Ellie Fox

I knew something was wrong the second my feet hit the pool floor. Blinding pain shot up my right leg, freezing time as the cold, chlorinated water swirled around me. I wasn’t sure what had happened.

My manager’s deliberate yelling pulled me out of the trance. I limped towards my coworker, my guard tube trailing behind me. The pain fogged my brain, so much so that I started to do the wrong type of lifeguarding save.

That day was an in-service, a weekly training all lifeguards had to attend.

“I think something’s wrong with my knee,” I had said to my manager.

I couldn’t put any weight on it. I had no idea if I could even walk anymore, let alone dance. I had faced many unknowns in my life before: first days of school, musical auditions, things like that. But this one, not being able to use my knee again, wasn’t an option for me; I would lose a part of myself, a part of the way I express myself. Not being able to dance again would be devastating.

I got the diagnosis a few days later. I hyper-extended my knee and jammed my ankle, which put me out of commission until my knee was healed: no strenuous activities allowed. While it could’ve been worse, a knee brace, an ankle wrap and a bag of ice became a new constant in my life. This scary unknown suddenly morphed into me waiting for my life to return to the way it was before my injury. I sometimes doubted if normal would ever come back.

It was a painstakingly slow process, but as my knee and ankle healed, I learned to take the small gains as wins. Walking without a brace, even for a few hours, was progress. I slowly got myself back. I could dance again. I went on runs with friends, stretched and swam without discomfort. Now, even though I can’t get my passé to exactly 90 degrees or land my round-off perfectly, I know I can face the unknowns ahead of me, whether it be dancing or anything else.

Claire Lewis

Driving down I-96 East, from Ann Arbor to Detroit should only take 45 minutes. But the evening rush of 5 p.m. on a Friday night, pulled our red Ford Escape to a dead stop.

It had been weeks since my dad got sick, and it was now normal to spend most days away from both my parents. My uncle would take us around town, my neighbors would take us to school and my grandparents would stay over in the night to watch us. This was all known. Schedules were posted all over my life, dictating my days from the time I woke up to the moment my head hit the pink floral pillow atop my bed.

The people that made up me and my sister’s lives began to turn our days into a game of distraction.

One Friday night, our Uncle Ryan decided to take me, my cousins and my sister to a monster truck rally in Detroit. The proposition was exciting, so we all piled into the back seat of his red car. I was squished in the middle, sandwiched between reality and distraction.

We tried to play games as we watched as the left side of the highway zipped past us, we stayed stagnant for hours. Whenever I thought of my dad, his unknown, I would turn my face toward the world and decide to let myself be consumed by the known.

Lydia Debord

I didn’t expect to meet my sister in my sophomore year of high school. But our matching Converse was an instant sign, and I have never been one to ignore signs. She was the only freshman girl in my forum, and I invited her to sit with me, cheekily noting that we we’re “shoe twins!”

Amelia Knight is two inches taller than me, but in platforms, I almost match her. Her hair is naturally a silky brown and mine is bleached blonde. She can knock out math problems in a second and I edit her essays. She is a year younger than me, but our minds rush at the same pace.

Within two weeks of knowing her, she was pinned on my phone.

We live 15 minutes away from each other, and in a year, it will be much farther than crossing school dis-tricts. I am going to college, and the year that separates us kicks in – she will stay without me.

One thing is certain, I won’t find another Amelia. That isn’t to say there won’t be beauty and good in my next ad-ventures, but something so firm and constant won’t be there. Lunches will turn to FaceTimes, hallway whispers will become texts under tables. She will be going to senior prom as I apply for internships.

Despite all of this, I know I will always have Amelia. We loved the fourteen and fifteen-year-old versions of each other, which is something so special and rare. Meeting someone at a time of vulnerability is an experience within itself – coming out of it together and still seeing eye to eye is something you find in a sister.

Amelia sees me for everything I am, and accepts all of it. I never have to hide, and she will call me out if I need it. I met her at the right time, and I have faith that it was for a reason spanning beyond Ann Arbor.

Isabella Maldonado 

When I was three my favorite word was “why.” I would lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, and as soon as my mother closed the book she was reading, a trillion questions would come out of my mouth. “Why do I have brown hair?” to “Why don’t trees have moms?” I wanted to know everything. I needed to know everything. I need to control the unknown.

I have carried my need to know everything throughout my life, from asking as many questions as I could to my teachers to being nosy and sitting outside my mom’s door while she was on the phone.

So now three weeks after one of the people closest to me has passed, I sit in my room asking why. Yet I can’t bring myself to find the answer. I know the scientific answer, it was a heart attack, but it’s not real, it can’t be.

Now, “Why?” has become a question I don’t have the strength to ask.

I have had my future planned for what feels like forever, she was in every vision of the future; my 17th birthday, getting into college, my graduation. She was supposed to be there. Now my future has changed and the plan I have carried so close to my heart has fallen into a state of uncertainty.

She read every piece of writing I ever wrote, we were good that way. I wrote, she read. It was our thing, but now I feel as though I am a writer without a reader. It doesn’t make sense just as you can’t be a teacher without students, its inexplicable.

As I sort through the thousands of books she kept in her small room down the hall from mine, I can see the past. I can hear her laugh. I can smell her perfume. I have no idea when the cloud of uncertainty will clear and when I will stop wondering when she will knock on my bedroom door.