Writing South Carolina: Selections of the 6th Annual High School Writing Contest

By Will Jordan

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• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Educational Foun
• Release date: Mar 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087885773

Will Jordan

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Book preview

Finalists

Front Row, L-R: Mason Waltman, Emma Miller, Katie Dorn, Rebeccah Ogbuefi, Alanie Blanton, Layla Wheelon.

Second Row: L-R: Cassidy Price, Kathleen Raye Humphries, Caitlin

Shelor, Christina Lewis, Maya Green, Brittney Watts, Gage Moccia, Rowan Brown.

Third Row, L-R: Maya Cline, Loulou Hranowsky, Walter Edgar, Makeenie Robinson, Lauren Teal, Autumn Simpson.

Back Row: Caelan Bailey, River Abedon, Sierra Sconzo, MacKenzie

Gascon, Devin Leigh.

Absent: Lauren Chen, Caroline Conway, Samuel Rosenberg.

Photograph by Stephanie Justice.

1

Alanie Blanton

All Eyes on Her

They stood back in silence and watched

As she made it across the room and took her seat

Cold, dry hands and trembling feet

She was nearly out the back door, even in her chair

Absently she stared past them, they whispered under shushed tones and unsteady breath, Who is she?

Who was she, really, or who had she been?

A debutante, teen idol, so pretty and prim

With wide eyes full of ambition and passion

A smile thriving on opportunity and enterprise

She was the girl who had everything, and in this had nothing

So rich that she was poor, so full she was running on empty

So alive that she was dying, but she wasn’t dead yet

At her highest point, she peered down from the top of Sassafras Mountain, and laughed at herself at her lowest

Unable to see from such great heights that the fall wasn’t as far as she figured

A Southern Belle stuck in her ways, a horse on her way to the glue factory

Who became so consumed in her own passage that she blocked off every other path

A closed mind with tumorous tendencies, with toxic thoughts addicted to being heard, drunken with the idea of being right, refusing to come down from the high and be told You were wrong.

Who would rather leave than accept defeat

Unless she had no other choice

She always had another choice.

That girl had become a shell of what was supposed to be a woman, wearing donated rags underneath layers of lavish riches

A lady who went mining and kept the fool’s gold but threw away the silver

Tossing away her chances at happiness like a rock across the Saluda River

Passionately pushing opiates and accepting paraphernalia as apologies

Unknowing of the unforgiving nature of the drugs she shoved down her throat

But she was silent as long as her lips were pressed against rolled up papers

This was as close to satisfied as she could get

As long as alcohol wet her whistle she wouldn’t blow on it, or cause a disruption

Because her opinions were white noise and she’d prefer white lines

And She finally fell apart on June 25th

One hundred and fifty years is a long time to lose the pieces before she managed to pick them back up

Every part of her is screaming that it’s too late to save her

But South Carolina does not need a savior.

And so the others who gathered, and sat there, around her

That stood back, aghast, in awe of her stature

Noticed, that in some ways, their scars were the same

That they all had cut themselves and watched as they bled red

She was struggling but she wasn’t so different than the others

Georgia remembered, she had fought alongside her

Virginia recalled when they all thrived together

North Carolina felt sympathy for her neighbor

New York pitied and tried to forgive her.

What could she do? How could she get better?

She’s so far gone, she can’t do this on her own

She doesn’t ask for help, but you hear it in her voice

All she wants is to be given a choice.

A choice to do better, a chance to get help

She wants to cleanse herself of the chemicals in her system

Tired of burning red eyes and black, ashy lungs

She wants to return to skies of blue and green, grassy plains

Run from the white lines and yellow nicotine stains

Drugs were her escape, but after all the time she’s spent pleading desperately to be free

How much does Freedom cost to someone who’s materialistic?

How much does an opinion matter to someone who’s addicted?

No light can come through if you shut the blinds

A Paper Cut from an Open Book

The pages I am in between right now are some of the best parts of the book. The words wedged underneath the name Alanie contain happy endings and harmonious beginnings. This chapter of my life is one the reader might read again and wonder just how lucky I am to be me. To them, I am fictitious. I am an exaggeration of anxiety, a hyperbole of the word spaz, whose trembling hands cause earthquakes and whose crying fits flood cities. Reading into me is trying and failing to step into a pair of shoes that will never be your size. Though our feet might be the same in length, we can never take the same steps. To them, I am a character.

My story, to some, would read as a tragedy, and to some, a comedy. Perhaps they would laugh at the anecdote about the first time I met a celebrity, find humor in my panicked cries. They would laugh, and upon looking in the mirror they would think that never once in their lives could they be anything like me. They could never be this character. Because they would laugh at the situation I brought upon myself. And if the reason wasn’t written in the paragraph below, then they would never piece together that my issues with being accepted and my fear of abandonment prompt me to create chaos wherever I go in some twisted effort to mediate a situation that does not even exist.

They would never read my story the way I would want them to see it. No aspect of my life could be put into the words they would need to understand, and I could never materialize for them. I would remain as I am – a character who’s seen hell but could not describe it in the language they would need to comprehend its heat and its horror. I could tell them what it was like to feel an unwanted touch, but could not make them feel the terror that curdled my blood and reddened my face. I would never want them to feel even an ounce of that pain.

The book could tell them that I would lie awake at night and wonder what it is about a drug that was so satisfying to make my birth parents give me up. But it could never tell them what it was like crying at the thought that from the very beginning I was never going be enough and never would be enough for anyone. My story might bring tears to their eyes, but it could never reproduce the hurt in my soul, the hurt from feeling worthless in your own skin. That’s how I’ve felt from age nine to even now. To think, truly, that their faces were such that not even a mother could love. They would see me as foolish, because they would know from previous chapters that the supporting characters were more than just support; they were binding the book together. Readers would know I live in a loving household and that the parents who took over love me more than those who didn’t ever could. Readers would think I am selfish, that in my unspoken thoughts I think only about myself.

None of them could understand that when I am nice, it is for my own benefit and not others. Could they truly relate to the euphoria of seeing someone smile and know it was because of their own doing? Would they feel as strongly about the desire to do good if it meant receiving a sort of love and affection back? Readers could never feel the love I feel when I listen to my friends speak well of me. They could never feel the jubilance of watching my teachers’ eyes light up as they read my writing, or understand that no matter how many times I receive a compliment I would still not find my sense of self-worth.

They would ask, How does she not see that she is loved unconditionally? Why does she see herself as an obstacle in every person’s way? And that would be a question that they would see on an essay prompt. I would become speculation. I would become a paper in a classroom, typed in Times New Roman. Never would they understand truly what it is like to be Alanie Blanton.

I am a character in a novel still in progress, with no telling of when it will end. Be that sooner or later, I am indifferent. But if they read this chapter right now, they would find someone who could tell them she was happy and fulfilled. Someone who was content, who loved her mother and father, held everyone up so high and thought them magnificent, who was writing and trying to figure out how she felt, after all this time, about herself.

They would be reading about a girl doing her best. She isn’t a heroine. She isn’t a villain. She doesn’t like being the main character, but it is what she has become. And even though her mind plagues her about a looming insignificance, she would present an image of uncertainty and hope. They would see a character with words to be said that they would ink on their skin, or scribble onto notebooks. Words they might would relate to, but never truly feel. They would realize they too are in their own stories, and that the library is unsorted and messy and hard to navigate. They would realize that nothing ever done or said could be torn from the pages, backspaced, or stuffed to the back of the shelves. Every single one of them would know they were like me, a character.

So read on and enjoy, whether I did or did not in the time that I wrote this. Then ask yourself, what are they reading about you right now?

2

Rowan Brown

Where the Words Come From

It took a long time for me to be proud of where I’m from. I felt like the only culture we had was ignorance. When I said I was from South Carolina, I whispered. Skimmed over. Skipped it all together. I thought it associated me with poverty and prejudice. Unforgiving religion and oppressive heat. Low mountains and red dirt.

When I talked to outsiders, I couldn’t even pretend that my South was any of the things Northerners thought were redemptive. My South Carolina is not picturesque in the way they want it to be. I drive past pawn shops and Confederate flags on my way into town and I’ve seen firsthand the hatred that can come out of this land.

I was frustrated when I wrote about places I thought I should be writing about. My stories about the streets of New York and Chicago came across as inauthentic, so I began to try and write about South Carolina. I liked