’s a tee-shirt.
Losing somebody you care about is a life-altering event. You feel as if you have lost a part of you. You may be confused or angry or distraught, maybe a mix of all three. For Mia Hall, in Where She Went by Gayle Forman, she lost her parents and younger brother in the first book If I Stay, which created a void within her heart. Where She Went had good intentions when it came to answering questions raised from the first book; however, it spent too much time focusing on the flashbacks instead of the night Mia and Adam had spent together.
Where She Went takes place in New York City, Mia’s new home. It is told from the point of view of her now ex-boyfriend, Adam Wilde and is about their lives three years after the accident. While in New York, Adam and Mia spend a night together, trying to reconnect, but they mistakenly avoid talking about the accident and why Mia had cut off any contact with Adam. They soon learn that they needed to talk about these problems, realizing that they can’t run from their past. The end of If I Stay raised several questions for the readers. What would happen to Mia and Adam’s relationship? Would Mia go to Juilliard? Would Adam follow Mia if she went to Juilliard, ultimately leaving his band? These questions haunted the readers from the day they finished If I Stay until the day they read Where She Went. You find out that Mia did leave for Juilliard, and Adam stayed in Portland to play in his band. You also discover that their relationship had fallen apart afterwards; “She left for Juilliard the day after Labor Day. I drove her to the airport. She kissed me good-bye. She told me that she loved me more than life itself. Then she stepped through security. She never came back” (47). Although they stayed together in the months after the accident, they did not stay together once Mia started at Juilliard. Neither of them ever called each other to make the break up official or to try and work it out; they just allowed their relationship to fall apart; they didn’t talk too much after Mia left, but when they stopped talking, they knew their relationship was over. When you find out that they’ve broken up, it raises another question. Why? You continue to wonder this until the night has ended. When Mia finally spills her guts, the readers are shocked: “She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger ‘Because I hated you’” (188). She may not have necessarily hated Adam right after waking up, but at some point between waking up and starting at Juilliard, she began to hate him. Finding out that Mia now hates Adam raises another question: Why did, or does, Mia hate Adam? Mia eventually answered this question; “You made me stay” (188). While Mia had been in her coma, Adam had talked to her: he had told her he’d do anything if she stayed, so when she tells him that, she finally reveals that she could hear Adam when he was talking to her. Within Where She Went, the readers were able to put their unanswered questions to rest and finally get some closure. Although this book answered the questions that were raised from If I Stay, there was too much time devoted to flashbacks of the events of the past three years, instead of on what Mia and Adam. Certain flashback chapters, such as the ones that discussed the months after Mia woke up, and Mia and Adam’s break up, were important to the book. I believe, though, that they should have been in the beginning of the book instead of dispersed throughout the book. About ten of the twenty three chapters are just flashbacks; one chapter is entirely devoted to how Adam met his girlfriend after Mia; “In a weird twisted way, Bryn and I met because of Mia” (81). This entire chapter has nothing to do about Mia or Adam that night. It was about Adam’s new girlfriend, who is not an important character. Since the flashback chapters are dispersed, going in between present day chapters, it can become confusing to follow; one chapter could be about Adam finding a flier stating, “Young Concert Series Presents Mia Hall” (36), and being about Adam then going to the concert. While, the next chapter could be about how “Mia woke up after four days” (39), and how she went to Juilliard. The author spent so much time on flashbacks that he didn’t spend enough time on the details of what was going on present day. He also made it seem like he rushed to finish the ending. Because too much time was spent on flashbacks, I did not feel as if the book reached to the standards I had hoped for- more detail about Mia and Adam’s current lives, showing how much they’ve changed- instead of the details of their lives from the past. Since they did not do this, it caused me to not like the book as much as I had hoped to. Evidently, losing somebody can be life-altering. In If I Stay, Mia and Adam thought that they’d stay together even after Mia had graduated and potentially attended to Juilliard; in Where She Went, you find out that they didn’t. Although this book achieved answering questions raised for the readers in If I Stay, it failed in making the book a new story by including too many flashbacks. Joseph Remington. This must be him, because everything about him is perfect. From head to toe. He’s absolutely perfect. His hair, a dirty blonde color, just barely brushes his ears, and shines, even in the ugly fluorescent lighting of the guidance office. He’s tall, but not too freakishly tall. He’s wearing a plain, navy blue tee shirt. It’s not too tight on him, but it’s tight enough for me to be able to see the tone of his muscles underneath. He must be an athlete. A pair of stone-washed jeans cover up his green sneakers, clashing with the dark green color of the carpet in the guidance office. I’m speechless. His green eyes pierce mine, in a curious way. He’s perfect. He starts to say something, but I don’t hear him. His pink lips move, and I’m mesmerized. He smiles, and his teeth are a sparkling white. From head to toe, he’s perfect. I know this. I know this. I don’t quite understand the feeling welling up inside of me. I’ve never felt this before, and I don’t understand it now. But I do know this: he’s the one. The first one I’ll ever kill.
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