I asked Grandma, “What does it feel like going crazy?”
She smiled like she was remembering a long lost love. “It’s the best feeling in the world. Sometimes I can’t wait for it to come back.”
I didn’t worry after that.
JOEY CHEN
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Junior
HIGH SCHOOL: Stuyvesant High School
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastic Art & Writing Award: Honorable Mention
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: The first time Kiele and I met, we discovered our mutual love for spoken word poetry. One of the goals we set for the Girls Write Now program was to attend poetry slams together. We recently went to a spoken word event called “Page Meets Stage” at the Bowery Poetry Club where we got to see Morgan Parker and Sam Sax battle it out on stage. Although I was never comfortable enough to pursue spoken word on my own, Kiele has definitely pushed me to take more risks and be courageous with my writing!
KIELE RAYMOND
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Senior Agent, Thompson Literary Agency
BORN: Portsmouth, NH
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: I love how Joey is always seeking out new experiences. She has traveled to Costa Rica, Spain, and Tanzania, and this fall, we worked on summer abroad applications. So I was thrilled (and a little jealous) when I found out she was chosen to study in Berlin for the month of July. She has rekindled my love for German philosophy and reminded me that new perspectives should be found both on and off the page. I can’t wait to hear all about her adventures overseas.
According to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, kairosclerosis is “the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.”
She looks at the dashboard from the backseat of some taxicab. 11:51 p.m. Only nine minutes until midnight. She was only nine minutes away from turning seventeen. Another year closer to eighteen, to becoming an adult. The prospect terrified her. She didn’t want to grow up, at least not yet. She didn’t quite have things figured out; no big plans for the future, except the stuff that everybody did, like college and graduating from college. She didn’t want to abandon what was in front of her. What she wanted was to be forever sixteen, forever young.
She stares outside the taxicab window at the lamplit Manhattan streets and skyscrapers; she’s gone down this crowded highway a thousand times before. But still this neighborhood is unfamiliar.
“Hey, taxicab driver!” she yells. “Where are we right now?”
“Uh, not too far from the High Line. We’re almost there.”
“Do you mind hurrying it up, man? I’ve got places to be!” she huffs.
“Yes, ma’am!” he responds obediently, and presses on the gas pedal a little harder.
She slumps back into her seat, taking in the musty smell of old leather mixed with her own perfume. She’s been wearing the same Vera Wang scent since she started high school, but now it smells different on her. She hasn’t noticed the harsh floral scent before. She wrinkles her nose, not sure if she likes it, and shrugs.
They stop again at a light. The driver looks back.
“So what are you up to tonight?” he asks.
“Some guy’s house,” she mumbles. “We’re going to see a band.”
“What band?”
“Not sure.”
“Oh.”
As they inch forward, he adjusts the rearview mirror so that he can see her face better in the darkness. He notices the streetlights reflecting off her angled cheekbones and the way her eyes wrinkle at the corners as she squints at something in the distance. She can’t be much younger than him.
“Do you mind turning on the radio?” she asks suddenly, interrupting his lingering stare.
“Not at all.”
He grips the steering wheel with one hand and slowly turns the dial until he finds a song he likes.
“Hey! I know this song!” she shouts.
“You like it?”
“Yeah! I used to listen to this all the time when I was a kid.”
Although she hasn’t heard the song in years, she still knows exactly where each of the guitar solos start and end. She drums her fingers against her thighs to the beat. Her mother used to raise the volume whenever the second verse started. They would dance together in the living room.
“Belle and Sebastian is my favorite band of all time,” he says.
She nods absentmindedly in response.
11:56 p.m.
She knows that to every passerby on the streets, she is just another teenage girl weaving through the city in a branded yellow taxi.
She thinks of that word, sonder, the realization that each passerby was living a life as vivid and complex as her own.
How many significant moments in her life actually matter in the grand scheme of things? After all, she is just a speck of dust stuck in an infinitesimal universe.
11:59 p.m.
The cab slows and pulls over to the edge of the sidewalk.
“All right, we’re here.”
“What? Already?”
She sees the dark green door of her friend’s apartment building. She pays and steps out onto the concrete pavement.
“Thanks for the ride, man.”
“Yeah, no problem. Have a good time at the show. And don’t forget about Belle and Sebastian!”
She nods and swings the cab door shut. The world speeds up again, and as the clock strikes twelve, she rings the buzzer.
Zenosyne
KIELE RAYMOND
According to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Zenosyne is “the sense that time keeps going faster.” Joey and I used these terms as a jumping off point to think about how change can be experienced in so many different ways.
My daughter turns seventeen tomorrow. She was born in 2000, and that felt very neat and tidy at the time. Clean slate, etc. Her birthday still feels like a kind of completion each year, coinciding usually with the moment I stop messing up the date on my checks or dentist forms. When I was younger, a new adult, I used to