Victor M. 11th - South Africa
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We're strangers in each other's eyes, with multiple versions of ourselves existing in every mind. To some, I'm loud and vibrant, while others see me as quiet and reserved. Perspectives clash, yet all are true, reflecting fragments of my being.

But who am I, really? The truth lies within. I'm not one person, but many - a mosaic of moments, emotions, and thoughts. Others see shining glimpses, but only I hold the full, intricate light. My identity is a kaleidoscope of selves, forever evolving. In this tapestry of human sight, lies the beauty of complex, multifaceted existence.

Evvi, 12th - France
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you stitched me from the prettiest pieces,
only the ones you wanted to see--
the way I laugh when I’m tired,
the softness in my apologies,
the parts of me that looked easy to love.

you never saw the jagged hours,
the shaking hands,
the dark corners I didn’t know how to light.
you built a girl out of daydreams
and asked her to be me.

I stayed still for you.
folded into shapes you liked.
shrunk myself quieter, prettier,
more patient, less real--
until even I forgot what I sounded like.

you loved the paper doll you made.
you never asked if I was bleeding under the seams.

E Spellman, 12th - Oakland, CA

For years, all I wanted was a baby sister. I’d heard somewhere as a child that if you looked at a star and clenched your eyes shut while thinking about something you wished for, it would come true. So every star became a wish for a baby sister.
When Chanukah came around, I had the clever and endearing idea to erase every single item from my wish list and replace it with one thing: Baby Sister. Mama rubbed my back knowingly, with a quiet sadness I couldn’t understand back then.
 “I know, love. I know you want that,” she said, tracing soft circles on my back.
Then came the yard sale, on a foggy afternoon. I sat on the porch, my long legs swinging off the top step. The air smelled like cardboard and old plastic boxes. I saw piles of old jeans, forgotten toys, things that hadn’t mattered in years.
A woman with short black hair sifted through a box of sweaters. Her toddler son was toddling across our lawn, crumbs stuck to his mouth. She held up a red sweater. A maternity sweater with a gaping looseness in the belly. PREGNANCY, the box read. The box that had been tucked away, half used, in the basement. 
“This is too cute for Christmas when I’m pregnant again!” she said to another woman beside her, laughing.
I stared at the red sweater for a long time. I knew then — Mama wasn’t going to be pregnant again.
I felt something inside me drop, slow and heavy. It felt like a dream had died in that moment — like I stepped into something heavy, something I wasn’t ready to feel. I didn’t cry or say anything. I just watched the woman, her little son, and felt my dream shift from my reality and into the little boy’s. The memory etched itself into me. Even now, years later, I can still close my eyes and see that red sweater in the black-haired woman’s hands. The way the material hung loose at the middle. The weight of the realization that I wouldn’t ever get a baby sister - no matter how many stars I wished on.
That realization lived in me. I carried it with me before I could even process what it meant or why I remembered that moment so well.
I’m sixteen now. I’m in a striped tank top and old jeans, crouched on the bed of my new room in Mexico, wet hair dripping onto the bedspread. Everything feels different and unfamiliar, with a rhythm separate from the one I was used to. 
The separation made me look back at my life, my childhood, my memories from a wider lens.
And the sweater moment came back to me. The dream that slipped quietly from my world into someone else’s. And I felt the feeling fully, consuming me like a cloud I couldn’t escape. It was rooted so deeply in me that feeling it again shifted something in my whole being.
I cried big, full tears splashing onto the sheets. I leaned over a white spiral notebook and let it spill out, pressing my pen hard into the page as tear drops blurred my fresh sentences. Mama wasn’t there to trace circles on my back. 
I was grown now. I had to wipe my own tears, to tuck my own hair behind my ears.
 I know everything happens for a reason.
But I don’t know why God thought I could hold this, my mind echoed.
I closed my eyes and let the tears sting my cheeks.
This is it. So I have to come to terms with it.
There had been a spit sample I sent to a lab when I was in middle school — something I’d completely forgotten about. And then one random night in high school, I checked my DNA test account out of curiosity. And I got the notification that I had a sister. 
A sister.
All that time since the red sweater — she had existed. She was real. With my same hair. Same eyebrows. Living in another city.
All those stars I’d wished on as a kid - I was wishing for someone who already existed.

Daniel, 11th - New York, NY

The water flowed over my face as I opened my eyes. I looked up and saw the great river roar over me as though I was a rock in a stream. The sun's beautiful rays fanned out around me like a many-armed angel. I felt the currents drag at my clothes. They seemed to whisper to me, “Come down Nathan, down into the depths.” I shivered, What's going on here I thought. The water felt more insistent now: “Come down Nathan,” it said again. Just then, a leaf dropped onto the river. I watched as it landed above me, sending ripples across the water. It flowed down the stream gently rocking from side to side. Such a nice leaf I thought. “Be like the leaf, Nathan. Come to us.” The voice seemed to emanate from everywhere– “What is this? Why am I underwater and who the f*** is Nathan?” I pushed up from the river bed, but it was as if it didn't want to let me go. “Stay Nathan,” it whispered into my ear. “My name’s not Nathan,” I screamed, trying to rip myself free from the silt. “No, stay with us Nathan, stay and be one.” I am not dying to some creepy river voice, I thought, as the silt started closing over me like a coffin. “Come join us,” the voice said as if slithering into my ear. It was getting hard to think now. NO NO NO I wanted to say, but it was like my mouth was sewn shut by a million little needles. The water pressed down on me, the pressure feeling like I was trying to move a mountain: “Yes Nathan, come down.” The silt closed over my head and the world went black as I was dragged into the dark abyss. “Thank you, Nathan.”