Literary Orphans

TEEN SPIRIT: You Are What You Eat by Katha Sikka

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Major Premise: You are what you eat.

Minor Premise: What you eat is artificially flavored.

Conclusion: You are artificially flavored.

 

This syllogism is not only true but also pervasive in our society.


 

“Wait, so why is the force of friction equal to the applied force?”

 

“But how do we rank the energy dissipated in the resistors?”

 

“Is g referring to acceleration due to gravity or something else?”

 

Each of them scribbled into their notebooks, stabbing their pens into the paper as revenge for the pain that each vector, each arrow, directed toward their hearts and their brains, caused them. One of them did not attempt to attack physics directly but rather using the parallelogram method, wanted to shoot multiple vectors, which formed a perfect frame around each of the students’ hearts.

 

“I don’t study,” she said, although the complaints that managed to occasionally cough up from her larynx and the bags under her eyes seemed to indicate otherwise.

 

But since I was the only one who heard the coughing of her larynx, her bags underneath her eyes began to grab her pupils, squeezing them tighter and tighter, relentlessly causing her augmenting pain.

 

So much pain that she had to repeat, “I don’t study.”

 

It was at this time that the bags released, causing her pupils to enlarge, erupting over the entire surface area of her irises.

 

And not only did the bags release…

 

But also did the highlighter from my hand, scratching every vein, as the downward pull of gravity prevailed

 

But also did the previously stationary vocal cords of the other students as the intrinsic muscles moved them apart, allowing them to move in a rhythmic exercise.

 

“Really?” one said as her muscles began to perform yoga.

 

“You’re so smart,” as another one’s voice began to get increasingly faster, her muscles in the middle of running a mile.

 

“I wish I was you,” said another whose muscles did jumping jacks, and each of her words made her voice more high-pitched than before.

 

When the bell rang, she said, “All of you just spent the entire period discussing physics, but it didn’t increase your understanding of the subject at all,” as each of her veins anchored into the spirals of her physics notebook, showing that even she succumbed to gravity.

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Katha Sikka is inspired by many writers’ techniques such as Jane Austen’s extensive knowledge of human nature and incorporates it into her own writing style. Katha is involved in all the literary clubs at her school, including the Jane Austen Society of North America, and is a prominent writer of both her school’s newspaper and literary magazine. She has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her work is published in the May issue of Foliate Oak Literary Magazine and Gone Lawn Issue 18. She is attending the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference this summer.

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–Art by Milan Vopálenský & Esmahan Özkan

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