Read Online Write This Down by Claudia Mills - Free Book Online

would definitely publish this. It’s so deep and wise and true. It takes the whole “what don’t you like about yourself” prompt and turns it inside out. How can we know what we like or don’t like about ourselves, when we can’t even see ourselves, we can only see what the mirror shows? And what Cameron wrote connects with what I didn’t write, about how I care too much about what other people think.
    I can’t help smiling at Cameron.
    â€œIt’s beautiful,” I whisper.
    Cameron doesn’t return my smile or acknowledge my praise. He starts doodling all over the rest of the page and keeps on doodling. And for the first time this trimester, I don’t write anything either. Instead I just sit and chant Cameron’s haiku over and over again to myself.
    Then in the last minute of class, I write a mirror haiku of my own:
    No mirror shows me
    An image more real and true
    Than one that is cracked.
    I can’t help myself: just before the bell is about to ring, I turn my paper so Cameron can see it.
    As I suck in my breath, he reads it and gives a curt nod. Of approval? Or just acknowledgment?
    I like his haiku better than mine. But I like mine, too. I think it’s deep. I think it’s even profound . I like that we wrote them, side by side, together, on the same day.

 
    11
    Ms. Archer gives us class time to work on our personal essays on Thursday. Kylee lets me read what she’s done on hers so far. It’s about knitting—surprise, surprise. It’s about how she learned to knit, taught by her Chinese grandmother, who died earlier this year.
    Kylee is half Chinese (her mother) and half not Chinese (her father). Some kids and even some teachers expect Kylee to be a math-and-science whiz because she’s part Asian, but she’s not at all mathematical or scientific, and neither is her mom. Kylee says that’s a stereotype, and even though it’s a positive stereotype and not a negative one, it’s just as annoying.
    Her essay is good. It’s sweet and touching and really sensory. You can feel the warmth of the tea she’s drinking as she knits, and how it’s a metaphor for the warmth of the relationship she had with her grandmother.
    But is it about something? Or is it just an incident?
    Right now my piece about Hunter and Mrs. Whistlepuff feels like an incident, too: here’s a nice thing my brother once did for me. Mine is even more of an incident than Kylee’s. You could say that hers is about the value of passing on family traditions, about how little things like knitting together can feel so big when someone is gone and only the memory remains. Kylee’s piece starts with the line “Po Po died last May.” That lets us know right from the start the essay is going to be about surviving loss.
    Now that I think of it, my piece is about the exact same thing. The person I loved is gone, like Kylee’s grandmother, but in a different way. My piece is about surviving loss, too, about how people who once loved you may not love you anymore, but you still love them because of things they did back when they did love you. Though right now I have to admit I don’t feel a whole lot of love for Hunter, just this sickening kind of hurt inside me.
    But I don’t think any of this comes through now, the way I’ve written it.
    I gather up my essay and my writing notebook to take them over to Ms. Archer’s desk. One of the reasons she gives us in-class writing time is so that we can conference with her as much as we need to.
    Olivia is already talking to her, of course, leaning forward in the conference chair, tossing her long dark hair as she gestures animatedly. Olivia talks one-on-one to Ms. Archer every single in-class-writing day. I guess she’s entitled to. Half the time Ms. Archer is sitting there waiting for someone to talk to her, so it isn’t as if Olivia is taking time away from anyone else. But it