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Grade
10

The Williams were not rich, were not wealthy. But their daughter Lily still had an allowance, and every week, she would save her money in a homemade piggy bank, waiting for the perfect time to spend it. She was now eighteen, and could use the car only to and from community college. And every day, she did. Until one day, she took a detour to the store, and her dad noticed that her piggy bank was empty. 

When Lily came home late, and was about to drive on the driveway, she saw her dad outside, heartbroken and furious that his daughter had broken their rule to waste her money on what was probably something useless. He yelled at her, and Lily tried to explain from the car. Suddenly, a sports car sped and rammed Lily’s car. Lily was taken to the ER, but soon, the doctor uttered the most horrible words Lily’s dad had ever heard, “There’s nothing we can do.”

Red with tears, Lily’s father went to the trunk of the car to see what Lily had bought that could have possibly been worth all of this. His eyes touched upon a present that was labeled: Happy birthday, dad.

 

Grade
8

The train whizzes past me, swiftly approaching a fork. My best and only friend is standing on the track with her back turned, gazing at the horizon, oblivious to her impending doom. Eight workers wearing headphones dig at the tracks on the other side of the fork

I sprint up a steep ramp, approaching a bridge. I see a lever next to me, and in my trance I see a label showing how it will redirect the train to the workers. I stare indecisively, slowly gaining consciousness. I pull the lever.

My hair is frazzled, and my eyes are weary of sleep. I snatch the heavy weight off my head. The chamber I’m lying down in is labeled, saying that I took a test of morality, and choosing the workers was a fail. I glance back at the headset. I can retake the test, and choose the correct option to pass. Somehow, I believe no one can find out. 

I fall back into the chamber with the headset, and everything fades to black. Eerie red letters blare in front of me. “You have failed the honesty portion of the test!”

 

Grade
11

“You’re bleeding,” he says gently, cupping her face. Ruby-red tears ensconce themselves in his palm.
“It’s not blood,” she chokes out and moves away. Her face, once bright and verdant, wilts where he touches her.
He grabs her again and produces two Band-Aids out of his pocket. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you bleed,” he soothes, but instead of placing the Band-Aids over her tear-ducts, he sticks them on her mouth, so she cannot speak.
But she continues to weep, shedding tears of lead-contaminated water, rivers fraught with corpses and rotting flesh, oceans plagued by toxic hydrocarbons. Until she drowns in her ersatz blood, taking with her the man she once loved.