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Prompt One

EAST REGION | First Round

Summertown

Alexander Yates

Syracuse University

I believed in Summertown from the very beginning.  From the very first time I saw it out the window of Dad’s station wagon.  We were zooming up route 81, the car full of my sisters and our pets and what furniture was left after the fire.  Florida was nothing but a terrible memory, miles behind us. Summertown loomed to the north, its massive glass dome...

...Pacheco stops typing away at the computer.  “Can’t do it, my friend.”  He radios back in his throaty, charming way.  “I’m busy.”

“Ha.  Busy doing what?”

He perks up.  “Where are you?”

“At home.  I’m having a lie-down with my old lady.  What’s got you busy?”

He turns to look back at the vault-style door, but as he does his elbow hits the printer and sends it tumbling to the floor with a plastickey crash.  His shoulders dip and his neck scrunches up like someone afraid of being hit.

“What was that?” I push him.

“I’m in the Explanatory.”  He’s totally cool.  “A humming owl’s got loose from the Aviary, and it’s knocking into the display cases.  My boys and I are trying to catch hold of it.”

“That sounds serious.  I’ll be right there.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm hmmm.”  I very convincingly mimic the sound of tying my shoelaces.  “All set.  Be there in a minute.”

“Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine.”

I huff and puff, like I’m running down my condo steps.

“Hey,” he says.  “Hey.  No.  All right, I’m not in the Explanatory.”

I stop huffing and puffing.  “I don’t understand.”

“Listen,” he says.  “I’ll be honest with you.  I’m in women’s fashion.”  He knows I hate women’s fashion...

The Flood

David Letzler

City University of New York

On the night of May 1st, 1976, as they camped on Pine Hill, a mile from the campus of Henderson College, Jonathan Hart asked Emily Prentice to marry him.  The breeze from Lake Ontario flitted through their matching shoulder-length chestnut hair, and the faint yellow grass fluttered in a light wind beside the big white rock that sloped down the hill’s leeward side, just...

...We’re not even sure what ethnicity he is, because he’s that Natalie Wood color where you might be Latino, Jewish, South European—”

“Does that matter?”

“I’m just saying.  He doesn’t have close friends, but everybody knows him.  He shows up at every event, every party, but doesn’t stay.  And there are these legends: he was tops at tryouts for track, baseball, and swimming, but didn’t join the teams; he showed up to quiz bowl practice, got more questions than everyone else combined, and then didn’t come back; then he—”

“I get the idea.”

“Well, maybe it’s made up.  Anyway, he’s pretty cute, too.  I sort of want to track him down and have a serious, liberal-arts-college-type discussion, figure him out—”

“Nik.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to go crazy if you’re not the most interesting person on campus.”

“What?  No, don’t worry about it.”

“Mm hmmm.”

“Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine.  I love it here.  I mean, isn’t it what everyone wants?  To be where more people are like you?”

“Yes.  Exactly.  It’s why I’m enjoying law school, actually.”

“Good.  Yeah, enough about me: what have you been up to in Queens?” ...

Prompt One, East Region, Round 1.

"Summertown" by Yates [54.9%]

"The Flood" by Letzler [45.1%]

Go to Round 2